Forgiving infidelity is only one step along the path to learning to survive infidelity. After you discover your spouse’s affair, you are faced with what may seem insurmountable problems. Initially, you may think the pain is too great to allow you to do anything constructive to try saving your marriage
or to decide to move on from it and start completely fresh.
You just found out you are married to a cheater. It may feel as if the world just came crashing down upon you. Now what?To find out about your spouse’s cheating is one of the most wrenching, emotionally-devastating events that can happen in a marriage—ranked up there with the death of a spouse.
Is Forgiving Infidelity Something You Should Do?
A common reaction from the cheating victim is, “I don’t know what to do.” What should you do first? You are trying to pick up what can feel like the shredded remnants of your life after you’ve had the wind knocked out of you, so be patient with yourself while you figure out what to do.Infidelity shreds everything that was once whole: your relationship with and trust in your spouse, your sense of peace, your self-esteem and your thoughts. It can be extremely overwhelming, especially since you have more going on than just tending your relationship. No doubt you are trying to run your household, take care of family members, and work, too—while in excruciating psychological and emotional pain. Forgiving infidelity may not be at the top of your list right now.
After learning of the affair, you may not know exactly where to begin the healing process, but here is a broad-based plan so you can break the process down into more manageable phases. Most people experiencing a crisis feel better with a working plan. It’s concrete, it’s logical—and it’s something solid to hold onto in an uncertain, emotionally-wrought time.
Here are the 3 phases you need to know to help you learn how to survive infidelity and heal from the pain.
Phase 1: The Cheating Victim: Your Pain Comes First
Healing in the marriage can’t come until you have looked after yourself first. As has been emphasized in previous blogs, if you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t have an easy time taking care of anything or anyone else.
If you want to survive infidelity, you need to address the onslaught of thoughts and emotions that are overwhelming you. If you don’t have a firm internal foundation, you will be unable to rebuild a firm foundation in your marriage.
You have to deal with the negative impact of your spouse’s cheating actions. This includes effectively handling all of those negative thoughts and emotions, images of the affair, and self-doubts until you begin to feel some semblance of internal peace again.
Putting solid ground down internally will strengthen your ability to put one down externally in phase two.
Phase 2: The Couple in Crisis: Begin Working—and Healing—Together
This is as challenging a phase as the first one in which you work on yourself—perhaps even more so. In phase 2, you need to work on communcating effectively with your spouse.
No doubt, the early stages of this phase will feel very strained. You may have a lot of anger, and find yourself lashing out at your spouse, and your spouse’s response may be the silent treatment as retaliation for the discomfort he or she may feel over what they have done to your marriage.
It will take effort on the part of you and your spouse to work together on your communication skills, and for you as the victim, to feel some sense of trust that your partner is truly committed to this process.
There will be lapses into negative thoughts as you begin to work with your spouse, but it doesn’t mean your internal foundation is at risk—it’s just being challenged by the rawness of communicating after the devastation of the affair.
Phase 3: Rebuild Your Marriage (or not)
Once you and your spouse are able to communicate effectively, you are ready to begin rebuilding the foundation of your marriage. If, despite your best efforts, communication just can’t seem to happen, it may be time to consider terminating your marriage. With work and commitment, most marriages can survive infidelity.
It is in this phase that you will work on rebuilding trust. In essence, you are wiping clean the way things have “always been done” in your marriage, and recreating a stronger foundation with very clear-cut, defined rules.
The work of a marriage never stops, so this phase will move from a period of rebuilding to one in which you are continuously solidifying. There will even be occasions where you step back into the first two phases, so don’t be thrown off your end goal, which is surviving infidelity.