Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack

How to Win Your Husband Back from Another Woman

• Jack Ito PhD, Psychologist, Author, and Relationship Coach • Season 3 • Episode 34

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On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.

On today's episode, Coach Jack helps women to choose the right approach for getting their husband to give up the other woman.

After listening to today's episode, you may want to:

How to Win Your Husband Back from Another Woman

(Podcast Transcript)

(0:00)

[Introduction to the podcast]

Announcer: On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.

(0:29)

Coach Jack: Being cheated on feels horrible, but it’s also an opportunity to make your marriage even better than before. Allow me to share with you three approaches to winning your husband back. One of them just might be what you need to reunite with your husband.

Being replaced in your husband’s life by another woman hurts a lot. You are likely to cycle through periods of anger and sadness. It will be hard to stop thinking of how you were betrayed, which makes you angry, and how you may lose him which both makes you sad and intensifies your feelings of love for him.

(1:05)

These contradictory emotions all mix together and can make you feel crazy. That will lead you to either escape or support. Support is better than escape because it gives you more strength to deal with the problem. But, you still have to know how.

As an expert on reconciling, I help people to match the right approach to their situation and give them the skills to make their relationship as close as they want it to be. If you are the kind of person who can learn the steps, and do them in the right order, you can restore your marriage. 

Restoring a marriage isn’t rocket science–it’s just a series of steps done in the right order, at the right pace. A good coach knows the steps, the order, and how to help you with the pace, whether he is a sports coach, a business coach, or a relationship coach. Make sure whoever is helping you knows how to do those three things.

(2:00)

Don’t let your husband’s behavior surprise you

It really hurts to be betrayed, and it is really surprising to be betrayed when your relationship is really good. But, the worse your relationship was before his affair, the less of a surprise his affair should be. 

Here’s some things that should not surprise you:

  • your husband, just like all men, has been attracted to women for a long time and that didn’t stop just because you got married;
  • the worse your marriage became, the more appealing other women became;
  • your husband is more likely to blame you for his affair than to blame himself; and
  • the more valuable you are, the less he wants to lose you.

I’m sure you know that women are the very same way. When they cheat, they blame their husbands; the worse their marriage, the more appealing other men are; and the more they value their husbands, the less they want to lose them. 

(2:57)

You are not to blame for his affair. Too many women are quick to accept responsibility for their husband’s behavior. I want to talk about that a little, just in case you are blaming yourself rather than taking action to get him back.

It will help you to be less reactive if you…

Expect him to blame you for his behavior

Although he is the one having the affair, he is likely to blame you. Perhaps it’s true that you contributed to relationship problems, but that doesn’t mean you caused him to have an affair. He could have chosen to work on things with you, work on himself, separate, or gotten others to help him do a marriage intervention. He chose the more destructive route. That’s on him.

Don’t try to convince him of that, though. All you will get is conflict and that won’t help. Much of the work that I do with women who are being cheated on is to teach them how to respond in a loving, but secure way. That means not being defensive, but not accepting blame either. It also means having appropriate boundaries so he can’t have his cake and eat it, too.

(4:06)

The main reason for his blaming you is so he doesn’t need be feel bad about cheating on you. That’s what blame does–it shifts the responsibility onto someone else. He wants you to see him as a victim rather than a villain. In actuality, he’s a little of both and he needs the strength of your love to get him back to a restored marriage with you.

An affair, like an addiction, is a pit that people fall into and have great difficulty being able to climb out of. They need someone else strong enough to help them get back out.

Note that some men don’t blame. Whether your husband blames or not doesn’t change how to win him back, so…

Don’t apologize for what wasn’t your fault

Because you are not the real cause of his affair, your apologies or attempts to make things up to him won’t make him less interested in the other woman. He’s interested in her for what he gets from her–not because of anything you did or didn’t do. Changing yourself won’t make him less interested in her.

