Healing Infidelity Through Forgiveness

This is a chapter excerpt from our book, Healing Infidelity: How to Build a Vibrant Marriage After an Affair. You'll find not only other helpful articles in that book, but our story of how my wife entered the affairs, how I found out, and how we successfully rebuilt.

------------------------

Forgiveness is one of the often difficult steps that a person hurt by the infidelity of a spouse can take. In part because the betrayal of the unfaithful partner is a deep hurt. The trust is placed in one's spouse, the commitment made to each other and to God, leaves us open to that deep hurt. The more on guard we are, the less likely someone's betrayal of our trust will hurt us. The less intimate the relationship between two people, the more walls and defenses we put up to guard against such attacks.

But we don't expect such attacks from those who love us. The risk one takes when one loves another and is intimate with him is that any hurts go deep. They strike us at our very core and affect our self-esteem and identity. So it is no wonder that when such a deep hurt has been inflicted upon someone, that they find it difficult to forgive. Yet, for full healing to take place, that is exactly what needs to happen. So let's look at the process of forgiveness in relation to the hurt inflicted by the infidelity of one's spouse.

First, let's define what forgiveness is. Webster defines it: "To pardon; to remit, as an offense or debt; to overlook an offense, and treat the offender as not guilty." The two ingredients, in this context, are an offense committed against you and the release from punishment for it.

There are some who speak of "earning forgiveness." This is a contradictory statement. One cannot earn forgiveness, for by its very definition it is an act of mercy. For example, if I owe a debt to a creditor, and they decide to forgive me that debt, that means I don't need to pay it back. If I earn that money back and pay the debt off, then there is no need to forgive me the debt. One can't earn forgiveness. As soon as you do, it is no longer forgiveness by definition.

What I believe people really mean by that statement isn't conditions upon which a spouse will forgive the unfaithful spouse, but the conditions upon which the unfaithful spouse can receive that forgiveness and benefit from it for saving the marriage. We'll examine that in a minute, but in this case the unfaithful spouse doesn't "earn" it, it is what he needs to do to apply the forgiveness to themselves.

For example, let's say you need to hammer in a nail, but you don't have a hammer or anything that will work for one. But your good friend holds out a hammer for you to use. In reaching out your hand and taking that hammer, have you "earned" that use of the hammer? Of course not. Neither is doing the actions to receive forgiveness earning it. It is simply holding out your hand.

Likewise, that the spouse has to do those things to receive forgiveness doesn't have any bearing on whether the hurt spouse forgives or not. We examine why below, but just as God stands always ready to forgive, so are we called to do, no matter what the offender does or doesn't do.

There are some natural conclusions that can be drawn from this understanding that we'll address as we go through this information. But first, it may be helpful to address what forgiveness is not.

One, forgiveness is not a denial of the wrongness or hurt that an action brought about. Notice the above definition. It says, "treat the offender as not guilty." It doesn't say the offender isn't guilty, but you are going to treat him as not guilty by way of not punishing him. In truth, it acknowledges that you do have a right to punish him because of his offense. If you didn't, there would be no point to forgiveness. Forgiveness is an act of mercy on your part, not a denial of the offense itself.

Two, forgiveness does not mean the offender will not be punished. What it means is you are not going to do the punishing! A sin like adultery hurts the adulterer as much, if not more, than the hurt spouse. That may seem contradictory as we tend to think, "He had the fun at my expense!" But adultery isn't a sin because it is fun to do. It is a sin because it causes some very serious damage to one's soul and life. That is why Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6:18, "Flee fornication. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits fornication sins against his own body."

Three, forgiveness does not erase the consequences of the offense. As mentioned above, by showing mercy and forgiving the offender, it only means you will not add your punishment to the natural consequences he will endure. Take the example of King David. He committed adultery and murder to cover up his sin. Psalm 51 is an example of what true repentance is about. According to the Scriptures, God forgave David. But he still had consequences due to that sin. The baby that resulted from that sin died. His sons ended up fighting and dividing the kingdom, even rebelling against David. David suffered the consequences of his sin. So will the unfaithful partner suffer for their sins, even though God and you forgive them.

But by this point, one might ask, why is it necessary to forgive to heal? Isn't part of healing that justice is served? Shouldn't he know I'm not going to put up with this behavior? Won't forgiving the offender be sending the message, "I'm not offended or hurt"?

There is a difference between not putting up with a behavior, and the message of forgiveness. As noted above, forgiveness does not negate the consequences of his actions. One of those consequences, if he persists in his sin, is the loss of his spouse. Forgiveness is not a "Get out of jail free" card, rather it is both an opportunity for the offender to change his behavior before worse consequences set in, and the release of the offended from their own sins.

If the offended spouse were to mitigate the consequences of the sin, and not merely forgive, then that would be sending the wrong signal. It is one thing to say, "I'm not going to beat you over the head with this offense you've committed against me for the rest of our lives," but quite another to say, "I will stay by your side and support you, no matter how often you have an affair." One can forgive the spouse for his infidelity even while separating from him because the spouse refuses to give up his infidelity. This allows you to forgive, but not enable his sin by erasing the negative consequences of it.

