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MARRIAGE

Winning Your Husband Back

By Gary Smalley, Dr. Greg Smalley, and Deborah Smalley

I was the latest and best new driver when a fairly new golfer bought me. Right away we were a special team. With me he hit the ball farther and straighter.

My golfer told everyone how special I was and how he had never played better because of me. He took me into the clubhouse after a round and continued to sing my praises. When we got home, he polished and shined me and took me into his room between uses instead of leaving me in the garage with his other clubs. I felt so special and pampered. I tried to help turn through the shot and climb high on the backswing and follow through.

Occasionally, we hit a ball into the water or the rough, but we won many tournaments and he won lots of money with me. Sometimes I could feel his grip tighten or we swung too fast and we mishit a ball. On those occasions, he would sometimes become very emotional and blamed me, but then he cheered up, regained his balance, and we continued winning.

We began playing more and more and his grip steadily tightened and he swung harder. We hit balls in all sorts of bad places. My golfer became progressively more frustrated and angry and blamed me every time. He would throw me angrily into the bag without my cover. Once he even threw me into the lake only to come to get me later. I tried to follow his swing; but the line and tempo were off. I couldnt turn through the shot as before.

His anger grew and he quit taking me into the clubhouse after a round or into his room at night. He even told everyone that he didnt know why he had bought me and that he had never hit well with me. I was so insulted and hurt.

Several people suggested lessons with the "pro," but my golfer refused, saying that there was nothing wrong with his swing. He said the faults were the crowding of the course, the weather, his headache, the noise made by the other golfers, and the club--that I was too long, too stiff, too light, weighted incorrectly, and so on.

Finally, one day he exploded after a bad shot and threw me down on the ground after hitting the cart with me. He was so angry! When we got home, he threw me into the corner of the garage. Thank goodness I had my cover on.

I didnt go onto the course anymore. The new clubs he bought to replace me soon joined me in the corner of the garage, saying that his grip was too tight for them, also, and that he swung too fast.

One day, I was put back in his bag and taken to the golf professional for lessons. A swing flaw was corrected here and there. Some of my dints were fixed and I was regripped and polished. Neither partner was changed, but rather, both were updated. Soon we were hitting the ball far and straight, just like before. We began winning again and were the envy of the other players.

This was an "emotional word picture"~1 we received, written by a woman whose husband had walked out of their marriage. She went on to write, "David, I want you to understand how I feel about our life together and divorce. Until you wanted out of the relationship and would not seek a life with me, I had always felt secure in the assurance that we were committed to each other for a lifetime. It was the cement foundation that gave me the awareness that whatever difficulties we faced, we would work to solve them together--that we were fully committed. I never doubted your commitment. Now I feel like the driver in the garage. It only takes the decision and the golf pro to resurface the commitment with new skills and knowledge and build a deeper intimacy. It takes a decision."

As the above writer understood, the process of winning your husband back requires several important ingredients, like finding "golf pros" (Christ, experts, family, friends, mentors, and other support), making a decision to love and remain married, and developing new skills and knowledge. Our hope is that you will find the keys to these important issues, as well as others, within the pages of this book. Join us as we begin the journey of winning back your husband.

This Book Is for You!

This book is for women who have noticed a distance forming between them and their husband. That gap may be a Grand Canyon chasm that seems virtually impossible to span. Or it may be a crack that ever so slowly widens and uproots the foundations of your marriage like a tree root gradually pushing against a sidewalk until first a crack then a fissure breaks through. What was once a smooth, solid, and level walk together is now uneven and breaking apart.

The distance growing in your relationship may have been suddenly precipitated or slowly and imperceptibly prying apart and stretching the seams of closeness that once knit you together in a love you expected to last forever.

Winning Your Husband Back is a book for you if youre a wife . . .

• whose husband may be emotionally gone but not physically absent.
• who has been involved in an affair and now desires to restore your marriage.
• whose husband has been in an affair and you want to win him back.
• whose lifestyle or career has kept you too busy to stay emotionally or physically close to your husband.
• who has focused on relationships with your children and neglected your husband.

