How to Save your relationship post an affair (part 2)
Your partner/spouse had an affair. The affair has been discovered by you or your spouse/partner has decided and disclosed the affair to you.
Your have been deeply hurt by the revelation. But you do want to save your marriage/relationship, and do not want to separate from your partner but you are having doubts if trust can be re-established. Your partner also wants to save the relationship.
What to do now?
It is understandable that you may be feeling angry and may express this anger in different ways, whether it is overtly by shouting or crying or by silence. Anger can also show up as sarcasm, suspicion and scepticism in your behaviour.
Some times you might feel better and assume that you are moving on and then you may find that you are not, plunging back to the despair. This might make you feel drained emotionally or react emotionally.
You might feel that you took one step forward and slipped three steps back.
It is important that you look beyond the anger and understand what primary emotions lie beneath the anger. You might be feeling betrayed, dis-respected, insecure and hurt. You may need to be able to access, understand and express your underlying emotions, in a healthy manner rather than just anger.
When your partner tries to express remorse, look for genuineness in that. Responding with sarcasm and scepticism here might not help you or your relationship. You both need to reach deep within yourself and ask for what you really want from your partner.
If you discuss the affair in detail, try to do it in such a way as to help you know what happened and to understand the same. Do not bring the affair details in every other conversation and conflict, subsequently, as a weapon against your partner. Remember you chose to rebuild your relationship and trust therein.
You may feel that you are not yet ready to rebuild the trust yet. Its is ok to take some time for yourself to learn to cope with your emotions. You may want to engage in some self care and practice self compassion.
If you both are able to deal with the transgression in a manner that is healthy for yourself and your relationship, it is important for you both to talk, discuss and re-establish boundaries for your relationship.
This also could be an opportunity to take a fresh look at the other existing challenges in your relationship and address the gaps in your communication or conflict management, address any misunderstandings if any and resolve other underlying conflicts. All this is going to take quite some time, effort, talks, discussions, commitment and patience from the both of you.
You both can also meet with a professional relationship counsellor or therapist who can facilitate your movement through this process. If you both want to, you will be able to work on the damage caused by the affair and also look at the other relationship issues that you might have.
To know more, or to fix an appointment, call us at +919632146316 or write to us at counselor@innerdawn.in
How to establish boundaries in a relationship, I will cover in my next post.