It can be a real challenge to deal with infidelity in any marriage. After all, didn’t the two of you vow to be faithful to one another as long as you both shall live? Not only is infidelity a huge betrayal of your trust, but it can severely shake the very foundation of your life. After all, for better or worse, most people heavily identify themselves with their relationships.
Trust is a really hard thing to rebuild after it’s been lost, but here is a simple recipe to help you get the trust back in your relationship.
First, you both need to practice transparency in everything that you do. When trust is broken it is because one or both people were keeping secrets, hiding ulterior motives, or otherwise withholding the truth. The only way to rebuild the trust is with transparency.
Note that I am recommending that both of you practice transparency. There may be feeling that only the person that cheated needs to be more honest and transparent, but that is not the case. This is something that both of you need to do or else it will feel like some sort of humiliating punishment for the cheater. Plus it will only instill a “I’m right, you’re wrong” sense of entitlement in the victim. Neither of which will help to build a healthy relationship.
Second, understand that trust takes time. It will take time to rebuild the trust in your relationship. Something like infidelity can really destroy trust in an instant, but it may take weeks or months to get that trust back.
Stay committed to rebuilding the trust by continuously practicing transparency in your relationship. The trust will come back slowly and it will start with small things before big things. Have realistic expectations and don’t expect things to change overnight.
Third, develop better ways of resolving conflict in your relationship. Trust is great, but unless you can change how you address and take on problems in your marriage, you’re only setting the stage for another affair.
The reason the affair happened in the first place was because something in your marriage wasn’t working right and one or both of you were left with unmet needs. Instead of dealing with these issues in your marriage, your spouse turned to someone else, drawn by a clean slate and the prospect of a fresh new relationship.
As long as those unmet needs remain, your relationship will have trouble. The two of you need to talk and figure out what each of your unmet needs in your marriage are. Then you must develop realistic ways that you can work toward meeting them.
So, coping with infidelity is no easy task, but with commitment and dedication to working through it, you and your spouse can overcome this challenge and go on to enjoy a happy marriage together. Rebuilding trust will take time and work, but with patience it will come back, and with better communication skills and the ability to openly discuss both of your unmet needs, you can begin to build the foundation of a much healthier relationship.
If you're ready to take control of your marriage and start the path to recovery after the affair, consider checking out some popular infidelity books that can help you when coping with infidelity.
Alex Haight is a relationship writer helping women with relationship problems and specializing in affairs and infidelity.