When your husband wants to separate, it is normal to feel panicky or lost. A marital separation is fraught with risks. Reports found that about 80% of cases of separation lead to divorce ultimately. If you do not want to give up on your marriage, you might read on.
Anyway, if you can act from a place of calmness, composure, and inner awareness instead of a place of fear and anxiety, you will have more chances of salvaging your marriage.
And here are some tips on what you should avoid during this marital crisis:
1 Don’t blame your husband for relationship problems:
Probably, when your husband wants to separate but you don’t want, you become very anxious; and you will attempt to gain more control over the relationship by all means. And by blaming him for a variety of relationship problems that are thought to be caused by him, you feel like you can gain a strong sense of power, especially when you point your finger at him and get him to see what he has done to the marriage. But actually, you can not gain any control in this way; on the contrary, this will only make him feel like you are deliberately putting him down, hence, he will pull further away.
Instead of blaming your departing husband, you might share your experience and then ask about his experience. In doing so, you are more likely to keep calm; on the other hand, from your husband’s perspective, you are much more approachable when you are honest and vulnerable with him.
2 Don’t launch verbal attacks:
In your broken marriage, there must be some emotionally charged issues, or there must be something that can easily trigger your intense emotions. For example, if you feel like you always can not get through to your husband while you are expressing your opinion about a controversial issue, you will easily have a surge of emotions; another example: when you realize that you have no control over your husband’s bad decision about an issue, probably you will be moody; then in the heat of the moment, you may use some inflammatory statements to keep your man engaged in an argument.
Conflict is a part of a marriage, regardless of the stage of a marriage. Understandably, during a heated conversation, feelings of frustration and anger can swell quickly, causing you to snap at your spouse in the heat of the moment. However, if you can’t stop yourself from using demeaning or negative words to attempt to gain power over your husband, it can cause unnecessary emotional harm to him, and even progress towards violence.
3 Don’t be controlling or jealousy:
When your husband wants to separate, maybe you start to suspect whether he is having an extramarital affair. Once you entertain such a thought, you may feel the need to spy on him; for example, maybe, you want to secretly check his phone logs and text messages of his social media accounts, and even you want to follow him when he goes outside. And this thought will drive you to cross healthy boundaries between you and your man, and I bet that you had never thought about doing so.
Whether your husband is having an affair or not, checking up upon him can offend him; especially if your husband hasn’t had an affair but you spy on him and suspect him of having an affair, he will think you are too jealous and controlling; your jealous and controlling behavior is a manifestation of a high level of your anxiety and fear; acting on emotions is like shooting from the hip, and it is often a recipe for mistakes and failure.
4 Don’t get stuck in a sustained state of seriousness and intensity:
Like many couples on the verge of separation, probably you are also subjected to a sustained emotional intensity that wears you down. It is like the body that has been stuck in fight-flight-or-freeze mode: you are always mentally prepared to defend yourself with provocative words or actions. In such a situation, you remind yourself to maintain a high level of tension with your husband, and it can be hard for him to communicate with you.
When your husband wants to separate, there have already been a lot of hurdles and pitfalls ahead of you. And now that you want to save the broken marriage, you should not erect extra walls. Therefore, you should manage to de-stress yourself in your married life. And here are some simple tips:
- Sweat away the stress by taking exercises.
- Improve your sense of humor.
- Indulge in mood-boosting foods.
- Get up early and don’t stay up late.
- Learn to do meditation or take yoga.
- Listen to soothing music.
- Spend time with a pet.
5 Don’t always shut down emotionally:
During this time of uncertainty and stress, it is tempting for you to emotionally shut down and completely close yourself off. And when your departing husband senses that you are refusing to share your feelings, he will only continue to act cold and distant. As you become reserved and uncommunicative over time, both you and your spouse will feel suffocated in the relationship; and the “acting in” behavior will pave the way for prolonged periods of depression as well as future emotional outbursts.
Understandably, you are afraid of being hurt again by your spouse’s words or actions, so you may try to stifle your feelings and remain silent, but you do not have to shut down and go inward all the time; sometimes when you feel too depressed, you need to learn to relieve your feelings in front of your husband. For instance, sometimes you might just express what you are feeling without expecting any positive response from your husband.
