I often hear of spouses trying to no avail to get their husband or wife to clarify what is going on with their marriage. It is often quite obvious that there are serious problems and issues, but it can be difficult (if not impossible) not to know what the future holds. Many people feel they could better address serious marriage problems if their spouse would agree to even acknowledge them, work on them, or at least give some indication of where they see the marriage going in the future.
I recently heard from a wife who said in part, “Obviously our marriage is in serious trouble. We’ve been struggling for the past six months. There was a time when my husband hinted that he might move out or file for divorce.” I begged him not to and for now, he’s still here, but it’s obvious that sometimes he wishes he wasn’t here. Sometimes he stays out all night with his friends or practically ignores me when we’re together. Usually, I can only take part of this before wondering what is going on and what is going to happen to our marriage. I am willing to try to save it, but I doubt I can do it all on my own. However, whenever I Try to bring up our marriage, what’s wrong, what we could do to fix it, or what my husband has planned for the future, he’ll quickly change the subject, it’s like he flatly refuses to talk about the state of our marriage in any capacity. I’ll tell my husband that ignoring the problem isn’t going to make it go away, but he does. He doesn’t seem to care. He just keeps changing the subject or pretending he never listened to me in the first place. What can I do about this? And why do you keep ignoring the issue?”
There are many reasons why your husband might be avoiding the subject of your marriage. I’ll discuss some of these reasons below and suggest some ways she might try to handle this.
Possible reasons why your husband might be changing the subject every time he mentions your marriage: There are numerous reasons why your husband might be inclined to change the subject of your marriage. First, he may be just as puzzled and frustrated as you are. And, since he doesn’t have any decent answers for you, he may do better to remain silent until an answer is presented. Second, he may not know how he feels about her marriage or saving it. Therefore, while he decides what he wants to do or how he wants to move forward, he may be better off simply not discussing the issue in depth. Or he may just want to wait and see what happens before making a comment that isn’t confirmed or that he later regrets. Finally, he may have an opinion about your marriage and where it’s headed, but he may not want to discuss it just yet, perhaps because he doesn’t want to hurt or discourage you, or as I said earlier, he’d rather see how things really are. result rather than speculate. Now, let’s move on to the things he might consider trying to handle this situation.
How to handle it when your husband won’t talk about your marriage or refuses to talk about saving it: Many in this situation will be frustrated that their spouse won’t talk about their marriage, so they will try to bring it up even more intensely. They think that if they keep bringing it up, their spouse will eventually get so tired of the question that she will eventually answer it. The problem with this method is that you might get the answer you didn’t want. In other words, if you force a response, your spouse may get so frustrated that he tells you that if he insists on rushing things, then maybe the marriage is in real trouble or even over.
This is the last thing you want. So sometimes it’s best to give up the continual questioning, at least for now, and just tackle or try to start saving your marriage on your own. Actually, there are many things you can do without having to dwell on the unknown. You don’t necessarily have to endlessly talk about your marriage to save it.
You can start by trying to focus on what is going well between you instead of what is going wrong. Sometimes, if things go particularly wrong, you’ll have to dig deep or search very hard to find any shred of what’s right. But this is preferable to continuing to address something that your spouse is clearly unwilling or unable to address. For now, start focusing on those little things that are right between you. Build on those as you can. Become the spouse you yourself would like to be. Be sure to show your spouse the person you fell in love with. Make it easier to see the good things about yourself and your marriage instead of forcing your spouse to take inventory of the bad. Set it up to be a cheerful and welcoming topic rather than one that your spouse feels he should avoid.
While there may be a legitimate, negative reason why your spouse is changing the subject when you bring up your marriage, nothing says you can’t set the events in motion that are going to transform your marriage so that at some point in the near future, you no longer you have to keep asking questions you don’t know the answers to.