I recently heard from a wife who confided in me that whenever she and her husband disagreed or had a rough patch in their marriage, the husband would pull out what the wife called the “license card.” She told me: “Every time the going gets tough, my husband says he’s going to leave. He packed his bags before, but never left. Still, this hurts and I’m getting tired. How can I make it happen? him Do you see how old these threats are getting? At the same time, I fear that someday soon, he will actually comply and walk out the door.
This type of correspondence is not that uncommon. I hear a lot of comments like this. And I can absolutely identify with these wives. This is a very difficult position to be in. It is difficult to move forward and improve things with the constant threat of it hanging over your head. You may start to feel like you are walking on eggshells or have to edit or suppress yourself in some way. Therefore, it is highly recommended to consider being proactive and addressing this before things deteriorate further. I will discuss more about this matter in the next article.
Asking you to stop constantly making threats to leave you and the marriage: It is true that I do not personally know this couple. But from the little the wife told me, two immediate facts jumped into view and seemed the most important. First, despite repeated threats from her husband, she had not left. He was still there, repeating the same old things. This tells us that you are not 100% committed to leaving or that you have not yet reached the breaking point or the place where it is feasible or comfortable to move on.
The second thing that mattered was that the husband kept repeating the threats. Now the wife was very frustrated with this, but one possibility was that the husband was repeating or speeding up his words because nothing was changing or improving and this was the only way he knew of trying to get the answer he wanted. Sometimes people keep repeating the same patterns out of frustration. And sometimes they do it because they don’t know any other way.
But whatever the reason for this negative cycle, I felt that the wife could gain some ground if she approached this issue with openness and empathy. It was going to be very difficult for both of them to get on the same page when he kept backtracking. So the next time he started with the “I’m just going to leave you” talk, I felt like the wife should have asked him to sit down and talk about this for a minute.
With a pause in action, the wife might consider telling the husband that they both knew this was a path they had traveled many times before. And yet nothing was really changing except that they were both becoming frustrated with the same course of events that never produced the result that neither of them really wanted. I suggested that the wife offer to make a deal with the husband. She would genuinely listen to why he felt the way he did and would make a very honest effort to address and improve things if he stopped with threats to leave her whenever the going got tough.
Understand the opportunity that has presented itself and take positive action to stop this cycle: I understood why the wife doubted she was in such an important position, but I had to admit that she had some advantages. Almost daily, I hear from wives who were served with divorce papers or returned to an empty house without a husband (because he left) seemingly without warning. These women would have loved to have a warning period and a chance to fix things before this action was taken.
So even though the wife was tired of all this, she had to admit that she still had a chance to make things better and save the marriage. This was an advantage as was the fact that despite all her empty words and posturing, the husband was still there. Clearly, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to leave, but he was sure he wanted a change that he wasn’t getting, which is why this cycle was repeating.
Once the wife was able to see this, she was willing to approach things differently. But, before he lunged forward wanting to make drastic changes, I told him that it might be a good idea to focus on reconnecting. There was a lot of underlying resentment and anger and I felt that the changes and efforts might not last if they tried to figure things out while both people were still a bit tepid to each other.
Do you remember the first time you were together and your problems were always small disputes that passed quickly? This is because I was deeply connected and didn’t want to let anything derail that process. Sure, things change and people mature. But often, you will find that if you can get to a place where you feel genuine affection and empathy for your spouse, solving the remaining problems becomes much easier and you are much less likely to continue to hear threats than either of you. one of you is hearing more anyway.