9 Strategies for Moving Past Your Partner's Affair

You love your partner, and never dreamed they would be unfaithful. Now you found out. Perhaps you had been noticing different behaviors in your partner, or you found a heap of text messages or phone calls to the other person. Maybe you found the restaurant or hotel receipts, or the credit card bills, or a mutual friend saw your partner out with the other person and reported it to you. It may be that your partner came out and told you directly. You are grief-stricken, and your whole life appears not to be what you thought it was. Now what?

If you are married, love your spouse, and  have children and a whole life together, it's a big decision to give up all your dreams because of their affair. Infidelity is wrong, and involves a third person in your relationship. Practically speaking, it is also very common. Can couples heal and move on together after an affair?

I have seen many couples deal with the aftermath of one partner's affair, and some couples really can heal and get past it. An affair can, but often does not have to, end your marriage. If you choose to stay and repair the marriage, you have a whole journey of healing ahead of you. It helps to know what to expect, what to talk with your partner about, and what to do on your own to take responsibility for your own healing.

Your partner's response when the details of the affair matters: Were they remorseful? Did they sincerely ask for your forgiveness? Were they more arrogant and defensive? Were they willing to work hard to repair the marriage with you? If they weren't truly repentant and deeply sorry, you may want out of the marriage, because this affair may be foreshadowing of more affairs to come.

What if they really regret the affair and want to repair things with you? How do you manage the myriad of feelings the spouse feels who has been cheated on? How do you work through the trust being broken with your partner? How do you move through the current hell you are living through,with an eye to rebuilding the future of your marriage?

1. You need to take time to grieve. Finding out that your beloved spouse was unfaithful to you---physically, emotionally, or both, is a huge loss. In some ways it's worse than a death, because it was a willful decision to turn to someone else without regard to hurting you.To grieve, you must  feel all the feelings that you experience: shock, anger, bargaining, sadness, hurt, and eventually, acceptance.Grief comes in waves. It can be very intense.You can feel it as physical symptoms, including an inability to sleep, not being able to eat, a hollow feeling in your chest, etc.You have lost the trust and the innocence you once had in the marriage. Something has happened that you won't be able to forget, but can work hard to forgive over time. You may want to journal or talk with a therapist on your own to process all your feelings, and decide what you most want to communicate to your partner. It is usually a better choice not to share everything with friends, family, or your children (especially if you want to work it out, as you may forgive your partner, but they might not).

2. Do extreme self-care. In the months following your finding out about your partner's infidelity, it is  important to rebuild your confidence and self-esteem. Few things in life feel more like a personal hit and rejection that a partner's affair. Take some time to reinvest in yourself. Exercising might save your life during the first few months. Change a few things up about yourself. Find ways to be your own best friend. This is a time to reinvest in yourself, because you have to get stronger to fight for and rebuild your marriage. Whether your repair attempts work, and you are able to rebuild your marriage or not, you are with you either way.

3. After you get the facts on the affair and have talked openly with your partner, try not to obsess about your partner's every move. Better to act with integrity and self-esteem, and put your partner on notice that you are "all in" the relationship with them, as long as they are "all in" as well. Let them know that if you find out they are continuing their unfaithfulness, you may need to end it. This is about reclaiming your own power. You are not willing to be repeatedly victimized. Go on record about this with your partner.

4. Restructure the relationship with your partner. You need to understand what the affair meant to them. Are their unmet needs that they have? How about needs that you have? Create a format where you can each check-in with each other about how you are doing with the other. Do you have a regular date night? Weekends and vacations away together? If not, set it up, take turns making the plans, and get going. Begin having fun together again if you weren't. Find a safe way to make behavior change requests with each other.

5. Require new transparency in the marriage. As a marriage therapist, I don't like couples to have secrets. Discuss and negotiate new boundaries on Facebook, cell phones, email, lunches with the opposite gender, etc. Modern technology makes infidelity an easier temptation, but inappropriate and hurtful behavior needs to be addressed. If your partner can't agree on some reasonable compromises with you, it's a huge red flag. It is reasonable for you to want new boundaries.

6. Coping with triggered grief, anger, and sadness is an inside job. Much like war veterans can get triggered PTSD symptoms, lots of little things can surprisingly trigger the downward emotional spiral of people who have been betrayed. You have to be able to sort it out yourself, or get help doing so. If you fall apart or get angry or paranoid over every little thing,your partner will begin to feel hopeless that you two can get back on track. You have to be able to choose which items are the big things, and how to ask your partner for comfort (as in holding you). You can't stay stuck in angry, attack mode or it will drive your spouse further away. Remind yourself that your partner CHOSE to return to you, rather than pursue a future with the other person. It may help you to keep a list of your negative thoughts and check the evidence, making sure you are not using distorted thinking like emotional reasoning. You need to sort this out and be aware of not coming across as hostile, defeated, and stuck with your partner. Pick your battles, don't beat your partner up every time you get triggered. You can also learn to do thought stopping, where you go run a few miles when triggered, or remind yourself your partner stayed with you.

