A man recently asked me, “Should I stay or leave my marriage, when sex is gone, the connection is shallow, or I feel neglected/cheated on”? That’s a hard question a lot of men face. The answer is never simple or black and white. Your identity, your family, your future, and everything you’ve built is on the line. Before you make a decision, you need clarity on what you’re actually deciding.
Should I Stay or Leave My Marriage When It Feels This Hard?
There are seasons where marriage will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.
The relationship calls for:
More patience
More leadership
More emotional control
…And you’re tapped out.
You’ll crave instant relief from pain.
But pain alone isn’t a signal to leave.
EVERY path comes with pain and suffering at some point.
Life demands a price for everything you want, but you get to choose how high a price you will pay.
You also need to know if what you’re investing in is leading somewhere you even want to go.
You want to know if the effort you’re putting in is aligned with the kind of marriage and life you want to create.
Without that clarity, you stay stuck in your head, circling the same thought: “Should I stay or leave my marriage?”
Hardship is easier to handle when you know it’s making way for the destination you want to arrive at.
Should I Stay or Leave My Marriage Based on How I Feel?
Your feelings will go up and down like the weather; they are highly unreliable.
You’ll feel inspired one day and burned out the next.
You’ll feel committed one moment and disconnected the next.
Feelings respond to your beliefs about stress, conflict, and uncertainty; they’re not designed to lead your life.
You need something more stable than feelings to make big choices.
A man with direction doesn’t let temporary emotions decide permanent outcomes.
He looks at the bigger picture.
He looks at the long-term vision he has for his life based on values and unshakable principles he trusts.
Feelings come and go, but your mission for your life is the map you hold yourself to.
Look At Your Past Patterns Before Deciding What To Do
Every man has a tendency to either hang on too long or jump too soon.
Which are you?
If you’re the man who trades his truck in the moment it makes a funny noise, your growth will be to lean into the uncomfortable edge of holding out a bit longer to fix things.
If you’re the man who keeps patching his truck back together years after you should have let it go to scrap, then your growth will be to lean into the uncomfortable edge of throwing in the towel sooner rather than later.
The edge of your discomfort is where your growth always happens.
Your life is the accumulation of your patterns built around your comfort levels.
It’s why your life feels like it’s on repeat sometimes.
Want a new life?
You’ll have to go past where you turned out before because of discomfort.
If you’ve been asking yourself, “Should I stay or leave my marriage?” your answer is often tied to this pattern more than the situation itself.
I’ll Help You Answer The Deeper Questions You Need to Face
This decision isn’t just about your marriage.
It’s about the kind of man you are and where you’re going in life.
What are you building?
What kind of man do you want to BE as you move towards that?
Healing a broken heart after your wife walks away happens in stages. Men are affected by heartbreak differently than women, so the steps to heal are a little different. This article and the video below will help you take the right steps to feeling better.
The Pain Of Heartbreak
Loss of appetite.
Tears.
Inability to sleep.
Feeling like a used rag flushed down the toilet.
Nausea.
Shortness of breath.
What a man goes through when the woman he loves divorces him is no joke.
Healing a broken heart after your wife walks away is possible if you follow time-proven steps.
Why Should Healing A Broken Heart After Your Wife Walks Away Be The Focus?
When we’re suffering from the loss of our marriage, we men tend to hyper-focus on ONE thing…getting our wife back!
We think if we could get our wife back, all our suffering would end and the world would feel like a happy place again.
However, making our wife want to be with us is out of our control.
We will get stuck in grief for years if we focus on things we can’t control.
The other problem with focusing on getting our runaway wife back is it leaves us feeling like a powerless victim.
You know a man feels like a powerless victim when he…
Complains about his situation
Blames others for the choices he “had” to make
Defends why his pain is “different” from what other men face
Argues and raises his voice
Focuses on all the negative things that make his situation seem “unchangeable.”
Always brings up his ex in conversation to point out that she left him and why the relationship could’ve been fixed
Many songs have been written about men who pined for a woman who stopped loving him until he died.
