How to Restore your Relationship after an Affair

8 Steps to Restore your Relationship after an affair

An affair can have devastating consequences for your relationship and emotional wellbeing. In the aftermath, you’ll need to decide whether to stay with your partner or to split up. Regardless of your decision, affair recovery is a difficult process as you struggle to deal with the emotional wounds that are left behind.

1. Put in the effort

When it comes to understanding how to get over an affair, there are no easy answers. Recovering after an affair takes time and effort so you’ll need to make sure that you’re committed to working hard. It’s vital that both partners take the time to decide whether they want to continue with the relationship or not. If you choose to stay together, both yourself and your significant other need to be dedicated to rebuilding the relationship.

2. Foster Open Communication

• Open and honest communication is vital in affair recovery. It’s common for the person who was cheated on to experience grief, pain and sadness. It can be helpful for the unfaithful person to listen to their partner’s emotions and acknowledge how they are feeling. Giving them the opportunity to express themselves is an important part of the healing process. The adulterer needs to be willing to face the pain that their actions have inflicted on their partner. In a rush to ease their guilt and shame, many adulterers urge their partner to put the affair in the past before they’ve given their partner time to deal with their pain. This is a mistake as repressing your emotions is unhealthy for both yourself and your relationship.

2. Rebuilt Trust

• In the aftermath of an affair, the trust between you and your partner is broken. Honest communication is required in order to start the process of rebuilding trust. Don’t expect this to happen overnight but rather view it as a journey towards healing. Accountability and integrity are vital components of recovering from an affair. The adulterer needs to keep their promises by phoning when they agreed to and doing what they said they will.

Not only will the person who was cheated on need to restore their confidence in the relationship, they’ll also need to learn to trust themselves again. They may find themselves doubting themselves and their own feelings as they struggle to make sense of why their partner was unfaithful to them. Taking time for self care is important during this difficult time.

4. Establish Boundaries

• Feelings of insecurity are common after an affair. You’ll need to establish new boundaries with your partner as you try to recover a sense of safety. The person who was cheated on can ask their unfaithful partner to follow certain rules at the start of the healing process. This may involve having less privacy and maintaining high levels of transparency. While rigid boundaries can be useful after an affair, it’s beneficial to loosen them as healing progresses.

5. Give yourself Time and Space

• When it comes to understanding how to get over an affair, the person who was cheated on may need space to heal from their pain. If their partner expresses a need for some time apart, it’s helpful for the adulterer to respect their wishes. Healing takes time so don’t expect affair recovery to happen overnight. It’s not a linear journey and you may find yourself having bad days just when you thought things were getting better.

6. Get Support

• During difficult times, having support from non-judgemental family or friends can be helpful. When you’re feeling overwhelmed or experiencing feelings of despair, talking to someone who cares may offer you relief from difficult emotions. The person that you confide in needs to be trustworthy as well as having good listening skills.

7. Address Relationship Issues

• While there is never an excuse to cheat, there is likely to have been problems in your relationship that preceded the affair. The recovery process is an opportunity to re-evaluate your relationship so that you can establish a stronger bond with your partner. The adulterer should examine the circumstances that led up to the affair as well as their motivations so they can ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

8. Let go of Expectations

• While recovering after an affair is possible, don’t expect your relationship to go back to the way that things were. Infidelity has long lasting consequences and its likely that your relationship will change during the healing process.

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