9 Steps To Save Your Marriage For The Husband

Nine Steps
to Save Your
Marriage
for Husbands
Wife’s Module
TEXT
by Kenneth Johnston
W9-uhwm

Wife’s Module
1© Visionary Publications, Inc.W9-uhwm
You’re in the right place if you are a wife whose husband’s indiscretion has threatened
your marriage. We’re the people who help save marriages and avoid divorce. Your
husband came to us because he wants to save his marriage.
Why This Module
We wrote this for wives because we found it’s critical that you clearly understand what
your husband has said to you and exactly what he means. This is a deeply troubling time
for you and your husband. Feelings are strong. Your thoughts race. Self-talk can come in
torrents. It’s sometimes difficult to get things across to each other.
So in this module we’ll deal with these things:
1. What is your husband saying to you?
2. What will he learn from our course?
3. How will he be different — if you forgive him — and resume your marriage?
4. How divorce will affect your life if you choose not to forgive.
5. A few thoughts on the benefits of forgiveness.
What Is Your Husband Saying
Let’s start with what your husband is saying to you:
• He is deeply apologetic. He is sorry that he risked his marriage and risked losing
you.
• He feels mortified, ashamed, and embarrassed that his foolishness put his whole
life at risk. He loves you. He wants your marriage to endure and he wants to learn
to appreciate you and your marriage more.
• He now realizes that his indiscretions had nothing to do with you.
• He had unrealistic expectations about his ability to resist temptation.
• He felt like something was missing, not because you or the marriage was at fault.
• He had a man’s vulnerability, and he gave in to it. He wasn’t thinking.
• We will teach him to think, wisely, before he does anything reckless again..
• We will teach him to cope, and how to create a really great relationship.
• He wants to build that relationship with you, and he’ll do all the work. You’ll get
all the benefits.
Relationships
Each person creates his or her own experience of a relationship. We’ll show you how that
works in a minute. You may have created a better experience of your marriage than he
did.
His coping was not very good. He made herself dissatisfied, and his dissatisfaction made
him vulnerable. He won’t make that mistake again.
We’ll show you what we showed your husband, about relationships and coping. We
won’t be teaching you about coping here, but if you’re interested, it’s all taught in the

Wife’s Module
2© Visionary Publications, Inc.W9-uhwm
books that come with your husband’s course. Here is something about coping that your
husband will be learning.
Relationship Diagram
This is a diagram of how relationships usually begin. The different phases are Attraction,
Courting, maybe Infatuation, then Reality, and last, Coping.
Notice the vertical bars. These represent the range and strength of the feelings partners
have. The top of any of the bars represents a strong good feeling, the bottom a bad
feeling. At the beginning, most of your feelings are good. The few bad feelings — little
niggling concerns — aren’t very strong. So, on balance between your good feelings and
bad feelings about your partner, your total feelings are well above the neutral line.
We say that if you experienced infatuation — wow — this is the stuff of romance and
magic. If you were infatuated with him, you loved every little thing about him. He was
the funniest, the cleverest, the handsomest. You were blinded by infatuation. Even his
failings were not so bad. You might think: “I never know when he’ll show up. That
means he’s spontaneous. When he drinks too much, he gets so hilarious. When he ignores
me, it shows that he’s cool,” and so on. The worst feelings you might have about him
during this phase were better than the best feelings you might have had for any previous
suitors.
Then, of course, reality kicks back in because infatuation only lasts two, or three, or
maybe six months, and all of a sudden everything isn’t quite so funny, or cute, or reliable,
or caring.
The Relationship Diagram
The purpose of attraction, courting, and infatuation are simply to help humans find a
mate, and bond into a couple. Once a couple is formed, attraction and flirting are natural

Wife’s Module
3© Visionary Publications, Inc.W9-uhwm
and pleasant to feel from other women, but are not to be acted upon. Genes,
chromosomes, and hormones prepare males for a lifetime of responding to attraction and
flirting. Adulthood, maturity, and marriage are often enough to allow men to defend
against their impulses. But, as in your husband’s case, sometimes it takes a little more
direct instruction. We’ll teach him to look! but don’t touch! Between your reaction to his
lapse, and our instruction we can be pretty sure he’ll learn. It’s clear that you’ve gotten
his attention. Good for you.
Coping
Coping is what happens for the rest of your lives. The keys to successful coping are
having
• many good feelings — that are strong — and last
• and fewer bad feelings — milder and shorter.
How will we teach your husband