Is that any way to live?
Misery puts a dark cloud over life itself.
Healing a broken heart after your wife walks away is 100% in our control, and that is why we must focus on it.
You know a man is staying focused on what’s 100% in his control when he…
Sees the cup as half full instead of half empty
Can clearly describe what his bright, amazing, love-filled future will look like
Stops acting urgent
No longer holds others responsible to change for his life to be amazing
Bravely makes BIG, BOLD choices to create what he wants (even if nobody else approves)
Doesn’t allow fear, loneliness, or desperation to dictate the choices he makes
Takes full responsibility for how he feels without holding others liable
4 Steps To Healing A Broken Heart After Your Wife Walks Away
1. Come to terms with your denial of reality.
During a marriage, it’s best if we focus on the positives of our partner. However, after divorce, it’s time to notice what was not positive about our wife. We can easily romanticize her, which perpetuates our suffering. Coming to terms with reality means accepting that she isn’t all the amazing things we thought she was. We need to believe that we deserve better. A self-respecting man will not throw himself at a woman who clearly does not love him. The reality we must accept is that she no longer loves us, and clinging to her prevents the love we want from coming into our lives.
2. Go alone in nature and unload all your anger.
We will not be able to heal if we try to suppress our emotions. Go out in nature (far away from people) and fully unload all your anger about the relationship ending. Feel the anger from your head to your toes. An emotion that isn’t fully experienced can fester for decades, keep us stuck, and lead to PTSD. You might find the anger shifts to grief, regret, or resentment. Whatever emerges, get it all out. The goal is to let our body naturally heal by progressing through a whole range of emotions.
3. Grab a journal and vent all your “if onlys” and all the things you wish you could have made your wife understand.
When our wife leaves us, our brain will stew and stew on it, analyzing every angle, desperate to find a fix. Mental exhaustion ensues. It leaves us dazed. We can hardly function at our normal capacity. Use your laptop or journal to unload everything in your brain. Write out all your “if onlys”, “what ifs”, and everything you want to explain to your ex. Do not send her any of your epiphanies! Our subconscious can’t tell if we’re using paper or her as a sounding board. Using paper (instead of her) provides relief as if she were there to listen & understand our perspective.
4. Let yourself grieve the loss
Letting go and grieving the loss of the relationship is the hardest part. Some call this stage “the lament.” A lament is to mourn what we lost, grieve what will never be, and let go of the story we’ve been clinging to. Hanging onto our suffering does not prove our love for her! I’ve found self-love meditations to be very healing during this stage, along with doing shadow work. It’s important to build a support system during this time, preferably with men who understand your pain and can empathize with how it feels.
Your Personal Guide To Heal A Broken Heart
Acceptance is the only path to having a meaningful, happy life, even when life hands us lemons.
Once we reach acceptance, we can look forward and create a new chapter that’s BETTER than the one we just closed.
Accepting that your wife wants a divorce is tough. All you think about is how to stop her from leaving. Losing a person who is still alive hurts worse than a funeral. Many marriages can be saved, but not until you learn how to manage your heartache. This article explains 3 healthy ways to reduce the pain.
She Wants Divorce: 3 Steps to Reduce The Pain
The Role Of Ego In An Intimate Relationship
The term “ego” seems to have a negative connotation.
We tend to think of ego as a narcissistic ass-hole with an over-inflated self-image.
However, a relationship is the joining of two (or more) lives into one interdependentfamily unit.
You cannot be “joined” to another emotionally, physically, mentally, or spiritually unless you are first separate from it.
What makes a co-dependentrelationship toxic is that both are seeking completion through the other.
What makes an independent relationship toxic is that both are living like ghosts in passing, with zero overlap in life experiences.
In an interdependent relationship, both have a healthy sense of self (ego) so that neither suffocates the other.
Things like happiness, security,and confidence are notthings to get from someone;they are things to share with them.
An ego that’s not fractured will feel safe, secure, confident, happy, and complete!
But when your wife wants divorce, the more your ego has been leaning on her for support, the more it will feel like you are free-falling.
