How
do unfaithful partners typically respond differently than hurt partners after an affair?
Not exact matches
Do not make the decision to betray your
partner and become
unfaithful as a way of handling your frustration with a lack of sex in your marriage.
Most people who have been
unfaithful do not believe it when their
partner says they forgive them.
While it's certainly easy to understand why someone would want an
unfaithful partner to feel just as lousy as they
do, getting revenge typically backfires.
I know, I know, when your
partner is caught being
unfaithful, it seems like the last thing you can
do is «keep calm and carry on», but if you're steady, you have a better chance of talking it out rationally and getting some real answers.
But lots of us
do love it because some people already have relationships and don't want to be
unfaithful (despite some obvious problems they value their
partners and don't want to part) and others just want to have something funny and easy.
As our goody two - shoed protagonist, Alex doesn't follow her friends into the racket of offing
unfaithful and unkind men for their
partners.
Your
partner may make assumptions about who you spend time with and make accusations about your
unfaithful behavior, even if they
do not have any reason to suspect it.
There are 15 things you can
do to get beyond the hurt, forgive your
unfaithful partner, and save your marriage.
In order to show guilt for cheating, the
unfaithful partner must be willing to account for her whereabouts when her significant other is looking for her, says marriage and family therapist Sheri Meyers in her Huffington Post article «For the Betrayer: Eight Things You Must Know and
Do to Rebuild Trust After an Affair.»
The
unfaithful spouse must promise to stop any interaction with this person and keep their
partner informed as this is
done.
Working with couples and individuals healing from this pain, I so often hear the person who has been
unfaithful say that they wish they could go back and
do things differently, that they wish they had never met their affair
partner, that they had no idea how much suffering their actions would cause to them, their
partner, as well as to their children and extended families, and sometimes even communities.
We are talking about the grieving part of the affair recovery journey, because whether you lose your marriage, or you lose only the innocence of your marriage (turns out you
did not have the marriage you thought you had), or if you are the
unfaithful partner, perhaps you are grappling with a loss of respect (including loss of self - respect), and / or loss of your reputation, we all are grieving the loss of our dreams, how we thought our lives should've been — how it should've turned out.
You'll also gather skills for helping wounded and
unfaithful partners normalize the emotional avalanche of their experience so they don't feel so crazy, shattered, or alone.
If your
partner has recently been
unfaithful, and you're struggling to figure out what to
do next, click here to download my free guide on communicating after infidelity.
One of my favorite clinicians in the field of psychology and couples therapy is Esther Perel, and she talks about a very important concept in overcoming infidelity, and it is that if you have been
unfaithful to your
partner but would like to
do the work to keep the relationship together, you must hold vigil for your relationship.
Repeating endless details of the sexual indiscretion doesn't help, but taking a deeper look at what the
unfaithful partner longed for and couldn't find in the marriage — and so looked for outside of it — as well as finding empathy for the other, who was in the dark, can elicit a shift in how both
partners see the affair and what it meant in their relationship.