Affair recovery is one of the most traumatic things a couple needs to confront. The pain of betrayal when there is infidelity in a marriage can be overwhelming. The person who had the affair has broken the trust of their partner, and the vow they swore to keep when they were wed. Their partner is left feeling bereft, alone, grief-stricken, and can also feel embarrassed and filled with rage and a desire to retaliate or punish their partner for hurting them. Can a couple who experiences this ever have affair recovery? Surprising as it may seem, the answer is yes. The only way his can happen effectively is with marriage counseling. You cannot do this alone.
Couples can have affair recovery from infidelity with the right kind of mindset, proper counseling and a sincere desire to fix what was wrong in their relationship. It’s not enough to say “it will never happen again,” and “I want us to be together.” To gloss it over and ignore the issue creates a risk of another affair,and possible retaliation from the cheated on partner, since the problems and issues in the marriage are never addressed. There’s something inherently problematic in the relationship that has left it vulnerable to an affair. This has to be uncovered and addressed if recovery from infidelity is to be achieved.
Both parties must have a total commitment to doing whatever is necessary to rebuild the relationship.The desire to move forward and move past the breach of trust has to be at the core of relationship recovery.There’s no going back, you cannot ever get back to how it used to be. You will have to create a brand new relationship from the ruins of the past. The first step in this process is to work through the anger, shame, guilt and fear surrounding this terrible breach of trust. With the help of an objective third party, a relationship counselor, all of these deep emotional wounds can be examined and expressed in a safe space. Then the real work of healing and affair recovery can begin.
There’s no set time frame for this process. For some couples, it may take a very long time to unpack all of the emotions surrounding infidelity.There are often many layers of hurt to be peeled back to expose the causes of such a serious breach. Some relationship counselors will want to see the couple together and individually to properly address their needs. There is a great deal of inner work that has to be done. It’s a difficult and often painful process, but if you want your marriage to recover and to thrive, you have to be willing to bare it all, and look at all of the sometimes ugly truths that lie within. A therapist skilled in an attachment based model can help you with this.
Complete authenticity and vulnerability is required if your marriage is to have a chance at affair recovery. For someone who has been living a double-life and conducting themselves in secret, this process can be a welcome relief. It may feel quite liberating to stop hiding, and get everything out in the open and your cards on the table. This carries a great deal of shame and guilt as well. It can be hard to tell your spouse all the things that you’ve done in secret, and hard for them to hear it, but if you wish to have a chance at saving your marriage, you have to go through it together.
Both parties must agree to total honesty and open communication with one another. If you’re the person who cheated, you have to be completely transparent going forward.You have to regret what you’ve done and the pain you’ve caused your spouse enough to be completely honest with them about everything. You have to own your mistakes and behavior with no excuses.You have to take responsibility for the hurt that you’ve caused. There must be total accountability on your part and there must be a true apology. A sincere apology can only occur when there has been a feeling of emotional safety otherwise you will never know what you are apologizing for.. This is why this can at times take a long time.
The person who was not cheating must also examine their role in the relationship. What went wrong that led to the affair? What needs to change going forward to meet one another’s needs and build a solid foundation of trust and respect in the marriage? Where was the disconnection and how do we find that place of loving connection again?
There must also be genuine forgiveness.This is probably the toughest requirement for recovery from infidelity. In order for the relationship to recover, both parties will need to put the transgressions behind them. There is no time frame that says we won’t talk about it again. This process is a life long process.
There must be no punitive action/revenge or laying of guilt on the cheating partner. The affair is a fact, and you both must acknowledge it without beating each other up with it moving forward. The marriage has no hope of surviving if one of you is set on punishing your partner, and keeps the fact of the affair as an active issue that can be pulled out when there’s a disagreement or used to manipulate your partner in any way.
Open and transparent communication is key. There can be no secrets, no time lapses where one partner goes missing, you must be above reproach in all of your dealings. This also means you have completely cut off the person with whom you were having the affair and no longer communicate with them in any way. If monogamy is the goal, there must not be any sense that one partner is at risk to cheat again, nothing to raise suspicion. They must be 100% on board with this if recovery from infidelity is to occur.
The only way that the marriage can recover from infidelity is for both partners to move forward together with the goal of creating a new and better relationship. You both must be working on this constantly. This means guarding your words, communicating what you want and need from each other and taking special care to nurture the relationship. There’s a reason why you fell in love in the beginning and got together. You need to begin a journey of discovery to take you to that emotional place. With all your hearts, you will need to seek that place of love and connection together.
