Now your marriage is collapsing, and it seems your wife has shown no intention of maintaining the relationship, she tells you plainly that she wants a divorce, but you don’t think you should give up yet. As to the question – how to save your marriage when your wife wants a divorce, you should know that there is no guarantee that your marriage can be saved; after all, you can not force your wife to make a decision that she doesn’t want. However, you do not have to be too discouraged, it is also possible to see amazing things happen if you persist in making positive changes in your married life.
When you’re the only one who is trying to save the marriage, you may keep the don’ts below in mind:
(1) Don’t beg and cling:
Maybe, you can pressure your wife to stay for the time being by demanding, clinging, pushing, or begging. And you just attempt to do that to express your thought that you still deeply love her and that you still want to maintain the relationship sincerely. But unfortunately, this approach is ineffective in saving your marriage. On the contrary, it backfires – it tends to drive her further apart from you; remember, attraction draws her close, but repulsion only drives her to want to distance herself from you even though she is on your side all the time.
You can hardly be attractive to your wife when you emotionally fall part, whine, beg, or cry, and don’t expect to get a positive response from her in this way. Although doing so can make her experience your hurt feelings and her compassion may help relieve your pain temporarily, probably it will distance her from you later; because this makes her think that she caused your pain – if she continues to stay in the relationship, the two of you will only feel more pain; and now that your wife seriously asks you for a divorce, she will also not simply change her mind just because of your begging, pleading, anger, or threatening.
(2) Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated:
If your wife violently expressed the thought that she wants to leave you, perhaps you will choose to give up your dignity, and give in to almost all her demands and follow the path that she has already determined, especially if your departing wife gets extremely angry with you or even threatens to bring about financial changes or take children away (if you have) and so on. For a man longing to save his marriage, he may simply believe that the departing wife will come to her senses as long as he continuously goes along with what she wants.
However, even though you jump through hoops for her, it will also not help improve the relationship. The manipulation through threats or anger will only paralyze you into inaction gradually; the more you indulge your departing wife that has become manipulative, the less restraint she has in doing do she wants, and then finally she will have fewer difficulties in leaving you.
(3) Don’t give up easily:
Understandably, you may have ever been tempted to give up this one-sided relationship at some point; but anyway, you should not give up easily. Once you sign the divorce paper to end the relationship and start to disconnect from your wife emotionally and physically, you can hardly get her back to you. And even though you eventually think that your marriage is beyond repair, you still need to give yourself enough time to accept the painful facts and get yourself ready to move on.
(4) Don’t be seized by your emotions:
Every time she says that she wants a divorce, probably a plethora of negative emotions (e.g. sadness, anxiety, and anger) will suddenly flood your mind. At that moment, those negative emotions are counterintuitive and you should learn to get a grip on yourself in front of her; here introduce some simple ways to release emotions; for example, you may leave her at once and take 1~2 minutes to freak out alone, or you may immediately go out to do physical exercises.
In short, as long as you want to save your marriage, you should try your best not to act on your strong emotions when these emotions erupt, let alone take your bad emotions out on your wife.
Next, let’s talk about how to save your marriage when your wife wants a divorce:
(1) Improve your communication skills:
How couples interact and perceive each other has a particular concern with the health of marriage relationships. In your married life, as long as you can make the communication with her more fluent and harmonious, you will realize that a big number of issues will no longer be so stubborn because of the significantly decreased intensity of fighting and conflict.
After an intense argument with your wife, you may easily find that your tone of voice was offensive to her in the heat of the moment, and then you may consciously remind yourself that you should not be too emotional during an argument. However, probably you ignore that your view was also one-sided when discussing with your wife; to make your wife feel more comfortable during conversations, the more important thing is to pay attention to what you should talk about with her. For example, you should try to talk about more issues that you and your wife have the same opinion about, and meanwhile, you should try to avoid saying things that may hurt her sentiments.
In short, no matter what opinion you want to express, try your best to maintain a smooth communication; even if you have to say something that may make her feel uncomfortable, you need to learn to communicate what you mean in a peaceful and soothing manner.
