I often get emails from wives of husbands who have just left (or are about to leave). Some of the most common questions I get asked are: “what are the chances of my husband coming back?”; “How can I get my husband to come home faster?”; “What will I do if he leaves and never comes back?”; and “how can I stop him from leaving in the first place?”

The answer to these questions depends on the circumstances, but with that said, how you play while your husband is away or contemplating leaving will have a big effect on the results you get. There are things I see wives doing that almost always push the husband more and there are things that usually work well. I will talk about both in the next article. But the quick answer is yes, the men do come back, but the chances of this happening are better if you play it right.

Just because he’s gone doesn’t mean he’ll never come back: I can’t tell you how desperate I feel in the emails I receive. I understand, because I was once in the same situation. But it is important that you do not admit defeat before you have started playing. When I was going through this, I had a girlfriend who one day very honestly told me that I was “the walking wounded man.” He was depressed and exuding a vibe that said he knew he was defeated and unworthy. Obviously, this is not attractive to anyone nor is it conducive to attracting anyone.

The point is, don’t let your panic and desperation show. If you need to let these feelings and fears out, write in a journal when you are alone. But it is important that you portray a person who wants to save the marriage or relationship, but who respects and believes in herself enough to know that she will make it and that she is worthy no matter what.

This is much more appealing than someone who is clingy, needy, prowling, or acting rather embarrassing in the hope that the drama will force them to come back.

You can’t “make” him come back, but you can help him want to come back: Many women ask me how to “make” or “get” their men back home. The implication of this is wrong in many ways. First, “making” someone do something she really doesn’t want to do isn’t going to create the lasting results she wants. You don’t want him home because he feels guilty or begrudgingly comes back when his heart isn’t really in it.

Under those circumstances, you will refer back to this issue in the near future. Instead, you want him to genuinely want to come back with all his heart, fully committed to working with you to put things right once and for all and ensure this doesn’t happen again. So instead of arguing with him, giving him ultimatums, blowing off steam, or playing games, focus on creating positive interactions between the two of you that will help him want to come home.

Now, I don’t mean to say that you should demean yourself or compromise on things that are important to you. What I mean is that you should carefully assess the qualities that first attracted her husband to you or the things that you first enjoyed together and focus on those things.

Because people are often wrong or don’t really understand why the husband is gone. They think it’s external things, from third parties, like a clash of personalities, stress, money worries, infidelity, etc. What it almost always is, instead, is a loss of connection and closeness. Think about it. When your husband is in sync, the problems you face seem small. You will overlook them because you are happy and you are getting your needs met. You want to work with this person because you know that you are both in this together and are a team.

But, once the connection starts to fail, you’ll begin to see yourself as an individual rather than part of your team. Things that he used to ignore or find endearing suddenly drive him crazy or become a deal breaker. So instead of focusing on resolving fights, solving money problems, etc., he addresses the loss of intimacy first. Now, he will have to deal with these external things later. I’m not telling you to ignore them indefinitely. But there’s no point in putting a Band-Aid on something that hasn’t really healed. If you do, the same old problems will keep coming up and it will be harder to fix them each time they happen again.

Making it come back faster: The best thing you can do when your husband leaves or threatens to leave is to remind yourself to always be aware of your actions. It is very easy to panic and overreact and these things will only drive you further away. It is fair to say that if he is leaving it is because now he himself sees things very negatively and does not believe that things can change. In a nutshell, his goal should be to change your perception from negative to positive and show you through the things that happen that, in fact, things definitely can change.

Therefore, you want to behave with dignity and grace. She wants to keep a smile on her face and keep her heart open. It’s easy to argue or try to make him feel guilty or convince him that he’s wrong. But, this is not going to help the cause of him. It is better to validate it from the beginning. Tell him that he is right, that things are not acceptable right now and that you both deserve better. Explain that you don’t know how this will end, but you can both control how you interact in the days ahead. Do you remember the things that first attracted him to you? Now it’s time to put them on full display. You want to be that confident, happy, competent, attractive woman that I couldn’t live without.

When you see that she is still there and that you can reconnect with her, the rest will gradually fall into place.