She’s Leaving You—Here’s How to Change the Outcome

Hey, Cody Butler here. In this video, I'm going to talk about what to do if your wife has just told you that she wants a divorce. So your first instinct in this situation is likely going to be to fight, beg, convince, show her that she's wrong, convince her that she's making a bad decision, etc., etc. But I want to show you today why this is the worst thing that you can do in this situation right now, and the actions and the steps to take to give yourself the best chance of saving your marriage, and the actions that you absolutely, positively should avoid under all circumstances. That are just going to convince her that she's made the right decision. So let's get straight into this. So the situation here is maybe you've just been handed a situation where your wife says she's done, she wants a divorce. Maybe you found out she's with another man or something like that. The situation is that your marriage has just been severely threatened. So the immediate male response and the typical instinctive response here is going to be one of panic, urgency, and emotional Escalation, and right now you're probably facing the instinct to fight harder for the marriage, to convince her, I need to fix this immediately, and it feels like if I don't act now, I'm going to lose this marriage forever. There's a real urgency driving you forward to act, but that urgency is going to cause you to take the wrong decision, make the wrong decisions, and actually make the situation worse. So what's actually happening here, and where is this urgency coming from? So You're— what's happening internally with you emotionally is that you've been suddenly confronted with, out of the blue and unexpectedly, unexpectedly, loss, consequence, and emotional cost. It's a bunch of stuff just been piled upon you that you didn't think you were going to have to deal with, and until now there's been little or very delayed costs to the behaviors that you've engaged in. Maybe you know you should have talked to her more. Maybe you know you should have been more present. Maybe you know X, Y, and Z. Many of the men that I work with understand what they should have done, they just didn't do it, and the reason they didn't do it is because there was little or no consequence or cost, and it was kind of a case of, I'm gonna do that and I'm gonna sort this out, but I'll do it later. I'll do it at a more convenient time. So the problem now is that The costs are no longer delayed. A divorce threat or a marriage-ending situation makes those consequences immediate, and they make the pain unavoidable and have to— has to be dealt with right now. So the panic— this causes panic behavior, and that panic behavior puts you into survival mode, or in other words, fight or flight. Now let me just pose a question to you very quickly before moving on. Which one of those 2 states is going to help you save your marriage? Which one's going to put you in the best state to be productive to save your marriage? Is it to fight? Is it to fight with your wife, to become confrontational? Or is it flight, to flee the situation? Well, the answer is obvious, right? Neither one of those is going to help you. Whether you go into fight or whether you go into flight, both of those are going to damage your situation. So this panic activation that puts you in survival behavior This is essential that you get this under control, and that you move out of fight or flight, because the state that you're in is going to largely determine the level of behavior. If you're in that fight or flight, you are going to be panicked, and you are going to be the proverbial monkey with a machine gun. You're going to do a lot more damage than, than restoration, just because you're in the wrong state. So what this problem creates here is You're going to reach for the same tools that have regulated the marriage for years, right? So again, the problem is you've got a lot of false positives within the marriage. The negative behavior that you've used to regulate the marriage, such as pressure, guilt, control, manipulation, emotional safety, or emotional intensity— sorry, these are all behaviors that your wife is now using, or she's trying to leave, exit the marriage to avoid. But these have, these have regulated the marriage in the past. Look, pressure is a very effective tool. Guilt, control, manipulation— these are all very effective tools at getting what you want. And if your wife or the situation has allowed those tools to be effective in the past because she doesn't want the confrontation, she would rather, she would rather acquiesce to the pressure and the guilt than to deal with the consequences of a direct challenge because she has no emotional safety. Then over a period of time, your nervous system has been trained that these are effective tools. These are effective mechanisms to control the situation within the marriage. And when I say control, I don't mean like you're some controlling demon, some, some nasty narcissistic person. We all want to control. We want to control the level of pain we experience. We want to control a sense of certainty in our lives. These are all basic human needs. So when I say control, It's not necessarily manipulation as in you're trying to get her to do something she doesn't want to do. It's like these are tools that, of course, that you've used to limit the amount of pain that you experience or to increase the level of certainty that you experience, which is necessary. So during the marriage up to this point, these mechanisms here— pressure, guilt, control, etc.