Picking Up the Pieces After the Affair !

Are you still picking up the pieces of your relationship after the
affair. Has it been months… maybe years without any luck of
any positive change. If you are fighting to fix what has been
broken then I want to tell you a story…

Even though this may sound like a fairy tale, it certainly didn’t
start like one.

(I’ve changed the names, to protect the couple.)

Kevin was manager of a very successful restaurant
and Donna was a nurse. After being married for 17 years, 2 kids
and two very demanding jobs they emotionally grew apart.
Sound familiar?

What made it worse is when Kevin came home and dropped the
bomb that he’d been having a 6 month affair with Kris, the waitresses
from the restaurant.

And to top it off he was moving out.

Donna, was devastated, enraged, and humiliated.
“How could this woman, Kris, come into our lives and
destroy 17 years?”

“How could my husband do this to me and my children?”
The jealousy, shame, loss of hope, betrayal, anger, fear,
frustration and insecurity were almost too much for Donna to
manage.

She immediately went into a deep depression.
It’s wasn’t only Donna that was traumatized. Her two children
were facing the possibility that their mom and dad would
divorce.

This seemingly perfect family was ripped apart almost overnight.
When you are 14 and 12, having your parents together is crucial
for your sense of safety and self-worth. Remembering the day
their father left still holds scars (and many tears).

After 4 weeks Donna decided to try to pick up the pieces and
do what she could to salvage this wreck. However Kevin was
stone cold and unwilling.
She tried:

> talking…
> going to personal counseling…
> discussing details…
> even reading self-help books…

However nothing seemed to work to motivate Kevin to work
on the relationship.

Finally after 7 weeks of being separated, Kevin’s affair with
Kris ended and he decided to move home.
Apparently, he felt guilty and realized that he didn’t want to
hurt his children.

But still he refused to go to counseling or restore the relationship.
He was simply going to stay for a limited time for the children
until he could figure out what he wanted to do.

Now you know why I say this was far from a fairy tale.
That’s when Donna found me online. She was close to giving up
because she had taken more than she though she could handle.
However, one night she read my article on Surviving an Affair
and decided to invest in:

How to Survive An Affair
Even after she purchased it, she had serious concerns
about her husband’s willingness.

“How can I motivate my husband to engage with me and
heal our marriage?”

She had every right to wonder that.

However, I told Donna not to concern herself with this.
Right now she needed to worry about herself and let
Kevin develop the desire to change.

You see, we all know that we cannot force change on
someone else.

It has to be a freewill decision. Forcing someone to change
is in fact telling them that they are not valid or that what they
are currently doing is not good enough.

It can only make matters worse.

That means:
> Not forcing someone to read my program…
> Not conveniently leaving the system around where they can find it…
> Not giving ultimatums.
No, in fact if you want someone to change, you have to
give them a reason to change. You need to inspire them.
Here’s what Donna did.

She decided to put aside her fear and went through my
entire Survive An Affair program. There are 3 distinct
phases and each one is designed to be followed in
sequence.

After she went through the first phase, she was able to
get a handle on her emotions. All of the:
* Jealousy
* Uncertainty
* Shame
* Loss of hope
* Betrayal
* Guilt
* Disappointment
* Anger
* Vengefulness
* Fear
* Frustration
* Paranoia
* And many more (too many to list here)

You see, I’ve never met anyone who hasn’t experienced these
emotions. Once you feel them, you can either stuff them or
learn how to process them.

However, if left alone, you will become calloused. I saw it
starting to happen to Donna.

This is why, I instructed Donna to go to page 38 of Section 1,
where I took her by the hand and showed her how to process
the Eight Heart-Wrenching Emotions.

After she took a few weeks to do this (and leave Kevin alone)…
that’s when it started to break.
Read what she wrote…

‘Thursday afternoon late in the day Kevin came home early from
work. I still had a few hours before the kids got home from
school, so I was surprised when I heard the door open.
We hadn’t really talked in months, so you can only imagine
how tense it was just the two of us alone. However, I knew
something was going on. Kevin very rarely got off work early,
in the restaurant business.

