I Want A Divorce But I Can’t Tell My Wife
A man walks delicately around his partner. In any moment, she might reprimand him. It’s a pattern in their relationship.
In reaction, he thinks, If only she’d give me some peace of mind.
If only she’d stay out of my shit, not be after me so much, then I could rest, then I could be ok.
He rolls out of bed in the morning and goes downstairs to have breakfast, hoping she’s not in the kitchen — because at any moment, with the wrong look, the wrong movement, if he puts something away in the fridge the wrong way, she might get mad at him.
Are you walking on eggshells around your partner?
Chuck was doing just this. And while he knew things had to change, he had no idea how to make it happen.
He had left his wife twice over the past few years. But both times, he came back.
For what? he wondered.
His fears — of being the jerk who blew up his family, of his kids hating him forever, of being the lying cheater his father was — were bigger than his fears of her anger.
And yet that had him pinned up against a wall from which he couldn’t escape.
He felt trapped between two undesirable options — divorce or stay.
Do you feel trapped like this?
I just want some peace, Chuck thought.
Years of therapy had given him a lot of self awareness. But he hadn’t gotten out of his dilemma — a marriage fraught with tension and episodic explosions.
A few weeks before Chuck and I began talking, he had landed into the scary truth that he wanted a divorce. It was done, over. But…. he couldn’t tell her.
A voice inside him said, if you think things are bad now, imagine what’ll happen dropping divorce on her. All hell will break loose. He worried about his relationship with his kids most. She was already more close to them than he was.
Chuck was spinning on his fears of the imagined outcomes. Like many men I see, he was trapped between a rock and a hard place.
How do you get peace when you feel so trapped?
But then Chuck began doing the unthinkable. In a short time of working with me, he began having discussions with his wife that he never dreamed were possible.
She too was concerned about the toll of their strained marital dynamic on their kids. She didn’t take it out on him, as he expected.
How’d he talk to her in a way that didn’t blow up on him? He faced what he feared, as I tell in the video below.
A man’s marital peace rarely resides in his wife.
But instead, in how he deals with his inner war. Chuck’s war was within himself. A war built on a false set up of conflicting options, both leading to hell.
Tell her I want a divorce and face the unimaginable shit storm or say nothing and live in a daily shit storm.
Either option kept him feeling weak and compromised.
What if you could walk through the marital minefield unscathed?
In Chuck’s case, it was as simple as having an initial conversation about it. Nothing unattainable for any man. He knew he was NOT less of a man, but more of a man for getting help.
Chuck went from a scared, trapped guy, avoiding his wife, to a bold man acting on what he feared prior.
Can you do the same?
The first step is simple, just like Chuck did. Having a conversation.
Living in a fearful, timid place is no good for any man. Every man deserves better. Starting with you.