(2) Learn to accept who she is:
The key to living a life of love is learning to accept your spouse. When your wife feels accepted as she is – instead of being forced to live up to your expectations, she feels more loved and valued. But unfortunately, things that cause your wife to consider leaving are probably something that you are not willing to accept; so you might ask yourself whether you have ever attempted to convince her to abandon her thoughts and force her to follow you by degrading or belittling her opinion. Well, what if you can moderately accept what she expects without fighting or arguing?
Have you ever carefully thought about why so many people had an affair? A big reason is their spouses failed to meet their emotional needs but their paramours satisfied their needs just right; as regards this issue, from where the errand spouses stand, they may think that they did not ask of their couples high, and they may have also complained why their spouses were always reluctant or unwilling to meet those reasonable needs.
Yes, as a role of a husband, learning to make concessions is indeed a tough thing, especially when your marriage is on the verge of divorce; however, it works well in saving a collapsing marriage: your amazing strength in accepting her can help reduce unnecessary conflict between the two of you, and this change can also make her look at you with new eyes.
(3) Hang on a bit longer:
This point has been mentioned above – numerous couples give up saving their relationships too soon. Giving up just means getting to a point where pain can not be tolerated any longer. Surely, they are not supposed to be blamed; although hanging in there a little longer is exhausting, it is worthwhile in most cases. Many people who divorced eventually admit that they were more or less driven by impulsions to divorce. So even if you choose to stay in the relationship without doing anything, things will change and you give your wife more time to reflect upon herself; certainly, if you can stay longer and take the right actions, there shall be more chances of salvaging your marriage.
(4) Use “we” instead of “you” and “me”:
A common factor can be identified in the majority of failed marriages – strictly distinguishing between “you” and “me”. When one person gets used to just talking about himself/herself and his/her issues without caring about the feelings of the opposite person, the marriage has gone in the wrong direction.
Generally, happy couples are those who like to deal with various problems from the standpoint of a couple (not an individual), therefore, they like to say “we”. When your wife wants a divorce but you want to save your marriage, it is quite easy to trap into the “you and me” lifestyle; if you realize that the two of you have started to distinguish between you and her more and more clearly, make a point to switch from “you and me” lifestyle to “we” lifestyle; and you should make this change immediately if you want to save the failing marriage; if you go on clearly differentiating yourself from her, your wife will feel more and more miserable in the marriage life. For example, when you go on fighting or arguing with your wife using “you”, “I” and “me”, such a situation will continuously evoke conflict, hatred, and selfishness.
The word “we” means things involve the two of you and that you both will take equal responsibility for them, whether those things are related to the argument, fight, or love. Changing from “you and I” to “we” is just like balancing the ledger as a whole. If you are a businessman, you must know how important it is to balance ledger accounts. Surely, a marriage is never a business; it is a kind of partnership that is built based on “we” as a whole, hence you do not have to make a fuss about your profit and loss in the relationship; keep in mind that you need to learn how to keep both of you happy in married life even though you two have an unbalanced ledger.
(5) Keep a healthy distance:
After knowing that your wife wants a divorce, it is better to give her some space. Give her some time to think through marital issues; after an interval, perhaps she will miss you a little. Apart from letting your wife know that you want her to stay, your wife must find the meaningful reason to go on staying in the relationship, no one can give her the exact reason, she should find it on her own; and this is more important than anything else when it comes to saving the marriage.
Just like when your wife decided to get married to you, your wife must make the decision because she wanted to, this decision should not be driven by her guilt or someone else’s desires. And hence, one practical suggestion is to back off a bit upon learning that she wants a divorce. By promoting a healthy distance, your wife can better work on herself at this critical stage.
The final word:
You know nothing is so perfect, and a long-lasting relationship also needs to stand the test of time, so you may treat this marital crisis as a test, what you should do is to try your best to achieve a satisfactory score in this test.
For more tips on how to save your marriage when your wife wants a divorce, you might go on to watch the video below to follow the comprehensive guidance that is offered by Brad Browning, a marriage coach with 12+ years of experience in helping couples survive their difficult marriages:
Maybe, you are also interested in the related posts below:
How to save a failing marriage alone – Try to save your marriage.
What to do when your spouse wants to leave you – Save your marriage.
Should you stay in a loveless marriage – How to survive a loveless marriage.
6 tips on how to survive in an unhappy marriage without divorce.
What a wife needs in a marriage – Basic needs of a woman.
How to avoid divorce after separation – Save the broken marriage.