What’s A Fractured Ego?
Your ego was born the first time the thought, “I am” popped into your brain as a child…
I am fast
I am funny
I am smart
Knowing who you are creates your sense of ego.
Your ego fractures when you abandon part of yourself to minimize the risk of being shunned by a person or group. Your ego also fractures when you become enmeshed with someone,and then they back out of your life.
Human tendency is to replace the fracture with something…Anything! so that we can regain a sense of balance, safety, and routine in life.
This desperation to fill the void can be dangerous since human nature gravitates towards what’s familiar over something new or unknown.
When your wife wants divorce, your brain races down every possible worst outcome.
Those thoughts create feelings more intense than the imagined outcomes themselves.
Your body needs extra sleep, water, rest, and exercise during this stage.
I guarantee you’ll feel better as time passes.
Especially if you can formulate a plan A and plan B to fall back on if the worst should happen.
Use your anxiety as fire under your butt to formulate your next steps.
Think Of Your Ego Like An Orange
An orange is made up of many slices.
Your identity as a couple, your position as spouse, your daily routine, and household activities – those all became who your ego knew you to be.
But what if your partner was emotionally abusive?
What if she was unkind, unfaithful, unwilling to emotionally connect, or to be intimate?
Your fractured ego will gravitate towards what’s familiar over what’s healthy.
For example, if you grew up with a father who never listened to you, you’ll gravitate towards people who don’t listen.
Why?
IF FEELS FAMILIAR.
New is scary.
Familiar feels safe.
Part of our self-development as men is to get clear on who we are and how we will self-reliantly fill the slices in our ego with new, healthy affirmations, routines, and people.
This means we’ll also get clear on what’s toxic that we’ve been enduring because it feels familiar.
It’s healthy to stay focused on what’s good about your wife while you’re in the marriage.
But when your wife leaves the relationship, you need to reckon with her negative traits.
Coming to terms with what WASN’T right about your partner helps you detach.
It helps you see reality and stop putting her on a pedestal.
If you keep telling yourselves that you’re losing your dream girl, you’re only delaying the healing of your heart
3 Steps To Reduce The Pain When She Wants Divorce
1: Stop holding other people responsible for your happiness.
You are not responsible for your wife’s happiness, and she isn’t responsible for yours. Let her off the hook! By definition, love is to ACCEPT something for what it is. If you really love your wife, you will not try to change her into the wife you think she should be. The saying is true, “If you love her, let her go”. But a lot of nice guys are not just tolerating annoying behaviors; they are tolerating straight-up abuse. Accepting your wife for who she is means you have clarity about whether she should be placed inside or outside the “wife” category in your life.
2: Establish a new, exciting routine that’s sustainable even if she never returns.
This one is easy to overthink. Routines are made of many small things. Things like running the dishwasher, where you store the toilet paper, and which side of the garage you park. It gives your life a pattern! Your ego needs patterns, or it feels lost. Many of the small things your partner handled created a rhythm for your life. A rhythm you probably took for granted. Now that she wants divorce, it’s time to build a new rhythm that doesn’t lean on her.
3: Find new sources of identification.
Your ego needs to feel like it belongs to something. A group. A cause. Something bigger than yourself. Otherwise, you’ll feel isolated and disconnected. Whatever is vital to your life mission or purpose will clue you into what group, club, or membership is your tribe. When your wife is trying to walk away, you need to lean on your tribe for support and belonging.
How Else Can You Reduce The Pain When She Wants Divorce?
When I take men through my Masculine Confidence Framework, we dive deep into 14 essential layers for you to be a happy, confident, masculine man.
Most of what you want in life cannot be gained by pursuing it directly.
Things like charisma, being emotionally grounded, and having a strong and happy ego are byproducts of addressing deeper issues like shame, fear, and low self-esteem.
Marriages are not saved by trying to save them!
Relationships are a natural byproduct of two people being mature, happy, committed, responsible, and secure.
If you’re ready to stop trying to put out fires and face the deeper problems, reach out.
