This is one of the more difficult questions that arise in the course of dealing with affairs. This question is one that challenges your commitment to your spouse, your values and yourself. Many people look for a skeleton key that unlocks all the locks and answers all the questions. There is no one size fits all answer to this kind of question, other than is you safety in danger. If you are in danger physically, emotionally or spiritually, you will need to go and go quickly. Although that should be a common sense response, with many people, the intensity of the bonding with their spouse makes it difficult to even know when they are in danger.

You will need to be honest about what constitutes a ‘real’ threat. There have been many counselors and lawyers who have exloited people in this area. You will need to be honest with yourself about the level of the threat. If you can not tell a real threat from a possible one, there are other questions you need to be considering.

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah

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Should You Get Divorce after an Affair?

You were hurt and you feel deeply betrayed. You ask yourself, “How can I trust my spouse again?” because of emotions and internal conflicts, you may become desperate in seeking for the right answers and the right solutions.

The most instinctive response to an affair is divorce. But is it really worth getting? Are you dead set on ending a relationship that seems to have ceased working? Before getting a divorce, you should carefully think through several things.

Don’t you love your spouse anymore? This question might be tough to answer for you. Even if you love your spouse, you can say that there are other things that could make a marriage work and that you are already at the end of your limit.

Do you wish to close the door to your spouse permanently? When you answer this, it might mean that you are closing the possibility of reconciliation. It means that you have given up on your marriage for good. This also means that you no longer believe that your spouse is capable of changing.

Is there an alternative other than divorce? Yes, there is! You can affirm your love and go through the process of rebuilding your marriage. Admittedly, it is the more difficult option. If you love each other enough and you are willing to work it out, then both of you can stand side by side and weather the storm that an affair caused.  

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Communicate and Participate in Rebuilding Your Marriage

Communication is a two-way process. If all you do is talk and talk and talk without considering your partner, he or she might just leave you talking.Health communication allows for both you to talk and listen. The amount of time each talks requires parity. When one person is doing all that talking, then there is little communication going on.

If you knew how to talk, you should learn how to listen.You need to giver your spouse emotional space. Allow them to respond on their time table, not yours. If you ask a question, wait for a response rather than answering it yourself.

If you are the type that simply keeps mum and wait for your partner to do the talking, you should stop being passive and assert yourself! Rather than shutting down, you need to speak out. Being passive does not help your marriage. What you need to do is to cultivate an attitude of taking responsibility and taking action in rebuilding your marriage.

An affair is a very devastating process to go through. But if you take responsibility and work in rebuilding your marriage, you can succeed. You may have to take the responsibility of giving space or the responsibility of speaking up. But if you remain passive, or domineering you might just end up with a divorce and broken hearts.

Communicate. Think about your situation and the state of mind of your partner. If you have been together for several years already, you already know the line of thinking of your spouse and you know the lines and the words that can move him. Don’t just think of your claims and what you are entitled to. Carefully choose the right words and you can start rebuilding your marriage together.

Communicate lovingly but firmly. The affair has to end if it hasn’t already. You can communicate your love to your partner but you should also firmly state your case and what you expect. This isn’t about coercion or blackmail; it is about being true to your vows and your promises. Since you are being true to this, your partner should also demonstrate the same commitment. The first step in healing your marriage is for the affair to stop.

Anticipate your partner’s responses. Since you know your partner well enough, you already know his expected responses. Give allowances for mistakes and time for both of you to recover your bearings. This way, you can both have calmer heads and you can work out how to rebuild your marriage.  

Work together. Love each other. It takes two to tango. There may have been problems in your marriage that led to the affair. But that is already past. You need to work together in rebuilding your marriage since you both love each other. There is no other way. If one of you decides not to help, the results will be devastating.

Rebuilding your relationship is a difficult process but it is not impossible. Communicate with each other and participate in the rebuilding of your marriage.

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You and your partner have known about the affair. To save your marriage, you have to understand that there are several things both you and your partner have to do for your marriage to be promoted.

Make sure the affair is truly over. The affair has to stop! No more communication and interaction at all with the previous lover. If the communication will still continue, then expect that conflicts and quarrels will escalate.

Agree on your mutual goal. At the outset, you should both come to an agreement concerning your marriage. Divorce is not the only option available. When you agree on preserving your marriage, then really work on it.

Ensure mutual accountability. As partners, you are both responsible for each other. You both need to communicate concerning your weaknesses and your problems. This way, you will come to understand each other better and you can work on your marriage.

Enroll in marriage counseling sessions. Getting an outside observer on your marriage can be a good thing because you can expect a more objective appraisal of your situation. This way, you can better understand your issues and your situation.

Identify the issues and work towards solving them. Infidelity may be a window to deeper issues in your life or in your partner’s. As you identify these issues, you can start working together in solving these issues. You will also know what to avoid and how to prevent the affair from happening again.

Restore broken trust. Trust, once broken, is very difficult to give again. As you work together for mutual healing and marital recovery, you can start restoring broken trust by giving it gradually. The pain might still be there and you might fear that your trust will be broken again. But trust, hope and love are our strongest emotions as human beings. Ironically, they are also the greatest source of our pain when we fail in these areas.

Love each other. Love each other! It is not only about feelings or emotions. Love is a verb. When you start caring for your partner again and looking after his or her welfare, the feelings will return eventually. But the best fuel for making your marriage go forward is by loving each other!

