10 ways to make your wife want to divorce you

I’ve been married for twelve years. Twelve very long years.

Were there good times? Sure there were.

Was there love? Sure. There was.

But that’s all gone now and I want this marriage to come to a close.

The problem is that my wife is extremely invested in our marriage and we have three kids.

That’s why I’m now doing what I can to make her see that divorce is our best option at this point.

10 ways to make your wife want to divorce you

Hack Spirit is all about making self-development and relationships easier to understand and resolve.

The truth is that divorce is tragic. I hate it, and I’d love to do anything I can to avoid it.

What makes this harder, however, is that I know deep in my bones that divorce is the best option at this point, and I also know it’s only going to happen if my wife also gets onboard.

Knowing I’m part of a statistic is also super ironic, but also depressing.

The highest statistics for divorce in the United States are for gaming services workers at 50.3%. I work in a casino and have for the past nine years as a pit boss.

Now I’m going the same way as half the other married folks in my industry.

1) Cut down the time you give her

This is a good starting point and I recommend it as the very top of the ways to make your wife want to divorce you.

Give her as little of your time as humanly possible.

Speak to her rarely, ignore her texts and calls, give her the brush off or say you’re busy when walking past her.

The communication needs to eventually circle around to divorce.

My wife and I already tried sparking our intimacy back up and reconciling in many ways.

We made a real go of it and for that I respect her and myself.

But the love and even the respect is no longer there with us, and I genuinely believe the adult and responsible thing to do at this juncture is to separate.

Regardless of your reasons for wanting to divorce, which I’m sure you have, you need to make sure she realizes that you’re not going to change or come around and want her back.

You want out.

Now she needs to want out, too.

2) Criticize her whenever you get the chance

My wife has a lot to criticize, so this isn’t too hard.

I used to hold back because I didn’t want to be an asshole husband who tells his wife everything that’s wrong with her.

Now I let it flow.

I think of it as free therapy. I provide her instant feedback on all her back decisions and actions, and I don’t even charge.

If you ask me it’s pretty generous of me.

But all kidding aside, I am absolutely at the end of my rope with this woman; she has strained my last damn nerve in every sense possible, betrayed my trust and led me through trials I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

If that sounds overly dramatic all I can say is this: you haven’t been married to my wife for the past twelve years.

If you had been you’d be in an asylum or living under a false identity somewhere after faking your own death.

Me? I’m simple: I just want a divorce. Please. I need her to want it, too, and stop holding out hope that we’re going to get back into our early days of foolish romance.

It ain’t happening, honey.

3) Fix your most important relationship

I want my wife to divorce me, but I also have a desire to remarry.

I don’t want my whole life to have been spent on one woman who treated me so poorly in so many ways.

Back when I was growing up in Oregon we guys used to work out like crazy all winter to get our “beach bods” ready for summer and surfing.

The most I ever did was stand next to a surfboard and try to look cool and then paddle it around for an hour and stand up once or twice all summer.

But it worked to meet my first girlfriend.

Now I’m in a stage of my life where I don’t need to get a beach bod, I need to get a personality upgrade.

To be more specific, I need to get back to respecting myself and my relationship with myself, which I left trashed by the wayside for so long on account of making sacrifices for my wife and kids.

It’s something I first heard about from the Brazilian shaman Rudá Iandê. He busted a lot of my beliefs about love wide open and I thank God he did.

I saw the mistaken beliefs and traps that led me into my marriage and the way to get out of repeating the same hell in the future.

As Rudá explains in this mind blowing free video, many of us chase our idea of love that’s completely mistaken and horrible for us.

We torture ourselves, fall in love with pain and end up idealizing and sticking with people who are terrible for us and lock us in unhelpful and old patterns.

While watching, I felt like someone finally offered an actual, practical solution to learning to reconnect with yourself and avoid the trap of repeating a broken marriage in the future.

Click here to watch the free video.

4) Replay your worst memories together

Another thing I really recommend for ways to make your wife want to divorce you is to highlight your worst memories and failings.

The time you were away at work and she didn’t like how much you were flirting with your assistant at the casino…

The year of horrible fights you had when your wife was pregnant with your first son and had constant mood swings…

The stressful move to another state that ended up costing mountains of money and leaving the family in a strange and lonely new place which everyone hated (and for which you were roundly, and probably rightly, blamed)…

The time you admitted your wife’s sister is “objectively” more attractive than her…

Ah, the memories.

Bring them up. Joke about them. Watch your wife pretend to laugh.

I can almost see her signing the divorce papers now.

5) Express an interest in other women

I’ve never been a ladies’ man, but I’ve never had that hard of a time either.

