How To Know If Your Marriage Is One Of The Few That Can Survive After An Affair
A therapist shares the work you'll need to do to make it past infidelity.
KrakenImages.com | Canva When you find out your partner has had an affair, many questions will go through your mind. Can I stay married to this person? Do I want to stay married to this person? How do I know it is over? How can I trust them ever again? Will intimacy between us ever be normal and right again?
This question is the one most often asked: "Can a marriage ever truly recover from adultery?"
A step-by-step guide to determining if your marriage can survive an affair
1. You see signs that rebuilding trust is possible
- The affair has truly ended.
- All contact with the affair partner has been broken off and shut down.
- Your partner informs you of any attempts by the other party to contact them.
- Your partner is working hard at restoring your relationship.
- Your partner is doing everything possible to help rebuild trust.
- Your partner is learning to be patient with your suspicions each time they arise.
- Your partner is learning to be patient in answering your questions, even though it seems like they have already told you this 100 times before.
- Your partner is not so overwhelmed with their shame they can't sit with you and help you through your pain.
To successfully navigate the painful territory of affair recovery, there are some tasks you will need to take on individually, in addition to the work you do as a couple, as evidenced in the Journal of Family Issues.
StockPhotoDirectors via Shutterstock
2. The unfaithful partner is ready to handle the tasks ahead
- A study of rebuilding relationships after infidelity shows how building trust with your spouse by being trustworthy from now on. One major mishap and you are back to ground zero, if not worse than that.
- Knowing that even if you are trustworthy all the time, there will be times when your spouse is suspicious and feels you can't be trusted.
- Accept that you are responsible for breaking their ability to trust and you are responsible for working at fixing it.
- Figuring out everything you can about why this happened (which doesn’t mean blaming your spouse for the choice you made). Knowing this will help both of you know what to do to prevent it from happening again.
- Accepting responsibility for getting right with yourself and your spouse.
- Doing the work to make the changes needed.
- Paying your dues to the spouse you have hurt (within reason).
3. The betrayed partner can handle the road ahead of them
You don't owe your partner any effort to save the relationship, but if you want to stay, you'll have to fight the urge to quit too soon. Unless you know you can't do this, at which point you should proceed with a separation, you need to be prepared to do the following:
- Talk to the people you need to, but be careful how many you talk to. If the two of you do make it, you may not want everyone to know your business.
- Ask yourself often, "What do I need?" and then make it clear to your partner, as shown in a study of intimacy after infidelity.
- Allowing yourself to take a break (and work at taking a break once in a while) from the heaviness of the affair.
mavo via Shutterstock
When you have done the work needed and enough time has passed so you are ready to move forward, plan a celebration.
The victim of the affair must be in charge of this step and it should not take place until they know they are ready. Plan a "Let's Put This Behind Us" day and perform a ritual or action or two that will mark this day firmly in your memory.
You want to do something to put a stake in the ground for the two of you and firmly remind you on a particular day, at a particular time, you put the affair behind you. Then in the future when something triggers the thoughts and feelings again, you can tell yourself, "I don't need to go down that road, we put it behind us."
4. Be conscious of signs your marriage cannot recover after an affair
You know you have worked hard at saving the marriage, but if you can make no progress at getting close to your partner, even though they are working at it, it might be time to end it. Here are a few other signs:
- You know the affair has not ended or your spouse will not cut off contact with the other party.
- After what seems like enough time spent working on it, you can see there is no progress being made, no resolution to the problems, and no acceptance of responsibility for the bad decisions that were made.
- You have asked your spouse to join you in getting some outside intervention and counseling and your spouse continues to refuse to go.
- You have determined after seriously working on your marriage you will not be able to trust your spouse in the future, particularly because they refuse to do what they need to do to regain trust, as shown by research on relationship dissolution after infidelity.
- You have determined and you know you have more energy to handle leaving the marriage than to continue working on the marriage.
While this article doesn't cover every issue you will encounter when dealing with an affair, it does address many of them.
If you are currently stuck and making no progress in working through the effects of the affair on your marriage, it may be time for you to get the best available help and determine if the two of you are going to be able to make it.
Don't delay too long. Sweeping most of it under the carpet will just create a terrible bump you will trip over and stub your toe on often.
Drs. David and Debbie McFadden are a husband-and-wife team specializing in helping struggling and distressed couples in the US and Canada.