subject: Rebuilding Your Marriage After an Affair [print this page] Rebuilding Your Marriage After an Affair Rebuilding Your Marriage After an Affair
I have a small blog / website wherein I share the story of how our marriage survived my husband's affair. Sometimes, people will email or share their own stories with me. Often, they ask questions or want advice. One of the most common is "how can I build up my marriage after an affair?" Most times, this question comes from wives whose husbands have cheated, but sometimes there are men whose wives have had an affair.
And, there are times when the spouse who had the affair deeply regrets it, wants to save the marriage desperately, and is seeking advice on how they can do this. No matter which party contacts me, I often give similar advice. The tips that follow are the things that helped me rebuild my own marriage (as the spouse who was cheated on) and the things that I believe the spouse who cheated can do to help the injured party heal.
Don't Diminish The Reality Of The Affair Or It's Impact On Your Marriage: An affair is horribly painful for all involved. No matter how you slice it, it's a huge injury to, and a huge failure of, the marriage. There may have been contributing factors that left you vulnerable. You both may deeply regret it and want to brush it under the rug as quickly as possible.
Sometimes, the party who cheated feels that talking about the affair or being honest about it will only cause more pain. And, there was a time when I didn't know if I wanted to hear the details my husband's affair because it was just too painful and it battered my self esteem and made me question my husband's love and desire for me. Sometimes, folks suspect that it's better not to know all of the hows and whys of an affair.
The problem with this is that if you don't bring these things into the light, you will just wonder about them anyway. They will eat you alive. The things left unsaid will actually scream out in your subconscious, no matter how much you want to silence them. And, often, you'll imagine it as worse than it really was, anyway.
In my worst fears, I imagined that my husband was madly in love with this other woman and was going to run away with her any day now. In my husband's mind, I secretly hated him (it was true that I hated what he did) and was going to have an affair myself as retaliation. Neither of these things were true, but we didn't know this for a long time, and this lack of knowledge only weakened our marriage more. When you are ready, you really do need to understand how and why the affair happened. Doing so is necessary in moving forward in a successful way and allows you to fix what was broken. This is the only way to be sure it won't happen again.
Step Up And Take Responsibility For What You Really Want: Before your marriage can be rebuilt after an affair, you need to define what you really want. If you cheated and you want your wife back, tell her and commit to doing every single thing that is necessary to make this happen. Often this means patience, reassurance, responsibility, and accountability.
Always take full responsibility for the affair and the decision that you made alone. So many people make the mistake of hanging back, hanging their heads, and waiting for their spouses to initiate everything (the wait for this may be a long one). Often, the fear or rejection or punishment is so great, that you're afraid to show your deep regret and request for forgiveness. This is a mistake. You need to be honest with your spouse. Lay it out on the table and express your deep regret, sorrow, and commitment. Be ready to provide plenty of genuine reassurance and patience as they work through this. They won't trust you again immediately. You will have to earn this, but you can do this over time as you show them that you mean what you say.
And, often if you're the spouse who was cheated on, you may really want to save your marriage, but you find yourself spewing out hurtful comments, gestures, and body language. I know from my personal experience, my actions were saying things entirely different from my wishes. What I really wanted was my marriage back and to know that my husband still loved me, but I was so hurt and angry, that I was participating in actions that were only pushing my husband further away. He was remorseful. He was patient. He was accountable, but this was never enough for me. I continued to punish him even after I was telling him I was ready to move on.
To really heal a marriage, you need to be willing to really let the affair and blame go and to stop keeping score. This doesn't happen over night. But, once you've made a decision that you want to save your marriage, don't look back, don't continue to punish, and don't continue to revisit the past. Working on your own self esteem outside of the marriage can really help with this.
Take The Lessons That The Affair Can Offer Your Marriage: Only from my own experience do I know that an affair can actually improve your marriage if you are willing to do the work necessary. The truth is, if you're open to the lessons that are right in front of you, you can take something very negative and turn it into a positive. You can allow this to shine a light on places where your marriage could use improvement. Yes, it will require you to be vulnerable and to trust again, and this can be difficult. But, in the end, the rewards are great. Many marriages improve as both partners learn not to take one another for granted, to communicate and express affection in a new, better way.
The real key in building a marriage after an affair is to create a new, better reality. You need to create new memories, new shared experiences, and new communication and intimacy that is better than it was before so that you can look forward rather than looking back.
Although I never would've believed this two years ago, my marriage is stronger than ever after my husband's affair. It took a lot of work, and I had to play the game to win, but it was worth it. Because of all the work I did on myself, my self esteem is at an all time high. I know longer worry my husband will cheat again. You can read my very personal story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com/
