Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack

How to Prevent Divorce and Reconnect while Separated

• Jack Ito PhD, Psychologist, Author, and Relationship Coach • Season 3 • Episode 39

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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 teaches how to reconcile and rebuild a relationship while separated..

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

How to Prevent Divorce and Reconnect while Separated

(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: While many people view separation as a relationship being over, it’s actually an opportunity to strengthen your marriage. 

Separation has become synonymous with ending a relationship in recent times. Historically though, separation has been used as a way to reduce the stresses of marriage so that a couple can focus on enjoying each other again.

Separation does not have to become divorce and may actually become the best thing that has happened to your marriage in a long time.

An Ending or a Chance for a New Beginning?

(1:02)

What makes the difference for whether separation ends a marriage or creates a new beginning is the way people interact while they are separated. Of course that is no different from when they lived together or even before they were married.

It is how we interact with people that most impacts their desire to be with us. Separation is an opportunity to interact well without the negative time that can happen with living together. Couples who live together until they divorce, don’t get to cut out the neutral or negative time, and so it is much harder to get the relationship growing again. And, living together while calling yourselves divorced is the most difficult situation of all for rebuilding a relationship.

In-home separations require intentional distancing, which inhibits the growth of loving feelings.

There is hope for your marriage after separation as long as you are willing to do the right steps in the right order. There is actually hope for everything if you are willing to do the right steps, in the right order, at the right pace.

(2:04)

Do you want it fast, or do you want it good?

Don’t waste your time looking for easy steps or one step solutions. While you are looking for quick fixes and easy solutions, others will be doing things the hard and effective way and achieve their goals. I give my clients hard things to do, but they work. 

The fastest way to achieve a long term goal is to do what works and get started on it right away.

One of my favorite motivational speakers is Jim Rohn. I learned from him that we need to do things that are hard to be successful. Get in the habit of doing things because they are hard and you will become successful where others don’t. I also noticed that God asks us to do things that are hard.

Many things I can’t do by myself. But there is nothing that I can’t do with God’s help. The same is true for you.

(2:59)

My favorite Bible verse is, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13). 

Perhaps that verse will be a good one for you to hang onto.

Reconnecting after separation

Preventing divorce with a separated spouse comes down to re-connecting and re-attracting. Can you imagine your spouse choosing to reconcile with you if he or she does not become reattracted and reconnected to you? 

Reconnecting means connecting again, when a connection has been lost. This what my specialty is as a coach–helping people to build an emotional connection that has been lost.

Connecting is not done in a single step. Connecting is the result of helping your spouse to feel relaxed around you, to have more desire to interact with you, and to feel similar to you. There is no convincing whatsoever in connecting.

(3:56)

Convincing disconnects. Validation connects. Write that out on a paper one hundred times if it helps. Every time you validate you connect. Every time you try to convince you disconnect. Once you get how that works, you will be amazed at what it does for your marriage.

Reconciling while separated is not a collaborative process

When you are working to reconcile, you are working to attract and connect. You are not working to get your spouse to agree to work on it with you. Also, there is no discussion of problems. Some people love to talk about problems. If that is you, you need to realize it is not turning your spouse on to you. 

Unless you think your spouse is looking forward to working on problems with you, don’t do it. 

If you can stop seeing connection as a collaborative process, you can stop trying to convince your spouse, and get to work on interacting with your spouse in desirable ways. This is how you did it when you were single. This is how another person would do it with your spouse. 

(5:06)

Giving someone a relaxed smile is much more effective than both of you agreeing to smile at each other more. It feels different. And, the feelings are what matter.

We reconcile not by changing our spouse’s mind, but by changing our spouse’s feelings.

Stop Trying to Convince

Attempting to convince your spouse to work on the relationship with you is a needy behavior because it results in resistance, distance, and rejection if you keep it up long enough. If your spouse wants to work on your relationship with you, great. If not, create in your spouse not the desire to work on your relationship, but the desire to be with you.

Work not on convincing your spouse to work on your relationship, but work on being more desirable so your spouse will desire you.

(6:00)

Also, don’t ask your spouse how to be more desirable. Your spouse doesn’t want you to manufacture changes. They won’t seem genuine. The way to create desire in your spouse is the same as for creating it in others and is not a secret you have to learn by climbing a tall mountain and asking a guru.

The same set of basic skills essentially builds all relationships…

Growing up there were some basic life lessons we were supposed to learn:

  • First was how to be relaxed and friendly even when we didn’t feel like it. This helped us to get along with others.
  • The second was learning how to agree and be similar and this helped us to make friends we could do activities with.
  • The third was how to be attractive and this helped us to have a boyfriend or girlfriend.
  • The fourth was confidence and security which, in addition to the first three skills, allowed someone to fall in love with us.

(6:56)

And, continuing those same four life lessons allowed us to maintain a loving relationship with someone who learned the same things. These are the basics and when something has gone wrong it is typically with one or more of these. These are what we need to return to for things to be right again. Separation included. Don’t think of it as a totally different thing…

If like me, you didn’t learn these growing up, you can learn them now. I will help you.

