Accepting the Past and Moving into a Brighter FutureFrom: Dr. Frank Gunzburg On some level, you have already opened up to the possibility of accepting your partner again, if you have come into agreement with them about preserving your relationship. Generally, coming into agreement in this way is more of a practical move than a heartfelt opening. You know you need to come into agreement about preserving your relationship in order to move forward, so you do. At some point, you will open your heart to your partner again. You will notice that I don’t go into detail about acceptance until Section 9. That is because I don’t think you will be able to fully accept what has happened until you have done some more work on the relationship. Acceptance does not mean approval. However, you, the injured person, might find that when your partner understands, truly understands, some of what you have suffered as a result of the infidelity, you will begin to open your heart. When you couple this with your own efforts to understand your partner better by looking through their eyes, hearing through their ears, and thinking through their thoughts, you will be starting to open your heart. If that isn’t the case for you right now, don’t worry about it. It will come. This process is up to you, and you should take your time with it. At some point, if your partner is doing their job honestly and thoroughly, your partner’s apologies are going to break through the ice that has frozen itself around your heart. You will know when this starts to happen, and it can be scary. You might go back to old worries about “being a doormat,” or you might get angry with yourself for being “too soft on them” and condemn yourself for wanting to accept them into your life again. At this point, all I want to tell you about giving acceptance is this: allow it to happen when it feels right. You will know. Don’t stand in the way of your own process. This is your relationship and you needn’t judge it by anything but your own standards. Don’t get caught up in what you think you should do or what you think others think you should do. Just follow your heart. When it opens, let it bloom. Remember that you aren’t going to work through the pain that the affair has caused by working out every detail of the affair. However, you probably do need to get enough information to know that your partner is now being honest and loyal to you, rather than to the paramour, and you may need enough information to know the extent of their relationship so that you can completely come to terms with your own feelings about it. As I mentioned in an earlier section, you might also want enough information to know that the cheater understands the multiple decisions made along the way in the hopes that this understanding can help protect them in future situations where they might act the same way. But I warn you not to convince yourself that you need to talk about the affair, when you don’t truly feel you need to. If you have questions you are thinking about asking your partner, I suggest you write them down in secret, hold on to them for a few days, and consider whether you really want to know the answers to each of your questions. After you consider the questions in this way, you will have a better sense of which ones you want to ask and how. Whenever you choose to talk about the details of the affair, you are risking a regression in your relationship. This happens because all the emotions you have been effectively coping with tend to resurface when you discuss the affair. This is not a reason to avoid the discussion. I am telling you so you don’t expect this conversation to be a smooth transition. It won’t be. But if both of you are committed to getting to the other side of the discussion about the affair, you will probably recoup quickly from the regression, and potentially have more strength in your relationship as you move into the future. Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years. For more information about forgiving your partner and working through the past, please visit http://www.howyouforgive.com/ |