Can Your Marriage Recover After Your Spouse Cheats?
You just found out your spouse was unfaithful and your entire world is rocked. You can’t imagine staying, but you also can’t imagine dismantling your life and starting over. Is divorce inevitable, or can a marriage really recover after one spouse cheats? The answer: Some marriages can be mended, but you must have a plan to determine if your relationship can be repaired.
How To Create An Infidelity Recovery Plan
Creating an infidelity recovery plan will help you feel more in control. Ideally, you and your spouse would each be in individual therapy, 12-step groups if sex addiction is an issue, and couples therapy to work on repairing trust. If you can’t afford therapy, you can still create a plan of your own by following these crucial steps.
Your spouse must:
End all cheating. Monogamy means abstaining from extramarital sex and flirtatious entanglements both IRL and virtual. For instance, breaking up with an affair partner but continuing to sext emotional affair partners is still cheating. Your spouse must signal their commitment to repairing the marriage by severing all kinds of infidelity.
Demonstrate remorse and empathy. Your spouse must acknowledge the pain they’ve caused you and create space for you to share the impact of their actions on you. It’s important that they don’t blame you for your feelings or sideswipe the conversation with defensiveness. Doing this successfully requires enough maturity so they can tolerate their own discomfort and keep the focus on your healing.
Accept your recovery timeline. Yes, it feels crappy being in the doghouse, but not as crappy as being betrayed. Your spouse needs to accept that you probably have different recovery timelines; no matter how much they would like you to “get over it,” they must allow you to heal at your own pace.
Demonstrate accountability across contexts. This means that your spouse is true to their word not only regarding sex, but in all areas of your lives together: finances, parenting, and promises made. They need to show that they can be trusted to do all the things they say they’ll do.
You must:
Commit to your own healing. Many infidelity therapists generally suggest taking a year before making the life-altering decision to end your marriage. It’s tempting to dwell on how you’ve been hurt, but your time will be better spent learning how to set appropriate boundaries, express yourself directly, and practice coping skills so you can manage difficult feelings.
Accept that you cannot control your spouse’s choices. Stop obsessing about what your spouse might do in the future. The only thing you can control is how you choose to behave. So keep the focus on your own self-care: set limits, communicate effectively, seek support from your therapist.
Don’t overshare. Be careful whom you confide in, and how many details you reveal. Your family and friends may fuel your anger and fear, which will make it much more challenging to resolve your issues. Other people’s opinions don’t belong in your marriage. After all, you’re the one that has to live out the consequences of your decisions, not them.
Don’t marinate in blame. No amount of anger and blame can change the past. Expressing anger appropriately is justified, but continually erupting in rage or reminding your spouse of all their transgressions is just going to keep you feeling victimized. Concentrate on what your spouse is doing in the present to demonstrate accountability.
After a year, take stock of your infidelity recovery progress. If your spouse hasn’t been able to demonstrate reasonable remorse and accountability, or if you just can’t imagine trusting them again, then it may be time to move towards divorce and let your spouse know about your intentions. But if you feel that you’ve taken steps forward, you may feel optimistic that your marriage will recover.
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