How I Saved My Marriage

Truthfully, even though I was getting slightly better at separating him and the rest of my life just to survive, if I was honest with myself, I loved him and did not want a divorce. I believe marriage is forever. I believed this man was my soul mate. At that time, divorce was the worst possible outcome, but I was tired of feeling so out of control.

In the days before our outing, I read both books, cover to cover twice. I did not want my desperation to show, but I didn’t want to be unapproachable either. And, no matter whether we stayed married or not, I wanted to at least be able to look this man in the eye and maintain a cordial relationship.

I memorized my road map and learned that what I needed to do most probably wouldn’t come naturally, but nothing in the book was hard or asked me to do something that I wasn’t comfortable with.

Save My Marriage Today by Amy Waserman is very big on not giving your power away, yet communicating fully with an open heart, which is what I vowed to do. The Magic Of Making (and Mend the Marriage too) stresses that you should be friendly, light-hearted and happy with yourself. Being happy with yourself is a huge key because you’re not going to attract the relationship you want if you yourself are miserable.  Without really meaning too, I kind of combined these methods with pretty convincing results.

Begging, stalking, make promises, or acting desperate or volatile (which I had been doing) will only make you more unattractive to your spouse and will only make the things which prompted the divorce firmer in his mind. I didn’t want this. I also (for about the millionth time) watched The Magic Of Making Up’s video on the website to calm myself down. However, with that not available, you can also watch the Mend the Marriage video as often as you need (which is available for anyone to see) since it is very straightforward and calming. The author calls himself a geek, but honestly, I find him very soothing and matter of fact. He’s very open and honest about the mistakes you are probably making that you must stop.

Both books offer several concrete ways to do this without seeming desperate or that you are playing games. Everything you do needs to be genuine or something you are comfortable with. If you just play games, it will eventually come back to haunt you because you can’t maintain a facade that is not really you.

Back to the story – The foursome went extremely well. We had the same fun time we used to when we all lived in the same town. I tried to have no expectations beyond this night and promised myself if all we built was a friendship, I could live with that – somehow.

Believe it or not, the calls started to be initiated by my husband. The new me created from the pages of the book (who had been hiding somewhere all this time) was apparently pretty appealing.

According to the Mend the Marriage, this was EXACTLY what I wanted. Sometimes, I was “busy” when my husband called. I needed him to know that I too was a valuable person with goals, hobbies, and interests, which is what he loved about me in the first place.

We started out just talking. I took this very slowly. One day at a time just repeating what seemed to be working – light-hearted, friendly, but interested. Once that became comfortable and frequent, I moved on to the next steps. Eventually, the talks on the phone became small meetings or outings. Again, I moved as directed and as was now comfortable. I wanted to be happy with where this went because any relationship based on lies or my faking it would fail anyway.

No more desperation. No more giving my power away. I held my head sky high but my heart was wide open. This process took months. It may have gone quicker, but I was too scared to push.
I had a few setbacks where I got cocky, strayed from what the books were telling me, and royally messed up. These mistakes took serious clean up, but I took it one day at a time. Still, there was a good bit of delay from this, but I knew there was lifetime at stake so I didn’t beat myself up too much.

A few months down the road, I knew the 60 days period of the divorce had come and gone. I certainly didn’t bring it up. I just kept doing what I had been doing and things kept improving, although, for the longest time, we didn’t specifically discuss it. We just enjoyed the positive changes that began to make the relationship feel much more effortless.

A huge weight was lifted because I knew that even if we were to split up, at least it would be on good terms where we could respect one another and walk away with good feelings. I didn’t know though whether that would mean parting as friends or reconciling as a married couple. Here’s what happened.

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Filed under: Pursuer Becomes Pursued by admin