I get so many questions about how to keep a husband home or how to prevent him from leaving.  A true example is: “can you tell me a way to keep my husband from leaving or to make him want to stay, because I know that once he leaves, I stand a real chance of losing him?  He’s determined to go and I need to come up with something fast to keep him here.”  I get all sort of variations on this but the theme is basically always the same – the husband wants to leave the wife and she panics, thinking that this is the beginning of a divorce.

I completely understand these feelings.  I was in this same scenario a short time ago ago and I handled it as many people do.  In my panic, I literally tried and did everything that I could think of to get him to stay.  I’m embarrassed about some of these things now.  They were so beneath me.  And, they only made him leave faster. I eventually got him back, but my actions delayed my success big time.  In the following article, I’ll explain the preferable way to stop a husband from leaving.

You Can Not Physically Stop Him From Walking Out The Door If That’s What He Wants To Do. Negative Mind Games And Ultimatums Don’t Work Either:  I’ve had wives tell me stories of them literally laying in the door jamb screaming and crying in an attempt to stop the husband from leaving. You know what he did in response? He stepped right over her, like she was the morning paper lying in the door way.  I had one woman tell me that she grabbed onto her husband’s leg and held on for dear life as he just walked toward the car with her clinging to his leg and being dragged along.

I often tell readers that when you act like this, it’s really a huge annoyance and turn off.  You could compare it to the actions of a child, not an adult. How do you respond when your toddler tries to manipulate you with a well played tantrum?  Does that behavior endear you to him? Likely, it only makes you angrier.  And, if you are too tired to play the game and you do give in just to keep the peace, you’ve often quite resentful that you didn’t handle it better.  So that the next time he begins the theatrics, you overreact with your determination that he won’t win “this time.”

Some women will go the opposite way and they’ll try to play hard ball.  They’ll say things like “fine, go, but if you cross that line, don’t you dare come back. If you make this decision, that’s it.  Never speak to me again if you walk out that door.”  Again, this is very negative behavior that is only going to make him think “good riddance then.”  There’s a much better way.  It may not feel as satisfying but it will yield you much better results so that it will be much more satisfying in the end.

You Have To Let Him Come To The Decision Of Wanting To Stay With You On His Own: Let’s be honest.  The only decent way for this to play out is that he genuinely changes his mind through feelings that were not manipulated.  You don’t want him feeling fear or guilt or those negative feelings that he will eventually resent you for.  You want him to feel positive feelings so that he can come to his own conclusion that it’s better to stay and be happy than to leave and miss you. 

This will not happen if you are fighting him tooth and nail or acting like you are helpless and weak with out him.  I know that it’s very easy to let desperation rear it’s ugly head.  But, if you feel yourself losing control, excuse yourself until you are able to calm down. You don’t want to allow a few seconds of losing control to sabotage all the ground that you need to make up.

In all of your interactions with him, you need to be calm and rational.  You need to speak softly but clearly and make direct eye contact. It’s OK to say that you don’t want him to leave, but you need to also let him know that you truly want him to be happy and you aren’t going to add to his problems with your behavior.  Many women tell me that this sounds like the subservient behavior that I’ve been telling you to avoid.  It really isn’t.  It’s a time buyer.  If he knows that it’s not going to get ugly when the two of you communicate or are together, then he’s going to give you much easier access to him. So, what do you do with this access?

He Has To Know He’s Better Off With You Than Without You:  It’s totally human nature to gravitate towards whatever feels good and to try to escape from whatever feels bad.  You need to position yourself as what he’s coming toward rather than what he’s running away from.  When I tell women this, they think that I’m telling them to pour on the fake affection or to try and seduce their husbands to get them to stay.  I’m not saying this, unless you can pull it off so that it doesn’t feel like an act or a show. (And often, your strong emotions will keep this from happening until you have some distance.)

Men loathe being manipulated. If they feel that they’re being played, they will again put you in the negative category.  It’s so much better to not play games but to still interact on the basis that you did when you were first falling in love.  You know what and who your husband responds to.  You’ve been there before when you first met.  Everyone is different, but men are pretty basic.  They like to feel appreciated, understood, valued, and they like to know that you feel genuine affection for the person that they truly are.  Women or wives who manipulate them don’t respect this and the husbands know it.

Often women will tell me that they understand this, but they don’t think they’ll get the chance to let it play out because once the husband leaves, all access is gone.  This is not necessarily true. There are often lose ends to tie up and conversations that must take place.  There’s also the strategy of getting out there, living your best life, and making quite sure he knows about it.  This will often draw a man’s attention quite quickly, because he wants to know what’s changed.  He’s been trying to change you and this situation for years and then when he leaves, you’re suddenly different? How did this happen? He’ll generally come around to find out, and that’s when you display your best self.

It all boils down to letting him see the person who he once loved.  Because right now, he doesn’t see that at all.  He sees a situation that he thinks is never going to change.  And, because of this, he’s given up and feels it’s better to take his chances on the outside.  You must show him that things absolutely can change and you must show him this through actions and not words.