"Cheating Spouses – Surviving Infidelity - Marriage and Infidelity"



The hurt, the pain the lies, the betrayal, the secrecy and the infidelity. There is nothing in the world that will hurt more than to find out that your spouse has been cheating on you. If your relationship has a foundation built on deception it cannot and will not survive. When you find out infidelity, lies and betrayal threaten the marriage you thought was on solid ground, what do you do? Who do you turn to for advice?

At the moment a cheating spouse fulfills his or her needs by looking  away from their spouse instead of looking too them, this is where betrayal begins! To a great extent it is not what they do, many times betrayal is how they act and the things they do not do.  Without thinking you can violate your spouses trust by withholding affection, love and sex, not communicating your true feelings or by pushing back and not allowing your spouse to get close to you, the way a spouse should.  Always remember you will need to focus on the problems in your marriage.  You will never fix the  problems inside your marriage by turning to a third party outside of your marriage.  Before you realize that a disaster is about to happen, you will need to acknowledge and accept that there is a serious problem within your marriage.  You cannot fix what you deny to acknowledge and come to grips with the situation in front of you.  If you see something happening within your marriage that is not right,you will have to admit it in order to fix it.

When you find out that your spouse has been cheating..…. Well that is a lot to deal with.  A cheating spouse

can and will shatter your world, and for the time being you may feel as if you are in a fog. Not knowing which direction to go in for a while.  But let me tell you, when you come out of that fog and you regain your mind.  Because time does heal all wounds, you are going to have some decisions to make.  What is your next move?  Your cheating spouse needs to realize and acknowledge their infidelity has seroiusly damaged the marriage.  They will need to listen,  understand and realize the consequences of their behavior and how their behavior has affected you.  They also must understand and acknowledge the damage in your trust of them, their actions has caused damage to your fragile self-esteem, a stressed out mental state with trust issues and emotions.  You do not have to apologize to the cheating spouse because you did not do the cheating so it is not your fault they cheated on you. Remember you teach by your actions, you teach people the way you want very much to be treated by your actions.  If you can not bring yourself to tell your spouse how their actions have hurt you, they may never know. In some ways you have just giving the cheating spouse Card Blanche to do it again. 

 If you are going to try to work on the marriage with your cheating spouse after they had their extra marital affair, you will need to establish some new ground rules of acceptable behavior for your marriage.  Your cheating spouse will need to be told what those ground rules are from this day forward.  Maybe your spouse from time to time has gotten their way with you by taken advantage of your kindness because they feel they can. And if you continue to allow a certain type of behavior and or actions to continue by creating excuses for your cheating spouse and to keep blaming yourself, you really need to stop thinking like a victim.  If you are serious about wanting to be treated differently in your marriage, I mean with the utmost respect and dignity. You are going to need to be firm and stand up for yourself and demand the dignity & respect you deserve.

Marriage is a committed relationship between two people.  No one deserves the betrayal of being cheated on. We know people can change, and the spouse who cheated should be given the opportunity to change but, can they.........will they?  If by chance he or she is not or will not make the changes needed, you will need to take a look at your marriage  and ask yourself the question.....if I’m able and or willing to deal with this present situation.  If you know or have an idea that the situation will never ever change and you decide to stay. Can you emotionally handle what comes next, will it happen again, can you trust them again?  You should consider never investing more into a marriage than you are going to be willing to give up.  Yes, it will be difficult and the hurt will run deep and it maybe harder to leave the marriage or relationship than it would be to stay.... but the fact is you and only you will have to make a decision concerning your feelings and emotions and eventually do what's right for you.