Marital Troubles due to Cheating

Marital troubles stemmed from cheating are nothing new. In fact, the number of spouses not having affairs is on the rise. If you believe your spouse is one of these people, then you need two things - discovery of the truth and a good support system. Many times, once you confirm your spouse has been cheating, you may hear something like, "I love you, but.." Obviously, those words are just as devastating as the affair itself.

For starters, if you have noticed things not quite right around the home and with your spouse's behavior, do not jump to conclusions. Instead, take a deep breath and look at things from a logical perspective to make sure you have understood things correctly. Sometimes, people in marriages do strange things that can seem a little suspicious but they are not always, as they appear.

If you have put all the information together and documented your findings only to discover your spouse is in fact cheating, you can walk away or fight for the marriage. If you decide you want to work things out, then you cannot start by pressuring your spouse to work on the marriage. Obviously, trying to talk sense into your husband or wife, showing him/her that you should both be committed to the marriage may not be the right approach, yet. In fact, bugging your spouse about making things right could backfire, making things much worse.

Although frustrating, just remember that you can work on your marriage productively. For example, consider going to marriage counseling. You can ask your spouse if he or she wants to go with you but if not, go alone. The truth is that a cheating spouse cannot stand the non-cheating spouse going to counseling in that he or she will likely worry about the discussions taking place.

Even though you want your cheating spouse to go with you do not stay home if he or she refuses. Go to counseling for you first and then work on the marriage. While you did nothing wrong, you have to heal and sort things out before you can start rebuilding the marriage. After all, finding out a spouse as cheated usually results in hurt feelings, distrust, fighting, and a sense of numbness. You owe it to yourself to get past the negativity so the marriage will have the best chance of reuniting.

The key in handling a cheating spouse is to avoid being confrontational. Instead, you want a good counselor who believes in the sanctity of marriage and understands how hard it is to work through an affair. Unfortunately, some counselors will immediately tell you to move on, dump the jerk, and forget about him or her. However, this is not always an option, especially if you have children, are pregnant, caring for elderly parents in the home, and other situations. Therefore, you need a counselor who will take a proactive approach first.

Yes, there are times when a marriage cannot be saved after a spouse has cheated. However, many times the marriage can not only be saved but also made stronger with the right guidance. You need to remember while an affair is devastatingly painful it is not necessarily a marital death sentence. The truth is, even if you choose not to believe it right away, people can change and many do. With proper coaching and working through the affair together, you would be amazed at how much power your marriage has.

Typically, a divorce happens out of an affair because one or both parties do not have the proper skills to deal with the frustrating problems in the marriage. This means learning how to approach and communicate with the cheating spouse, how to regain trust, how to determine why the affair happened in the first place, and how to restore damaged feelings. Most marriage couples know that love alone will not salvage a broken marriage, especially one in which cheating was involved. Therefore, by working with a qualified coach, you can use love plus many other tools to take some very broken and put it back together again.

For the cheating spouse, it often boils down to learning why there was the feeling of being stuck or needing another person in the first place. Sometimes, the affair was strictly physical, while other times the cheating spouse felt this individual fulfilled a need not being found in the marriage. For the non-cheating spouse, he or she can learn what could be done differently to help the spouse not feel the need to go outside of the marriage. Although hard to admit, most often an affair is a two-way street, meaning both parties have issues to resolve.

The bottom line is that after finding your spouse has cheated, you immediately feel lost and simply want to call it quits. At this point, you need good emotional support and a detailed plan on how to feel better about yourself so you can feel better about the marriage. Do not think for one minute fixing a broken marriage caused by an affair is easy work. In fact, this will be the hardest thing you have ever done but the results can be gratifying with time, forgiveness, love, patience, and appropriate tools.