When it comes to recovery from affairs, forgiveness is only the start of the recovery process. When you assume that forgiveness is the end product, you are making a major error in your thinking.
Forgiveness allows the slate to be wiped clean. It also allows the two of you to once again be in relationship. These are important parts of the recovery, yet they are far from the end of recovery.
The cheater will need continued accountability. When you hold them accountable, it does not mean that you have not forgiven them. Forgiveness only erased wrongs from the past. The trust will need to be rebuilt. Accountability helps foster the building of trust. The more accountability, the more trust can established on both sides. )If you need more help with trust, you may want to consider “How Can I Trust You Again?” where I go into greater detail on this matter.)
Forgiveness also brings the two of you back into relationship. Once the two of you are back ‘in relationship’, you face the challenge of what are you going to do with it? Choices will be made as to whether the two of you will just ‘tread water’ and keep things as they were, or whether the two of you will open up communication and strengthen your marriage. You will need to consider how to make your marriage its best rather than settle for ‘getting by’.
Forgiveness also does not repair hurts or damage from the past. Cleaning up the mess that was made by the affair takes MORE than forgiveness. This is where you ‘make up’ or ‘make things right’.
In terms of making things right, the two of you will need to revisit the affair. In fact, you may have to revisit it repeatedly until all the damage that can be repaired has been repaired. If you assume that once the affair is forgiven that there is no need to talk about it again, you are limiting what you marriage can be. You are literally choking off the emotional connection with each other.
Although I have not done a scientific study on it, my suspicion is that where couples use choking to control each other, there is a tendency of one or both of them to limit their relationship. Choking is merely the physical manifestation of emotional issues that are already at work.
Given the life threatening nature of ‘choking’, this is not a behavior that is open to control group studies. The only way to assess this is through case studies, which have already given me this suspicion.
Refusing to talk about the affair limits your relationship. It limits how close the two of you will be. Forgiveness does not automatically clean up the damage that has been done. It takes more than forgiveness to clean that up. Changes are needed in how the two of you talk to each other, and validate each others concerns in order to start cleaning up the damage.
Best Regards,
Jeff
