If cheating occurs in a relationship, it’s hard to imagine being able to recover from that. After all, trust–essential to the foundation of any long-term relationship–has been broken in a monumental way.
For many relationships, coming back from cheating just isn’t possible. There’s just too much hurt, and it’s just too hard learning to trust again. For that, only about 16% of couples who have experienced a cheating event have been successfully able to work through it.
However, it’s not impossible, as long as you both really feel the relationship is worth saving and are willing to put in the work to make things right again. In order to rebuild trust after cheating, you can get yourself into the right mindset by:
-Working on accountability
-Getting professional help
-Actively deciding to trust again
-Being ready for ups and downs
Make a Push for Accountability
On the road back to trust, blame and guilt need to transition over to forgiveness and responsibility. The cheater needs to know and fully admit that what they did was wrong. Being openly accountable for their transgression should help this person to be more willing and able to move past their guilt about what they did. Then he or she can move on to the important work of examining why they cheated and working with their partner to fix that problem.
On the other side of things, the person who was cheated on needs to pull him or herself out of any sort of victim mindset. If they can’t, they cannot feel genuinely ready to fix things and forgive their partner. And ultimately, not only is being a perpetual victim bad for a healing relationship, it’s bad for a person’s soul in general to dwell in hurt and anger for too long.
Get Outside Help
To get a handle on rebuilding your relationship, it can help to get an outside perspective. Better yet, find a professional who can give you the tools you need. A person like this can mediate important conversations, offer encouragement to help you both move forward and give you both exercises to continue the work at home.
Make the Decision to Trust
After cheating, trust is not likely to just come back on its own. More than that, if it’s not explicitly addressed, mistrust can continue to fester. So, at the same time you both decide to stick it out and work on your relationship, make the active and conscious decision to trust each other.
Especially if you are the person who was cheated on, you may find your resolve tested. Maybe your partner stays late at work one night. Or you see an unknown number flash across their cell phone screen. In situations like that, you will likely need to continually remind yourself of your resolution to trust.
You shouldn’t have to go through it all by yourself, either. Honest communication should come hand-in-hand with trust. So, talk with your partner about any struggles you experience (without blame, of course).
Understand that There Will be Ups and Downs
Rebuilding trust after cheating is a process. And it can be a challenging one, often with as many bad days as good ones. Feelings will ebb and flow, and daily life will offer its own complications. By understanding that, the bad days won’t necessarily throw you off.
Just brace yourself and focus on getting to more good days than bad. This will keep you on the right track to meet your main goal: the renewal of a strong and trustworthy relationship.
For more information on how to deal with cheating and other relationship issues, read the articles on those subjects on the PeopleFinders blog.
Image attribution: fizkes – www.shutterstock.com
The post How to Rebuild Trust After Cheating appeared first on The PeopleFinders Blog.