Jason Martinkus’s Amends Matrix is a great model for putting your thoughts down, staying on track, and giving a thorough and clean apology. Writing it out helps slow down our brains and reactivity; we’re better able to focus and be clear-minded. It also allows you to write about the issue without interruption and fear of rejection or shutting down from emotions ramping out of control. In conflict, our knee-jerk . The questions below are Jason’s original and the examples have been paraphrased.
Amends Matrix Step 1: What’s happening now that connects to past pain or disappointment? Trace the touch point.
Identify what event is taking place in the present that has a touch point to the past. You’re looking for experiences connected to painful emotions for your wife, such as shame, disappointment, mistrust, or fear. These events may be linked to sexual integrity issues, but they could be separate and distinct, indicative of your hurtful character traits. When you notice the connection, it is essential to ask yourself, what and how is it connected? Men usually experience this as guilt and shame, but it could also be noticed as anger. A touch point occurs when you get a sense that the current situation or circumstance is familiar in a negative way.
In an amends, you are looking for things that might trigger your wife’s pain. When you identify with something, you should attempt to connect with why it would trigger her pain. Once you connect with it, you are ready to move to step 2 in the Amends Matrix.
When you perform the amends, you should begin by clearly stating what you realize in the present is connected to the past. Your job is to describe the current situation that you have identified.
Example: Sitting in the restaurant together, in the past your attention would have been everywhere but your wife.
Amends Matrix Step 2: What exactly happened in the past? Tap into the past.
Bringing up the past for healing is different from bringing up the past for pain, especially if you work on steps 6-7 of the Amends Matrix. If your focus is only on the past without so much as a nod to a different future, that hurt will win the day. If your focus is on a better future, while not belittling the past, then hope will take the day.
While a wife wants to forget much of what has happened, she does not want her husband to forget. She wants you to remember the pain you have caused,
hoping it will be a deterrent to engaging in this behavior again. If you talk through this within the Amends Matrix, you actually reassure her that you understand the past and are in touch with the hurt you caused and are not inclined to forget it.
It’s important for you to cite specific examples in this step. Sometimes a husband will give this a glance and speak only in general terms. Don’t make that mistake. Cite specific examples. Chances are your wife remembers specific instances, and you will do well to recall them yourself.
Example: “On our honeymoon, when we ate at the seafood restaurant on the beach, as well as last year when we ate at a restaurant. I was not paying attention to you. I was watching other women at the other tables as well as the female waitress.”
Amends Matrix Step 3: Why did you behave this way in the past? Find the why behind the what.
This step requires that you dig into the underlying reasons for your behavior. It is too simplistic and shallow to say you behaved this way because you were selfish or a jerk or prideful. This step is only meaningful if it includes a description or explanation that delves into the behind-the-scenes mechanism that were driving you. You must take sole responsibility, and you must own it completely. Engaging in this step means elaborating on the what and why of your attitudes and actions.
Example: “In the past, I would pay more attention to other women in the restaurant because I was trying to shore up my insecurity. I was trying to make eye contact with a woman who would look back so I could feel significant and desirable. Engaging in a false form of intimacy with them meant that I did not have to risk rejection. I have lived most of my life terribly afraid of your rejection, which is a function of my insecurity, not your judgment.”
Amends Matrix Step 4: How do you think she must have felt? Be present in the pain.
Empathy is the entire purpose of this step. True empathy, especially with your wife, means getting out of your world and into hers. It means trying to see life through her eyes. It requires considering her past and present life. Experiences, which may both precede and include you. To engage empathy, you must extract yourself from the equation and attempt to be enveloped in the circumstance of the person with whom you’re trying to empathize. Walk a mile in her shoes. Consider
what the other person is bringing to the situation. What has gone on in the other person’s life that would play into the hurt you have caused? This step offers you an opportunity to communicate to her that you get it and are committed to not subjecting her to that pain again.
Example: “At the restaurant, when I was looking at other women, you must have felt insignificant, undesirable, and rejected. You probably questioned your beauty and your value. It must have felt very lonely even though we were in a crowded place.”
Amends Matrix Step 5: How does it make you feel, knowing she felt this way? Engage empathy.
The goal of this portion of the amends is to communicate the impact of the other person’s pain on you.
How do you feel about them? How do you hurt them? You want your wife to know that you understand her pain and are truly convicted and repentant, fully intent on never inflicting the same kind of pain again. Also, it is within this step that a formal apology is made. I suspect that if you are amending a past wrong, you may have already apologized. However, an apology does not count as making amends. How many empty apologies have you made to this point? We have an incredible opportunity to facilitate healing in the person we’ve wronged if we will earnestly admit it, realize the harmful ripple effect, repent, and confess our ownership.
Example: “What I’ve done and how I hurt you, with respect to the restaurant and our time together, makes me feel so remorseful. You should not have had to endure nights like that where I took your vulnerability and your heart for granted and wasted your time.”
Amends Matrix Step 6: How do you want her to feel now? How do you want her to feel now?
Begin to paint a hopeful picture. This step speaks to the heart and in some sense is the antithesis of step 4. The goal is to state the positive emotional experience you want the person to have in situations like the one you listed in step 2. Instead of pain and discouragement, you’re trying to convey healing and encouragement. It again requires empathy, only this time empathy is based on what-if scenarios:
- What if things went well and there was healing and restoration?
- What if you could erase the past mistakes and create a new landscape for your relationship?
- What if you could rewrite the script to be a positive one, devoid of the hurt you’ve caused?
- How would you want your wife to experience you and any situations like the ones you recounted in steps one and two?
You want your wife to see that you are taking her feelings into account. The message you are sending is that you’ve thought through how it must have felt for her.
Example: “Regarding restaurants and our going out in public, I want you to feel confident, secure, and protected. I want you to see that I am enamored with you. My hope is that you’ll feel like we are the only two people in the entire restaurant.”
Amends Matrix Step 7: What do you want the future to be like? Cast the vision.
We must detail the path to get to a healthy future. We’ve got to create a plan to get there. Then, we must communicate the strategy, path, and end goal to our wife. We can’t prove what we’re not doing wrong; we can only prove what we are doing right. Our vision, which ideally inspires hope and relational redemption, will become experientially evident to our wife. Craft a vision in your mind and communicate where you want to go. Express how you want life to be and how the two of you fit into it. Specifically, you want to paint a picture of the scenarios and life context where the positive emotions you listed in step 6 can become a reality.
Example: “When we go to restaurants together, I want you to know that my eyes and mind are solely on you. I want our conversation to be rich, deep, and intimate. I can see a day when my level of communication is creative and intimate enough to hold your attention, and you’ll know my love is reserved for you only. I hope you’ll feel like we’re the only two people in the restaurant.”