How to Heal After Infidelity When the Pain Seems Too Much

The bond of marriage is supposed to last until the day you breathe your last breath on this earth. In essence it is a verbal agreement between two people in front of God and society that is, ultimately, based on trust. When a cheating spouse breaks that trust, it can be one of the hardest things to put back together again. What actually occurred when your spouse cheated on you? Essentially two things occurred when you discovered that your spouse was cheating •A unique, trusting bond was broken between you and him/her •Your perception of your spouse changed forever The act of infidelity rendered the word of your spouse useless in your own perception, which means that if you wish to fix the problem you must repair both of these issues if you ever hope for survival. The First Steps to Recovery In order to patch up the relationship the first thing that needs to happen will be for you to decide whether you actually want to or not. Your spouse may have repented for his/her sins, but you must be willing to forgive their actions otherwise any other work will be useless. Once you have decided that “giving it another shot” is worth your time and effort you can pave the way to recovery. This requires open communication between you and your spouse. It doesn’t mean that you will point out every thing “you don’t like” but rather begin to talk about relevant things that are happening in your life. Become interested in each others lives once more and find out what attracted you to your spouse in the first place. Communication is the key to a healthy relationship, and requires honesty to work. Try to have meaningful conversations with your spouse as much as possible. Since trust was violated by the act of infidelity you will need to repair that trust. Obviously you won’t be able to just “blindly trust” the cheating spouse once more, but you can begin to create little tests of trust. Every time your spouse “passes” a test, a little more confidence will be restored in your relationship and in your spouse. This doesn’t mean that you will create tests for your partner to pass, but rather base it on the smaller commitments that are established between you and your partner. Remember, Forgiving is Forgetting rnThe main reason why marriages fail after an act of infidelity is not because of the cheating spouse not “trying hard enough”, but rather the affected spouse not letting go of the act. You must remember that forgiveness means to forget, it means that you must “cast the past into the deepest ocean”. It really comes down to you since you were the affected party. You must consider how sincere your spouse is and if he/she truly repented. It will take a great deal of you to trust your spouse once more, and even if you throw yourself back into the relationship whole heartedly you will still always have the dark remembrance of what happened. It takes a giant leap of faith, and obviously it requires complete commitment from your partner as well. If you are going to take the giant leap of faith then consider this as a “do-over”. It is a second chance and a second wind to your relationship. This time around you and your partner will both have to work hard at the relationship in order to make it better than it was before. There have been many cases of people who worked through these types of situations, and in many of those cases their relationships flourished more than it did the first time around.