HOW TO FORGIVE A CHEATING PARTNER

HOW TO FORGIVE A CHEATING PARTNER

Forgiving doesn’t mean you are OK with what happened or you are again best friends with the person or that you even like the person to communicate with them.

Forgiving someone mean letting go of all the resentment that you feel for the person & whatever happened.

Forgiving someone is for you, and maybe a just a little bit for them.

Remorse and honesty are 2 important factors helping people to go through difficulty and forgiveness.

There are steps to moving forward with or without….

STEP ONE: Are they worth another chance?

Some cheating partners don’t deserve to be forgiven.

Ask yourself these five crucial questions.

1. Have they cheated on other people in the past?

2. Why did they do it? A one-off incident with seemingly genuine reasons to explain it is a lot easier to forgive than repeated slip-ups or a long-term affair.

3. What do you think they will do if they're in the same predicament in the future?

4. What guarantees can they give you that it won’t happen again?

5. How was your relationship when it happened? You’ll be much more likely to forgive (if not forget) if you were aware your partner was unhappy, the relationship wasn’t great and you were suspicious.

If you thought you were blissfully happy and didn’t notice a single sign that anything was wrong, it’s desperately hard to trust again.

6. Do they regret what they’ve done? They should be even more miserable about the pain it’s caused than you are.

STEP TWO: Give each other space

Your first reaction will be to want to cling onto him and not let him out of your sight.

Don’t.

There are two things you need to establish at this point: that you mean business and their behaviour is not acceptable and that you have dignity.

STEP THREE: Meet up

This isn’t a kiss and makeup session. This is a meeting to decide if there is enough worth saving.

Warn your partner there are lots of questions you still need answered. If they're not prepared to answer them, forget it. If they are, start asking.

STEP FOUR: Build a new relationship

Your old relationship, the damaged one, is dead. You now need to build a new one.

Yes this is sad, but it’s also exciting. Just think! It may well end up even better than the first in lots of ways!

Although innocence and trust will be missing.

You will feel insecure and you will feel angry. You will fight about it, over and over, to begin with. This is normal.

STEP FIVE: Be prepared to change

All of the above looks after you, the wronged party.

But as much as it should be skewed to look after you, it’s unfair to discount your partner’s needs. Your partner cheated for a reason.

What did they get from this new person that they couldn’t get from you?

Explore ways to help him be able to do this with you.

One final question that I get asked all the time: when will I feel better and when will the pain go away?

The answer is this: time heals wounds that are able to be healed. It depends o. The person and how deep the wound but in most cases the following is most likely.

In six months, you should be feeling better most of the time;

one year and beyond, Trust should be developing again.

If it’s not developing as it should then sorry to say it. But, it’s time to move forward - SOLO !!