Imagine your spouse breaking their norm, and not receiving your nightly phone call or text message that usually reads, “I’m on my way home.”
After multiple failed attempts to reach your spouse your intuition kicks in clearly saying, “he’s cheating.” The very next morning, you follow your urges to look through your spouse’s cell phone messages. To your dismay, you read the most memorable text message of your life…”Last night was well worth it.”
The above was my reality. So just imagine if this was you or may be this is you now. I was devastated.
Upon discovering my husband’s affair, I went on this on this emotional roller coaster. I felt betrayed, sad, angry, depressed, perplexed, a bit cra-cra (translation: crazy) and even obsessed to gain all the details of the affair. If you have been here or are here, I’m sure you feel me!
I rarely if ever use the word “but” because it tends to negate everything said right before its usage. However, this time I’m using the word BUT (big and bold)…But as shattering as infidelity can be, please do not immediately by default make it a deal-breaker…it doesn’t have to be!
If you and your spouse shared a TRUE love prior to this, please make a TRUE attempt to work it out. As shocking as an affair is, it does not have to result in divorce. But you MUST overcome the following excuses and reactions if you would like your marriage to overcome infidelity.
1. They just need to GET OVER IT already!
If you’ve been the unfaithful spouse, never say nor encourage your spouse to just “get over it.” Rather, be open to actively listening to your spouse’s pain while being compassionate. Don’t be afraid of discussing the infidelity.
Remember you can not conquer what you are not willing to confront! I don’t mean angry confrontation; healthy confrontation leads to conversations that allow your spouse to know you’re open to discussions that provide for healing.
Don’t allow the betrayed spouse to be burdened with their pain. Be fully present to hearing your spouse’s anger and sadness for as long as it takes, which may feel like an eternity. If you want your partner to let go of the pain, then you’ll have to hold it with them for a while.
2. We don’t need counseling
Yes, you do! Before filing for divorce, PLEASE consider couples counseling (and individual counseling with the same counselor because infidelity typically stems from a much deeper root).
All too often in our communities, we are branded from birth believing counseling is for the weak along with other negative stigmas associated with mental health.
Counselors are trained with tools to assist and provide you and your spouse with tools to properly heal you and the marriage vs. you trying to do it on your own—only to struggle with it off and on for years to come.
3. It’s been long enough!
Rome was not built in a day, nor is the healing time from an affair. Give yourself and your marriage the chance to heal and grow stronger over time. This is slow and grueling work, and I’m speaking from experience.
You both have to be 100 percent committed to healing and allowing for nature to take its course to heal both parties organically over time.
I, too, wanted to know “how long is it going to take to get over these feelings and resume a normal state of marriage,” so trust me, I get it!
It took me six months before all the burdening feelings began to dissipate and one year before I began to trust him again. Because we took our time organically from the onset through that year, we made progress in other areas like intimacy; and that was restored within that time too.
However, every couple is different and must take their time and BE TRUE to healing in the various stages before moving forward.
Forgiving infidelity is a process. It takes time to process all of our emotions. Your marriage is worth the time!
4. I will never be able to forgive him/her!
Forgiveness is job No. 1! Trying to rebuild without embracing true forgiveness is like trying to build a house with no foundation: it just won’t stand solid. What’s a marriage if it’s not built to last?
Forgiveness is something I believe in with all my heart. I forgive others and have been forgiven many times. I’m sure you have too. God wants us all to be forgiving just as he has forgiven us. So who are we not to forgive?
Many folks get forgiveness twisted. Forgiveness is NOT condoning the wrong behavior. Forgiveness is NOT forgetting about it. Forgiveness is NOT denial and pretending it didn’t happen. Forgiveness does NOT mean the pain has gone away.
Forgiveness is not about letting the other person off the hook so to speak; it is about letting ourselves off the hook.
Through forgiveness, our hearts no longer have to suffer the pain that comes from holding on to the infidelity. Forgiveness, when EARNED, is a healthy response to infidelity.
It is not healthy to keep offenses bottled up inside of you. The vast majority of women and couples I coach who have been impacted by infidelity and FULLY FORGIVEN have better marriages after the affair than before…our marriage is walking an example too!
“If we really want to love we must learn how to forgive.” – Mother Teresa
5. Once a cheater always a cheater!
The dilemma of the “once a cheater, always a cheater” concept is far too simplistic in its blanket statement.
