Answers To Your Questions About:
How To Forgive and Work Through the Past

Before I launched my program, I asked the subscribers on my newsletter, the single biggest question they had about this new program. Here are the main questions that were brought up.

If you are interested in my new program, but you are not quite sure it will help you, please read through each of these questions. It will give you a lot of clarity.

“Does your program deal with forgiving infidelity?”

It covers all aspects for forgiveness including infidelity. I discuss in detail two of the biggest challenges you will experience if you are the injured person. The first is getting the images out of your mind and the second is overcoming obsessive thoughts.  I will provide exercises and techniques for managing these challenges so that you can be free of them before you work on the other areas.  If you don’t learn how to get those under control, learning how to forgive will be very difficult.

“Will I be able to feel the love that I had for wife again?”

If you two were once in love, it is possible to fall in love again (and it can be better than before).  However, you need to fix the underlying problem.  Simply going back to the way it was will most likely result in the problem occurring all over again.  The goal for this program is to help you fix the core problem instead of simply applying a band aid.  It will be a communication process for the two of you to weed out the root problem so you can identify what is wrong with your relationship, fix it and then build a new loving relationship.  So, yes… it is possible, if you choose to make it happen.

“Does it touch on anger and feeling the need for revenge?  That is what my husband is hanging on to.  I believe once he is able to forgive me the anger and revengeful thoughts will subside. Am I on the right track? I am excited about your new system. I just want to move forward with my marriage its been a year and he is stuck in the anger.”

Starting on page 20, I will explain 3 reasons why you are still angry and explain why it’s so hard to let go.

“Does your new program cover how to move past obsessing about the other person in the affair?”

Yes, I have a very useful exercise that you can use to manage jealous feelings, anger, resentment and bitterness when and if they start to get out of control.  It may sound a little strange at first, but I have been successfully using this exercise for almost 20 years.

“How do I get the program?”

On Friday 28th at 9:00 am ET I will release my program.  It will be a download only program.  Like all of my programs it helps me keep the cost down to keep them download only. The manual and companion workbook are PDF’s and the audio interview is a MP3.  You can easily rip the mp3 to a CD and listen to it in your car or ipod.

“In your new program Forgive.... do you also touch on how to forget?  I know that will never happen entirely, but is there a way to diminish it.”

What I am presenting here is a different way of thinking about and moving toward forgiveness. It doesn’t include forgetting about the past. Think about it. How can you ever forget what your partner did? It isn’t as though you are going to get amnesia and the memory of the event will be excised from your memory. It will always be there, somewhere in your mind.

But the word “forget” is an interesting word. There are things we “forget” all the time. Take your phone number for example. It is almost never in your conscious mind, but you can recall it on demand. You “forget” it until you are asked for the information, and then you can recall it at will.

The path that I will show you is one that can make it as though you have forgotten the offense. As you begin to tolerate the reality of the event and begin to work through your emotions, you will move toward a place where the thoughts of the transgression and the emotions that come along with them start to move to the background of your mind.

In time, the feelings that are associated with this event will disappear. You will also stop thinking about it regularly. In this sense, you'll “forget” about the problem the same way you “forget” about your phone number when you are not telling it to someone. It isn’t in the forefront of your mind anymore.

“How do you forgive “everyday”? Sometimes I feel forgiveness and then four days later I'm so angry and hurt again. How do I make it last?”

One of the first problems you will face as you start down this path of forgiveness is how to let go of the emotions that come up every time you think about your partner’s transgression (whatever it might have been). After all, it is very difficult to move toward forgiveness when you are pulled down into the whirlpool of agony every time you think about the problem.

Even if you aren’t completely conscious of it right now, it is likely you are still suffering from some emotions you haven’t completely dealt with. After all, you wouldn’t feel the need to forgive if you had already worked through all of the pain and problems you are facing. 

So how do you move on from your dilemma? The truth is that many people who have been betrayed by their partner or are offended in some serious way unconsciously hold on to their pain and anger for a variety of reasons. Understanding your purpose or intention in holding onto this pain is the first step to letting it go. That’s why I will discuss the 3 Reasons You Are Still Angry and take the first step down the path of acceptance.  You can find this on page 21.

“My husband says that I have not really forgiven him for his affair, each time he says things that upset me, and trigger off the memory of how he cheated on me, he ends up getting nasty to me, with hatred in his eyes.”

One of the most difficult challenges you face on the road to forgiveness is getting your parent to understand the depth of your pain. It sounds like your husband is not connecting certain triggers with his offense.  Learning how to communicate with one another in a deep and meaningful way (which is what you need to do if you are going to successfully express the pain you feel) is a skill you can learn. There are a series of steps to take that will allow you to communicate with each other in new and more meaningful ways – ways that will allow you to truly share and better understand the pain you feel.  On pages 27 through 38 I will walk you through a 5-step communication process that (if willing) can transform the way your husband thinks about you, your emotions and the pain you experienced.

“I am having trouble with my husband because I approached him about his Internet viewing, but now he has shutdown completely and shut me out. How can we work through it if he will not speak to me about anything of depth – only the weather?”

There is a whole program for communication in the forgiveness guide. It is built to help you negotiate the most difficult conversations effectively, without all the usual emotional baggage that's attached to them. What's more the program there will help you and your husband open up to each other in new and deeper ways if you put it to good use but you both have to be willing to do that.  I will be offering many more courses in the next few months that will go into even more detail on the subject of communication, and how to get the engines running when they’ve been sitting for such a long time, but this program will most likely help you see things a little better from his point of view.  Doing so, may give you some insight into why he’s so guarded.

“How can I forgive someone who is constantly hurting my feelings and move on?”

