Today's the most popular day for women to file for divorce, so... Why can't husbands see when wives stop loving them?

The first time Martin knew his marriage was in trouble was when his wife of 18 years, and the mother of his two children, dropped a bombshell.
'She bluntly told me that she didn’t love me any more, that she felt no connection to me and wondered if she ever had,' he says.
In that instant, Martin felt his wife Katie, 48, was taking away his entire future. 'She said she was being stifled, though she couldn’t explain why. She had no idea what she wanted — all she knew was that she didn’t want me.'

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The 50-year-old businessman from Maidstone, Kent, had no idea any of this was coming.
Like most men in his situation, he had been vaguely aware of a bad atmosphere at home, but had simply put it down to a 'rough patch' that would pass.
Divorce statistics suggest he isn’t alone — 68 per cent of petitions are initiated by women and just 4 per cent by men (the rest are joint).
Today — January 3 — has been nicknamed 'divorce day' by lawyers, as it’s the most common day for couples who have been struggling to hold it together over the festive period to finally snap and contact their lawyers for a divorce. 

 

In my 30 years as a marital therapist, I’ve found men aren’t only reluctant to call it a day, but rarely even recognise there’s a problem.
That’s not to say that any woman takes the decision to ask for a divorce lightly. Even after years of unhappiness, it’s always the last resort.
So, when they do finally pluck up the courage to say 'I don’t love you', they don’t expect it to come as a surprise, as it did to Martin and many men like him.
But it almost always does. By then, a husband’s desperate pleas and attempts to fix things is often too little, too late.
But the warning signs are nearly always there if you look for them. During my therapy sessions with Martin, he began to pinpoint the issues he had overlooked.
'It’s not surprising Katie felt stifled — I never asked her what she wanted to do or how she felt,' he says. 'She did what she thought I wanted all the time.'
Katie buried her feelings and opinions to keep everyone happy. But this suppression causes problems.
In shutting off negative emotions such as anger or upset, you end up switching off all feelings — even positive ones, like love.

After opening up about her unhappiness, Katie realised she needed to express herself.
As she did, their relationship gradually improved.
As the couple, who are still together, prove 'I don’t love you' doesn’t necessarily mean: 'I can never love you again.'
Of course, it’s better to avoid getting to that point in the first place. That means dispensing with the male belief that relationships are women’s work.
Men may be conditioned to buy flowers, chocolates or an expensive dinner occasionally, but they often fail to keep an eye on the health of their marriage.
They think that if there was a real problem, their wives would tell them and they would fix it. So the unhappiness goes unchecked.
By the time the alarm is raised, she’s not saying 'You’re taking me for granted' or 'We should go out more' but: 'I want a divorce'.
Men are emotionally ill-equipped to deal with this, because the one person they always turn to for advice — their wife — is unavailable.
And while women have close friends to talk things through with, men have mates who go out of their way to avoid such personal conversations.
Actually, in this situation, they shouldn’t be talking anyway — they need to be listening to their wives. Really, truly listening.
This is harder than it sounds because men are programmed to search for an instant solution. They want to feel better immediately.
But this sticking plaster approach makes women feel their pain is not being taken seriously.
Graham, 33, a lawyer from Cambridge, came to see me with his 30-year-old wife Karen. He was determined to squeeze reassurance from her with a barrage of leading questions.
'Don’t you want to work on saving our marriage? Isn’t that the best outcome for you, me and our son?' he demanded.
She clearly felt bullied and downtrodden, and admitted she had agreed to see me only to 'keep him quiet'. 

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Rather than listen to her, Graham tried different tactics to get her to say what he wanted, such as: 'If we split up, I’ll take that job in the Middle East and our son will hardly ever see me.'
Unsurprisingly, the threats just drove an even bigger wedge between them.
Graham eventually stopped talking for long enough to hear why his wife was so unhappy — his long work hours, falling asleep in front of the TV, leaving her to do so much of their son’s care that she felt like a single parent.
He reluctantly agreed to stop asking for reassurance about their future and to concentrate on making things better between them over the next week. They then left to have dinner together.
In our next session, I discovered not only that Graham had pestered Karen in the restaurant to agree counselling was a 'positive sign', but that he’d also hired a private detective to check she wasn’t having an affair.
Short of packing her case and phoning a taxi for her, Graham had managed to do everything possible to make her leave him. However much I tried, Graham wouldn’t listen to what was making Karen unhappy.
Like many relationships in crisis, it ended more because of his panic than her determination to leave.
The best thing to do in Graham’s situation is step into your other half’s shoes, as Tim, a 32-year-old salesman, from South London, found out. The first time he realised his marriage was in trouble was on his wife Ellie’s 31st birthday.
'We have sons of four and five, so it was unusual to be out for dinner, just the two of us,' he said.
'I asked why she’d been so distant. She blurted out: "Because I don’t love you an more."'
He had known something was up, but thought it was just a bump in the road, that they would start getting on better, and that Ellie would become more interested in sex again once the boys were older.
Instead of listening to her, Tim had been defensive, constantly justifying his behaviour. 'I have to meet clients in the evenings from Monday to Thursday, so I always got home late and couldn’t put the children to bed or help at all around the house,' he says.
'I’d say I’d had a stressful day and needed to unwind alone.'

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Thus, Tim effectively 'owned' evenings and Ellie felt trapped at home. Her anger built up and whenever she did snap, Tim would simply walk away from the confrontation.

'I was thinking of myself — I wanted a quiet life, but it was making Ellie even angrier,' he says.
Once he realised his coping strategies were contributing to the problem, he began to acknowledge, and tackle, her anger.
'I had thought that having it out would make it worse — and in a way it did because she spelt out her unhappiness in detail — but I learned more about how she felt and the rage did burn itself out eventually,' he said.

He also negotiated one weekday evening off and to go into work later one morning so he could take the boys to school.
Of course, it’s not just a husband’s job to save a marriage. If you feel you are falling out of love, chances are that you’re alternating two strategies, neither of which is working.
First, you keep trying to fix the relationship single-handedly, but feel increasingly resentful of this.
Second, after suppressing your unhappiness for some time, you explode about something trifling and all the pain and bitterness floods out.
This will barely register, as men tend to put outbursts down to feminine over-sensitivity or they simply can’t understand why such a minor issue has caused so much fury and soon forget about it.
The time to broach your issues is when you’re getting on well, as it’s when he’ll be most receptive.
Calmly, explain that you’re exhausted and running out of hope that things can change.
The words 'I don’t love you any more,' may be harsh, but they are ones he will, at least, understand. If the situation is not quite so bleak, say: 'I love you, but I’m not in love with you.'
This will give your husband a final chance to shoulder his share of the responsibility for saving your marriage. It’s much better than joining the queue of women outside the solicitor’s office today filing for divorce.