If your wife has told you that she wants to separate, there is a really good chance your brain immediately started looking for instructions on anything and everything you can do to prevent it. 

And if you have spent any time on YouTube looking for answers, you have probably heard five completely different opinions from five different people.

So in this video today, I am going to show you why one person telling you to go no-contact and another telling you to fight for her and show her how much the marriage means to you can both leave you more confused until you understand something that needs to come before any of those moves. 

Because your wife asking for a separation is just the headline.

And if you only react to the headline, you can completely miss what the rest of the story has been trying to tell you this whole time.

Let’s jump in…

WHEN SHE SAYS “I WANT TO SEPARATE”

After doing this for a while now, it is so interesting to see how many different ways separation rears its head in marriages. 

The obvious instances are ones where it is just heated argument after heated argument in your relationship, and it culminates to a point where she angrily says she has had enough and wants to separate. 

But that isn’t the only way it happens. Actually one of my newer clients, Tim, he just found me recently…

Before he found me, he felt things in his marriage were actually turning around…

He and his wife were fighting a lot less than the previous few months and seemingly getting along (at least in his eyes).

And one night they were driving back from her parents place (I believe), and Tim was talking about how it was a nice evening…I believe it was just a dinner with them and her sister and her husband.

Anyway, he was saying how it was a good time and she just had this blank stare and told him that she can’t keep doing this and thinks they should separate. 

And he was stunned by this, he thought things were going in the right direction… He knew things weren’t perfect but he thought since the fighting was not happening it was at least going the right way. 

So for her to just come out like that after a nice night with her family just sent him into a panic because that was the last thing he thought she would say that night. 

In a way this hurt him even more than if they would have been fighting a lot, because if you’re in a situation where it is just constant arguments and toxicity, as jarring as hearing that she wants to separate can be, at least mentally you almost expect it to a certain degree. 

And to Tim’s situation, he admittedly told me on our strategy call that as soon as she said that, he felt that tingly feeling all through his body on his skin, and he started saying whatever he could to change her mind.  

He also told me it’s almost like he knew he was doing the wrong thing, but when something you love feels like it is slipping away, doing anything but panicking to try and change her mind felt like it would be wrong. 

So that is what I want you to think about if your wife is talking about separation right now, or you are separated currently. 

If you take a look at your thoughts and actions, you will probably notice that a lot of them are attached to reacting to the separation instead of slowing down long enough to understand why your marriage reached separation.

THE HEADLINE IS NOT THE STORY

Think about the news notifications you get on your phone and seeing a headline of a big company you are familiar with, and it says…you know… “XYZ Inc Goes Bankrupt”. 

That headline will catch your eye and tell you something important obviously happened in the company, but it doesn’t tell you why they went bankrupt. 

You have to click into the article and probably read 4 pages down to finally find out what happened:

Did the company take on too much debt; was their star product all of a sudden obsolete because of technological advances; were the main two business partners fighting with each other and it destroyed the company, or could it have been they had a great product but management was so horrible that the company was driven into the ground.

The same headline could tell any one of those stories underneath it when you get that many pages deep. 

Your marriage is the relationship version of that company headline. 

Let’s say you and some other husband in the world both hear their respective wives (at the exact same time on the exact same day) say the words “I need space, I think we should separate”.

Same sentence…but your marriage and their marriage can be completely different.

YOUR wife may have spent years asking you to talk to her and feeling like every difficult conversation ended with you shutting down or becoming closed off.

His wife may feel the complete opposite.

Maybe every time his wife became upset, that guy chased the conversation with her, wanted answers immediately, asked her twenty questions, wasn’t hearing her out and instead just tried to solve her problem and tell her why the way she was feeling was wrong. 

Now think about it like this. Imagine someone giving both you and the other guy the exact same advice…

They tell you both: “Just give her space.”

Okay.

What does that mean for you, who has spent ten years disappearing every time your wife needed you?

Or somebody tells both of you the exact same piece of DIFFERENT advice…

“You need to fight for her.”

What does that advice mean for the other guy whose wife already feels like she cannot take one step back without him immediately coming toward her?

It’s fascinating, and often totally overlooked when searching for advice to help you in your marriage, how the same words from two different wives don’t automatically mean the same thing.

YOU CAN BE TRYING HARD ON THE WRONG THING

And what can really feel like garbage is the situation a good portion of the guys I talk to who apply for my coaching program are usually in.

They aren’t just sitting around doing nothing. 

They provide for the family and do the best they can with the kids, try to handle problems that come up. 

But then their wife says she has been unhappy for a while and it’s like a punch to the gut and it feels like someone changed the rules of the game right in the middle of it. 

The immediate instinct is to think that it is crazy for her to be unhappy because you are doing all of these things for the family.

Almost that feeling that no matter what  you do, she won’t be happy. 

It’s a very hard place to be in, because although you are doing a lot for your marriage (providing, bills, and so on), it’s truly a bit different than understanding what  your marriage actually needs.

You can be a very hard-working husband and still be defensive every time your wife brings up something that is painful to her emotionally.

You can also be a husband who has spent years bending over backwards trying to keep everybody happy, never saying what you need, and then quietly becoming angry because nobody seems to notice everything you are giving up in order to please them.

There are a myriad of different ways a marriage can slowly get off course.

This is why I don't want you hearing “she wants to separate” and immediately turning it into: “tell me exactly what to do next, Jeff”. 

I want you to go one level deeper first to actually REALLY help you.

THE INTERNET WILL GIVE YOU A HUNDRED “RIGHT MOVES”

Because you’re going to find a hundred “right” moves if you go searching for them…

Picture this, it’s 12:45am and you can’t sleep because you have these stories or possibilities of what is going to happen to your relationship just olympic sprinting through your head. 