— they've been used intermittent— intermittently. These have been tools in the toolbox that you can use. So Sometimes maybe you use pressure, sometimes maybe you use guilt, etc., etc., etc., but you don't use them all at the same time, right? They're used intermittent— intermittently. But the problem now is that in this crisis scenario where she's asked for a divorce, all of these mechanisms tend to get deployed simultaneously, all at one time. So in effect, you create a super weapon effect, or in other words, a maximum pressure, maximum emotional intensity situation, which is going to be very, very detrimental moving forward. So why does this backfire so badly? And this is instinctive, by the way. The man's not necessarily— you are not necessarily choosing to— you're not looking at it like, I'm controlling all of these things. This is just instinct. This is what we do as human beings. So The problem is, and why this backfires, brother, is that the behaviors that you're now instinctively reaching to, to save this marriage, to turn the divorce around, are the exact same behaviors that caused the damage in the first place. You're doubling down on what it is that she's trying to get away from. So this panic, it amplifies the emotional suffocation that she's experiencing. It amplifies the overwhelm, the oppress— the, the, the pressure that she's experiencing. And the emotional labor that she's having to go through. So ultimately, a divorce or a separation scenario, it's a relief situation. The woman simply is looking for relief from whatever it is— emotional suffocation, overwhelm, it doesn't matter. Like, whatever the emotion is, it's a negative emotion or a series or a combination of negative emotions that she can no longer handle, and she's looking for relief from those experiences, and she believes that leaving Or exiting the marriage is the way to get relief. That essentially is what marriage is— divorce is about. It's about pressure relief, and the panic that you've naturally gone into now, it reinforces and amplifies the exhaustion, lack of safety, the emotional shutdown, etc., all of the things that she's looking to get away from. So you think that you're actually— you're convincing her to stay, or you're showing her the steps, or what needs to happen for her to stay, but actually what you're doing is you're just doubling down On the very things that she's trying to get away from, and you're gonna reinforce that leaving is the best thing. So, as I've just said here, the key point to understand is divorce is not really about leaving, or it's certainly not just about leaving. Divorce psychologically represents relief, space, emotional safety, and an environment of lower emotional intensity. So, she's experiencing divorce as an escape pathway for emotional overwhelm. Excuse me. So it becomes obvious at this point. Let me ask you the question. If she is— if the divorce is a mechanism to escape emotional overwhelm, and when she brings this to you, you increase the emotional overwhelm. So what you're training her now is she's emotionally overwhelmed within the relationship. When she brings divorce to you, that increases the emotional overwhelm. This is where communication stops. This is where the situation can and does become worse, right? Because if she can't get the relief within the marriage, and she wants to leave the marriage through divorce or separation, or again, this is space, right? This would work in the scenario where she says, I need space. She's looking for a relief of the emotional overwhelm. When she can't get that relief in the marriage, and she looks for space outside of it through divorce or whatever, and she gets more of the overwhelm, then her only choice left is to completely separate and cut off. The relationship. This is where she won't talk to you. So this is what we want to avoid. So what she's expecting in this moment when she asks for divorce, or the fracture of the marriage is brought to your attention, she is expecting pressure, begging, convincing, an emotional escalation, guilt, guilt trips, control attempts to turn the situation around, and an emotional collapse from you. Desperation. And she's actually bracing herself, and she's preparing for increased emotional intensity, increased labor, increased emotional suffocation, etc., etc. And if this is— this is what she's expecting from you, and when you provide that through acting out, through panicked behavior because you don't understand what's going on, then you are reinforcing that she's made the right decision. You're not changing her mind. So your act— your reactions In this situation, your instinctive reactions validate the divorce decision, because the panic response confirms that this relationship cannot produce relief. It reinforces that divorce actually equals safety. Divorce equals peace. Divorce is emotional breathing room for her. So, if you react in the typical way, Your reactions accidentally validate her decision for divorce. They confirm her fears that she's trying to escape from, and it destroys any remaining emotional safety if there was any left in the first place. This is a very, very destructive situation. This is— if she's asked for divorce, you, you really need to take very specific actions at this point if you want to turn this around. So the critical principle to understand here is that Instinctive— the instinctive responses that you are going to take as a man, your animal instinct, your natural instincts, and your behaviors are actually the most destructive behaviors that you can take in this situation. You're— what saves a marriage in late-stage marriage crisis and divorce crisis is very counterintuitive to what you think it is. It's your instincts have led you to where you are right now. Your intuition has led you to where you are. And when I work with men, a lot of times I'll give them advice or direction, and they'll say, well, that just— it seems like that's gonna make the situation worse, Cody. If I do that, she's gonna think I don't care. If I do that, if I give her the space that you're telling me to give her, she's going to— she's gonna think that I don't care. No, you're going to show her that there is safety within, that you are capable of producing that safety within the marriage or outside of the marriage, either way. Right now, all you're doing is showing her That you are incapable of producing that relief and safety in any location at all, in the marriage, outside of the