Hey, Cody here and I want to talk to you right now about what you have to do to get your spouse to come back and start to re-engage in the reconciliation process. Maybe your spouse has physically left the house or is living somewhere else, or maybe they’re still living with you but just not engaged in the reconciliation process. They’re stonewalling you and shut down in the entire process. So, what I want to talk about here is what to do in that situation.
The first thing to understand is that you’ve got to understand the environment in which things show up. You can’t go after things directly. It just doesn’t work like that. You can’t go after happiness directly, or go after a happy marriage or healthy communication directly. You’ve got to understand the environment in which these things show up and then work on creating that environment.
If somebody does not want to engage with you, it’s because they feel like it’s completely useless or not safe. Most likely, it’s not safe right now. I had a conversation with somebody not too long ago, and they just insisted that their wife just doesn’t like talking, won’t talk to me because she doesn’t want to talk. I asked them the question: is it that she doesn’t want to talk, doesn’t like talking, or doesn’t like talking to you? Have you created an environment where it is so painful for her to talk to you that it is so useless for her to talk to you that she just doesn’t want to do that anymore? Because, she’s a woman, she wants to talk. If she’s not talking to you, it’s because you’ve created an environment where it isn’t safe for her to talk.
Here’s the problem with that: If the environment is not safe for honest open communication and honest dialogue to take place, there can be no healing in the relationship, no restoration. In order for a relationship to come back together, whether it’s a spouse that’s left physically and is living somewhere else or whether they’re still with you and they’re just stonewalling you and shut down, you have to create an environment where that dialogue can take place because it’s that dialogue that is ultimately going to be required to get the relationship re-engaged again.
The fundamental thing you’ve got to understand is a safe environment is absolutely essential. A safe environment is the starting point for a relationship to heal, whether your partner is separated somewhere else or whether they’re in the house with you, it doesn’t matter. If they don’t feel safe talking to you, then they’re not going to talk to you. Maybe they’ve tried many times to communicate with you to tell you the problem, and they’ve just been stonewalled back, or they’ve been met with a lack of validation. They’ve just been told that their emotions and feelings are incorrect, that they’re misunderstanding the situation, and as a result, that’s created pain and a sense of hopelessness. That is when they check out of the relationship.
Relationships don’t just die; they starve to death. It’s a slow, long, drawn-out process. If your relationship is in trouble right now, it’s suffering from starvation, and one of the nutrients that are missing in this starvation process is communication. So, what is safe communication?
Well, let me ask you this question: if you’re in a struggling relationship right now, when was the last time you were actually able to have a thought all the way through and express it to your partner, to its completion, without interruption, judgment or correction? Probably never, right? Let me ask you that in a different way. When was the last time your partner was able to speak to you and complete a thought without you jumping in, interrupting, correcting them, or passing judgment, telling them that they’re wrong, or that they have no right to feel that way? Are you actually listening to them to try and understand what they’re saying, to try and understand where they’re coming from, what they’re feeling, what emotions they’re experiencing right now?
Because here’s the thing: we’re not dealing with logic in relationships. We’re not dealing with actual facts. Perception is reality. If somebody perceives that they’ve been injured, if somebody perceives that they’ve been done wrong, if somebody perceives pain, then that pain is real, and you’ve got to treat it like it’s real. You can’t go, “Well, I didn’t mean that, so therefore, your feelings are not real.” That is invalidation, and that is going to shut that person down, and that is creating an environment that is not safe. Now here’s the second part of this. This takes some time. You can’t just go back into the relationship; there’s no script here, there’s nothing that’s really a tactic or script that’s going to engage this person again. We’ve got to show them that we are now ready to engage and provide a safe environment for the dialogue and the negotiation to re-engage.
As I said, relationships don’t just start or end; they stop to that. They end over an extended period of time; they get into trouble over an extended period of time, and there’s history. That means there’s history. So, if your spouse has a history with feeling unsafe, unlistened to, unvalidated, that their emotions are just going to be challenged, you don’t listen to them to understand them. You listen to them waiting for your next chance to jump in, to build a case against what they’ve just said, to defend yourself against what they just said. If that’s happened over and over and over and over and over again over a period of years, then they’re not going to be ready to accept that you’ve changed straight away.
They’re not going to be ready to accept that. So, we’ve got to understand that this is going to take a little bit of time, and it starts with a fundamental shift of mindset. We’ve got to look at how we create, how we communicate, and we’ve got to ask ourselves honest questions. We’ve got to deal with ourselves honestly, and a lot of times that’s going to be very, very ugly because people don’t respond to you personally; they respond to the behavior that’s coming out of you.
And if they’re not responding to you how you want, it’s because the behavior that you’re putting out is not ideal, and you’ve got to address that. You’ve got to look at that and honestly acknowledge that, which can be quite difficult sometimes, saying, “Hey, I’m not a great communicator, or what I’m communicating is not actually what I mean, but there’s a disconnect here between how I feel and what I think and what I’m actually saying.” Or maybe you feel like you’re creating a safe environment, but you’re not, and starting at that point, saying, “Hey, what do I have to do to create a safe environment?
Right now, if you want to improve communication, there are certain things that must happen. Firstly, you need to believe that it is possible and be patient if your partner has left you. If they are still walling or stonewalling, they are disengaged, and you are trying to get them back into the relationship. You can do it, but you must be patient. They need to see that something has changed, and if there’s a history, it will take more than one or two conversations for them to feel like there is legitimate hope for change.
So, how can you convince your partner that you have changed and that there is hope for a better relationship? You need to show them that this is a safe conversation between two adults trying to negotiate feelings and learn how to work together. This is not just another knock-down, drag-out fight. It works both ways; men and women both need a safe environment for communication.
Men, in particular, don’t like to have their masculinity challenged. To defend their masculinity, they may not make themselves emotionally vulnerable. They don’t expose themselves to attack, and they don’t open up emotionally. It’s important to create an environment where they can do that without feeling threatened.
If your partner has left, it’s up to you to create a safe environment for communication. You need to prove that the environment for communication is safe, and that if they come back and re-engage in the relationship, it won’t be more of the same old fights and attacks. Step one is to create a safe environment for the relationship to thrive.
If you want to learn more about how to improve your relationship and create a safe environment for communication, I invite you to join our free five-day marriage retreat. We’ll be going over these topics and more, and it’s completely free. Follow the link above or below this video to sign up. Thank you, and God bless.