But forgiveness is more about you than about the offender. It is his opportunity to repent and make right the wrongs he's committed against you. But you can no more control his responses to your forgiveness than you could prevent him from cheating on you. All you really have under your control is yourself. Forgiveness is absolutely necessary for the healing of the offended much more than it is about healing for the offender.

For one who will not forgive is also one who is not forgiven for his own sins. Jesus states this clearly in the parable of the servant who owed his master so much money, there was no way he could ever pay it off even if he worked for the rest of his life. The master forgave the servant the debt. But the servant, either not accepting that he'd been forgiven or too selfish himself, refused to forgive someone who owed him a small amount of money, and had him thrown into prison. The master, upon hearing this, reinstated the money the ungrateful servant had been forgiven because he refused to forgive. Jesus' conclusion to the parable was, "Thus also My heavenly Father will do to you, if you do not forgive each one his brother their trespasses, from your hearts." (Mat 18:35 EMTV).

Jesus also states this clearly in the Lord's Prayer, when we ask God to "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." By refusing to forgive, we cut off the grace for our own forgiveness from God. This is because forgiveness is like a river of running water. For the river to flow for you, it must flow for those down the line. That is in part why in the early Church, the prescription for baptizing someone was, if at all possible, to do so in running water. Sins are washed away by the flow of grace. Stop the flow, and you have stagnant water that grows stale and dirty.

It should be noted that this is not so much God saying, "What? You won't forgive? Well, then, I'll show you!" No, God is always ready to forgive. But what happens is if you cannot forgive others, it demonstrates you are unable to receive the forgiveness that God offers. It is like you have the faucet open and water is coming out, and you are drinking it, but the moment someone else wants that water from you, you shut it off so they cannot get any. But then, neither can you get any. So in your refusal to give someone your forgiveness, you cut it off for yourself as well.

It is for this reason that when the woman caught in adultery was put before Jesus by the Pharisees, attempting to trap Jesus, He replied that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. Because they had sins that needed forgiveness, they either forgave her or stood condemned themselves. They all forgave her, and so did Jesus. (John 8:3-11)

Therefore, forgiving is necessary for your own healing, but it is also necessary for the healing of the marriage, if there is to be a chance for that to happen. Forgiveness takes the bitterness and hate off your shoulders for what the other person did to you. If you are going to rebuild the marriage, one key component of that rebuilding is to release yourself from the anger and hate for what they did to you. As long as that is festering, it will not be possible to restore the relationship.

This is why God Himself forgives us in order to restore our relationship with Him. If God was not willing to forgive, there would be no hope for us but death. But because He is willing, there is hope for eternal life with Him. So it is for the spouse. If a spouse remains bitter and hateful to the other, rebuilding will be impossible and the marriage will suffer. Healing will not take place.

For these reasons, it is necessary for the hurt spouse to heal within themselves, and for the marriage to be healed, as well as releasing the unfaithful spouse to have opportunity to heal, that we must seek to forgive the individuals in the affair.

Even the affair partner. You need to forgive them for your own healing. For the bitterness and hate it can generate will poison your spirit and will carry over to the unfaithful spouse. The affair partner is an easy target since you are not reconciling with him, and you hope to never see or speak to him. But the unfaithful spouse and the affair partner, in most all cases, willingly participated together, even if one seduced the other or took advantage of the other's weakness. Hate for the affair partner will transfer to the unfaithful spouse by the fact that he or she joined with him against you. So even harboring unforgiveness toward the affair partner while forgiving the unfaithful spouse will block rebuilding efforts.

This is often seen when the inability to forgive results in the hurt spouse's obsessions over the affair partner, seeking revenge on him, or wanting to punish him. It puts the focus on the affair partner and the wrongs he committed against you and the marriage, instead of on the marriage and working with your unfaithful spouse to heal it. The best way to focus on the marriage and its healing is to forgive the affair partner and then take them off the radar screen.

What about forgiving yourself? Sometimes you see an unfaithful spouse talk about their difficulty in forgiving themselves for what they did. But you can't really forgive yourself. You didn't commit the offense against yourself, but against the hurt spouse and God, as well as the affair partner. What most people who ask this are really concerned about is being able to receive forgiveness. They face their guilt, and have trouble believing that anyone really forgives them for that act. They don't accept that their spouse has forgiven them, or that God forgives them. That can result in shame which causes a "death spiral" affect of encouraging the unfaithful spouse to repeat the unfaithfulness. The only way out of that cycle is to come to a place of accepting forgiveness.

There are two aspects of forgiveness as it relates to infidelity that need to be kept in mind. One, that forgiveness is a process and not a one-time event. Most people will not be ready to forgive upon discovering the affair. Most must go through the stages of grief as it pertains to their loss, and the stages of denial and anger don't lend themselves to an attitude of being ready to forgive. The pain is too fresh and the hurt still being processed to expect an immediate forgiveness. Some can do that, but it is also true that some may short-circuit the grieving process by forgiving too quickly, and in effect end up failing to deal with their anger and hurt. There can be an initial desire to forgive, while not yet knowing all that it entails.

