Staying married after an affair can be the one of the most difficult things you ever do in life. You obviously have to forgive your spouse, but you have been betrayed by the person you love most in the world. Your life seems a sham and your confidence has been shattered. When your spouse cheated, he broke your sacred oath of infidelity that he swore to in front of God. How can you possibly forgive something as unforgivable as that?
If you truly want to have a happy relationship post-affair, you are probably desperate to find a way to move on with your life. But the hurt goes very deep and you don't trust him anymore. You don't want to feel like a fool if you do forgive him and he turns around and does it again.
And you don't want to deal with this pain ever again. But you know that without forgiveness, your marriage will be over.
How can you possible get back to what you once had and move on after an affair? The simple answer is that you can't "go back to the way things were". It's impossible and you should not try. Going back won't solve your problems and pretending nothing ever happened is pointless.
But there is another path you can take. And this path may make your marriage better than it ever was before. And you don't need to forgive him in order to move on after his infidelity. Instead, you need to focus on acceptance.
Forgiveness Does Not Always Work
Let's say you want to forgive him with all your heart. But no matter what you do, you can't "make" yourself forgive. You may have decided to forgive him and move on, but this is not magic. You can't wish everything was wonderful again just because. Just because won't cut it.
Forgiveness requires hard work. It takes time and you can't force yourself to feel it in your heart. It either is or isn't.Acceptance is the Path Towards Forgiving the Unforgivable
Let's be honest. It would be a miracle if you actually forgave him. On the other hand, when you focus on acceptance, you start working towards forgiveness and allows you to work through your anger, overcome your anxiety, rebuild your confidence and start trusting him again.
Acceptance means you don't have to make the decision to jump into forgiveness all at once. You can take it slowly and feel how things are going on in your marriage. This way, you won't feel like a fool if you forgive him and he decides to betray you once again. You approach this rationally, not by forcing yourself to forgive when your heart is not in it.
Defining Acceptance
Acceptance is not the same thing as forgiveness. The Oxford English Dictionary defines acceptance as “willingness or ability to tolerate.” The definition for forgiveness is “cease to feel angry or resentful toward.”
When someone cheats on you, it is extremely unlikely that you will wake up feeling like you want to stop feeling angry or resentful. On the other hand, you may start feeling like you can live with the betrayal or tolerate his infidelity.
Acceptance Does Not Mean "Everything is Okay"
There is no way to deny what happened to your marriage. What happened, happened and you cant change it. You can't go back to the way things were and if you are really honest, you did not have a perfect marriage to begin with.
And it means coming to terms with the idea that you aren't going to simply “get over it” one day.
That doesn’t mean you have to like what happened. Acceptance does not mean you have to say, “It’s all okay. What you did is okay. Let's forget it and move on”.
However, you do have to accept the reality of your situation right now. If you do this, with time and work you will get to a place where the bad feelings you are experiencing move to the back of your mind. You will be aware that your past happened, but the memory of it won’t plague you as much anymore.
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Saturday, April 23, 2011
Staying Married After An Affair-Forgiving the Unforgivable
via hubpages.com
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