Can you forgive an affair? What would have to happen in order for you to forgive your partner’s affair and rebuild your trust? Many people would say nothing would need to happen because it’s simply over. An affair is the ultimate betrayal.

However the real question is, “What allowed the affair to happen in the first place”. Something must have been happening in order for your partner to stray. I don’t think he or she woke up one morning thinking, ‘how shall I best hurt ‘Alison’/’Mark’ today? I know, I’ll have an affair, that should do it’! No, nothing like it, I promise you. The fact is that because a need of theirs was not being met and it was an important one, they were open to it being met by someone else. Yes, it breaks all the rules of marriage and yes it’s a cop out because if there is a problem in your relationship, shouldn’t you be able to discuss it? But many clients have told me, “I did say I was unhappy/feeling unloved/a long way down the list/ but my partner did not listen or made light of it. I didn’t know what else to do to make them hear me and when ‘he/she’ came along, well it just happened”. So what happened was that one of you missed the clues and cues the other was giving out before they strayed. If one of you feels unloved and undervalued by the other, when someone else finds you attractive and lovable, you’ll reach out and grab him or her as if you are being thrown a life raft. And in some ways, you are.

Now I am not condoning the behaviour. Affairs are cowardly, deceitful and always cause pain and upset to the partner who has been cheated on. What I am interested in is getting to the truth of the matter to discover what happened, why it happened so we can avoid it happening again.

When the cheating partner is found out, he or she often wants to stop the affair immediately and sort out the problems so that relationship can be resumed. That means that it really was nothing more than an affair and there was a reason for it. If you are both willing to look at the situation from a position of wanting to know the truth, it’s often interesting to discover the type of person your partner had the affair with. What did that person provide him or her with that you had stopped or had never provided? It’s often a good idea to take a step back before you walk out the door. An 8-year partnership or a 15-year marriage is a big investment of time. Surely there must be a reason for infidelity? Recent studies reveal that 50-60% of married men and 45-55% of married women engage in extramarital sex at some time or another during their relationship ((Atwood & Schwartz, 2002 - Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy). Infidelity is nothing new. However where there is deep mutual respect for the other, where there is valuing of the other and true caring for the other, which is reciprocal, affairs rarely happen. So something is obviously missing.

I recently had a client who admitted to me that she actually pushed her partner away over the years, because she had married him to keep her parents happy, and she was never really that keen. She stayed with him, giving him crumbs for as long as she could get away with it. So when he told her about the affair, she was not surprised as they had not been intimate for three years. So is this his fault or hers? In a case like this, the relationship was never going to last.

If your partner has had an affair, you have a choice. You can either make up that what happened spells the end of your relationship/marriage or if you believe there is still value in your relationship and you really do love your partner, you can ‘separate what has happened from what you make it mean’ and find out the truth. You have so much more to gain from the latter than you do from the former, which will always lead to anger and bitterness. However, you must be willing to discover your role in the relationship breakdown in order to redesign your relationship and move forward.

I have worked with hundreds of couples over the years who have faced this heart-wrenching situation and the majority of them have survived and learned how to trust each other again. When I work with couples I provide them with the exact skills and strategies to help them regain their trust and rebuild their relationships and if this has happened to you, just give me a call to discuss how I can help you too.

Till tomorrow,

Love Francine

PS please note, the above is about normal, everyday people like you and me. Footballers, golfers, celebrities and other individuals who believe in their own hype and have a distorted view of their lives are excluded!