Why don’t I care if my husband says he’s going to leave?

Early in your marriage, you often believe that this relationship is the most important thing in your life. You protect it like the jewel that it is. However, as time goes on, sometimes we begin to take our marriage for granted or it may begin to suffer. Over time, there may be talk of a separation or a spouse moving out. At first, we may not panic about this, especially when the talk amounts to nothing.

And it can be a long time when nothing really changes. The marriage is still struggling, and yet both spouses stay put, until one day one of the spouses announces that he is leaving. And the other spouse may not have the reaction she expected. In fact, you may not feel anything at all. She might explain: “For the past year and a half, my marriage has been a terrible thing. I think my husband has been going through a midlife crisis. Nothing I do is enough anymore. He thinks being married limits him. somehow. For a while, he just complained about this while blowing a lot of hot air, but he did nothing. So we continued to fight and generally be unhappy. Then last night, he announced, in great dramatic style, that he was leaving me. He said that he had found an apartment and that he couldn’t take it anymore. Well, maybe I can’t take it anymore either because to my surprise, I don’t even feel that upset about it and I really don’t understand why. I almost feel like I don’t care, but that can’t be right. I know I still love my husband. I know that ideally I would like it to turn out well. But I don’t even know where to start. Things have been bad for so long that I don’t know if there is any hope. Why are my feelings so high? thrown this way? I think that if my husband ever sought a separation or divorce, I would be terribly upset. But I don’t seem to be. Why? “

Well, there are a couple of possibilities. First, sometimes it is hard to believe that this is actually happening. It has been in the status quo for so long that it may be taking a kind of “I’ll believe it when I see it” stance, which would certainly be understandable. This kind of reality can be very difficult to understand, until it actually happens.

Another possibility is that, like many people, you suspect that a break will be a relief. When things get so bad that there’s really nothing but tension and fights, taking a break can definitely feel like a release of air. You may just want a break from all the drama.

Finally, reality may not have affected you yet. This is a huge change and adjustment and, speaking from experience, you really can’t anticipate how it will feel until it actually happens.

I definitely learned that your feelings and perceptions change with the process. One day you may prefer to be separated and think that you have really improved your situation and the next day you may find that you desperately miss your husband and do not want to be separated for another day.

Both perspectives are completely normal. You are expected to have wildly swinging emotions. I doubt that you would go through the entire process without worrying at all. But you won’t know until you take things one day at a time.

Since you haven’t moved in yet, it’s very difficult to predict how you’ll really feel once you do. But since it’s still around, you might want to take advantage of that proximity to figure out a few things. I think it can be vital to agree on how often (and by what means) they will communicate and see each other. Of course, this should be a flexible arrangement as problems arise. But the reason I suggest this is because it is very common for couples to deviate during separation. And before you know it, you realize you haven’t spoken to your spouse in a couple of weeks. And then one of you begins to suspect that maybe your spouse likes the single life or is dating someone else.

It is better to avoid these misunderstandings. The more you agree now, the better. What you feel is perfectly normal and does not necessarily mean that you are headed for divorce or that you are no longer committed to your marriage. It may simply mean that you need a break or that you don’t believe this is happening yet. In my own experience, his feelings may change once he moves out or once he’s been alone for a while.