A letter to reconcile your marriage: what you should and should not include

I recently heard from a wife who asked me to help her “write a letter to help me reconcile my marriage with my husband.” The two had been having problems for a while, but in recent weeks things had escalated to the point where the husband had been hinting that he would move out and eventually file for divorce. So the wife felt pressured to come up with something to prevent this from happening. She hoped that the correct letter would do the trick.

I very much understand the appeal of a card. You can open your heart without having to worry about being interrupted or stumbling over your words or becoming overly emotional. Sometimes it’s easier to write delicate words than to say them. But unfortunately, all too often I see people make serious mistakes with these types of cards. I’ll discuss these common mistakes in the next article, tell you how to avoid them, and discuss what your letter should include with the highest chance of success.

Understanding basic human psychology before writing the letter that will hopefully reconcile your marriage: Before you begin, it helps to understand exactly what you want to accomplish with the letter. In most cases, people hope that the correspondence will help their spouse commit to saving the marriage. They hope to change their spouse’s perceptions and feelings from negative to positive.

To that end, it is very important to understand how your letter will be perceived. Probably the biggest mistake I see people make is that they focus on themselves in the letter (instead of their spouse). They put most of their attention on their own feelings and their own fears. Some examples are phrases like “I don’t know what I would do if I lost you.” However, “my heart is breaking and I pray that we can work this out.” It’s okay to add some of these phrases to your letter, but be very careful that the overall tone of your letter is not one of negativity and fear.

It is very important to understand basic human nature and psychology. People will move towards those emotions, things and people that make them feel more positive and optimistic about their situation. And, people will turn away and have negative perceptions towards those things that bring them down. Make sure your letter isn’t overwhelmingly negative and isn’t based on dark emotions like fear, jealousy, or possession. Review it several times to make sure you’re not constantly mentioning yourself, how you feel, or what you want.

Consider who your audience is. It is your spouse or partner. Therefore, the letter should be primarily about them and what you are going to do now to make things better for both of you. Keep in mind that they want to know how and why things are really going to be different. Nice words are nice, but most people will see through this and be more interested in how your actions will directly affect them.

It’s human nature for people to want to know what’s in it for them instead of what’s in it for you. Focus on painting a picture of how you are actually going to make things better. Of course, this requires that you have a workable plan before you sit down to write the letter. But that’s okay because it never hurts to really think about how you’re going to make some real, lasting improvements in your marriage.

Often it is your actions over time that matter, not your fleeting words. And very often, if your marriage is in trouble, your spouse will already be somewhat averse to what he has to say anyway. So yes, a card can open doors for you, but to get through that door, you’ll usually need to rely on your quick, measured, and decisive action.

Finally, don’t get too hung up on how you’re going to “work” your marriage. Sometimes when spouses hear this phrase, she paints a very negative picture. Many people don’t really want to work hard with their feelings and mark the marital time clock. You can usually say the same thing in a different way to make it sound much more appealing.

You’ll often have much better luck if instead of telling them you’re going to “work things out” with them, you focus on getting your hot, passionate, and connected relationship back to where it used to be. be. This gives them more to look forward to and gives them an incentive to get on board.

Here’s another clue. Men or husbands will often be more responsive to referrals to improve their physical relationship. They crave physical intimacy which means you feel attracted to and appreciated by them. Women or wives also want to be appreciated, but the emotions will usually mean more to them than the physical (although this is important to us as well). Therefore, if you are writing a letter to your husband, it is better to focus on a physical connection rather than alluding to how you are going to “work” on your problems. In reality, both spouses often want the same things, but they will often show it in very different ways. Therefore, it is important to keep these things in mind.

At the end of the day, these are just stop words on a page. If you don’t keep your promises and follow through with action, then it’s almost better that you don’t even write the letter because your spouse will come to doubt his sincerity even more and his job will be that much harder in the end. But I have seen several carefully written letters be the catalyst for marriage reconciliation, as long as the right actions are followed.