Your husband has told you he wants out, he’s fallen out of love, he might have suggested a separation or maybe he has left and you want to win him back.
Last week I wrote a post titled “she wants to leave the marriage” and this is to balance the perspective on this position.
So when I hear this message I have four questions.
- Is he worth fighting for and if so why?
- Are you willing to do what it takes – this means doing an emotional reset?
- Do you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror knowing you did everything you could?
- Will you follow what I ask because you can’t do this your way?
I felt it was important to share these posts about individuals wanting to save their marriage alone especially when so many of their partners are not interested in taking part.
Some simply don’t have the desire, motivation or enough belief it can be any different plus many are so full of resentment they can come across like they couldn’t care less.
I know many professionals will insist that both people need to be present so refuse to see them on their own but I don’t share this view.
I have personally seen and helped so many people take steps on their own to rebuild their relationships and helped their partner back into the marriage.
Not every relationship can be saved, but the way I see it the ones that should be saved are the ones that usually make it.
I have seen success with
- Men that have left and are having affairs
- Men who have lost all hope and have given up
- Men who have moved out after being devastated by their partner’s behaviours.
- Men who have broken his wife’s trust and given up because he cannot win.
I do tell all people who go through this process that I cannot guarantee we can get them back, but with many people committed to their quest, it is possible to turn things around with the right approach.
BTW if any professional guarantees they can get them back – RUN!
Why do so many men want out
Men’s emotional system is very different to women especially when it comes to relationships.
Just this fact alone is responsible for so many marital breakdowns.
To be clear there isn’t just one type of man and I can’t cover them all so I’m going to share the biggest trends I see to help you.
- Some men are blind to what their wives need.
- Some men just want baby love.
- Some men bring a confusing mix of masculine and feminine energy.
- Some men bring aggression and frustration driven by fear.
Lets start with her first
One of the pet hates women share with me is a man that tries to fix everything. For many women, this drives them mad.
Her conversation doesn’t need fixing, she doesn’t need fixing, she tells me “he tries to fix things I don’t need fixing and then gets upset when she doesn’t appreciate him”.
“Or he occasionally does something that I do every day without any kind of appreciation from him and then he wants praise when he does it once”.
“Give me an example”, I asked.
“I pack the dishwasher every day I don’t think anything of it or mention it to him. He does it twice a year and comes and tells me, what does he want me to say?”
So she gets frustrated with him so let’s start with the basics.
Masculine men are designed to be fixers
Getting them to naturally stop without guidance is like trying to convince a Lion to go Vegan.
So what many women are probably not aware of is, being a fixer is how many men are designed.
He is different to her, but he isn’t wrong.
His approach to life, and his emotional processes and needs are very different from hers, remember he isn’t wrong he is just different.
I have to help women understand the way men approach her problems is just the way he deals with his own.
To her as she shares her day or a problem she can feel a loss of connection and feel uncared for as he shuts her down, and asks her to get to the point.
He is assuming she has a point of course.
Many women are not trying to get to a point they are wanting to build a connection.
He wants her to get to the point so he can fix the problem he thinks she has, he wants to do that because he cares.
She feels his request to get to the point is shutting her down and she sees this as uncaring.
To him, this is him looking after her and caring by trying to fix her problem so she can let it go which is why men become so confused when she becomes upset at this process.
A man’s mission is to let stuff go, so he assumes she is the same as him.
Men have no idea why women find it so hard to let things go, when letting things go is a daily activity for him.
In fact, many men are so confused by much of the relationship-building process which is why they know they usually say the wrong thing so better off saying nothing.
Men usually bring a very logical fixer mindset to the relationship unaware of how much this will jar her.
To be clear both men and women have logical emotional systems, the problem is it’s not the same logic which is why they struggle to communicate.
So what many men end up feeling is he knows he’s not perfect, but he knows he does his best for her.
But he can see from her responses he is failing her and this is where he starts to suffer, but he won’t show it to her.
From her perspective, he is cold and uncaring from his perspective he is in a world of pain but for some men, his face isn’t sharing that.
He knows he keeps failing – she tells him every day
If a man is designed to fix problems and the most important part of his life his relationship seems impossible to fix here is what men do.
If he can’t fix the problem he will let the problem go and focus on something else.
Again she will feel he doesn’t care, this isn’t true but over time his lack of ability to fix the problem can lead him into resentment and that’s a problem as you will soon discover.
It’s why some men will see she is upset, he knows there is very little he can do so he leaves her alone and gives her some space to calm down on her own.
He again is giving to her what he would want.
Any man coming into my session will be instructed to never leave her alone, if she feels he doesn’t care this is devastating for her and she will resent this disconnect.
Unaware of all this he happily leaves her and waits for when she lets it all go!
Like that will happen!
Nothing he does works and for men, this is bad news!
For her, the combination of loss of connection, feeling abandoned, and his lack of empathy will either ignite her upset or emotionally detach her.
As her resentments grow she can stop intimacy, care and love.
He is no longer a priority, his work and what he brings to the table are irrelevant to her, in her mind “she works too, so what if he’s busy so am I!”
Some couples end up turning what they do into a competition.
The more she resents the more he fails and for many men, a dangerous shift can start and she won’t be aware of it as she is so consumed with his lack of care.
She is not seeing the danger brewing
She won’t be aware because he has learnt with her a problem shared, is a problem doubled.
So he might shout, bicker, defend himself walk off in disbelief, but he will be reluctant to tell her how he really feels.
To start with he will hide the truth to protect her and the marriage, but as his resentment starts to build his desire to protect her will start to fade.
He is changing as his resentments are now more important than harmony – he’s had enough!
So when she gives him a mouthful now he will give her one back, no filter!
