Husband Cheated After 11 Years – How Do I Forgive Him?

Hi, Can you please advise me how to forgive unconditionally? I found out my hubby of 11years had an affair. He had since broke off with the girl and is now trying very hard to make our marriage work again. I am also trying very hard to make him love me again. Sadly, I get depressed when he is not around. I think of the stuffs that he has done to me i cannot help not crying. I feel like shouting it to someone but…… There are not many who I confide in about his infedelity. I feel so depressed. I didn’t talk to my hubby about this as I feel it will upset him and whatever we have been doing in the day will all go down the drain. Am I doing it the right way? I hope you can help me.

Thanks, Wanting to Forgive

Hello Wanting to Forgive:

First and foremost, we commend you for making an attempt to reconcile with your husband and understanding the importance of forgiveness to make things work in your relationship. Whether most people agree or not, forgiveness is the ONE component all broken relationships need in order to successfully get on the road to recovery. Forgiveness is not allowing someone to get away with what they’ve done; nor is it an excuse, permission slip or an opportunity to forget what happened.

To be clear, forgiveness is letting go of anger and other negative emotions related to perceived or real acts of wrong performed against you or another person. Forgiveness acknowledges that certain events occurred, but remembers that people are only human, and we too must be forgiven for things we have done. Forgiving someone isn’t easy and does take time. Recommended methods of forgiving someone include:

- Forgiving yourself for whatever role you played in the relationship

- Making an attempt to understand why and how that person acted the way they did

- Acknowledging and expressing your inner pain in a mature fashion without further aggravating the situation

- Deciding whether or not to remain in the relationship

Now, Wanting to Forgive, you’ve expressed that you continue to think of things he’s done during his sexual affair and wonder about what he’s doing when you’re not with him. This is completely normal, especially after what you’ve gone through. You don’t really speak to anyone, and also say that you’re afraid to confront him because you don’t want all of the hard work you’re doing go down the drain. You must know that you have every right to speak to him about what he’s done and how you’re feeling. Cheaters hate to talk about what they’ve done, but at the same time, they must be fully responsible for their actions and how they’ve affected the relationship. Not only will sharing your feelings with him force him to fully acknowledge the pain he’s caused, but it will reinforce the fact that it will require the both of you to work on fixing your relationship.

A final word about friends and your husband’s infidelity: We won’t say that you can’t confide in them, because sometimes a friend with an open ear is all you need to feel better. Just make sure your friend doesn’t become your therapist; if things get too rough, consider looking for a professional either for yourself or for marriage counseling.

Refusing Therapy to Save Your Marriage

After promising do anything to save your marriage, your husband may have agreed to attend marital counseling. During the initial stages of the sessions, he seems attentive and open to the situation, but as time goes on, he becomes more withdrawn and even irate about the sessions. Before you know it, he’s changed his tune, refusing to undergo anymore counseling and doesn’t want to discuss it.

Marriage counseling is a good opportunity for couples to work through their issues under the direction of an unbiased party. Marital counseling will help a couple discover what brought them to the painful crossroads in their relationships. In counseling sessions, alliances are formed between you, your spouse and the therapist, and they all abide by the belief that you are unique individuals who are to be looked at individually and as a couple.

Counseling sessions are by no means easy to deal with. The truth about how you both feel may be brutal to face, and some nerves may be struck. However,  you and your husband should feel comfortable in your therapist’s presence to let these harsh thoughts and deep feelings out and resolve to work through them together. If you find that your husband becomes stubborn and unreceptive to the counseling, ask him what the problem is. Perhaps he feels as if your marriage and its problems are private, and shouldn’t be worked out in front of others, therapists included. There’s also the possibility that he relives feelings of guilt from his affairs in every counseling session and doesn’t want to deal with that feeling. We can’t tell you what his exact thoughts are; the possibilities are endless.

If you feel that you’re making excellent progress in your marriage counseling together, try to encourage your wayward husband to work through the complications he’s feeling. Be honest about the fact that you feel marital counseling is helping your relationship and mention that you’re proud of his efforts.

