Infidelity in a relationship may seem like you–or your relationship–will never be able to recover. Even if this isn’t completely true, the feeling is not unwarranted. Cheating is a huge violation of trust, and it will completely level your relationship. However, you can move past it.
It will be hard, but if you and your partner are both committed to one another, it is possible to move past infidelity. Keep reading if you are interested in learning more.
Choose to recover
The most important part of moving past an act of infidelity is deciding to do so. This may sound obvious, but for your relationship to recover, you must fully commit yourself to do so. All further actions will be futile if you do not decide to recover your relationship.
In addition, you must ask yourself if an act of cheating is something you can get over. Once you put in the work to mend your broken relationship, you should aim to leave the act of infidelity in the past; it cannot be brought up in arguments or as a point to hurt your partner with. This cannot be something that will plague your thoughts throughout your relationship.
If infidelity is not something you think you can move on from, that is completely valid. Trust is everything in a relationship, and it will take a lot of work to rebuild that foundation.
Redefine your relationship
After you have both decided that cheating is something you can move on from, you can begin to redefine what your relationship will look like. You are entering a new phase of your relationship, one that looks completely different from what it used to be.
An important part of this step is to mourn the loss of your “old” relationship. Your love will look different for a while, and that is okay! You and your relationship are in a rebuilding phase. Things will be different in your relationship from now on, hopefully for the better, but you can grieve the past in whatever way you feel necessary. However, once you have accepted the loss of trust, you must leave it in the past to make room for the future.
Help one another understand
Help one another to understand the transgression. This may hurt both you and your partner, but it is so important to be honest about why the infidelity happened. It may hurt to hear how your partner was feeling during the period the infidelity occurred, but again, it helps to build a strong foundation of trust.
Additionally, this exercise will help you to find the problem areas in your relationship that you can work on. Do you lack effective communication? Are you not spending enough quality time together? Hopefully, this will help you understand where you went wrong.
Commit to the changes
For any and all of this to work, you must fully commit yourselves to the changes. Both you and your partner must be willing to implement the updates to your relationship. Now that you have an understanding of where your relationship went wrong, you can commit to the changes.
Consider couples counseling
Doing the work on your relationship yourselves is, well, work! Having outside help is incredibly beneficial as you will have a mediator to explain things to you both. Marriage counseling help you two see things from each other’s point of view. They can also offer additional tips to help rebuild your broken trust.
I specialize in helping couples through rough patches in their relationship. If you feel as if you and your partner could benefit from a joint session, do not hesitate to reach out. Contact me today.