Determine Where You Are

Its time to assess where your marital relationship stands right now. How much distance is there between you and your husband? Put an X on the continuum below marking where the relationship is:

Beginning to Emotional Physical Alienation Divorce

Grow apart separation separation

The farther you are to the right of center, the more difficult it will be to reverse the direction you are headed. In making this assessment, you have taken an important step. You have faced the reality of where you are.

If you find it difficult to mark the continuum, you may still be in denial. Denial is the refusal to accept or to see circumstances as they really are. Tell yourself the truth. If you have a mentor, ask her where she would put an X on the line. See how close your perception of reality is to hers.

Once you have admitted where the relationship is, you have some choices to make.

1. You can decide to remain angry and blame yourself or your husband. This will result in being stuck where you are until the pain becomes so unbearable that you finally admit, "I cant go on like this forever." Anger and blame become terribly self-destructive as well as deadly to any possible future reconciliation with your husband.

   Anger is to marriage what termites and rot are to trying to rebuild a home. Why put up new Sheetrock and wallpaper on a wall whose studs are eaten away by termites? While the surface may look great for the short-term, the building is doomed to collapse until both the termites and rot are removed.

   The same is true for your marital relationship. Being stuck in the mire of anger and blame will only cause your marriage to deteriorate further until it finally disintegrates.

2. You can decide to grieve and stay depressed. When a patient is terminally ill, the family may start grieving over their loss even though the ill loved one is still breathing. Terminally ill patients often report that they feel abandoned by family who have already started preparing for death while the patient still lives. If you are grieving over your marriage, you may already be filling out its death certificate. What husband would want to be around a constantly depressed wife? Yes, the dead should bury the dead. But, if the marriage isnt dead, dont bury it prematurely.
3. You can decide to bargain with God or your husband. This attitude is characterized by, "If you do __________, then I will do _________." Bargaining seeks to manipulate God or a husband into being who we want them to be or into doing what we want them to do. If a wife decides to take this action, she tries to negotiate with her estranged husband the terms of their reconciliation. Or she tries to get God to accept and bless her plan for putting the marriage back together. Bargaining is doomed to dismal failure. It will only push your husband farther away.
4. Or, you can simply decide to assess the situation realistically, accept reality, and refuse to stay stuck. Now you are ready for the next step.

You have taken the first step, which is to recognize that distance exists between you and your husband--either physically or emotionally. He may or may not be living under the same roof as you. He may or may not want to work on rebuilding a marriage relationship. He is not the key; you are! If you desire to win him back, then its time for you to start just as Norma did in our marriage years ago.

Too Close for Comfort--How Norma Won Me Back

Winning your husband back strikes close to home. I < P back.< me winning toward steps crucial first, those took she how and lose to began words own her in you with share Norma asked have I us. separated that distance relational of miles the across together back come issue faced marriage, our Early right. Thats back--me! husband win well knows Norma, wife, my say should or comfort; for close too almost its because subject this know>

Six weeks after we were married in 1964, I started feeling very lonely. I had never felt that before as a single person, so I didnt really know what was happening. We were in a new city and lived in a new apartment. As I examined my feelings, trying to understand why I felt so alone and why I didnt feel super excited about being married, I realized that everything in Garys life seemed more important than I was.

He was a full-time student and youth director at our new church. This meant long hours away from home studying and attending youth events such as basketball games. He was so swamped. Of course, by this time I was pregnant. That brought in another person who needed his time and attention. He tried to fit me in somewhere, but as the months passed by, we began to grow more and more distant from each other. I began to feel very lonely. We had never had relationship training. Therefore, I didnt know how to express my true feelings to get him to respond in a positive way. I would say in frustration, "You dont really spend any time with me. When youre not in school, youre over at the church counseling or meeting with young people. I dont know anyone at the church. I sit in church alone." I think he thought that I was being ridiculous. He would always answer defensively, "You knew when we got married that God would be first place in my life. That the people in ministry would be second, and you would be third." I think the saddest thing is that we did not have the insight to know that we should go for counseling.

Each time this negative interaction took place, the distance between us seemed to grow wider and wider. He usually walked away and I sat in silence, stuffing my feelings back further. The worse part was that I began to feel like a nag as I "reminded" Gary of my relational needs. It felt very hurtful. I think deeper than that I felt something was very wrong. But I didnt have the knowledge and training to figure it out. So I just accepted that and every so often would talk about it. Thus, this became our pattern for the first three years of our marriage.

