My partner wants to separate. How do I save my marriage?
Jason writes: “I am recently going through a separation because of issues I was causing in our relationship that I was not aware of. One of them being communication. I am just heartbroken that I was unknowingly hurting the person I loved. I'm trying to do whatever it takes to regain her trust and become a better partner in case we get back together. If, for some reason, it doesn't happen, I will have gained the tools to become a better partner to someone in the future. My question would be what is the best course of action to get her back and become a better partner?”
Dear Jason,
Your question touches on tender subject … what to do when you didn’t know there was a problem in your relationship and you only find out once it might be too late to fix things.
I understand your heartbreak at discovering that you were hurting someone you love without even realizing it. I appreciate your response to your situation—wanting to work on things so you can rebuild a better relationship with your partner while also knowing that if this relationship doesn’t continue, it’s still tremendously valuable to work on yourself and your own relationship and communication skills.
So let’s talk about how you can give your relationship the best possible chance and what you can do to be a better partner.
While I’m going to offer a lot of ideas about what you can do, I can’t really answer the question of what can I do to get her back? That really depends on where your partner is at with this relationship right now. If there’s still a chance of getting back together, one thing that sometimes helps is making an effort to take the pressure off her altogether, so she doesn’t feel like she has to make an immediate decision about the future of your relationship.
Right now, focusing on working on yourself can help create some breathing room for your partner and for the relationship.
Here’s something I’ve learned from working with couples who are separated or on the verge of breaking up. Often there’s one person in the relationship who has reached the point where they no longer want to work on things. And maybe that’s where your partner is at right now. That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s crossed the point of no return for this relationship (although she’s the only one who knows that for sure).
Most of us know that in order for a relationship to work, both partners have to want to work on it. But answering the question of can this relationship be saved? is a bit more complicated than just figuring out whether both people want to work on it.
By the time one partner gets to the point of wanting a separation, they’re often past the point of wanting to work on the relationship. But that doesn’t mean that all hope is lost. That’s because what actually matters here isn’t whether or not your partner wants to work on the relationship.
Maybe she feels like she doesn’t have the emotional energy to put toward trying to fix things or she’s feeling hopeless about the chances that the relationship can be fixed.
A lot of people get to this point, but they’re still not ready to let go of the relationship.
In other words, they may not want to work on relationship, but they still really want to want to work on it. If that’s where your partner is at, I would say there’s still a chance that you two can work on rebuilding your relationship. On the other hand, if your partner no longer even wants to want to work on things, there’s really nothing you can do to change her feelings or make her want to work on it again.
If your partner is leaning toward ending the relationship, you might feel the impulse to try to convince her that you’ll change and to give you another chance and some time. In other words, you might try to change her mind. Most people in your shoes feel this urge to try to convince their partner not to end the relationship. They might summon up lots of reasons and arguments to support their case. If they’re desperate, they might even try to use guilt to get their partner to keep the relationship going.
While this urge is completely understandable, it nearly always tends to backfire and actually squash any possibility that a partner might decide to try working on the relationship instead of ending it.
That’s because trying to argue for the relationship ends up putting your partner in the position of having to argue for why it should end. That’s not what you want, obviously. Trying to convince a partner to stay also tends to backfire in relationships where a partner hasn’t feel heard in their relationship.
So while you might have that impulse to try to convince your partner to work on things, it may be more effective to just try listening to her … and listening and listening … to as much as she’s willing to say about what wasn’t working in your relationship.
The key to being able to truly listen is remembering that you don’t have to agree with everything she’s saying. You don’t have to agree with her perspective, but you also don’t have to argue your side of things with her.
It’s a common misunderstanding staying quiet and really listening to someone who sees things differently than we do is essentially like agreeing with everything they’re saying. But that’s not true.
I’m not saying it’s easy to listen well when your emotions are heightened. And she might be saying things about you that you really don’t agree with. Personally, even though I help people with effective communication in relationships for a living, I still have a hard time with it in my own relationship. My urge is always to interrupt and start “clarifying” myself (i.e. defending myself), which is where my attempts at listening can often devolve into me doing most of the talking and very little actual listening. To counteract this tendency, I’ll often sit on my hands—literally—as a way of reminding myself that I don’t need to jump in immediately with my own perspective just because my partner sees things differently.
