My husband and I have been married for 13 years and separated for 8 months. He keeps pushing for the divorce but I'm still wanting to reconcile. He ensures me that won't happen but I can't accept it. He's turned into someone that I don't even recognize anymore and his coldness is so painful.

I know that, as he is now, I definitely don't want him but I have these ideas that he'll return to the man I married and I can't let go of that. It's so frustrating.

Lisa,

I’ve been in the same boat. We were together for 34 years (almost my entire adult life) and he’s never once faltered in his desire to end it for good this time. It took us a while to separate because we agreed to be “adult” about helping each other sort through all the logistical stuff (selling our home, dissolving our business, moving etc.).

Somewhere along the way I stopped allowing him to witness my side of the emotional journey. I don’t remember where I got that advice, but it was the absolute best thing I could have done. Basically, I taught myself to fake it until I make it.

What I mean by this is I never wanted this split and he knew that. He saw me go through all the initial cycles or anger, sadness, depression...and it gave him some kind of odd satisfaction. I think he actually liked that I was suffering so much and didn’t want to let go. Ego? Maybe, but either way I hated that my misery gave him comfort, so I stopped sharing any of it with him. I still felt the exact same way on the inside, but outwardly, I started teaching myself to put a completely different face on it.

I stopped using the “us” word and exclusively used ‘me’ instead. I portrayed someone who’d come to accept and agree with it all. Later, I learned how to sprinkle fake optimism into my outward persona. It all drove him crazy. It confused and even hurt him at times. Even on the very last day he was with me, he stood in the kitchen with tears in his eyes...asking me why I wasn’t as sad as him.

Not that I enjoy hurting people, but I have to say that teaching myself to do all that was the best thing I ever did. Even if I don’t feel one iota of those things inside, it still gave me strength because it returned a sense of control to my life. In an odd way, it’s the one thing getting me through all these early days without him (I’m only a month into the physical separation).

I know it’s not going to change anything about us, but taking that little bit of power back in the most inexplicably cruelest time of my life, taught me a lot about myself. I am STRONG. And the more I continue being so by staying no contact (I don’t respond to his calls or emails), the more I’m beginning to believe in those things rather than wallow the fallacy of “us”.


Hope this helps in some way.

What are some suggestions you have to 'fake it until you make it?" I'm an open book & I wear my heart on my sleeve. That makes me very vulnerable & my husband feeds off of that. It's created so much more hurt in this situation than there truly needs to be.

Sara,

I don't really know how to explain it better than I already did. I too am someone who wears my heart on my sleeve, but somewhere along the way I realized that he was USING that against me.

It's not easy to portray yourself in exact opposition to how you really feel. It killed me at times. But I saved those moments for myself. I no longer showed or shared ANY of it with him. The ONLY thing that changed by my acting that way was that he couldn't feed off my misery anymore.

Why was that important? Well..first, depriving him of feeding off me drove him nuts and returned a ton of control back to me. Second, I found strength within myself for being so successful at it. Third, it's taught me how to tap into that inner strength now that he's gone...which has been a tremendous help in getting me through each day.

I can't be sure of this because I wouldn't allow myself to falter, but I think by the end of our time together, he was so confused about what I really felt about the split, that he wasn't sure he wanted it anymore. He kept opening the door for me to ask him not to do it--but I never did because the FIFTH important thing I got out of that process was realizing what kind of many he really was to put me through all that.

As for specifics...

He'd say something like; "I hate hurting you so much".

My old response would be to cry and spell out all the ways it was hurting me.

The new response was; "yes, but I'm seeing now why this has to happen." Then I'd walk away and not talk about it further.

Another example is he asked me one day if I was 'happy' in the new surroundings. The truth was I wasn't at all. But my answer was; "Best thing I've ever done".

He asked me to purchase his plane tickets to leave (his computer was having issues). It was one of the hardest moments I ever experienced. But when he sat me down to thank me and proceeded to tell me how he knew how hard it must have been...I simply said, "You're welcome, it was a long time coming, but we both know it needs to happen."

Sara, by the time I bought his flight, I was starting to believe in some of the things I was saying to him. Did I really want him to go? No, but yes too because the husband I was still mourning wasn't the same guy I was looking at anymore. The man who always had my back was long gone.