If He Doesn’t Like the Therapist Environment

Should your husband state that he’s open to working on the marriage, but that the problem is the environment – he doesn’t like the counselor, for example- then this will probably require rectification in order to keep things afloat. Ask him what he doesn’t like about the therapist and their office.  Maybe the office is too cold. Perhaps he feels judged by the therapist and presumes that the counselor empathizes with you as a victim of infidelity. Offer him the opportunity to switch out your current therapist and find someone who seems to fully engage the both of you in your sessions.

If you discover that your husband truly just isn’t interested in marriage counseling, but doesn’t have any other possible solutions to help rebuild your relationship, this may be a sign that he’s just not as invested in the marriage as you are. At that point, it’s time to re-evaluate your options.

The Other Woman In Our Cheating Men’s Sexual Affairs

 As women, when we are cheated on, we feel degraded and humiliated. We are shocked, and at times, even embarrassed or ashamed. Usually, we’re quite pissed as well. When you’re faced with such a highly volatile situation, it’s easy to simply see red and share your anger. Despite the fact that she owes us nothing, we usually end up blaming and unleashing our wrath on “The Other Woman.”

Discovering Your Man’s Other Woman  

 Who is the “other woman”? Well, basically speaking, she’s the woman getting the inappropriate attention from your partner, the woman whom he’s funneling energy outside of your relationship for.  Your husband’s attention toward her can be sexual, emotional, or a combination of both; it all depends on the nature and status of their relationship with each other.

The Other Woman is Not To Blame – It’s Your Cheater

We admit, it’s just too easy to become angry with this “bitch” as we see her, but the real problem doesn’t lie with her. It stems from your cheating husband or boyfriend. Oftentimes, your man’s side chick wasn’t made aware that he had you as his main lady, and once she finds out, she’s usually just as shocked and hurt by his deception as you are. It would help to remember this, as you don’t want to lash out at her when she’s in the same predicament that you are. (Now if she did know, but persisted to get with him anyway…)

When the Other Woman is Someone You Know

If you find out his mistress is your friend or family member, then take a breath. At this point, anger is understandable. You’ll definitely need to assess your relationship with her by itself, and separately from the conversations you will have with your cheating spouse or lover. Chances are, she never respected her friendship with you from the beginning, or she suffers from any number of peculiar issues. Confront her if you must, but don’t excuse her like you would a woman you never would. The relationship, whether friend or family, may never be the same regardless, as trust and deep bonds have been destroyed.

Dealing with Your Man Post-Infidelity

Moving on from infidelity usually isn’t easy. It takes time, patience and strength. Whether you stay with your husband or boyfriend, or choose to move on with another beau of choice, you’ll need to take time to emotionally accept and understand the infidelity. Perhaps you’ll want to discuss why your man felt the need to cheat and whether you could have helped prevent it, or you may just want to go out for coffee with the other woman and see what she did that you didn’t. Or you may realize that he was just going through things and used adultery as a method of dealing with it (however poor a choice that was). Either way, realize that you have a choice in how to maneuver from this situation now that everything’s on the table.

Does it Make Any Sense to Get Your Wife Back After She Has Had an Affair?
By Emma Audley

should i get my wife back when she cheated on me

This is a question which haunts many husbands when their wives’ infidelity has made a dent in the relationship. You are overwhelmed by this dilemma – should you or should you not get your wife back – particularly when she has hurt your feelings so much and has played with your implicit trust in her. Such mental trauma is understandable.

But even if you love your wife very dearly, before you finally decide to get your wife back, there are some soul-searching which is required, if you want to put your marriage back on track:

• Is this is the first time that she has had an affair after marriage?

• You want your wife back – but does she also want to get back to you?

• If you want to know how to get your wife back after an affair, you have to know for sure, whether the affair was a fall out of existing gaps in your marriage.