I mentioned Oregon and the whole beach bods thing, right…

It goes deeper than that. I have an Olympian sex drive and I like to chase women.

I committed to my wife for the past more than a decade and only cheated once on a drunken work trip, but I almost regret not doing it more.

My wife cheated multiple times and I’m pretty sure they should name some kind of carousel after her at the carnival.

I’m pretty sure a couple of her special friends were carnies, so that would make sense, too.

My circumspect behavior is now over. I flirt openly. I gape at attractive women on TV. I heart Instagram models right in front of her.

6) Make your alternate path clear

I’ve let my wife know I have a very different vision of the future than her.

I plan to quit my job, buy an RV and discover the Rocky Mountains. I offered to take my three kids with me in the summer, so we’ll see if that ends up happening.

The point is that my wife wants to retrain as a legal secretary and do all sorts of more established things that honestly couldn’t bore me more than they already do.

I’ve told her: nobody’s stopping me getting behind the wheel of that RV, blasting John Denver and hitting the road.

I’ve also told her she’s not invited!

Could I be any more clear?

7) Clear the field for new experiences

A huge part of successfully getting your wife to want to divorce you is clearing the field for new experiences.

Meet new people, attend new groups, start doing new things, and see what happens.

In this article I’ve emphasized on creating space between you and your wife and how this can be done by emphasizing some of your worst traits.

But it can also be really good to talk to a professional.

The best place I found in my quest to get my wife unhitched is Relationship Hero.

These coaches are accredited and experienced. They’ve seen it all, and I mean all…

They helped me untangle a horrible web of toxic shit I was holding inside and sort out my real deeper emotions and values from temporary thoughts and illusions I was having at the time.

In just a few minutes you can connect with a certified relationship coach and get tailor-made advice for your situation.

Click here to get started.

jumpstory download20220817 192050 1 10 ways to make your wife want to divorce you

8) Encourage her to choose her own future

Encouraging your wife to find her own future is the most crucial way to make your wife want to divorce you.

Show her she has options.

Talk about how she can pursue more of her dreams by living her own life apart from you.

Apologize for what you’ve done wrong but never try to actually make it better.

Make it clear that this chapter is closing and that her option now is to embrace the moment or resist it and just end up more alone.

Give her some proactive things to look forward to and support her friendships and social activities that are leading her in new directions away from you.

This is a good thing!

9) Don’t involve your children

For God’s sake, please don’t involve your kids in this whole process.

My own parents divorced when I was seven and tried to get me to choose sides. I still haven’t fully gotten over it.

It’s part of why I also wanted so badly to avoid divorce as an option if possible.

I did my part and have still concluded divorce is what will be best.

My three children literally mean the world to me and I hate how much this will hurt them.

But I also know that they understand their mother and I have grown apart in ways that are painful to be around.

We will work out how to love and care for our children and I will never become the deadbeat dad I dread.

My kids are never going to be bargaining chips in my divorce or in trying to get my wife to divorce me.

10) Begin divesting your accounts

On the pragmatic side, please begin taking rational steps to divest from your wife.

This means closing joint accounts, discussing finances and beginning to sharply separate what you spend for yourself and what she spends.

I earn more than my wife (which is one of the bigger tensions of our marriage) and I’ve usually paid the lion’s share.

That’s come to an end.

I want her to see that any financial benefit of remaining with me is long gone at this point.

It’s over. The love is gone. The money is gone, too. At least for her.

I will always have money for my kids and will always respect my wife as the mom of our kids.

But she took me on an emotional rollercoaster that still has me sick to the stomach, and I will not be paying any money I don’t have to pay into her pocket now or ever, if I can help it.

I declare you divorced!

The day my wife and I divorce will be the day I breathe a long and ragged sigh of relief.

There were some good times, but those times are over.

It will be best for all of us to go our separate ways with any shreds of respect that are still left.

This marriage is over.

I just hope to God my wife reaches the same conclusion as soon as possible.

Did you like my article? Like me on Facebook to see more articles like this in your feed.

Picture of Lachlan Brown

Lachlan Brown

I’m Lachlan Brown, the editor of Ideapod and founder of Hack Spirit. I love writing practical articles that help others live a mindful and better life. I have a graduate degree in Psychology and I’ve spent the last 6 years reading and studying all I can about human psychology and practical ways to hack our mindsets. If you to want to get in touch with me, hit me up on Twitter or Facebook.

Enhance your experience of Ideapod and join Tribe, our community of free thinkers and seekers.

Related articles

Most read articles

Get our articles

Ideapod news, articles, and resources, sent straight to your inbox every month.

0:00
0:00