Ø      The give and take would have to wait until he could get her attention and get her to come home.

Ø      He didn’t push her to come back right away or try to turn the children against her.

Ø      He didn’t try to tell Amanda that her feelings were wrong or invalid. 

Instead, he gave her the space to express her feelings, knowing that she must have felt very strongly to have left and taken the children.

If you are like Kennett and you really want to reconcile, you may have waited until things were really bad before you started, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make up for lost time.

Ø      Don’t play the blame game

Ø      Don’t try to convince your spouse that they are overreacting

Ø      Don’t turn children or family members against your spouse

Ø      Don’t try to control your spouse or the situation

Ø      Don’t give up on yourself or your spouse

Ø      Don’t declare war on your spouse

Ø      Don’t make threats

Ø      Don’t talk about the personal issues and details of your relationship with others.

If others know there are problems and ask out of concern, simply say that you are working on it together and trying hard to work things out!

Ø      If you need to take a break from the stress of breaking old habits and talking constantly about issues, raise your hand and ask for a ‘time out’. 

Ø      Ask your spouse if it would be OK for the two of you to take a day off and just relax. 

That doesn’t mean you will fall back on old habits, it just gives you a day or a few hours to take a breather from what can be an intensive discussions.

Ø      Do something fun and different together – or just go to a movie or out to dinner and talk about fun things.