I often hear from wives who want nothing more than for their separated husband to finally come home. Usually, the couple has separated but the husband is dragging his feet on coming up with the resolution. I am usually contacted by the wife who wants her husband to come home so that they can save the marriage. But wives usually tell of a husband who is reluctant to come home. And many of the wives assume that if he won’t come home, this must mean that he wants a divorce but this isn’t always true either. Some wives will tell me that their husband doesn’t seem to want either – meaning he doesn’t want to come home but he also insists that he doesn’t want a divorce. Needless to say, this can be extremely frustrating.
I recently heard from a wife who said, in part: “My husband and I separated five months ago. It has been hell while he has been gone. I miss him so much and it’s so hard to raise my kids and to give them what they need without him. But no matter what I do or say, he refuses to come home. When he says this, I will then ask him if this means that he wants a divorce and he tells me that no, he doesn’t want a divorce. This makes me so angry. It feels like he is keeping my life in limbo. And there’s a part of me that thinks he doesn’t want a divorce because he doesn’t want to pay me a lot of money when we get divorced. What can I do to get him to make a decision? Truthfully, I don’t want him to choose to divorce me. I love him. I want him to come home so we can save our marriage and be a family. How can I get him to cooperate and stop acting like this?”
I know that this is a very frustrating and difficult situation. It’s very hard (if not impossible) to “make” or “get” your husband to not only stop sitting on the fence and make a decision, but to make the decision that you want him to make, which is to come home. With that said, there are some things which I believe increase the likelihood of you getting what you want, which I will discuss below.
Your Husband Doesn’t Necessarily Need To Come Home Immediately In Order For You To Work On Or Save Your Marriage: Many wives make the assumption that in order to give their marriage a real chance to succeed, they and their husband need to be living under the same roof – which means that he needs to come home immediately. Although this can make things easier (simply because he have more access to him,) it isn’t 100 percent necessary. Countless people save their marriages while they are separated or living apart.
Usually the wives who are successful with this figure out a way to make the distance work for them rather than against them. You can still see, date, flirt with your husband and work on your marriage during the separation. People do this all of the time. I won’t tell you that it is easy, because it most certainly isn’t. But, it is possible. Now with that said, you don’t want to make every single encounter about saving your marriage. Because doing this can create awkwardness and tension. Sometimes, you just need to keep things light and easy. It can be important to find that combination between trying to save your marriage and trying to just reconnect and make your relationship and interactions easy and less tense.
Sometimes, When You Back Off On Trying To Get Him To Come Home, You Will Find That He Is More Receptive To The Idea Of It: Frankly as hard as this may be to hear, sometimes the harder you push or attempt to force your husband to make a decision about coming home, the less he truly wants to do this. He will almost go out of his way to avoid the topic and will make sure that he’s not going to “give in” to you.
But, you might be surprised to find that if you back off (just a little bit) and if you can stop making every conversation come back to when he is coming home and start talking about something else that connects you rather than pulls you apart, you might see that eventually he becomes more receptive to coming home because you have allowed it to be his choice and he no longer feels as pressured. Therefore, he is less likely to resist.
Don’t Make Your Husband’s Only Two Choices Coming Home Or Getting A Divorce: The wife in this situation had no doubt in her mind that she wanted to save her marriage. And yet, she was making ending her marriage one of only two choices available to her husband. Basically, she was telling him that he needed to come home or make a decision about a divorce.
Don’t get me wrong. I completely understand her frustration. She did feel as if her life was on hold. But you know what? Sometimes if you can just begin to start living again and not measuring each day by his actions, you will start to feel a little relief and he will notice the change in you. Sometimes, this actually makes him more receptive to you because he sees that you are capable enough and flexible enough to not need an immediate answer. Frankly, in my experience and observation, the more you pressure and become impatient with your husband, the more likely it is that he will eventually either decide to get a divorce or to begrudgingly come home only to leave again relatively soon so that you keep repeating the same old cycle.
So don’t set it up so that your husband must make a decision between two choices – coming home or getting a divorce. If he’s reluctant to come home, you don’t want the only option to be a divorce. Instead, back off a little bit and give him another option – improving your marriage right now despite your circumstances so that eventually he will very willingly make his own decision about coming home.