My husband doesn’t know if he wants to come back to me
If you’re separated and living apart (but still involved in your marriage), it’s quite understandable that you might be feeling extremely impatient. When I was separated, there were times when every day without my husband felt like torture. In fact, I used to notice and reflect on this feeling. Of course, when things start to look up between you and your husband, it’s natural to start fantasizing about coming home. Sometimes you think about this so much that you ask him directly if he is coming home. Unfortunately, sometimes you don’t get the reaction you expected. There are times when he doesn’t say yes and he doesn’t say no. He just tells you that he’s not sure. This leaves him wondering where he could put it in the future. Should you let go of your hopes or could it just be temporary?
Someone might say, “For almost six months, my husband acted like he could hardly bear to even talk to me. Never mind the fact that he had moved in to avoid me and not fight me. He didn’t even bother to control me.” what hurt me the most. He would always ask me what I was doing or how he was, but he got to the point where I couldn’t just call him and ask him about it, because he wouldn’t answer my calls. So he was absolutely thrilled when he started calling me and then stopped screening him. Even better, it led him to ask me if we could see each other a few times a week. All of this is more than he dared me to hope for. So when we started spending time together, things started off weird. But eventually, we started to click and things got better pretty quickly. After that, we really started to connect again. This has been a precious time for me because it’s almost like when we first dated, I had high hopes for a quick reconciliation, I just wanted to get back to living our lives and forget about all the pain of separation. But a long time passed and my husband did not say anything about it. Fortunately, we continued to see each other and talk, but he didn’t mention coming home or making up. It killed me to have a good time together and then go home alone. So one day I couldn’t take it anymore and I blurted out ‘when are you coming home?’ My husband looked at me like he was surprised by my outburst, then sighed and said he wasn’t sure he was ready for that yet. He was quite gobsmacked because he seemed happy and content as we spent time together. Why would he be perfectly willing to be affectionate and interact with me, but then I’m not sure if he wants to move back in? Does this mean there is no hope for a reconciliation?”
No, I definitely wouldn’t say that at all. My husband and I moved on very gradually when things started to freeze between us again. As much as I wanted him to come home, I was very afraid that our reconciliation efforts would fail. I knew that if we tried to reconcile and then things went wrong, it would be very difficult (if not impossible) for me to convince my husband to try another reconciliation. So essentially, I knew I only had one chance to make this work. And I knew how lonely and miserable I was living alone. But still, he wanted to wait until he could be relatively sure that things would actually work.
Your husband might be having a similar thought process right now. She could be careful not to rush things lest the spell be broken, as things seem to be going very well at the moment.
Trust me, I know how hard it can be to remain patient when what you want most in the world is not to spend another night alone. But when I had these thoughts, I would tell myself that I’d rather continue with things as they were (on good terms between us) than risk my progress by rushing. I just wasn’t willing to go back to the time period where my husband avoided me, wouldn’t return my calls, and gave me very limited access to him. I decided that I would rather wait than go back to it.
Instead, I just tried to skew things so that my husband would spend more and more time in our house. He would offer me to cook him dinner. He would ask her to fix things. Finally the night passed. So this turned into him spending the weekends. He got to where he was staying for several days at a time. Then he moved again, but there was nothing really official about it. This took a lot of pressure off the situation. If we had a bad night together, he’d just come back to his house, let things cool down, and then we’d pick it up again. We were able to assess our “hot spots” and where we still had work to do before attempting a full reconciliation. This gradual approach meant there was much less risk and pointed out where we could still make improvements before my husband returned full time.