What does it mean when a husband says he needs time apart to think?

Sometimes I hear of wives whose husband has left them “because he needs some time to think.” That’s pretty much the extent of what he tells them and he rarely digs a bit deeper and offers an explanation of what “thinking” really means. Wives are often dissatisfied with his lack of logical explanation.

I recently heard from a wife who asked, “What the hell does my husband have to think about? He told me last week that he’s moving away for a while because he needs ‘time to think.’ That’s pretty ridiculous to me. I told him he could think in any room in our house undisturbed by me, so why the hell would he need to spend money living in a hotel just to use his brain to think thoughts and problems he had to ponder but was told “he just wouldn’t get it “. Well, you’re right about that. I don’t get it. If there were things I needed to figure out, I wouldn’t leave my spouse to do it. I feel like he’s feeding me a load of crap. What do men mean when they tell you that they need time to ‘think’? Is this a good way of saying they want out of the marriage?” I will try to answer these questions in the following article.

When a husband tells you he needs time to think, you will often think about your marriage and what you want from your life moving forward: Most of the time when husbands give you the “time to think” line, they are dealing with whether they are happy with their life and their marriage. If they needed to think about an issue that didn’t include you or your marriage, then they wouldn’t need to distance themselves from you to reflect on it.

Therefore, they often suspect (or hope) that being away from you for a while will give them the literal and emotional distance to come to a conclusion without any influence from you. I hear from many men in this scenario and if they are honest they will often tell you that they are on a path in their lives that they are no longer entirely sure of. Sometimes they wonder how they could be happier or more fulfilled and are not sure what it will take to move forward.

And it’s probably no coincidence that this often happens in mid-life or when men have a problem or event that makes them question whether they’re reaching their potential for happiness in life. You’ll often hear them say things like “is this all there is?” Or “I’m not sure if I’m leading the life I was meant to lead.” To be fair, their unhappiness or questions about their life are often not your fault. Sometimes their problems and struggles don’t even have much to do with you. Some men are weighing their personal achievements or career path. Others are dealing with family relationships (or relationships with other people who are very close to them). Therefore, it is not always correct to assume that a man who wants “time” will suddenly file for divorce or separation once he returns. .

Some men come back ready to improve their lives and their relationships and others come to believe that their relationships are the problem. How you end up proceeding is often dictated, at least to some extent, by the conclusions your husband reaches after much thought.

How to react when your husband asks for “time to think”: How you choose to respond to your husband’s request and how you choose to behave while he is away really depends on what you want the outcome to be. Once the wife in the previous scenario calmed down, she realized that she didn’t want to walk away or criticize her husband too much. He had always supported her, so she decided that even if she felt the whole mental conversation was a bit too dramatic, there was no reason why she couldn’t offer him the support and time he had asked for.

Because she wanted to not only save her marriage, but also make it as strong as possible, she decided to do her own soul searching and think while he was away. She was so happy to hear this. One thing many people don’t understand is that anything you can do to strengthen yourself individually will also strengthen and improve your marriage most of the time. You have a much better chance of success if you have two whole, happy people sitting at the table rather than one or both people dealing with their own personal struggles, projections, or fears.

So, to answer the questions posed, men often ask for time to think when they are facing a crossroads in their life and struggling with their own personal happiness. They are often looking for answers about what is causing their unhappiness and what they can do to fix it. If you love the man who wants the “time” and you want him to be happy, your best bet is to offer him both your support and the time he has requested. Because at the end of the day, you want him to realize that you are part of the solution and not part of the problem.