She may start to show no interest in intimacy with him when it goes too far for her.
She is withdrawing from him for being so horrible to her, for him, this can be a blessing because he now no longer cares.
You see the shift has happened.
He no longer wants to protect her – he now wants to protect himself from her
So now all the bad things she said about him he collected and believes she meant it.
All the times he felt unfairly treated he collected.
All times he let things go or apologised when he did nothing wrong.
All the years of feeling unappreciated.
He stacks the profile of who she has become.
He now sees her differently
The negative energy he feels she is constantly in, he now believes this is her true identity – and he could never be with a woman like that!
Who he married in his mind is a different person she is long gone.
So for him, he now has no problem leaving or wanting to leave the woman she has become.
He feels this despite being unaware he is part of the reason she is this way.
From his perspective…
She spoilt the relationship
He will feel she spoilt their relationship and will blame her for the loss of connection.
For him, she is no longer attractive to him, she isn’t fun, sexy, or playful to him she is hard, negative and miserable to be around.
He has more fun and can be himself outside of the home.
He watches in disbelief as she walks around the house in his mind miserable, but wait as soon as a friend calls her energy switches and in a flash and she lights up and engages, “unbelievable he thinks”!
His attachment to her is getting worse.
“I can’t be my fun relaxed easy going me when I’m with you!”
The nail in the coffin is when feels he can only be himself when he is not with her.
This will now bring a desire to want to feel free.
Just so you are aware.
His desire for freedom which he will attach to a need to leave, separate, some even have affairs to escape.
These men are misunderstanding what their mind is telling them, they think the answer to their happiness is getting away from her.
What he is really escaping is what his mind does to himself based on the meanings he has attached to her.
So leaving her can create an illusion that his feelings were right.
To start with the ones that do leave do initially feel better, they think it is because he is free of her when in reality he has stopped doing something to himself that he doesn’t like.
He won’t be aware of this.
The way to get him back is to understand this part.
The way many women try to get men back actually repels them.
- Some women get upset with him – guaranteed to make him run, he’s got one foot out of the door already.
- Some women change from sexually dormant to full-blow sexual temptress overnight – he will see this as manipulation or just weird.
- Some will be overly nice and try to convince him to see someone – she still isn’t seeing what she is doing is based on her and what she wants. – In his mind, nothing has changed it’s still about her.
- Other women may write to him endless pages totally unaware he is likely to read the first line and bin it. – This just irritates him.
- She may try to convince him, talk to him, tell him how much she knows he loves her really, she may even tell him about what he said in all those special cards and what about the flowers. –
As she’s telling him this it’s likely to bring a rollercoaster of emotional shifts in her as she connects to the good times and the potential loss at the same time. He will either agree it’s sad or simply look perplexed at all the emotions he has never understood.
You cannot change his mind only he can
You see when women do their best to get him back all she really does is prove how little she really knows about him.
She will see the irony of this when this for her is at the core of her complaint about him.
You see you can’t change a man unless he is in agreement.
Logic is the process to help him back
The starting point is he will be convinced he is right and will feel impossible to move.
He has a clear memory of what she said and did that made him feel bad and those are undeniable facts to him.
In fact, he will have designed his new future and is getting comfortable with that.
So for him to change his mind he would have to understand why his logic isn’t logical.
If there is no answer he can accept and no way for him to be successful he will never step back into the marriage.
I have seen so many men draw up a pros and cons list of if I stay and if I go – in relationships this process is a terrible idea and only proves the perspective of the bias.
It doesn’t bring the real facts because neither he nor his partner has the knowledge base to get to the facts, they will only access their perspectives – that is called limited data or bad data.
No logical person makes life-changing decisions on limited information or bad data. Well sadly people do this every day, they just don’t know they are.
He has collected all the problems over the years to justify how he had no choice but to leave.
The problem is, how do you create logical answers to emotional problems that are not logical?
The answer is to understand the logic that drives them.
He also needs to understand how he contributed to the problem he doesn’t like, initial he won’t be interested in this so he needs to process to help him listen.
Again all this needs to be turned into logic so he can make sense of it.
Women bring so much emotion to her words, but none of them make sense to him.
When I speak to men they listen to what I say and agree, but are also confused at the logic that isn’t their logic.
How can logic that isn’t my logic make sense?
When you can help a man question his own thinking in a way he agrees with it has the power to change his emotional attachment to the beliefs he called facts.
You see, men are not unreasonable they but they suffer from a challenging problem; they have never been a woman.
This leaves them judging their wives as if they are badly behaved men.
The moment he understands she was never supposed to behave the same as him he can start to make shifts.
So you want to help him back into the marriage?
If you want to get him back then you have to stop thinking like a woman and start to see the world the way a man does.
Kick him, he’ll run.
Help him achieve, be successful and win, and you’ll get his attention.
The starting point is to help women understand not just how to understand his mind but to understand the changes she has to make in herself to help him see her as attractive again.
So, if you don’t want the relationship to end, please review my questions.
- Is he worth fighting for, and if so, why?
- Are you willing to do what it takes – this means doing an emotional reset?
- Do you want to be able to look yourself in the mirror knowing you did everything you could?
- Will you follow what I ask because you can’t do this your way?
If you said yes to all four questions and are ready to win him back take action click here NOW!
Harley Street Expert | Founder & High Performance Coach
With two decades of experience helping couples out of crisis, Stephen the founder of The Marriage Breakthrough Program, uses his proven system for rescuing and rebuilding relationships on the edge of divorce. A trusted advisor to CEOs, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders globally, his work blends emotional intelligence with strategic clarity. Known for navigating highly complex relationship challenges, Stephen helps individuals and couples find clarity and direction when everything is at stake.
Find out more >>> The Marriage Breakthrough Program
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