• Did she voluntarily admit to the affair and apologize for the mistake?

• Are you completely sure that your love for her is strong enough to pardon her errant behavior and accept her back again?

When you do the soul searching, on your way to get your wife back you also have to bear in mind the following:

• Obviously, the affair is a result of some existing need gaps in your marriage. She has sought for things which you are unable to provide. These could be anything from mental compatibility, financial security to physical inadequacies.

• If you are aware of the inadequacies and imbalances which are affecting the marriage, are you prepared to ‘change’ for the sake of getting your wife back? Many of these changes could involve completely altering the way you look at life, your habits, lifestyle choices as well as behaviors.

• There are enough instances, where husbands have accepted their wives back, after an affair and they have found happiness and congeniality in their marriage. This is because they have taken the affair as a wake-up call to sit up and notice the underlying problems affecting the relationship. Are you viewing your wife’s affair similarly?

In short, it does make sense to get your wife back, provided you are capable of pardoning her simply for the sake of love and nothing else, like ensuing loneliness, kids, home management, etc. The pardon has to be unconditional and both of you have to work double-time to rebuild the lost trust. Once again, you have to have implicit faith in her and rely on the love and respect that you share. Only then getting your wife back makes sense.

Why is saving your marriage so important to you? Because a good marriage is one of the most treasured of human interactions. It colors everything else around us.

Visit my site at http://www.LonelinessToHappiness.com to find out how you can save your marriage after infidelity and make your spouse fall in love with you again.

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Starting over can help you save your marriage.

Cheating on Wife Can Put You Back At Square 1

When it comes to dealing with infidelity and cheating, many of us are aware that it can have dire consequences on a marriage or relationship. But how much of an impact is a dire impact? As our feature writer chronicles, cheating on your husband, wife or lover can literally put you at Step 1 all over again.

Saving Your Marriage After Infidelity – It is Like Starting All Over Again
By Emma Audley

Infidelity – a thrilling and adventurous escapade for many. But there is hardly any instance of an ‘affair‘ not generating pain to people concerned. But the situation is not bad all the way. More than 90% of couples, who have survived errant behaviors from a partner, confirm that it is possible for saving your marriage after infidelity!

But that still leaves the hapless 10% who may not be able to restore marital harmony again, ever. Or, even if they do survive infidelity, the restoration is only temporary; infidelity very efficiently weakens the basic foundation of marriage.

In case you are wondering whether you would succeed in saving your marriage after infidelity and whether things would get back to normal quickly – let me confess the basic truth: saving your marriage after infidelity is possible, but it is more like starting all over again. This means, that both of you have to have patience, understanding and be prepared to rebuild that lost trust brick by crick. Here are some cues for saving your marriage after infidelity taking you through the process step by step:

• Saving your marriage after infidelity essentially starts with a frank and sincere admission of guilt. This admission should never be linked to any inadequacy in the marriage which in turn is justifying the action in a way. Infidelity should be treated as a stand-alone episode, and the best way to deal with it is to de-link it from any rationale.

• This is followed by an unconditional forgiveness. This means that this episode should not ever be mentioned in your future years together. Even if memories haunt you, learn to live with it or shelve it back in the deepest crevices of your mind.

• Thereafter, saving your marriage after infidelity is a painstaking and laborious process, which goes through the usual test of trust, faithfulness and honesty. Somewhat like when you both first met. As mentioned earlier, you have to be prepared to start all over.

• It is cruel to hold the errant partner ‘guilty’ and raking up old memories can only increase the pain for all concerned. The best way to move on is to forget and forgive.

• Infidelity can be also viewed positively, if you take it as a wake-up call for both of you to take notice of the several areas of incompatibilities existing in the marriage. Saving your marriage after infidelity is possible if both of you make conscious efforts to bridge such need gaps, so that the relationship does not have to face such times again.

At the end of the day saving your marriage after infidelity can be an easier process, if there is true and sincere love and respect between the two of you. Every thing else can be taken care of.

