If there has been cheating in your relationship, trust has been shattered. Fortunately, you’ve found this website and now have access to numerous articles, videos, and even programs that have been specifically designed to help couples move past cheating and enter into a new chapter of their relationship.
A new chapter that is even better than what the relationship had experienced before because a new foundation will be laid out. In today’s article, I want to go over how to forgive infidelity and transform your relationship.
It’s an incredibly difficult situation to be in and the emotions involved are not to be taken lightly. As you know, trust is one of the pillars of a healthy relationship and when it’s broken, both partners are going to have to put in a substantial amount of work. I am not telling you this to scare you, but I want you to understand that the most gratifying things in life take time and energy.
If you can handle this period in a productive manner (which I am sure you can because you’ve already gone out of your way to find these tips and tools), you will be able to help your relationship evolve into something new.
Many clients that come to me with these types of issues ask me not only how to forgive infidelity, but if it’s possible to ensure that cheating never happens again in their relationships, and I want you to know that the answer is yes. You can set yourselves up for success, you can revamp your relationship, you can heal trust, and you can create a deeper bond with the one you love. I
know it’s going to be hard to believe at this juncture, but I have had so many clients who have reached out to me after we had worked together, telling me that in the end, they were grateful to have had to go through an ordeal like this.
They tell me that as a result of having their relationship be threatened by infidelity, they realized how much they wanted to fight for each other, a bright light was shone onto the issues that needed to be solved, and it ended up serving as a powerful catalyst for positive change.
It’s true that there are some unfavorable infidelity statistics out there. To give you an idea:
▪ Percentage of marriages where one or both spouses admit to infidelity, either physical or emotional: 41%
▪ Percentage of men who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had: 57%
▪ Percentage of women who admit to committing infidelity in any relationship they’ve had: 54%
▪ The average length of an affair: 2 years
▪ Percentage of men who say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught: 74%
▪ Percentage of women who say they would have an affair if they knew they would never get caught: 68%
So, at the end of the day (and quite unfortunately), infidelity is not that uncommon. The good news, however, is that it means that there are many solutions available to you, and many couples have come out stronger as a result of it!
how to forgive infidelity? I know that when someone breaks trust by straying outside of the relationship, it can feel impossible to find it within yourself to forgive it. Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love, but to be sincerely loved by another person and to know that that love grows out of reason and choice.
A person needs to be loved by a person who chooses to love them, someone who sees something in them worth loving. That kind of love is one that requires effort and discipline, and it is the choice to expend energy in an effort to benefit the other person. So when something like cheating happens, all of that gets thrown into question.
One thing that many people do not realize is that one of the most difficult things about infidelity is that not only does it affect your perception of the person who cheated, it also has an enormous impact on your perception of yourself. It can make a person doubt their lovability, their attractiveness, their partner’s true feelings for them…
Cheating can have a huge influence on our ability to love ourselves and feel lovable, and this is one of the things that can create a deep-seated sense of resentment in the long run.
As we dive into this article, I want to bring your attention to a very important fact right off the bat. If your boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse has cheated on you and you want to stay together, finding the appropriate ways to nourish your self-esteem and your confidence will be a crucial step in your journey back to self-acceptance, acceptance of your significant other after their big mistake, and a happy and fulfilling relationship.
So, to answer the question of “Can you forgive infidelity?” The answer is yes. If you want to save this relationship with your significant other, it will be important for you to be willing to reconnect with him or her on a clean slate. If you hold on to disappointment and resentment, it is going to be difficult for your relationship to succeed. This is why taking some time to work on self-love is such a crucial element to this equation.
As always, I want to deliver only the truth, so I will not sugarcoat things: Saving a relationship after infidelity is not going to be easy, but forgiveness is the first step towards success. Accepting that saving your relationship after cheating will not be easy is a way to help you stay motivated even when it seems tough (and there will be moments when it does seem very tough). Good change, like bad change, does not happen overnight, and it’s important that you view this journey as a marathon and not a sprint. Do not lose patience. It will help you see the results.
When you choose to forgive someone after an affair, you have to commit to forgiving them every single day.