This article is for the man who still loves his wife and wants to understand what it takes to restore trust after her affair. Some marriages go on to be more connected and intimate after an affair. Others do not. The difference? Genuine remorse. When Genuine remorse is present, there is a path back to having trust again!
Surviving Her Affair – 3 Steps To Restore Trust
Can You Restore Trust After Her Affair If It Was Physical?
An emotional affair is the most detrimental form of cheating for a woman.
A physical affair is the most detrimental for men.
Neither has to be the end of a marriage.
Many times, it takes something as painful as a physical affair to finally wake a couple up.
For years, they’ve both been a shell of themselves…ruminating on dashed expectations, avoiding each other, disconnecting, and sweeping their feelings under the rug.
And when an affair first emerges, it doesn’t feel like an opportunity to face those issues.
It feels like panic and hurt.
Like you’re on a sinking ship with no shoreline in sight.
Every fiber of your being wants to make your panic STOP by patching the holes in your boat to save it.
If you restore trust after her affair, it won’t be because you had a meltdown.
You really need to check our motives for WHY you want to patch the holes in your relationship.
If your underlying drive to “fix” the relationship is to settle YOUR fear, YOUR insecurity, YOUR panic, then you’re doing damage control, not relationship creation.
Self-care to alleviate your painful symptomsneeds to be your main focus when surviving her affair.
Many men have ignored this advice.
They convinced their wives to forgo the affair.
They might have avoided divorce, but these men were never able to trust her again.
Without trust, you’ll constantly wonder if she’s hiding something.
3 Steps To Restore Trust After Her Affair
If your wife is not genuinely sorry for her breach of fidelity, you can’t restore trust after her affair.
But if your wife is sorry and shows genuine remorse, here are 3 steps to take next:
Create an amazing life to the same standards you expect from her
Resolve your own insecurities so you can SHOW trust
Create a temporary framework for her to show her trustability
Many couples have built BETTER, stronger relationships despite an affair.
That’s because an affair doesn’t necessarily mean you had a bad relationship.
Esther Perel has spent decades studying infidelity.
I’m paraphrasing, but Esther says, “Good women sometimes cheat when they become unhappy with who they have allowed themselves to become in the relationship.”
This means the version of herself that she feels comfortable showing you isn’t the version she likes.
This version might have been good enough in the beginning, but it feels lifeless to her now.
This old version of her (and you) created version 1.0 of the marriage.
Version 1.0 ended the moment she cheated.
To restore trust after her affair, a new version 2.0 of the relationship has to be created.
Setting Standards For The Relationship So You Can Trust Again
I’ll say it crystal clear right now.
If you’re secretly using porn, you are in no position to expect trust from your wife.
Men get from porn what women get from attention.
The adrenaline, the dopamine, the sedative effect on the mind – those same juices that keep you addicted to porn are what keep her addicted to attention from other guys.
The same goes for side chicks or cam girls.
Hold all your behaviors to the same bar you want her to live by.
Lead by example.
Show her what’s possible by doing it yourself.
Giving her rules to make her trustworthy does nothing if you don’t live up to those same rules.
Resolve Your Insecurities So You Can Show Trust
Your wife could be 100% trustworthy for the rest of her life, but if you don’t SHOW trust, there will be no trust.
You don’t get to use your triggers or traumatic past as a cop-out.
Were you abandoned once?
Are you terrified of being alone?
Have you been cheated on before?
That’s YOUR stuff to work on!
Delving into this kind of personal development isn’t a matter of reading a few articles or watching a few YouTube videos.
Reach out to a coach, mentor, or therapist to get your stuff resolved before addressing her stuff.
Constantly panicking about where she is and who she’s texting is a “you” problem, not a “her” problem.
Create A Temporary Framework To Restore Trust After Her Affair
If your wife has no interest in rebuilding trust, then DO NOT try to impose this step onto her!
If SHE wants to build a relationship 2.0 with you, it’s ok to have a temporary season for her to prove her trustworthiness.
