Healing the Marriage: 3 Steps to Closeness
What things can you do to help you in healing the marriage?
The first step in your journey to closeness is to understand and be aware of your patterns. You have ways of coping with emotional issues and relationships that you took with you from childhood.
It was sensible for you to develop a coping strategy a long time ago by choosing between being close and not being close, between knowing and being known, between needing and not needing, between working together and working alone – by acting in a way that fit you best.
You survived. You coped. And you took those strategies along with you.
And even though those strategies may NOT work now in healing the marriage, or are terribly inadequate or maybe even a little destructive, you still use that coping strategy. It’s automatic. You don’t think about it. When someone moves close, you just act as you always have.
You move away from these unconscious coping patterns – that frequently get you want you don’t want – and start healing the marriage by being aware of three processes:
- First, you must understand and acknowledge what I’ve just said: you must identify the coping patterns. This will help you tremendously in healing the marriage. You must experience yourself, your partner and the significant others in your life in terms of patterns. A tremendous amount of freedom and hope emerges once you identify life-long patterns.
- You must meta-comment. You must have the capacity to mentally and emotionally stand back and see the patterns, acknowledge the patterns and place a label upon them. Psychologists seem to agree that the greatest attribute of the healthy person is the capacity to meta-comment.
- You must make distinctions. Men and women are not all alike. The finer the distinctions you can make, in terms of the patterns, for example, the more personal power you exude to influence and create the type of marriage or relationship that offers you genuine intimacy and closeness.
These three easy steps will not only help in developing intimacy and closeness with your partner, it can help in healing the marriage as well.
7 thoughts on “Healing the Marriage: 3 Steps to Closeness”
NO marriage is worth saving after a lengthy affair, not one.
There r only 2 base emotions: love &, it’s opposite, fear. So ur (obvious) anger is based on fear (fear of ???? Being alone? Not feeling wanted or valued? Being disrespected? …)
But the bottom line is to live in love. & u can love her even if she didn’t love u back. but in our humanness we want to feel the love back! So release the fear! U r wonderfully made! Ur true self is nothing but love joy bliss! So continue to love – that will put u in the positive vibration to attract love into ur life!!!! & ur love will b reciprocated! But ONLY if u r open & willing to receive!!! Read about affairs – it is that person’s feeling of lack that drives them to it! Feel sorry for them. U r not to blame. Move on. Let the past go. The only thing the past is good for is to learn from & not make the same mistakes over & over. Live ur life in the NOW!!! B amazed & enthralled with all of life’s little miracles!! Live in appreciation & more & more will come to u! It is the Law of Attraction!!! Learn about it – Google it – YouTube it…. A good one is abrahamhicks – .com or YouTube!!!! I wish u peace!
Unsure what you mean by lengthy. 60% of marriages survive when there is one case of infidelity. If lengthy is years, you could be right. The reason for he affair is very important.
How about 10 years – does that qualify as “lengthy”? And yet, we’re still together, altho I have been left with a permanent case of PTSD-like symptoms. Even 7 years post, one association (esp. my Hs tone of voice) can shut down my nervous system for days. I try to explain how it’s a visceral reaction, but he accuses me of deliberately punishing him. I don’t think there is a solution. Anyone got one?
My wife has had a one year texting, sexting and actual meeting an old boyfriend affair about three years ago. We kinda worked through that but she insisted on remaining friends with her boyfriends sister.
Then she had a one years highly sexual affair with someone else. Now she wants to work things out with me. I’m hurt and confussed.
I looked at porn for decades, engaged in online emotional affairs for years, and minimized the impact of my actions and the trauma I caused my spouse — until I got caught.
I now accept complete responsibility for my actions, my secretive nature, and the hurt I inflicted on my wonderful and gracious spouse.
We are working on healing our marriage, and my awareness of the three processes will go a long way toward that goal and our happiness.
Wow. Wish my husband would adopt your approach. He continues to be secretive nearly a year after my discovery of his affair. He says I should be focusing on the future, not the past. But his lack of transparency has me paralyzed.