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

Dealing with infidelity in your marriage is not an easy path. I know from experience that your best laid plans can be torn apart at any moment when heated emotions get involved.

This has given me a long list of things NOT to do because I have done a number of these and each one set back my marriage even further. Looking at it again I have to say that I am surprised I am still with my wife now because we were both such fools back then. I must thank Frank Gunzburg again for his amazing guide to surviving infidelity.

1.Yell and Scream – Never EVER get into a yelling match. It is the easiest thing to do and you are angry and they are defensive and a simple conversation can turn ugly and then all bets are off. Obviously this never helps but why do we always end up doing it? Often it is because the other party starts it … then it escalates. However knowing how to end a conversation before it gets to this stage will help a great deal with fixing your marriage after infidelity.

2. Forcing Apologies – If you are the victim in this sometimes you will feel a powerful desire to have your husband or your wife to BEG you for forgiveness. You will want them to confess everything and say they were wrong and everything they did was completely their fault and make you feel like you have won somehow. This is a dangerous thought. There are no winners in an affair and forgiveness … true meaningful forgiveness will come in time. Trying to force it will simply make them bitter and angry and may push them simply to leave.

3. Beg Them - The opposite end to this is begging the cheater to stay if they are still involved in the affair or are simply deciding whether they can handle staying in a marriage anymore. If you want the marriage to work and you are fearful of them leaving even when you might also loathe them for their actions begging and pleading is the wrong way to go about it. IT can also be incredibly hard to stop yourself from doing this when you are so in love and also so hurt so the emotions just roar to the surface coming out in tears and phrases like “Please don’t go”, “Think of the children” and so forth. You need strength now to fix this and begging often makes them feel more guilty and so they run rather than facing it right now.

4. Plot Revenge - I never did this but I heard of a lot of people and a lot of websites even ENCOURAGING people to take vengeance on their cheating partners. Even if you don’t want to make your marriage work this is a bad idea. Giving in to vengeance can never erase what happened and it does not make you really feel better. It just makes you a sadistic person who may now have trouble trusting others later on. Going through the grieving process without taunts or acts of revenge will make you a better person and can save your marriage too.

I might come back with some more of these ways NOT to deal with infidelity in your marriage but that’s all I can think of at the moment. For how you SHOULD deal with an affair see the e-book I recommend on this site by Frank Gunzburg a marriage counsellor of 30 years experience.

Surviving The 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!)