marriage, anywhere. You're just reinforcing in her mind that you're utterly incapable of producing that anywhere. So the instinctive response usually is the most destructive response. Late-stage marriage is very counterintuitive, and what feels emotionally correct in the situation, what your instinct and gut is telling you, very often is making the situation worse, and it's turning the situation to the point where it just makes it really— it makes it much harder to turn the situation around at a later date. So what should you do instead? So let's be clear, so I'm like, I'm not advocating passivity here. I'm not indicating giving up. I'm not indicating emotionally shutting down and just withdrawing and going, throwing your hands in the air and going, whatever, whatever you want, I'm down with it. Instead, what you need to do is interrupt the expected pattern. Now, what happened— what's happening here is your woman has a mechanism called her nervous system, and that nervous system is a predictive mechanism. It is predicting behavior, and that prediction is coming based on years or decades of experience with you. Her nervous system tells her, or predicts how you're gonna behave in a certain— in the situation. Her nervous system has predicted for her how you are gonna respond when she asks for divorce, or what's gonna happen next, and honestly, this is why the divorce situation has arisen in the first place, because her nervous system is predicting that you're never gonna change, that there is no hope, that the situation is hopeless. So if you want to have hope of turning this situation around, the first thing that needs to happen is there needs to be a pattern interrupt. She's expecting you To behave in a panicked, dysregulated way, and she's expecting you to bring control, guilt, manipulation, etc., to the situation, and she's expecting you to pile on the overwhelm. When you do the exact opposite, when she's looking— when she's expecting confusion from you and you bring clarity, when she's expecting overwhelm and you bring relief, it forces her to question the validity of her predictive mechanism or her nervous system. Forces her to go, are my predictions right about this man? And this is where the magic happens, that she can start to reconsider her decision. As long as you are reinforcing, as long as her predictive mechanism has predicted an outcome or a path of behavior and you reinforce that every step of the way, there's nothing for her to reconsider. She thought you would behave this way and you did, and that behavior is what she's looking to get away from. So there has to be a pattern interrupt here. There has to be an unexpected behavior opposite to what she thinks she's gonna get. You have to reduce emotional pressure on her. So again, as we— as I said earlier on, right, the divorce or the separation is simply— it's a mechanism to get emotional relief. So you have to reduce that emotional pressure. If you— if she steps outside of the marriage or asks for divorce to get that emotional relief, and you pile on more pressure, You just convinced her that there's no relief from you, period, anywhere, and you're pretty much guaranteeing that this is not going to end in a way that's conducive for you. So you need to regulate the emotional intensity. You need to respond calmly to what's going on. You need to hear her instead of opposing immediately. So again, the instinct is going to be to oppose what is going on. You need to, you need to hear You need to hear her, and not just her words, but hear her situation, hear her emotionally, understand what she's going through, and what she's actually trying to relieve— uh, achieve. And what she's trying to achieve is relief, not escalation. So the outcome that you must provide, or I would suggest it's very desirable that you provide, is when she asks for divorce, you need to create a scenario of relief and not escalation. Again, this is very counterintuitive. When When most men, when I say this and say, hey, my wife just asked for a divorce, okay, you need, you need to create some emotional calmness, they think that is escalation. They go, well, if I, if I react calmly and act like I don't care, she's going to think I don't care, and she's gonna, she's gonna leave me because I don't care. No, brother, she's leaving you anyway. She's already left the marriage. She's not testing you to see if you care. She's, she's decided that you don't care And she's leaving, or she's decided that you do care, but you're incapable of providing an environment that she's happy to stay in, so she's leaving. This is the— this is, in my estimation, as a marriage coach, been doing this for decades now working with men, this is your very best course of action. So, what is the pattern interrupt that we have to put into the situation, or the desirable pattern interrupt? Well, right now she's expecting pressure from you, panic, emotional control, etc., etc. She's not expecting you to behave calmly, rationally, and in a way that creates the stabilization so she looks like— so you want to be calm. Now, the unexpected calm creates relief. It emotionally destabilizes her in a good way, and it makes her uncertain about her certainty. So the emotional destabilization that we're looking for, which you may say, well, Cody, you just said that she needs emotional stabilization. Now you're saying I need to emotionally destabilize her. Let me clarify. The emotional destabilization is not in adding pressure to the situation. The emotional destabilization is causing her to question the certainty that she has about you. She's very certain about what you're capable of right now. She's very certain of the change that you're capable of making or not, and by acting in a way that challenges that certainty, it destabilizes her decision To leave. So the pattern interruption challenges that emotional certainty. It challenges her predictive mechanism, her predictive expectations of what's going to happen, and it challenges her nervous system assumptions of who you are and