Sometimes I hear from estranged wives who want nothing more than for their husband to come home. I understand this thought because it is what I felt when I was separated. I used to wonder how many more days or weeks I could tolerate. I kept telling myself that I could probably only tolerate a few more days. But guess that? Unfortunately, it was not my choice how much to drink. I had to put up with many more days, far more than I had anticipated. But I actually survived and eventually my marriage did too.
However, during my separation, I always wondered what I could do to bring my husband home. And I know that I am not alone. I hear wives say things like, “My husband has been living apart from me for almost two months. He was unhappy with our marriage and wanted time to see how living alone would feel. We honestly haven’t seen one.” as much as I would like. It always discourages me. We talk because I call him. Last night, I asked him when he was coming home. He replied that he did not know. I asked him no. Do you want to go home? His answer was ‘not now’. I don’t necessarily understand this. We haven’t been fighting as badly as we were, so I don’t understand why he needs to stay away. “
I understand how you feel. During my own separation, I didn’t understand why my husband didn’t want to run home, because being apart felt so bad. But clearly, he did not share my feelings. For a long time, I did not understand why. After reconciling and having some honest conversations, I began to discover why men sometimes delay going home. I will share these observations below.
It could be that it hasn’t changed enough. (At least for him). Here is an important thing that I did not understand in the initial stages of my own separation. My husband was actively seeking real and ongoing change before he even allowed himself to be open to reconciliation. In a way I assumed that once things calmed down, he would get tired of living alone and we would fall back into our marriage. Well, this was not going to be considered good enough for my husband. I wanted a much better marriage. And to believe that this could be a reality, he wanted to see the concrete and continuous changes that were going to make it possible. He was watching and waiting for that. And, until he saw it, he was perfectly willing to continue the separation.
You are waiting to see if the changes are real: Here’s another thing I didn’t understand. Once I realized that my husband expected changes, I started working on those things, and so did he. However, in my anxious mind, I hoped that when he saw me making an effort, this would be enough. Unfortunately, it was not that simple. My husband only wanted to reconcile once. So I wanted to wait until I was absolutely sure that the changes made were real and lasting so that we could actually make those changes stick. At first, I hated this. I thought he was unnecessarily delaying our reconciliation or that he didn’t love me enough to dive in.
However, now that enough time has passed and the pain from this is not so recent, I realize I was right. He came back in very gradually. At first, it only happened one night from time to time. Then he would spend the weekends. This allowed us to gradually make adjustments as problems arose. Of course, I was impatient, but at the same time, I was very afraid that my husband would again be distant and cold to me if something went wrong. So I didn’t want to curse anything. I had to work really hard to make my husband receptive to me, so if I had to wait a little longer to make sure I wouldn’t have to go through a separation again, or worse yet, a divorce, then I was up for it. to do it (though not always patiently).
The good news with this is that some of it is under your control. You can try to make the changes you are looking for (either by yourself or with self help or / and a counselor) and you can watch and listen very closely for clues when you are on the right track. I learned to be very good at observing and listening. When something I changed didn’t get a good response, I did less of it. When a change I made got a good response, I did more of that and introduced more behaviors like the ones that had already been successful.