Gain Back Trust After Cheating
Filed Under Relationships Help
If you have made the mistake of cheating on your partner, you may believe that your relationship is over. However, this is not necessarily the case. You can get a second chance after cheating. If you and your partner both really want to continue the relationship, it is possible. It just takes work.
You and your partner must be willing to make adjustments in both attitude and actions. To save your relationship after an affair, it is necessary to increase the level of trust in the relationship; even though, this may seem impossible. There may be a central problem in the relationship that fostered an attitude within you that allowed you to wander. It could even be said that your relationship suffered from disease.
Fortunately, many diseases can be cured. It is necessary to look for the root causes of the attitude that allowed you to stray. It could be anything from a perception of boring sex to a sense that your partner was too busy to spend time with you. Perhaps you interpreted a failure to attend to appearance as a lack of interest in you.
No relationship is perfect. By changing your focus to resolving difficulties in the relationship rather than seeking to escape them by straying from the relationship, you can heal your relationship. Taking the time to work on the basic conflicts of the relationship will help build trust. Often this can be accomplished through couples counseling.
It is one thing to understand your thoughts. It is another to take actions to adjust your thoughts and correct your actions. This is the basis of problem resolution. It is important to not only talk about the conditions that preceded your affair, but also to make solid plans to correct those conditions in the future.
A good trust building technique is to start with small promises and make it a point to keep them. Attend to every day details like shared housework. If you have promised to do a daily chore, be sure to do it. Do it every day on a consistent basis without being reminded. In this way, you are making a small show of being trustworthy.
Build on this by making and keeping more promises, until this becomes the way of your relationship. Don’t expect a single apology to cover your transgression. Your partner will need reassurance that you are genuinely sorry for your actions and that you will never transgress again. Be patient when your partner brings this up and seeks reassurance. While it is important that you maintain an understanding attitude when reassuring, it is equally important that you not allow yourself to feel guilty. If you are genuinely interested in really getting back together, guilt has no place in the equation. If your partner seems to want to make you feel guilty, don’t allow this to happen. It is counterproductive. Rather that looking at the affair as a wound that can’t heal, view it as an opportunity for your relationship to grow stronger.
Mature people know how to forgive, grow, and move forward. If you allow it to, this negative experience can be an opportunity for positive growth. It takes a great deal of time and a series of positive, measurable changes in attitude and action to recover trust in a relationship. If you are patient and willing to make the effort, it is possible.
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