what you're capable of in the environment that you're going to produce. These are all necessary. So this is, this is critical because when the pressure decreases through this, Her emotional safety increases, which is critical if you're going to save this marriage. When emotional safety increases, her certainty about the necessity for this marriage to end destabilizes. Relief— providing relief in this moment instead of confusion and pressure and panic— relief interrupts the emotional momentum that she has. She's in a car going downhill right now. Getting to the point of asking for divorce or separation, or telling her that she's very, very, very unhappy within the marriage. This required a huge amount of energy and effort from her, and emotional uncertainty. Now she's told you and put this on the table, there is emotional, there is an emotional momentum moving towards leaving this marriage. Momentum is on her side. It's going to be much easier now she's told you that she wants to. To divorce, to move forward. Now the lawyers can be in the open, the separation can be in the open, the child custody can be in the open. All of these things can— the division of property, all of these things can now be in the open. She's been thinking about these things in her mind, obviously, all along, but now she's put the divorce on the table, these things no longer need to be hidden. They can be in the open. So momentum is now on her side, moving in a direction that you don't want it to go in. The relief that you provide, or you have the opportunity to provide right now, interrupts that emotional momentum that she has, which is very, very important. Step 1 in the reconciliation program that I teach in the Win Your Wife Back program is you have to interrupt. You have to stop making the situation worse. The step number 1 is not to save your marriage. Step number 1 is to stop this emotional momentum. Stop the train moving in the wrong direction. Just slow it down. Stop it. That's step number 1, and that's what we're doing here in this situation. So the important distinction is this is not agreeing with the divorce. This is not becoming passive about the situation. It's not abandoning your boundaries or pretending that you don't care. It does mean you becoming emotionally regulated, reduce the pressure that you're providing and pushing into the relationship, interrupting the destructive patterns That are causing her to move forward right now and creating emotional safety. Many men ask me, it's one of the most common questions, or the 2 most common questions, is, can this marriage be saved, Cody? And how long is it going to take? Well, my answer to that question always fundamentally is, can you create emotional safety? Can you reintroduce emotional safety into the marriage? And how long is it going to take for you to do that and for her to believe that there is emotional safety? That's the answer to the question, right? Can the marriage be saved? If you can reintroduce emotional safety in a genuine way, Yes, it can. How long is it going to take? Well, how long is it going to take for you to do that? If you continue to act in a fight or flight scenario, then there's no safety. If you're in a fight or flight position, there's no emotional safety. State is everything here. Managing and controlling your state is everything. So the core internal shift to make right now is to stop asking the question, how do I stop this divorce? How do I, how do I change her mind? And start asking the question, how do I stop reinforcing the emotional conditions that caused her to want to leave in the first place. She's leaving for a reason. The question is, what is she moving away from? What are the deal breakers? What has she said, I can no longer live with this? Start to remove those elements of the relationship and you'll start to see the situation turn around. So our core takeaway here is, in a divorce scenario, most men accidentally reinforce the decision that she's made Through panic and through going into a fight-or-flight state. They then use the same mechanisms that damaged the marriage in an attempt to repair the marriage. They double down accidentally and unknowingly on the very mechanisms that she's trying to get away from. It's relief, not pressure, that destabilizes certainty— the certainty that she feels like she wants to leave. It's not convincing her that she's making the wrong decision. It's given her the space within that decision that she's not expecting. It's pattern interrupting. That's what destabilizes her certainty about the decision, which is absolutely essential. Step number 1 is you've got to destabilize that certainty. She's not gonna immediately change her mind. She's gonna go from being certain that she wants the divorce to being, maybe I'm not, maybe I'm making the wrong decision, to I need to think about this, to I don't want a divorce. That's the hierarchy. That's how it works. Emotional regulation matters in this situation more than emotional intensity. You being calm, collected, and in control of yourself, and emotionally regulated, removing pressure, not applying it. Emotional intensity— she does not need emotional intensity from you. She's not looking for you to show how much she— you love her in this scenario. She needs regulation, emotional regulation from you. So if you like that, if you want more information on how to do this, I've got a free workshop, link in the description, how most men unintentionally do make things worse in a divorce crisis. And I'm going to show you in that class what to do in more detail, what to avoid, how to stop reinforcing her decision to leave, and how to create conditions that, that can actually make the situation shift. And also, if you want to talk about this, um, Cody AI, if you want your specific situation discussed, check out Cody AI, have a chat with Cody AI, trained on, on all of my strategies and frameworks. Links in in the description, and then go ahead and watch this video right here. God bless you, and I'll talk to you soon.