Reconciliation with a Hardened Wife – By Reb Bradley

How are you doing, husband? Is your wife considering separation, or worse, are you already separated? How are you handling it? Are you angry? Were you shocked? Do you feel like you have just awakened from a long sleep, and now find yourself becoming an intensely spiritual man? Would you like to win your wife back and restore your family?

I cannot promise that all who read this article and follow its recommendations will see their family restored, but I do believe that it presents the best biblical recommendations for a man abandoned by his wife — particularly for men who feel they have been unjustly abandoned. Brothers, as you read, keep in mind that what is presented here is most effective for men who have given their wife no biblical grounds for divorce. Those men, who have been guilty of some kind of sexual sin or have been abusive, have wounded their wives very deeply, so have a more difficult path to walk. However, they will still find here great benefit. The man caught up in adultery will want to also read the article I’ve Been Unfaithful (Adultery or Porn).

Husbands, for your information

        When a woman first seriously considers divorce she usually isn’t thinking about the theological implications of her desires – all she knows is that she is desperate to get away from her husband. She doesn’t arrive at this state of desperation by a process of calm deduction. She is simply reacting to the feeling that she “can’t take anymore.”  Her departure is typically a sign that she has hardened her heart towards the man to whom she once entrusted it. Likely, she has been hurt over and over, and finally decided she will tolerate no more emotional pain. Her leaving may have been an attempt to coerce her husband to change, but more often it has been a desperate effort to survive. She sincerely believes that she cannot endure any more heartache, so she has reached out and grabbed onto the separation like a drowning swimmer clings to a life ring.

One of the reasons she became so weak, and finally, unwilling to go on, was that whenever she became hurt, she also became angry. As time progressed, the hurts mounted up and the less she felt able to endure. She inadvertently was doing what Christians are warned not to do, and was letting the sun go down on her anger (Eph 4:26), which grew into bitterness, which ultimately defiled her (Heb 12:15). In a final act of self-defense, she hardened her heart so that it would no longer be vulnerable to pain. This wall around her heart seemed to give her the courage to emotionally cut herself off from her husband.

           Sadly, most husbands have few memories of “hurting” their wives. But let all such men consider – if a woman does something as extreme as leave her mate, claiming she can no longer handle the emotional pain, isn’t it likely she is, in fact, in pain? (If emotional feelings could bleed, a man would see a trail of blood following his wife as she leaves him.) The truth is that a hardened woman only got that way because her feelings got hurt over and over. Herein lies the problem – most women believe that they have communicated their hurt to their husbands, but most husbands only have memories of their wife’s bad attitudes. All those times a wife thought she was simply expressing the cry of an injured heart, her husband only perceived hostility, coldness, or hatred. She felt like she was begging for tenderness and sensitivity, and he backed away because he thought he was being attacked. My experience is that most women leave their husbands, because they entered marriage with expectations of feeling cherished and secure, and their husbands unwittingly have sent the message that they are not. Hence, those women end up feeling defrauded, then often bitter and hardened.

       The man who hopes to reconcile with a wounded wife must first realize that for her to return to him will require that she trust and forgive him. Such a wife may be consumed by bitterness, but rather than concentrate on what his wife is doing wrong, it is better that an abandoned husband think about what he must do facilitate the softening of her heart to help her forgive and trust him.

read the rest of the article…

by Reb Bradley at Family Ministries