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.