This may include her abiding by a curfew, sharing phone records, or regularly updating you on her whereabouts.
Make it clear to her when this framework starts and when it ends.
The point isn’t to be a control freak.
This is a temporary season for her to prove she’s serious about being trustworthy.
But let’s be real.
If she wants to cheat, she will find a way.
The purpose of setting this framework is not to block her from cheating.
When my wife’s affair finally surfaced, I wasn’t blindsided. The signs had been growing for months. But nothing prepares you for the moment suspicion becomes reality. That fleeting rush of “I knew it!” wears off, replaced by a deep sense of betrayal. But honestly, you’re more angry with her affair partner than her. You feel gutted, but you still love her. You said you would leave if she ever cheated, but now you stand to lose too much. It feels like only she can soothe the pain by ending her affair and loving you again. Here’s how I survived my wife’s affair and how to restore shattered trust.
The Day My Wife’s Affair Came Out
My Saturday in August started as usual.
Stacks of bookwork needed my attention.
Self-employment meant wearing the hats of five employees.
It had done it for years, working 80-plus-hour weeks until winter.
But this summer was different.
The few times I was home, my wife acted as if I didn’t exist.
She hadn’t wanted sex in weeks.
She would go out with friends and not come home for days.
Today, my wife was home.
I spent the morning being mopey about the lack of sex.
I tried to imply how I felt without actually saying it.
After dropping a few complaints (hoping she would catch my drift and want sex or to stay home more), I sat down at my desk to do the bookwork.
What happened next changed my entire life.
She sat down on the couch beside me and said, “I have feelings for someone else, and it’s turned into an emotional affair.”
I wasn’t good at being direct back then.
My slide comments were easy to misinterpret, but there was no mistaking her words.
She went on to say, “It’s only been an emotional affair, but it’s going to turn physical soon. I’m going to leave you for this new relationship.”
Even though I had my suspicions for months, reality was a dagger to my heart.
I felt raped, used, and rejected
I cried for days
I stopped eating
I couldn’t get out of bed for weeks
My will to live left me
My wife’s affair tore me apart, making everything we had built together seem pointless.
Fast Forward To Now:
I’ve created a life I love!
I live location-independently
I spend part of the year deep in the mountains
Cedar trees, creeks, fireplaces, and coffee are all normal parts of my day
If you don’t stop these things, you will remain a victim of your wife’s choices and destroy any chances for reconciliation.
Stop things like:
Checking her phone.
Tracking her location.
Begging, bargaining, pleading.
Trying to win her back with flowers and love notes.
New Mindsets To Reduce The Pain
If your wife shows genuine remorse for her affair, your marriage can be healed.
But your relationship will worsen if you let your stinkin’ thinkin’ run unchecked.
Here are some new mindsets to adopt:
Your FEAR of divorce (not divorce itself) will PREVENT a new, better relationship from developing. Divorce papers don’t keep people apart, and marriage certificates don’t keep them together. If your wife is leaning towards divorce, let her go. It’s the most attractive thing you can do.
She didn’t cheat because you’re a bad husband. Drop that thought now, it stinks. An affair is a CHOICE. It was HER choice. You can be the worst husband in the world, and she can still choose to NOT cheat on you.
Don’t view your wife as a monster set on destroying you. She’s trying to do what she thinks will make her happy, not what will hurt you. She really is doing what she thinks is best based on what she values. It only adds to your resentment and anger if you expect more than that from her. See how your pain comes from your expectations, not her actions? If you start to believe your wife is doing the best she can with the brain she has, you prevent contempt from creeping in.
Clarify your values and boundaries. Write down the consequences for those boundaries being crossed. Your boundaries are NOT meant to control her. They should NOT be created out of fear, anxiety, or insecurity. They are intended to define the borders of what YOU want to experience and what YOU will do next when they are violated.
Let her feel the sting of her choices.
Reconcile Your Marriage by Changing How You Communicate
If your wife has shown remorse for her affair, you need to lead a more emotionally intimate relationship going forward.
