Repair your marriage after an affair
Most of the people who come across my cheating blog are women, but sometimes I’ll go find some men. And often people email me wanting to know “how to fix a marriage after an affair.” Often people really want to save their marriages and move on, but they just don’t know how to get over the feelings of betrayal, shock, and deep hurt and pain. It can be difficult to rebuild trust and intimacy after an affair, as the spouse who cheated will often hold back for fear of rejection, while the spouse who was cheated on will suffer from self-esteem issues and self-doubt that will contribute to their falling out. ask if your spouse really still loves and desires you. But, it is possible to overcome these things. Marriages often can and do survive affairs, only to emerge stronger when both parties rise to the occasion and make a conscious decision to work together to fix the issues that contributed to the affair in the first place. In this article, I will offer you tips and advice to start repairing your marriage after an affair.
Responsibility must be assumed: The spouse who is cheated on must take full responsibility for the decision, actions, and consequences. I understand that you have felt abandoned, misunderstood or vulnerable, but there are always better ways to handle this than cheating. I understand that you would probably like to withdraw it, but you can’t. However, a good start is to take full responsibility for both his actions and repairing the damage.
On the other hand, the spouse who was cheated on must play some role in repairing the vulnerabilities that existed and contributed to the situation. I understand that you were not the one who cheated and you are the one who was grievously wronged, but if you truly want to save your marriage, you must make a conscious decision to act in a way that will help it heal. to hold you
It is very easy to hold on to bitterness and punctuation, but this will not really make you feel better or make you happy. Define what you really want. For me, it was feeling loved and desired by my husband again and feeling safe again in the world as he thought it existed. One day I finally realized that punishing my husband and continuing to dwell on the issue and how they wronged me was only continuing to perpetuate the negative feelings that were destroying me. And finally, I realized that I had self-esteem issues that existed (and needed to be addressed) long before the affair was introduced. So, myself, I needed to address these things so that I could be whole on the outside and inside of the marriage.
A new reality must be created: I see many couples making the mistake (which I made too) of trying to recapture the life they had before the affair. They do the same things, go to the same places and make the same moves, hoping to get back to life before the deception. But, here is the truth. First, their marriage before the affair was in trouble and somehow missing for the affair to happen. Second, whether we like it or not, the issue changes things. It is usually impossible to really go back.
The best thing you can do is look forward instead of looking back. Establish new ways of doing things, new ways of communicating, new ways of being intimate, and new ways of interacting and enjoying time together. Often a change of scenery or location goes a long way. The key is to create new memories, new rituals, and a new marriage that is better and more fulfilling than the old one. Before my husband cheated on me, I used to hear people describe an affair as a “wake-up call,” and I never really understood that, but now I do. And sometimes this wake-up call is a real blessing because once the deficiencies are ironed out, both parties are usually much happier as a result.
It all comes down to a conscious decision: People often ask me what is, in the end, the most necessary thing to repair a marriage after an affair. There are quite a few things, but if I had to limit myself to one, I would say that it is making a firm and conscious decision. One day, I woke up and decided I wasn’t going to let this thing ruin what I had built for years. I had painstakingly built my family, my home, my life, and I wasn’t going to let some ridiculous stranger take this away from me. In the same way, my husband had to decide that no matter how hard it was to communicate with me, no matter how much patience and reassurance I needed, no matter how hard it was to know that I wasn’t ready to trust or be intimate yet, he had to take a conscious decision to stick with me and hang on until I was ready to move on.
There’s no denying that it can be a real challenge to get through an adventure. It’s not always an easy road, but in the end, the rewards are great if you use this as the starting point for a new and better way of doing things and a new marriage that ultimately works better for both of you.