My husband doesn’t know if he wants to come back to me
If you are separated and living apart (but still involved in your marriage), it is very understandable that you feel 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 your coming home. Sometimes you think about this so much that you ask him directly if he’s coming home. Unfortunately, sometimes you don’t get the reaction you hoped for. There are times when he doesn’t say yes and he doesn’t say no. He just tells you that he is not sure. This leaves him wondering where he might leave 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 barely stand to even talk to me. Never mind the fact that he had moved out to avoid me and not fight me. He didn’t even bother to check.” what hurt me the most. He would always ask me what I was doing or how he was doing, 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 his calls. Even better, it led him to ask me if we could see each other a couple of times a week. All this is more than he dared to hope. 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 connecting 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. We wanted to live our lives again 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 come home alone. So one day I couldn’t take it anymore and I was like ‘when are you going to come 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 stunned as 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? Does this mean that there is no hope for a reconciliation?
No, I definitely wouldn’t say that at all. My husband and I moved in very gradually as 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 really work out.
Your husband might be having a similar thought process right now. She might 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 the thing you want most in the world is not to spend another night alone. But when I had these thoughts, I told 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 period of time where my husband avoided me, didn’t return my calls, and gave me very limited access to him. I decided I’d rather wait than go back to it.
Instead, I just tried to skew things so 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 arrived at where he was staying for several days at a time. Then he moved back in, 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 would just go back to his house, let things settle down, and then we’d pick up again. We were able to assess our “hot spots” and places where we still had work to do before attempting a full reconciliation. This phased approach meant there was much less risk and pointed out where we could still make improvements before my husband returned full time.