Wives who are at the end of their marital strings often reach out to me. Sometimes it is very clear that you are at a point in your marriage where your husband is not making you a priority in her life. Often the wife believes that the husband sees her marriage almost as an afterthought. I heard from one wife who said, “We’ve been married for about five years. For the first three years of our marriage, things were wonderful. My husband would come straight home from work and we were always together. We were both very invested in each other.” our marriage and it showed. We were very much in love and very happy. But a couple of years ago, everything changed. He stopped coming home from work and started going out with his friends. He took up golf. Now he’s gone the weekends. I’m so alone in my marriage right now. I told my husband I don’t want to live like this anymore. I told him he had to make a decision about prioritizing our marriage and choosing me over all his hobbies and friends. He listened to what I had to say, but he told me I was being too sensitive. And then he didn’t make any changes at all. I’m at the end of my rope. How can I make him choose me and our marriage? Because if he doesn’t ago, I’m afraid that nue Our marriage will end.” I will address this below.
Make sure your request doesn’t sound like a nuisance so he’ll be tempted to avoid you: I understand how wives feel. Once my husband stopped prioritizing our marriage, I stepped back and did the same. Finally, we parted ways. So I completely understand that you want him to notice and listen. But, there is a real danger in asking this so often that he sees it as a nuisance and starts to ignore you. Very often I hear from husbands in this situation on my blog and they often offer comments like, “everything my wife does is telling me how I’m not meeting her needs. It’s squarely focused on what I’m doing wrong. Every conversation seems to be They focus on her asking me for more. If she had her way, I’d have no friends except her. I love my wife, but she asks a lot of me. So I just tune her out.”
I am not telling you this to discourage you. I just want you to see why her husband may be disconnecting from you and why, if this is the case, continuing with the same plan will likely continue to get you the same results you are currently unsatisfied with. That’s why it can really help to try to use positive reinforcement, which I’ll talk about now.
Try to catch him in situations where he chooses you and make it worth doing the same thing once again: Earlier, I described a situation where your husband avoids spending time with you because he knows that when he does, you are likely to make demands on him. So, you need to change this dynamic. You want to set it up so that when your husband comes home or chooses you in some way, you make a big deal about it in a positive way. Instead of saying things like “well, it’s about time” or “no one was available to play golf, so now you’re staying with me,” you should tell him what a nice surprise his presence is to you and how much you care. I want to appreciate this time. Then follow through on those statements by making it a night your husband will want to repeat.
The wife in the above scenario had been married to her husband for five years. She probably knew very well the kinds of things that would be memorable and enjoyable for her husband. The general idea is that if you give her some positive reinforcement, she is much more likely to choose you again very soon. And every time he does, you want to make sure that you both enjoy your time together so that it eventually becomes a habit. The idea is that you get to the point where you no longer have to praise him or give him much importance because it has become a habit for both of you.
So if you’re stuck in a cycle where you scold him and he doesn’t change his lifestyle a bit, consider trying to back up a bit and focus on catching him doing something right and then rewarding him. It is human nature for him to want to choose his wife and come home as often as he can when she gives him a compelling reason to do so. And once this happens, both people feel happy and valued without anyone feeling like he has lost the argument or given up.