We spoke for a few minutes and he acknowledged that he
knew I was studying your system. He saw me reading it,
and I am sure he glanced at it, but what happened next I
never expected.

He tried to open his mouth to talk but nothing came out.
He was speechless. He just broke down and cried.
I’ve never seen him cry so hard. It broke my heart.
He told me how sorry he was for all the pain he caused
me and the family. He told me that he didn’t deserve me.
And that’s when I lost it. We must have cried for a 20 minutes.
After that we were able to talk for almost an hour and half before the
children came home and it was an answer to prayer.

In essence, he explained to me how he saw a difference in
me and appreciated the patience I had with him even though
he knew I wanted to kill him at times.

He agreed to making a new start and told me he would begin
your system because he could see it made a huge impact
on me and he was willing to give it a try.

Not just for the children, but for the reason why he married
me in the first place. Because he loved me.

It was the best news I had in 11 sleepless weeks.
It was a start and a little ray of hope. So I took it.
Thank you for your program and thanks for dedicating your life to
saving families.’

Donna (real name withheld)

Several weeks following I was pleased to discover that Kevin and
Donna were successfully going through my system and things
were changing.

What To Do When You Can't Forgive?

You’ve been betrayed.

Your spouse, the person you once loved and trusted most in the world, took advantage of your confidence and walked all over it leaving you to stew in your sickening feelings of anger, shame, resentment, fear, and maybe even jealousy.

Perhaps your spouse cheated on you, breaking the sacred oath of fidelity that was the foundation of your marriage.

Or maybe your spouse broke faith with you by systematically lying about who he was or what he was doing. Gambling, stealing, drinking excessively, or getting involved in nefarious business dealings are a few examples that come to mind.

If this describes the current state of your marriage, you are facing one of the most difficult challenges any married person has to cope with.

You’re desperately looking for a way to forgive your spouse so you can move on with your life and get back the wonderful marriage you once shared.

There’s only one problem.

You don’t think you can forgive your spouse.

The hurt goes too deep. You don’t trust your spouse anymore. What if you forgive and he or she betrays you again? What if he or she has another affair? You don’t want to be walked on like some cheap doormat. And you don’t think you can go through the pain all over again.

You know if you don’t forgive it’s going to be hard . maybe even impossible . to rebuild your marriage.

But you’re terrified that if you do forgive, the consequences may be even worse.

You’re caught in a trap-stuck in a Catch 22-and no matter how hard you try you can’t seem to get free of it.

We’ve all heard the saying “To err is human, to forgive divine.”

But we aren’t divine. We’re all human beings struggling to get by in this crazy world.

The question almost raises itself:

“If I can’t forgive, what’s left? How can I move on with my marriage? How can we rebuild what we once had and move on with our lives?”

You can’t.

I hate to tell you, but you can’t “go back to the way things once were in your marriage.” If you take that path, you are in for more of the same kind of pain you are facing right now.

Going back to the way things once were is not going to solve your problems.

But there is another path you can take.

You can work to make your marriage better than it was-maybe even better than ever.

And the road you need to take to make that happen doesn’t require forgiveness.

In fact, forgiveness may even come naturally if you follow the path I suggest.

You don’t have to forgive your spouse to move on with your marriage.

There is another path you can take. That path can be summed up in a single word . Acceptance.

Let me explain.

A New Path to Forgiveness: Acceptance

In my opinion forgiveness doesn’t work the way many people think it does.

I’ve heard people in my office, on movies, on TV, in books, and in articles I’ve read speak about forgiveness as though it’s something they simply “decide” to do. Once they make their “decision” the light of forgiveness is turned on and everything is wonderful and light again.

This is what I would call “magical thinking.”

I once heard about a couple whose daughter was murdered. This man and woman eventually went down to the prison, met with their daughter’s killer face to face, and forgave him.

