Discovering your spouse has been unfaithful can cause emotional wounds from which you think you will never recover. Overcoming infidelity is extremely hard, but not impossible. It requires time, often as much as years to get over the hurt. The advice you often receive from friends and family is often for you to forget about now that it is over and to move on. This is something you can’t do and it is only someone who has never been through this experience that will give you such advice. There is a grieving process involved because you feel as if you have lost an important part of your life, especially if the discovery cam as a shock to you.

If this is the first incidence of infidelity, you can accept the apology and talk about what led to the affair. If, however, it seems as if your partner has a string of affairs and apologizes, only to start another affair, then it is time for you to take a long, hard look at your relationship. It is also easier to forgive infidelity if it was a one-night stand, but it is still a hard process. Forgiving is not easy because the suspicions will always be there and the spouse now has to prove that he/she is faithful.

Is your relationship worth saving? This is one of the main things you have to reflect on when you discover that your partner has been unfaithful. What repairs do you have to make to the relationship so that you can get it back to where it once was? It may be easier to think about a divorce or dissolving the relationship if there are no children involved. However, you have invested a lot of time and money into this relationship and you may have accumulated debts together. Therefore, just getting out of the relationship is not as easy as it seems. It is important to take steps to try to save the relationship.

You may forgive but you will never forget. Once infidelity happens, you will always have it at the back of your mind and wonder if the same thing is happening every time your partner leaves for a night with the boys or a business trip. You may even start to notice how he/she reacts around your friends and pick up on little bits of conversations that you would previously have ignored.

Dealing with infidelity and moving on is stressful for both partners. The cheating partner will always be on his/her toes trying to assure you that nothing is happening. So much so that you may even think the extra attention is contrived or fake. During this reconciliation period, frank and open discussions are essential, answering all questions honestly. Once honesty is restored to the relationship, trust will return and eventually you will both be more comfortable in the ways things are progressing. One bout of unfaithfulness is hard to get over, but when it happens a second and third time, then you should know that it is likely that you won’t be able to get over it.

Why do girls cheat? This is a question to which there is no one simple answer. Every girl has her own reasons for cheating on her boyfriend or husband and each relationship is unique. Sometimes, guys do silly things that don’t mean anything to them, but it really ticks off their girlfriends. Then she may cheat in a one-nightstand just to get even or to prove that she can get someone else. In exceptional cases, there are girls who are addicted to cheating and it doesn’t make any difference how good they have it or how well their boyfriends treat them. They are going to cheat and that’s it.

No girl wants to be saddled with a desperate needy man because of the negativity that surrounds the relationship. When you are in a relationship with someone who is miserable all the time, this tends to bring you down. Therefore a girl in this type of situation will seek out the comfort of someone with a more upbeat attitude just because she wants to have some fun in her life. She also doesn’t want to be the one responding to her boyfriend’s needs all the time. Her needs have to be met as well, but when he only has time to make sure he gets what he wants, then she has no time for herself.

A boyfriend who isn’t willing to take responsibility for his own mistakes will end up losing his girlfriend. She can’t and won’t admit to making mistakes all the time for something that she didn’t do. Some men have a lot of difficulty saying that they are sorry when the two simple words “I’m sorry” will solve a lot of problems. As a result small issues that can be swept under the rug or ignores, result in a big fight with one or the other storming out. This may be the time she decides that she doesn’t want any more of this wand starts to look for someone new.

Sexual satisfaction is not the same as sexual gratification. When your girlfriend is satisfied with your love life, then there is little chance she will look elsewhere. You have to make sure that she is satisfied and not concentrate on making sure that you are not the only one that gets satisfaction from the love making. All good relationships between partners needs to have an active sex life to give both of you what you need.

One of the main things in maintaining a good relationship with your girlfriend is to keep the lines of communication open. You should always answer her questions honestly and confide in her about your day at work and your friends. Keeping secrets is a sure way to arouse her suspicions and lead to her cheating on your with someone else. When you start out as friends and then start dating, the friendship has to stay as the basis on which you build the relationship and you will stay together and get stronger.

