Friday, July 29, 2011

How to Handle Emotional Infidelity in Marriage - Steps to Rebuild the Relationship


The subject of emotional infidelity in marriage is a tricky one. Many people side with the idea that unless you've consummated the affair, it's not really an affair at all. Other people firmly believe that if your partner has developed strong feelings for another person that infidelity is occurring. It's easy to see where you'd sit on the issue if it was happening to you. When the person you love connects on an emotional level with another person, it leaves you feeling confused and alone. It doesn't have to be the end of your marriage though. The way you handle this situation will dictate whether or not you can move forward in your marriage and work on rebuilding it.

When you are considering how to handle emotional infidelity in marriage you have to talk about the other person and their role in your lives. If you and your spouse have agreed that rebuilding your marriage is the priority, the emotional affair has to stop. All contact with the other person should be avoided. A clean break must be made. Unless this occurs, trying to work on saving the relationship is fruitless.

You two need to discuss what led to the emotional affair. If you both were happy and satisfied in your relationship, it never would have occurred. You're going to need to have a series of frank and open discussions about where your marriage is now and where you hope it will go. It's wise to not try and place blame for the affair. Sometimes the person who was cheated on will dissolve themselves of all responsibility because they weren't the ones seeking out someone else. The person who did strike up the affair may try and point the finger of blame at their spouse saying they had to find emotional support with another because they were neglected or ignored. It takes two to make the marriage work and it also takes two to contribute to its destruction. If you two can work on finding out why it happened without blaming one another, you'll stand a fighting chance of staying together.

Just as trust needs to be rebuilt after a physical affair, it does in the case of an emotional affair too. The person who engaged in the affair has to be willing to make their life an open book. They need to be transparent with everything they do and also they have to be willing to answer the tough questions when their partner starts feeling suspicious. On the other side of the equation the person who was cheated on needs to be open to trusting again. They have to give their partner some breathing room when they've shown that they can be trusted. Trust takes two to build so you need to work together, hand-in-hand to make it happen.


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