Honestly, I have to say this isn’t a form of forgiveness I even understand. I don’t doubt the reality of it. I just don’t understand it myself.

In my view, forgiveness requires work. If you do the work, the feeling of forgiveness comes by itself . in time.

The work you have to do starts with acceptance.

Acceptance is the path you take to move toward forgiveness.

Instead of focusing on the seemingly miraculous (perhaps even divine) act of “deciding” to forgive, when I work with my clients I help them take the path of acceptance so they can work toward a better marriage in a practical step-by-step matter.

I have found that working toward forgiveness this way makes the act of forgiving more accessible to many people.

Acceptance will allow you to systematically work through your anger, overcome your anxiety, rebuild trust in your partner, and do so without being stuck with the feeling that you might be walked on like a doormat one more time.

With acceptance you don’t have to “make a decision” and jump into forgiving all at one time. You can take it slowly, and feel out how things are going in your marriage. This way you don’t get stuck in the process of forgiving only to be betrayed again. Instead, you look at your relationship rationally and do the work you need to make it better.

To start understanding how this works, let’s look at the definition for “acceptance” and see how it is different than the definition for “forgiveness.”

Defining Acceptance

The Oxford English Dictionary defines acceptance as “willingness or ability to tolerate.” The definition for forgiveness is “cease to feel angry or resentful toward.”

In my mind, the difference between these definitions is quite enlightening, and it’s a good indicator for why acceptance is the path you take toward forgiveness.

When your spouse betrays you, it’s very unlikely that you are going to wake up one day and simply cease to feel angry or resentful about his or her actions unless you do some work to make that happen.

In my opinion you can’t just “decide” to make these feelings go away. You have to take some specific actions so you can overcome them.

The first step is to accept that the awful events which occurred in your marriage did, in fact, occur.

This means getting past your initial denial. It means accepting that what happened in the past happened, and there is no way to undo that reality.

It means abandoning the idea that you can “go back to the way things once were.” Because, for most of you, if your honest with yourself, things probably weren’t so great before otherwise your marriage probably wouldn’t be in the state it’s in now.

And it means coming to terms with the idea that you aren’t going to simply “get over it” one day.

The experience of having your spouse betray you has become a part of your history now. There’s no way you can go back to a time before that happened.

There are going to be unpleasant and unwanted feelings associated with this reality. You aren’t doing yourself any favors by trying to swallow, ignore, or “just get over” those feelings. In fact if you try to do that, you’ll likely make your problems worse.

What you can do is accept that what happened happened. You can accept that your spouse’s actions really happened, and your emotional responses to those actions are really happening too.

You can choose to be “willing to tolerate” the actions that happened and the feelings you are experiencing now. If you are willing to do that, you can then take specific steps toward overcoming the difficult emotions and experiences you are now suffering from.

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. Now we can all be happy again.”

Quite the contrary!

No one can expect you to like the fact that your spouse cheated on or otherwise betrayed you. That’s absurd. Acceptance does not mean you have to approve of what happened in any way.

However, you do have to accept the reality of your situation right now.

Once you do that, then there are specific exercise you can employ to overcome the anger and fear you feel. You can work a set of exercises that will allow you to rebuild your trust in your partner, learn how to communicate, get past your feelings of jealousy, rid your mind of the awful images of the affair, and ultimately rebuild confidence in your spouse.

However, if you don’t accept the reality of your situation, the chances any this will happen are minimized.

When you accept your situation you are saying, “I don’t like what happened. I don’t like the feelings I am having right now. I don’t even like my marriage or my spouse right now. But I’m willing to tolerate this so we can work toward a better future as a couple.”

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.

This won’t happen overnight, and it won’t happen unless you put some real work into your marriage to make it better than ever.

To help you along this path to acceptance, in the next article I will give you another tool. I will explain why you are probably still angry with your spouse, and I will offer you some tips for expressing and letting go of that anger.

