Couples of all ages experience different kinds of challenges in their relationships. Infidelity is a particularly heartbreaking one.
It can easily break people apart no matter how strong or tenured their relationships are. In this day and age, it’s also one of the top reasons for divorce.
However, if you and your partner are willing to work things out, the good news is that there’s a high possibility of rebuilding trust again.
Whether you are the one cheated on or you’re the betrayer asking for forgiveness, there are different action steps both parties can take. The key is to recover from the affair and move forward to stabilizing your relationship once again.
Here are some ways to rebuild trust after infidelity issues:
- Seek Couples Counseling
Trust issues, especially those involving infidelity, are best dealt with through couples counseling. It’s vital to do more reading about visiting a registered counseling and psychotherapy clinic.
They’re experts in the field of relationships and can assist couples suffering from emotional trauma, anxiety, relationship challenges, and more.
Counseling provides you and your partner with an unbiased perspective on your relationship, the betrayal, and its consequences. This helps you understand each other’s feelings and behaviors, as well as the contributing factors.
Chances are, when couples try resolving their issues by themselves, they find themselves in more arguments, pain, and anger.
As difficult feelings arise, your trusted therapist can help you deal with them and prevent arguments from becoming destructive. They act as the middleman and mediate for both parties.
If you go ahead with couples counseling, it may take some time to repair things. Making progress requires both of you to stay committed to attending sessions. After all, rebuilding trust doesn’t happen overnight, and both sides should be invested in this process.
- Establish Transparency
Your partner may ask you many difficult questions during counseling sessions. Some answers may be too painful and unbearable for them to hear or for you to say.
However, you need to be open and honest about everything at this point. The nature of infidelity is that it happened because you or your partner has been secretive.
If you want to regain trust from each other, you should work towards establishing transparency and honesty. Be careful not to get defensive if they ask something that may sound like an interrogation.
Regardless of whether it hurts, you should answer truthfully. No one will feel better with these answers, but it’s okay as long as both of you are transparent.
Being transparent does require a ton of effort. You will feel vulnerable and exposed to your partner. But it’s okay because it’s all part of the process.
- Be All Out
It’s time to express everything you want to say to your partner at this point. Once you’re doing the couple counseling, take advantage of opportunities to tackle issues and reveal skeletons in your closets. Talk about the elephant in the room, and face your issues up front this time. Express your emotions freely to each other, so both of you can start healing.
To put your mind at ease, you must think hard about what you need to know. Stop masking your emotions, as this will not do you and others any favor. You must express yourself and what you feel about it all. The process of rebuilding trust in a relationship requires them to understand that it will take time before you can completely trust them again.
- Move Forward
A relationship can only be saved if both parties want to rebuild trust. However, it can’t be helped if they show different levels of commitment.
Often, it’s harder for the one cheated on to heal than the betrayer. It’s up to you to decide if you still want to invest in rebuilding if you were cheated on.
Just understand that you and your partner will need to put the infidelity behind you once you’ve talked it all out and decided to continue your relationship. The issue should not be brought up as an argument or entertained again by either partner.
If you are cheated on, you should try your best not to bring up the past to intimidate your partner. Only once both of you can get over it can you start to heal and move on as one.
Where Do You Go From Here?
If you decide to work and strive for your current relationship with your partner, both of you should be willing to put in the work.
Hopefully, you can follow these steps to move past your relationship’s biggest challenge. You must find a good therapist to work through this problem and create a relationship that both of you can happily invest in.
