Can your relationship really survive infidelity?
Well, the answer is: it depends. The person in the relationship that did the cheating has to do some soul searching to truly understand what motivated them to do it. Then and only then can they have an open and honest dialogue with their mate about the next steps.
The key words here are open and honest. You can’t sugarcoat it or try to spare your partner’s feelings. If you do that, you are only piling on more lies and if your answers are contrived, your mate can’t help but question your sincerity.
Another element that’s absolutely essential is patience. Your mate is going to ask you every question under the sun, ‘Did you love her? What did you do together? Why her? Why him? How could you do that to me?’ It will go on and on. And just when you think you’ve answered every question and you assuaged every fear, you wake up the next morning and it starts all over again. You have to remain patient, you will have to answer the same questions repeatedly until your partner (not you) gets tired of asking them.
If you really want things to work, you have to be transparent in everything that you do. It’s not enough that you know you’re no longer up to no good, you have to put in the work to regain your partner’s trust, and there is no quick and dirty way to do that. It takes time and a lot of it. You have to be truly committed to the process.
You want to be careful though, that you’re not setting yourself up to fail. Things like promising never to hang out again, exchanging phone and email passwords, etc. don’t really work in the long run. One day you will want to go to the bar with your friends again. You want your partner to be able to trust you in any and every situation, so the focus needs to be on making your bond stronger. And most importantly, you must keep the lines of communication open, no matter what.
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