How to rebuild trust in a marriage damaged by infidelities
What have you done? What were you thinking, man? What made you think it would be any different with you? Nobody ever gets away with cheating; something always catches up with you. Now you’ve done it and you feel an immense remorse and emptiness.
All you can picture is your lovely wife in tears. She has put her entire life into this relationship and you throw it away for one night with some lame bimbo from across town. Man, you are not thinking. Nothing is worth the humility you are going to have to endure as you slowly come back into your wife’s good graces; if you are allowed to.
You are asking so much of her. Somehow she has to deny the images of you in another woman’s arms. She has to erase the thought of your lips brushing another woman’s lips. Not only does she have to erase those reflections, she has to bring herself to kiss the same lips that kissed who knows what on another woman. She has to put herself in the position of never knowing you even existed before this very moment.
Somehow, your wife has to take herself back to a time when there was no you. She has to imagine herself as she was before she ever met you. That’s probably the only way she will ever be able to tolerate that image of another woman. What you did before her is history, that won’t bother her. If she can somehow make this most recent escapade of yours seem like it happened before she met you, she may have a chance.
You desperately want to be back in her good graces. I know you’re sorry, tell someone who gives a rat’s A–. Sorry just doesn’t cut it here buddy. There is no sorry that will ever make a difference. Don’t even bother. The only thing you can do is throw yourself at her feet and plead for her mercy. If you really want to have your wife ever believe in you again, then you will have to go the distance buddy. Sorry is first, but sorry doesn’t mean a thing in matters of infidelity. Don’t even bother.
For one person to be sorry and to benefit from being sorry, the other person must forgive. She is not going to be able to forgive. Oh, she may say she has forgiven you but you have to know what forgiveness means to really accept the fact that you have been forgiven.
To forgive someone means you will never mention the act that threatened your faith and trust in that individual in the first place. You will never expect compensation or remuneration. There will be no “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” Forgiveness means erasing all recollection of the act from one’s mind. It will never come up again. It will never be thrown in your face in any disagreement or dispute of any kind. The act is as if it has never been. That is forgiveness.
Next, trust has nothing to do with it any more. Where there was trust before there will only be tolerance, if you are lucky. So, you want to rebuild that trust your wife once had in you, right? Forget it, the best you are worth is a resistant tolerance. There is no room for trust any longer.
You must not only agree to answer her every question about your whereabouts in the future but you must want to. You must be ready to offer her the answers even before she has asked the questions. That is the only true way to bolster that resistant tolerance your wife has to foster for you. Simply let her know what you are doing, where you will be when you do it and with whom you are doing said thing. I’m not being sarcastic either. These are normal and expected pieces of information for any committed relationship. Apparently you let your obligations slip some time ago and have not been ready with the answers. As a result you let yourself fall into a trap.
Never try to face the world alone. If you entered into a relationship and you want to keep it, then depend on your partner to be there for you. Use them, depend on them and invoke their ever-watchful eye.
None of us are strong enough to face the emotional and sensual temptations of the world alone. There are traps being spun everywhere we turn. Every body is a likely target. If you really want your relationship to remain a relationship then depend on one another to keep each other in line. There is no stronger divergent than that of a jealous husband or wife; use it and make it work for you and your relationship.