In the meantime, let me know how it goes with you. I’d love to hear about your marriage. Post a comment to this blog by clicking the comment button below.

Forgiving in an Uncertain World?

You want to forgive your spouse. You probably want it more than anything in the world. You want to take the steps necessary so you can move past the awful pain you have endured and toward a relationship that is happy and full of love once more.

Perhaps you’ve even done some work on your relationship so you can move to that point. Maybe you have started down the path of acceptance and you are ready to move on with your marriage, but there is one thing still holding you back.

You’re terrified that your spouse might betray you again.

How can you forgive your spouse when the horrifying possibility exists that he or she will do it again?

What if you forgive your spouse and your trust is violated again? Are you just supposed to act like a doormat and be walked on forever?

You want to know that your partner won’t ever betray you again before you are fully ready to forgive.

You don’t want to be hurt again. You don’t want to be made to feel like a fool again. And you definitely don’t want to compound your own grief by moving on in your relationship and then finding out your partner’s remorse was just a pretense.

What you want is some assurance that your partner will never, ever do what he or she did again. You want rock solid proof before you are willing to truly let go.

I’d like to be able to tell you I have a way to give that to you. I’d like to say there is a way you can be absolutely certain your spouse will never cheat on you again. But I won’t lie to you. There isn’t a way you can be 100% sure your spouse won’t cheat on you or otherwise betray you again.

Every human being is responsible for his or her own actions. Your spouse has to choose what he or she is going to do. You can’t make personal choices for another person, and, ultimately, you can’t control your spouse’s actions.

That means there is some chance your spouse will repeat the awful behaviors that lead you to this point in your marriage. You can’t control the outcome: only your spouse can, and there is already some evidence that he or she has a leaky character. You aren’t 100% safe from being betrayed again.

What’s more, most people aren’t very good lie detectors. I’m not a good lie detector myself. I never vouch for anyone else’s actions, authenticity, or truthfulness, because I can’t catch a good liar.

You probably can’t either. In fact, studies have shown that even people who are supposed to be excellent lie detectors, like judges, police officers, and even psychologists are generally no better at determining lies from truth than the flip of a coin. Chance is often better.

Unless you undertake very specialized and expensive training, it’s unlikely you will reliably detect lies your spouse tells. Almost no one can do it. I can’t do it either.

That being the case, how can you possibly forgive your spouse and move on with your marriage?

In my experience there is a way. I recommend you move toward forgiveness while accepting the reality that it is possible your spouse will cheat again.

I know that sounds like a contradiction, so let me explain what I mean.

It is possible you will be hurt. That’s a risk we all take when we choose to care about people. They might hurt us. That’s always possible.

The question is how probable it is that your spouse will hurt you again. That’s a very different issue.

If you want to make an educated guess on how likely it is that he or she will cheat on you again, observe the actions your spouse takes to reassure you.

In this article, I will share some of the specific observations to be aware of to help you make your best guess.

After all, it’s only natural that you want to know as much as you can about the reliability and trustworthiness of your spouse before you forgive.

Does Your Spouse Understand Your Pain?

One of the best indications you have that your spouse is re-committing to you is whether or not he or she understands the pain you suffered and are suffering.

When you communicate your pain to your partner, you will want to feel that your partner understands the full ramifications of what he or she did.

Your partner should accept full personal responsibility without hedging or excuses, carry an appropriate level of guilt, and seem committed to making the necessary changes to insure the behavior won’t be repeated. These factors make it less likely your spouse will betray you in the future.

If you don’t have these in place, you need to continue working on your communication skills together.

The level of commitment your spouse has to this emotionally painful process is also an indication, in itself, of the commitment your partner is making.

You probably won’t begin to rebuild confidence in your marriage and your spouse until you are satisfied that he or she understands you pain. If you haven’t gotten to a place where you feel your spouse really understands at a character level, keep working on it. An academic understanding will probably not feel satisfying.

