How to Survive Infidelity – Can a Marriage Survive?
How to survive infidelity doesn’t mean that an extra marital affair spells the end of a relationship. Can it be salvaged? Here we explore the fabric of a marriage after a partner has strayed.
Infidelity can break a relationship, making both partners feel lost and angry. But, many marriages not only survive but get stronger after facing an affair. This guide will show you how with commitment and effort.
I will give you tips on how to overcome infidelity, restore trust, and make your relationship better. It doesn’t matter if you’re the betrayed or the betraying partner. I want to give you hope and actions to move forward positively.
Key Takeaways
- Infidelity can cause intense emotional pain, but with commitment and effort, many marriages can survive and even thrive after an affair.
- This guide will provide practical tips on how to overcome the betrayal, restore trust, and rebuild your relationship.
- The process of healing from infidelity is complex, but with patience, resilience, and a willingness to forgive and be forgiven, you can emerge from this difficult chapter with a renewed sense of trust and connection.
- Remember, you are not alone in this struggle, and there are resources and support available to help guide you through the healing process.
- By understanding the nature of infidelity and addressing the underlying issues, you can work towards mending your marriage and creating a stronger, more intimate relationship.
Powerful Secrets to Rescue Your Marriage After an Affair
Understanding Infidelity and Its Causes
Infidelity is complicated and can show up in different ways in a relationship. Each couple should talk and find out what infidelity means to them. Some see emotional cheating as bad as physical cheating. Others see only a sexual affair as breaking trust.
Defining Infidelity
Not all forms of cheating are the same. Cheating could be emotional, online, or physical. Each pair needs to decide what breaks their trust and commitment. Some see emotional connections with others as hurtful. Others feel only sex outside the relationship is wrong.
Why Affairs Happen
Affairs can happen in any marriage, even happy-looking ones. There are many reasons, like not feeling loved, not being fully committed, or not talking enough. Low self-esteem, mental issues, and stress can also lead to infidelity. Knowing these reasons can help couples solve their problems and move on together.
Discovering an Affair and Taking Initial Steps
Finding out about an affair can lead to strong feelings and quick decisions. It’s important not to act impulsively. If you’re scared about hurting yourself or others, get help from a doctor right away. If not, give each other space and time to think before talking. Don’t make big choices until you’ve talked to people you trust.
Seek Support
Talking to friends who listen without judging can ease the pain. Stay away from friends who are too hard on you. Also, talking to a counselor or a therapist can really guide you. They help sort out your feelings and the challenges ahead.
Give Each Other Space
Finding out about the affair can shock you both. It’s key to step back and think before you talk deeply about it. Taking time apart can stop more hurt. It lets you seek help and get clear on what to do next for your relationship.
How to survive infidelity
Coping with an affair is very hard for a couple. But, by being dedicated and working together, many manage to not just survive but thrive. They need to heal, learn from mistakes, get help from a counselor, and build back trust and intimacy.
Mending a Marriage After an Affair
Fixing a marriage after cheating needs effort from both sides. The one who cheated needs to admit their wrong, stop talking to the other person, and be truly sorry. The hurt partner should try to forgive eventually. Together, they make a plan to trust again.
Restoring Trust
Trust must be pieced back together after an affair. Forgiveness takes time but is key to feeling safe again. The unfaithful one must take blame, show they’re sorry, and set clear rules. This starts the path to trust again.
Seeking Professional Help
Seeing a therapist who knows about infidelity helps a lot. They can explain things, find what’s really wrong, and teach how to talk and solve problems. Having a neutral place to talk and heal is very critical.
Coping with the Pain and Healing Process
Experiencing infidelity can make you feel all alone. But, remember, many face this too. Studies show lots of partners have affairs. Know you’re not alone in this. You can find support in others who have gone through this. This can help you feel stronger to heal.
Knowing You’re Not Alone
Learning how common infidelity is can bring comfort. It shows you’re not the only one hurting. Connecting with those who share your story can make you feel supported. This support can be found in groups online or in-person, where everyone shares and learns from each other.
Getting Help from Support Groups and Counseling
Support groups and counseling are great steps to take. They offer a place to talk and get advice from others like you. Counselors can guide you through the healing process. They help you address deeper issues and learn to cope in healthy ways.
