12 Actions That Push Your Spouse Away (Stop These Now)

When your husband or wife is wanting to separate or divorce, the last thing you want to be doing is something that pushes them even further away. Today, I will share the most common behaviors that create distance and rejection. Stopping just one of these can help you to greatly improve your marriage.

We all want to have good relationships, but none of us were born knowing exactly how to go about that. In fact, we start off rather uncivilized. Our family of origin are the first to imprint their relationship skills on us. That can be a good thing, but often it’s not. In my case it wasn’t and I grew up with many bad relationship habits without even realizing that I had them.

We are not to blame for early scripts, but changing them can make us more successful, improve self-esteem, and make us more desirable. It can make the difference between getting the date, keeping the relationship, getting married, and preventing divorce. These relationship damaging habits can interfere with each step of the way.

Let’s talk about some of these habits and what you can do instead to go from rejected to desired. That’s what reconciling is all about.

#1 Showing you are scared is unattractive

A fear of abandonment and being alone underlies most needy behavior. None of us wants to be alone, but we need to show our desire to be with people rather than our fear or anger of being without them. That would just push them away–which is the opposite of what we want.

For example, Daryll interpreted his wife wanting to hang out with her friends without him as rejection. He needed her to text him while she was out, and if she didn’t say “I love you,” at the end of every communication, he worried that his wife didn’t love him. His need for reassurance was a turnoff and made his relationship more of a job for his wife than a pleasure for her.

Daryll needed to look for other signs that his wife loved him, without requiring her to provide them. This made him seem less scared and boosted his attractiveness.

Be careful not to intrepret your spouse’s poor listening, desire to spend time with friends, or failure to turn the bathroom light off to mean that he or she doesn’t love you. And, stop needing reassurance from your spouse. Every time your spouse needs to reassure you, you chip away at your own attractiveness.

#2 Having poor boundaries

Fear of losing a spouse can lead people to let them get away with all kinds of bad behavior. Unfortunately, letting people get away with treating us badly or damaging our marriages just leads to more damage.

Melissa’s husband was frequently rude and disrespectful to her, but because of fear that he would leave her, she let him get away with it. She had asked him to stop before, but never really required that he do so. As a result, he disrespected her even more.

Even when our spouse is separating or wanting a divorce, we must still have good boundaries. Loving behavior to help them desire us, combined with good boundaries, work together to create feelings of love that might not otherwise grow. My podcast on separation boundaries can guide you further if you are already separated.

#3 Being too self-focused

You don’t have to be a narcissist to be self-focused. All you have to do is to assume that everything your spouse does is related to you. If you think that your spouse’s every bad mood or clothes on the floor means that he or she is upset with you, you are too self-focused.

People are moody for lots of reasons. A lot of people are bad with tidiness, married or not. Let yourself off the hook by not trying to figure out how it connects to you.

Two recommendations for reconciling and marriage improvement: First, don’t ask your spouse if you did anything wrong to make them upset, not follow through, tune out or so on. The second is to assume that if your spouse doesn’t say something about you, it isn’t about you.

These assumptions may make you wrong sometimes, but they will require your spouse to be more direct with you when he or she is upset.

#4 Overreacting

Overreacting means that an upset spouse can get a lot of payoff by saying or doing just a little thing. Like a school child being teased by another, that will give him or her too much power over your emotions. That actually makes you less attractive. Weakness and sensitivity are not attractive.

Another problem with overreacting is that it will make your spouse hesitant to share things with you. Many people have been suddenly surprised their spouse wants to divorce because their spouse never complained about anything. Well, often they didn’t complain because they didn’t think they would get a helpful response and it would just make things worse.

Learn to take what your spouse says at face value. If he or she says your turkey is a little dry, don’t assume your spouse is ungrateful for all the work you did. It just means the turkey was probably a little dry. Either that or your spouse can’t tell good turkey from bad turkey. Taking people at face value encourages them to talk with you more openly, especially if you can agree or empathize rather than react.

#5 Requiring too much togetherness

Spending more time with your spouse than he or she enjoys makes you less enjoyable. Quality and quantity of time together both matter. Getting them both right will really help your spouse’s feelings for you grow.

Start paying attention to when your interaction with your spouse goes from good to dull. Then, end them before they get dull. His or her facial expression, energy level, and participation in the conversation will be good clues for distinguishing good from dull.

#6 Unrealistic expectations

Unrealistic expecations lead to disappointment that we will feel and our spouse will see.

John expected that his wife would start initiating sex with him, though she never did. If he had been content that she responded to his initiations, all would have been well. But instead, it led to him complaining to his wife about it–even though she was a good sexual partner. He created a problem where there was none because of his expectation.

Becky expected that her husband was going to be more involved with the children although he rarely was. As a result, she was more dissatisfied with him, treating him worse and complaining to him as well. Of course this didn’t help the children at all, but it did hurt Becky’s relationship with her husband.

