The foundation of a loving marriage is trust, but when that trust is betrayed, people will often wonder if there is any way back. Rebuilding trust after cheating and lying is not easy, and it will require time and effort for both parties to revive their relationship.
What Is Trust in a Relationship?
Trust is a bedrock in any alliance. Believing that the other person will remain faithful and honest helps you feel secure and create a solid emotional bond with each other. Without these core values, relationships can often feel chaotic, unsafe, and even unloving. Trust means being comfortable confiding in your partner.
What Counts as Cheating in a Relationship?
What counts as cheating might vary in every union. A couple may have certain boundaries that they cannot violate and things they have determined as unacceptable. However, when these commitments are violated, cheating can take many forms.
Physical cheating
The most common type of infidelity, as you might guess, is physical. When someone is married but secretly spends time with a third person for sexual pleasure will be defined as cheating. There are a few cases when this might not count as cheating, such as in polyamory, where sex isn’t limited to a couple or in an open relationship. However, even if so, some parameters dictate what is allowed within the relationship.
Emotional infidelity
Emotional infidelity is also a very common type of affair. This is when the wife or husband may be turning to one of their friends for all of the emotional support they need rather than trusting their spouse. Emotional infidelity can be much harder to define, but in many cases, it can constitute a much bigger betrayal as important matters will not be discussed within the couple.
Both of these types of infidelity mean that the trust in the couple is broken, and often there is a long road ahead for the couple to solve the issue and forgive each other to revive their relationship. It is also important to note that the specific things within emotional or physical infidelity that people consider cheating may vary. This is why you should openly talk with your partner so that you can know what they consider cheating. This will help you be more honest and careful in your actions.
How to Regain Trust After Cheating: Step by Step
Rebuilding trust after cheating is not easy, but there are tips to help couples looking to rekindle their connection. In this journey, it is also important to remember that relationships after cheating might take their twist and turns, and staying together might look different for every man and woman.
Step 1: Don’t Ignore What Happened
Giving space to someone is important while building trust after infidelity. However, this doesn’t mean moving forward without ever talking about or discussing what happened. To recover after cheating, both parties will need to come to the table open and honest, ready to discuss and listen to what the other person needs. There is no quick solution to gaining trust after an affair, but understanding where things went wrong is vital.
Step 2: Understand What Forgiveness Really Means
To forgive is a concept that many are aware of, but in reality, it can at times, be hard to forgive someone sincerely. Many believe forgiveness is about forgetting what occurred, but in reality, it is about understanding the other person. Learning to view them with empathy and compassion. Realize that your grievances are justified, and you need time to come to terms with what happened. For some couples, forgiveness is a long journey of constantly choosing each other over and over again. Choosing not to let their pain cloud their view of each other.
Step 3: Sincerely Apologize
For a wife, husband, boyfriend, or girlfriend responsible for breaking another person’s trust, a sincere apology can be a big step towards regaining it. This is because an apology will often reassure the hurt person that you have understood how what you did hurt them. It will often make them feel heard. However, an apology should not be thrown around; it should come after a period of deep introspection and with a true will to rebuild trust after betrayal.
Step 4: Communicate Openly About the Affair
Communication can be the key to the revival of a relationship after cheating. While it will not be easy for either person to speak about what happened, it can still be necessary. Especially if you want to recover your marriage after infidelity, you will need to go back to that grounding truth of open honesty. It will also help both parties work through their feelings better.
Step 5: Trust Yourself and Your Partner
Someone will always be around you and your partner. Whether that someone is a friend, colleague, or other acquaintance, you might feel you can’t confide in your loved one anymore. But, to rebuild trust after cheating and lying, you will need to actively work towards believing your partner even when you might feel like you shouldn’t. This can take time as trust is not easy to recover, but eventually, it will become an easy habit to trust each other again.
Step 6: Keep Your Promises
Rebuilding trust after emotional infidelity or physical cheating will usually require you to make promises about being better. Both parties will need to openly search for a way in which they can save their bond and reassure their partner. No matter how small or big each of those promises is, you should always keep them, as that will allow you to move forward.
Step 7: Don’t Dig into The Past
While it is hard not to delve into the past, it is also an essential part of staying together after cheating. Put simply, if the past pain and hurt keep entering every conversation you have with your partner, then your opinions of each other will always be clouded. While talking honestly about the past is important, there is a point where you need to stop holding what your spouse or partner did against them. This will help you rebuild trust after cheating and lying.
Step 8: Be as Transparent as Possible
Throughout your marriage, after an affair, you will need to aim at being as transparent as possible with each other. This means not withholding even the little things, as these can lead to even less trust after betrayal. After a painful affair has been brought forth, it is the little things that can slowly help either pick the relationship back up or destroy it.
Step 9: Stay in the Present and Focus on the Future
As you will not be focused on the past, it is much better to focus on the present and the future you want together. By envisioning your future life, you can take actionable steps to create better communication avenues in your union. This is key to building trust after affair.
Step 10: Attend Joint Counselling Sessions
Counseling can be a great help to all after cheating as it allows an impartial third party to be present during your conversations. A counselor will also help you foster that transparent, honest communication that is not filled with blame necessary for your marriage or relationship to recover from the affair.
Step 11: Respect + Sex
Affection after infidelity can be hard. Sex especially requires the partners to trust each other. If that trust is not in place, then either one of the parties in the relationship could be completely turned off. Understanding that it might take time and respecting each other’s boundaries regarding affection can be the key to starting to be physical with each other again.
Step 12: Try To Start Over
To move forward, sometimes, you need to start over. This means taking each other on dates, rediscovering each other, and slowly building affection after infidelity. Try to give it a fresh start by creating new memories and building trust on the same foundation of honesty you had before.
Trust Takes Years to Build, Seconds to Break, And Forever to Repair
There is no magic button to regain trust. Much like the first time around, it took your relationship years to develop credibility, and it will require years to rebuild trust after infidelity. Trust is fairly easy to break. Therefore, while rebuilding trust after cheating, try eliminating all the things that could lead to cracks in your union.
Why Do Our Recommendations for Repairing Relationships After Infidelity Work?
Repairing a relationship after infidelity is not an easy thing. But with our holistic approach, you will be able to move forward with a better understanding of how you and your spouse should approach trust issues. Our tips can be easy to enforce, but they will require time and dedication from both of you – this will help you recollect yourself after an affair.