Why is saving your marriage so important to you? Because a good marriage is one of the most treasured of human interactions. It colors everything else around us.

Visit my site at http://www.LonelinessToHappiness.com to find out how you can save your marriage and make your spouse fall in love with you again.

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Emotional Acceptance: The Most Important Aspect of Healing from His Affair

Throughout the discovery of your lover’s affair, you may fight to resist the truth. You may refuse to believe they cheated on you, deceived you and lied to you. “How could this happen?! No, it didn’t happen… not to me, I’m too good for this!” you may think.

Emotional acceptance is an important part of recovering from an affair, or any other traumatizing situation in life. When you have emotional acceptance, you give yourself the ability to stop fighting and resisting what’s happened on an emotional level. You become less emotionally reactive and accept what’s happened without the overt, painful dramatics. Emotional acceptance aligns you with reality, allowing you to see your husband’s cheating for what it is and helping you decide what to do next.

Emotional Acceptance Is Not Passivity or Tolerance of Infidelity

A striking example of example of emotional acceptance is dealing with the death of a loved one. When someone you love dies- a dear friend or beloved pet- it’s hard to accept what happened initially. You don’t want to hear that everything will be okay and you don’t want to believe this person is dead and never coming back. You’re consumed with grief and have little-to-no control over your emotional reaction when the news first hits. The pain lives within you for a long time, but decreases its affects on your daily living over time. Eventually, while you still love and miss the person, you’re now able to fully accept and embrace their passing. At this point, you’ve stopped resisting what’s happened and emotionally accepted it.

When it comes to emotionally accepting an affair, the process will be very similar. You will have to ride it out and accept that your husband did cheat on you. You will have to accept that things in your marriage were not going as expected. You will have to accept that your cheating husband did lie to you about his sexual or emotional affair, and that he did so willingly for a period of time, in an effort to conceal his extramarital trysts.

Clearly speaking, emotional acceptance does not mean what he’s done is okay. Emotional acceptance simply allows you to find peace within the storm. Emotional acceptance is not tolerance; his cheating on you doesn’t have to be right as long as you accept it happened. When you emotionally accept a situation, you’re not rewarding poor behavior and it doesn’t stop you from making his life difficult. You don’t minimize what was done when you accept his cheating; in fact, you must see it for what it is in its full glory. And emotionally accepting your husband’s cheating does not denote passivity and mean you do nothing, but allows you to move forward with confidence in yourself to make the most of this situation.

This information was adapted from Paul Coleman’s You, Him and the Other Woman: Break the Love Triangle and Reclaim Your Marriage, Your Love, and Your Life. If this information helped you, consider purchasing Coleman’s book for more insightful information.

Learn to Have Sex With Your Husband & Save Your Marriage

Sex after an affair can reconnect you, or instill anxiety

Having sex after an affair is a difficult and awkward experience, wrecked with anxiety and confusion. Throughout the experience, you’ll experience a range of emotions that are incoherent and unpredictable, and pull your cheating spouse along for the ride. One night, you’ll pull your cheating husband closer; the next day you’ll push him away and withdraw. He’s annoyed and confused, but so are you. You wonder, “How am I supposed to do this again? How can I enjoy sex with a husband when he cheated on me and feel blissful about it?”In order to break past your barriers and this issue, you must completely accept these crazy ups and downs and the anxiety. Completely accepting that all of your hopes, fears, actions, thoughts and emotions will be jumbled, confused and anything but neatly organized will allow you to find a sense of peace within the turmoil. Allow all of these crazy emotions and feelings to coexist within you for now, and don’t make any excuses for it. Don’t oversimplify anything you’re feeling, and don’t discredit one emotion when the opposite emotion arises within you. Understand that fear may be ruling your judgment at the moment and allow all your beliefs to be what it is.

In You, Him and the Other Woman: Break the Love Triangle and Reclaim Your Marriage, Your Love, and Your Life , Dr. Paul Coleman states that allowing yourself to feel the full spectrum of your emotions and dealing with them effectively is more important than your choice to have sex.