Your spouse will continue engaging in this process with you if he or she is serious about helping you rebuild your confidence and trust.

Consider the Transgression

Another useful bit of information is in the nature of the transgression.

Some behaviors are more likely to happen again. For example, someone who has a record of being offensive in public will probably do it again. That’s not a 100% guarantee, but if there is a history, the probability increases that it will happen again.

Human beings are creatures of habit.

This means a “serial cheater” is more likely to cheat again in the future.

That doesn’t mean your situation is hopeless. It only means it will take that much more work on the part of your spouse to make lasting changes in behavior. Your spouse will have to improve his or her character, and that will take some work.

Responsibility for making these changes lies with the offending party. You can communicate how much pain you are in, but you can’t change your spouse’s beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Only your spouse can do that.

The amount of work your spouse puts into these changes is usually a good indicator for his or her commitment to the relationship.

If your spouse was a serial cheater or has a history of being offensive in public and you can see that he or she is making a real effort to change, it’s more likely he or she will continue, at least in the short run, to be committed to your relationship and to the change he or she is undergoing.

Work on Your Part of the Relationship

Most of what I have been discussing up to this point depends on your spouse. That’s because your spouse is the person who needs to prove he is trustworthy again.

However, there are some things you can do to help improve the likelihood that your spouse will continue to be loyal to you and your relationship.

In many cases the person who was betrayed might discover his or her actions or inactions from before the betrayal contributed to problems in the marriage.

Let’s look at infidelity as an example of this.

First, let me qualify what I am about to say by explaining that according to the wedding vow, you have great flexibility in what you do or don’t do, but the one thing you can’t do is cheat on your spouse.

The wedding vow is a statement of loyalty. Whoever breaks that vow has a leak in his or her character in my opinion, and that person needs to work on repairing this leak if the marriage is going to truly thrive.

Regardless of the wrong your partner did, when you get past the immediate pain from an affair you will look back and probably see things you could have done better in your marriage.

That doesn’t mean the affair was your fault. It wasn’t. The cheater broke the wedding vow. You didn’t. The onus for accepting the blame for that and making the necessary changes to insure it doesn’t happen again lies with the cheater.

It only takes one person to destroy a marriage, but it takes two people working hard to put it back together. When you take action to repair your part of the marriage, you make it more likely that your marriage will succeed and this is the only way you can achieve a relationship that is better than ever.

If you can see a commitment in word and action from your spouse, and you are both working actively to repair your marriage these are the best signs you have that your marriage is in recovery.

There are no guarantees in life and it won’t happen overnight. Building confidence takes time.

But it can happen.

This doesn’t mean “everything is okay and what your spouse did was justifiable.” It isn’t and it wasn’t.

What it means is that you are willing to accept what happened so you can move on with your life together in the hopes of creating a marriage that is better than it was before.

As you approach this point the pain you experience, the images that haunt you and the memories of that awful time will move to the back of your mind. They won’t disappear entirely. After all, you can’t undo the past. You will always remember that your spouse betrayed you.

But if you are both working hard on your marriage, you will find a way to make this betrayal into an opportunity to repair the problems in your marriage and become closer to your spouse than you ever were before.

One Ingredient that is Vital in Saving Your marriage?

Somewhere along its path, your marriage hit the skids, and may have been additionally rocked by an affair. If your marriage is in crisis, you know how your once-happy “union” can begin to feel like unpaid, overtime work.

There isn’t a way to not do the work when it comes to saving your marriage. But take heart: it doesn’t have to be all drudgery.

In this post, I’ll help you evaluate whether you’re taking advantage of one tactic for saving—and building—your marriage. Also, a plan to make sure you incorporate one crucial piece.