Re-attracting after separation

Re-attracting means becoming attractive to your spouse again. Like re-connection, that is not something you convince your spouse to do or work together with your spouse to accomplish. Your ability to re-attract your spouse depends entirely on your ability to become the kind of person your spouse is attracted to.

One of the biggest misconceptions about attraction is to believe that attraction only has to do with physical appearance. Physical attractiveness is only part of it. Physical appearance plays a larger role in being attractive for women than it does for men. 

(8:04)

If you are a man, you don’t need to look like a body builder or movie star. Physical appearance is a definite plus in meeting women, but that is not your goal here. Your goal is to work on all the qualities that your wife desires in men. If you have let your body go, of course work to get back in shape, but don’t neglect the positive, social, and empathetic aspects that will make you more attractive.

Likewise, if you are a woman, make sure you look your physical best. Accentuate your best physical feature just like you would if you were single. Also, think about the personality characteristics of the kind of women your husband is attracted to. Becoming more social and active often helps women to become more attractive to their husbands.

Both men and women need to remember that they are competing with the best partners that their spouse would be able to get. How competitive that is depends on how desirable your spouse is to others.

(9:04)

Even if your spouse is not looking for someone else, he or she can still see the difference between you and others and that matters.

Do not wait until your spouse is interested in building your marriage to work on becoming attractive. That is the wrong order. You have to attract and connect before your spouse will become more interested in your relationship.

Most of my clients, in order to become more attractive, need to work on small changes in several areas rather than one large change. That is probably true for you as well. Exercise a little more, eat a little better, socialize a little more, get out a little more, develop one or two new interests, and don’t forget to smile. Many small changes like this can really boost your attractiveness.

If you want to reconcile, don’t get focused on preventing divorce

(9:59)

People who focus on preventing divorce become fearful and reactive. They behave in ways that are unattractive and invalidating. They continue to try to persuade, often causing so much emotional distance that they have little opportunity to interact.

People who instead focus on being relaxed, friendly, attractive, and validating, start making their relationships better almost immediately. There is no better way to prevent divorce than to become the kind of person your spouse enjoys and is attracted to. Combine that with good separation boundaries and your spouse will fall in love with you again.

This method also works if neither you nor your spouse want to divorce

I have heard that many people separate to work on themselves, but in my opinion, they work on the wrong things. They work on figuring out what would make them happy instead of self-improvement. They work on figuring out why they are not happy in their marriage instead of working to be an enjoyable spouse. 

(11:01)

If just you or you and your spouse work on becoming more attractive, with more attractive lifestyles and validate each other just like you would do if you were single, your relationship will grow. There is no way for it not to. That will make you happier. 

Work first, be happy with the results. That is the correct order. 

Repeatedly talking about your relationship problems provides no assurance that your relationship will get better. Becoming more attractive means enhancing various aspects of yourself and your life that not only your spouse will enjoy, but you will also enjoy. You will become more secure and enjoy your life more.

Have you fallen for this false teaching: I have to take care of myself before I can take care of others?

Christians will recognize that this is counter to what God teaches. God teaches us to focus on loving Him and others and that He will take care of us. 

(12:01)

If you want more love, then focus more on loving

Give and it will be given to you. Luke, 6:38.

You reap what you sow. Galatians, 6:79.

Working on yourself is for your spouse, and for you

It is good to work on yourself, but don’t have the mindset that you are going to work on yourself, just for yourself, or just for your spouse. Work on yourself for you and your spouse. Those are not mutually exclusive things.

You are not working on reconciling for yourself. At least you shouldn’t be. You are doing it for both you and your spouse. Always go for the win-win. Being a better parent is good for both you and your kids. Being a better friend is likewise good for you and your friends. Being a better employee or employer is good for both you and those you work with.

(13:00)

Learning to be relaxed, friendly, validating, and similar is not some sacrifice you make for your spouse. It is self-growth that will help you and your spouse both enjoy your relationship more. And, it will boost your other relationships as well. 

My clients who stop focusing on convincing their spouse of anything and instead focus on core relationship skills, often make very rapid improvement in their marriage.

How about you? Do you want to go down the path of being fearful and pushing your spouse away with unattractively trying to convince your spouse to give you another chance? Or, do you want to get started becoming the kind of person your spouse looks forward to seeing every single time?

How to get started reconciling with your spouse

(13:50)

The place to get started is always the same and that is where your spouse is emotionally. Don’t try to get your spouse to start from where you are. Work with whatever interaction you have, helping your spouse to feel relaxed with you and to enjoy interacting with you, even if you are in the process of separating or divorcing. Then, keep doing that until your spouse is looking forward to talking with you everyday.

When my clients say that things have changed so much that their spouse is now pursuing them, both my client and I have achieved our goal.

Becoming the kind of man or woman your spouse would not want to lose, and looks forward to being with more than anyone else, is the single best method you will discover for reconciling. 

This is what I help people to do everyday. If they can do it, you can to. See my re-connections coaching package if you would like me to help you progress from where you are to where you want to be.

(14:51)

 [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.