There were many times I felt guilty for demanding to be a higher priority to my husband. I really respected his strong love for the Lord and his dedication to minister to people. Those were the very things that attracted me to him, the reason I really wanted to marry him. I couldnt figure out why I had this longing to be higher in his priorities. None of it really made sense to me. Most of the time I would hide my true feelings because Id wear out during a confrontation. Gary has a much stronger personality and I like peace at all costs. So I would be silent, but hurting and longing inside.

During this time Gary had started going to a seminar put on by Bill Gothard. It was wonderful. It was the first light of hope that I saw at the end of this tunnel. Several times after the seminar, Gary asked me how I felt and earnestly wrote it down. But after several months, it had little effect. Now he was trying to become an expert in his field. That meant more time with the church people and with the youth group. He was in heaven professionally. The other thing that started to come into play was his personal time. On days off or during any free time, he wanted to watch football or go fishing with somebody. I grew more and more frustrated as I felt pushed a notch lower.

We began to argue more frequently, which only added more distance between us. So then he would say, "Hey, I have an opportunity to spend my day off fishing with some of the church men. What do you think?" I was insulted. Since his days and his evenings were spent at the church with these people, I couldnt believe that he would want to take off time from me and our small children to fish. It was one thing to submit to him doing Gods work at the church. But I had to draw the line at fishing. Werent we more important than a bass?

At the same time I remember the spiritual guilt trip I experienced for even saying how I felt, again feeling that a wife should always prefer what her husband wanted above her wants. But I still believed deep down inside that something was wrong. Something about his priorities seemed out of balance. But I didnt know how to confront him without feeling very mean inside. Rather than act that way in front of the children, I decided to let silence do my talking. This was how it was going to be and I would have to live with it.

About this time, Gary was getting more involved with Gothards seminar in Chicago. The Lord started to work in his life and he became interested in what was wrong with me. If someone would have asked Gary, "Do you love your wife more than fishing?" He would have obviously said, "Absolutely." If they had asked him if he loved the youth or the church people more, he would have answered by this time, "No." But he didnt understand that he was not valuing me as one of his priorities.

One day Gary came home unexpectedly at lunchtime. The children were asleep. He asked me several questions that caused my anxiety to skyrocket. "Norma," he said gently, "what do you see as being wrong with our relationship? Why dont you feel that youre number one--an important priority in my life?" I stared at him in silence for a few seconds. I didnt want to answer. These times were so hard for me because they could last hours and might finally end with a "Proverbs 31 woman" lecture. But Gary was persistent. I rolled my eyes and thought to myself, Ill do this one last time.

We talked for hours--much like in the past; however, this time instead of receiving a reprimand to become more Proverbs 31*-*like, a light went on in Garys head. He really understood what I was saying.

As Gary repeated things back to me I felt that he had the head knowledge, although I didnt have a lot of hope that there would be a change. But because of my lifelong commitment, there was no other choice. My faith in the Lord dictated that I accept that Gary did want to change. That he desired to learn about my needs. That was a real marking in time for us. He had been growing in his relationship with the Lord. He began to understand that I was fifth, even sixth place in his life. However, until I realized something about myself, I wasnt yet on the right path that would "win" my husband back.

Around this time, I began to realize that my level of relational satisfaction did not begin with my husband making me feel like a priority. Instead, I needed to reach out to him and begin to win him back in our marriage. This understanding was a foundational principle that I had to learn. Because of my commitment to our marriage I realized that I needed to become a team player. In other words, instead of my waiting for Gary to make changes, I needed to encourage him in what he was doing. I needed to praise him when he did little things, which seemed kind of ridiculous to me. They were so obvious, but I realized I had to let him know when he did something small that made me feel very important. When he said, "Tonight I dont want to go over to the church. I just want to be with you," I needed to make that a big thing so he could see some results. I would say to him, "Gary, you made me feel like such a priority when you stayed home instead of going to the church. Thank you." It was amazing. You could see his brain computing and analyzing my response: If thats the response I get by staying home from church, imagine if I stayed home from fishing! He began to make me truly feel like a priority that day. I learned a valuable lesson in those early years: Youre more likely to get positive results when you build up someone for what they do right, than when you correct them for what they do wrong. Taking responsibility for myself became part of the foundation that God used to strengthen our marriage. I also had to be courageous at times when we slid backward. My responsibility was to share my feelings even when it meant a possible argument or worse--a lecture.