Critical Elements Involved in Marriage Salvage

When couples talk of saving their marriage, both spouses may have ideas as to what it will mean:

• Tense discussions about marriage problems
• Uncomfortable silences
• Accusations and recriminations
• Exhausting efforts to resolve conflicts
• Negative thoughts, emotions and images
• Developing new communication skills

No one kids themselves that saving a marriage in crisis is going to be easy. Who wouldn’t have some sense of dread, though, when faced with an unappetizing menu such at that to look forward to?

Don’t sell yourself—or your marriage—short. Yes, the difficult work of reconciliation and repairing the damage caused by an affair must go on. Just remember another critical element that goes into building your marriage: Fun.

The Survival of Your Relationship Demands It

You may be thinking: Fun? Did I just read that right?

Fun has probably become a distant memory in light of recent events in your marriage. Trying to save a sinking ship doesn’t seem to go with making time to strike up the band.

But in order to move forward as a couple, you and your spouse need to rebuild your bond. By focusing on building good memories once again, the bad memories and pain may begin to lose their power and hold over your relationship.

What you need is to reignite the spark that once brought you and your spouse together. In order for this to occur, you need to work together to prepare fertile ground for this to take place.

And where have couples always created and expanded their mutual spark? By indulging in dates with one another—time set aside to just “be” as a couple, relax and have a good time. Here are some steps to help you prepare to reignite:

Step 1: Create a Date List

For weeks, months—and maybe longer—you and your spouse have been cataloguing and reviewing the hurts and slights in your relationship. And if there’s been an affair, the misery wrought is never far from your consciousness.

Take a step in a positive idea: sit down with your spouse and brainstorm date ideas. Or, agree that you will each brainstorm 5 ideas, and then combine the lists.

Step 2: Choose and Plan a Date Idea

From the list you and your spouse have created, select one date idea—and calendar it immediately, in ink. In order to rebuild your marriage, you need actions that will propel the relationship forward.

This doesn’t mean all of the hurt and anger disappears. What it shows is a commitment on the part of both spouses to take the necessary steps to build positive memories.

Step 3: Put Aside Conflict for the Date

Your “first date” in your quest to save and build your marriage may be a tense time. It won’t be the jitters you had on the original first date you and your spouse had when you first got together. Below the surface of this date may be jitters about how to behave, what to say, what to discuss.

Agree that for this date, you will both commit to relax, and not bring up any conflicts or points of contention during this time you’ve set aside. You will both need to be mindful of your hot-button issues—and steer clear.

I would like to hear from you about what you have done for fun in building and saving your marriage …

Have you developed date plans together, and then followed through on actually going on the dates?

How did you feel on your “first” date?

Did you and your spouse set ground rules in what you would discuss/not discuss on the date?

Please share your thoughts and experiences on this topic by leaving a comment below.

Wishing you hope and healing for your marriage,

Save Your Marriage : Reach an Agreement? "Post Affair"

Your spouse’s cheating has the effect of pulling the rug out from under you while also crumbling the foundation of your marriage and annihilating your vows to one another.

Despite the devastation, many victims of an affair have a desire to save their marriage, with the affair being just a very excruciating bump in the road. They think, “I have invested many years with this person—sacrificing, negotiating and accommodating—why should I give all that effort away to someone else? I want things to go back to the way they once were.”

In this post, I’ll show you why going “back” maybe isn’t such a hot idea, and give you some steps to get your efforts to save your marriage, moving forward toward a stronger, healthier, happier marriage.

Looking Back to Happier Times in Your Marriage

It can be a mistake to expend your energy trying to move your relationship back to where it once was. By moving it “back,” you’re actually retreating to the birthplace of your current marriage problems.

Of course, during this time of pain and anguish, you are reaching for the happier times. You’re nostalgic for the innocence of a time when you didn’t have to deal with the ugliness of learning your spouse cheated. You want the good memories, not the torturous ones spawned by infidelity.

The past is gone, and even though it’s tempting to put on those rose-colored glasses to view those past years, many married couples are actually carrying their injuries, hurts and slights from previous years right up into the present. This is why looking backwards and working to get there can have you dragging past negativity into your present attempts to rebuild your marriage nd destroy your chances of building a better-than ever relationship with your spouse.