The first tip I have for you when it comes to forgiving infidelity is to avoid playing the blame game. In my own life, the day I realized that I was in control of how I approach the problems in my life, that things will turn out better or worse as a direct result of my actions, that was the day that I would be a happier and healthier person. When I realized the control I had over my life, I understood that I could build a life that truly matters.
So, I know that you might be feeling like you don’t have much control over the situation at the moment, but the truth is that you do. For example, one exercise that is very helpful when you’re working on forgiving a spouse after an affair is this. Every single time you have a negative thought about what your partner did, follow it up with something positive they offer you or the relationship. Make sure you remind yourself on a daily basis what you’re fighting for and why you chose to build this relationship with this person. It’s important to believe that people can change and remember that sometimes good people make bad mistakes. If the roles were reversed, wouldn’t you want your partner to believe that you were capable of turning your life and decision-making process around? Forgiveness is a habit, so as I was saying, you have to choose forgiveness every single day if you want to make it stick.
Every challenge, every failure, and every heartbreak carries with it a seed of an equal or greater benefit. If you approach this situation in the right way, it can help you propel your relationship with your significant other forward towards a loving and safe place with a more solid foundation.
To give you an idea of how to forgive infidelity and transform your relationship into something even better than before, let me tell you the story of one of our clients, Isabella. She had been cheated on by her boyfriend of 6 years, Mark. She found out after having gone through the home computer, where iMessages between Mark and another woman popped up. When she approached Mark about it, he immediately came clean and confessed. In this confession, he also said he had been unhappy in the relationship and wanted to find a way to work things out with Isabella. Initially, Isabella wanted nothing to do with Mark or with his request. However, after a couple of months of reflection, Isabella began to agree that their relationship had gone downhill before the cheating happened and that when he would try to speak with her about it, she would get frustrated and brush it off. This motivated her to learn how to forgive infidelity, change the tune of her relationship, and she started by outlining what was causing their romance and bond to dissolve and found a solution to every single issue they had been facing as a couple, including the broken trust. Today, they’re engaged, and are both very happy to be moving the relationship forward!
Surviving Infidelity In Your Relationship: The Road To Success
How to forgive infidelity? As you’ve understood by now, forgiveness after an affair is a choice, and you have to choose to have faith in a healthier future with your partner. The more you actively choose to think this way, the more your mind will make a habit of it. With repetition, things begin to feel more natural, and you will start to have the natural reflex to choose forgiveness for what happened.
That said, I am writing this article for those of you who have already made the decision to forgive your partner for cheating. If you’re still on the fence about it, ask yourself what you’re fighting for. If the good outweighs the bad, remind yourself of the journey from start to finish. What have the two of you built together? What goals have you accomplished together? If you’re looking for positivity, then remember that common life projects are strong things to hold on to when you’re struggling with forgiving infidelity.
It’s really all about mindset. The key to forgiving infidelity is allowing yourself to believe and know that you two can come back from this as a stronger couple. It is what will help you to operate as a team and work towards the common goal of revamping this relationship. If you can reshape your thinking and allow yourself the time you need to heal, this will become infinitely easier. It can be very hard for someone to work through difficult issues when they’re blinded by strong emotions, and painful or difficult emotions only get stronger when they’re fought or suppressed. Like I said in the very beginning of this article, the first step is allowing yourself to heal. You have to take care of yourself and work on strengthening your sense of wellbeing. Once you do this, you can tackle the issues within the relationship.
The thing about infidelity is that it is usually a symptom of a bigger problem. When a person cheats, it is usually because they are not getting something that they want or need out of their relationship. We saw this in the example of Isabella above, and we can also see it in Matthew’s story. When he came to me, he was heartbroken and furious at the same time. He had just learned that his girlfriend of many years had been having an affair with a man that she worked with for the last three months. When he learned of this, he approached her about it and she was forthcoming with honest information. She explained to him that yes, she had, in fact cheated, she admitted to everything, and she ended her affair with the other man. She explained that she missed the romance in their relationship and admitted that she was wrong for looking for it elsewhere…
They decided that they wanted to make their relationship work, but Matthew was having a very difficult time moving past it. He had trouble believing that their relationship could truly be saved and that he would be able to feel confident that this would never happen again, and that he would feel fully loved and respected. What it boiled down to was that he was afraid to trust her and didn’t know how to forgive infidelity. Forgiveness after infidelity is no easy feat, and it takes time.