That leads to the other part of the process. We can often think we've forgiven, but then a new layer is peeled back and we must continue to apply forgiveness. We may be faced with the details of what we had forgiven, whereas previously it was generic actions, and feel the hurt once again. Fresh hurt should remind us of our commitment to forgive and applying that fresh each time to release the bitterness and hate it would engender, and the depression that can trip up rebuilding a marriage.

Two, that forgiveness is only effective in healing the marriage if the unfaithful spouse accepts and allows it to change him and the situation. For the problem has never been whether God will or can forgive us for our sins. No, it has always been about whether we are able to accept His forgiveness. For as long as we are not, His forgiveness does us no good.

That is why God gives the following conditions for His forgiveness to be active in healing us in 2 Chronicles 7:14, and therefore what the unfaithful spouse needs to do for the hurt spouse's forgiveness to be effective in healing the marriage:

Humility – if we do not lower ourselves before God, if we think we know better than He does how to live our life, our pride will prevent us from receiving His forgiveness. Indeed, the one key to why most people cannot receive forgiveness nor give forgiveness is their own pride. Pride says, "I don't need your forgiveness, I'm right," to God, and to those we've offended, "My rights have been violated, and I will be given what is due me in retribution." If the unfaithful spouse maintains an attitude of pride and not owning their responsibility in the affair, no forgiveness will be received by the unfaithful spouse.

Pray – if we do not ask, due to that pride, if we do not make request for forgiveness, it shows our unbelief that the offended is or can forgive us. It means you don't believe the forgiver when he says, "I forgive you for what you did to me." So you refuse to even ask for it.

Seek my face – if we do not face the one we've offended and look them in the eye, if we refuse to face the guilt in our lives and desire mercy for what we've done, if we avoid him, don't want to talk about it, ignore him, then we cannot receive his forgiveness and have it be active in healing us and the marriage.

Turn from your wicked ways – if the unfaithful spouse refuses to stop the affair by making no further contact with the affair partner(s), is more concerned about the feelings of the affair partner than he is about his own spouse, if he continues the affair or returns to it, and does not stop doing that which is hurting his spouse and destroying their marriage, the hurt spouse can forgive all he wants, but it will do no good for healing of the marriage. To not stop is to say, in pride, "I am not wrong. I want to do this, my way."

If these things are done, however, we are promised that God will forgive our sins and heal our land. If the hurt spouse is able to get to the point of offering forgiveness to the unfaithful spouse, unless the unfaithful spouse is doing the above, he will not be helped by his spouse's forgiveness nor will he and the marriage be healed.

Forgiveness is not an option if the goal is healing of the hurt spouse, the unfaithful spouse, and the marriage itself. While the hurt spouse may not be ready to forgive immediately, it does have to happen at some point in the healing process for the relationship to be restored as it should be. Additionally, the unfaithful partner needs to do the things necessary to receive that forgiveness or they put their own healing and that of the marriage in jeopardy.

Jesus stated it clearly: Then Peter came to Him and said, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy-seven times." (Mat 18:21-22 EMTV)

To heal, we must forgive and accept forgiveness. It is not an option if the goal is to heal.

Healing Steps for the Unfaithful Spouse

This is a chapter excerpt from our book, Healing Infidelity: How to Build a Vibrant Marriage After an Affair. You'll find not only other helpful articles in that book, but our story of how my wife entered the affairs, how I found out, and how we successfully rebuilt.

------------------------

This chapter is for those unfaithful spouses who wish to rebuild their marriages after having committed an act of infidelity. Many unfaithful spouses who have ended an affair and want to save their marriage don't always know what they need to do, what approach they should have, or understand fully the damage to the hurt spouse. Usually, the “natural” reaction is the wrong one to successfully rebuild. My wife, Lenita, who is an unfaithful spouse and has successfully rebuilt our marriage, wrote an article on what the unfaithful spouse needs to do to help the hurt spouse heal. I'm taking the core outline from that article to write this chapter.

This chapter assumes that you have told your hurt spouse about the affair and that he knows the general details of the affair. Now you are asking: what are the ways in which you can best help you and your hurt spouse heal and save the marriage, if indeed that is your goal? Here are the main areas that need your attention to potentially succeed.

1) Be prepared to invest yourself 100% and more into the rebuilding of the marriage. That means two major points. One, rebuilding will not be easy, especially for the unfaithful spouse. To help your spouse heal means facing the pain of what you've done, examining it, and dealing with it until the wound has healed. These are hard things for anyone to do. Unless you are totally committed to doing whatever it takes, you will tend to falter when, for instance, you debate whether to tell your spouse about that chance encounter with the affair partner or not.

