The cry of I broke my wife’s heart, how do I fix it? is more common than you might think. Whatever you’ve done, now you want to fix it. Where do you start though? It’s not like there’s a pill to mend a broken heart.
It’s going to take time, honesty and effort. You can’t just sit back and wait for this to all sort itself out. Fixing your wife’s broken heart is going to take more than a bouquet of flowers, you’re going to need to set your ego aside.
Because no two marriages are ever the same, there’s no complete A->Z here. You and your wife are going to be different from every other couple I’ve spoken to. I’ve seen some definite trends however so I’ll give you guidelines to use around your own marriage.
You are the one who betrayed her trust and turned a good deal into an ordeal. But at the same time, you are the one who knows her to her very core. And that’s the best tool you have in your arsenal. Before using that tool, you need to figure out if there’s still a chance for you two. Is it possible that you have already lost your spouse?
Can a Broken Marriage Be Restored?
I personally think almost any marriage can be restored and trust me I’ve seen marriages come back from things you wouldn’t expect. We’re going to talk in general terms here but if you’d like to be more specific to your marriage then take a moment and take the marriage assessment quiz.
The short answer is always, yes.
As long as at least one of you is actively working to restore the marriage then it still has a chance. I’m not saying it’ll be an easy process by any stretch. If you broke her heart then you’re the one at fault and the one who’s really going to have to make the effort to fix it.
Let’s start with a couple of questions to see where we’re at first of all.
Does Your Wife Want to Forgive You and Salvage the Marriage?
We need to start with a difficult question.
Statistically, most couples regret divorce so while on some level she’ll probably want to sort things out – she just might not be ready yet.
You can do everything in your power to save the marriage. You can beg for her forgiveness and show a willingness to do whatever it takes to make her forget what you did. But, none of these will work if your wife doesn’t want to be with you anymore. We can’t control how others feel. We can’t force someone to forgive us.
I’ve seen marriages saved from the absolute brink of disaster. There’s almost never an absolute sign a marriage cannot be saved. While I can give you advice on what to do next – you’re going to need to be patient with her feelings.
The pain she’s feeling might still be raw. Research has shown that our brain registers the emotional pain of heartbreak just like physical pain. When you broke her apart, her stress hormones named cortisol made it too hard for her to deal with the pain. She has gone through that agonizing experience because of you.
That might hurt to hear but you need to understand this pain is real to her. I’ve covered signs your wife wants to reconcile in more detail elsewhere but the main thing you have to remember is to be patient and accept her feelings at the time.
It’s absolutely possible to restore a marriage when only one of you is (currently) making the effort but you can’t ignore her feelings and she will dictate the pace in how much you can do at once to fix things.
Do you wholeheartedly believe that you can be the man she needs you to be?
If you have said yes to the previous question, you are one lucky dog. She still wants to make the marriage work after being hurt like that. Do you realize how much marriage means to her?
Now, you need to start stepping your life up to provide her a good reason NOT to walk out the door.
Maybe you have been always canceling plans with her because you were putting work before your marriage, maybe it’s the constant fight about your priorities, maybe you have been unfaithful to her and in this very specific case, you risk losing her if she can’t move past the infidelity.
Doesn’t matter what the reason was or how you have shattered her heart, you need to find a way to become a better husband before she even considers forgiving you.
Now there’s no guarantee that your wife will be able to forgive you for something that you have done to her or something that you were supposed to do but failed, right?
When you are assuming the worst, there is a decent chance that your wife will forgive you even if you did something unforgivable like being unfaithful.
Does that come to you as a surprise? Statistics show that 57% of people who were unfaithful have been forgiven by their partners while 21% forgave immediately after and 36% took some time but eventually ended up forgiving their partner.
You shouldn’t give up on someone you love without a fight, right?
Let’s dive in deep and save your marriage from drowning. I am going to walk you through the steps of conquering her love again.
How Do I Regain My Wife’s Trust?
I have a complete guide on how to save a marriage and if you’ve broken her heart it all begins with rebuilding that trust.
Have faith in the relationship that you have built with your wife and keep asking yourself what she needs right now. Then go through the following phases and fingers crossed, you’ll win her back.
In many ways, it’s easier to regain trust than it was to build it in the first place. The two of you were in a happy place before, we just need to figure out how to get you back to that point.
Open your heart and show her how genuinely sorry you are!
She is so mad and doesn’t want to do anything with you. Whatever you try to do, you end up rubbing her up the wrong way. How to fix a broken relationship like that?
You should allow her to feel the pain and anger while she processes it her way. Meanwhile, just tell her in person or through a friend that you are devastated and prepared for anything to make her take you back.
She won’t respond? Don’t expect her to. Just own up to your mistake and let her heal. While she is at that, keep reminding her you are not going anywhere. This marriage is top-priority in your life and you can’t think of ever being with another woman. So, she can push you away all she wants but you’ll crawl right back in.
