Why Your Spouse Wanting a Divorce Doesn’t Mean It’s Over

Why Your Spouse Wanting a Divorce Doesn’t Mean It’s Over

 On this episode of Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack, Christian psychologist and relationship coach Dr. Jack Ito talks about one of the most painful moments in any relationship—when a spouse wants a divorce. Many people panic and assume that it’s the end, but in this episode, you’ll learn why that fear is often misplaced. Coach Jack shares how reconnecting and rebuilding a relationship is still possible, even when your spouse says they’re done.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why a spouse asking for divorce doesn’t necessarily mean reconciliation is impossible
• How to avoid common mistakes that derail reconnection efforts
• What it really takes to restore love, commitment, and value in your relationship
• How to use process goals to build attraction and security, step by step

Want to Work With Coach Jack?
If your spouse wants a divorce and you’re not ready to give up, the Re-Connections Coaching Package can help you rebuild your relationship from the ground up—without pressure or pursuit. Coach Jack will guide you through a proven process of retraction, reconnection, and security so your spouse starts to value and desire being with you again.

Key Takeaways:

• Trying to convince your spouse not to divorce won’t rebuild love
• Reconciling follows the same path as dating—build value first
• Secure people commit to those they fear losing, not to those always available
• Process goals like showing love and being enjoyable are key to restoring connection
• Divorce may happen, but it doesn’t have to stop the reconciliation process

Additional Resources:

• What to Do When Your Wife Want to Divorce and Be Friends
• Your Spouse's Real Reasons for Wanting a Divorce
• How to Prevent Divorce and Reconcile while Separated

Work one-on-one with Coach Jack to repair your relationship using small, easy steps that rebuild connection quickly. Visit CoachJackIto.com to learn more about relationship coaching.

Transcript

Why Your Spouse Wanting a Divorce Doesn’t Mean It’s Over

Introduction to Reconciling Marriages

[00:00:00]Announcer: On the reconciling marriages with Coach Jack, podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito will help you to build and restore your marriage by learning just a few relationship skills you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more while getting more love and affection from your spouse.

[00:00:20] Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love. 

Understanding Divorce Fears

[00:00:29]Coach Jack: Is your spouse talking about divorce and you are scared it means you've already lost your chance to fix things? Things may not be as bad as you think. I'm going to tell you why your spouse wanting a divorce doesn't actually stop you from reconnecting or even reconciling.

[00:00:44] I've helped thousands of clients to reconcile with separating, divorcing and even cheating spouses. I don't believe that everyone should try to reconcile with a rejecting spouse. There are many times when a marriage is badly mismatched. If you add that on top of a badly damaged marriage, reconciling is not likely and not your best choice.

The Possibility of Reconciliation

[00:01:06]Coach Jack: However, if you and your spouse are not badly mismatched, but have become very distant. Then it is very possible to reconcile. Stay with me and I will tell you why that is and how you can get started today. Even people who don't change their minds easily do change their minds. The best example of that is people who decide to divorce, though once they decided to marry till death, do you part.

[00:01:34] But some people think that when their spouse says they are done, that there is no chance. And so give up on their relationship. 

Common Mistakes in Reconciliation

[00:01:42]Coach Jack: Here's how this often looks In real life, a woman feels like she's been emotionally punched in the gut because her husband mentioned he is considering divorce. She quickly begins to take steps to improve their relationship.

[00:01:56] She stops all arguing and pursuit, focusing on helping her husband to feel relaxed with her. Her husband relaxes, but tells her that he is done with the marriage and that it is too late to improve it. She then begs pleads and argues with him for three hours, undoing her progress before she gives up. If only she had continued to build her relationship without reacting to her husband's feelings or decisions she may have been able to reconcile.

[00:02:30] It wasn't her husband's decision that derailed her. It was her decision to give up. 

Effective Strategies for Reconciliation

[00:02:35]Coach Jack: Based on what he said, a lot of people before working with me were having a hard time reconciling because they were putting all of their efforts into convincing their spouse not to divorce. Trying to convince someone to do something they don't want to do is not a good strategy for reconciling.

[00:02:54] In fact, it's not a good strategy for any relationship. In fact, it's not a helpful strategy for accomplishing anything. Reconciling means restoring love and commitment. That doesn't happen by convincing anyone to do anything. It happens by following a series of relationship building steps, just like you did when you first met your spouse.

[00:03:19] I don't think you met and then started begging him or her to marry you or go to counseling to work on problems or to see if the counselor could somehow convince him or her to fall in love. Those behaviors would have driven your to be spouse away and rightly so. 

Timeframes for Reconciliation

[00:03:37]Coach Jack: A common question people ask me is how long it takes to reconcile with a rejecting spouse.

[00:03:44] For me, the question is like a single person asking how long it takes to get a disinterested acquaintance to Mary. Hey Jack, there's this woman I really like. She doesn't like me at all. How long will it take to get her to marry me? Some people would tell that guy to forget it. The fact is, many people who were not initially interested in each other.

[00:04:07] Became interested in each other and got married. Just about 100% of married people, in fact. So how long does it take? Well, you can get married to a needy person within a week. For a secure person, it's not likely to be less than six months. And if they're currently dating someone else, then add three months onto that.

