I have a lot of frustrated women who contact me and say things like “my husband says he wants a divorce but won’t say why” or “he won’t tell me why he wants a divorce.” Am I supposed to agree to this without him giving me a valid reason?” I completely understand your frustration. I was in this situation too. You can’t help but think that if you could identify his reason for wanting a divorce, you could properly address the issues and save the marriage. But, your reluctance to talk about this means you’re either flying blind or just groping in the dark. It’s hard to formulate a plan when you can’t even identify what you’re up against.
However, it took me a long time to realize that fixing and thinking about this (and annoying my husband non-stop) was only doing me more harm than good. I’m certainly not saying that his reasons for wanting a divorce don’t matter. They certainly do. But, the truth of the matter is that you will have to do and say the same things no matter why this happens. So while it’s good to know, it’s not required to save your marriage.
Know that even he may not know or understand why you’re doing this (and if he does, he may not say it because he knows you won’t agree with him and will try to change your mind): Often when I tell women that a husband is sometimes not counting the beans about divorce because he can’t articulate his reasoning, even to himself, they look at me like I’m crazy. But listen to me for a second. I have some men who contact me through my blog. Many of them want to know how to deal with their wives once they have filed for divorce or want to know how to tell their wives that they want to end the marriage.
Of course, I can’t resist asking what caused this. I’m looking to find out if the problem is big or small, and if I think the marriage can be saved. The vast majority of them (I would say more than 85%) cannot articulate a concrete answer, even for me, someone who knows nothing about them or their marriage. They’ll mumble general reasoning like “well, we just broke up” or “I just don’t want to be married anymore” or “I want to start over.” Sometimes I even push and ask things like “Well, what caused this?” But even then, I’ll get vague responses like “we just grew apart” or “we’re not in love anymore.”
The point I’m trying to make is that men know these reasons sound pretty silly and general, and I can hear their hesitation to say this out loud even to a stranger. And, they also know that the moment they say it, they will immediately pounce, with a laundry list of why they are wrong. More fights will ensue. More tension will be present. By wanting a divorce, they want to escape these negative emotions, not create more of them. In essence, locking lips is your attempt to get out without a big confrontation or debate. They don’t want to give you ammunition to try to change their minds or tell them they’re wrong.
This is important for you to understand, because the plan that I think works best is based on this. We know they don’t want an argument or any attempt to change their minds, so we’re not going to give them that, although they’re going to be quite surprised. No, we are going to agree with them and throw them off balance a bit.
Go with the flow instead of going against it: A reader once called what I’m about to tell you “go with the flow instead of trying to swim against it.” What she meant by that is that if you’re constantly trying to swim against the current, you’ll eventually lose your strength and give up anyway. It is an impossible task. But, if you go with the flow, you allow it to effortlessly take you exactly where you want to go. So how does this relate to her marriage and her desire to divorce her?
Because I want you to go with the flow and agree with him and forget about trying to get the reasons for the divorce out of him. Listen to me. You and I both know that this plan is designed to save your marriage, but we’re not going to share that with him. Why? Because if we did, he would just close his ears to anything you had to say. He doesn’t want to let him change his mind, so you’re going to stop trying.
Am I telling you to just grant the divorce? Absolutely not. What I’m telling you is that in order to save your marriage, you first have to get them to let their guard down. So you’re going to stop harassing them with whatever’s on their minds. You will agree that marriage, as it is lately, has not been a field day for you either. You will tell them that you would also like to have some time for yourself. You will behave with class and respect for yourself. You’re going to stop killing yourself by swimming upstream. And do you know what usually happens when you do this? They are absolutely shocked. This is not the reaction they expected.
And then they get curious. Is there anyone else? Don’t you love them anymore? They’ll need to know the answers to start snooping around. And what do you do when this happens? You are still the most elegant, fun, cheerful and loving version of yourself. You make sure they see the woman they first fell in love with and you have patience. You can’t straighten this train overnight, but you can do it one step at a time. You can know that each and every little win will build on itself until he’s anxious about every encounter and starts thinking this whole divorce talk was a big mistake.