10 Common Marriage Reconciliation Mistakes to Avoid After Infidelity
Read our blog on “Does Couples Counseling Work for Cheating?” (Spoiler: It does.)
Recovering after someone cheated is difficult.
The point of this blog is to make sure you and your partner have the best chance at re-building. Read below for 10 things to avoid doing when re-building your relationship after infidelity.
Here are 10 key tips to keep in mind when you are on the verge of rebuilding your lives together:
Keeping in contact with the affair partner
Whether you are the partner who engaged in the cheating or the partner who didn’t it is best for both of you to no longer have contact with the person that was part of the cheating.
Remedy:
Both of you should take the time to communicate how to rid them from your lives (i.e., block them on social media, block their number). We also suggest making a plan for how you will handle it if the affair partner reaches out to you.
Expecting perfection in the relationship
It is common for our brain to freak out when it thinks our partner is being deceptive or just not doing “enough.” But no one can be perfect all the time; there’s so such thing.
Make sure to take a breather and allow for space in the relationship to make mistakes. This also gives your partner the opportunity to be accountable, to show you how they are trying, and for you to show them how you are changing too.
Remedy:
Don’t let this one bad moment take you down. If you see all the other stuff that is going right, remind the brain that you and your partner are rebuilding and it’s okay to make some mistakes because we are human. Review some old emotional tools you may have picked up along the way.
Continuously asking, Will it always be this hard?
Nope. This is just one chapter in healing your relationship. Your relationship will never be the same because something big happened. But, it can be better because you are both growing. Right now you may just be feeling the healing pains that come along with rebuilding.
Remedy:
Make sure to take some time for yourself and check-in with your emotional self with or away from your partner.
Your personal healing matters too.
Not setting boundaries in the relationship
It is okay to have a meeting of the minds with your partner to create new boundaries that are explicitly stated in the relationship. For example, let them know how you want to go about if the affair person tries to contact your partner.
Remedy:
Make sure to state a positive about the relationship and how reasonable boundaries help everyone in the relationship heal. If someone is becoming defensive, take a 20 minute breather and then come back and try it again. If this is too difficult then couples therapy may be useful to help with this process.
Forgetting relationships take two
Sometimes our brain can drag us back into old habits where it just focuses on how our partner did us wrong. Your healing matters too. It begins when you initiate your own personal healthy changes. This may mean addressing our own not so healthy life patterns.
Remedy:
If you are struggling in your personal growth maybe individual therapy could help facilitate your journey.
Believing that we already talked it all out and therefore it will never or should never be brought up again
Our brain helps us remember the most emotionally important things so it can help us relive that great wonderful feeling or remind us of the pain so we can avoid that. If you have experienced infidelity your brain will remember this. It is how we talk about it that matters the most. Make sure to remind your brain that if you are both working on the relationship, what the positives are, what the “facts” are, and we don’t want to “punish” our partner by making them feel horrible every time they mess up or just when we feel like it by bringing up the affair. This disturbs the process of healing because now our partner has to emotionally process the new emotional hurt.
Remedy:
If this is something you relate to maybe it’s time to use some emotion processing tools (i.e., journaling) and digging into personal healing. If this has been ongoing it may be useful to engage in couples therapy.
Avoiding hard conversations in order to not rock the boat with your partner because things are “finally normal”
Omitting information from your partner may be the knee-jerk reaction, but being open and honest about it will promote healing no matter how tough the conversation is. Also, withholding difficult emotions to keep the peace is not good for anyone in the long run.
Remedy:
Try bringing this up by beginning with a positive about the relationship or about your partner then engage in the hard conversation. Also, maybe scheduled check-ins with each other can help make sure we are all saying what is really on our minds in a respectful and caring way.
Living life as “normal”
Let’s not pretend like nothing happened.
Something big happened and it is okay to begin rebuilding by just talking about the elephant in the room. If you continue to avoid this, the healing will not begin.
Remedy:
Learn to look at this as an opportunity to talk about this as a chance to be a team and rebuild the relationship.
Too many people know about the affair
Sometimes people find themselves in a vulnerable place after finding out about an affair and they end up telling a lot of people about it. This can be tough to navigate when you are on the rebuild with your partner. You are allowed to set boundaries with these people you told and let them know you and your partner are trying to work things out together.
Remedy:
If you already said too much, you’re allowed to go back to those people and explain why you told them and let them know you and your partner are working on things and would like their support. Take accountability with your partner as well of what you did and who you told.
Not telling your partner the whole truth
Leaking information over time and not being straightforward with all information about the affair hurts your partner more because these little wounds keep opening up.
Remedy:
Have an “all cards on the table” talk. Prepare your partner by letting them know you care about the relationship and want to start on an honest foundation. If this is too difficult, please consider couples therapy to help facilitate this conversation.
Cheating, affairs, or infidelity are some of the hardest things relationships face. They are also more common than you might know. And I hope it brings you hope to know couples counseling can work for cheating! We help couples every week deal with this challenge. At Inland Empire Couples Counseling we know the steps to help your relationship heal from infidelity. If you would like to work with one of our therapists, the first step is to schedule a free phone consultation. Click below to schedule!
Sometimes when you’re in therapy to recover from infidelity, a one-our weekly session just isn’t enough to process all you’ve got to work through. We have a solution for that: a couples therapy retreat. You can do 6-8 weeks worth of therapy in one weekend, working with two experienced couples therapists to help you and your partner get your relationship back on solid ground. Learn more about our couples therapy retreats here.
Do you still have questions about counseling in general or us specifically? Visit our FAQs page to find out more! We are now offering online couples therapy in California and in-person marriage counseling services in Riverside, CA; and online marriage counseling services in Temecula, CA!!