(5:12)

So, what will motivate him to give up her for you? Let me help you to understand the…

Love principles for winning back your husband

First off, we will never win someone back with hostility. You may be very angry with him and who can blame you for that? He betrayed you. It sure might make you feel better to let all that anger out on him. But, it won’t help you to reconcile. Therapists encourage open and honest expression of negative feelings because it facilitates letting go. 

If you want to restore your relationship and you are very angry, you need to find a way to see your husband as a fallible human being, doing his best to take care of himself. If you can empathize without being codependent, you have the loving mindset needed to help your husband get out of his addiction to the other woman.

(6:06)

You may have heard that…

Love must be tough

What you need to realize is that there is a difference between being tough and being mean. We are being mean when we do something to harm another person. We are being loving and tough when we do something the other person doesn’t like, but is actually helpful for them or for our relationship with them. Using boundaries is tough, but not mean, because they help to restore relationships.

People who are addicted or having affairs are never going to like the boundaries necessary to help them. This is what you are doing to win your husband back from the other woman–you are helping him to give her up. You are not being mean to him to punish him for what he has done. That is not the Christian way.

Love is never about just getting what we want…

Love must consider what is actually best for the other person.

(7:02)

Winning him back from another woman is not getting him to lose so you can win. It’s about creating a win-win situation for the both of you. That means if you want to reconcile with him, it is because you believe that you are actually a better choice for him than the other woman. If choosing you only benefits you, and not him, you need to become a better choice for him to make it a win-win.

These things don’t happen overnight, so…

Love must also be patient

There is a right time to make him choose between you and another woman. Sometimes that is at the very beginning of the affair. Sometimes it is not until after the relationship has been strengthened. Remember I said that pace is important for success? That means you must not make him choose before you are a better choice, and you don’t want to wait so long that he gets used to having his cake and eating it too.

(7:58)

Patience doesn’t mean waiting indefinitely. It means waiting for the right time. I patiently wait for my tomatoes to ripen to pick them, but I don’t wait until they are rotten. Knowing when to take the next step is as important as knowing when to not take it.

With these love principles in mind, let’s go over…

Your choices when your husband is having an affair

You always have choices. If you want to get your husband from the other woman, you will base your choice on how close your marriage was before his affair, as well as your ability to be both secure and loving.

You can’t just do what worked for someone else because these things might be different in your situation. Look at all your choices first. There might not be a perfect fit with any one of them.

Just like buying shoes, avoid regrets by choosing the one that fits best.

Choice 1: Forcing a choice right away between divorce or continuing the affair

This approach uses very strong boundaries and there is no acceptance of his affair. He either ends his affair immediately or you end your marriage. 

(9:07)

This choice results in reconciling some of the time. It depends on the man’s fear of losing his wife and how much he has to lose. People only give up something they value in order to keep something else they value more. If a man has a wife he values, he may cheat on her, but not if it means losing her.

Many women have ended their husband’s affairs this way.

This approach works best for secure women who would rather divorce than keep a cheating husband. It will be most successful when their marriage is good and the man does not want a divorce. This confrontation should never be done as a threat, as that will only cause more damage. It is consistent with the Bible as long as you are willing to reconcile if he gives up the other woman.

(9:55)

God permits us to divorce in the case of affairs. Because of that, many men have not cheated on their wives. Women who would never leave their husbands, no matter what, are the most likely to be cheated on.

What if keeping you is not as important to him as keeping her? Well, then you don’t make him choose if you want to get him back. You might need to make…

Choice 2: Have no boundaries and become more valuable before forcing a choice

Boundaries are excellent tools for stopping bad behaviors, but only when people care about the relationship. That’s why self-work comes before boundaries in damaged marriages.

With a no boundaries approach, you must set aside the fact that he is cheating on you and focus instead on becoming more valuable to him. You have to help him to look forward to seeing you and being with you, without having any conflict about his affair. Only after you have become valuable do you make him choose between you and the other woman.