We were still not in a situation where we were getting any training in husband-wife relationships, other than what Gary was getting from Bill Gothard, which really centered around his life with the Lord. Subsequently, my relationship with the Lord became a top priority. I was driven to start studying and started reading in Genesis to try to understand.

One of the neat things that I felt I received in Scripture was understanding that when a man and a woman marry, he is to leave his family and commit to her. Its Gods perfect design. I didnt have to feel guilty that God wanted me to feel that I was number one. It wasnt selfish. Actually, when I felt like number six, it was like a thermometer that would inform Gary and let me know that we were not growing together--but in opposite directions. That was a tremendous boost for me to see that I need to be even more active in spending time talking with Gary about our relationship.

Now Is the Time to Start Winning Your Husband Back

I (Gary) am so proud of Norma. She didnt wait until I started doing things right before she began taking steps to draw closer to me. Notice that she took the initiative to begin to affirm and encourage me. Instead of nagging me about my overwork, she began to find ways to team up with me in those areas that were important to me. She also grew closer to God. And she stopped feeling guilty about wanting more from our relationship.

You may be on a slow slide or a rapid free fall toward separation or even divorce in your marriage. Either way, now is the best time for you to start winning your husband back through taking positive steps in loving the Lord, yourself, and your husband.

What's Your Plan?

Imagine building a home without a foundation or on a foundation of sand or mud. Renovating or redecorating your home would be senseless because at any moment the whole house could collapse because of the faulty foundation. The same is true of rebuilding a relationship with your husband. The original foundation for your marriage has disintegrated. Your house lies in shambles. Now that you have decided to start over, develop an overall plan to win your husband back.

When a certain room in your home is in disrepair or desperately needs renovating, simply moving the furniture around will not do. An interior designer would start at the foundation and work up, changing everything from flooring to wall coverings, window coverings, colors, furniture, and accessories. A complete overall plan or strategy would be necessary.

Likewise, winning your husband back necessitates more than simply rearranging the old stuff in your relationship. For example, you may decide to fight differently from the way you fought in the past, but if the same old furniture of unresolved anger is allowed to remain, then nothing will genuinely change in your marriage. Old mildewed carpet can ruin a room just like smelly, rotten anger from the past can ruin a marriage. As I said in Making Love Last Forever, the number one enemy of love in marriage is unresolved anger.

Lets return to our analogy of remodeling or building a house. You can begin to remodel a kitchen by taking a sledge-hammer and beginning to knock out the cabinets or you can obtain drafted plans and hire a contractor to help you renovate step-by-step.

To renovate, we need paint, plaster, plumbing, electrical wiring, and much, much more. We may not want to gut the entire house. The antique fireplace may be a valuable keepsake while the old wool carpet must go. Whatever we incorporate into the new house, it will be done according to plan, not whim.

What You Will Discover in This Book

The same is true for winning your husband back. With a house, you need a master site plan or survey that shows how everything will be laid out on your land. In marriage, you need a plan that provides you with a vision for today and the next step for tomorrow. Furthermore, your plan must start at the foundation. What design sketches or blueprints can you make to reinforce or build a foundation?

Join us as we learn together how to bridge the gaps that can form in marriage through infidelity, insensitivity, anger, hurt, bad attitudes, and unloving words and actions. In this book you will learn the following key elements to winning your husband back:

