There are certain moments in your life when it is very easy to fear the worst case scenario. Even if you are a natural optimist, when faced with the reality you fear and dread the most, you tend to allow your mind to go to unfortunate places and almost expect the worst to happen to you.

This is very common. Unfortunately, however, your sense of dread can cause you to make desperate moves you wouldn’t normally make, making the worst case scenario a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is extremely normal to expect the worst during a separation. For example, a wife might say, “My husband and I have been separated for almost six months. If you had told me at the beginning of the separation that things were going to be this bad, I wouldn’t have believed you. But they are pretty bad. When my husband left home and stated that we broke up, he made it seem like hopefully it would only be temporary. I don’t know if he really meant to or if he only did it for my benefit. But the separation has been anything but temporary. My husband he never calls. I ask mutual friends if he asks about me and they have to admit he doesn’t. He acts like I’m a bother to him. When we first broke up, I thought he’d be back in less than three months. Not even in my wildest dreams I thought it would be so long. And I have to be honest. Now I don’t think he’ll ever come back. And I miss him so much. I’m usually an optimistic person, but this has really depressed me. It’s all I can think about. At the beginning of our separation, i tried to communicate with my husband all the time, but he was not receptive. me. He still tries, but not as often because rejection is so hard to take. Some of my friends and family tell me that I have to accept that he will never come back and I guess they are right. But this is a very sad reality for me and I am realizing that it affects me much more than I thought. How do you deal with the reality that the estranged husband you miss so much will probably never return?”

I’m probably not the best person to ask as, despite all the evidence to the contrary, I never really accepted that my husband wouldn’t be coming back. But things got so bad that at one point it became clear that he needed to live my life. I never gave up on my husband or my marriage. And I thought if we were going to get a divorce, he would have to be the one to find it. I left that alone and tried to live my life to the best of my ability. I forced myself to keep busy so I would stop constantly pestering my husband and being rejected. I traveled a lot so the distance made it almost impossible for me to continue with this cycle.

Ironically, once I forced myself to make this change, my husband was receptive again. But I like to think that he would have carried on regardless. It is true that you cannot control what your husband will ultimately do. But you have control over what YOU are going to do. Focusing on the negative while remaining immobile in your own life (although it is absolutely understandable) is not the best course of action. It took me too long to learn this.

You deserve better than just treading water. As hard as it is to see him at the moment, his marriage is only one aspect of his life. You have many others. Sure, no one wants to voluntarily put their marriage on hold. But when you have no choice in this, it’s best not to put yourself last on your priority list. Because in that sense, you are suffering twice. You are suffering because of what is happening with your marriage. But you’re also suffering as an individual because you’re basically standing around waiting for something that’s not completely in your control.

Sure, you can certainly paint yourself at your best, work on yourself, address your marital issues, and take advantage of any interaction with your spouse. (All of these things help tremendously and may eventually bring you back.) But you can’t control what he thinks or does. So the best course of action is to do what you can and then focus on moving forward. Doing this doesn’t mean you have to accept that your husband will never come back, I certainly didn’t. But it does mean that he has made a conscious decision to not focus solely on the negative and prioritize himself enough to continue living his life, rather than putting it off and viewing it through the negative lens that the breakup has caused. .