Aftershock - Confronting Your HusbandSample

Staging an Intervention: Key Step #1

Select and meet with two or three key intervention support people.

The first step to take in an intervention is to meet with a small group of people who love and care about you and your husband. The individuals you choose from might be siblings, parents, adult children, friends, coworkers, or wise church elders. This meeting should take place without your husband present, so it might be best to gather at one of their homes.

In addition to the primary qualifications of loving and caring about you and your husband, these individuals need to clearly understand that you are doing this in an effort to save your marriage, not to seek revenge by revealing his secrets to others. Unfortunately, wives often hide the husband’s double life from close friends or minimize it so that no one knows what’s actually happening. This may mean that the key people in their lives need to be told the whole truth for the first time ever. They may be shocked initially, or you may find that more people than you realize already know or suspect the truth. Some of them may even know more than you know about your husband’s activities. While this might not surprise you, it could strike a painful blow to your heart. Keep a close watch on your emotions during this time and continue taking responsibility for healthy self-care.

Also, make a mental note to talk with your support group about your feelings. The preintervention meeting typically requires about 60 to 90 minutes for the people on your team to get facts straight, discuss the need for specialized or intensive marital therapy, and agree on a specific time and place for the intervention. It’s extremely important that each person on the team cares enough about your husband to present a united front with others and be willing to follow through with check-ins and further confrontation if needed.

Next, staging an intervention: key step #2.