When you have a strong emotional attachment to another adult that does not include any sexual intimacy, but you try to keep it secret from your partner, then you are guilty of emotional cheating. You could come back and say you are not really cheating because there is no sex involved, but if your thoughts are consumed with this other person and you exclude your partner, then it is cheating whatever way you want to look at it. Another term that refers to this is having an emotional affair.

The time you spend together may be chaste, yet intimate at the same time. The intimacy may be inappropriate in that you share secrets about you are your partner that you would otherwise never tell anyone. It also involved spending excessive amounts of time with this person that you would ordinarily spend with your partner. Maybe you confide more in this person and you do hold hands and touch each other a lot. You have more feelings and emotions toward this other person that you do for your existing spouse or partner.

When you are involved in an emotional affair, you have the same habits as a person who has a lover. Deception and secrecy take over your life as you keep secrets and devise ways of getting out of the house to meet. You may make up lies about where you are going or where you have been so that your partner doesn’t get suspicious. In your conversations, you are very careful not to make any mention of this other person’s name or if he/she is a friend of both of you, you try not to bring the name into the conversation too often. Even if there is no sexual activity, the fact that you are hiding this relationship or friendship means that you do believe that you are doing something wrong.

When you think about your emotional relationship with this person, you deny that it is an affair. You may even deny that there is any sexual attraction there. Such an affair may go on for a long time, even forever, without any sexual activity being involved. In most cases, though, it does lead to further developments in this area after you spend a lot of time with this “new” confidant. This usually happens between a man and a woman because even though men and women have best friends of their own gender in whom they do confide, such relationships don’t usually blossom into a lesbian or gay relationship.

Cheating on your spouse emotionally is not the same thing as having a special friendship with someone. It can only be called cheating when you don’t tell your partner about this friend, what you do together or where you go. Your partner may never even know that this person exists and it is in not telling or sneaking around that makes it cheating. You will tend to take on the characteristics of a person who is having an affair whether or not there is any sex.

Temptation to cheat on your partner is all around you if you recognize the signs. Your next-door neighbor always compliments you on your clothes or perfume and makes flirtatious remarks. A coworker looks for every opportunity to be by your side and strike up a conversation. While most people do brush these off and find ways of getting around them, there are others who do not and end up having an affair. Why do people cheat on their partners when they have a happy life?

The decision to cheat is not one that happens all of a sudden. A man or woman just doesn’t wake up one morning and decide to look for a lover with whom they can have a one-night stand or a long-term affair. Some of those people who do cheat do have an unhappy home life and rather than face a large confrontation, they sidestep the issue and gain some comfort out of an affair. Quite often, though, it happens by accident and has nothing to do with the other partner, who is often very unsuspecting that something is going on.

Relationships do fall into a pattern as the years go by. The excitement of dating and the honeymoon does wear off when real life sinks in and bills have to be paid. Then when the children come along, life changes again with less time to go out together because of babysitting needs. The financial situation also changes with increased expenses. Most times, both partners have to work and come home tired and grumpy or work different shifts. So there time together decreases. At the workplace they make new friends and have experiences that the other cannot relate to.

A lack of communication between partners if another reason why people do cheat in a relationship. They grow apart, with each one having different chores and responsibilities. They become complacent in their relationship and start to take one another for granted. And then they realize that the fun has gone out of their lives so they look for other ways to bring it back. For example, a man that comes home each day to listen to a string of complaints about what went wrong, is going to look for companionship that will allow him time to laugh and relax. The lack of talking and listening to each other is often the cause of infidelity.

Although partners need to be good friends to provide the basis for their relationship, they should always try to keep the spice and excitement going. When your relationship reverts to friendship and you rarely have intimate moments together and sex becomes almost nonexistent, it is likely that one or the other of the partners will stray to try to get back some of the excitement that is missing.

No marriage has a 100% guarantee that one or the other won’t cheat or won’t be tempted to cheat. Relationships need work on the part of both partners to make them last.