Discovering that your partner has been unfaithful to you is a traumatic experience and one from which you think your will never recover emotionally. However, forgiving infidelity is a necessary part of the healing process in order to rebuild your relationship and become the loving couple that you once were. There is no doubt that you will be angry at first and probably say some things that you will later regret. This is because the person you trusted most in your life has mishandled that trust and thrown it back in your face.

When you find out about the infidelity and confront your spouse with it, the best thing to do is put some distance between you after the confrontation. This will give both of you time to cool down so you can talk things over rationally. This calm talk is essential for you to understand why the affair happened in the first place and how you plan to proceed with your relationship. During your fight, and there is a good chance there was a fight, your partner may have expressed sorrow at having the affair.

This is the start and it is important that he/she apologize for having strayed and hurt you. Once the apology is out in the open you can start down the road to forgiveness, even though it will be a rocky one at first. Then you have to see if there is a renewed commitment on both your parts to get past this and move on. Your spouse has to agree to stop the affair immediately by severing all ties with the lover. This may be harder for you to believer or accept if the other person was a coworker with whom your spouse will still have contact. You will need assurances that all future contact will be for business only.

The manner in which you discovered the affair will have an affect on the forgiveness process. If you caught your spouse in the act, it will be harder to forgive than if he/she came clean and admitted it to you when you were alone. If you had a feeling that the affair had been going on and your spouse was sneaking around while you collected the evidence to confront him/her with, will also affect how readily you can forgive the infidelity. You also have to look into the apology to determine if your spouse is sorry for having had the affair or if the apology is for getting caught.

Think about how you feel about your spouse now. Are you still in love? If so, then there is a great chance you will be able to forgive the unfaithfulness. However, if you have doubts about your feelings, then it may be harder to forgive and get over the hurt you feel. Your love isn’t enough though. You have to find out if your spouse is still in love with you and does want to make an effort to make things better. If your spouse is angry with you for having discovered the affair, then maybe your relationship is over.

When you discover that your partner has had an affair, you will be hurt and angry. However, after you have a frank and open discussion about the reasons for the affair, you can start rebuilding the relationship. Surviving an affair is possible, but for a while there will be feelings of mistrust. However, it is hard work for both of you to get back to where you once were, especially if there were words spoken in anger that you now wish you could take back.

In order to get past the affair, the cheating partner has to promise to end the affair and promise not to stray again. The healing cannot really begin until he/she severs all contact with the other man or woman. This helps to give the one who was betrayed a sense of safety and a feeling that things are going to be all right. The cheating partner has to agree to stop all conversations and if the other person was a coworker, all communication must be kept on business terms. There should be no more secrets between you and this means you should openly discuss the events of your day when you return home after work or a night out with your friends.

Marriage experts will tell you that the best way to start being more open with each other is to answer all questions honestly no matter what the answers may be. When partners are honest with each other, they each feel that the other is committed to the relationship and will take the steps necessary to heal the breach caused by the affair. You do have to talk about the affair, even though it is painful, to get everything out in the open. If you don’t talk about it, there will still be feelings of mistrust and unanswered questions that will never go away.

Each partner has to be sympathetic to the other, even the betrayed partner. The cheater expresses sorrow at having hurt the partner and says that he/she didn’t mean to hurt anyone, and really mean the words. The betrayed partner should also try to understand the reasons why the affair happened in the first place and sympathize with the reasons and the fact that the husband did fall into this situation. Talking and listening to one another is paramount in surviving the infidelity of a partner and saving the relationship.

Blame should not be a part of the healing process. The cheating partner should not blame the affair on the other partner because of something he/she said or did or did not do. This will hamper the survival and may even cause damage to the relationship, which is already fragile. Showing sincere regret and apologizing for having cheated is the best way to get started and letting the healing begin. However, it is important not to expect forgiveness immediately as the cheating partner now has to prove he/she is sorry and is taking steps to bring everything back to normal.

