So, your wife has told you that she needs space from the relationship. What does this mean?
Well, the short answer to that question is that she’s putting you on notice, and you are in a very serious and precarious situation right now, and immediate action is required if you want to save your marriage.
Hi, my name is Cody Butler, and I help men rebuild their marriages from the ground up, even if their wife has already checked out, asked for a divorce, or is not willing to participate. If you like this content and want more of it, make sure that you hit the subscribe button below, and make sure you hit that notification bell so you get notified when we release these videos every week. And just so you know, we do still have a few places left in our “Win Your Wife Back” Marriage Recovery Program. There are details in the description if you want more information on that.
So, your wife has told you that she needs space. What does it mean, and what can you do about it?
Well, the first thing I want to say is that you need to take this very, very seriously. A woman telling you that she needs space is a very serious situation, and here’s the number one reason why: it’s because a woman is at least six months further ahead emotionally in her mind than she is indicating verbally. If she is now coming to you, telling you that she needs space from the marriage, she needs space from the relationship, or even worse, maybe she’s asking to get out or she’s asking for a divorce, she’s been thinking about this for at least six months before bringing it to you, and she is very serious about this now.
To understand what to do about this problem, how to turn it around, and let me tell you, absolutely 100%, it can be turned around. We see this very commonly with our clients, and we deal with this in our Marriage Recovery Program. This can be turned around very, very quickly, but to turn it around, you have to understand the underlying cause of the problem.
What is the cause of the problem? If she wants distance from you, if she wants separation from you, fundamentally what she’s saying is: whatever I’m going through right now, whatever it is that I’m experiencing right now, I would rather experience it without you. And that is not a great thing, right? Because when a marriage is healthy and when a marriage is flourishing, whatever is going on in the wife’s mind, it doesn’t matter what the problem is, she gets to a point where she says, whatever I’m dealing with, I want to go through it with you. You are the person that I want to go through. And the fact that she wants to go through this by herself now or with someone else is an indication that she is emotionally replacing you and replacing the support with somebody else or something else. Or she sees that going through this, or perceives that going through this by herself, whatever it is she’s going through, is better than going through it with you. And we need to turn this around, and we need to understand what’s caused this.
So, in the very beginning, your wife said yes to you for a reason. She said yes to going out with you, she said yes to dating you, she said yes to marrying you for two reasons: she loved the way you make her feel, or made her feel, and she saw that and she believed that a future with you was far better and far brighter than a future without you. Now, if she’s pulling away from that, if she’s moving towards separation, if she’s asking for space, it’s because the exact opposite is now happening.
She doesn’t like how she feels around you or how you’re making her feel, and that’s why she’s pulling away or needing space. She sees a future without you as brighter and better, and that’s why she’s ultimately pulling away. The fix to this problem is simple; we need to make her feel the way she wants to feel and show her that a future with us is better than a future by herself. However, this is an oversimplistic answer to the question. We need to dig deeper to understand what’s going on here and fix the underlying issues.
To fix this problem, we need to understand a woman’s fundamental needs and the building blocks of a relationship. A woman’s deepest and strongest need is emotional safety and security. If she’s pulling away or asking for space, it’s because emotional safety and security are not present, and her feelings are not being validated. Many men believe that they provide emotional safety and security for their wives, but the results speak for themselves. If she’s pulling away, the problem is a lack of emotional safety and security.
Before we can make her feel the way she wants to feel and show her that a future with us is better, we need to re-establish the bonds of emotional safety and security. This means that she can express herself without fear of judgment or invalidation, and her problems and viewpoints are not dismissed. When a woman comes to us with a problem, we may think that we’re solving it, but we’re actually invalidating her feelings and destroying her emotional security. If every communication she has with us ends in pain or frustration, she will pull away and ask for space. This can lead to separation and divorce if not addressed.
Ultimately, if this situation is not turned around, it is very serious, and asking for space is an indication of a much more serious underlying structural issue within the relationship. It is something that has to be addressed. We have to address the issue of emotional security. So let’s look at this another way to really make it clear. When a woman says that she needs space, what she’s saying is that she needs time away from communication with you. She needs time away from conversation with you. Now, the only reason a woman would do this is that the conversation is painful, frustrating, or making her feel invalidation in her emotions and experiences. It’s more painful for her to communicate with you than it is for her to withdraw. Withdrawal is painful, so let’s look at what that would mean for a man.
Communication for a woman, conversation for a woman, is the equivalent of sex for a man. For a woman to say, “I don’t want communication with you” or “I need time away from the conversation, I need space,” that is the equivalent of a man going to his wife and saying, “I don’t want to have sex with you for a while. I need space from sexual relations from you for a while.” It is a sign of a very, very big problem. As men, we are not going to say that we are never going to have sex with our wives unless there is a major issue within the marriage. There is a major problem within the marriage. So, this is the best way to look at this and understand this.
A woman who is not having a conversation with her husband is like a woman in the desert; she is dying of thirst. A woman who is not having a conversation is the same as a man who is not having sex with his wife. And again, as men, we can see the seriousness of that situation. We can see the implications of that. So, if our woman or wife is in a position where she says she needs that space, she needs that time away, we have got to start addressing that right now. We’ve got to get away from the views that we have and start seeing our relationship differently. If she’s saying that, it’s because she needs more safety. And to continuously say to ourselves that we’re providing that safety and providing that security is just naive.
It’s just going to wind us up in family court in divorce court. It’s going to end up in divorce. We have to accept the idea that maybe we haven’t created the emotional security that we think we have. We haven’t created the emotional safety that we think we have in the relationship. The way to start to turn this around is to go back to your wife and create that emotional safety and security with her again. Make her aware of the fact that you know and understand that you have destroyed that emotional safety and security, and you are now aware of that and going to turn that around.
You can’t expect her to come running back to you just because you tell her that you understand the emotional security has been destroyed. Until she sees that you are taking action to rebuild that safety, there’s no hope of her returning to you. It’s crucial to demonstrate to her that you can create emotional security in your marriage, rather than just telling her. There are specific structures, formulas, and blueprints that can help you have conversations that allow a woman to feel emotionally safe and secure. When she feels safe to communicate and express herself fully with you, she will be more likely to come back to you.
If you want to learn more about how we can help you rebuild emotional safety and security, and provide you with scripts and structures to have conversations that make your wife feel safe and secure, check out the link in the description. We offer emergency divorce prevention sessions, and all the information you need is there. Hopefully, this was helpful. Make sure to subscribe, give us a like, leave a comment, and God bless you. I’ll see you very soon.