So you grab your phone and throw a search into YouTube, and you say “My wife wants separation. What should I do?”

You start clicking a bunch of videos to try and get some help ASAP…

Video number one says: “Give her space.”

Okay.

Then video number two says:

“Never walk away from your wife. Women want a man who fights for them.”

Well...damn, okay.

Now video three says:

“Go no contact immediately.”

Video four says:

“No contact will destroy your marriage.”

Video five tells you to work on yourself.

Video six tells you she needs to see your changes.

Video seven says don't let her see you trying to change because that looks desperate.

And down the list we go…

At this point you have fourteen browser tabs open, your eyes hurt, it is now 2:15 in the morning, and somehow you know less than you did at midnight.

This happens because you are looking for a universal move in a situation that is not universal.

And this is something I really want you to remember:

Advice without the story behind your marriage is mostly guesswork.

I could tell every separated man watching this video:

“Stop texting your wife.”

That would make a fantastic simple YouTube title.

It would also be completely irresponsible because I know nothing about your marriage.

Maybe you're texting her thirty times a day and she has repeatedly asked you to stop.

Okay. We need to look at that.

But maybe you have two kids and need to communicate about school, doctors, pickups, sports and a hundred other things.

Maybe she has spent your whole marriage feeling like you disappear when things get uncomfortable.

Those situations aren't the same, and pretending they are doesn't make advice simpler.

It just makes the advice less useful.

So I don't want you to turn this next part into another twenty-question checklist. That defeats the point.

What I want you to start looking at is the story that came before the separation.

Not just the final argument, or only what happened last Tuesday.

Zoom out.

What kept happening between the two of you?

When she became upset, what normally happened next?

When you felt criticized, what did you normally do?

Were there things you needed that you never said until they came out as anger?

Things of this nature. 

The point isn't that I know your answer from behind this camera.

The point is that the answer matters.

Because before you decide what the next move should be, you need to understand what has actually been happening in your marriage.

YOU DO NOT NEED TO BECOME AN EXPERT ON SEPARATION

This is where I want to move the needle for you a bit, because you don’t need to become an expert on separation. 

But you do need to become more precise about what has been going on in your marriage.

Because your goal isn't to become REALLY GOOD at being separated.

Your goal is to understand what broke down well enough that you stop rebuilding the same thing.

There is no point…zero… notta…in getting your wife back into the house if the exact same marriage is waiting for her when she walks through the door.

Think about that.

If you could somehow snap your fingers tonight and she said: “Okay, forget the separation. I'll stay.”

Would the problems that brought you here suddenly be gone?

I am going to guess that they would probably not be. 

Don’t get me wrong, you would feel this IMMENSE sense of relief, and she may even feel like that too at first. 

But that relief feeling is not repair…

And that is why I don't want your whole focus to be on how you can change her mind. 

There is a better question.

“What would you need to understand about your own specific marriage so that you don't help create the same marriage again if she decided to come back, or not to separate in the first place?”

Now you are getting into the nitty gritty of what you can actually do in order to build that reconnection with her again, naturally get her to reconsider and believe she is making a mistake staying separated (or wanting to separate). 

And there is a lot of hope inside that question because it means you are not powerless here. You have WAYYY more in your control than you would ever believe.

You cannot choose what your wife ultimately decides.

But there is a huge amount you can learn about the part of the marriage that had your name on it.

How you communicate, what you avoid, where you become defensive, among many other possible things.  

Keep in mind though, this is not about turning yourself into the villain of your marriage.

SEPARATION IS SERIOUS BUT IT DOESN'T KNOW THE FUTURE

A request for separation is serious, take it seriously but it is also not a magic fortune teller that is putting the final note on your marriage. 

It gives you a really solid piece of information of where your wife is right now.

It doesn’t give either of us a perfect picture of what she will feel three months, six months, or a year from now.

So don’t spend your time and energy trying to predict that.

You should use your energy to get a much clearer picture of how the two of you got here.

This is also one of the biggest reasons I built the Relationship Rebuild coaching program the way I did.

I can give you a lot here for free, I can teach you the principles.

I can help you understand why some of the things you have been trying haven't worked.

I can help you start seeing your situation from angles you probably haven't considered before.

And I want these videos to serve you so that you can actually take something from them and make a better decision in your life.

A guy I watch who talks about business and is a business coach is fantastic, and on YouTube he calls it his community service content.

And I like that approach, I am here to serve you to help you not make the same mistakes I did for a decade. 

But at some point, there is a limit to what I can know about your marriage while talking into a camera.

That is where having somebody hear the whole story becomes very different from watching another video.

Because once we understand what has actually been happening, then we can start talking about what you need to change and how you start doing that in real life.

That is the kind of work I help men do inside Relationship Rebuild.

THE BOTTOM LINE

The bottom line is, if your wife has asked for a separation, remember that is just the headline.

It is not the whole story.

Do not become so focused on fixing the headline that you never understand the story underneath it.

So if you are struggling to figure out what actually broke down and what you should start working on first, I created my free Relationship Rebuild Masterclass to help you get a much clearer path forward.

I'll walk you through the areas that matter most when your marriage is in crisis and where most guys often spin their tires trying to figure all of this out by themselves.

You can watch it completely free through the link in the description and pinned comment below.

And if you're not ready for the masterclass yet but you are sitting there asking yourself whether you should keep fighting for your marriage or whether it may be time to let go, watch this video next, because there is one true question you need to answer before you make that decision.