All that is to say: I’m well aware that listening with an open heart can be challenging when the things she’s saying are difficult for you to hear. But it’s also really valuable, especially if there’s been a pattern of your partner feeling unheard in your relationship.
There is a definite skillset that goes along with relationship communication. And when we haven’t learned these communication skills, our relationships will inevitably be affected by communication difficulties of one sort or another.
For example, in your shoes, many people might take issue with a partner who tells them that they’re lacking communication skills only when the relationship is on the verge of ending. In that situation, many people might want to fire back something like, “Wait? Why is this the first I’m hearing about this? If this is a problem and you haven’t even told me about it, it seems like you’re the one with the communication problems.”
But from what you described, you resisted the urge to point the finger back at her and attack the ways that her communication may need some work. Instead it sounds like you’re taking in what she’s saying and figuring out how to work individually on the relationship issues that she’s identified.
When one person is on the fence about continuing a relationship, as strange as it might sound, it’s not the time to initiate work on the relationship. Instead, it’s a time to get clarity.
It’s a time to understand more clearly what’s gone wrong and to pinpoint your personal role in what’s gone wrong. That doesn’t mean it’s about taking the blame or acting as though all the relationship problems were your fault. In any (non-abusive) relationship that’s not working, both partners play a role and make a contribution to problematic relationship patterns and dynamics.
But when you want to save your relationship, the first step is looking at the changes that you want to make for yourself.
If your partner also decides that she wants to work on the relationship too, that’s great because then there can be a mutual exploration in which both of you consider how you’ve each contributed to the relationship not working.
three steps you can take right now:
Step 1. Solicit her full feedback (if you haven’t already).
From her perspective (and again, you don’t have to agree with her fully), what does she see as the main issues in your relationship? When she said that your communication was a problem, what did she mean specifically? Was it that you didn’t communicate openly? Or you used harsh ways of communicating that caused hurt in the relationship? Or you didn’t listen to her?
Once you have a clearer sense of how your way of being in the relationship contributed to her deciding that she needed a separation, you’ll be ready to move on to Step 2.
Step 2. Self-reflect.
Of everything your partner shared about her perspective on why the relationship wasn’t working, what do you agree with? While the first step was all about listening and setting aside the question of whether you agreed with her or not, this step is all about looking for areas of agreement.
You’re looking for all the places where her perspective and your perspective overlap.
This is a really important part of the process because our tendency when a partner says things that we don’t want to hear is to look for the flaws in what they’re saying—the places where our partner got things wrong or were unfair to us or where they really need to look at their own behavior and how they’re part of the problem.
In other words, we focus on what we don’t agree with. And by doing that, we miss a major opportunity to understand ourselves and our partner better.
So in this step, just focus on trying to see things from your partner’s perspective and identify those areas you now recognize that you need to work on in order to be the kind of loving partner you’d like to be.
Make some notes on what you learn through this step before you move on to Step 3.
Step 3. Create an action plan. If your partner is unsure whether she wants to work on things (or even if she’s pretty sure she doesn’t), now is the time to take what you learned through Step 2 and figure out what relationship skills you’d like to improve and how you’re going to start working on these skills. This step also applies if your partner has decided to end the relationship. But in that case, it’s important to give yourself time to grieve first before focusing on building new relationship skills.
I’ve observed that most individuals whose partners announce their desire for separation will immediately panic and try to implement an emergency action plan without pausing to think things through.
They start doing anything they can think of to reverse their situation and get the relationship back to how it was before. That’s how people end up trying to pressure or convince their partner to change their mind about the separation or breakup (which most often has the outcome of pushing their partner even further away).
But in reality, the relationship as it was before wasn’t working, so going back isn’t ideal. The relationship needs to change—and if you stay together, your relationship will probably change into something better for both of you.