Two, realize this will take years, not weeks. Too often the unfaithful spouse wants to put it all behind them. He doesn't want it thrown into his face regularly. That is understandable. But keep in mind that while you have known this secret for weeks, months, or even years, for the spouse it is fresh and new information that has to be processed, the loss grieved over, and the trust that has been violated to be rebuilt over several months. To do that, he needs to talk about it, deal with it, and process it to the point of satisfaction that he can move past it. That will not happen quickly. Doing the following will help it to happen as quickly as possible, but even in the best of circumstances, don't expect everything to be "back to normal" until a minimum of two years. In some cases it may take even longer. No two individuals are the same. But unless you realize you are in it for the long haul, it will be easy to get discouraged when after three or four months, he is still bringing up issues about the affair. He has to deal with the affair, and if he isn't allowed to, then he is prevented from healing.

2) Develop an attitude of healing. Lenita listed several examples of what that attitude needed to be:

I will own up to what I have done and place none of the blame on anyone else.

I will never try to 'gag' you but will listen bravely without flinching away and answer/discuss anything you need to, anytime you need to.

I will be humble.

I will show you my heart.

I will understand that I must be responsible for helping you heal and that I must work diligently to heal myself.

I will not be defensive concerning the affair or the affair partner.

Without these attitudes, the chances of rebuilding are slim. This is because for healing the marriage to take place, the bulk of the work will be with the unfaithful spouse. The bottom line is you have hurt your spouse, and now it is your job to heal that hurt. You are the only one who can heal your spouse, because only you can rebuild the trust that has been stolen from them. To not do the above is the equivalent of shutting the door on the marriage. If you said to point #1, "Yes, I am committed," then this needs to be the first place you take a stand. Because if you approach it with any other attitude, the following steps will not only be harder, but you'll not implement them as fully as you should to really heal your spouse.

3) Break all contact with the affair partner. Until the hurt spouse feels secure that there is no more contact of any kind going on between you and your affair partner, for him, the affair isn't over. As long as that door is still open, however slightly, the hurt spouse will live in fear that if the affair hasn't restarted, it is only a matter of time until it does. Contact means the emotional bonds are still alive. Only complete and utter no contact will allow the hurt spouse the ability to start healing. To not do so magnifies the odds against any rebuilding efforts being permanent.

Unfortunately, this is one step many unfaithful spouses find hard to follow through on. Especially if they were caught while the affair was ongoing. It usually means a sudden end to a relationship that at that moment, neither of you were ready to end. Maybe one goodby phone call and then to never speak or see them again sounds harsh and drastic. When someone has fallen in love with another person, even if inappropriately, to stop all contact is the equivalent to saying to the affair partner, "I don't love you, leave me alone and never talk to me again," when that is the exact opposite of how you feel. Yet if you want the affair to be over for your spouse so that healing of the marriage can begin, this is a necessity.

Remind yourself that if you are experiencing the sudden loss of a relationship with someone you were with for a few days, weeks, or months, how much more is your spouse going through when they are feeling the loss of a relationship they've had for years with you? At this point, you have to chose and invest yourself in whichever path you wish to go. In either case, that means cutting off all contact with the other you are leaving. No matter how much you love him. Bottom line: this is one of the hard consequences of allowing yourself to have an affair.

"But I work with the affair partner. How do I deal with that?" You may find your spouse is one of the rare ones who can deal with that situation, but with 99% of the hurt spouses, even if they acknowledge the financial stress of losing a job you've held for years, maybe nearing retirement, and the unpredictability of finding new work, the chances of successfully rebuilding the marriage goes down drastically if continued contact of any kind is retained.

Until contact is cut off, the affair is still going for the hurt spouse, even if in truth it isn't. The hurt spouse has no means to know you are being faithful even while making frequent contact at work. He has no way to know you aren't meeting in a closet or room or car. He has no assurance that you aren't sharing lunches together and discussing personal issues. Rebuilding trust in a situation like that is next to impossible. It's like telling someone to put out the fire with water while you continue to blast it with a flame thrower.

As Lenita often told me when she faced something painful, "I asked for this, you didn't." When you allowed an affair to happen, you put at risk everything. Your marriage, your children, your job, your stability. There may come a point that you have to sacrifice your job security for marital security. That can be one of the costs of having and affair. Which will you chose?

There may be solutions. You can ask for a transfer from your department if the company is large enough. Preferably to another building. Your spouse would even by happy in most cases to hear the transfer meant a move to another town. But if that doesn't work out, and there is no choice but to either quit or stay in contact with the person, it may mean making that hard choice to find another job. We again go back to points #1 and #2. It may mean less money, or financial hardships. That's when you have to ask what is more important to you? Your marriage or your job? If it comes down to a decision between the two, and no compromise can be worked out, it may mean making a decision of which one to sacrifice. No contact is that important.

No contact also extends to mementos you have from your affair partner. Pictures, written letters, emails, or other items bought for you all constitute links to the affair partner. These should be deleted or thrown away to complete non-contact. Both because they can be triggers to the hurt spouse, but also triggers for you, causing you to recall him or her and the "good" times. The goal of no contact is to let the affair partner fade into the past, so you can focus on your spouse, your marriage, and your family.