Start seeing your spouse for who he or she actually is and enjoying his or her good aspects. Don’t expect the worst, but don’t expect the best either. Fit your expectation to your spouse.

If a difference is intolerable, you can use boundaries as long as your relationship is otherwise good. Thank God for what your spouse does for you, even if you don’t get everything you want.

#7 Using your feelings to gauge your relationship

Feelings of love come and go in relationships. That is normal. There may even be times in your marriage when you wonder why you even married your spouse.

I tell my clients, who are almost all working on reconciling, that they need to be friendly even when they don’t feel like it. Why is that? Because when we don’t behave in a friendly way, we are actually rejecting our spouse. Our reason might be because we have a headache, are stressed with our job or kids, or are remembering something bad about our spouse.

It doesn’t matter why. Just like a salesperson with a customer, we must not let our bad feelings at the moment create bad behaviors at the moment.

I hope that no matter how much pain or difficulty I have, I always have a smile for my wife. Of course in a good relationship we are not always going to be able to do that. But in a rocky relationship, we have to be able to always do that. Let your goals guide your behavior rather than your feelings.

#8 Rejecting good behavior

What do you do when a young child picks a weed for you? The right answer is that you accept it with love and appreciation. Why is that? Because that child has done his or her best and is giving you something he or she thinks is good. It might actually be poison ivy, but the child is not trying to give you a rash.

The same goes for your spouse. If you get a little smile from a normally cantankerous person, that’s like getting a big smile from a social person. Your spouse’s help might not be all that helpful, but if he or she is trying to be, see it for that. Make your spouse feel as good as the child who picked you a dandelion.

Accept help when it is offered, because not to do that is to reject a gift the person is trying to give you. Then, make them feel good about it.

#9 Expecting your spouse to be your therapist

Even if your spouse is a therapist, don’t expect him or her to be yours. Don’t expect your spouse to be your parent either. It is not your spouse’s job to take care of you like a child. As much as you can, deal with your emotional problems by yourself. Telling them to your spouse makes you less attractive.

Can you imagine any single person being attracted to someone because of their emotional problems and incompetency? If your spouse is looking to get out of your marriage, the last thing that will draw them back to you is your need for reassurance or psychological assistance. Being secure and displaying your competence, while also being friendly, can make them think twice–especially if you were previously very needy.

#10 Being fake

Some people are pretty good at making a good first impression. They know how to come across as warm, friendly, and interested. It is an excellent social skill. But, when you see the same person ignoring their kids, using foul language to complain about others, and having a total lack of friends, then their warm, friendly, impression is seen as a mask.

The way you treat your children, your dog, your neighbor, your spouse’s friends, and everyone else is a large part of your attractiveness. If you want to reconcile, your spouse must desire what others get from you. Single people who see that their boyfriend or girlfriend treats others badly, are seeing a preview of how they will be treated if they get married.

Work on social skills, one at a time. Bite your tongue when you want to say something bad about anybody. Find ways to be nice to people even when you don’t have to. Your attractiveness will go up.

#11 Failing to empathize with rejection

It is really hard to empathize with someone who is rejecting you, but it is an excellent way to start to reconnect with them. I start most of my clients on the path to reconciling by helping them to empathize with their spouse. It is part of the seven steps to marriage improvement involving helping your spouse to relax with you.

The bad alternatives to empathizing are arguing and defending. No matter how brilliant your logic, these will only disconnect you from your spouse even more. If your spouse is leaving you, or wants to, he or she probably has some valid reasons to want to. Focus on those and empathize with them. Ignore the other things. Validation is your key to building connection.

#12 Making your spouse feel needed rather than loved

People only want what is desirable, and they will only commit when they have to.

This means that you always being available, and not being able to be happy without your spouse, is too reassuring. It prevents your spouse from having the feeling that he or she could lose you. Because of that, his or her feelings won’t be stimulated to grow again.

Your spouse may feel that you will still be available post divorce. That also is reassuring and prevents the feeling development necessary for reconciling.

Getting help

My most popular book is called, Overcome Neediness and Get the Love You Want. It covers in depth more of what I shared with you today. If you struggle with removing any of these behaviors, I recommend you get a copy.

My Secure Partner Coaching Package will help you to work intensively on replacing bad habits with good ones for rapid relationship improvement. If your spouse is already focused on leaving your marriage, my Re-Connections Coaching package can help you to reinterest your spouse in your marriage. See the links in the description.

It’s time to start seeing what really works and what really doesn’t in your marriage. With eyes wide open you are now ready to start down that path to a restored marriage.

For further study:

Miga, E. M., Hare, A., Allen, J. P., & Manning, N. (2010). The relation of insecure attachment states of mind and romantic attachment styles to adolescent aggression in romantic relationships. Attachment & human development, 12(5), 463–481. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2010.501971