You need to be able to develop your own internal dialogue to deal with the insecurities that have gotten stirred up inside you. It may be overwhelming to your partner for you to be consistently needy, angry, and hyper-vigilant. You need to stay grounded, and keep a mindful of creating a new, better relationship with each other. Keep in mind that your partner may have given up the other person, but is actually grieving that relationship concurrently to working out things with you.

7. When you feel safe to do so, begin to address the sexual relationship between the two of you. If it has been dormant in recent months or years, heat things up again. I find many marriages have become disconnected in this intimate part of the relationship after having children. Begin to talk about what you would like in this intimate area of your life again, and get your partner to talk about what they have always wanted in this area. If at all possible, do not ask for specifics about sexual activities between your partner and the other person. It will be harder to get rid of these images. Make your partner wonder why they ever got involved with anyone else! Again, get out of victim mode as soon as you can. You can't undo what has happened, but you can try to rebuild and move forward.

8. Develop your spiritual life together as a couple after the affair is uncovered. A shared faith could be a huge help as you try to heal.

9. After the initial grieving, try to introspect about whatever part you may have played in the distance that happened in your marriage. It's perfectly possible you played no role in it, and certainly your partner involving another person was wrong. It is also possible that you need to own things you did or didn't do that distanced your partner (Did you get busy and ignore him? Over-focus on the children? Not invite her for date nights or couples time? Not share responsibility for a great sexual relationship?)

Marriages change after infidelity, but with your strength, the right support, and a good effort from both you and your partner, you may be able to get back on track and not lose your love and your life together. Hopefully, years from now you can look back and be glad you rebuilt your life together. In a world where the divorce rate is this high, being a couple who dug deep and renewed your commitment to each other and rebuilt the trust over time is something to be proud of you both for. There are times in life when digging deep and growing through difficult times can make you grow as an individual and as a partner.

The Eight Habits of Love

We all have our daily habits: what we eat for breakfast or lunch, the route we drive to work, what programs we watch on television, and a thousand other little repeated patterns. What if we cultivated emotional and spiritual habits that made our lives warmer, bigger, and more transcendent?

In Ed Bacon's new book, The Eight Habits of Love: Open Your Heart, Open Your Mind (Hachette Book Group, 2012) he gives illumination and insight about how we can grow these emotional habits in our day to day lives. Ed Bacon serves as rector at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, and is known for his radically inclusive views about building interfaith community between Christians, Jews, Muslims, and atheists. Ed has received awards his peace and interfaith work in Southern California.

What are the 8 habits of love?

1.      The habit of generosity: Overcoming fear to live daily with the spiritual practice of an open and generous heart. This means knowing that love flows through you, generously, to others. This includes not only giving money to less fortunate people, but also time, emotional and spiritual support, and encouragement. You can make a practice of lifting others up. Giving time and attention to others only enhances your own life.

2.      The habit of stillness: Learn to quiet your body and your mind. This quiet space within us is where we plan, get inspiration, strategize, dream, and self-nurture. There are many roads to this inner stillness. Look for yours. You might start with 10 minutes a day.

3.      The habit of truth: This involves developing the courage to go against what is expected of you by others at times. Choosing your truth, rather than self-deception or the deception of others, takes daily practice. Telling the truth is both frightening and refreshing. Bacon says, “Truth leads us to a more honest and vital life.”

4.      The habit of candor: Using both tenderness and tact, candor helps us have difficult and important conversations with those we care about. We don't avoid in fear; we move towards the other person in love and candor. The habit of candor is one of the hardest habits to practice, because it involves risk. Candor is not a power grab. I notice the healing, transcendent power of honest, candid, heart-centered conversations in my counseling office on a regular basis. Couples often do not say the things they need to be saying to each other. When those difficult conversations begin in a safe way, transformation can begin between two people.

5.      The habit of play: Bacon reminds us that play and laughter change our brain chemistry. Play activates our imagination, creativity, and joy. Spending time with a child always helps me remember how vital play is. It relaxes and refreshes us. Play and lightness renew us, and are the perfect foil for dealing with life's challenges. Bacon suggests when you have made an error, acknowledge it with humor, poking fun at yourself. Invite play into your work, the things you do at home, your time with your partner, your family, and your friends.

6.      The habit of forgiveness: When you can, forgiving someone who has wronged you releases a powerful, loving energy. When we hold onto wrongs, we hold tension, anger, resentment, and hurt. You don't even have to reconnect with the person that hurt you in order to forgive. Forgiveness brings self-healing and self-empowerment. In his book, Bacon tells a heart-warming story about Nelson Mandela establishing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after the end of apartheid. Those who acknowledged guilt to those they harmed weren't punished. Forgiveness, and moving past blame, moves individuals, families, and communities forward towards healing.