4) Become totally transparent. What is meant by this is to open yourself up in all ways that relate to rebuilding trust in the aftermath of the affair, so that your spouse can see everything he needs to see to feel secure that contact is not still ongoing, and that you are being truthful.

Think of it like this. The hurt spouse just discovered that you've broken your wedding vows to him, and in most cases lied about it, hid it from him. You've stolen something precious to him: his trust in you and his security in your love for him. Any "secret," any request for "privacy" to him is translated that you have something more to hide about the affair. He has no reason to trust you at this point.

It will take months of constantly discovering that you are telling the truth to begin to trust that you are actually doing that. The only way he can see you telling the truth is by being transparent.

There is a saying, that trust takes a lifetime to build, but seconds to destroy. Trust is the glue that holds a marriage together. By opening yourselves to each other in the most intimate of ways, you have made yourself vulnerable to being hurt. Trust means "I trust you enough not to hurt me. So I open my soul to you." The moment that perceived truth is broken by being hurt, the natural reaction is to pull back and not trust. After many positive examples of truth-telling, gradually he will start to trust again. Even then, it will never be the same innocent trust he had prior to the affair. Like an accident victim, he will tend to flinch inwardly when anything that even looks like the same threat darkens his path. That will be with him to some degree for the rest of his life. The only way to rebuild that trust is to no longer hide anything from your spouse that would be of concern to him or her.

What does “no longer hide anything” mean? We're not talking telling him what you ate for lunch, or all the thoughts that go through your mind everyday. Rather, there are two questions you can ask yourself that will determine if it is something you should tell him: “If I were him, would I want to know this?” and “Is this something I don't want him to know?” If you answer “yes” to either of those questions, then to be transparent, you should tell him.

On the practical side, transparency translates into actions like giving your spouse the user names and passwords to all social media accounts you have. All email accounts. All cell phone's and their bills. When your spouse asks to look at them, you readily give them over without the need to "erase" anything. Likewise, one of the best trust rebuilding activities you can do is to tell him things he could have never discovered himself. For instance, my wife told me about any and all encounters with her affair partner, who for some months kept attempting to contact her. Most of those I would have never known about if she hadn't told me. But she wanted to be totally transparent with me. Having her tell me that aided in my rebuilding of trust in her.

Some spouses expect a level of privacy and are unwilling to give this up. However, this is unhealthy, even for a marriage that has not gone through an affair. Even more so once one spouse has hurt the other by having an affair. Some secrets a spouse has are harmless. Maybe you were called a nickname by family or friends when little, and you've never told your spouse out of embarrassment. Understandable. However, once a couple is married, the old saying, “No man is an island” takes on an increased meaning. Any activity you do can affect the marriage and relationship, and each spouse has the right to know about it. That right supersedes any rights to privacy a spouse may think they have. Bottom line, if you have information you don't want your spouse to know that affects the marriage in any way, financially, socially, emotionally, sexually, or spiritually, you don't have the right to keep that from him, and he has every right to find out, even spying, if he has probable cause.

Without consistent transparency, you severally limit the ability of the hurt spouse to rebuild trust in you and the marriage, and drastically lower the chance of success in rebuilding.

5) Avoid "rug sweeping" at all costs. There are two ways and motivations for wanting to take the issues generated by the affair and sweep them under the proverbial rug so you don't have to look at them or deal with them.

One, what you did is painful to face. It is easier to say, "Okay, that's in the past now. It's over. Time to move on," and clam up about the affair, expecting him to do the same. We've already discussed in the previous steps why this is dangerous. It prevents the hurt spouse from dealing with and healing from what has been done to him. He is not able to find closure. It also causes him to sense that you are continuing to hide something from him. Making it near impossible to rebuild trust again. Doing this will ensure the marriage will fail at some point because the hurt spouse will not heal.

Two, it also ensures that you, the unfaithful spouse, will not heal. You will help your hurt spouse heal in large part by healing yourself. He needs to know that you are working to not only discover what character issues as a person allowed you to treat any problems and fulfill any unmet needs in the marriage in such a destructive way, but that you are also working to fix those issues, to make the changes in yourself to prevent another occurrence from happening again.

If you refuse to face your issues and instead keep them out of sight, you will not heal. Indeed, by ignoring the need to face these issues and do the hard work to emotionally and spiritually heal yourself from this destructive event, the likelihood of it happening again is substantially higher. Your spouse knows this instinctively. If you are hiding from the issues, the fear that it will happen again is much greater than if he sees you wrestling with what you've done to him and yourself, and working to fix it.

6) Take advantage of counseling. Being willing to not only go to individual counseling to help you sort through your issues related to the affair, but also marital counseling, is a key component of healing for both of you. Especially important if your skills at communication are less than ideal. A counselor can help to facilitate constructive communication and conflict resolution. But even if you have good communication and you felt your marriage before the affair was good, this is still important.