She’ll get even angrier but she’ll know that you care. She’ll realize that you still think of her as a precious person once you got married to. That’s something she didn’t feel for quite a while since you smashed her heart into smithereens.
Let her heal on her own terms
It might sound like a no-brainer but she really needs time to heal. To do that, she needs to feel the pain as that’s part of the healing process. If what you did shook her to the very core, she can’t just snap out of it.
While from your perspective it might feel like she is taking ages and that’s making you worried sick, you still can’t ask for a timeline. You have given her weeks and she shouldn’t take that long, right? But healing doesn’t happen overnight. It takes weeks, months even years depending on how badly you have broken her. Every time you start contemplating the worst and fall into despair, remind yourself that she is worth the wait. Give her the time to heal.
I know it can be frustrating but if we try and rush things too much it can end up backfiring.
Does she need to go on a trip with her girlfriends?
Does she want to visit her family for a few days? Let her go. Let her feel liberated.
Let her come back on her own terms. Don’t be so desperate to make it work that you break her even more. Things you have done to crush her heart have taken a toll on her. She needs a little breathing space. Help her to find herself back again. Use this time to reflect on yourself so that you can treat her right once she comes back.
There’s a catch though. Don’t let her feel distant while she is taking her space. Don’t let her drift apart by shutting off communication. Make sure you let her feel your presence every once in a while. She is mad but she is also expecting you to show that she matters. Send her flowers, remember her menstrual cycle and send her chocolates when she is PMSing, send a picture that you took on your honeymoon to remind her how happy you two were.
Don’t get disheartened when she doesn’t respond right away. This isn’t an overnight process.
Be a good listener when she finally is ready to talk!
See I told you she’ll come round. Now that she is prepared to have that ‘talk’, let her know how much you appreciate it. Listen to her feelings instead of just hearing. Stop focusing on what you want to say next.
You are not here to win an argument. This woman loves you unconditionally and decided to move past the blunder. The least you can do is to pay full attention to what she is saying. Don’t check your phone, don’t stare at the wall; maintain eye contact with her to show you are present in the moment. Let her feel heard and loved.
When she is done talking ask for her forgiveness again. This time she’s hearing you. Do it with conviction rather than barely saying sorry. Acknowledge her emotions. Open your heart to her so that she can see how it’s filled with remorse.
Make her fall in love with you one more time
It feels impossible at the moment, right? But, while she’s taking time and space to heal, you should take some time for a little soul-searching. What are the things she loves most about you? What was your fail-safe move to win your wife’s heart?
You need to rekindle that passion that you had when you first started dating and bring romance back into your stale marriage. Show her the person she fell in love with is still there. Don’t push it too hard but leave subtle hints here and there. Let her pick up them at her own pace. Make her believe in you again.
Take care of your physical and mental health. Go join the gym or go to therapy to deal with your anxiety, then show up as your best self. In marriage, sometimes people tend to lose themselves and evolve into someone else. If you have let that happen, bring that handsome, witty, funny and kind guy back. She fell in love with that guy once, she’ll fall again.
Shower her with love!
You know her love language by now, right? Speak that when you talk to her. She thinks you never really paid attention and this shows the opposite. This makes her thrilled to work with you on fixing this relationship.
Take her to the place where you went on your first date. Send flowers to her work with a note that says how much she means to you. Better yet, leave everything behind with a honeymoon. Maybe she has always wanted to go to Santorini for the honeymoon but you couldn’t make time for it with your packed schedule.
Now would be the finest moment to spend some quality time with her on those beaches. Allow no distractions, no work calls; just two lovebirds coming back to each other after a storm.
She needs assurance; keep it pouring!
You have broken the trust she has been building over the years. It’s only natural that she’ll question everything you do after that. Your marriage is standing on shaky ground and you cannot blame her for this. Many men think that they have sincerely apologized and that should have been enough for her to move on.
Easier said than done. She used to think of you as her safety net, she believed that you’d catch her if she falls. Now she is not so sure anymore. You can’t build the wall of trust around the relationship this time. It has to be her. All you can do is facilitate the process by providing her with constant reassurance. Keep her updated all the time. Tell her there will be no more secrets in the relationship.
Build the marriage on truth this time. Marriage counseling comes in handy during times like this. Give it a try?
Forgive yourself before you do more damage!
What? You need your spouse to forgive you.
Who’s talking about forgiving yourself and why does it matter? Well, it sure does and you have to be compassionate to yourself. Trust me on this, you need it more than you’d think. Yes, you have made a terrible mistake. If you could, you’d go back in time and you’d never do something like that to break her heart. But what’s done is done. Doesn’t matter how harshly you beat yourself up now, you can’t fix it.
What you can do though is, let that resentment go. You have been miserable for hurting her and you need to heal too. Allow yourself to let go of that built-up anger and stress for putting her through it all. Be more self-aware and look at yourself objectively. Be patient and give this marriage everything that you’ve got.
Learn to grow as a person to make her so happy that someday she will forget her heart was ever broken!
