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Sometimes I hear of wives who feel very lonely, isolated, and vulnerable during their trial or marital separation. Often times, the husband had assured the wife that the separation would work one way, but the wife realizes that it now works in a completely different way.
I heard a wife say, “My husband and I split up about five weeks ago. He gave me the excuse that he felt I needed some time for him. He assured me that he would let me know where he was and that he would. I checked in from from time to time. He asked me to respect his need for space and I told him I would. After he was gone for a couple of days I called him and realized he was not happy to hear He said he was busy and that he would call me back. He never did. So the next day I came. Every time I want to talk or see my husband, I have to be the one to initiate it. One day, I stopped by his apartment and he had people. Obviously he was there. angry to see me. He finally blurted out that he just wanted me to leave him alone for a while. He was so upset that I turned around and ran away and we haven’t been in contact since. I’m so hurt by this. He’s made it clear that he wants to let him leave him alone. But I don’t know if I can. I miss him. He is my husband. I change my marriage and I don’t know if I can do it if we don’t even talk or communicate. “
I know firsthand how painful this is. And I also understand that the further you go, the more fear overwhelms you and the more you may feel like you have to hold on more tightly. But it’s my opinion and experience that you often get to the point where pushing even harder will only damage your marriage that much more.
I remember thinking that if I could just see my husband and make him understand, I could change my mind. But what I didn’t understand at the time is that the more I kept trying to get him to listen to me, the more he thought I was unstable and a plague and the more he wanted to get away from me. This made it less likely that he would objectively listen to anything she had to say.
I’m not saying this marriage has reached that point. Honestly, he didn’t know if he had. But I know that often continuing with something that no longer works sometimes makes things worse. That is why I think that sometimes it is worth trying another strategy that I will talk about now.
Understand that for now, he is not asking you to leave him alone forever: Often when a woman hears her husband ask to be alone, her mind goes to the worst possible place. You may start to fear that he wants to be alone forever. This is not necessarily true. Sometimes it really just takes a little time. And there are also times when you give him that time he has asked for and he discovers that it is more lonely than liberating.
Sometimes what we don’t realize is that we haven’t yet allowed this process to work for us. He has not had time to surprise us because there has not been a real separation yet. I know losing sight of it is difficult. I know that when you don’t hear from him you wonder if he’s forgetting about you or if he’s dating someone else. These fears are difficult to overcome. But it becomes easier to do this if you realize that not doing it will only make him want more freedom from you.
So sometimes you have to turn the tables a bit. You have to give him exactly what he asked for, his own time, and then let him see that it is not what he took on.
This will not always happen immediately. And it’s certainly not always easy. But when you consider that the alternative is to keep pushing him when he has made it clear that he is not receptive to it, then the choice becomes a little easier to make.
How to start giving it more space while staying hopeful: Some wives ask me if they should make an announcement that they are now going backwards or if they should let their silence speak. This really is up to you and often depends on the state of your relationship at the time. In my case, I told my husband because I chose to get out of town for a while and I didn’t want him to wonder where I had gone.
So I told him that I was going home to visit family and friends and that he wouldn’t hear from me for a while because I was taking time for myself too. I’m sure at first you thought something like “Bon voyage”. But ultimately, the space really worked for me rather than against me. And he actually took the initiative the next time he approached me.
I know it hurts to hear him tell you to leave him alone for a while. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be forever and if you don’t do it voluntarily, then he may take his space by force, which means he will start to limit your access to him. And this is probably not what you want.