Many clients come to us asking if it’s actually possible to fix a marriage after infidelity and are very relieved when we tell them that yes, it is! If you have found yourself reading this article today, the chances are that you also have been wondering the same thing.
Your marriage has been faced with infidelity, whether it was your own, or your significant other was the one who strayed outside of your marriage, and you’ve been trying to figure out if it’s even possible to put the pieces back together.
Well, as I said, it IS possible to fix a marriage after infidelity. It is just going to depend on some very important elements that I will be going over with you today in this article.
Here at Happily Committed, we have combined over twenty years of experience in the field of love and relationships in order to provide individuals and couples with all the tools they need to coach themselves through even the most difficult experiences in love.
Though your relationship has been threatened by cheating, I want you to know that you can rebuild your marriage and what’s more, you can actually make it better than ever!
I am going to explain what you need to do with your partner in order to move forward from the cheating, and what you need to do on your own in order to move on from infidelity. So let’s take a look at what needs to happen.
When a person is unfaithful to their partner, it is very important to understand what happens on a personal level. When someone cheats, not only does it affect the way that their partner sees them, it affects the way that their partner sees themselves.
It will make them question their lovability, their attractiveness, how valuable they are, and how worthy of love they are in the relationship, and these elements make up one of the biggest obstacles that is in your path right now. Bringing your awareness to it is crucial.
It’s easy to turn a blind eye to this because there are already so many emotions that you’re dealing with, but whether you were the one that cheated or if it was your partner, this aspect needs to be taken into consideration.
So when it comes to how to fix a marriage after infidelity, it’s not just going to be about rebuilding the relationship between you; it’s also going to be about rebuilding the relationship that both individuals have with themselves.
The person who was cheated on needs to be reminded of their value, and the person who cheated needs to remember that they are more than their mistake and that they can ensure that it never happens again.
If you cheated on your partner, you must remember that their self-esteem is broken right now and you are responsible for giving them the boost that they need. People often assume that they need to constantly be making grandiose gestures in order to do this, but it’s in the little things too.
It can be as simple as bringing home their favorite dish, or flowers. You can think of doing little things for them that make their daily lives easier like doing some of their errands when you know they’ve had a busy day.
It can also be allowing them to express their emotions to you about how hurt they are by what has happened and what you’ve done. It’s very important for the person who was unfaithful to take accountability and not point fingers.
It is a way to help them recover from this because if you acknowledge that these are your faults, then they can accept that these are not their faults. By justifying how much pain they’re feeling, they can start to let it go. If instead, you are trying to sweep it under the rug or pretend it never happened, you’re only going to show them that this relationship is not serving them and that they need to leave. So, at the end of the day, acknowledging what happened and your partner’s emotions is going to help both of you, and this is one of the keys to fixing a marriage after an affair.
Taking accountability for cheating is a key player in fixing a marriage after infidelity. Not only is it important for the healing process, but it is also important for laying out a new foundation. If the person who cheated is able to take accountability for what they did, and they try to fix it, showcase different behaviors, and actively work on laying out a new foundation, then their partner is going to believe its genuine. If they do the opposite, it’s going be impossible for their partner to feel emotionally safe and vulnerable, which of course, blocks progress and can make it impossible for the marriage to survive.
Recovering from infidelity is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. If you try to hastily try to turn this around overnight, you won’t have longterm success. A bandaid is not going to fix a marriage after infidelity.
In relationships, consistency is credibility, so you have to keep going. It will take time to put the broken pieces back together, so make sure that you are both consistent about your efforts, even when things are hard. It’s completely normal for things to feel challenging in a situation like this, and keeping that in mind will help you to stay motivated when challenges arise.
The next part of fixing your marriage after an affair has to do with asking yourselves what happened. Cheating is usually a symptom of a deeper problem, so it is very important to do some analysis, and for both of you to do some introspection. What are the choices you made, what are the choices that your partner was making that drove you to where you are today? Was there jealousy, neediness, neglect? Taking a long hard look at what you both felt was lacking in the relationship prior to the infidelity, and by narrowly defining what you were feeling and what was going on, is the way to define the solutions that will fix your marriage. This is how you ensure it will never happen again.
In most cases (unless the person who cheated is a serial cheater), cheating happens because something is missing. It could be affection, validation, attention, acceptance… something is missing, and it gets filled with a terrible decision in the hopes that it would somehow fill the void. More often than not, the person who cheated realizes that it was a terrible idea and it made matters worse.
