Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack

Wife Resist Reconciling? How to Make Progress

• Jack Ito PhD, Psychologist, Author, and Relationship Coach • Season 4 • Episode 7

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Break through resistance and rebuild your connection

In this must-listen episode of Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach Dr. Jack Ito delivers straightforward, no-nonsense strategies for overcoming resistance and rebuilding a genuine connection with your spouse. If you're ready to break through the barriers that keep your marriage stuck, you’re in the right place.

What You'll Learn:

  • Overcoming resistance: Discover practical techniques for handling your wife’s reluctance to reconcile without creating more conflict.
  • Building a positive connection: Learn how to create a relaxed atmosphere and align your agendas so your wife feels safe and open to reconnecting.

Ready to transform your relationship with practical, real-world steps? Tune in, subscribe, and dive into the show notes for extra resources that will accelerate your journey to a more loving, connected marriage.

Some key takeaways from today's podcast:

  • Address resistance by avoiding overwhelming gestures.
  • Focus on creating a relaxed, positive environment for your wife.
  • Take small, manageable steps to gradually rebuild your connection.
  • Learn strategies that work in the real world—no sugar-coating, just results.

More relationship help for you:

Wife Resist Reconciling? How to Make Progress

(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: If your wife is resistant to reconciliation, remember that the best way to handle resistance is not to create it in the first place. Here are five ways to prevent it.

Resistance isn’t something your wife naturally wants to do. It isn’t part of her nature to purposely reject you or be cruel. If it were, you wouldn’t want to reconcile with her in the first place. In reality, her resistance to reconciliation is her way of protecting herself.

Is your wife relaxed with you?

(0:59)

If your wife isn’t relaxed, she isn’t going to want to talk or do much of anything except relax. How about you? When you’re stressed, do you want even more stress, or do you want to get away from whatever is stressing you? And if you do get away, do you really want to jump into another stressful situation? Probably not.

Creating a relaxed atmosphere

When you’re single, your best first dates are those where you do something relaxing, behave in a calm, agreeable way, and avoid stressing your date out. A relaxed atmosphere prepares the fertile soil for her feelings to grow—provided you can be attractive and use good connection skills. Likewise, these same principles are key when it comes to helping your wife be open to reconciliation later on. In either case, you have to be able to help her relax if you want things to go well.

For your wife, this means consistently showing a relaxed demeanor every time you interact. It also means avoiding approaching her when she’s stressed—regardless of what’s causing that stress. And it won’t hurt to do other things that help reduce her stress, as long as it doesn’t make her feel pursued by you.

(2:07)

She thinks you have a different agenda

What do I mean by a different agenda? It’s when you want to reconcile while she’s leaning toward divorce, or when you’re eager to discuss your relationship and she just wants to watch TV. I’m sure you’ve experienced moments when she wanted to do something completely different from what you had in mind.

Having a different agenda isn’t really a problem—as long as it’s not intended to harm your wife and you keep it to yourself. Think back to your days of single dating: if you go out with a woman who just wants to have fun, and you suddenly start talking about marriage, babies, and a house on the lake, she’s likely not going to see you again. It’s not that your desires are wrong; they just aren’t what she’s looking for at that moment

Your agenda and your spouse’s agenda need to overlap somewhere—even if it’s simply to avoid conflict. 

(3:03)

It won’t always be that agenda–it’s just a place to start. The next matching agenda might be just to relax together. And so on. What she wants right now should, in some way, be what you want right now. 

Avoiding unwanted actions

The moment you bring up something that doesn’t match her agenda, she’ll shut down.

When you’re rebuilding a very badly damaged relationship, you have to be careful. As your relationship improves, you’ll be able to differ more without disconnecting. 

Make sure you are not trying to get her to do something she doesn’t want to do or give her something she doesn’t want to get

Good intentions are not the measure of good actions.

Maybe your wife loved receiving flowers for your anniversary two years ago—but that doesn’t mean she wants them now. She might have enjoyed intimacy before, but that doesn’t mean she wants it now. 

(4:00)

No matter what your intentions are, offering something she doesn’t want will create resistance to reconciliation. Explaining your intentions won’t make it any better—explanations never do.

Explaining to a woman you didn’t intend to make her feel upset never stops her from being upset.

Don’t give me a spider—I hate them. Even if your intentions are good, they won’t suddenly make me want a spider. Giving your wife flowers at this time might be similar to throwing a spider on her in the shower. Don’t think about what you want to do–think about what she wants you to do.

Moving too fast

I know you want to reconcile as soon as possible, but that won’t happen if you get ahead of your wife emotionally. You have to rebuild your relationship step by step—small, measured moves that don’t trigger a defensive response. 

(5:00)

The smaller the step, the more natural it will seem, and the less damage you’ll do if your wife isn’t ready. Think of it like dipping your toe into the water once you think it’s warm; don’t just go diving in.

Many of my male clients ask, ‘Should I ask my wife out on a date?’ I then ask, ‘Do you think your wife wants to go on a date?’ Typically, they answer ‘no.’ So I tell them not to ask her out until she’s ready. It might seem like common sense, but it’s all too easy to start thinking about what might build your relationship—and then try to get her to do that. That’s not the right approach.

