Pam Ponders

Marriage reconciliation – making the initial move.

More often than not, the approach to a counselor for assistance to help repair a relationship is made by only one of the partners. It is a accepted fact that in most cases this is the woman rather than the man.
 
It is good practice for a counselor to work through the issues in the first case with the partner who made the approach for assistance as this person has already shown a readiness to reunite with their ex partner. An experienced counselor will have dealt with most marriage issues and will formulate a plan to help guide you through the reconciliation process. You may however be confident of dealing with your break up  on your own without any outside help.

Above all be completely honest with yourself.

You need to devote time to determining the reason(s) for your marriage difficulties and then give serious consideration as to whether it is possible to sort through those difficulties and reconcile the differences in your marriage.You must be painstakingly honest with yourself about the reason(s) for the marital difficulties which led to the break up. If you just evade the issue and are not prepared to air, or admit to yourself, the reasons for your troubled relationship, (and the part that you may have played in it) then if you do manage to reconcile, the chances are that you will just head down the same path as before with no hope for a stable reconciliation.  

Any negative traits that you are able to identify in yourself such as poor grooming, argumentativeness, lack of compromise and so on should be worked on in an endeavor to make yourself more attractive to your ex partner.

How to make the approach to your ex partner.

This is considered by most to be the hard part. There are several ways of accomplishing this:

• The casual approach at a place that you are aware that your ex frequents.
• Take the initiative and write, text or email, asking for a chat to just catch up over a coffee etc.
• Have a friend act as an intermediary to set up a meeting to discuss matters of mutual interest.

It is to your advantage at the initial meeting with your ex to simply keep the discussion super cool. Cover superficial subjects only, unless you are drawn into a deeper conversation by your ex–then go with the flow. Your partner may be just as interested as you are to save your marriage. If the subject of your reconciliation doesn’t arise then just lay the ground work for another meeting at which time you can subtly raise the subject of a renewal of your relationship into the conversation.