If you feel like the affair has damaged but not destroyed your marriage then you need to know how to make your marriage better after infidelity. Such a task is not easy however as there are so many emotions to navigate and so many issues that can boil to the surface due to the tiniest little things that may happen.

With my own marriage it took quite some time to get back to what it was, even when I thought we had buried everything and overcome the resentment, jealousy and hurt. The truth is that you never fully bury the memories. You can never forget infidelity but you can forgive in time which requires more than just words. It requires a change in how you think about your relationship and the future.

As such here are a few steps that helped me make a better marriage after infidelity:

1. Focus on the Future

This does not mean forgetting the past of course. However, putting your mental emphasis on the future and how great you can make it is like drowning out another noise, the noise is still there but the resounding blast of forward facing thinking will mean it cannot hurt you as much.

So if something is bothering you about what happened try to focus on something in the future to do with you marriage that is good and happy. You may not squash the negaqtive feelings completely but it will lower your anxiety somewhat.

2. Rebuild a Marriage – Do Not “Fix” a Marriage

Now these might sound like he same thing but they have very different meanings when you think about it. Rebuilding something is about starting from scratch to build a structure or anything again. It can be rebuilt better and it can be rebuilt differently (and has to as you will see). Fixing a marriage sounds like trying to plug the gaps and stop the whole thing falling down. A band-aid solution which will not hold and the entire marriage ends up falling apart.

These metaphors can be explained as such. If you try to continue your marriage as it was and just try to make the rough bits a little bit better then you may be doomed to repeat the same problems that caused your partner to stray in the first place. If you however see this as a new start to your lives and your marriage then you can build a stronger foundation based on what you have learned about each other and what your marriage once was.

3. Date Again

This ties in with the previous point but really helped me become closer to my wife. In the interests of rebuilding from the beginning and also to remind each other of the passion and love that you once had consider going on proper dates once again.

If you stay within the same context that the affair happened over and again it becomes harder to disengage from the memory and create new ones. Rekindling the desire you once felt outside of the home life can often mean that your intimate moments will not be plagued with negative thoughts and can have a chance to become fresh and new. Try to also do soem different things and new things when going on dates to remember the old times before he problems and dd that element of newness that is needed for a fresh start.

For more information on how to make your marriage better after infidelity though I as always recommend Dr Gunzburg’s most excellent e-book on the subject. Click below to visit the official site.

Surviving an Affair

Just how does one go about putting marriage back together after infidelity? As the title of this suggests I believe that love does have the power to do this but only if it is given a chance to shine which is the hard part.

Before we can delve into this much further, just what is love? Perhaps this is the eternal question that can never be truly answered but we all know it when we feel it. Love, if you have to quantify it, is about a deep sense of care and affection for the other person. It is about really wanting them to be happy but not at the expense of your own happiness. It is about wanting to grow together and to become closer spiritually. Many may completely disagree or think this is too simplistic but at its heart this si what I personally believe.

Now you may have questioned what love is if you found your spouse cheated on you. If you are the cheating party looking to patch things up after your infidelity you might also be reassessing what love is (maybe in a better way). In the end though you need to work out what it means to you and hang onto that through the emotional turmoil as a touchstone.

What I mean is that all the terrible thoughts that you have, the hurt, the betrayal, the anger and the sadness can all be transient and all pass once you go through these stages as we all must. What is important is they do not corrupt your love, if you want your marriage to work you must love your partner. You may not be happy with them, you may even think you HATE them … but it is amazing how we can both love and hate people at the same time. Hatred cannot be sustained though and love can.

So before you take action, find that core of love through your emotional tangle. Really look hard and if it is there latch onto it hard! If you cannot find it … perhaps the infidelity was too great. I believe that putting your marriage back together has to come with love though and not logical pragmatism as love holds the keys to forgiveness, happiness and success.

Again, I highly recommend Frank Gunzburgs Guide to Surviving an affair if you want to now more about saving your marriage from infidelity if you are the victim or the perpetrator. It has very practical advice you can follow unlike my piece here where I simply wanted to voice an opinion (but an important one!)

Rebuilding marriage after infidelity is not an easy task but one that can and in most cases should be done. However the road to recovery from an affair is fraught with pitfalls for husband and wife, cheater and victim that often trip them up and send a healing relationship down a fast track to divorce.

Here are a few pitfalls to avoid when coping with infidelity and rebuilding the trust and love that has been so shaken.

• Revenge Cheating – Sleeping with someone else as a way to get revenge on your spouse is the ultimate in hypocrisy and is a sure fire way to destroy whatever chance you had to actually make a marriage work. Do not do this as you will regret it and your spouse, though a cheater them self will be pushed away.
• Emotional Blackmail – Do not hold your partner to ransom because of their actions. While you may feel powerless and want some way to control your spouse this will breed a deep resentment that will not help you rebuild your marriage!
• Intentional Hurt – Sniping and cutting remarks designed to hurt your partner because you think they ‘deserve it’ does not help matters. While they certainly may have earned such disdain ask yourself “Will this help me love this person again and them me?” Unless you WANT a divorce learn to hold your tongue or it can make matters worse … I know from experience …
• Forgetting – Never forgot the infidelity of your partner. You need to learn to understand and forgive but forgetting is not possible as all you do it “not talk about it”. Not talking about an affair means it is always there looking over your shoulder and no emotional healing and trust building can happen while it festers beneath the surface.

Rebuilding a marriage after infidelity is possible is you avoid these pitfalls but it takes effort, understanding and sometimes a little bit of help. If you want to salvage your marriage then you must take control and make it happen!

It will never be the same …. but it can be good and even better … just different. Discover more about this here