Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: In the past, I’ve heard from wives who’ve asked about wife or spouse abandonment syndrome. Many of them found this term by googling what they were experiencing – a husband who left a seemingly happy marriage with no warning and then completely and totally closed the door on his marriage and spouse. He wanted no additional contact from his old life, and seemingly felt no remorse whatsoever. He either had no valid reason for wanting out, or he’d found a new partner, to whom he was seemingly totally devoted. Some of these wives describe this scenario as a death. One minute the most important person in your life is present. And the next minute, he is not. When you grapple with this, he becomes frustrated and defensive if you try to ask for answers. He wants you to just walk away (or accept that he is going to.)

A wife might say, “There is no doubt in my mind that I’m experiencing wife abandonment syndrome. My husband of 12 years completely abandoned me. One day, seemingly out of the blue, he decided that he could not take one more day of our marriage. He bowed out on me the day that we were going on an overseas vacation. We had been planning this vacation for years. We’d waited until our kids were older, and when we had the money to comfortably travel. Well, that day finally came, but as I was putting together some last-minute packing, he told me that not only was he not going on vacation with me, he was moving out and leaving me. He said he hadn’t been happy in years. Looking back now, I wish I’d gone on the vacation alone. But I didn’t. I stayed home and tried to get answers. It was soon clear that there would be no answers. He refuses to communicate with me in any way, almost as if I’ve done something wrong. I know I’ve done nothing wrong. He’s distanced himself from some family members and mutual friends as well, because he knows that these people are going to express outrage over what he’s done. He offers no financial or emotional support. It’s as if he wants me to pretend that he has dropped off the face of the Earth. Well, I obviously can’t do that. I know my next step is to get an attorney and tend to the financial implications of this, but I don’t want to do that yet. Because I’m hoping that he may one day come to his senses and realize his mistake. Is this even possible? How many men who abandon their wives come back?”

A Lack Of Statistics. An Abundance Of Challenges: I do not mean to be discouraging. And I suppose it is possible that he could change his mind, but, as you’ve probably already seen for yourself, there are very few statistics about this. So we honestly have no way of knowing what percentage of these husbands return home. I’d be willing to guess that these husbands come home less often than the around 15-20% statistic you see for separated spouses reconciling in general.

And the reason for this is that wives who don’t fall under spouse abandonment syndrome may still have a husband who is communicating with them. If this is the case, you can at least gradually attempt to move toward rehabilitation. In contrast, in cases of abandonment, you generally don’t have regular communication so your opportunities for reconciliation are less.

As a result, any wife who has any sort of success in this situation would need to be an absolute master at seizing on communication opportunities and building upon them. It’s not impossible.  I did this, and I was eventually able to rebuild my marriage because of it. But I must admit that I didn’t have quite as many challenges as this situation poses (although at times my own challenges felt insurmountable.) Still, I don’t want to discourage you. Anything is possible.

Prioritize Change And Respect Over Reconciliation At Any Cost: I can understand why you’d want to give your husband the benefit of the doubt, especially when this behavior is completely out of character. He’s clearly not himself. And no one wants to give up on their marriage without a fight.

But you also want to make sure that you are conducting yourself with dignity and expecting that he does the same. It’s not ideal to throw your marriage and your spouse away like an object that you just don’t want anymore. There were years of togetherness, and a home and family built together. That isn’t something most people just discard without a backward glance – which is why I’d suggest that any eventual attempts at reconciliation address why he felt it was okay to abandon you without warning.

We do know that men who abandon their wives tend to be the type of people who will avoid conflict at all costs. In other words, he simply put off talking about your marriage until he could no longer do so. And then everything came pouring out at once.

So he must learn to speak up when something is bothering him instead of waiting until he can’t stand another moment of the problem.

The Right Approach Can Make A Huge Difference: Admittedly you’ll need to make a series of steps from where you are now to get to where you want to go. And you can either try to initiate the first steps or wait for your husband to change his stance a bit. Which you chose depends upon his attitude toward you when you attempt to approach him.

You can’t force him to listen to or engage with you if he’s unwilling. Sometimes, you have to come at this from another angle and communicate with him about issues not related to your marriage just so that you’re communicating again about anything at all. Then, you’ll be able to build on any gains that you make.

As you’re doing this, you mustn’t present yourself like something that is damaged but still up for grabs at his whim. His abandonment is not in any way your fault. You did nothing wrong, and you shouldn’t need to convince him of your worth. He may not see it right now, but that is not a reflection on you. So always hold your head high and resist the urge to act if you have something that you need to make up for. (If anything, it is the other way around. ) Understand that if you portray yourself as something broken, your husband is likely to follow that lead – making reconciliation less likely. Put your shoulders back and conduct yourself like a self-respecting wife who is waiting for her spouse to return to normalcy with a reasonable explanation for his behavior, and a plan to keep it from happening again.

Ensuring my own self respect was difficult at times.  I definitely did not always succeed.  But other people will often treat you in the same way you treat yourself.  I didn’t want to give my husband a pass to treat me with a lack of respect. You can read the whole story of our eventual reconciliation at https://isavedmymarriage.com

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