Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: I sometimes hear from wives who aren’t sure how to approach their husband during their trial separation. Often, they believe that it is their husband’s behavior that made the separation necessary in the first place. So, they are understandably a little angry at him. And they are afraid that this is going to come out during their interactions during the separation. And, while they don’t want to put their marriage in jeopardy because of their behavior, this is how they really feel. They can’t help their anger. They can’t help their disappointment. And they feel as if the separation is mostly their husband’s fault.

I might hear a comment like: “my husband and I are separated because of his behavior. That is pure and simple. Throughout our marriage, my husband has always flirted with other women right in front of me and this has always been a problem. However, every time I would confront him about this, he would tell me that I was overreacting. Well, several months ago, I caught him having inappropriate text messages with one of his coworkers. Needless to say, I had a huge blow up about this. And, once again, my husband told me that I was overreacting and seeing something that wasn’t there. About four weeks later, I found the same type of exchange between my husband and yet another coworker. I was really upset this time. In fact, I was so mad that I kind of went numb. When my husband would try to talk to me, I wouldn’t respond. I closed myself off to him. And, as a result, he says that he feels as if we need to separate. I can’t really deny this. We probably do need to separate. And I am not sure how to treat him during this separation. I am still really angry at him. But I feel like if I continue to approach my husband with anger, he is eventually going to get tired of this and he may start up a relationship with some of the women with whom he is flirting. I don’t want for this to happen. Ultimately, I would like to save my marriage. But I also want for my husband’s behavior to change. I want him to be faithful and loyal to me. But if I push him away, there will be no marriage to save. Should I be nice to my husband during the separation that was all his doing? Or is that being hypocritical?” I will try to answer this question in the following article.

I think that before I attempt to answer this, I want to stress that the appropriate path to take here is going to hugely depend on what you ultimately want the outcome to be. If you really don’t care what happens with your marriage and you aren’t ever going to be able to trust your husband again, then allowing your true feelings of anger to come out isn’t going to be that great of a concern. But, if you think that you are hopeful (or at least open) about the future of your marriage, then you will want to take some extra care, which leads me to my next point.

You Don’t Have To Lie About How You Really Feel, But It Is A Good Idea To Act In A Way That Allows An Open Ended Future: I am not going to tell you that you need to embrace your husband despite his deplorable behavior or that you need to lie about how you really feel. Your feelings are valid. You have the right to them. And they are justified. But, you have to think about your long term goals.

And, if you allow your anger to lead your behaviors, you are likely to approach your husband with behaviors that are angry, resentful, and closed off. And even if it is not your intention, you could be giving your husband the message that your anger at him is more prevalent than your love for him. If you want to save your marriage, then this may be something that you want to carefully consider.

Now, I’m not going to tell you that you need to act in a fake, sweet way that obviously isn’t genuine. Your husband knows that you are angry with him. So pretending that you are not doesn’t really do you any good and it just makes your husband question how genuine this whole process is.

That’s why I believe that there is usually a medium between allowing your genuine feelings out without any hesitation and acting in such a way that doesn’t jeopardize the future of your marriage, should you eventually decide that you might want to save it.

Not Hiding Your Disappointment While Being Receptive To Future Changes: It was pretty clear that this wife wanted to keep her future options open. She knew that at some point, she may want to forgive her husband and save her marriage. She also knew that it was important that her future actions were in alignment with this. But, she didn’t want to behave like a hypocrite and pretend to be nice to husband when she was feeling anything but nice.

I think that it is both acceptable and authentic for your husband to know that you are very disappointed in and angry about his behavior. But it is very important to separate the behavior from the person so that your anger doesn’t feel personal. You can be angry at your spouse without believing that your spouse is a deplorable person who can never be redeemed. That is the real difference.

You can be disappointed in him but still believe in him enough that you’d be willing to save the marriage if you saw some rehabilitation and some remorse. That, to me is the distinction. So to answer the original concern, I believe that you can be nice to your husband during the separation because you are trying to leave the future open. But this doesn’t mean that you also have to be fake or to pretend that you aren’t angry and disappointed. There is room for all of those feelings and behaviors as long as you are clear on the fact that ultimately, you want to work this out. And, as long as you remember that people (your husband included) will not be as receptive to you if you are abrasive and angry.

Frankly, I was overwhelmingly nice to my husband during our separation.  And it rang as fake.  He didn’t respond well to this.  So I had to learn to strike a balance, which eventually worked.  If it helps, you are more than welcome to read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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