Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: In today’s economy, it’s not at all unusual for couples to continue to live together even when they are going through a marital separation. Sometimes, the couple truly hopes that the separation isn’t going to mean the end of their marriage so they continue to live together. And other times, one or both of them might like to live apart, but they really can’t afford to pay for or support two households. Many people assume that living together during your separation means that reconnecting or reconciling is going to be a little easier. This isn’t always true, although this situation can have its advantages.

You might hear a wife in this situation comment: “my husband and I still live together although we are completely separated. My husband wasn’t happy in our marriage. I realized that we had our problems but I never stopped loving him. I still love him today. And I would like to reconnect with him so that a reconciliation is eventually possible. But I don’t think that my husband will be receptive to this. He pretty much keeps to himself. He isn’t rude to me or anything like that. But he doesn’t really talk to me or seem all that interested in spending any time with me.  He’s been staying late at work. I think he’s doing this because he’s trying to avoid me.  So how can I reconnect with him in this situation?” I’ll offer some tips for this in the following article.

Accept That Any Progress Is Likely To Be Gradual: If your husband is already showing resistance to reconnecting, then it’s likely that this is going to be a gradual process. Because if you push too hard too soon, you run the real risk of your husband avoiding you even more. He may try to make sure that he isn’t home as much or he might just openly resist your efforts.

It’s important that you set a pace where he isn’t going to resist and you are both going to be comfortable. The idea is that you move forward as you can. You may try to make a couple of overtures to see how they are perceived. If you have success, then you will know that you can slowly move forward. If he shows resistance, then you’ll either need to back up or try again in a different way.

Make Sure That You Make This Process Lighthearted And Fun: From my own experience and from stories that I hear about on my blog, I firmly believe that you often have much more success in reconnecting with a reluctant spouse if you take the pressure away. What I mean by this is that it’s often in your best interest to not be so serious. I know that this might sound absurd. After all, we’re talking about whether your marriage succeeds or fails and this is a very serious matter. But it’s just human nature for people to back away from things that cause pain or awkwardness. Along that same idea, it’s human nature to move toward what is fun or what makes you feel good.

It takes real skill and trial and error to maintain a sense of play and light heartedness in a difficult situation such as this one. But if you can do this, I believe that it will often go a long way toward helping you reconnect. This will often seem counter intuitive. After all, how does watching a funny movie solve your marital problems? It doesn’t. But it does allow you both to just relax and enjoy one another’s company. And you often really do need to bring back the sense of ease with one another and the bond before you can solve your biggest marital problems.

So often, people have this backwards. They think that they can’t reconnect until they solve all of their problems. They figure they will eliminate the problems and only then will they reconnect. But often what they did not consider is that it’s very hard to solve your problems when you are so stiff, angry, and awkward with one another.

But if you can successfully bring back a sense of play and whimsy, your problems will seem to shrink. They will become easier to deal with. And your spouse is likely to be more receptive to you. The bottom line is that sometimes in order to reconnect, you have to step back and take your focus off of reconnecting, as odd as that might sound. Because this takes the pressure off. And once that happens, you can have some fun, relax, and rediscover one another.

I know that this all might sound a bit crazy. But what harm would it do to just try it? Think about what your spouse sees as fun or a good time and then try to introduce that, in a very laid back way, into your household and see if you get a positive reaction. If not, wait a while and try again. I suspect that you’ll find that you get a more favorable response than trying to force your spouse to reconnect when he’s resistant and when things are awkward.

I had to use this same strategy during my own separation.  All of the pressure had to disappear because otherwise, my husband avoided me completely.  If it helps, you can read more on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

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