after the affair: yes, you can you rebuild your relationship

An affair can be the most brutalising of all experiences in a couple relationship. The betrayed partner experiences a tidal wave of mixed and often chaotic emotions. The pain, hurt, anger, humiliation, and despair can be often overwhelming. It can produce fearful, anxious, and hypervigilant behaviours, not unlike symptoms felt by military veterans who have returned from combat; and it quite literally can feel as you are combating something completely out of your control.

Your mind races with out of control thoughts, but an affair is felt viscerally too, the body shakes, the stomach heaves, you wake up with images of what your partner did, the when and where endlessly replaying.

The betrayer also experiences a great deal of emotion. The guilt and often the suppression of the force and meaning of having betrayed the person they pledged to love can result in a just-wanting-to-move-on mentality, but this rarely works.

What causes an affair?

Why do happy partners have affairs? (and they do)

What does an affair mean? -incredibility it does not necessarily mean the relationships is doomed or the other person does not love you.

But is does mean that you are both left with a huge, gaping wound in your relationship which, probably without help, will tear you apart.

An affair does not have to mean the end, but will require some work to move to the next version of your relationship.

It’s tempting to think that it will automatically get better with time. This is rarely the case, the anxiety, fear, resentment, anger, and guilt felt early on by the betrayed person often gives way to a slow but sure contempt for the betrayer or a sense that they must “pay for their crimes” for evermore.

This is not being in a healthy relationship.

There are 3 stages in moving on from an affair:

Understanding and experiencing the trauma of an affair
Understanding and experiencing the guilt of betrayal
Emotionally recovering from the affair

It takes both partners to do this, to survive and then thrive after an affair, but we can further break down the respective partner tasks:

For the one who has had the affair:

acknowledge the hurt and the pain, understand the trauma and how powerful it is, almost literally fall on your sword. It tells your partner you want to work on things and him/her and your relationship really matter
Take responsibility for the affair, do not shy away from this and expect your partner to do all the work, almost become a custodian for the affair
Don’t try to move on quick; in fact, don’t use the words “move on” at all -repair, when it happens, will go at its own pace
Express your guilt and shame

For the betrayed:

Attempt to find the meaning of the affair and get past the gory details which you will want to hear, but will hurt you more
Don’t turn this relationship into victim-victimiser i.e. feel entitled, if you have been hurt, to hurt back. This merely sets up a toxic future relationship
Decide if you want to work on your relationship, if so, you need to do the work as well, if connections are being made appreciate them; you need to give feedback it’s working
Reconnection comes before trust-take time to refit your relationship
See your relationship as version 1 what was, version 2 what is, and version 3 what could be and work to this

For both