If your spouse recently made you aware that they had an affair, you have a big decision on your hands. Are you going to stay with your spouse and try to make amends? Or, is this something you cannot move past? Either option is valid, difficult, and requires that you put in a lot of work. Forgiving infidelity can be extremely difficult, if not impossible for most. But, if that’s the route you decide to take, you’ll likely need some help making sense of their affair, of your own feelings, and how to heal.
Forgiving Infidelity: How to Heal, Forgive, and Grow Together
The first step to forgiving infidelity is to realize what forgiveness really is. Of course, most of us think we understand. That is, until it comes to something this major, and suddenly you realize that forgiveness is a lot more difficult than you might have thought. It’s a lot to ask for a spouse to forgive cheating. After all, you made a fatal error at least once, if not many more times.
Rome wasn’t built in a day
To forgive— to fully forgivemeans that you have to forgive, move on, and not hold that thing they did over their head. As a spouse who is forgiving infidelity, it’s important that you understand and take allof the time you need. Don’t let your spouse make you feel rushed to forgive. And, in the end, if you find that you cannot do so— that’s fair too. The problem for many is that there’s no way to ‘make them pay’ for what they did to you. After all, if there was a price on an affair— it would be far too high.
Forgiving does not mean forgetting
An important thing to remember is that forgiving does not equal forgetting, or condoning the behavior. Forgiving means that you have the strength to say: ‘this bad choice they made is not worth giving up what we’ve built’. Forgiving is not easy, it doesn’t have a strict time line, and it’s not the same for everyone.
Acknowledge your feelings to the person who hurt you
When it comes to forgiving a cheating spouse, you have to lay all the cards on the table. Now, more than ever, is the time to tell your spouse exactly how you feel. Do not hold onto the resentment, anger, hate, disgust, sadness— you have to put it all out there. More than any other step to forgiveness, this one is important. Holding onto those words as ammunition for a later date does not help you heal, or help the relationship to repair.
Accept your part in the relationship
One of the most difficult things to do after being cheated on, is acknowledging the faults in the relationship that led to such a thing happening. Understand that we are absolutely, 100% not saying that the affair is your fault. However, we must acknowledge that all things happen for a reason. Something about your relationship was not functioning properly.
Somewhere, something in your marriage created a rift between the two of you. Accepting that your relationship needs work does notequal taking responsibility for your spouse’s affair. They cheated, and that is their wrongdoing— and yours to forgive if you choose to do so. But to heal the marriage, you have to acknowledge the parts that need fixing.