Repairing Your Relationship After Cheating

With a fifty percent (50%) divorce rate in the United States and innumerable relationships ending every day it is important to address the issues that are causing these problems. The main cause of divorce, separation and breaking up in the United States is infidelity.

There are varying opinions on the state of a relationship after infidelity has occurred. Many people hold the belief that "once a cheater always a cheater" and the relationship is over. Others seem to have a certain number of instances that mean that make infidelity a deal breaker. Such as if the person cheats once, they can be forgiven and trust rebuilt, but if they do it again then it's over. Still others believe that with effort and the rebuilding of trust their relationship can be lifelong no matter what they face. No matter what your stance on infidelity, when it comes to maintaining a relationship or marriage after infidelity occurs there are certain things that each person must do to rebuild trust and confidence, affection and even sexual activity.

Other than physical abuse there is probably nothing that hurts a person worse than to find out that the person they are dedicated and committed to has broken that trust and gotten involved sexually with another person. There are different areas that are considered cheating. There is emotional infidelity, flirting, online affairs etc. But for the sake of this article lets just classify cheating/infidelity as having sexual contact with a person outside the relationship.

The knowledge that your spouse or partner has engaged in the most intimate of behaviors with someone else can crush your heart, make you feel less attractive to the partner and signal a serious problem within your relationship that needs attention. The first step to rebuilding your relationship is to forgive. This is also the hardest part. You must put those images and thoughts of what your partner did with someone else out of your head, accept that it happened but that you will deal with it together and convince yourself it won't happen again. Once you can honestly say that you have forgiven your partner you can begin to address what caused the infidelity to happen. If you and your partner are having problems with this part of your relationship a professional counselor can help you work through it to get to a place where you are able to rebuild your relationship.

Infidelity can stem from many different sources. Whether your spouse experienced a midlife crisis and needed to be reassured that he or she was still attractive to the opposite sex or your communication within the relationship was lacking for some reason your partner was vulnerable to the illicit attraction, excitement, and sexual satisfaction outside the relationship. Determine what the problem was and work together to fix it. Working to repair your relationship is no time to hold grudges, to be too proud to be vulnerable or to be too scared to be honest. You have to both lay all your cards on the table and commit 100% to rebuilding your communication, trust and affection for one another.

Keep in mind that sexual activity in your relationship may be on hold for a while. This is normal and allows you both to come to terms with what happened, deal with it internally and move past it. To be in a normal sexual relationship with someone requires a great deal of trust and security and it may take a while for you to get that back after infidelity has dealt a blow to your relationship.

While you have forgiven it is not likely you will forget. Avoid the temptation to check up on your partner or spy in some way. Cell phones, emails etc. are all a bad idea. You are both working to build the trust, complete transparency should be an effort that the cheater makes to prove consistently that there is no more subterfuge and no more contact with the person or people that the cheating occurred with. If your partner has cheated but is still secretive, that is something that the two of you must discuss openly . You have to tell your partner what you need to feel secure in the relationship again.

It takes time and a concentrated effort to rebuild a relationship after infidelity, but if both partners want the relationship to work and are willing to commit to making it better than before to prevent infidelity from creeping in again; then it is possible. On the other hand if your spouse or partner seems unable to stop cheating, or shows no signs of trying to stop there is also a point where you just have to give up and move on. This applies to relationships and marriages alike. If there is no trust and no chance of building trust then there is no relationship.

Sources: http://www.divorcerate.org/, Author Experience, Survey and Conversation with Random People