Healing the marriage after infidelity is a daunting task.
Read these practical tips on how to heal the marriage after the affair:
1. List 2-3 things you did to help you as a couple heal the wound.
Wound STILL healing but holiday away together helped us. Text messaging each other just once a day with ‘how’s your day going’ type comment makes me feel like he cares again. Breaking out of our routine and being spontaneous – just going out for a weekday meal instead of arguing over who was going to cook it (and leaving food in fridge, chores etc when HE suggests it)
1. Talking about the affair. 2. Finding time to be together 3. Read your book and Dr Gunsburg’s books and articles.
Initially split and took time living apart to understand each other, “dated” during this period so we were not allowed to be judgmental. This helped us both regain our self confidence, and see what it was in each other that initially attracted us. When we got back together we allocated specific times when we could ask each other questions, sometimes hurtful, but we had to promise to listen and not be reactionary or judging.
1. Told my husband that our marriage was over, and that what we were working on is a new relationship. With all the expectations of any new relationship, and we have both put together a list of non-negotiable rules for the new relationship. 2. We each have a notebook in our bedside tables to list good/bad issues in, and we discuss them each Tuesday night, when we have a two hour break from children in the house. 3. I have learned to “bite my tongue” rather than become angry when he says he doesn’t know why he had an affair, that he has always loved me (!) and is sooooo sorry for what he did. It is just not helpful to tell him that if he loved me he would not ever have hurt me the way he has. I am learning accept that he doesn’t really know what he got out of the affair. 4. We accept that our marriage became bogged down in achieving material wealth (both of us), me helping our son who has a learning difficulty, running our business etc. Our relationship lost its romance and intimacy – and was not ever based on trust. I accept that no marriage will ever be truly happy under those circumstances.