Think about what lead up to the cheating and how it was in the moment. Was it impulsive? Was it a drawn-out affair? Were there drugs or alcohol involved? The only way to fix something is by identifying how it broke. The relationship did not break because of the cheating. Again, the cheating was a symptom of something else. Identify the illness and you’ll fix the symptom, so look beneath the cheating. If you can identify what developed into cheating, you can truly make sure that this doesn’t happen again.
You’ll know how to anticipate issues and nip them in the bud before they develop into an actual act like cheating. 
As this article comes to a close, I want to let you know that we have created a significant amount of content around this topic because we want to make sure that you have all the tools at your disposal to heal your relationship after cheating. We have numerous videos on the topic that you can see on our YouTube Channel, there are many articles on this website, and we have also created a powerful program designed to help you put the pieces back together after infidelity with grace and peace of mind. As always, we are also available to you for one on one coaching, so please don’t hesitate to reach out by clicking here.
To summarize, when it comes to repairing your marriage after an affair, here are the things you need to keep in mind:
1. The person who was cheated on needs to feel appreciated
2. Both partners need to take accountability for their roles in the situation
3. The person who cheated must acknowledge that their partner’s pain is real so that they can chip away at it
4. The issues that lead to the cheating need to be analyzed and addressed
As uncomfortable as it may be, you’re both going to have to dive in and take a look at all the elements at play here. This is how you will be able to build a new foundation that sets your relationship out on a new path. What’s more, this is how you ensure that cheating never happens again.
I sincerely wish you all the very best in life and love,
Your coach when you want to know how to fix a marriage after infidelity,
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My boyfriend and I have been in a relationship for 8 years now. I met my boyfriend when I was 23 years old. At first the relationship was not all that serious but as years went by we started to get serious. He went training to the army for 4 years and after he graduated he was deployed in 2018 and this was when the affairs started according to him. We had also just moved in together the same year.
I found out this year during one of his breaks. He came home and he was a bit distraught because something bad had happened at his work place and also at home. He requested to get a day by himself where he could just unwind and I agreed to it. The next day was a Saturday and I was meant to go back but instead he asked if we could meet at his sister’s place instead. We talked and he convinced me to stay at his sister’s and he went back home alone. I didn’t know that he had a woman at our home. The next day I woke up feeling uneasy and I grabbed an uber and headed home when I was just alighting the cab. I saw this woman whose name is Leisha going to her car (but wasn’t sure if it was her at that moment). I knew her because I had confronted my boyfriend before about her because something about their relationship always didn’t feel right.
When I entered the house he was just seated like nothing had happened. During the day I went through his phone and I saw her photo. She was dressed in my clothes and I confronted him about the photo but he straight up denied it but I knew in my heart he was lying. The same day he had a family dinner I wasn’t feeling up to it and he left me at home. I found the woman’s headband and jewellery which she had intentionally left there because she knew that I lived there. When I confronted my boyfriend again he denied it, to the extent that he turned the tables on me instead saying that I was being unfair to him and that he would leave if I kept it up.
The next was a Monday, I left for work as usual and he was left at home. In the evening he decided to leave the house saying he was going to play PS with his friend which was indeed true but the real reason as to why is because the woman was in our house that day and she didn’t want to leave and the only way was to lie to her that he was leaving to go somewhere. When I reached home I waited for him because something wasn’t okay. When he fell asleep I took his phone again and I went through his gallery instead of messages and I saw a video of him with a different woman still in our house and that’s when all hell broke loose.
The days that followed after that were just full of tension and we were speaking but not that much. He finally went back to work. A few weeks later I decided to go through his gallery from his laptop that he had left behind. And that’s when I saw all these videos and photos of other more women, some in motels, others at his mother’s home. And when I confronted him about it he still lied, claiming that they were before we met which wasn’t true coz in the video I could tell they were recent.
I don’t know what to do, I feel stuck. I’m so hurt and disappointed by his betrayal. But my biggest issue is that I fear I’m dealing with a pathological liar who can never tell the truth even when confronted with it, because until now I still have this gut feeling that he hasn’t been completely honest with me. And I feel so frustrated because even when I try to make him understand how his betrayal has hurt me and broken me he doesn’t seem to. He keeps asking me what he can do to make things better but he doesn’t understand that hiding things is only making the situation worse, and when I lash out he tells me that I’m being fragile and crazy.
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Thank you! Thanks for support!