Insight before action is my motto. That’s why the listening and self-reflection of the first two steps is so important. Once you’ve heard your partner out and you’ve taken the time to identify the areas where you can really see where she’s coming from, then you’re ready to start the process of taking action.
You’ll still need to spend more time gaining insight before you know what actions to take. The way to gain insight is to begin asking yourself some questions about what’s behind your patterns and behaviors in intimate relationships.
For example, let’s say that as part of Step 1 your partner told you that your biggest problem with communication is that you don’t listen to her. Whenever she tries to express how she feels or how she sees things, you immediately start telling her why she’s wrong to feel that way or see things that way. And you could see in Step 2 that there is a lot of truth to her perspective.
So you ask yourself the question, Why do I do that?
Now I don’t mean asking yourself why do I do that? in the sense of being self-critical like: What the hell is wrong with me that I do that? What I mean is asking with genuine curiosity: Why do I do that?
When you ask yourself this question with curiosity, you will learn something new about yourself.
It might take some time for an insight to come, but I’ve found in my work that answers will always come when people are curious and patient with themselves. They always learn something new about themselves. But fair warning: The things we learn about ourselves when we’re open and curious aren’t always pleasant.
When we are genuinely engaged in building more self-awareness and interrupting the kinds of behaviors that can be destructive to our relationships, sometimes what we learn might be painful.
For example, we might discover that: Oh, I react so strongly when my wife tries to talk about her feelings because I immediately feel a wave a shame, like I’ve done something wrong. And then I feel blamed and get angry.
But until we understand these sorts of things about our own reactions and relationship patterns, things can’t get better in our relationships. For you, whatever patterns you uncover as you work through this process would otherwise most likely to continue to repeat in this relationship or your next.
When we don’t understand why we react the ways we do, we don’t know how to change our responses to something more conducive to happy, healthy relationships.
Here’s another example of what this process of gaining insight might look like. Let’s say that you learn from your partner that what she means by communication problems is that you never talk about your feelings. And when you start to self-reflect on this and ask why is that? as a way to get more insight into yourself, you realize that you don’t have a clear sense of how to even identify your feelings.
And when you ask yourself again why is that?, you realize that it likely has something to do with growing up in a family where feelings were not talked about. You realize that you missed out on the experience of having a parent or other adult who could help you work through your feelings or put words to what you were feeling.
In this case, once you understand that your difficulty talking about feelings is because you don’t yet know how to talk about them or even how to name them, then you can make an action plan that centers around starting to develop emotional literacy.
One last thing: I deeply believe in the value of approaching intimate relationships as learning opportunities.
Because relationships take two people, as individuals, we can’t necessarily prevent a relationship from ending. And when an ending isn’t what we would’ve chosen if we got to decide, we can still approach the ending as a chance to understand more about what went wrong. Then we can use that information to give ourselves a better chance in our next relationship.
In this way, there is no such thing as wasting your time or investing your energy in the wrong relationship. Painful relationship experiences are invitations for us to grow.
Sometimes that growth happens as a couple and other times we are doing that work separately as individuals. It sounds like you are on the right path with understanding that this is an opportunity for you to grow and develop the relationship skills that you now know you want to have.
And on that note, I wish you the very best in learning what you need to learn and growing toward becoming the kind of intimate partner you want to be.
~Angela
Ask Angela is an advice column dedicated to the topic of having fulfilling relationships after trauma. Click HERE to submit a question for Angela.
DISCLAIMER: this content is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other licensed health care provider with any questions or concerns you may have regarding a medical condition.
about angela Amias, LCSW
Angela Amias, LCSW is a relationship therapist and nationally-recognized expert on trauma and relationships. She’s the co-founder of Alchemy of Love, which provides trauma-informed relationship programs and resources. She’s also the founder of the Institute for Trauma Informed Relationships, which provides training and education to therapists and coaches who want to help their clients heal past wounds and create more fulfilling relationships.
As an expert on trauma and relationships, Angela has been featured in numerous publications, including Today, Oprah, Cosmopolitan, The Independent, Well + Good, Inc., Forbes, Business Insider, Salon, MSN, Women’s Health and the Toronto Sun.