7.      The habit of compassion: Most religions are founded on it. The challenge is in trying to stretch the edges of your compassion to all living beings. Try not to dehumanize any group of people. In categorizing others, Bacon suggests, we cut ourselves off from the foundation of our own humanity. If you did not receive compassion growing up in your family, you may need to look outside the family to experience the compassion for yourself and others that is your birthright.

8.      The habit of community: It's not good for us to get too isolated. A shift in our awareness can help us realize that we need each other. Connecting with the people whose lives intersect with ours is practicing building community. Look for your community. Developing a sense of belonging in community is good for our mental and physical health. Whether you apply community by interacting kindly with counter staff or others you see at the gym, at work, or next door, or look for a group of like-minded people in the larger community, it makes a difference, both for you and for others. Respecting differences within the community is essential.

The Eight Habits of Love is a thoughtfully written reflection on ways to begin moving forward in your life in an open-hearted way. We will make mistakes, but stretching ourselves to live with a more generous spirit, playfulness, bravery, honesty, compassion, forgiveness, and community will help us to make our lives well-lived. Now that's success.

The Decision to Forgive

Forgiveness is ultimately a decision one makes.You might make it because you are exhausted from carrying around so much pain and hurt. You might be concerned about the physical health ramifications of holding a grudge or resentment over a period of months and years.

It doesn't take a perfect apology in order to choose to forgive. Forgiveness is more an internal decision one makes,realizing that all people are flawed,and that you accept whatever hurt was caused and move on in your life.You free up trapped energy that was stuck in justified anger and hurt,forgive the person involved, either literally,through a conversation or in writing,or symbolically, through a forgiveness ritual you can create. Sometimes I have encouraged my patients to have a burning bowl ceremony,where you safely and ceremoniously burn scraps of paper with names or actions you forgive and release.

When is it hard to forgive?

When your partner has betrayed you by becoming emotionally or physically intimate with someone else.

When someone close to you has lied to you.

When your parents were physically or emotionally abusive.

When a sibling rejects you and builds allies in the family against you.

When a co-worker or business partner doesn't keep their commitment,and you are negatively impacted by it.

When a parent falls apart,and can't be there to play their role in your life that you really need.

Amazingly,I have witnessed people in all of these painful circumstances,and others, who choose to forgive.Giving forgiveness,after fully working through your hurt and anger, means choosing peace inside yourself. Choosing to forgive doen't neccesarily mean you can feel safe with that individual again right away,or maybe ever.You don't forget. Forgiveness means you accept the natural weaknesses and imperfections in people you have cared about.You stop feeding the fire of anger,going over the other person's wrongdoings like a movie repeating.You choose your own peace and lightness,because life is fragile,and you reject wasting anymore emotional energy in that negative,hopeless way.

Forgiveness allows you space to add other emotionally satisfying people and experiences to your life.Resentment is about the past. Forgiveness is about freeing yourself from victimhood,and creating emotionally healing experiences with either those you've forgiven, or others you allow into your inner circle. Taking inventory about what grudges or pain you are carrying,and working it through to forgiveness can allow you to take back your life.

The Gift of Forgiveness

There are only a couple of weeks left until we wrap up 2010. It seems an appropriate time to think about mending fences in our lives, and see what we can each do personally to apologize, forgive, and lighten the emotional load we take into the fresh new year. As each year passes, the enlightened soul realizes that our time on the earth is finite. The years pass more and more quickly. Sometimes we can't even remember why we carry a grudge against a family member or friend.It is time to unpack the baggage.

Healthy people apologize freely. They realize noone is perfect, not even themselves. Often in the quickness of daily life, we forget to consider the impact of our words, actions,or tone on the people who are close to us. We may disappoint others and let them down. I have seen family members melt in my counseling office when a heartfelt apology is given freely, with the genuine intent to learn and do better in the relationship. Apologizing to anyone you have hurt this year will likely bring you closer, but,at the very least,it will give you more peace internally. To give a satisfying apology, one must be able to get past the ego and pride, and recognize our own human frailty.

Forgiving others for the hurt they may have caused you is something smart that emotionally intelligent people do often. Holding grudges and resentment is like eating poison every day. Why would you want to do that? One of my favorite lines from the Course in Miracles is,"Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" There is no benefit to holding on to resentment, and it could negatively impact your mental or physical health.Forgiveness is something you do for your own well-being, not because someone earns it. After all, if we aren't perfect, how can we expect that everyone else is going to read our script?

This Christmas season, be generous with your apologies and your forgiveness. Doing your part to own your own shadow self,in Jungian terms, makes it easier for others to do the same. By apologizing for your own thoughtlessness, selfishness, or hurtfulness to those you love, and forgiving their slights towards you, you will be better prepared to begin the new year with lighghtness and more room for joy.I wish you a happy holiday season and a lighter 2011!