Should you choose to have sex with your wayward spouse after he’s had a sexual affair, you can communicate your mixed emotions while asserting your decision. You can say, “I desire to intimacy with you and we’ll have sex but my heart is all over the place. I might not feel as intimate or close to you after we’ve made love, but I still want to do this.”

If you’re not interested in having sex, you can state the following: “I really want to enjoy sex with you again, but only when I feel comfortable and ready to do so. Right now, I’m not really feeling this, so let’s pass for now.”

At this stage of the game, while you’re trying to sort out your relationship and save your marriage, it’s incredibly important to accept your feelings without trying to discredit them with logic. You don’t have to express your wide range of feelings all the time; it’s actually prudent to restrain from acting on all your feelings at various times in order to keep your husband from pulling back from the relationship. (If he thinks he’s being rejected, he’ll pull back from you and you’ll take this as a sign he doesn’t care.) Make the best decision you can at the moment while still giving indications that you’re walking on eggshells and acknowledge that he’s doing the best he can.

To learn more about what you can to do to recover from infidelity and save your marriage, check out You, Him and the Other Woman: Break the Love Triangle and Reclaim Your Marriage, Your Love, and Your Life and read what others have been saying about it.

If He goes to a Strip Club, Does that Mean He’ll Cheat?

Going to a strip club doesn’t mean he’s cheating…

Your boyfriend mentions going to a strip club with his buddies and you immediately go into panic mode. Flashes of Demi Moore ripping open her top, business execs smoking cigars, silicone, and 8″ Lucite heels race through your head. Don’t worry, you’re not alone – any woman who hasn’t had the pleasure of a lobotomy would react the same way. But do pleather thongs and body glitter necessarily mean that your man is going to cheat on you?

The real, completely unsatisfactory, answer to that question is you never know. Now, I would say that it doesn’t matter the situation or environment, all that matters is your man’s character (and willpower) – but the women who are so convinced of their man’s perfection are also the ones who seem to be the ones who catch their little angels cheating more often than not, so for now let’s put aside character and look at the facts.

Strip clubs are fantasies, but they don't equate to a need for cheating.

Fact #1 – Not all Strip Clubs, or Strippers, are Created Equal:

Palm trees line the red carpet as he walks into the unmarked door. A fine mist slowly disperses, revealing a scantily clad model. Handing him a glass of champagne, she beckons with one perfectly manicured finger. “Come in, we’ve been waiting for you.”

Ok, NOT. If you’re dating George Clooney then that might be the high-class establishment you can expect your man to visit. But if your man is one of us normal people, it’s more likely that he and his buddies will hand their money to some fat guy in a security tee then seat themselves in cheap plastic chairs. A cocktail waitress – who is only a cocktail waitress at a strip club because nobody wants to see her strip – comes over to take orders to fulfill their 2-drink minimum. The dancing starts and the only 5-or-better in the room is the Seven and Seven your man just ordered from the waitress.

Not exactly the tempting and seductive scene you pictured. I once went to a strip club with my long-term boyfriend (side note: going with your man to the strip club is always an option) and we simultaneously felt-embarrassed-for/unmercifully-mocked this one stripper whose unruly brown hair kept poking out of her Kim Zolciak mermaid wig.

True, most guys don’t care about the atmosphere, they just wanna see some tits. And true, there are strippers who don’t completely resemble Amy Winehouse. Which brings us to Fact #2…

Fact #2 – The World is Your Oyster, and Your Strip Club:

Strip clubs are so scary for women because we can’t help but view them as a one-stop temptation for our men – mixing booze, boobs, and boyfriends never seems like a good idea. But the truth is a man doesn’t need a strip club to be tempted by some skank in a short skirt – any trip to the mall, local bar, or friend’s house can have the same end result. Of course, having girls covered in oil writhing in front of him might be a tad more appealing than the checkout girl at Best Buy, but in either situation the act of cheating and the burden that comes along with it rests on your man’s shoulders.

