Can You Get Past Cheating?
Many people wonder when they have caught their spouse cheating if they can move past it. A lot of people assume that the relationship cannot survive while other people want to believe that their relationship can move past anything. The answer of whether or not your relationship can move past cheating really is dependent upon a lot of things. Every relationship is different and some people are never able to move on while other people are able to leave it in the past.
A lot of what will determine if your relationship will survive an affair is honesty. Relationships that do not survive an affair usually do not involve the person who cheated being completely honest. Those that do survive usually involve the person who cheated becoming an open book, answering all of the questions posed to them about why they cheated, what happened during the affair, and then on going honesty as the relationship heals itself.
Another characteristic of a relationship that survives is on going openness. Many people who try to get past an affair need to continue to rehash the details again and again. This is very common, especially for the person who was cheated on. What they need is someone who will continue to answer their questions and be open about what happened. This is really sort of a grief process and a closure process and if both parties don’t continue to be open the relationship will have a hard time surviving.
To get past cheating the person who cheated needs to realize that they are not going to be trusted for quite some time. An apology isn’t going to be enough to have the person relax and move on, instead the person who was cheated on is going to need to be able to keep tabs on the cheater for awhile. This can get uncomfortable for the cheater really quickly, but for a relationship to work this is a normal process that needs to happen. It helps to develop trust again.
Another really big determining factor of whether a relationship will survive an affair is past history. If the cheater has repeatedly cheated or has cheated in the past and said they wouldn’t do it again, the relationship is more likely to fail. If it is a first time thing, the other person is probably going to be more open to forgiving the cheater and moving past this experience.
Cheating is something that affects each person and each relationship differently. Honesty really is the key to moving past an affair, but it is not necessarily going to save all relationships. Cheating is a betrayal of trust, and some people just cannot move past this, for obvious reasons.