[00:04:31] Even if someone ends another relationship right away, it still takes time for them to get over the other person. For reconciling, it's the same numbers, not one week unless your spouse panics and wants to make up right away. I never see such people, but there are probably a lot of situations like that.

[00:04:51] Reconciling with a secure rejecting spouse takes at least six months, nine months if there is an affair. Those are minimum numbers. Reconciling might never happen. In my experience. 

Building Value and Boundaries

[00:05:06]Coach Jack: Reconciling depends on the ability to retract, reconnect, and be secure. Retraction and reconnection create the renewed interest and being secure is what gets recommitment.

[00:05:18] Spouses are only going to reconcile in order to keep someone they value and would otherwise lose. That means using good boundaries once you have, again, become valuable. These are the very same factors responsible for getting married in the first place. You need to be desirable. You need to help the other person feel.

[00:05:38] The two of you are similar in enjoyable ways, and the other person needs to have some fear that you might slip away if marriage doesn't happen. Some people naturally have a lot of that fear. They are the needy people full of abandonment issues who are willing to marry quickly. For others, it's necessary to have good boundaries, not be overly available, not be willing to just date or live together without getting married.

[00:06:07] Secure people commit or recommit in order to keep someone they highly value who they would otherwise lose their initial decisions. Don't change that. Everything I help my clients with has to do with becoming more valuable and or using good boundaries. Everything else is like pedaling a bicycle with a broken chain, not fun to ride and not getting you anywhere.

Divorce and Reconciliation Process

[00:06:35]Coach Jack: So why doesn't divorce prevent reconciling whether the divorce happens or not, depends on when the relationship is rebuilt relative to when the divorce happens. Some places have a mandatory one or two year wait before divorce can happen. That greatly increases the odds of reconciling prior to divorce.

[00:06:55] You would start that process by agreeing that divorce isn't a bad idea given how your relationship has been, that helps you to get to square one instead of being in the hole with arguing and convincing. The same thing goes for places where divorce can happen quickly. Sometimes in as little as a day, you still need to agree that divorce isn't a bad idea.

[00:07:18] I help my clients to craft empathetic messages to do that, but much of your relationship building is going to happen during the process of divorce and after that, if it only takes one month to divorce. And at least six months to reconcile. That means it'll be at least five months after you divorce, before you reconcile.

[00:07:40] A divorce proceeding does not need to interfere with the reconciling process. It will though, if you take an oppositional or argumentative stance. Do people remarry each other after divorce? Well, some do, but most don't. The main reason that most don't is that even if they have done a good job with the retracting and reconnecting, they're unwilling to walk away from the relationship.

[00:08:06] That means their spouse can continue to enjoy the advantages of being independent while still having all of the benefits of the relationship. That's true for both of them though. That's the main reason. It has nothing to do with it not being possible. People only commit. Or recommit in order to keep something valuable they would otherwise lose.

[00:08:30] I don't know if there's a Christian obligation to remarry since divorced people are still considered married anyhow, this is why the Bible tells us that if we divorce and remarry another, we are committing adultery. As a relationship coach, I'm most concerned with helping my clients to rebuild a loving, monogamous, and committed relationship.

[00:08:51] Good. You know that divorce is a symptom and not a cause. Divorce isn't something anyone wants to do. It's what they believe they need to do in order to have something better. People don't really want to divorce. They want what they believe they can have after they divorce. If you restore their relationship, the divorce is no longer desired.

[00:09:13] Don't spend your time staring at the smoke when what you really need to do is gather more firewood. 

Goals for Successful Reconciliation

[00:09:20]Coach Jack: What are the right goals for reconciling the right goals for reconciling don't include preventing divorce. They're actually the same goals we need to have every day. My goal today isn't to make sure my wife doesn't divorce me.

[00:09:33] My goals are to behave in desirable ways, to show love and to help her enjoy her time with me. Those are process goals. Process goals mean enjoying the relationship as you go along. That's what single people do and doing that leads to marriage. That's what people need to do to reconcile as well. Focus on being desirable, having behavior which is attractive for the current level of the relationship.

[00:10:02] Being empathetic and agreeable and not pressuring or pursuing. If you can do that, then the relationship will build. But asking your spouse to call off a divorce before love is restored will create the same problem as trying to get a single person to marry you before they're in love with you. You will get rejection.

[00:10:22] Many people give up at that point. As long as your relationship is growing, there is no reason to give up on it. But you will have to develop your relationship a lot before expecting your spouse to give up freedom and all others to be with you only for the rest of his or her life. That is only natural.

Conclusion and Coaching Offer

[00:10:45]Coach Jack: You can get all the way to reconciling. I would be glad to help you reconcile my re-connections coaching package Will help you with a process of attraction, connection, and security. This will help you to rebuild your relationship regardless of whether your spouse wants to divorce or not. It's okay if you give up on your relationship because you truly think it is the best thing to do.

[00:11:08] But don't give up because your spouse wants a divorce that can change. 

[00:11:14]Announcer: Thank you for listening to Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack. Visit coachjackito.com to learn more skills for reconnecting with your spouse and restoring your marriage.