If you are going to overcome the problem you face in your relationship right now, you need to start by explaining what your partner has done wrong, what the impact has been, and how you feel about it. I can’t tell you exactly what you should say because each situation is different and you need to express yourself from your heart. Only you can know what you need to say. But starting on page 27 I will offer a few suggestions that can show you about how you should say what you need to say.  Another thing to remember is that many people give far too many details when they discuss an issue.  You’ll learn how to isolate one problem so that your spouse will see the true depth of what is going on.  This may have a huge impact on how and what your spouse say’s from here on out.

“How much time should we give to resolve issues? What's realistic because at some point if there is no change or willingness to change it becomes ‘pointless’?”

Because I have no idea what the real issues are or what has been done to solve the problems, I cannot really answer that question.  The real question you may want to ask yourself is… have we done everything we can do?  You may simply need a few new ideas if the old ideas are not working.  You probably have heard that instead of doing the same thing expecting different results, you need to try something new.  This program may be exactly what helps you and your spouse start over.

“How do I work through all of the haunting things he said to HER? And all of the haunting things he said to ME that keep playing back in my head like a broken record?”

Starting on page 43, I will provide help to overcome obsessive thoughts that keep you imprisoned.  In this program, I will refer to this kind of thinking as “obsessive” thinking. I use the word “obsessive” in the way a layman might. The clinical definition of “obsessive” is different. For now, we will use it to mean “thoughts that come up over and over again.”  This technique might seem like a really simplistic way to approach obsessive thoughts, but this is a process I’ve been using almost as long as I have been in practice, and I have seen it work again and again.

“I am curious to know if you address the issue of when the hurt person has forgiven but the offending party hasn't. By that I mean, I have forgiven and moved on but my partner is still reacting to old behaviors and patterns I had and continues to live in the past. What are the steps that I can take to continue to be positive?”

Learning how to open up and communicate with each other will reveal many things you may not have expected.  There are 5 specific communication steps that will allow you and your husband to interact over the issues he still harbors.  However, the outcome will depend on both of your willingness to follow my guidelines because it is easy to allow emotions to take over.  Step 2 on page 29 will show you how to manage your emotions.

“Does it cover how to deal with a child that came from the affair?”

Not directly.  But, the communication outline can give you the ability to discuss it without getting sucked into a vortex of emotions.

“I want to be a forgiving person to my husband who has had a history of lying to me. I would like to know how to handle a situation where he's lied to me which is stepping on a boundary. And balance that with forgiveness. In the past I've forgiven and he's lied again. So now what do I need to do?”

Your husband is going to have to be able to take the hit for what he’s done.  You will be able to communicate these issues in this program, but we’ll cover how to rebuild the honesty in the next course.  Because this is such a huge topic, I chose to make it a program all unto itself.

“Will your system help if my husband and I are separated? We have been for two years and we are trying to stay separated instead of divorcing to see if there is anything worth saving. We are constantly fighting about his affair that is still somewhat going on. I cant seem to get over the hurt and I don’t know how to get along with him anymore.”

I can understand how the hurt can continue, especially if he’s continuing the affair.  The bottom line is that if he wants to start again with you, he’s got to end the affair.  Once that happens, then the program will give you the outline for working through your hurt and pain and how to communicate that pain. However, the issues of infidelity will be covered in a lot of detail inside my www.survivanaffair.com program.  I would also highly suggest that program because in it, I discuss in detail the emotional aspect of being injured, but also how a cheater should break off the affair.

“Is it possible to forgive someone for infidelity when they don't admit that they had an affair? I think he admits his mistake to himself but not to me because it would then become an confession and he is not sure how I would react.”

Even though my program will help you manage emotions, feelings, images and thoughts if your partner isn’t yet willing, your husband will need to engage with you and be honest about his affair.  It’s quite possible, that he’s afraid of the conflict.  My communication process may help him open up and become honest with you.  We’ll cover a very thorough discussion on honesty and transparency in my next relationship course.

“I want to get rid of all the images I have in my head of him and her and the affair. How do I do that?”

I have an entire section dealing with just that topic.  Starting on page 36, you’ll find How to Free Yourself for the Plague of Images.

“Will it help someone who has lived through many, many affairs, is still married after 40 years, and still feeling the pain everyday, decide if leaving at this late stage is the right thing to do or not?”

Nobody but you can decide whether or not you should stay or go, but you can get relief from the pain.  That is what my program is designed to do.

“Is the forgiveness that you discuss concern your partner, yourself, or both?”

Both.  It outlines how to receive forgiveness and how to give it.

“How can I get past the hurt and trust him not to cheat again? I believe that I will never be able to stop thinking about what he has done and get to the healing part.”

There are actions your spouse can take that can help you improve your confidence. There are ways you can become more confident that the same thing won’t happen again. But as the old saying goes, there are no absolutes in this life except death and taxes. You simply can’t be positive, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that your partner won’t make the same mistake again. The truth is that he or she might. You simply can’t know for sure.

I am telling you all of this because I want you to understand that even though you can’t have any absolute assurance that your partner won’t do the same misbehavior again, that doesn’t make you a fool. You aren’t a fool for wanting to work things out, and you aren’t a fool for having trusted your partner while he or she was lying to you. Even “experts” are not accurate at telling when someone is lying. You can’t expect yourself to be better than an “expert.”

I also tell you this because I want you to know that while there is no way for you to be 100% certain that your spouse won’t do the same thing again, there is still hope for your relationship, there is still a way for you to move further down your path to forgiveness, and there are ways you can become more confident that your partner won’t betray you again.   And we will discuss those ways to build reassurance and minimize your suspicions.

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