How to Get Your Wife Back after Separation

Winning your wife back after separation requires a step by step approach. The right moves to make. How long it takes to reconcile.

If I asked your wife if she loved you, she would probably tell me that she loves you, but that she is not in-love with you. Regardless of what has gone on in your marriage up to this point, her feelings are the main obstacle to your getting her back.

Because she does not know how to turn that feeling on again, she will not believe that anything you can say or do could change that. Apologizing and convincing won’t change the way she feels about you. That’s why they don’t work.

There is something that does work. You need to work on switching on that in-love feeling again. I know that’s something you can do because I help men do that every day.

What was your initial reaction?

If you are like the men that I work with, you probably did all the wrong things at first. You begged and pleaded with her to change her mind–to give you another chance. You argued with her. And, when she didn’t give in, you got mad at her or got depressed. In short, your actions were geared toward getting her to see that she was making a mistake.

The convincing approach to reconciling:

• Makes you unattractive
• Makes her defensive
• Is further evidence you care more about yourself than her
• Your willingness to change now makes her angry
• This approach convinces her she is doing the right thing

You failed to put her first. You tried to get her to change her mind because that’s what you really want. These behaviors made you look both selfish and needy. There was nothing attractive about them and nothing in them that would make her feel more in love with you. If anything, you were just pushing her further away. If you did too much of this, she probably said she needed space. You may have even pushed her emotionally right out the door.

Some men believe so strongly in their ability to convince their wives, they will not stop, and their wives end ALL contact with them, making reconciling impossible

What you don’t know about your wife

When your wife told you she wanted to separate, it came as a surprise, didn’t it? But for her, it was just one of the last steps of a long process. Women don’t decide to leave quickly. For a long time–maybe years–your wife wanted to be attracted to you, but there was something missing for her in your marriage. It was a very painful time for her.

She struggled either to improve her marriage with you or to be patient, until her love ran out. For a while she was depressed, but as she began to anticipate leaving you and making a fresh start, she became more positive and hopeful.

Because you had no clue, it probably seemed to you like the marriage was going along pretty well. She may have even have continued to have sex with you. You thought she was loving you, while what she was doing was verifying that her love for you was gone.

There are a few major reasons why women separate but they all require similar responses.

What will happen if you keep trying to convince her

Ask yourself the question, “If I had been feeling depressed, hopeless, and empty in my marriage, and now feel hopeful about a fresh start, how easily would I change my mind?”  Every attempt you make to convince her to come back will just make her remember that painful place she was in before. And, she doesn’t want to think about that anymore.

If you persist, she will have to ask you to give her space. Any communication you have will become business like. She may become very cold. Her behavior is designed to get you to stop convincing. The more you try, the colder she will become.

You may have noticed your wife being puzzled about your wanting to save the marriage and your persistence. The most she can figure out about it is that you need her for your own reasons and don’t really care what happens to her. After all, if you did, you would have changed long ago, while she still cared.

Stopping the damage that prevents you from getting your wife back

When men start reconnection coaching with me, they are usually on their way to total rejection from their wives. Our first session is spent working on stopping the damage they create every time they talk with their wives.

Behaviors that prevent reconciling:

• Convincing her to work on the marriage or go to counseling.
• Arguing.
• Jealousies and insecurities, questioning her about other men.
• Putting the kids needs before her.
• Trying to make her feel guilty or ashamed.
• Holding her to her marriage vows.
• Judging her religious values.
• Any show of being depressed and needy.
• False compliments.
• Making unwanted advances.
• Giving her gifts she doesn’t enjoy.

The reason these behaviors must stop is because not only are they not attractive, they are actually repulsive. You know you’re doing damage if she wants less and less contact with you rather than more and more.

What about dating other women?

Some men have the misguided notion that they can make their wives jealous by dating other women. Dating other women could actually be the death blow to your marriage. You can’t repair a marriage by being unfaithful. Even if your wife cheated on you or is looking, your dating would be the WORST thing you could do if you want to save your marriage.

If you date, she will actually feel happier about her decision to leave you. Some wives even encourage their husbands to date for this very reason. If you were your wife, what would you conclude about your husband dating other women?

This tactic of being unfaithful to make your wife jealous is only going to be effective if your wife is still in love with you. Even then, it will promote insecurity for the remainder of your relationship and will make the marriage worse for both of you.

Your friends encouraging you to date is no more helpful than their encouraging you to jump off a bridge to cure your depression.

If you are still wondering, you can make sure if your wife is really not in love with you.

The most important thing to focus on to win your wife back

Work on your relationship and put your marriage concerns aside for a while. Trying to get your wife to stay married to you now is the wrong timing. That’s like being single and trying to get a woman who doesn’t love you to marry you. To have any success, you have to develop your relationship first.

You will need to start to get to know her again, just as if you were interested in her for the first time. For many men, this is hard because they don’t know how to attract a woman who isn’t already attracted to them. However, it’s a skill that many men use every day to connect with women.

Women cannot consciously control their feelings (neither can men for that matter). Using the right skills, you can gradually move her feelings in the right direction. The big mistake many men make here is to do too much, too soon. If your behavior gets ahead of her feelings, she will feel pressured and you won’t make any progress.