The first misconception of the statement is that it fails to address why individuals cheat in the first place (which will be a good basis to predict whether or not they are capable of betraying you again).
For that reason, it’s one of the important questions to ask if you are a betrayed spouse.
As much as we would like to believe that cheating is simply black-and-white, it’s not. The expression, “once a cheater, always a cheater,” negates the complexity of the issue and discounts the external factors affecting the situation.
It is one of the most common and reasonable responses from someone who’s been betrayed. It offers the option of dismissing an unfaithful partner’s cries for “I’m so sorry, and it will never happen again,” while eliminating the possibility of getting hurt again. This thinking makes it easier for them to potentially never trust again, which can be dangerous as life requires us to trust.
We must be careful of the “childhood seeds” that were planted coming up. I can remember growing up hearing two responses to cheating, such as “if that ni**a cheats, then you leave no questions asked” or “turn a blind eye because men will be men and dogs will be dogs.” Both of those thoughts sat dormant only to surface when the infidelity struck in my marriage.
Then I had to make a decision…will I trust my “childhood seeds?” After carefully processing those excuses for MYSELF, I realized they made no sense to me in adulthood.
So see, those childhood values can be misleading in adulthood along with the societal input of what to do when he/she cheats.
YOU MUST MAKE THE BEST DECISION FOR YOU AND YOUR MARRIAGE REGARDLESS OF THE CHATTER!
6. My spouse cheated, so I have to get a divorce!
Divorce has become so prevalent in this country that it has become a default reaction—likely because we are so programmed by the world around us.
Many of us are quick to say if he/she cheats, I’m divorcing them…like the above no questions asked! It is funny what we say before vs. after. Hindsight is 20/20 right?
Marriage and divorce are both common experiences today. Healthy marriages are good for couples’ mental and physical health. They are also good for children, growing up in a happy home protects children from mental, physical, educational and social problems.
Spouses should be more willing to work through the infidelity. In my opinion, there is not the same kind of bitter resolution that people may have had in the past when women would stay with an unfaithful husband because they had no place else to go. Today’s women have options. Heck, today’s women are breadwinners! So if both couples are willing to work through infidelity, more out love for each other and less out of lack of better options, I believe the marriage can be healed.
Today, spouses and couples are empowering themselves to say, “I’m willing to work this through, but we have to solve whatever problems we have, we have to get help; our marriage has to be even better than it was before.”
Our marriage healed from our infidelity once we laid EVERYTHING out in the open, and it even enhanced our communication and closeness.
For this positive outcome to have occurred, we needed to re-commit fully to one another, to telling the FULL truth, to commit to avoiding future temptations and to promise to endure all the highs and lows.
Love is by far the greatest influencer for restoring a marriage broken by infidelity. This means that beneath the hurt, the agony, the rage, the resentment, the anxiety and all the ugly, you know deep down inside your marriage is worth fighting for…fighting against all the reasons listed above is why couples don’t overcome infidelity. When it is all said and done, only TRUE LOVE, mirroring 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 can bridge the gap of infidelity.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
BMWK, did infidelity occur in your marriage? How did you address these common excuses? What was the result?
Jayla says
I wholeheartedly agree and think this is great advice. However, what I don’t see that there needs to be more of is how to deal with extreme situations. Even therapists don’t sometimes know what to say, or how to help people through extreme situations. My advice is go to God First in prayer, and know that no matter what happens, God is a healer, and he will work things out for your good. The extreme situations I’m speaking of is years of physical, mental, and emotional abuse, or one spouse completely taking advantage of the other spouse and using and abusing them financially and in every other way, and misusing their kindness for weakness. Constant cheating and lying and living as if they’re single with very little to no disregard for the feelings of the other person. When no amount of love or prayer can get through to that person because they have no desire whatsoever to change their ways. They choose to stay who they are, and your only options are to stay with them and accept and tolerate it for the rest of your lives, or walk away. I sometimes see people in these situations where they’re being told to stay, and someone ends up with an STD or STD’s, a permanent disability from abuse, or even dying at the hands of the abuser, or the person killing themselves. I think instead of being so quick to dole out advice based on our own personal experiences and lives, we need to point people in the direction of God more. God can do what we cannot. We’re not God. We may need help ourselves, and there are situations that we cannot help or counsel a person through. Where are the therapist who suggest prayer, and going to God? Where is the God therapy? jmo.