Affair Recovery Counseling
You Can Recover from Infidelity: Three Reasons to Find Hope
It’s painful to hear. An affair, the lies and secrets…a destroyed relationship. Infidelity seems like the tipping point of which the most natural inclination would result in divorce. However, an affair does not need to end your relationship and ruin your family.
The lines of what can be construed as cheating or having an affair differs widely for every individual. For some, a steamy conversation with an individual other than your partner is considered infidelity. For others, it’s a romantic, or a physical connection. No matter what you define as cheating, it’s what happened before the cheating that’s important. Affairs don’t end relationships. Your involvement (or lack thereof) in your relationship and your reactions to your partner’s affair is what ends the bond that your relationship originally had. It’s the relationship itself that has slowly suffered in silence.
You don’t need to suffer in silence. There is hope.
Use these three reasons to build a foundation of hope for your relationship with your partner.
Reason for Hope #1: Recognize the Problems in the Relationship
The first step to get on the path to recovery is to recognize that your relationship is suffering. It’s time to come clean and realize that there are crushed feelings, injured egos, and suffering souls that occurs within your relationship and with yourself. In order to restore the relationship, it’s time to find a way to safely uncover the issues that are making you and your partner hurt.
After accepting the fact that your relationship needs help, then it is time to work on the feelings of resentment. Many times, couples hold secret grudges against each other, not naming the problems that really bother them. These issues build up until some major event, such as an affair, triggers a cascade of extreme emotions and irrational behavior. Therefore, in many cases the affair is not killing the relationship, rather, it’s the chronic lack of having a way to communicate and address differences and needs without hurting each other in the process.
Reason for Hope # 2: An Affair Can Act as a Wake-Up Call
The revelation of your partner’s affair is never an easy concept to stomach, but there is a silver lining. While each partner in the relationship needs to come to terms with the infidelity that has occurred, the affair itself can be like a douse of cold water on a marriage.
Anne Bercht, author of “My Husbands Affair Was the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me,” states that good can come of an affair. She points out in her vividly descriptive book that while she wished her husband never had an affair, the path that they had to go on in order discover the problems they each suffered has led to a stronger, more resilient marriage.
The initial shock of learning of a partner’s infidelity might seem like too much to handle, but with help, communication, couples counseling and therapy, a relationship may survive and even become better than it was prior to the affair.
Reason for Hope#3: You Can Reach Out for Help
Trying to stay happily married without family or community support is like trying to keep an ice cube from melting on a hot summer day! No man or woman has ever mandated that a marriage should survive separate from society. It’s through shared communication, family and friendships that help make a marriage complete. When a traumatic event occurs, such as the death of a family member, friends and kin come together to provide support, comfort and understanding to the grieving individual. An affair can feel like a death in the family. If you seek help to discover the reasons behind the infidelity and the issues that are troubling your relationship, you will have a better chance at saving your marriage. Talk to a counselor. Cry on a shoulder. Listen to professional and guided advice. A qualified therapist can help you and your partner uncover the underlying issues that can turn your broken relationship into one that is forged of iron.
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