20 Ways to Move Past Betrayal

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Keeping someone in your life after he or she has hurt you through infidelity can seem like an impossible request.

It’s not. It can be difficult, but it is not impossible. Here are 20 steps you and your partner can take to make it through this challenging time together.

1. Be gracious. Find things you appreciate about your partner.

2. Confront emotions. Accept your pain so it can begin to heal.

3. Focus on the solution, not the problem. Rehashing the act doesn’t help. Focus on how you want to make things better.

4. Create more emotional intimacy. Infidelity is rarely about sex, but about unmet emotional needs.

5.  Time together. Couples who explore hobbies together recover from infidelity quicker.

6. Look at your shared past and plan a shared future. Remember why you married your partner and think about where you want to go with him or her.

7. Normalize your reactions. Research normal reactions to better understand what is happening in your mind.

8. Ask questions. Focus on the ones you absolutely need answered. But, don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.

9. Don’t make decisions right away. Your first decisions are likely to be emotional and illogical.

10. Allow your initial emotions to pass. Let the initial anger fade before responding or you will make things worse.

11. Learn from the incident. Talk about why this happened and how it can be prevented from happening again.

12. Build a better relationship. Take a course on relationships and build communication skills.

13. Set aside time to listen to each other. Make it a point to actually listen and seek understanding.

14. Tell the whole truth. You and your partner need to explore exactly what led to this.

15. Be together in grief. Even if your relationship heals, it will not be the same. Grieve together for innocence lost.

16. Decide to recommit to the relationship. Both partners need to be committed to making the relationship work.

17. Recreate trust. Back up words with actions. Don’t just say, “I love you.” Show it.

18. Accept what happened. Denial will not help the healing process.

19. Begin again, together. Create a new, stronger relationship from this point forward.

20. Get professional help. See a specialist in infidelity to help uncover what led to this and how to heal.

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