7 widespread make-up errors to keep away from after infidelity

Cheating usually spells death for a relationship. While infidelity is not the main reason for divorce, it is one of the most common reasons. And even when couples try to repair their marriage after a betrayal occurs, the road ahead is tough. In a survey of 441 people who had been unfaithful to their partner, fewer than 16 percent said their relationships survived the infidelity.

That’s not surprising. Finding out about an affair is emotionally devastating for the betrayed person. Getting away from such a break means restoring trust between someone who no longer seems trustworthy and another person who doesn’t want to trust that person again. But while rebuilding a marriage after infidelity is difficult, it’s not impossible. Couples can rebuild trust with patience and careful, hard work. That hard work gets a whole lot worse when you accidentally make one of these common reconciliation mistakes.

1. First of all try to stay together

Not all couples recover from cheating. And often the ability to recover depends on the nature of the infidelity itself. Stepping on your spouse could be a crime of opportunity done in a moment of poor judgment. Or it could be a sign that the marriage was built on poor foundations. dr Gail Saltz, psychiatrist and host of the “How Can I Help?” podcast, notes that cheating can reflect not only a desire for sex, but also a desire to end a relationship. “Sometimes, knowingly or unknowingly, the person who cheated did it to end a relationship,” she says. “Sometimes that person wanted to leave anyway and that’s their step to the door.”

2. Go alone (or seek help too late)

After a spouse cheats, any marital conversation can seem like walking through a minefield. Because of the tense emotional landscape and potential for explosions, an objective third party can play a crucial role in guiding couples onto safer ground. “An outside therapist who is familiar with these dynamics can be very helpful in conveying and pointing out where the problems lie, what needs to happen and where you have blind spots,” says Saltz. She adds that unfortunately, couples can only turn to therapists as a last-ditch effort to salvage their marriage. But at this point, resentment has undermined the chances of a reconciliation. “When there’s already so much contempt or deceit or contempt for one another, it’s really hard to come back from that,” she says. “So earlier is better.”

3. Staying under the same roof when infidelity is discovered

The first night the affair becomes public is tense. Sweating together in close quarters is a common mistake, according to Lisa Concepcion, a life coach who specializes in divorce and infidelity issues.

“Emotions run high and rightly so,” she says. “People don’t think right because they’re in fight or flight mode.” Creating some distance between the people in the marriage is important to marital health. “The best thing to do is find a friend or a hotel to stay at for a cool-down so both parties have the freedom to gather their thoughts and assess their feelings without outside influence,” she says.

4. Tell friends and family about it right away

Concepcion says that while the hours and days after the infidelity disclosure can be lonely and confusing, both spouses must resist the urge to turn to their social media for support until they figure out how to proceed with the relationship.

“It’s important that you first assess where you stand with everything,” she says. “Maybe you have a hard line about infidelity, have been unhappy and want a divorce. Or maybe you want to try to repair the relationship. It is best to come together and be on the same page on the next steps before sharing personal matters with family.”

5. Share every detail about the cheating with your partner

Sexologist and sex educator Susanah Weiss warns that too much disclosure of the affair can be fatal to a relationship. While it’s important to be accommodating, it’s crucial to keep in mind the motivation for a confession. “It’s important to ask yourself whether this desire stems from a desire to help your partner recover from the incident or from a desire to alleviate your own guilt,” she says.

The most important thing to focus on is the scammer’s feelings and motivations for cheating, not the cheating itself. “Hearing everything about the other person or gender can unnecessarily increase feelings of jealousy,” says Weiss. And just like the scammer shouldn’t share too much, the cheated person needs to identify what details are important to them in order to understand them. You deserve an honest account of what happened and why it happened. You don’t need to hear a detailed play-by-play of how it happened.

6. Lack of Full Disclosure

While it can be a mistake to indiscriminately dump all the details of an affair on your spouse, withholding information can be just as bad. The challenge for couples trying to reconcile after cheating is finding the right balance of information.

Naomi Yano, a couples therapist who specializes in infidelity recovery, says couples she works with often get caught in communication loops that prevent their relationship from recovering. Common elements are what she calls “trickle truth,” where the cheater tries to protect their partner by selectively revealing the truth about their affair.

“They usually mean well when they don’t share details because they think it will hurt their already injured partner,” she says. “It actually has the opposite effect. Every time the injured partner learns again that something has been hidden, they go back to square one and rebuild trust.”

7. Trying to recover too quickly

Marriage coach and relationship expert Lesli Doares says couples who rush the reconciliation process won’t get the results they want. Repairing a marriage after infidelity is slow, difficult work, but she says it must be done for the good of both parties.

“There’s often a rush to get through and get things back to normal,” says Doares. But normality was part of the problem.” Doares notes that leaving the marriage is a sign of problems elsewhere in the relationship. “Infidelity only makes whatever the problems were worse, it doesn’t make them go away,” she says. “Healing is a slow process and often an uneven one. It’s like peeling onions – there are often several layers for both partners.

The bottom line is that reconciliation after infidelity is not possible unless both parties commit to doing the work needed to rebuild trust and repair the relationship. But unless every person is committed to this goal, they will only put things right on the surface. The underlying problems remain. “They seem to be trying to make things right, but one of them doesn’t want to,” Saltz says. “And then it probably won’t happen.”

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