Cheaters and Betrayeds Helping Each Other Community Group
This is a group where cheaters and betrayeds can come to try to help each other better understand infidelity from the perspective of the other side because understanding can often lead to healing. Members can ask each other questions, share experiences, and provide insights and opinions without judgments or animosity. If you have a chip on your shoulder, an axe to grind,...
Has anyone gotten past the infidelity and gotten into a better relationship with their spouse? If so, how did you do it? Did you start trusting again? How long did it take? what can the cs do to help with that?
I wouldn't say "gotten past" exactly because I don't think it is possible. We move forward, but so much changes after infidelity that it is a major life change and you get used to the new life. I guess in a way we are past all the initial trauma though.
We did it with lots of hard work and both of us giving it 100%. We did it with no rug sweeping. We did it with lots and lots of help. We have had the involvement of our faith and our priest. We have had counseling and we have read quite a number of books aloud together. We have changed the way we function as a couple. We changed our habits. We spend more time together and talk more. We connect more.
Trust was rebuilt one day at a time as I showed him my heart and stayed transparent. I make sure he always knows where I am and what I am doing. I show him my sincerity every chance I get. It helped rebuild trust that I have told him things he wouldn't have found out otherwise like every time I see OM car to car and what happened if there was any interaction, or the time OM called me and I told him right away. It has helped rebuild trust a lot that he sees me work on myself and I talk about it to him.
My H gave me trust on loan on Dday. Can you believe that? He told me I had to make payments on that loan, and if I did not, the loan would be default. It made sense to me, and I have worked very hard. He asked me for 100% and I gave it to him.....and to myself.
Short answer is, yes you can rebuild, but it takes total commitment by both partners and doing all the things one needs to do. Gabi listed out most of those. Here is a link to a series of articles, most of which appear in our book, that will get you started:
http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/healing-infidelity-through-faith/news/
Concerning the trust on loan. I came up with that on dday (discovery day) for two reasons. We'd committed to rebuild. I knew I couldn't watch her like a hawk 24/7 and ensure she didn't cheat again. If she wanted to, she could find ways to fly "under the radar." But I knew if she did, I'd likely find out about it at some point, because unlike the first time, I'm sensitive to red flags, and my gut. Suspicions are much more easily aroused.
I also knew that if rebuilding was to work, it would be because she made it work. I worked to not prevent her from having opportunity to heal, but it was up to her to do the heavy lifting. We both worked on marital issues, but she had to work on why she allowed herself to give into the temptation to cheat. I healed as she healed. Without that, there was no future security, no hope of rebuilding trust.
Giving her "trust on loan" put the ball squarely in her court. Acknowledging that she didn't have any trust with me, I knew she'd need some if rebuilding was to be successful. So by giving her trust on loan, she had a workable level of trust to operate, but if she failed to pay it back, enough trust to hang herself too.
She repaid it back by being transparent, healing, working on herself, and like she said, telling me things I would have had no way of knowing. I knew if they had fired their relationship back up, the last thing she'd want to tell me is she saw him. I could go on. Like I said, wrote a whole book on this subject. But over the months, by being transparent had healing herself, she paid back the loan.
What would be a default? Any discovery that she was lying to me, making contact again, acting like I should just get over it (she never did that), not being serious in her attitude in dealing with this, etc. Not everything would set us back to zero. Discovering she was back with him or another man definitely would have. Discovering she lied about where she was might not set it back all the way, but would at least be a "late payment" with consequences. A combination of those smaller infractions could have been a default.
What a default would mean is, depending on the severity, our relationship would change. I'd do more of the 180. (See the article in the above link.) I would have withheld sexual relations from her...if I can't trust who she might be with, I'm not going to put my health on the line or continue to pretend to be physically married (it is actually harmful to her soul to be bouncing between people, physically joining and divorcing all the time). I'd grow more distant from her, and she'd have to earn back my trust before I would open up to her again. If she didn't earn it back, at some point, it would have led to an official divorce.
Without trust, you don't have an intimate relationship. It is either rebuilt or it is not. If not, there's not much point in being married. But I should add, don't expect to rebuild to the same trust level before the affair. Before the A, I thought there was a 0.001% chance my wife would ever cheat on me. I knew she hung out with a lot of men, but I trusted her and didn't worry. Now, while a lot of the trust is rebuilt, it isn't to that level again. I don't think it could be with anyone. Which is probably more realistic and healthy.
Like today, when we cleaned an office, she was upstairs talking with a guy. Pre-A, I wouldn't have given that a passing thought. Today, even though I knew it was very unlikely, especially with me in the building, that anything in appropriate was being discussed or happening, I felt uncomfortable. "What ifs" fired off in my head. I knew it was stupid to even think about it, but I couldn't help it. Get hit by a car, and you flinch every time it looks like the same thing could happen. Don't know if that reaction ever goes totally away.
You obtain what I'll call a workable trust. A trust that allows you to be intimate, but is no longer blind to the human weaknesses in your spouse and/or yourself.
Hope that explains it a little better.
We go to Imago therapy as a couple and each go to individual councelling. We make a consciencious effort to work on our marriage every day.