In reconnection coaching, after stopping the damage, I help men to have the right level of interaction with their wives to build the relationship without making their wives feel pressured.

Helping her to be less guarded

In my work with men, what we do after stopping the damage is help their wives’ defenses to come down. To do that, it’s important to empathize with her and to help her feel her needs and desires are important. You must make her feel that she is not doing a terrible thing, and that she has your support.

Once women feel like their husbands are no longer trying to convince them, they become more approachable. They have less need for space. But, they are still far from being in love. For help with this stage, some men use my book, Connecting Through “Yes!” to help them to be agreeable without being needy.

It is important not to drop back to convincing once you start reconnecting. That would just set you back to the beginning. The issue of reconciling has to be set aside until she is falling in love with you again.

Trying to convince a woman who is not in love with you to marry or stay married to you is like to trying to convince someone who is not hungry to eat at a buffet.

The key to getting your wife back

You can’t reconnect by talking about yourself. The most common word that I find in men’s communication to women is “I.” “I did this,” “I did that,” “I was thinking,” etc. It’s a really big communication mistake with a separated wife because at this point she is still not interested in what you are doing or thinking.

She is interested in herself, her life, and her future without you. To re-connect, I teach my clients to initiate conversation, then to respond in connecting ways to whatever she says. If you fight her on her ideas for the future or about your marriage, all you will do is shut her down when you need to open her up. If you use key connection skills, it will increase her interest in talking with you. That does not mean talking about your marriage.

There is still a long distance from a woman enjoying talking to you to her wanting to re-commit to you for the rest of her life.

Friendship is good, but an unconditional friendship is not

After the re-connecting has been going well, my clients continue to focus on building their relationships by adding more face to face contact. It’s still a tricky time. Saying the wrong thing can set you back to square one. It’s also at this time that she is likely to say that you can be friends, but nothing more.

That is a good sign because becoming friends is an important step toward a deeper relationship. However, you have to be careful about being an unconditional friend. You should never want to hear about how her dates with other men are going. You must use good boundaries for any talk that she has about other men or risk losing her respect for you.

Respect is an important part of the re-attraction puzzle. If you merely do everything your wife wants, she will appreciate you, but she will not fall in love with you. You will become needy “Mr. Nice Guy.”

Why rejection and unpredictable behavior are sometimes good things

When your wife starts to have renewed interest in you, she will begin to doubt her decision to separate from you or divorce you. This creates terrible tension and anger inside her. She will treat you badly and try to provoke you. Why is that? Because she wants to feel good about her exit plans.

If she can provoke you into behaving like your “old self,” it will reassure her that she is indeed on the right path. She can again feel good about leaving you. This is often a confusing time for my clients because they interpret their wives’ behavior as something going terribly wrong. Mood swings can actually mean things are going terribly right.

What you have to be very careful not to do is to have some kind of bad reaction to your wife’s behavior. That could kill the whole reconciliation process. Men who can successfully handle this transitional time will once again have the interest of their wives.

How working on yourself will help you get your wife back

Reconnecting with your wife is only half of the work of reconciling. The other half is working on yourself. What this does not mean is becoming what you think she wants.  What it means is becoming a better man for yourself. That’s why I give men two assessments—one for what’s going on between them and their wives, and the other about how much they have their own lives together.

Women are attracted to men who are successful, have good self esteem, and who have a passion for something in their lives. These are biological triggers for women, just as young, attractive women are biological triggers for men. Women can’t turn off their attraction for such men any more than men can turn of their attraction for such women.

Submissiveness and subservience don’t trigger attraction in women. Neither does being overbearing and controlling. You need to be happy and in control of your life. If the only way you can be happy is to have the love and attention of your wife, you are way too needy to attract her.

Recapping important points for getting your wife back

I hope you have learned from this article that never should there be talk of reconciling until your wife is in love with you again. Her feelings precede her decisions.

The correct steps for winning your wife back after separation:

1. stop saying and doing damaging things
2. help her enjoy talking with you by using good connection skills,
3. become friends while still maintaining good boundaries,
4. respond correctly to her provocative testing behavior,
   
5. continue to build your relationship at her pace, and
   
6. know what to do if your wife says she wants to divorce and stay friends.

Focus on the relationship, without being overly concerned about the state of your marriage. Focusing on preventing divorce, rather than building your relationship, will actually make you do things that are damaging.

Focusing on your relationship is more likely to save both your relationship and your marriage. As you can tell, a number of skills are needed in addition to patience and perseverance. A coach can help you to re attract your wife–even when your wife is involved with someone else.

How long does it take to get your wife back?

If you don’t go through this process, you may not be able to reconcile at all. The passage of time alone will not lead to reconciling. Just giving space will not lead to reconciling. How long it takes will depend on a few key factors:  1) how much damage has already been done to your relationship, 2) how well you and your wife can talk to each other, and 3) how well you can prevent damaging interactions.

Moodiness, neediness, or old behavior on your part can create significant delays or prevent reconciling altogether.

For one on one, live help with managing needy behaviors or learning connection skills for reconciling, please see my coaching packages.

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