Taking Care of Yourself
The pain of infidelity can hurt both your body and mind. Taking care of yourself is very, very important right now. Ensure you eat well, sleep well, and stay active. Avoid bad habits like drinking or overeating. Instead, use good ways to process your feelings. Things like writing, meditation, or hobbies can really help. Keeping balance in your life is hard, but it is important for healing.
Powerful Secrets to Rescue Your Marriage After an Affair
Honesty and Real Understanding
There are marriages and there are marriages. You can expect and demand the sun, moon and the stars or almost nothing. It’s a question of personality and perspective. But there is no doubt that the most important thing in a marriage, as in any other relationship, is honesty and a real understanding of each other.
In a marriage of the kind we all yearn to have, fidelity is vital. It implies a commitment that’s total and complete. You seek the closest intimacy possible from no one else, so sufficient is the love you receive. What could be more reassuring, more meaningful? But a relationship that intense, comes with a price tag.
And infidelity in a relationship based on such love can be shattering. Nothing can fix that first fine careless rupture. Trust is ruptured forever.
Infidelity is a betrayal that leaves you feeling painfully inadequate:
You look back through the prism of time and realize how wonderfully didactic you were in your youth! At 25, black and white could never co-exist. But then, life happens. And you realize that grey exists, and it is often a zone that needs far more maturity and understanding than you ever dreamed of.
When you’ve been married a number of years, the first lesson you learn is that marriage is a relationship which, like human beings themselves, is constantly morphing and evolving. It’s an equation where the variables change the answers constantly. People sometimes lead married lives together with infidelity between them. Children, autumn love, companionship allow such relationships to survive.
But at the end of the day, it’s really what you want from your marriage and partner. You can survive infidelity (don’t we survive everything?), but that’s the right word, isn’t it? Survive. If you want more, you have to sacrifice something. That my friend, is the nature of the beast.
How to survive Infidelity emotionally: A KEY Tactic to Save the Marriage:
Learn the one important technique to possibly save your marriage if your partner is having an emotional affair.
Hearing that your cheating spouse is “in love” with someone else is devastating. We often hear, “I can handle her (or him ) having sex with someone else. I think I can live with that. But, for him/her to give herself/himself emotionally and “love” someone else…, that’s hard.”
What can you specifically do to increase the odds of saving the marriage?
So often the offended spouse reacts with intense feelings and pulls out all stops to “win her or him back.”
He or she applies pressure. Begs. Cajoles. Makes promises. Gets in her or his face. Sends flowers. Arranges for dates. Talks to her or his family and friends. Calls on the phone. Asks questions… daily, sometimes hourly.
It doesn’t work. Why? Well, for one reason she or he has found all the stimulation and excitement she supposedly needs in the new found “love.”
At a deeper level this is confusing enough for the cheating husband or cheating wife. Any additional input will be overwhelming and she or he is liable to close the door on the marriage even further.
Plus, she or he is really looking for some stability, some solid centered core that will hold her or him firm when the wind of drama entices and blows around him or her.
If you bombard your partner with your neediness, you are certainly not the person who can help in ways they really seek.
She also is liable to create a polarity and begin comparing you to him. With your neediness dripping all over you, you don’t stand a very good chance of coming out on top. Sorry!
Here’s a tactic that helps solve the dilemma and gives you a greater chance of saving the marriage. It’s called “back off!”
Stop pressing. Slow down the pace. Be silent – most of the time. Stop making requests. Cease asking questions. Do not try to wiggle out some assurance. Stop being a pain!
Remember, this “in love” state will fade. You need to have the confidence that it will. You need patience. The relationship will run its course.
She or he needs the space. She or he needs some quiet moments to truly hear themselves and face the emptiness within. There will be a voice within that says, “This will not last. Is this what I really want? At some time I must live in the real world. Where is this taking me? Is this where I really want to go? Why am I so dependent on him (or her) ? Why do I feel this empty pit in my stomach when I’m not with him (or her) ? What does this say about me?”
This is her opportunity to learn about TRUE love. Don’t get in his or her way.
