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The Counselor’s Plan Is Key

A wife cannot – and should not – be her husband’s “babysitter,” and especially not his primary or exclusive accountability partner. Yet she can’t remain fully in the dark either. A skilled counselor is the one to help you and your husband come up with a plan that includes various forms and frequency of communication about your husband’s progress and the challenges he faces.

Your husband will communicate with the counselor and supportive men in his life to stay accountable, and they’ll need to keep you informed of his progress. Plans often include periodic check-ins with the recovery counselor, and a pastor, and/or another stable, mature accountability partner.

Your husband’s forthright sharing at regular intervals and growing emotional intimacy with you are key. This is where the skills you both learned during intensive marital therapy will be especially useful. Eventually, the effort your husband invests in recovery can lead to greater safety and trust in your relationship based on what he’s said and done consistently over time.

Once your husband begins to make important and genuine efforts toward restoring trust, you can hopefully be ready to emotionally receive those trust deposits into your heart in a meaningful way. Your job is to maintain goodwill in the journey and rightly evaluate and discern these deposits for what they are. By now you’re probably able to view the overall situation and read whether your husband is sincere in his recovery efforts. If he is and you still have trouble even trying to trust him, something else may be going on within you.

If practicing self-care and maintaining spiritual and emotional health aren’t occurring in your life, it will eventually seem to you and your husband that no matter how many trust deposits he makes, it will never make a difference. At that point, either of you is more likely to give up on positive change. Hearts can become sullen or hard. But you and your marriage deserve the time and attention it takes to remove barriers to your peace and progress.

Next, we’ll examine the concept of the Three Bowls.