He didn’t know how to rebuild trust and forgive his girlfriend for cheating on him, so we started to focus on exercises that were rooted in personal development. The goal was to find ways for him to allow himself to feel vulnerable and safe with her. He also had to work on allowing himself to be vulnerable with himself again. He felt unattractive, unlovable, and somehow “deserving” of being cheated on. He felt so low that he wasn’t sure how he was going to pull himself out of this rut. As we continued to work together, he came to some very interesting conclusions that ended up being what saved the relationship.
He came to understand that after the years they spent together, he had started to neglect his relationship and put all his focus on his work. Without realizing it, he expected her to maintain their relationship alone, and though this in no way excuses what she did, it helped them to define solutions to ensure that it would never happen again.
What I would like for you to take from this success story is that people can make mistakes and the ones that are able to learn and grow from these mistakes are the ones that deserve a second chance. It is up to you to evaluate the situation and determine whether your significant other has understood the gravity of their mistake and are willing to do their part in earning your trust back. This is a two-way road, and you’re going to have to operate as a team if you want to overcome this once and for all. Saving a relationship cannot be done by one person alone – whether that’s the person who did the cheating or the person who was cheated on.
Contrary to popular belief, infidelity in a relationship is not a death sentence. Your relationship is not doomed. If you are both willing to take accountability and accept that both of you can make individual changes if you are ready and willing to invest the time and energy requires to forgive and move on from cheating, if you are both willing to put time and energy into self-care and developing your sense of well being, and if you are both willing to do the work to lay out a new foundation, you can transform this relationship into something better than ever before.
There are many options available to you when it comes to understanding how to forgive infidelity. Activities rooted in self-care like yoga and mediation, help from a third party like my fellow coaches and me, activities that you make time for that bring you joy and peace of mind. A good idea would be to prioritize new things so that you can invite a sense of freshness into your life. After all, this relationship needs to set out on a new path and part of this happens by experiencing new things both on your own and as a couple.
Allowing yourself to forgive your partner and choosing forgiveness every single day will set you up for long-term success. So allow for honesty, transparency, complicity, and vow to work together to fix this. You’ve built so much together already, and that’s why you aren’t giving up on this relationship. Remind yourselves of this every single day.
To take it a step further, you can watch all the videos we’ve posted about infidelity on our YouTube Channel, you can reach out to us for one on one coaching for a customized action plan that will set you up for success, or you can download our brand new program that we have created to help you overcome infidelity and find peace again. To access it, all you have to do is click the link.
Join the Happily Committed project, where we have dedicated our lives to helping people live the love lives of their dreams. Let us help you transform your relationship in a meaningful and dignified way!
I sincerely wish you the best of luck in life and love,
Your coach when you want to know how to forgive after infidelity,
No spam, notifications only about news, events and updates.
“How long before moving in together?” This is a question I’ve been asked time and time again throughout my coaching sessions, and it’s no surprise!
A long time ago, he made a mistake that hurt you deeply. Your relationship was rocked by infidelity, but you put in the work to
Is your man dragging his feet when it comes to popping the question? In your mind, your relationship has long been ready for marriage, but
During my time as a love and relationship expert here at Happily Committed, I’ve seen every kind of relationship you can imagine. Everyone who comes
2 Responses
I have paid for the program but haven’t received anything how will I be able to engage in this program? I have made a huge mistake and I want to save my relationship please help
I recently came clean to my boyfriend of 1 1/2 years that I had been having an emotional affair with an ex over snapchat for a couple months. I took accountability for my actions and apologized. He was devastated and shut down mentally. I’m respecting his request for space, and my boyfriend ended the relationship.
I also ceased any communication with the ex before confessing to my boyfriend. I have taken actionable steps to not let the ex back into my life. I still feel immense amounts of shame and guilt that I hurt my boyfriend.
The last we spoke, I told him he can have as much time as he needs, but if he ever wants to talk I am here to listen. If he were to give me another chance, I am on board with building a new relationship with him. I still care deeply for him.
I have found your blog posts and YouTube videos so helpful to understanding what I’m going through and also what my boyfriend must be feeling. My question is would it be helpful to share your website with him? I want to nudge him in this direction so that he may find healing.
Thank you for all that you do!