Working within her comfort zone

The right approach is to help her enjoy more of what she’s already comfortable with. If she’s dating you, focus on making those dates truly enjoyable by being a great date. If she isn’t dating but is still talking with you, work on being a great conversation partner. By excelling within her comfort zone, you’ll be able to take small steps that gradually progress your relationship to a deeper level.

(6:05)

A prime example is how some men end up enjoying more intimacy with their wives simply by being better at both dating and conversation. Master the step you’re on now if you want to move on to the next level.

Doing too much (even if she likes it sometimes)

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. That’s true whether you’re at an all-you-can-eat buffet, riding a bicycle, or even sleeping. Even if your friend really likes you, he probably doesn’t want you visiting him every day or talking for hours.

When you’re trying to reconcile, you need to trim down your interactions—removing the neutral or negative moments. If your wife can enjoy talking with you for ten minutes, but you end up talking for thirty, you need to cut it down to ten. Better yet, trim it to eight minutes to ensure you don’t hit that point where she’s had enough.

(7:02)

I’m not talking about reducing contact so that she misses you. I’m not a fan of no-contact strategies (they only work with needy, dependent women). What I’m suggesting is that you aim for your interactions to be as close as possible to 100% by:

  1. Cutting out the things that make her not enjoy being around you.
  2. Doing things that help her enjoy being with you more. And,
  3. Reducing the overall time together to prevent negative or neutral moments.

Speaking of dating, a good 30-minute date is far better than a two-hour date where one hour is enjoyable and the last hour is dull or negative. Think positive time, not just the quantity of time. And that applies to every relationship you have.

If you ever hear your wife say she wants space, it’s likely because:

(7:57)

  • You’re interacting with her too much.
  • She isn’t relaxed around you.
  • She doesn’t feel you’re on the same page.
  • She senses you’re trying to give her something she doesn’t want or get her to do something she doesn’t want to do.

Example: Daniel’s journey

The challenge

Daniel was a client who, like most of my clients, desperately wanted to reconcile with his wife—but she wanted none of it. His approach was to be overly sweet in the way he talked, do extra chores around the house, and try to get her to talk about working on the marriage every day. That approach worked about as well as fishing in the sand. Needless to say, Daniel grew increasingly hopeless as his wife continued to avoid him. The writing was on the wall—if Daniel didn’t change his approach quickly, he was in danger of losing his wife. That’s when we started working together.

The strategy

I helped Daniel see that while his motivation was good, his behavior was having the opposite effect of what he wanted. He was trying to flip his wife from not wanting to be with him to wanting to be with him in one giant leap. 

(9:04)

In order to get someone to do what you want in one step, they need to be only one step away—and Daniel was many steps away. We needed to start with the first step, which would then lead to the second, the third, and so on, until his wife showed a renewed interest in their relationship.

All Daniel needed to do was focus on the steps that would help his wife feel less compelled to avoid him. If he could help her feel more at ease, their relationship would slowly start moving in the right direction—step by step.

In Daniel’s case, the disconnect was so severe that his wife wasn’t even interested in being friends. That was our starting point. From our very first session, I advised him to:

  • Create a specifically worded empathy message to his wife,
  • gradually decrease his contact with her,
  • avoid bringing up the relationship, and,
  • simply be relaxed and friendly, without trying to force conversation about their problems.

(10:02)

The results

This change typically helps a spouse feel less stressed—and that’s exactly what happened with Daniel. In our second session, he reported that although the first few days were really tough, his new approach paid off by the end of the week. His wife appeared more relaxed around him and less rejecting.

Even though the relationship was still far from where Daniel wanted it to be, he learned to focus on the progress he was making rather than on how far he still had to go. It’s crucial to measure movement toward a goal instead of constantly reminding yourself that you haven’t reached it yet.

Success comes down to the right steps, in the right order, at the right pace

The man who plants seeds one day and expects vegetables the next has the wrong idea about gardening. You must understand that good results take time, so focus on what you can do today.

(10:57)

My job is to help people move their relationships forward. It always starts by helping my client meet his wife at the emotional level where she is right now. Once you’re on the same page, your wife can begin to enjoy being with you again. Because, just like on a first date, no matter how badly you want something, you have to help that woman enjoy the experience—or else you won’t be seeing her again.

Three options for reconciling your marriage

You have three options when it comes to reconciling your marriage:

  1. Keep trying to convince your wife to reconcile,
  2. Figure out each of the necessary steps and work on them one by one, or
  3. Work with a relationship coach to ensure you get each step right.

The choice you make will depend on whether you’re the type of person who likes to figure out every little step or the type who wants to ensure that things progress as smoothly as possible.

Coaching for Re-Connecting

As a reconciliation coach, I look at every relationship problem with two things in mind:

(12:03)

  1. The goal of helping my clients reconcile, and
  2. Finding the best place to start the relationship journey.

I believe that even the most challenging situations can be overcome if you break them down into small, manageable steps. I am so sure there is a way to reconcile every relationship that I offer a 100% money back guarantee if I can’t find some actions you can take to start making your relationship better.

If your actions aren’t making your relationship better, you are probably starting at the wrong place.

Start where your relationship is now—not where you wish it were. Help your spouse enjoy the level of connection you currently share, and then take a small step to build from there. I’ve guided thousands of people through these steps, and I’d be happy to do the same for you. You can find my Re-Connections Coaching Package at coachjackito.com.

(13:03)

[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.