1. Establish Christ as your fulfillment in life. Often we plug into the wrong sources of fulfillment: people, places, and things. The foundation of your home must be Christ.
2. Become whole. A house is only as clean and sound as the housekeeper is. Your home will be a reflection of you. How are you doing--in body, soul, and spirit?
3. Get support. As you take on the task of remodeling your home, it is vital to get assistance from other homeowners, builders, carpenters, painters, and professionals.
4. Discover ways to energize yourself during the remodeling process. The task of rebuilding your house from the ground up can be exhausting. We will describe four key elements that can provide instant energy to keep you going.
5. Honor your husband. There are many things around your house that are extremely valuable--like rare antiques. We will show you how to identify and honor your husbands antiques.
6. Open your husbands closed spirit. Over the years, you have knocked holes in the walls, spilled things on the carpet, ripped the curtains, and caused other kinds of damage around the house. We will show you how to reverse the damage you may have caused to your home.
7. Forgive your husband. Over the years, your husband has caused damage to your house as well. The remodeling process will not turn out with the beauty you envision unless you can first forgive the past damage.
8. Keep further damage from happening. Establishing new boundaries can help you to build protection around your house to protect it from further emotional and physical damage.
9. Communicate. Good communication that listens, starts softly, and responds positively can keep you close to your husband. Discover that when you are free to lose him, you are free to win him back.
10. Become a student of your husband. In order to successfully rebuild, renovate, renew and restore your home, you must first learn what each room needs to be beautiful. We will help you to learn about your husbands most important relational needs.
11. What if he doesnt come back? Even if you are open to Christ and follow every principle within this book, your husband may choose not to respond to your rebuilding efforts. If this happens we will show you how to turn this into a victory.

Meet the Real "Experts"

In the following chapters, we will explore together how to win your husband back. We will be hearing from some wives who have shared their experiences with us about how they have sought to win their husbands back. What these women and scores of other couples have learned will help to encourage and strengthen your relationship not only with your husband but also with God and yourself.

Let us briefly introduce some of these wives to you now through a brief comment from each. You may find yourself feeling and saying the same types of things.

Debbie: It began with a distance that had been happening for years. We werent communicating at all. Then I began to realize he was paying a lot of attention to the lady we were working with . . . he would spend a lot of time at dental appointments and came home late. He was seeing her. I finally said to him, "Well, its me or her!"

Cindy: I was having a really tough time being emotionally supportive of him and he simply wasnt there for me. I had been sexually abused as a child. I needed his support but he had no clue how to treat a wife or how to be a husband. I looked to another man for support and got physically involved. I was anorexic, depressed, and suicidal. I was gone every weekend spending time with another man. I was angry with my husband, God, and myself. I needed him but didn't know how to respond to him.

Heidi: I had it all--a beautiful home, four wonderful children, and a prosperous lifestyle. Outwardly it looked to others like everything was right. Yet inside, I was dying. We had all the outward trappings of a relationship with each other and God, but inwardly there was nothing.

Sandi: The main reason I married my husband was because of his family devotion and loyalty. My family wasnt like that. I thought he would always be there for the kids and me. I always felt that in a husbands life his wife would come second to God. I never came second. I never came third. I never came fourth.

Brenda: I found that we were getting lost in busyness. It wasnt an affair thing. It was just busyness with work, other organizations, or overcommitting himself. I was getting lost in all the busyness. So what I started doing was to just let go of him. I pulled away and let him keep doing all his things.

Amber: When I got married, I took over and did what I wanted to do. Our home was not the way God intended our home to be. God at the head, man under Him, and then the wife. I knew the way we were doing it was wrong, because the burden was so heavy.

As these women will exemplify, your relationship with yourself is critically important in the quest to win your husband back. A good start to winning your husband back is to love yourself and love God. Centuries ago Jesus taught, "You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself."~2 Before you can find the power to love your husband and perhaps win him back; you need to learn once again how to love God and yourself.

At the end of this journey you might have your husband back, or he might refuse to return. Either way, you will be living with the Lord and yourself for a lifetime. A winning relationship with God and self will sustain you regardless of how your marital relationship is resolved. Right now, if you are willing to work at loving yourself, God, and your husband with the hope of winning him back, then this book is for you.

Finally, you may ask, "Why should I take the initiative--the first step?" Someone has to--why not you? If you desire to win your husband back, then some risk is involved. Yes, hurt and rejection are possibilities. Taking a first step does not guarantee quick or easy success. Its hard, risky and, at times, painful. Nonetheless, beginning to reduce the distance between you and your husband through understanding him can bring a significant thaw to your cooling relationship. And regardless of your husbands reaction--positive or negative, you will have accepted and affirmed who you are and who he is in Christ. And that "win" can never be stolen from you regardless of how your husband chooses to respond to you!

Your house may be beginning to crumble or already be in complete shambles. Its condition does not determine its future. You do. Winning your husband back begins with your relationship with Christ! So lets get started!

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