Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: It is very unnatural to think that while you are separated from your spouse, you will be fine not having face to face interaction, especially if you want to save your marriage. And often, just seeing your spouse to handle practical matters is not enough. Talking to your spouse about childcare or the household bills does nothing to ease your mind as to whether or not your separation is going well or making progress. And, you might crave more quality time with your spouse.

One way to achieve this is to date your spouse or to ask your spouse out. But this is a scarier proposition than you might think. A separation is an incredibly scary time. You have to guess constantly as to what your spouse might be thinking and what he might want. You hope that he is thinking favorably about you and wanting to spend more time with you, but you can’t be sure of this. And, if he doesn’t, does that mean that you should try harder to pull him closer?

I might hear from a wife who says: “I miss my husband desperately during our separation. We don’t see each other nearly enough. I would like for us to begin going out together regularly. I think that he would like this too but I can not be sure about it. I would like to ask him to go out to dinner with me, but I’m scared. There are days when he is nice to me but there are days when it seems as if I annoy him and then he makes it very obvious that he would like to be left alone. I don’t want to have him reject me. But I feel like if I do not take the initiative and ask him, then nothing is going to change or improve. I am scared of rejection though. When should you ask your separated spouse out on a date? When is it too soon or too late?”

There is really no set answer to this. But I know a lot of people (myself included) who suffered serious setbacks during their separation when they asked for this too soon. People say that you will never know unless you ask. But, in this case, asking does not come without risk. Because him saying no is only the tip of the iceberg. He may be so uncomfortable that he backs away or worse begins to avoid you and limit your access to him. If you are having a decent amount of give and take right now and you are enjoying a decent amount of access to him, I would be very careful about potentially moving too soon.

I know that this is probably not what you want to hear, but if I had to do it all over again during my own separation, I would have waited and allowed my husband to be the one to ask me. Because it wasn’t until I stopped and allowed him to initiate the contact for a while that I gained any ground. But when I pushed and pursued, he only ran away from me faster.

The other option is to build up to dating or asking him out. What I mean by this is instead of planning an elaborate dinner that might imply a lot of pressure start with something smaller and work your way up to this. Maybe just spontaneously ask if he wants to get a cup of coffee or offer to make him a snack if he’s at your house anyway. The idea is to extend the time that you are already spending together. That way, there’s no real risk of a huge rejection or him pulling away and it seems like a natural progression.

If you don’t like any of these suggestions and are still wondering when is the appropriate time to ask your separated spouse out on a date, my answer to this is when you know, without any doubt, that your spouse is going to say yes. And sometimes, over time, this becomes obvious and you can have this type of certainty. But until that time, I would wait and try to build upon what you already have until either he asks you or until you have absolute confidence that he is going to say yes.

I know that you might think this sounds very insensitive of me. And I apologize for this because I know how badly you want to reestablish a connection. I have been there too. But I also know how delicate a situation this is. And I know how badly it hurts when you push a little too fast and then find your husband not only not wanting to go our with you just yet, but also backing away. If things are bad now, I can tell you the second scenario feels much worse.

In my experience, there is much less risk in moving too late as opposed to too soon. To minimize this risk, it’s best to wait for him to ask, set it up so that the dates are just little outings that you are not calling dates, or wait and build on what you have already been successful in establishing.

If only I had done what I just advised you to do.  But I did not.  And before I knew it, I had nothing left on which to build.   Moving slowly would have been best, but I rushed.  I was eventually successful in getting him to pursue me but not without starting all over. You’re welcome to read the whole story on my blog at http://isavedmymarriage.com

Filed under: Uncategorized by admin