You’ve ended the affair and you’ve promised it’ll never happen again.
You want to stay married, move forward in your relationship, and put the affair behind you, but your partner will not be so quick to forgive and forget as you are.
This is a common situation that we often see in our marriage counseling practice.
While the offending partner usually wants to forget the affair and move on, the injured partner is still processing the pain and sorting through their feelings about the relationship.
But rebuilding a marriage after an affair doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen just because you are ready to move on.
Restoring trust requires commitment, dedication, and a willingness to do whatever work is necessary to make the marriage whole again.
If you’re trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered relationship, here are a few areas that you’ll need to focus on to start the rebuilding process.
Start by rebuilding trust
After an affair, your partner will justifiably doubt anything you say. You’re going to have to work to earn back your partner’s respect and trust, one fragile piece at a time. And it’s your partner, not you, who will determine the trust timetable and whether they can ever trust you again. You also must accept the fact that your partner’s trust may never be 100 percent complete. However, just because you’ve betrayed your partner doesn’t necessarily mean the marriage is over or can’t be saved. If there’s love and commitment between you, there’s reason to believe that the relationship can be rebuilt. We see it happen in our practice every day.
Accept responsibility for your past behavior
You’re the one who decided to have the affair. Don’t blame it on drunkenness, on problems in your marriage, on your affair partner, or on any other external circumstances. Don’t try to dismiss your behavior, and don’t try to minimize the impact on your relationship. Accept the fact that you made hurtful decisions, and hope that your partner can forgive you and move on. If you don’t accept personal responsibility, and try to blame the affair on external circumstances, you won’t discover what you need to learn or change. Otherwise, you’re signaling to your partner that an affair could happen again.
Commit to open, honest and patient communication
Accept the fact that your partner is going to have difficulty understanding why you put your relationship in jeopardy. Partners want answers to questions that are often uncomfortable. But you must answer their questions patiently and honestly, regardless of how uncomfortable they make you feel. Just accept this as part of the process your partner needs to go through to move toward rebuilding. Don’t become defensive, dismissive or evasive with answers to your partners’ questions. Your partner needs to know that you’re willing to answer questions openly and honestly. Your openness builds trust while defensiveness corrodes trust.
Use this experience to grow emotionally
This is a good time to critically evaluate the emotions and thinking that led to your infidelity. Try to identify any problems or unhappiness prior to starting the affair. It’s a time for self-assessment, not just marriage assessment. Was the affair an attempt to “cure” these feelings or avoid them? Did you put too much blame on your marriage for your unhappiness? How are you going to address these problems in a healthy way? These areas will need to be examined before your marriage can move forward. If you skip this step in the healing process, your marriage will be in peril.
Healing takes time
You’d like this to be over as quickly as possible, but your partner is going to need time to work through the healing process. When emotional trust is broken in a relationship, it’s not much different from a physical injury. If you were to break your leg, you wouldn’t be out jogging the next day. The leg needs time to heal. Well, the same holds true for an emotional fracture. It may take considerably longer to heal than a physical injury, but given enough time and the correct treatment, chances of a healthy recovery are significantly improved.
Seek professional help
You may want to seek advice from a therapist who specializes in marriage and couples counseling to help you work through some of these issues. When couples are in crisis after an affair, it is very difficult to navigate through the emotional turmoil, confusion and loss of hope. It helps to have an experienced counselor help you to work through the complicated issues on the way to recovery.
About the Author – Seth Brownstein, MA, Licensed Psychologist-Master – MaryAnn Bock, MS, Licensed Mental Health Counselor. Together, they operate Associates in Couples Counseling in Burlington, VT, specializing in marriage counseling, marriage advice, and personalized marriage retreats. http://associatesincouplescounseling.com
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These are good suggestions. The theme running through all of them, though is the need to remain as emotionally organized as possible.
I especially like the suggestion that the cheating partner not dwell on shifting blame or dwell on denial.