Forbidding your guy from going to a strip club solely based on your insecurities isn’t going to make him be faithful to you – in fact, it might end up pushing him away. Instead of spending your time second-guessing your relationship, spend some quality time with your man. The closer you two get, the harder it’ll be for someone to come between you, especially someone with size 34GG fake boobs. So have a little faith and look on the bright side – the next time a girls’ night rolls around, your man will have nothing to say to you besides, “Have fun, hun.”

- Guest expert D. Estepan

My Heart’s Not in Saving the Marriage

In an effort to rebuild your marriage, your husband whisks you off on an exotic getaway. He’s putting all his effort into saving your marriage and stopping divorce in its tracks but you can’t seem to get excited by his attempts to rekindle the flame. As a result, he becomes highly frustrated that your heart’s not in it and starts wondering why he’s bothering in the first place.

Your husband’s efforts aren’t completely in vain, yet they are a hasty effort to move the affair out of your relationship’s pathway; his trip is an effort to put the past behind him and make rapid progress.

At the same time, nobody can blame you if you can’t help but avoid feeling excited about your wayward spouse’s efforts to re-ignite the flame in your marriage; after all, you’re actually seeking to avoid getting so excited by this move that your husband settles the affair as a small bump in your marriage.

Move past this road block by discussing the need for acceptance on both sides. Your husband will need to accept that his infidelity affected your desire for him, and a romantic trip, no matter how passionate, will not easily replace the diminished attraction to him. Also explain that you have to learn to accept that he’s trying to improve the state of your marriage and assist in helping you move past the affair as a couple. Remind him that just because you intend to have a good time on your trip does not mean all is forgotten and you need time to move at your own pace.

Do not get into a debate about how you or your husband should feel, but instead allow each other to fully feel whatever it is each person is feeling at the moment. Honoring each other’s true feelings about the situation makes for a respectful interaction which assists in restoring honor for both partners in the relationship. Successful practice of emotional acceptance and respecting the other party’s feelings also results in the you and your husband being able to feel safe in sharing more intimate thoughts and feelings within the relationship.

Constantly Reminded of Husband’s Love Affair by TV, Movies and Celebrity Scandals

You two are on the couch or at the movies when one of the characters has a sexual affair with her lover while her devoted fiancé is out of town, or you read the latest celebrity gossip and discover another rock star having an illicit affair. You’re instantly triggered to think about your husband’s cheating and the effect it has on you. “Dammit, everyone’s having an affair these days, huh?”

There’s no doubt about it, the entertainment business loves infidelity scandals for ratings and attention, and nothing serves up scandal quite like an affair. Unfortunately, one person’s juicy buzz is your painful trigger about the hell you went through dealing with infidelity. These moments will spring up on you when you least expect it, and linger no matter how much you tell yourself to ignore it.

If your cheating husband is there, he may freeze up, or seem unsupportive when he also tells you not to let it get to you when you mention it. Easy for you to say, you think, remembering all the crushing details as they press down upon your heart while you get the beginnings of a migraine. If you’re emotionally triggered, his behavior and the movie can easily push you to become confrontational.

Ideally, your husband’s response wouldn’t be so frozen; he’d understand exactly what you’re going through and respond in a kind, loving manner that would put you at ease, especially since he knows he’s part of the reason you’re feeling so low. But he can’t – his head-in-the-sand approach is his way of staying out of hot water since he doesn’t know how to handle this situation.

Don’t be afraid to tell your husband exactly what you need him to do during these awkward and rough moments, especially since he’s too afraid to take chances and guess. If you need him to silently comfort you with a hug and a kiss, tell him. If you need him to reassure you of his renewed promise of faithfulness and commitment, then do so as well. He can’t help you if you don’t teach him how to. After all, he did participate in a sexual affair, and needs to help reassure you when these things happen – as long as you’re willing to work past this as well.