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Ending the affair is often a source of conflict. For the resolute spouse it is only a matter of saying “Goodbye, It’s Over!”. For the adulterous spouse, it is not that quick and easy. Letting go of the relationship also involves letting go of the dreams, hopes and optimism that it generated. They often find saying goodbye to those things more difficult than saying goodbye to their lover. Letting go of those things is akin to letting go of oneself, or parts of oneself. It feels like you are loosing part of you.

It is important for the resolute spouse to recognize and realize this. You want to remove the lover, but keep your spouse’s heart intact. Separating the lover from the dreams, hopes and optimism is not easily accomplished. The adulterous spouse is often unable to put into words what they are are struggling with, so they are not able to tell the resolute spouse what they are struggling with.  Knowing what they are struggling with will enable you to provide the support your spouse needs, without killing their spirit.

If your spouse has difficulty communicating, you may need to work with them thorough this time.

It is important for the spouse to accept responsibility for their actions. Yes you can break them up, but it will not have the impact that is often needed. You spouse needs to end the relationship. They need to verbalize this in a clear, unambiguous manner. They need to say it out loud.  It needs to be loud enough for them to hear it. They need to hear it themselves as well as the lover.  “It is over! Goodbye!”

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah

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Love is not all that matters in your relationship. Marriage needs commitment and hard work. Love makes everything all right. But you should be willing to do the “dirty work” and sweat it out. If you don’t, then there is a problem in your relationship.

An affair is sure to rock your marriage. Without true love, commitment and hope, you cannot mend your marriage. Yet, if you can mend your marriage and forego of the past, you love each other indeed!

Yet, there are times that the pain, the bitterness, and the hurt come back. When they do, your marriage is affected and even your well-being. If you continue in that state, your marriage might be in a very big problem.

Is it time then for marriage counseling?

When you find yourself asking this question, look at crucial aspects of your marriage and then decide if it is indeed time for marriage counseling. Just posing the questions indicates that you believe there is something worth saving.

You could not bring back the romance in your marriage. No matter what you do, you cannot seem to bring back the romance and the “magic” in your marriage. And because you cannot, you and your partner feel edgy and paranoid about the status of your marriage.

Although the affair is over, you constantly fight over the littlest thing. Sometimes, it is not the big things that lead to the disintegration of a marriage but the littlest things that add up day after day. When you constantly fight over petty things, then it means that you have some deep-set unresolved issues that have to be solved.

You keep bringing up the affair into your fights. This is perhaps the last straw for your decision. If you notice that the subject of the affair comes up every now and then, you know that you are far from okay.

When you notice these three things in your marriage, then you need to seek marriage counseling. This will help your marriage greatly.

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When you are working through the damage of an affair, one of the issues that eventually needs to be dealt with is that of dealing with personal needs and wants. Although to some people this may seem like a simple topic, in the aftermath of an affair, it is not so easy. Since the emotions are so raw, there are often feelings of guilt and confusion concerning what those needs are and how to meet them. Since many people do not actually work through their needs, this is an area that is often neglected or misapplied.

When unmet needs arise, there is often a confusion over what those needs are and this matter is further complicated by using sex to address every need. Sex is important, but it is inadequate in meeting every need. Before using sex as a “fix it all”, you and your spouse will need to first, identify what your needs are versus what your wants are. Once you have separated those out, you can begin coming up with a game plan on how to meet those needs. It is work, yet it is worth it.

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrha

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After affairs are out in the open, many issues are finally brought out into the open. One ploy used by adulterers is to plant seeds of doubt. While they are in denial, they often block things out either intentionally or unintentionally. The impact of their denial is that it often plants seeds of doubt in the resolute spouse. The impact of their denial is that it begins having you doubt your own recollection of what was said and done. In such times you may feel that you are going crazy. Since this is a highly emotional time, people are often more susceptible to suggestion at this time. So when the adulterer denies or distorts the facts, it is like planting seeds inside the resolute spouse. The effects of those seeds are that they determine your reality and you begin doubting your own gut reactions and recollection of the facts.

Recognizing what is happening will help keep you from being deceived.

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah

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There is a time, in the aftermath of an affair, when either through urges, frustration, temptation or just giving up that you consider having an affair yourself. Although it is tempting, you will need to resist the urge. This is one of those items that you will need to fast forward the tape and look at where it will get you in the LONG run rather than looking at the temporary relief you fantasize that it will bring.  Such affairs are often more about revenge and emotional release than about relationship and love. This temptation will come, but it will pass if you refuse to give into the urge.

Best Regards,

Jeff Murrah

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Learning to live together in a marriage is a continuous process. Sometimes it is easy, oftentimes it is not. Yet, the complexity and the difficulty multiply if an affair occurs in a marriage. If your marriage had been rocked recently by an affair, as a couple, you need to make some tough decisions and commitments to make things better. You have to deal with emotional challenges and difficulties on a daily basis.

As you continue your life together as couples, you need to deal with difficult situations as they occur. This way, you can arrest a situation before it escalates into an even bigger issue. You can also prevent the feeling of being trapped with each other and the accompanying hopelessness of such a situation.  

When rebuilding your marriage after an affair, honest is critical. Honesty is needed concerning  your emotions, behaviors and thinking. You need to accept responsibility in each of these areas rather than blame your spouse for what you felt, thought or did. This same honesty is needed in dealing with the different issues that you face. Acknowledge the part you played in little mistakes when they occur so that they would not grow into something bigger. When you are honest with each other, you will know where you stand in relation to each other and will be better able to determine your worth to each other. Honesty is a foundational building block of trust between the two of you. As you strive to deal with each other honestly, it will become more natural and less awkward. The blaming with decrease and trust increase.

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