How To Tell Your Husband You DON'T Want A Divorce
I get a lot of correspondence from wives who are asking me for the right words to say to tell their husbands that they don't want a divorce
. Many are hoping for the perfect words or the most effective phrases in order to convince their husband that a divorce would be a mistake and that deep down, he really doesn't want one either. A lot of thought typically goes into this. Most women in this situation worry about saying the wrong thing. And yet sometimes, when the words come pouring out, you sometimes know you're saying too much or are making the situation worse, but you just can't seem to stop yourself from continuing on.
In the following article, I'm going to discuss how to very carefully chose your words when you're trying to come up with those perfect heartfelt words to tell your husband that you don't want a divorce and to try to convince him that he doesn't want one either.
Choosing Your Words Carefully And Editing Before You Have This Conversation: The words that are going to work best in this situation are going to vary from couple to couple. They are also going to depend on the situation and what lead up to the husband wanting the divorce. But, before I get into specifics, I want to first go over many of the most common mistakes that I see wives make.
Many wives place all of their focus on their emphasis on this one single conversation. They are hoping that if they can come up with that perfect conversation, the husband will magically call off the divorce, commit to making the marriage work, and completely change his attitude and erase all of his doubts.
As nice as this would be, it's sometimes expecting too much too soon. It's sometimes unrealistic to think that the tide will turn over one conversation. And sometimes, in trying to force this, we say too much or we push too hard, even if we don't mean to. And when our husband doesn't respond exactly as we'd like him to or show a dramatic enough turn around, we become discouraged and think the whole situation is hopeless when it really isn't.
Sometimes, what we don't see is that if we break this process into smaller steps, we make it easier to keep getting positive results. Depending on your situation, it might sometimes be unrealistic to think you can change your husband's mind after one conversation. However, it might be possible to calmly communicate how you feel, set a positive tone moving forward, and lay the ground work for more positive gains in the days and weeks to come.
Generally speaking, you will often get better results if you place your focus on moving forward in a positive way. You don't want to dwell on yourself too much. This is a very common mistake. Many women will tell me that they are tempted to say phrases like "I can't bear the thought of a divorce." Or "I can't live without you. Why are you doing this to our family?" Or "you think you want a divorce now, but you will end up regretting it later and by then it will be too late."
Although you may well feel every one of these things and these statements might speak your truth, they aren't as likely to get you the results you want as some other alternatives. The reason for this is that you are focusing on the negative outcome rather than the positive solution. So, your husband may react with more negativity of his own. Or, he might think that he is just hearing more of the same and this may reinforce his belief that things can't or aren't going to change enough to make saving the marriage possible or even pleasurable.
The Things You Do And Don't Want To Say When You Tell Your Husband You Don't Want A Divorce: First of all, you want to avoid saying the obvious and you don't want to continuously repeat yourself. Some wives seem to be repeating the "I don't want a divorce" theme many times over but are just using different words and tactics to say the exact same things. This is the point where many men will begin to tune you out because they know what you are going to say before you even say it.
At some point, you have to understand that you either have to change up your message or you have to make your message so effective that he wants to listen to it the first time so that it doesn't need repeating. To that end, you want to ask yourself what is the most important issue to you. Be careful here. Because I rarely see dwelling on the issue that is separating you be successful.
I know it's very tempting to want to tell your husband why he's wrong or even to bargain or make promises. But again, this can push him away from you even more if what you're saying comes off as negative or insincere. It's OK to mention an issue, but you don't want to place all of your emphasis on that so that he's not hearing anything else.
You also are generally better off breaking the issue down into much more manageable pieces. Again, the right words vary depending on the circumstances but a good starting point might be something like: "I think you're aware that I don't want a divorce so I'm not going to keep repeating that. I know that you might think you want one and I certainly can't control your thoughts and feelings, nor would I want to.
I do want you to know that my primary goal right now is to make things better. We both deserve to be happy. I still believe that we could be happy together, but your beliefs are your own and I respect how you feel. I still love you and likely always will. I'll do everything in my power to make this situation better. I'll be here if you want to talk. I'll back off if you need your space. And I'll try to have respect for both of us as we move through this process.
Right now, I just want to improve how we're relating to one another because you are too important to me to allow this relationship to deteriorate without trying to improve it. Yes, our relationship may eventually change its form, but I'm not willing to let it go completely without giving it a fair chance for now."
Do you see how these words don't pressure, don't focus on the negative, and stress that because you love your spouse, you just want to two of you to be happy, no matter what form this takes? Now, granted, we all know that ultimately, you don't want the relationship to change or take a new form and this is fine. But the important thing is that you don't come on too strongly or push too hard and that you let your love for your partner and your concern for their well being to be the primary message. This is much more likely to get a positive response because it is centered on their happiness and on your respect for them.
I made many of the mistakes I outlined in this article when I was trying to tell my husband I didn't want a divorce. This made things worse for a while. Luckily, I learned to chose my words carefully and decided to show him my sincerity and love for him with my genuine actions in addition to my words. And it worked. You can read a
very personal story on my blog at
http://isavedmymarriage.com/ How To Tell Your Husband You DON'T Want A Divorce
By: Leslie Cane
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