Forgiveness means letting your spouse off the hook and giving up your right to hold an offense over his or her head. And many who have forgiven their mate have a hard time leaving the affair in the past. Only God can say, "I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins. Remembering that pain can help you value the lessons you learned and recognize what God has brought you through.
Remembering also helps to keep you from repeating the same mistakes or needlessly placing yourself in a position where hurtful things can happen again. Forgiveness is how you bring your relationship into the light. God says you must forgive because He has forgiven you. The hurt may remain, but the healing will lessen the pain. The benefits found in a renewed relationship are well worth the cost of forgiveness. You are able to cast off a burden only God can bear.
Through it, God allows you both to start over. In fact, forgiving love allows a relationship to grow even deeper and more meaningful than before. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellMind. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data.
We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. Table of Contents View All. Table of Contents. Health Benefits. How to Forgive. Ask for Forgiveness. Forgiveness in Marriage. When Forgiveness Is Not Enough. The Many Benefits of Forgiveness. Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up. What are your concerns? Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles.
Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. The path to forgiveness will look different for everyone. Couples therapy is likely the best route to go. You can work together to rebuild trust, and as you do that, you should see loyalty on his side.
Seeing dedication, effort, and changed behavior will help you to forgive your spouse. The therapy process will help with connection, trust, affection, and forgiveness. You might even choose to forgive and walk away. Couples therapy is the way to go. You and your spouse will be able to share both of your thoughts and desires in couples therapy or couples counseling, which is part of why it is so helpful to so many couples. Hearing him express his desire to be with you and working together to overcome this will help you to let go of resentment, as will getting it off your chest.
He betrayed you, so be frank about how you feel. Being honest about your feelings is the first step to working through all parts of the resentment. What if it cannot be forgiven?
The question is less if a marriage can survive without forgiveness and more if it can survive healthily without forgiveness. He has to put in the work, too.
Without forgiveness in marriage, you might worry that the cheating behaviors will continue. It could be that there was emotional cheating, that your husband slept with someone else, or a combination of both. The decision to forgive is yours and yours alone. You might be searching for the following:. This is a hard place to be, and especially if you just found out the news of their infidelity, you might be very shocked.
If the thought of losing your cheating spouse gives you separation anxiety, it may be worth giving them a second chance after the infidelity.
Sometimes, good people make bad choices. If you believe that it was a one-time affair and will never happen again, it may be worth giving him a second chance. You found out that your husband was having an affair, and you started crying.
When it comes to infidelity infidelity is a complicated matter that is different for each relationship. When trying to heal from infidelity infidelity and thoughts about the infidelity will always be on your mind. You wonder,. The best thing you can do for yourself is to take some time and focus on you. If there are things that you have wanted to do but never did, this might be the time to try something new. No matter his reason to cheat or commit infidelity, it makes sense that you feel hurt and betrayed.
It's important to remember:. Part of what that means is that whether or not you forgive in your marriage is a choice that you get to navigate as the betrayed spouse. It can be difficult to forgive after cheating at all, let alone if the cheating was long-term or if there were other parts of the relationship that were problematic.
The truth is that sometimes, people outgrow relationships. Sometimes letting go with love and strength is better than letting the relationship dies a slow, bitter death. For the relationship to heal, and for there to be any chance of forgiveness, there has to be an understanding of how both people may have contributed to the problem.
What was missing in the relationship and how can that change? This is not to excuse the person who had the affair. Not at all. Let your energy turn to an honest and open exploration of the motive behind the affair. It is about responsibility, as in response-ability — the ability to respond.
Healing will happen if both people can own their part in this. Many hard conversations will need to happen. As much as you are able to, try to be open to hearing the information and make it safe to explore. This is the information that will grow your relationship and repair the holes that have made it vulnerable.
This was vital information that fuelled the affair, sustained it, and drained your relationship. This is the information you need to know for the relationship to get its power back. Sometimes it becomes a case of either not being able to meet the need, or resentment and hurt wiping out the desire to even try.
Both people need to honestly look at what they want from the relationship and what they are able to give to the relationship moving forward. If this is the case, be honest. To the one who has had the affair: Now is your time to stand guard over the boundaries of your relationship. As with any trauma, finding out about an affair will create massive potential for the trauma to be re-experienced over and over.
Let me explain. These feelings might include panic, sadness, fear, anger, suspicion, loneliness, loss. This will keep happening until the trust has been restored. The privacy that was there before the affair is gone, and it will be gone for a while.
They turn trusting, loving, open hearts into suspicious, resentful, broken ones. It would be that way for anyone. How long it stays that way will depend a lot on how you handle things moving forward. Be accountable every minute of every day. Be an open book.
Let there be no secrets. Knowing that there is nothing going on is critical to healing the anxiety and trauma that has come with discovering the affair. For healing to happen, it will be your turn to take responsibility for standing guard over the boundaries of your relationship for a while. Be the one who makes sure there are no gaps, no absences, no missing pieces in the day. And no secrets. If the person you had the affair with contacts you, let your partner know.
Be the one who makes things safe again. It may become an obsession for a while. Forgive yourself for feeling angry or sad or hateful or for not knowing what you want. And let go of any shame — for leaving, for staying, for any of the feelings you felt before the affair or during it or afterwards.
None of the shame is yours to hold on to. Every relationship has a make it or break it point. Some relationships will have many. Forgive yourself if you missed something. This relationship involved two people. There will have been times that your needs went hungry too.
It happens in all relationships from time to time. And you deserved the chance to put back whatever was missing. You have that now. Most likely you have always been that to your partner, but somewhere along the way, life got in the way and things fell apart for a while.
Right now though, you are going through a trauma. Give yourself plenty of time to forgive, and to start to feel okay again, whether that it is in the relationship or out of it. Be kind to yourself and be patient. You deserve that. You always have. Every affair will redefine a relationship. There will be hurt and anger and both of you will feel lonely and lost for a while, but if your relationship is worth fighting for, there will be room for growth and discovery.
Good people make bad decisions. We do it all the time.
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