There are several factors that lead to partners cheating in relationships. The first one is that they do not take their commitment to one person seriously and think that it is okay to have more than one partner. Others may have problems in the relationship and look for other ways of regaining their emotional stability and get over feelings of being neglected. A third factor is that one of the partners realizes that the person he/she married or has a relationship with is not really what they wanted in terms of interests and activities of all kinds, including sexual activity.

Quite often cheating happens accidentally. Most people do not deliberately set out to cheat on their partners. Opportunities arise and there may be a sense of curiosity and experimentation wondering what it would be like to be with another person who just happens to be available and lets you know it. Statistics do show that most people who cheat on their partner have done so in the past and are likely to do so in the future. They probably do not realize how hurtful the discovery of infidelity is for the other person.

There is no one reason why cheating occurs in relationships. There is usually a combination of factors that lead up to the final push. If one of the partners is not putting as much as the other into making the relationship work, then this can cause problems. One partner may think the other is cheating and then cheat with someone out of revenge, without having nay evidence to prove the unfaithfulness. A lack of open and frank discussions with one another is often to blame in this situation when both partners do not fully reveal their feelings to each other.

Even though you are married, you may meet someone else and fall in love with this person. You start out by cheating just to see how things work out and then it becomes a full blown affair. Cheating is stressful because you are constantly watching over your shoulder to make sure you won’t get caught. This leads to secretive behavior, which your spouse will notice and become suspicious. Then you have to try to act as normal as possible and still come up with ingenious ways to meet with your lover. While you do know that what you are doing is wrong, it is also exciting and gives you a new purpose in life. When the affair comes out in the open, you are almost relieved that the sneaking around is over.

There are two sides to cheating situations. Men and women cheat on their partners for different reasons. For some the cheating does not mean anything and they do dearly love their partners. They know that they should stop and some do without anyone ever finding out. Even if the cheating results in a divorce, your new partner may have doubts about your faithfulness when he/she starts to notice little discrepancies and so the cycle starts to repeat itself.

You can’t deny the statistics that show that about 60% of men and 40% of women are unfaithful to their spouses. However, these statistics only deal with those who admitted to the infidelity. The percentages are actually higher than this because there are many men and women involved in affairs about which their partners have no knowledge. They may also have had affairs in the past and ended them before anyone found out. Marital infidelity is another term for adultery, which is regarded as a crime in some locations.

Statistics are just numbers and do not even touch the surface of what a discovery of infidelity does to people’s lives. It is a traumatic experience to discover that the love of one’s life is sleeping with someone else. It cause grief and pain to the point that you feel you will never recover or be able to trust your spouse again. Anger is usually the first reaction with remarks being made that are full of blame and hurt. Sometimes, these comments are so hurtful that it is they and not the infidelity itself that causes the relationship to shatter. It causes emotional scars that will not heal easily and are not visible to others.

The first thing you have to look at is why the infidelity happened in the first place. The only way to delve into this is to have a discussion in which both of you lay your cards on the table and get everything out in the open. Experts place the reasons for extramarital affairs into categories, which include:

* Avoiding conflict at home by seeking comfort elsewhere
* Sexual addiction
* Avoiding intimacy with a partner that does not meet one’s sexual needs

Having an affair does not necessarily mean there is trouble in your marriage. Quite often there is no planning involved - it just happens. A sudden change in one’s life could lead to feelings of loneliness or boredom, such as when the children all leave home. To the outsider, there is nothing to suggest that one of the partners is even having an affair.

When a marriage is in trouble, having an affair is never the way to solve the problems. This only makes matters worse and leads to further stress in trying to keep it a secret. The first step in dealing with infidelity is to admit it and get it out in the open. It is much better to admit the affair rather than be caught by your partner because for some reason, it is easier to deal with when discovered in this way.

Once the affair is revealed, you can discuss what you want to do next. The reasons why the infidelity occurred have to come out, even it if means hurting your partner even more. You do have to be sincere in you apology and not only promise it won’t happen again, but you have to take steps to ensure that it doesn’t. That is, if you want to save your marriage.