I recently heard from a wife who felt she was the only one interested in saving her marriage. She and her husband had been in trouble for over a year and the husband had apparently gotten very tired because he had recently told the wife that he was seriously considering filing for divorce in the near future.
The wife could not bear the thought of ending her marriage and uprooting her family. She said, in part, “He doesn’t listen to anything I say anymore. Every time I try to convince him to work with me to save our marriage, he changes the subject. What happens is that I firmly believe that we could change our course.” marry a little effort, but he doesn’t budge. It’s heartbreaking for me to sit and watch helplessly as I watch everything I worked for walk out the door. What I can do? “
Boy, I know how this feels. I was in the same situation. And what I learned was that the more “convincing” you try to do, the more resistant they become. This is especially true when the process takes a long time. Here’s the thing. If you have already tried everything in your power to convince your husband to save the marriage and not leave, sometimes you have to wait to address this until you have carried out another strategy. Sometimes it is necessary to delay the conversation until you can adjust your attitude and stamina a bit. I will discuss more about this matter in the next article.
Sometimes the more you try to convince your husband to save your marriage, the more he wants to end it: And this is the reason why you must be skilled with your strategy. Because I can’t tell you how many husbands tell me that their wife literally won’t take no for an answer and then proceeds to bombard him with all kinds of begging and promises (which generally fall on deaf ears).
And, once you’ve gotten to this point, it will often make your situation worse when you keep pushing. It’s almost like a switch flipped and now he’s absolutely determined to want the exact opposite of what you want and will make sure he gets his way. Therefore, do not allow yourself to be on opposite sides. You must find a way to be his ally instead of his adversary. This makes the process much easier and increases your chances of success.
Sometimes it is better to postpone “convincing” until you have already gained some ground: Sometimes it’s all about how you package it. Sometimes when you ask a husband to “work” with you on the marriage, the mental image you get is not attractive, at least to him. He is already resisting, so you will likely find him having to reluctantly talk about his feelings as you continue to ask him more questions and debate with him. Very few men will accept this.
But this is the good news. You can absolutely start this process on your own, without needing your cooperation, at least in the beginning. You can start making small changes and improvements on your own. Once you realize you’ve regressed and start to see some improvements, the chances of you getting on board are much higher. You don’t even have to tell or explain what you are doing. You just start to control what you can (yourself and your own actions) and as improvements come, take small steps to do a few more. As you start to get positive feedback, chances are they will start participating without you even having to ask or spell it out.
Most of the time, convincing you to save the marriage depends on how you pack and present it: Like I said, most husbands are not going to accept change to discuss their feelings and deal with all their problems. But if you don’t necessarily want to go it alone and want to get at least some of their cooperation, it is far better not to focus on the negative.
You don’t want to say something like “our marriage is terrible and if we don’t work very hard right now, we will be very sorry.” Instead, you want to shift your focus to the positive things that are easily achievable. The alternative would be something like, “Do you remember when you couldn’t keep your hands off us? Do you remember when we took that trip to (fill in the blank) and never left our room? I miss him. I want him back. I want to give something back. from that excitement to our marriage and I don’t think it’s that difficult. Let’s see what happens. “
You see the difference? In the second scenario, you are giving him something to look forward to so that he really wants to participate. And instead of asking “will you work with me to make that happen?”, You lowered the pressure and said “let’s see what happens.” In short, you really haven’t asked him to do anything he doesn’t want to do. Therefore, he has no reason to resist you and may want to stick around to see what awaits you.
Sometimes when you’re trying to convince your husband to help you save the marriage, you should never focus on convincing (or the work that is really going to take). Instead, you will often be better off taking things into your own hands and packing everything in a positive way so that your husband is the beneficiary of the plan rather than a reluctant partner in it. Yes, this requires more work on your part. But won’t it be worth it in the end?