So, if it’s not a good idea to get things back to where they once were, where does that leave you?

Rebuild a Brand New Marriage Foundation

It can be unnerving to move into the future if you’re not sure where to place your footing when it comes to your marriage’s foundation. As most couples who are working to save their marriage after an affair can attest to—it’s not easy.

But for those who put in the effort to not only rebuild their marriage—but to create a brand new foundation, those couples will tell you that the effort was worth it, and they are now experiencing a much stronger relationship, better than they’d ever dreamed possible.

Does that sound like something you’d be interested in having in your own marriage?

It may seem a little hard to believe from where you are right now, especially if the revelation of the affair is fresh and you’re dealing with the torment of images and negative thoughts swirling through your head. You may have difficulty believing things will actually improve, let alone become better than what you’ve ever experienced. But realize, saving your marriage is a process, and it will take time.

To survive an affair and build a stronger marriage than you ever thought possible, there is some groundwork that must be accomplished first. Whether you have already done the work of healing yourself, or are just starting the process, know that you can ultimately move toward a point where you won’t worry about picking up broken pieces—you’ll be looking to build a fresh foundation.

But in order to effectively move forward as a couple, you need to resolve old issues first. Here are some initial steps toward that stronger marriage:

1)    Define Your Marital Hot Spots

You and your spouse will need to take stock and pinpoint your trouble hot spots. These are the recurring issues that arise from unmet needs, such as:

• Do you and your spouse fulfilling one another’s need in how to express affection?
• Are you and your spouse arguing over how to effectively communicate?
• Is there a need to spend time together in a certain way, i.e. dates, holidays, vacations, that isn’t currently being met?
• Are tasks being divided up so that both spouses are satisfied?
• Have you agreed on the amount of effort to expend in saving your marriage?

These are the problems that you argue about continually, and the needs go unmet. They are not an excuse for an affair. But to move forward, you have to know where you’ve been in limbo.

2)    Be Specific on What You Need to Come Into Agreement On

When you and your spouse have defined those hot spots which lead to arguments and discord in your marriage, you need to specifically state exactly which needs are important to you to come into agreement on.

It helps to write these down. Think of it as a goal sheet. By writing out your specific needs that you want to come into agreement on, you can eliminate some of the misunderstanding that can occur from only verbalizing these needs.

After arguing for months and years about the same topics, both you and your spouse may have unconsciously developed a means of tuning one another out, or keeping your walls up and your rebuttal at hand. In order to work toward a stronger marriage, it’s time to put away those old gimmicks.

3) Brainstorm Marriage-Saving Solutions Together

Writing down your needs and coming to an agreement that these are the items you need to work on is only partially getting to your goal. Now comes the work of reaching your goals—together.

In order to reach the goal of resolving recurring problems in your marriage, you will need to develop solutions together. For example, if you have a need for your spouse to show affection for you by taking your hand when walking together in public, a solution may be a test run somewhere, asking your spouse to take the opportunity to show he/she is into you by claiming your hand for all to see!

It’s a simplistic example, but you can see that many times, the solution is simply a matter of developing a new habit, and it will take practice.

Surviving an affair and saving your marriage requires a broad range of effort from both you and your spouse. Problems and issues that took years to develop and entrench won’t resolve themselves overnight, nor will painful affair memories go away at the flip of a switch.

Saving your marriage is a commitment to stepping outside of old habits and comfort zones, and into unfamiliar territory. But in exchange, you may finally have the marriage of your dreams.

I’d like to learn more about the efforts you are making to save your marriage after the affair…

Have you and your spouse worked on undoing old habits that have caused strife in your marriage?

Are you taking a fresh look at your marriage’s hot spots, and working on doing something different to resolve those areas?

Have you done the groundwork in self-healing, to better prepare you for the energy you’ll need to build a better marriage?