Empower Yourself

Once you and your partner have worked through various stages in couple’s therapy after the affair, the betrayed partner is sometimes still left wondering how they will move forward in the relationship. Here are 3 goals that need to be met in order to move forward:

1. Develop a new foundation for your relationship. This means starting over and building a new relationship. In order to do this both partners need to develop a realistic view of their new relationship.
2. The betrayed partner must relinquish the right to punish the unfaithful spouse.
3. Carefully evaluate the relationship and make a healthy decision about continuing or ending the relationship.

True forgiveness does not mean you excuse or forget. In order to truly forgive, the unfaithful spouse must show responsibility for their actions, help build a new relationship, and help the betrayed partner feel safe by staying emotionally connected.

As Sue Johnson states, “What healthy people have is effective dependency, which means—and there’s lots of research behind this now—the more you know how to turn to other people, the more you can trust other people, the more you can go inside of yourself and access, for example, your loved one’s face when you’re feeling upset or distressed, the stronger you are as a person, the better you feel about yourself and the more able you are to take autonomous decisions.”

Many Blessings,

Carissa