How To Repair Your Relationship After Cheating
Dealing with infidelity is never an easy thing to do
When you have a partner that’s been unfaithful, you are going to have some serious issues to deal with.
But it’s not just your partner that you need to worry about.
It can be just as hard on the person that’s been cheated on.
You’re feeling like things will never get back to normal or like your love wasn’t real.
But you still want to try and make things work between the two of you.
Do you think it is possible?
Can it ever be fixed?
How To Repair Your Relationship After Cheating.
1. Work on you
First, you have to be honest with yourself.
Accept that your decisions and actions contributed to the affair and are at least partly responsible for the rift between you and your partner
Take stock of your actions in your relationship and try to understand why you cheated and what caused you to do so.
If you try to repair your relationship without any insights into yourself, then you will be doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
What was this person missing that they wanted from someone else? What did they have that made them more attractive than their partner?
Listen to your partner’s feelings and accept blame where it is due.
Do not try to justify what you did or blame them for the state of your relationship that led to the affair.
This will only worsen the rift between you.
If you are unable to give them what they need, then help them find it elsewhere, whether it is a therapist or support group or a new partner.
Keep an open mind and be willing to change in order for your partner to feel comfortable with you again.
The most important thing is not whether or not they decide to stay with you—it is how well prepared both of you are for whatever comes next.
Take stock of your actions in your relationship and try to understand why you cheated and what caused you to do so.
Be willing to take responsibility for it.
Second, be open to the possibility that this might not work out.
Be willing to accept whatever outcome comes from the work of repairing your relationship, regardless if it’s staying together or moving on from each other.
And third, be willing to do the work necessary to rebuild your relationship with the said partner: participating in counselling, being open and honest about what happened and why it happened, taking time away together as well as separately—whatever it is that you need to do in order to heal as a couple or as individuals.
2. Get help
You’re going to need help.
The best thing you can do for yourself and your partner is to get help.
This might mean going to therapy, reading books or talking with a trusted friend.
It’s really important that you take steps to heal yourself, so you can be sure that the same behaviour doesn’t happen again.
It’s also important that your partner realizes you’re taking responsibility for your actions and working on healing yourself, so they can feel more comfortable in moving forward.
Don’t try to fix things with your partner on your own.
Right now, you’re both hurting and feeling vulnerable.
You need an objective third party to help you navigate through this very difficult time in your life.
And, no, you can’t go to one of your friends for advice—even if they’ve been in the same situation before.
They’ll probably just say what you want to hear and not give you the tough love that’s necessary for healing after infidelity.
Plus, it’s too risky. What if they end up liking or disliking one of you more than the other?
That will jeopardize their friendship with both of you, which is not something anyone wants or needs right now
3. Admit and accept your mistakes
Cheating is a major breach of trust in any relationship — and, in most cases, will lead to the demise of the relationship.
No matter how thorough the makeup sex may be, there are going to be some lingering issues that both you and your partner will have to work through.
But it is possible to repair your relationship after cheating.
The first step is to admit and accept your mistake.
Chances are you’re going to have to do some serious grovelling and soul-searching.
Once you’ve accepted what happened and are ready to move on from the affair, your partner has to be able to trust you again.
“The offended party has a right to know about their partner’s affair,” says family psychologist Dr Terri Orbuch, who studies infidelity at Oakland University in Michigan.
“If not for themselves, then for their children.”
That means being completely open about your affair — who it was with, when it happened, where it took place, why you cheated and whether or not it involved sex.
“As painful as this might be for the person who had an affair, they need to tell all of the details,” says Orbuch.
It is critical that you admit and accept your mistakes, and not just to yourself.
You need to go through the steps of making a full confession to:
- Your spouse
- Your parents (and your spouse’s)
- Your friends
- Members of your church or religious community (if applicable)
- Colleagues at work (if applicable)
4. Be open about your affair
Once you’ve decided to end the affair, you’ll still need to disclose what happened.
Be open about your affair.
You owe it to your partner and yourself, to be honest about what happened.
Tell him or her what led up to the affair, why you cheated and how it ended.
Don’t try to hide details or downplay how often it happened or how intense it was.
It’s important that you share everything so that your partner can understand what happened and start healing from it
The more details your partner knows—including why the affair happened and what your reasons were for ending it—the faster he or she can begin healing.
Be prepared for anger, sadness and a lot of difficult emotions from your partner. Listen to them with empathy and compassion so they know you’re taking their feelings seriously.
See Also:
How To Fix A Relationship After Cheating: 16 Ways To Go About It
15 Characteristics Of An Unhealthy Relationship
5. Don’t expect it to be easy.
It takes time.
But don’t expect things to be easy.
There’s no way around it: Repairing a relationship after infidelity takes hard work.
Before you can talk about repairing your relationship after cheating, you need to make sure that the cheater is truly sorry for what he or she did.
If the cheater isn’t genuinely remorseful and willing to change, therapy won’t help.
You need to be ready to walk away from the relationship if there isn’t real remorse
You cheated on your partner, they caught you, and now they are upset and hurt. That’s understandable.
They’re going to need time to process their feelings of shock, anger and betrayal. It may take them a while to be able to talk about the cheating in an open way or even see it as something that is fixable.
They may not ever be able to look at you the same way again, depending on what their sense of self was before this happened and how much they feel like their trust was violated.
All that said: if you don’t have time for this work, then maybe it’s best to just break up instead of dragging out the process with more pain and disappointment.
6. Keep at it if the relationship is worth rebuilding.
Understand it will take more time than you think.
“Don’t jump to any conclusions about whether or not you are going to stay together,” says Martinez.
“It’s a long process, and it takes a lot of time to be able to deal with forgiveness and trust again. Don’t expect anything too soon.”
Give it time—if the relationship is worth rebuilding.
“If the other person is willing to work on the relationship, part of that is also trusting them and holding them accountable for their actions,” says Martinez.
She recommends setting boundaries around communication and behaviour; for example, if your partner cheated online, ask them not to use social media without you there or delete accounts altogether in order to rebuild trust.
However, if one partner isn’t ready for that level of openness—or the other isn’t willing—you might have different goals in mind:
“In some cases where it’s difficult to rebuild trust or one person doesn’t want to work through it,” says Martinez, “it may be better just to end the relationship.”
Conclusion:
As you can see, repairing a relationship after an affair is highly subjective and based on what both parties are comfortable with.
If you feel that your relationship can be repaired, the key to preserving it will be communication and forgiveness. Use this knowledge to have a happy and strong relationship.
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