There are certain times 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 dread and fear 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, his sense of fear can cause him to make desperate moves that he normally wouldn’t, making the worst case scenario a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is extremely normal to expect the worst during a breakup. 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 so bad, I wouldn’t have believed you. But they are pretty bad.” my husband left home and declared that we separated, he made it sound like hopefully it would only be temporary. I don’t know if that was really his intention or if he just did it for my benefit. But the separation has been anything but temporary. My husband 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 I’d be back in less than three months. Not even in my best dreams I thought it would be so long. And I have to be honest. Now I think he’ll never come back. And I miss him so much. I’m usually an optimistic person, but this has gotten me so down it’s all I can think about. n the beginning of our separation, I tried to communicate with m i husband all the time, but he was not receptive to me. He still tries, but not as often because rejection is so hard to accept. 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?”

Probably not the best person to ask, as despite all evidence to the contrary, I never really accepted that my husband would not return. 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 that if we were going to get divorced, he would have to be the one looking for it. I left that alone and tried to live my life the best I could. I forced myself to keep busy so I would stop constantly pestering my husband and getting rejected. I traveled a lot so the distance made it almost impossible for me to continue this cycle.

Ironically, once I forced myself to make this change, my husband became 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 standing still in your own life (while completely understandable) is not the best course of action. It took me too long to learn this.

You deserve better than just treading water. As difficult as it is to see at the time, their marriage is only one aspect of his life. You have many others. Sure, no one wants to willingly 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 are also suffering as an individual because you are basically standing still, waiting for something that is not completely under your control.

Sure, you can certainly paint yourself in the best light, work on yourself, address your marital problems, and take advantage of any interaction with your spouse. (All of these things help tremendously and may eventually make it come 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 not to focus solely on the negative and to prioritize enough to continue living his life, instead of procrastinating and seeing it through the negative lens that the breakup has caused. .