Hi Michele! I have a question that falls somewhere between recovering from infidelity and overcoming passion meltdown. My W and I are traveling down the road to reconciliation, and are slowly regaining confidence in our relationship. One of our (my?) major problems seems to be that I may be farther along in forgiving my W's affair than SHE is. She's harboring a lot of guilt over what happened, and it's putting the binders on our physical relationship.

I know that my W has to work through a lot of this on her own. I know that patience is important. What I don't know is if there is any way I can help speed up the process. Or if I should even try. Is this just something that needs to be dealt with in counseling sessions? If so, should I be the one to bring it up, or wait until the time is right for her? Or should I just "do nothing" about it at this time, and just keep doing what I'm doing to draw her closer to me?

BTW, I've found that trying to give your spouse books to read is usually "more of what doesn't work". It seems to come across as controlling, manipulative, and telling them what they need to do to "fix" themselves. I've had more success in buying my W books by her favorite authors, or about her favorite subjects, or something really fun and funny to read. No relationship type of reading material. Give them something that will put a smile on their face when they receive it, and help them to think "happy thoughts" of you whenever they see it or read it.

What HAS worked well for me is sharing the SBT techniques I've learned as they relate to people outside of OR (i.e. family, friends, co-workers, etc.) I've been trying to introduce a lot of the concepts to my W in our dealings with our children, and it's been working GREAT! In fact, it's helping us to be a stronger team in dealing with the home situation, which, in turn, is helping us to become stronger as a couple. I know, most of the books say that you have to be strong as a couple FIRST to be an effective family, but that isn't always the easiest thing to do in our situations. So, why not take the "back-door" method to it, try something different, and see if it works, right?!

Thanks, Michele.


JJ

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