How to Heal From a Wife's Betrayal
- 1). Get everything out in the open. This may be one of the hardest conversations of your life, but you need to know why she had the affair as much as she needs to know how much her actions hurt you and destroyed your trust. Opening the lines of honest communication helps to repair the intimacy you once shared.
- 2). Ask questions, if you feel inclined to do so. Morbid curiosity may prompt those more difficult questions about the explicit nature of her betrayal, but if you do not ask, you will always wonder. This uncertainty will inevitably make you hold onto the infidelity longer than necessary.
- 3). Listen to her reasons and try to understand her behavior, but do not internalize blame. Her decisions were her own, and although a lack in the marriage may have prompted her to look elsewhere, she is still responsible for how she decided to respond to it. Your job now is to understand her motivation, which may or may not have had anything to do with you.
- 4). Forgive your wife for yourself --- not for her --- whether you stay together or not. This forgiveness does not let her "off the hook" for what she did any more than withholding forgiveness punishes her further. This act of forgiveness helps you to release the pain. Resentment will only make you bitter; resentment is an emotional attachment to a negative event --- it prevents you from taking positive steps to heal and move forward.
- 5). Work on strengthening the marriage through communicating and reconnecting with your spouse. If she has made it clear that she is willing to do her part and you wish to remain in the relationship, you must both work together to recover a deeper intimacy and renewed trust and to strengthen your marital relationship. Focus on one another and put your marriage above hurt feelings and guilt.
- 6). Do not dwell on the affair. When those thoughts enter your head, focus on something more positive. Revisiting this betrayal obsessively is like ripping a scab off a sore --- it will just delay your healing process.
- 7). Let go of what was. Although you may never be able to recapture that initial trust and idyllic relationship unmarred by her affair, you will have something stronger and more profound, fueled by the knowledge that your relationship could ultimately withstand the hardship.
