After The Affair – Benefit From What We Learnt About Forgiving And Forgetting

After the affair you have to make a decision. Do you want to stay in your relationship or marriage?

You need to be really honest with yourself here. It’s so easy in this situation to make the easier short term decision. But you need to forget everyone and everything else and make the decision that is best for you. Don’t be influenced by what is best for the children or what is best financially. Do what’s best for your future happiness.

If you’re the one who’s been cheated on the only way your relationship can survive in the long term is if you are able to forgive. Does that mean that you also have to forget? The answer is no – forgiving and forgetting are two different things. Once you realise that it will be easier for you to be able to forgive.

Most people think that forgiving is something you do for someone else. And there is some truth in that. But forgiving is something that you also do for yourself. If you’ve been cheated on and you cannot forgive you will forever be bitter and twisted. To move on you must recognise that you will be going into a new relationship. If you decide to stay with your partner or spouse the relationship can’t be the same as before. It’s got to change otherwise the chances are that what happened before will happen again.

And if you decide to go you’ve got to make sure that you learn from the mistakes of your previous relationship and don’t take them into your new one. If you can’t forgive you will forever be the victim. By forgiving you give yourself the gift of freedom from whatever happened in the past. It’s difficult to do, but liberating when you do it.

But forgiving doesn’t mean you have to forget. The reality is that there will always be triggers that remind you of past events. There will be days when you wake up and for some unknown reason you can’t get past events out of your mind, irrespective of how far you have moved on and how long ago they happened.

That’s why you have to be open with your partner and share with them exactly what you are feeling. To move on, you’ve got to do it together.