Is There Anything At All That I Can Do Or Try If He Wants A Divorce But I Don't? Here's Some Strategies To Try

I often hear from wives who are trying to gain their footing when their husband has told them that he wants or is going to be seeking a divorce. Often, they have tried to reason with their husband or talk him out of the divorce. This doesn't always work.

Sometimes, they ask me about legal maneuvering or tactics which will keep the divorce from happening. I'm certainly not an attorney so I can't advice them about that. I do believe that eventually the divorce will go through even though they are using legal stalling tactics.

And if you think about it, sure, you can stall the divorce, but if you are fighting him every inch of the way, this will usually only make him more determined and anxious to get the divorce to go through so this process can be over once and for all. So in essence, you're only pushing him further away when actually it would be in your best interest to pull him closer. And being his adversary is not the way to go about this.

Often, when I explain this idea to women, they do understand the reasoning behind it. But they have some doubts about it in a real life situation. I often hear comments like "I get that I don't want to be his enemy during the divorce if I'm trying to save my marriage. But what am I supposed to do? Just accept the divorce? Just not fight him and let him divorce me without a fight? That's not what I want. And once we're divorced, it's over. He's out of my life and I'm not sure that I can accept this."

I understand this reluctance. In fact, I took this same tactic at first when my husband wanted a divorce. But as you may already suspect, it didn't work. He actually wanted to get away from me that much faster and he avoided me at all costs because he knew that every time we were together, I was going to go on my "call off the divorce" campaign again. My husband got very tired of this song and dance and it just became a viscous cycle.

But the more he didn't want me, the more I wanted him. The more he tried to avoid me, the more I followed him. It got to where he probably thought I was just a few steps away from being a stalker. Things just got worse and worse until I decided that, for my own well being, I just had to force a break.

And little did I know it at the time, but this became the best thing I could have possibly done. Because as soon as I backed off, I guess the silence seemed odd to him. And suddenly, he became the one who reached out to me.

But here's the thing, peaking his interest and making him doubt his perceptions is only the first step. This is what so many women do not understand. Their husband will show the slightest interest during the divorce process and suddenly they will push for so much more and the husband becomes frustrated or distant again.

Make Your Husband Look At You And Say "I'm Not Sure I Want To Divorce That Woman Any Longer. I Want To Explore What Would Happen If I Called Off The Divorce:" At the end of the day, this is really the goal, isn't it?  You want for him to stop looking at you as the woman he wants to divorce as soon as possible and start looking at you as the woman who he might want to work things out with.

But usually, many things need to happen in order to move where you are now to a place where he's considering calling off the divorce.  Each time he begins to suspect that maybe he was wrong about the divorce, your actions need to prove him right, not wrong.

So don't be overanxious or push too hard.  Have confidence in yourself and in the bond between you.  This is going to make a difference in how attractive you appear to him.  Speaking of attractive, know that desperation, jealousy, anger and fear aren't attractive to men.  Confidence and empathy are.

Often Getting Him To No Longer Want The Divorce Lies In Making Him Understand That You And The Marriage Can And Will Change If He Will Give You The Chance:  I speak with a lot of men on this topic on my blog and many of them don't have any problem admitting that they still think a lot of their wife.  They often speak about her with affection and a bit of nostalgia.  But, the thing is, they think she (and the marriage that they remembered as being good) is long gone.

Many men who seek a divorce often do so after many failed attempts to improve the marriage or at reconciliations.  So often, they are at a point where they just doubt that anything is going to change all that much.  You know what changes this perception?  Your behavior right now.  It really is as simple as that.

If you are following him around and telling him that he's wrong about the divorce and just being stupid, then you are only reinforcing these negative thoughts about you and your marriage.  But, if you conduct yourself with dignity and you show him the fun loving woman he used to know and love and show him that she's still very present, then he might back up and back off just a little bit.

I do have to mention that this is usually a process.  Because he's likely to have some hesitation that he can really believe what he is seeing,  he is likely to wonder if you are just putting your best foot forward to change his mind.  He has to come to believe that these changes are real and are going to be lasting.  You do this through showing him the same person and the same actions every single time that you are together.

Each encounter has to count.   And you have to build upon each tiny success.  Many wives will ask me what to do while the divorce continues to go forward.  I understand this puts a deadline looming in the balance, but you really can't push it sometimes.   He probably already knows that you don't want the divorce, but I usually advise wives to tell him that you are just trying to preserve the relationship because it means too much to you to just end it with the divorce.

This does a couple of things.  It shows your husband that you aren't going to be overtly trying to change his mind (so that he will become more open to you.)  And, it gives you a valid reason to be acting as you are.  He will know that you're going to be trying to improve things between you, but he doesn't necessarily have to know that you are doing it to avoid the divorce.

As I said, I lucked on the backing off approach.  But once I got my husband interested again, I really didn't know what to do with that. Through a lot of trial and error and research, I finally got the whole process to work.  You can read about how I used these methods to save my marriage at http://isavedmymarriage.com