(10:56)

This approach also does not violate God’s teaching. Women have no obligation to divorce their husband because of affairs. God presents it as an option.

You do need to realize that no matter how valuable you become, at some point you will still have to give him a choice between keeping the other woman and losing you. Men do not voluntarily give up an affair they enjoy if they don’t have to.

You won’t get him back by trying to meet all his needs. That will just let him have his cake and eat it, too, while making you very resentful when he doesn’t give her up.

Let me illustrate:

Imagine that you are a restaurant owner and your husband is your customer. The better you make your restaurant, the more he will enjoy eating at your restaurant, but he will still enjoy going to other restaurants. People don’t just go to their favorite restaurants. However, if your husband is only allowed to go to one restaurant, he will choose his favorite.

(11:56)

A man will only choose to give up a relationship he values in order not to lose a relationship he values even more. This is your key to understanding how to get your husband back from the other woman and keeping him only for yourself.

Choice 3: Separate, use boundaries, and build connection before forcing a choice

This is the most common choice my clients make.

With this approach, you give him a choice between continuing his affair and separating, if he doesn’t already want to. If he chooses separation, you use good separation boundaries so that he can’t have his cake and eat it, too. You then work on becoming more desirable and connecting as much as the boundaries allow. At some point, you give him a forced choice between giving up the other woman and you divorcing to find someone else.

(Many men don’t care about divorce, but they do care about their wives finding someone else. Women who say they would divorce, but have no interest in other men actually encourage their husband to divorce them).

(13:03)

As long as you have regular contact, can be desirable, and use good connection skills, you can stimulate his feelings toward you in a way that would not happen if you continued to live together. Every day women are building relationships with men through such small contacts with men. It may be how the other woman did it to start her romance with your husband.

This approach is also a good fit for Christians, is more natural to most people, and helps to prevent resentment which is the main obstacle with the no boundaries approach. It also allows time to build the relationship more before forcing him to choose between the other woman and losing you. 

All three choices for getting your husband back from the other woman have some common requirements.

These three approaches are all loving, but tough. They all seek to restore an enjoyable, committed relationship for both of you. They all require giving your husband a forced choice, whether it is sooner or later.

(14:03)

You are never going to argue your way to a better relationship. That will make him value you less and the other woman more. There are some other things that won’t work either.

These approaches do NOT include:

  • arguing or debate
  • pursuing or convincing
  • going to marriage counseling
  • apologizing or promising 

None of these behaviors is helpful for becoming more valuable or for making him feel like he is losing you–the two requirements for ending an affair. Marriage counseling is not helpful because it actually reassures men that the marriage is not ending while they continue their affairs.

People who like to be fully informed before taking action will want to get my book on preventing and ending men’s affair’s. It presents all the choices as well as all of the steps you need to end your husband’s affair.

If it’s possible for you, let me tell you…

Why you may want to invest in coaching at this time

(15:01)

These approaches require the ability to consistently interact with your spouse in a way that builds connection while not getting rejection. Before working with me, the women I help to reconcile were all struggling with how to respond to their spouse, what boundaries to have, how much contact to have and many other details. Many also needed help learning how to be more desirable.

The good news is that how desirable you become and how well you connect are under your control. As long as he is having regular contact with you, you can help your husband to get to that place where he does not want to lose you. When you do, and he is faced with losing you, his feelings for you will return and he can once again belong only to you. 

It is only the fear of losing someone valuable that creates in-love feelings.

That’s why your feelings have been rekindled for your husband and that is what you can learn how to rekindle them in him. If you sign up for my coaching package for ending a spouse’s affair, we will work together to restore the love and happiness that you and your husband used to have with each other.

 (16:12)

 [Podcast wrap-up]

Announcer: Thank you for listening to Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack. Visit coachjackito.com to learn more skills for reconnecting with your spouse and restoring your marriage.