There are some very good points there. I like the way it stressed the need for openness and honesty and to recognise the partners need to ask questions and try to understand what happened and why. It is an important part of the healing process.
Healing takes time, the offending partner may not be able to understand that after apologizing so many times, why the other partner refuse to just move on.
The cheater wants to forget about the affair and move on; the other spouse can think of nothing else for a while. This is a delicate balance.It can be very tricky.
Definitely, and I think it’s the cheater that should be more giving in this situation, especially since they are the ones that caused the situation to happen.
What sorts of things should the cheater do to exhibit a more giving attitude that will allow the relationship to heal?
Often, when that much trust is destroyed, the offended party cannot, and probably should not, simply forgive AND forget.
Should the cheater graciously accept new requirements within the relationship?
I think so, sometimes they may be a little unreasonable but with time they will be relaxed.
Forgiving is never easy, but many people do manage to do it. What is extremely hard to do is to forget. Much more effort has to be made for to do this
SageMother, I think it’s very commendable for couples to be able to move on after something as terrible as cheating happens in their relationship.
I still find that people who cheat are weak emotionally and it’s very hard to build something stronger from the future. It’s even harder for that person that cheats not to shift the blame, because it does come with the territory.
Justontime, how right you are.
Keeping the conversation open in the marriage is very important. Sometimes this is even the reason why most relationships get to the point that one partner cheats on the other.
Liza, if I found out that my partner was cheating on me, he would have to apologize a million times before I would give him a break.
It’s not that I don’t want to start the healing process, the bastard deserves a tough time.
mollyL, if it happened to me, and it has, I know I just won’t be able to forget it.
I know I just won’t be able to say “ok, you’re forgiven” and let’s just get back on to where we were before this happened.
Would you be able to do it?
I don’t think is possible to go back to “before it happened”. I believe both have to be in a new place, willing to accept that trust was broken but there is still hope for both of them… These tips are something that people can work from to keep the marriage alive.
I think berlinlife is right, you can’t put the clock back and you can’t forget what has happened, but you can start from where you are and try to rebuild the marriage
It would take years to get back to a trust position and even then, antennas would still go up at certain signals.
Liza, LOL! If my husband cheated on me and I decided to take him back…. he’s gonna have to do some serious ass kissing. I wouldn’t expect anything else.
Why do we never hear about chastity devices for men?
Do you think women who are trying to rebuild a marriage after he has had an affair, should consider implementing a chastity policy?
Just a thought.
LOL
Sage what an interesting thought, you have my imagination working overtime – chastity devices for men!
Well, justontime, I think some women need an outward signal that a cheating spouse can’t perform the act again.
A chastity device, with the wife having the key, would definitely slow down any physical infidelities!
I think there are a few women who are so angry and hurt when thy find out that they feel quite capable of action drastic enough to put a more lasting stop to such things.
SageMother, that’s just it… would making new rules to the advantage of the person who has been wronged heal the sadness? I don’t think so, I think it will just create more bitterness in a relationship.
Whether we like it or not, for most part, when cheating happens, there is a cause and an effect. Cheating might be the effect, so we need to see in an individual instance what was the cause in order to heal.
While I understand what you are saying, Diva, there are those women who would derive some satisfaction from creating new rules, even if it didn’t solve the underlying problem.
It might not be ideal, but sometimes it is that temporary satisfaction that allows someone to let go of a relationship that isn’t working.
Liza, time can heal all the pain. It’s just a matter of whether we want to give a cheater a second chance to do right.
berlin06, that’s a very good way of seeing reconciliation. We can’t live for the past and you just need to move forward with today.
I think with time and commitment from both partners a betrayal can be overcome. But it takes time and effort to rebuild trust.
Liza, lol… And some people have pretty long antennaes…. I don’t think the mistrust will ever go away… the antennaes just get shorter in time.
I think saying sorry is the start of a long process. Showing that you are sorry requires a change in behaviour that in time will hopefully enable a degree of trust to be established.