I hear this phrase, and various variations of it (ie, “my husband wants to separate”, “my husband wants to get a divorce”, “my husband is leaving”, etc.) quite often. Most of the wives who approach me with these situations really want to know the answer to some very different specific questions like the following: What they really want to know is “can I save my marriage by myself or without help?” and “can I make my husband stay when he doesn’t want to?”
From my own experience, the answer to these questions is a resounding yes. I have done this myself in my own marriage, even when my husband had already filed for divorce through his attorney. Of course, every marriage, spouse, and situation will be different. And each answer to these questions will also be slightly different. There are many factors that can come into play, such as why the husband wants to break up, how long the problems have been going on, and how receptive both parties are to making it work.
With that being said, however, it’s quite possible that with a little work, patience, and effort, you can save the marriage when you’re the only one who wants to. What this requires, however, is a deep understanding of her husband and her motivations, and the ability to take small, calculated steps (with each small victory leading to another until their marriage is back on track). Once you get to this point, then you need to address the issues and issues that were causing all these breakup talks in the first place, but I don’t recommend trying to have difficult or deep conversations until the marriage is back on solid ground. .
What your husband probablyHe really means when he says he wants to split up or separate: Unfortunately, sometimes husbands aren’t very good at communicating what they really want to say. They may give you very vague and unspecific statements like “I’m just not happy” or “I think it’s better if we’re apart” or “It’s not you, it’s me.” These phrases don’t really tell you anything specific or tell you any concrete action you should take. Worse still, husbands will sometimes send you terribly mixed signals. One second, he may be talking about the breakup, while the next, he’s hugging and reassuring you, acting affectionate, or even wanting to be intimate. Therefore, it can be very difficult for a wife to fully understand if she really means what she says.
From my own experience and research, I hope I can figure this out at least a bit. Men usually want to date because they have lost feelings along the way. But it may surprise you to learn that many times, the feelings they have lost have to do with how they feel about themselves and not about you. (Yes, the phrase “it’s not me, it’s you” is usually the truth.) I’ll explain it to you. When a man is in love, it is usually because a woman was able to make him feel attractive, valuable, interesting, seductive, and worthwhile. Most of the time, a woman does this by lavishing a lot of attention, interest, and affection on him (like when they were first dating).
Now, of course, later everyone has to come back to real life. Eventually we have responsibilities to which we must direct our attention. Our jobs, our commitments, our children, our elderly parents, and our homes compete with our husbands for our attention. We cannot be everything to everyone and we hope and trust that our husbands see and understand our struggle. We think: of course he will know that I love him and I will give him all the attention I can, right? Well not exactly.
For the most part, husbands know our intentions are good, but this doesn’t stop them from continuing to want our attention, affection, and admiration. They still need the validation that created all the positive feelings. They want to feel loved, wanted and appreciated just like we do. Deep down, they are often quite disappointed if they feel like this isn’t happening.
Therefore, the “desire to part” from a husband is often a reaction to his disappointment that these good feelings about himself are now gone, and he does not know how to get them back. So her job is to show you how this can be done.
How to regain the spark and save the marriage: Therefore, the most obvious thing to do is to return the original positive feelings to your marriage. This seems like such a simple task, but there can be challenges. First, you have to be absolutely genuine about it and you can’t be obvious about it. Nobody likes to be manipulated and men really hate it. If your husband thinks you’re just playing around, he’ll resist even more, and your job will be even more difficult.
What you need to do is, at every opportunity you get, present yourself in a positive light. You have to show your husband that you can go back to being the loving, joyful, happy, lucky woman he first fell in love with and made him feel so good about himself. I know this can be challenging when so much goes wrong. Instead, she may want to reason, debate, or bombard her husband with messages, emails, etc., but don’t. It will only make you appear desperate, out of control, and needy. Instead, you want to appear even-tempered, rational, and in control.
Yes, it can be challenging, and yes, it will require discipline, but it’s the only way to genuinely recapture feelings in a way that doesn’t backfire in the end. And it provokes positive feelings instead of negative ones.
When is it too late to save a marriage?: I may be biased, but I don’t think it’s too late. As long as the relationship isn’t bad and there’s at least one person who wants to save it, that’s all I think it takes.
But, the more your relationship is damaged, the slower you have to move. Just be patient as you will get there. If you rush, you will push your husband further away.
Similarly, if you don’t take any action and just hope things work out, you’re leaving a lot to chance.
I have wives who tell me “yes, but my husband is very angry”, or “my husband won’t even talk to me”, or “my husband says he hates me”. You may be surprised to learn that I often think of this as good news. Why? Because these are strong emotions that are indicative of strong feelings. Love and hate are actually quite similar and very close together. If your husband didn’t already have strong feelings for you, he wouldn’t react as strongly. If he didn’t care at all, he would be indifferent.