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How do I know if my husband is serious about reconciling?
I received the following question from a listener:

" How do I know if my husband wants to seriously reconcile? How do reconcile when both partners were unfaithful? But are willing to reconcile because they love each other and each did wrong, where do you start? We live in separate homes and the divorce is still in process, lawyers are still present. "

First of all, if you are both willing to consider reconciliation, stop the divorce. \xa0The divorce process just drives couples apart by planning the end of the marriage, dividing assets, dealing with child custody, etc. \xa0You need to push pause on the divorce process immediately.

You also need to put your lawyers on hold. \xa0I don't have anything against lawyers and I think everyone needs one when going through a divorce; however, in your case your lawyers are probably not interested in helping you reconcile. \xa0You may have a good one that would be thrilled to see you not divorce, but in general the lawyer's goal is to get you divorced because that's what you hired them to do. \xa0Also, keeping your lawyers while trying to reconcile will only escalate your legal bills.

Now, on to your question. \xa0How do you know if he's serious? \xa0If you've lived with him any length of time your gut feel is as good as anything. \xa0You should have a pretty good idea if he's serious or not. \xa0It ultimately comes down to the fact that you are going to have to trust him and learning to trust after infidelity is probably the hardest part of the reconciliation process.

The marriage bond has been broken at such a fundamental level that trust can be a long time coming. \xa0If you are to have any hope of rebuilding trust you need to be transparently honest with each other. \xa0I would go so far as to share all login information for email and social media accounts. \xa0Use the old cold war philosophy of "trust but verify". \xa0The more you verify, the more you will trust and you each have a lot of trust to win back.

The most important thing you can do is get marriage counseling. \xa0I would recommend a faith-based counselor who is committed to saving marriages and is willing to do the hard work required to get you on the track to healing. \xa0Unless you can find a counselor through your church or another ministry, counseling will likely be expensive. \xa0But no matter how expensive it is your marriage is worth it.
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