For us, our marriage counselor helped point us in the right directions. Our first thought was my wife was dealing with a sexual addiction. But we didn't understand that term in its full clinical sense. Our counselor pointed us to where we needed to work on our marriage. I realized after the fact that claiming Lenita had a sexual addition was more a way to blame it on something rather than her bad choices. Self-diagnosis isn't a good idea. An objective, informed guide is much better for seeing where you are at and helping you through the maze of feelings and options you'll encounter.

That said, not all counselors are created equal. Many are not that experienced in dealing with infidelity. I've heard more than my share of stories where a counselor gave out bad advice. Sometimes enabling the unfaithful partner to violate many of the needed tasks listed above. If you have a counselor who does that, feel free to change. Not merely because they ask you to do hard things, but because they aren't helping one or both of you to heal. Get a second opinion. Find out if they have experience counseling couples involved in affairs. There is too much on the line to stick with someone out of some sense of loyalty to them if they are not helping either of you to heal.

7) Read books on dealing with the aftermath of affairs and marriage. For the unfaithful spouse, the following is required reading. Get a copy of How To Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair: A Compact Manual For The Unfaithful by Linda MacDonald. Read it, follow it. It is not a big book, but goes into much more detail than we can in this article. It is very practical, blunt, and tells you exactly what you as an unfaithful spouse needs to do to help you and your spouse heal. You don't need to have the hurt spouse read this book, though he certainly can if he wants. This book is for the unfaithful spouse, and is spot on in guiding you to what is needed if you wish to save the marriage.

After that book, I have three more highly recommended books for both of you to read. The first is Getting Past the Affair: A Program to Help You Cope, Heal, and Move On -- Together or Apart by Douglas K. Snyder. This book will take both of you through a process of healing, step by step. Very practical on issues like communication, and based on sound principles.

The second is Not "Just Friends" by Shirley Glass. This is the best book for gaining insight both into what happened in the affair for both parties, and the steps each needs to take to help heal from it. It is down to earth, easy to read, and very practical. The author has years of work in the field, and her understanding of the reasons why this happens and what needs to be done to change it are on target. Both spouses will greatly benefit reading this book.

The other is His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage by Willard F. Harley. This book attacks another issue that commonly plagues marriages that have gone through affairs: the need to show each other love in a way they understand it. Some people might balk at the idea of working on the marriage until the affair issues have been dealt with. But what Mr. Harley found out in his own counseling practice, is that the success of rebuilding was greatly increased when both spouses were able to effectively communicate the feeling of love to the other person.

If you think about it, it makes sense. The more in love you feel with your spouse, the more motivation you'll have to face all the hard tasks of rebuilding. Likewise, the more your spouse feels you love them, the more likely he'll be able to not only get past the damage of the affair easier, but also motivated to have empathy and forgiveness for what you did. Honest feelings of love become the oil in a marriage racked by an affair that speeds healing and makes all the efforts you do to rebuild that much more effective.

These last three books we suggest you read as a couple. Preferably reading to one another. This not only provides opportunity to bond and participate in an activity together, but provides many chances to explore the events of the affair in a non-threatening manner, and see them through the light of another person. You'll find out your "unique" experience isn't all that unique.

Once done with these, seek out other books. Not just about affairs, but marriage enrichment in general as well. It will keep you both focused in building and maintaining a healthy relationship.

8) Don't neglect the spiritual dimension of healing. One of the advantages those of faith have is ways to deal with the moral and ethical guilt created by an affair. Often disciplines and perspectives can help a person not only deal with the guilt of what he's done, but the spiritual attitudes and practices that will aid in the healing process.

My wife, being a Christian, acknowledged her growing distance from God leading up to the affairs. She mentioned how she kept God in a closet much of the time during her affairs, and how hard it was to approach Him after it was all discovered. Then, as she emerged from the fog and faced the reality of what she'd done to me and herself, the immense guilt overtook her for months.

During all this time, our priest was instrumental in her spiritual recovery. This was key because it directly influenced her recovery in all other areas of the marriage. It also allayed one of my big fears upon discovering her sin, that we'd spend eternity apart from each other if she didn't change course. Key also is the fact that seeing her struggle spiritually enabled me to see she was working on all parts of her life, not just emotional or practical boundaries, but making herself stronger spiritually, which reinforced in me the sense that she was doing all she could to fix herself.

If you are or have held a faith, this is the key time to bring yourself back to that faith for support and strength and help in dealing with all the hard issues you have to face. You need to hear from God, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more," just as the adulterous woman heard that from Jesus. You'll never hear that by avoiding God. Only by coming to Him in repentance and humility. But dealing with this can be a long road. There are many consequences to work through. As Scripture also says, the sin of adultery is, at its heart, a sin against your own body, your own self. Healing that will require spiritual aid as well as the other steps discussed above.

