Your wife has completely given up on your marriage. Is it possible to win her back?
Well, the answer is absolutely 100%. It’s not only possible, it’s very probable if you follow the right steps, which I’m going to share with you in this video.
Hi, I’m Cody Butler, a relationship coach and founder of Better Marriage. In this video, I want to share with you what to do if your wife has completely given up on the marriage, and she’s telling you she doesn’t even want to work with you. I’ve seen this literally hundreds of times, and this can be turned around every single time with the right strategies, which I’m about to share with you.
The first thing to understand is when she’s saying, “I’ve given up on the relationship, I don’t want to try,” it’s not that she doesn’t want to try. You’ve got to understand what she’s saying. She’s saying that she believes trying is hopeless. She’s tried everything that she knows how to try, and you haven’t responded to her. You haven’t responded to the chances that she’s given you, and you haven’t responded to the opportunities that she’s presented to you. She can no longer see any hope in you changing, and if you can’t change, this situation cannot change. So, she is no longer willing to try in this utterly pointless situation. That is what she is saying to you.
She’s not saying that she doesn’t want to be married to you. She’s not saying that she doesn’t want it to work. She’s saying that she does not believe that it can work based on the set of evidence and the circumstances that you are presenting to her as her husband right now.
Once we understand that, that’s very important, right? Because if we can present new evidence to her, if we can present a new case to her, or we can start to show change that gives her hope again and injects hope into the relationship, then she will start to change her mind. She will start to soften. Let’s understand something; her leaving the relationship, her leaving the marriage is very, very difficult for her. She’s having to start out 10, 15, 20 years older than she did before. She’s halving her finances. She’s ruining her retirement. She’s destroying her children’s well-being, and so on. Leaving the relationship is the last resort for her. If she does not want to do that, I can promise you if there’s any way around it, but people leave marriages when hope leaves the marriage. If she’s saying, “I don’t even want to try,” it’s because she’s not seeing any hope.
The first thing to do now is to start to demonstrate change to her. We have to recognize that if we change, the marriage can change. If we can inject hope into the relationship, she will start to respond to that hope. The second thing is an attitude shift. For your marriage to change, you have to change. When the attitude is right, the facts don’t matter. When your attitude changes towards the marriage, the facts right now make no difference. So, the question then really becomes, what is the right attitude that I need to adopt to turn this marriage around? Because if you can adopt that right attitude, everything that you’re viewing right now as fact within the relationship simply doesn’t matter.
To give you some practical tangible advice on how we start to turn this around is, the first thing we have to do to inject hope back into the relationship is that we have to genuinely demonstrate that we understand what the problem is.
I guarantee she’s been testing you on this problem. She’s been giving you opportunities to correct it, and I’m guessing that you haven’t even really acknowledged what the problem really is. For her, if you don’t acknowledge what the problem is, there can be absolutely no hope in reconciliation. There can be absolutely no hope in the situation changing because you don’t even know what the problem is, right? So, the first thing is we have to uncover, at a very emotional level, what the real problems are within the relationship.
Let me give you an example of this. Most men really go through this process far too quickly. They go, “Okay, well, I know the problem. It’s this, this, and this.” It’s like, well, at the surface level, this is the problem, but we’ve got to go deeper to really understand not just what the actual problem is, but what the emotional impact of those problems are on your wife and the emotional impact that it’s causing.
So, let me give you an example to make this concrete and tangible for you. A lot of times, I’ll talk to men, and they’ll say stuff like, “My wife complains I do what she complains about, and then she still complains. There’s no pleasing her.” Let’s use garbage, for example. “My wife asked me to take the garbage out, and I do it, and then she still complains, and there’s just no pleasing her.” It’s like, well, you’re viewing the garbage as the issue here. The garbage is not the issue. The fact is that she’s had to ask you to take the garbage out, and by having to ask you, she is demonstrating that you don’t really understand the emotional impact that it’s having on her. You’re demonstrating that you don’t really understand that she’s a partner in this relationship. You’re not demonstrating that you don’t really understand that she shares this living environment with you, and she has an equal say, or at least she should have an equal say, in what this living environment is. You’re also saying that you don’t really care that she wants the trash out. You’re invalidating her feelings by not taking it out. You’re demonstrating that you don’t really care what her feelings about this are.
So, there are so many negative things going on here by not taking the trash out or revolving around emotions, feelings, validations, and what she sees her role is in the relationship. By simply taking the trash out because she’s asked you to do it, you’re demonstrating absolutely no understanding of the emotional impact that your behavior is having on the relationship.
By understanding and going in and deeply understanding the emotional impact that your behavior is having and explaining that to her, and saying, “Hey, sweetheart, I get it now. It’s not about the trash at all. It’s got nothing to do with the trash. It’s about the fact that I’m not acknowledging you as an equal in this relationship. It’s about the fact that I’m not acknowledging that it impacts you for the trash to be in the house. It’s about acknowledging that I’m not really giving you the emotional space and freedom that I’m giving myself. I’m being very unfair in this.” When you say that to your wife, she’s like, “Thankfully, finally, you’re starting to get the problem.” If you can demonstrate that you understand what the problem is, then there is hope for a solution. But as long as you think that the problem is the trash, for example, then there is absolutely no hope.
Now, there are many, many things that this can take the form of. Very rarely is the problem that you’re looking at the relationship and the actual problem that is causing major psychological issues with your wife. It’s the emotional impact.
When we start to understand that the behavior we’re engaging in is having a detrimental emotional impact on our spouse, we can communicate that and show her that we’re making an effort and taking steps to rectify the problem. This brings hope back into the relationship. Almost every single time, with the many, many men that I’ve worked with, when we can demonstrate what is going on, she will soften, reverse her position and go from feeling that the relationship is hopeless to being willing to give us a chance, saying things like, ‘I’ll give you three months,’ or ‘I’ll give you six weeks.’ As long as you continue to make steps moving forward, this is your opportunity to start working on yourself – which is the real key here. You need to work on your attitude towards yourself and your attitude towards her.
When you do this, she is going to soften more and more, until in a very, very short period of time, I can promise you that she will be coming back to you. Hopefully, that’s helpful. If you want some more tips on how to save your marriage if your wife’s not trying, there should be a video over here, or over here, or somewhere around here. Check it out. God bless you, and I’ll talk to you very soon.
