Managing separation in a marriage and how to get her back is one of the toughest emotional challenges a man can face.
Here’s the situation: your wife has just told you she needs space. She’s not happy in the relationship and hasn’t been for a while, so she wants to take a step back.
Your initial reaction will likely be to chase after her.
You’ll feel an overwhelming urge to do something—anything—to win her back. You might think the answer is to rush in with grand gestures and promises, hoping she’ll change her mind. But don’t do this.
Instead, take a breath. Redirect that energy toward self-growth and reflection. Focus on becoming the best version of yourself. If she sees genuine change, there’s a real chance she’ll be open to reconnecting.
How to Manage Separation in a Marriage & Win Her Back
How People Chase
Your gut reaction will be to reach out and immediately win her back. Most guys will do this in one of two ways.
Active Chasing
It makes sense that you want to get her back ASAP. But there’s a difference between getting in touch with her and fixing things in the short term versus getting back together and staying together.
Active chasing means you watch some videos and learn a couple of lines you can use to tug at her heartstrings so that she’ll agree to sit down and have a talk with you. Then you’ll try to say all the right things despite not really knowing what the right things even are. Instead of learning about what went wrong, you’ll immediately offer solutions.
Passive Chasing
Then there’s passive chasing.
Passive chasing kinda looks like the no-contact rule, and it’s the complete opposite of active chasing.
Instead of incessantly calling her or even waiting for her outside of work so that you can talk, you sit back, put your feet up, and sever communication.
You act as if you don’t care at all about the relationship in an attempt to shift the power dynamic, create intrigue, and, in a sense, make her feel as though this is all her fault.
Needless to say, it’s a manipulative tactic that won’t help you win her back.
Why These Chasing Techniques Don’t Work
Chasing seems like a good idea at first, but it never works.
If you’re actively chasing, she will see that your actions are disingenuous.
Sure, it looks like you want to get back together, but that desire to do so quickly without asking questions about why she wanted a break shows that you want to get back together because your ego is hurt, not because you truly love her and care deeply about fixing the root issue.
Even if you vomit out all the ways that you’ll change, either she will know that these changes won’t be permanent OR you yourself deep down will know that as soon as she comes back to you, you’ll stop changing for the better. You may have listened to her at first, made concessions, worked harder at work, or spent more one-on-one time with her at first, but naturally, this will fade. And this is because you only ever changed so that she’d come back to you, not because you had a vested interest in improving the well-being of the relationship in the long run.
And hey, let’s say you make these changes, you can’t even be sure they’re the right ones.
This is because instead of having a sit-down conversation where you hear her out and really learn what the problem is, you completely skipped this investigatory step and instead applied generic solutions to imagined problems.
As for passive chasing, you’re suffering from the same pitfalls.
You’ll come off as disingenuous and ignorant, but more than anything, it makes you seem as though you couldn’t care less about the relationship. If anybody needs to fight and show they care about this relationship, it’s you.
Intrinsic Desire to Do Better
Spoiler: there are no quick fixes to saving a relationship.
If you’re here to learn that one thing you need to do or say to win her back, then sorry, but it doesn’t exist.
What does exist is a right path forward, except this path takes time and the right mindset to follow.
How to get her back starts with an intrinsic desire to better yourself, for yourself. You’re not changing for some external reward; rather, you’re doing so because you genuinely want to change and become a better man.
You need to fall in love with the process of bettering yourself, and everything else will fall into place. That means if you want to be a better communicator, learn the skills to do so because you authentically enjoy them as opposed to using an end goal to motivate yourself.
So don’t lose weight or learn an instrument because you want to impress your partner, do it because you genuinely love the act of changing and improving yourself.
If this change is tied to an end goal, it means that it’s a superficial change that won’t last. The second this end goal is achieved, you’ll stop bettering yourself. Not to mention that if that goal is never realized, you’ll end up hating not only the process of bettering yourself but also despising the person you were changing for.
But if everything you do comes from a place of intrinsic motivation, your habits will last, and the changes you make will be genuine. Your partner will notice these changes, all you need to figure out is how to embrace this new mentality.
Embrace The New You
You know that you have to change your mindset but doing so isn’t that easy.
Here are three ways you can go about beginning to shift your mentality.
1) Obsess Over the Process, Not the Outcome
It’s easy to be motivated by an external goal. We want to finish work faster so we can go home earlier, we want to workout so we can look more attractive, and even make jokes because we find gratification in the laugher of others.
But what if we fell in love with our work, getting fit, or the craft of joke-making instead of only finding value in these things if they help us achieve an end goal?
Learning to love the process is in itself a process. Gradually focus more on the art of change rather than the final result.
2) Define Who You Want To Be
Define who you want to be instead of what you want to have.
Aspiring to be the best version of yourself is far more motivating than obtaining things. Doing this may require some serious rewiring if you’ve been using external goals to motivate you for a long time.
But once you’ve been able to make this shift, simply being you and building good habits and being the best you simply because you want to, will become seamless.
3) Buy In
If deep down you don’t agree you need to change your thinking to change yourself and ultimately win your partner back, you won’t create meaningful change.
Conviction in this new mentality and this new you will be tested. There will be times when you’ll hate the process and just focus on the end goal. When this happens re-center yourself and introspect on the best possible way to create lasting change. Do this and I guarantee that you’ll begin to not only see results, but more importantly you’ll find so much more meaning and gratification in the process.
How The New You Will Impact The Relationship
Once you’ve embraced this new mindset and are loving the process of changing and improving yourself, every word and action you take when interacting with your partner will come from a place of love and authenticity.
And again you’re not changing for her. But if she sees an authentic shift take place, she’ll be curious and want to see how you’ve changed. If you really drink the kool-aid she’ll notice that you’ve shifted in such a way that she now believes it’s worth it to give your relationship another shot.
If you’re struggling to create this change, let’s talk. We’ve created a detailed program marriage and relationship coaching program for men designed to help you win your partner back by creating lasting internal change. Let’s talk via Zoom to learn more about you, your relationship, and how we can help you win her back.