6 Don’t get into your husband’s drama:
When your husband wants to separate, he may look for a variety of excuses to leave the marriage. And one good trick is by making you the “bad woman”.
When your departing husband thinks that you are very predictable, he may consider purposely pushing your emotional button; the more you react emotionally to him, the more you look like a bad woman. Then he may manipulate it to prove that his accusation about you is right.
Hence, you need to reflect on whether your man has done things on purpose to make you angry/irritable; if yes, you should be more unpredictable and change your behavior patterns. For example, your husband has known well that you are constantly critical, so he deliberately does a series of things that you normally criticize, and he is ready to accuse you of being too bitchy as long as you criticize those things; in this situation, you might shrug it off.
7 Don’t try to convince, plead, or beg:
When your husband wants to separate and tells you about how dissatisfied, disappointed, frustrated, or miserable he is, maybe your first reaction is feeling shocked, and your initial response is to attempt to convince him that he is wrong and he misunderstands you, then you plead and beg him for an opportunity to change; and you hope that his mind can be greatly changed…
However, the reaction of pleading, begging, and convincing tends to set the stage for a deeper relationship crisis. Why? Here are 3 reasons why such a response can be counterproductive:
- Your reaction of pleading and begging makes you look unreasonable and needy.
- If your husband feels misunderstood, ignored, or unheard but you continue to convince him, he will strongly feel that you are dismissive of his feelings. Even though you may think you are logically speaking, it can still be perceived that you are dismissive.
- Your departing husband may have the “psychological reactance”. This term refers to a situation that when we feel cajoled and pulled, we tend to do the opposite.
A separation can be positive in some cases:
A marriage tends to fall apart when the relationship is always stuck in a destructive feedback loop. To put it simply, you and your husband may keep doing something that is ruining your relationship in some way or another, whether you realize it or not; and nothing will change until you two break the vicious cycle or get out of the rut. It is true that an unhappy marriage can hardly survive unless a couple makes changes.
So a separation can be viewed as a temporary way to break a highly destructive cycle. For example, your husband constantly feels unhappy in the marriage because of your excessive jealousy; maybe when you are jealousy, you often lash out at him; this may have undermined the mutual trust and led to him feeling frustrated and chained down; in this case, he may consider separating from you.
Taking a break from a destructive cycle that you two have always been trapped in can help. However, it can’t help save your relationship in the long term. One day when your husband picks up where he left off and he tries to move back in together with you, he will find himself in the same situation with the same issues.
In short, a separation may help in the short term. But to survive the failing marriage and remain happily married for years, one or both of you need to make a dramatic positive change to solve some stubborn problems and permanently break the cycle rather than steer clear of it.
Likewise, there may be another benefit to living apart: you and your husband can put an end to unnecessary arguments/fights, boring bickering, and petty disputes that may have badly affected your daily life. After separating from you, it can be hard for him to get mad about you forgetting to wash dirty dishes after dinner, it can be hard for you two to continually bicker over trifles in the way you two has done incessantly for years. Admittedly, a break from daily drama and conflicts may help protect your relationship in some ways. However, once you and your husband begin living together again, that sort of bad relationship pattern can still make its way back into the relationship.
By the way, if you and your husband struggle from bickering, petty arguments, as well as hostility towards each other, you might go on to read the posts below to try to prevent or defuse them without the need to separate:
How to defuse conflict in marriage – Calm down a heated argument.
How to reduce arguments in a marriage – Reconnect your spouse.
The final word:
In many cases, a separation ends up being a trial run at divorce; and living separately can create a lot of patterns of separation that will make it more difficult for a couple to connect with each other. Eventually, more damage will be done to marriage.
As explained above, separation is not a good option for saving a marriage. If possible, you should try your best to prevent or stop a separation; for more tips on how to save your marriage when your husband wants to separate, 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:
Maybe, you are also interested in the related posts below:
How to mend the marriage when your husband says hurtful words.
What you should not do when your husband wants a divorce.
How to get your separated husband back – Prevent divorce.
What should you do when your husband says he hates you.
What to do when your spouse wants to leave you – Save your marriage.