I know. I know. This is easier said than done. But, you must do it. It is vitally important that you learn to quiet yourself, control yourself and keep on the straight and narrow path.
At this point there is a skill called “back off.” Use that skill. This will take some effort. It might take some coaching or therapy. It most likely will demand that you get to know yourself better, that you gain more confidence in you – apart from what she does with him – that you build a strong foundation under yourself that can weather any storm.
This is your opportunity to grow to another level.
Oh, by the way. She or he will notice! And….she or he might like it.
Backing off does not mean that you don’t have anything to do with your partner Quite the contrary. You want to maintain your contact. but it will be QUALITY contact. It will be contact that does honor to you, confronts your partner with the reality of their decisions and works toward resolution for the marriage.
Less often means more when facing emotional infidelity. Learning a specific skill such as “backing off” enhances one’s chances of saving the marriage.
The reasons for divorce are diverse
How to survive Infidelity: How “My Marriage Made Me Do It” is a Cop-out
Learn why you shouldn’t believe your spouse when they say, “I had an affair because we have a lousy marriage.”
Ask someone why they had, or are having an affair and you may hear something like this: “I have a lousy marriage. My marriage is dead. There is no intimacy, no sex, and no excitement. The love is gone. We’ve grown apart. I can’t stand the marriage. There was nothing happening in the marriage and the affair just happened.”
These statements are rationalizations and fail to “get at” the underlying issues.
How to survive infidelity and fix a marriage – Here are some key points:
1. It’s as if a marriage is an animal gone bad. A marriage does not have a life of it’s own. In reality, there is no such thing as a “marriage.” One is “married” as a result of making some promises and signing a paper at one point. After the paper is signed, two people continue communicating and acting toward one another in particular ways that they hope will help them get what they individually want. Just as there is no “marriage,” there is no such thing as a “relationship.” There are, however, ways of relating for which each person is responsible.
2. We idealize “marriage” or “romantic relationships” with the expectation we will get what we want, without much effort to boot. The movies, popular public press and romance novels/stories don’t help much here. A “marriage” is behind the eight ball from the word go. “IT” can’t win.
3. From day one most of us don’t have a clue about how to get, build, nurture and maintain healthy and intimate ways of relating. We need ‘love 101’ and it’s not there. We rely upon experimentation or bad models.
Don’t Jump from the frying pan into the fire
4. If the “marriage” is dead, why in the world would one choose to have an affair? Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. It really is stupid. You add a whole layer of deceit and shame that eventually will result in consequences more dire than approaching your spouse and saying, “I’m really unhappy. What I’m doing with you obviously is not working. I want out.” Oh well, maybe some people need more problems and suffering.
5. If the “marriage” is bad, obviously, I don’t have to look at me. I can blame “it” or the other. Many of us find it difficult to look at me. Some of us don’t know how to look at me. A lot of us never think of looking at me.
Here’s a How to Survive Infidelity Tip:
If your partner/spouse is having and affair and blames it on the “marriage,” don’t buy into it. The “marriage” is not the problem. You are not the problem. Your spouse/partner chose the affair out of ignorance, fear or inadequacy.
To achieve infidelity recovery stages you’re not alone any longer. How to survive Infidelity experts are here to help you sort through this terrifying experience and understand exactly what you SHOULD and SHOULD NOT do to cope with the aftermath of an affair and get your marriage back on track again, if that’s what you decide you want to do.
For more information on the how to survive infidelity issues behind the other kinds of affairs and tips for dealing with them, visit: How to save a marriage after an affair
Conclusion on How to Survive Infidelity
Dealing with how to survive infidelity is hard but doable. It’s about knowing what infidelity is, starting to fix things, and working hard to make your bond stronger. Lots of couples make it through this, and they often end up with a better marriage.
It takes time, effort, and a heart open to giving and getting forgiveness. By choosing to move forward positively, you can rebuild trust and hope. The journey might be tough, but making it through brings great joy.
Remember, many have faced this challenge and won. You can too, with the right help and commitment. Striving for a deeper connection with your loved one after infidelity is possible. And it may make your relationship better than before.
FAQ’s about how to survive infidelity
What is the definition of infidelity in a relationship?
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