Living with Your Husband's Secret Wars by Marsha Means

Author:Marsha Means
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Love & Marriage, FAM030000
ISBN: 9781441201010
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 1999-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Who, What, and Why of Making Amends

Making amends means taking responsibility for our attitudes and actions that have hurt other people. And this includes our husbands. It may take time before we feel ready to follow Ginger’s example and take this difficult step in our own spiritual journey. And it will be especially hard if your husband is involved with another woman and doesn’t care about saving the marriage. Right now he may seem to be the “enemy.” After all, he is the one responsible for the deep pain you feel. When our husbands are involved in any kind of inappropriate sexual behavior, the thought of accepting responsibility for our own “minor transgressions” in the marriage may sound unthinkable and ridiculous. It may feel like we’re being asked to give ourselves away. We may still be filled with resentment and not ready to take this step. That’s okay. God can meet us where we are; he can walk with us through the grief and anger and still be with us when we’re ready to make amends.

When we are ready, when it’s God’s time, taking this difficult step will strengthen our own spiritual lives, and God may use it to reopen communication with our husbands, and possibly to bring healing to our marriages. Taking this step requires a willingness to honestly examine ourselves. Dr. Jennifer Schneider, whose husband was a sex addict, made amends to him as a part of strengthening her own spiritual life. She shares her insights about this important step:

Making amends first requires facing the truth about the effects of our behavior on other people. Did our critical attitude cause those around us to feel defensive? Did our need to control cause resentment by those we tried to control? Did our irresponsibility make others have to do our work for us? Did we hurt another woman by our unjustified jealousy? . . . Making amends to others is painful; it takes courage and humility. But the result is an increased sense of self-worth and peace of mind. The objective of making amends is to accept personal responsibility for our past behavior.[1]

We make amends not only to accept personal responsibility for past behavior, but more importantly, we do it to clear our relationships with others, particularly with our husbands, because we recognize that our own actions and motives in the marriage haven’t always been pure. If doing so reopens communication with our husbands and leads to healing our marriages, we are grateful, but that isn’t our initial and primary reason for making amends. Rather, it is to clear, as completely as we know how, our relationship with God. It’s our opportunity to sweep our side of the street so we’ll know we’ve done everything God requires of us.

Florence, whose twenty-four-year-long marriage has weathered many storms, has learned the relational value of making amends.

For me, making amends in any relationship opens up a blockage that keeps it from going where it could go. I know that in my own marriage when I hold back on wrongs I’ve done, it interferes with my intimacy with Dan.

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