One practice I gave my wife was to memorize Psalm 51 and say it everyday. If you don't know, Psalm 51 is often referred to as the psalm of repentance. In the case of adultery, it is on target, because this is a psalm King David wrote upon being convicted of not only committing adultery with another man's wife, but having him killed so he could have the man's wife for himself. I knew she would need the constant reminder not only that she could repent and be forgiven by God and me for what she'd done, but the humble attitude needed to rest in God's forgiveness. It became one of the spiritual crutches that helped her through the months when the guilt weighted heavily on her soul as she worked to accept His forgiveness.

9) Work to fall out of love with the affair partner(s). If you felt you loved your affair partner, this is a hard one and will take many months to accomplish. But it is important for the following reasons.

One, the relationship was immoral and should have never started to begin with. It is important that the unfaithful spouse do all they can to erase the improper relationship from their lives. Your love for the affair partner is an affront to your spouse.

Two, no one can love two people and give 100% to only one. The love for the affair partner(s) is love stolen from your spouse who you pledged it to.

Three, as long as you remain in love with the affair partner(s), you are susceptible to temptation to reignite the fires of that relationship. Time alone will not kill off love. You can be ten years of no contact, and if the love never died, it can fire back up into another affair.

At first, it will be hard to do the following, but as you establish no contact successfully, and you gain some distance from the affair, you'll want to make sure you do the following.

One, make sure no contact is fully established, including getting rid of any items or messages or pictures associated with the affair partner. These items serve as remembrances, and provide a link to keep the flame alive.

Two, as you emerge from the fog induced by infatuation, make a list of all the negative things you ignored about the affair partner. In Lenita's case, he had more of an anger problem than I do. I'm very emotionally stable, and she is highly sensitive to anyone being angry to her. He would have, at some point, crushed her love and self-esteem. But in the midst of the affair, she didn't think about it and he remained on his best behavior.

Three, practice guarding your thoughts using distraction and other techniques as described in the "Healing Steps for the Hurt Spouse" chapter. You can't so easily stop thoughts of them from popping into your mind, but you can work to not dwell on them. They slip out as soon as they arrive. The less you think about them, the faster you fall out of love with him.

Four, focus and work on loving your spouse as fully as you can using the resources mentioned in the "read books" step. Investing yourself into loving your spouse will not only regenerate feelings of love for him, but also make feelings you had for your affair partner pale in comparison.

There are many other details we could go into, but the books listed will have more of that than we could ever hope to squeeze into one chapter. But the above are the core issues to deal with to help your hurt spouse heal and save your marriage. It is a lot of work and will take a long time, but the reward can be very worth it both in terms of your own healing and growth as a person, as well as a fuller and richer marriage, despite the negative affects of the affair.

The Path to Self-Esteem

As we detailed in my last article, "Self-Esteem: Infidelity's Biggest Trigger," a low self-esteem often plays into the underlying reason that a person falls into infidelity (there is something missing in me that the Affair Partner completes) as well as getting in the way of successfully rebuilding once the affair is in the open (He's rejected me for someone else; I'm a horrible person for doing what I did; motivates blame-shifting and  rug sweeping mindsets). I pointed out how bad self-esteem does not equal low self-esteem, but that good or proper self-esteem removes a focus on self from the esteem equation. If you've not read that article, I encourage you to click the above link and do so.

The route most people suggest to build one's self-esteem revolve around the band-aid treatment of making one's self feel more important, more respected. Often the list includes things like treating yourself to something special, doing something for yourself, demanding more respect from others, adopt some beliefs that make you feel better about yourself, etc. These are band-aid treatments because they treat the symptoms, not the root cause. Doing those things are a temporary fix until the next message you receive from a source that you're a failure, and it all takes a nosedive again.

I suggested last time that the "cure" for an improper self-esteem is humility. Before we dig in to what this is and how to get it, first we need to clarify what it is not. Because when someone brings up humility, they tend to associate it with the following self-esteem destroyers:

Doormat

True humility is not to become a doormat for people to walk over. The real source of this unhealthy relational model is pride, not humility. It is based on believing if I do the right things to make him happy, he'll like me. Hold onto your questions; I'll explain why in a moment.

Codependent Relationship

True humility does not result in a relationship where fixing the other spouse provides the spouse's esteem. It does quite the opposite, freeing the other person to be responsible for themselves, even while you are cheering them on.

Passive Aggressive Behaviors

True humility will not result in underlying resistance while appearing cooperative and agreeable in order to maintain control and get what you want. Instead, it seeks to truly serve others for the betterment of all, including one's self.

Some will look at a truly humble person and believe they are exhibiting one of the above traits. But the key difference is in the above traits, one is seeking to feel better about their self through some attempt to control the situation or manipulate people. That is always a form of pride, not humility.

Humility, on the other hand, results in not focusing on self. On not seeking to control or manipulate others to feel good about yourself. The goal of humility is to place one's self on an equal plane of worth with everyone else.

