You and your spouse have survived the first stage of a damaged marriage.  In your case, it is an infidelity that has occurred and you have chosen to rebuild your marriage with forgiveness, communication and empathy.  

Like a test many marriages fail, you have elected to allow the strength of your marriage the opportunity to provide you and your spouse time to recover the serious impact of adultery.  

Beginning a new journey

In establishing the commitment to each other, the marriage and the time it takes to rebuild the relationship, you will need to call upon essential aspects of your faith, emotional intelligence and individual strengths.  These will provide you the ability to exorcise the demons that haunt your marriage, including the infidelity and all that led up to it and resulted from it.

It will not be easy and some days you may have feelings that may make you want to give up, give in and let go.  If you stay committed to not doing so, you will find that overcoming those occurrences of weakness will provide greater strength, courage and conviction.  

These qualities will supersede your negativity and provide an excellent example for both spouses in dealing with problems and negative feelings in the relationship. Each of you will be better equipped to handle the pressures associated with marriage, infidelity and struggles in your everyday relationship.  It won't be easy and neither of you will deal with it with such a positive attitude at all times.  In fact, you will both have your own personal journey to contend with along with your journey as a couple.  Be patient with yourself and your spouse as the breach in your marriage brings up a great deal of emotions and feelings about each other and the marriage that will not always be easy to cope with effectively.

Every marriage faces threats

Let’s face it.  It’s not easy to get through a long marriage without marriage threatening issues that arise at some point. Even everyday issues can lead to divorce. As the marriage gets older, careers get going, homes are purchased, kids arrive, life can start to “take over” and your marriage seems to fade in the background.  You may start to feel as though you are an underpaid, overworked, unappreciated leading lady or leading man in a role you can’t remember signing-up to take. The spouse part plays second to last and for many, it's importance is shared with self-love, health and happiness.  In other words, many of the things that we should really make as a priority are often neglected.

It’s not uncommon for a major life event to get our attention. Usually it’s the bad stuff that gets our attention first.  It makes us realize we can’t ignore problems.  We have a heart attack; we take better care of ourselves.  We fall asleep at the wheel; we get more sleep.  We face an infidelity in our marriage; we recognize the problems we ignored in hopes they would go away.  

It's not forever

Whatever you face in your life, marriage, family, career, know that your pain from your loss or life changing event will eventually lessen with time.  That most people will experience some eye opening event in his/her lifetime.  Your recovery will depend greatly on you and those also affected by the event.  Being proactive in your recovery will help.  

Infidelity can be draining and can seem more difficult than something like a near death experience in that the person for whom you felt immense love is the primary cause of your pain.  It makes it easy to blame a person than a heart condition or ourselves.  It’s difficult to give up the anger and blame, but to heal, you will need to.

Do not blame yourself, but at some point you will need to acknowledge your part in the relationship problem.  While one spouse may be completely or mostly at fault in the marriage, you will need to acknowledge that you can no longer enable his/her behavior by ignoring it, reacting poorly to it or continuing to support it.

It may take a great deal of time, therapy and/or commitment to addressing the dishonesty in the marriage and to acknowledge what it will take to rebuild. Ironically, it isn’t uncommon for the spouse who has committed the adultery to find the task to be too much.  If you both commit to getting past it, you should determine if your spouse is as committed as you.  Counseling and therapy will help.  Remember, a marriage needs two people who love each other; not just one who loves for both.  If even one spouse fails to demonstrate love, honesty and commitment, then your marriage is one spouse short of two spouse tango.

We are both committed to rebuilding

It’s important that if you decide to forgive your spouse, you stay committed to not bringing up the infidelity constantly.  Do not use the infidelity as an excuse for your own unfaithfulness or practice passive aggressive behavior to punish your spouse.  Conversely, your spouse should be patient and understanding that your forgiveness and the marriage's repair will not happen overnight.

You will both want to better understand each other’s feelings, build continued respect for yourselves, the marriage and your family.  Continue to improve communication and remember that life has a funny way of waking you up so that you can enjoy the rest of it together as a happier, healthier couple.         -OurDMK.com

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