I don’t know you, so I can’t guess exactly why your wife wants to divorce you. But, by the nature of my profession and from experience, I can tell you that the reason most likely has to do with one of the 3 categories below.

Note: This article has a little brother called “Why your husband wants to divorce you”.  If that’s the one you were actually looking for, you can read it directly. However, I recommend you read it even if you are the wife, just as a self-analysis exercise to see if any of those points apply to you. Just so we don’t just see the speck in the other person’s eye.

1. Low or extremely low emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence refers to how well you understand your own emotions, how well you deal with them and how available you are to understand someone else’s emotions, be empathetic or helpful.

Skills that are very useful in a relationship. Surprising, isn’t it?

Well, men are known for lower emotional intelligence but also for stubbornly not working on it.

Culturally, men are usually taught only nonsense about emotions. Especially not to manifest them in any way. Any emotion except anger is unacceptable for a man to manifest. And even anger is not taught how to manifest it in a proper way (hint: if you punch the wall when you’re angry, you haven’t been taught correctly, or at all, what to do with anger).

And this hiding or repressing of emotions creates a rift between man and woman, both feel misunderstood and unloved and this damages the relationship, sometimes to a point where it can’t be repaired.
Low emotional intelligence I think is the main reason why people feel lonely in a relationship, that loneliness in two so unfortunately common nowadays.

What can you do about it? It’s not enough to read Goleman’s book on emotional intelligence, you need to work on yourself and with yourself to learn all these skills. You have a lot of catching up to do, ideally you learn them naturally from your early years, but if you missed that start, it’s not too late now. You’ll not only save your relationship but possibly other things that are important to you.

For example, there are plenty of studies that confirm that an important criterion for professional success is emotional intelligence, more important than actual competence in that job.

Or you can close this article right now and tell yourself I’m rambling, because you know that men are only allowed to cry twice in their lives (at their birth and at the birth of their first child, in case you didn’t know).

2. You cheated on her

How about this. You know those wedding vows? Eh, if you break them, it’s hard to fix it. You can, it’s just hard. You don’t want to put yourself in that position.

Basically, you both need to work on rebuilding trust and intimacy in the relationship, and for her to make that effort she needs to believe it’s worth it. Only, in this situation, she has to put in the effort for someone who has betrayed her trust. It’s hard to do that, and she might conclude that it’s not worth it.

Not all people are able or willing to forgive that. If he’s come to the conclusion that he can’t move on, there’s not much you can do.

You can only work on yourself, understand what happened and why it happened, so you don’t end up in the same situation in the future.

3. You don’t live up to your obligations as a husband

Speaking of wedding vows, I don’t know if you paid attention to what those people (the priest and the registrar) said about obligations, but in short, it wasn’t just about bringing money home.

I mean didn’t they say to her “do you swear to love him, care for him, respect him, have his children, take care of the house, cook for him, wash him, choose the house, renovate it, plan holidays and make reservations, do the shopping, take the children to school, pay the bills and so on” and then to you just so “do you swear to bring money home?”.

Not to mention that in many cases the woman is in charge of almost everything and the man doesn’t even bring that much money into the house.

But even if you bring home tens of thousands of euros every month, it’s still not enough for that to be your only responsibility as a couple.

Think of a couple and a family as something that requires cooperation and active participation from everyone involved. There is actually no such thing as one family member having sole responsibility.

Somehow, this resembles another bogus idea that a child’s responsibility is only to get good grades in school. Maybe that’s why you now think that all you have to do is bring money home, because all you had to do as a child was get good grades.

But that’s a false idea, it’s impossible for a family to function like that. Life is complex and multifaceted, to quote a classic. You can’t get rid of your obligations and responsibilities by doing one thing. And if you do, the only way it can work is if someone else takes over your responsibilities. And that someone will be unhappy about it.

And we’re not just talking about bringing money home here, although that’s the main excuse men give for shirking any other responsibility. We’re talking about responsibilities in general, and we’re talking about commitment. Or lack of it.

These three are the reasons I most often encounter. Of course people are very inventive in finding reasons to break up and explanations are not limited to these three. I’d say they’re not as inventive when it comes to finding reasons to stay together, but that’s another discussion for another time.

The question is, what can you do. If any of the above reasons apply to you, can you still save the marriage? Hard to say, the moment the word “divorce” has already been uttered the chances are very slim that you can save anything.

It’s not impossible, obviously, but to save the relationship, both partners must want to save it.

Can all these points be worked on and improved through therapy? Yes, obviously. You can correct many communication problems through therapy, in this case through couples therapy.

However, if the couple ends up in couples therapy after they have already filed for divorce (possibly within the 30-day grace period before the final decree is issued by the notary), the chances of a miracle saving their relationship in the next few weeks are slim to none.

But it would be an idea to work on these things in individual therapy so that at least future relationships are not affected by these elements. Because, I don’t know if you know this, but problems in one relationship tend to pop up again in the next relationship if you don’t fix the causes.

And maybe you don’t want to set a new record for divorce.