The base definition of humility in the ancient Greek is "to lower oneself in relation to another." Likewise, the base definition of pride is "to raise oneself in relation to another." In order to put yourself on equal footing with everyone else, you must view their lives and needs just as important as your own. Any attempt to focus on your own self while using others to make yourself feel good is pride. It is putting your self as of more worth because you are using others to satisfy your desires and wants.

Keep in mind what humility is lowering one's self to. It is not inherent worth. All men and women are equal. It is not respect. It is in a focus of meeting needs and desires. If we are truly equal in worth, then my needs and wants are no more important than anyone else's. So the focus of our efforts cannot be on meeting our needs and wants above others. The moment we do, we put self in a position of worth based on what we do.

How Do We Foster True Humility?

You don't become humble by trying to be humble. The moment you seek it, you end up in pride, because you are doing it to lift self to a higher level than others. "Ah, look how humble I've become!" Then we're back to putting self in the esteem equation.

The key to answering this is control. At the heart of pride is making self important by controlling others or a situation. This is true of the doormat, the passive aggressive victim, or the narcissist. Pride says, "I want to control this for my maximum self interests."

To gain humility, we do the opposite. We give the control to others. I know, I know. This goes against our ideas of proper self-esteem. Seems to open up the door to being treated as a doormat, or abused by an abuser. But not really. Here's the difference.

For a doormat person, they meet any and every need because they hope to be liked and appreciated. Or they do it to control the other person in codependent manner or subvert them through passive aggressive behaviors. For a humble person, they do it purely to meet that person's true need, with no expectation of benefiting from it. Self is out of the picture, so there is no doormat to walk on. If they are unappreciative or don't reciprocate, that is no skin off their back since they didn't do it for that reason.

What loosing control means in practical terms is obedience. We become obedient to one another in love. When you are merely being obedient, you don't have the satisfaction of being prideful.

For example, when I was a teen, I decided on my own to clean out the garage because I wanted to surprise my mother. My motivation was to see her shock and praise me for being so considerate and helpful. It became a source of pride for me to say, "See what I did!"

Now back up. Let's say before my mom left that day she told me, "Rick, would you please clean out the garage for me?" Would I have been nearly motivated to do it? No, because self wasn't going to get kudos for deciding to do it. She might say it was a good job, but she would have expected that. Because I was only doing what was expected of me, I wouldn't have been able to take pride in what I'd done inappropriately, at least easily.

What am I saying? Don't surprise your loved ones with gifts? No. Rather, if you want to remove self from the esteem equation through humility, it is done through obedience to one another.

But we need to make one more point on this to avoid confusion. It is not an obedience to their demands and wants, but to what is in their best interest. To put it in obvious terms, if they say, "Give me a gun, I want to go shoot some kids at a school," you'd be obedient to everyone's best interest by not giving him that gun. A doormat would give him the gun. A humble person with proper self-esteem would not.

So, let's put this in marital terms, which is what our focus is here. What if your spouse is abusive, manipulative, etc.? Do you just obey him?

That will depend, but as pointed out, you are obedient to his best interest. Such types of relationships are not healthy for any involved, including the abuser. Obedience in that instance would be to leave in hopes he'll get a clue and seek help to change his destructive relational patterns. It would be obedient to the best interest of the kids, if any, who might suffer emotionally under such an atmosphere, to leave.

It would also be obedient to your own protection. "But I thought you said self doesn't enter the picture?" As a motivation to control others for your own ego boosting needs, yes. But if you do not protect yourself, there are needs other than your own that will go unmet. If mom is an emotional mess because of an abusive husband, she won't be able to fully meet the needs of her kids as their mother. Taking care of basic needs for yourself is being obedient to the needs of others. If you can't function in a healthy way, you can't help others.

"But what about a spouse who is simply not humble to me? Am I to continue to obey him when he doesn't respect me?" Yes and no. Yes, in the sense his lack of desire to meet your needs doesn't affect your reason to meet his needs. You aren't meeting his needs, if it is from true humility, because you want him to return the favor. So when he doesn't, you don't stop. To do so would indicate it arose from pride and a damaged self-esteem you are trying to shore up.

But, to continue in that type of relationship for long is not good for either of you. It needs to be addressed. It needs to be dealt with an healed. You might need to force the issue at some point by making it clear the situation cannot go on without forcing you to take some extreme measures, like separation. However, letting it go on and on would be an indication of pride rather than humble obedience.

In the end, you are simply being obedient to him/her by doing what is in the best interest of all involved. By so doing, your own needs are not front and center, though your basic needs are getting met that keep you going and healthy. But you are focused on other's needs not to use them for meeting your own, but because their needs are just as important as yours.

The end result is self is removed from the esteem question. You know your esteem is equal to everyone else's. Because of that, what others think of you or your performance matters little as it has no bearing on your self-worth. With self out of the picture, you are free to respond to others and be obedient to what is in their best interest out of genuine love for them as a person of worth.

Fostering humility becomes the path to proper and healthy self-esteem that will not only allow a hurt spouse or unfaithful spouse to heal quicker, but will prevent any self-focused decisions to have an affair to happen in the first place.