Sink Or Swim? – 5 Ways To Stay Afloat In Your Marriage After An Affair

When you first learn about an affair, you’ll feel a little like you’re drowning. That’s because you are. You’re drowning in a sea of sorrow, anger, hurt, disillusionment and distrust. Hold on. You can soon find your footing.

It won’t be easy. It won’t be pleasant. But if you’re both willing to work at it, you can learn to swim, stay afloat, survive and even thrive in your marriage after an affair.

Let’s look at some marriage lifejacket tips you can use as you struggle to keep from drowning after you’ve learned of the affair.

Marriage Lifejacket Tip #1: Ask only relevant questions

You may think that you want to hear every sordid detail, but in actuality, unless you want to put additional emotional weights to drag you down further, keep your questions to only the important things you need to know.
o Who was the affair with?
o Is the affair truly over?
o Was this person also married?
o Did you have unprotected sex?
o How long did it go on?
o Was it just physical or did you have a strong emotional connection as well?
o When did it start?
o Was this the only indiscretion or were there other affairs?
o Did you seek out this person or did they seduce you?
o Why did the affair start?
o Who else knows about the affair?

The answers you get will be very telling as to what part you may have inadvertently played in the affair, why didn’t you recognize the signs of the infidelity sooner, the need to get checked out for sexually transmitted diseases and so forth.

Marriage Lifejacket Tip #2: Don’t act irrationally or impulsively

If you want your marriage to survive after an affair, it’s important that you try to keep a clear head and not act irrationally or impulsively. If you immediately throw your spouse out of the house, your not only widening the chasm between the two of you, you’re now going to make it more difficult to work together to rebuild your relationship. Plus now you will have to involve your children. Yes, they may notice the tension between the two of you as your work through your problems but they will be able to deal with that better than a separation.

It’s also probably tempting to be openly hostile to your spouse in front of everyone, especially if you “publicly” announce the indiscretion. This will cause your spouse to be embarrassed further than they already are and will cause even greater friction between the two of you. It also will diminish your chances of surviving the storm.

Yes, you may want to seek counsel from a family member or friend or they may become aware of the affair, but if you want your marriage to survive After The Affair, you need to make it clear that while you may be going through rough seas, you hope to find calmer waters soon and that you’re working toward that.

Marriage Lifejacket Tip #3: Don’t dwell on it

Once your questions have been answered and you are satisfied that the affair is in the past and that you believe your spouse is truly sorry for it, try to move forward. If you constantly bring it up, it will be like picking at a sore. It will take much longer to heal. Of course your distrust, hurt and heartbreak isn’t going to heal overnight no matter what you do, but if you move forward to work on the core issues of why and how the affair began and what’s necessary to keep it from happening in the future, then you’ll be moving in a more positive direction.

Marriage Lifejacket Tip #4: Dealing with the pain

You will likely feel hurt, sadness, pain and possibly even rage over the betrayal. If you direct all of that at your spouse, they will shut down even more and will be less open to the healing process so that your marriage can survive after the affair. If you must find an outlet, take up a physical sport, keep a journal, meditate, join a support group, get counseling or do something else that is positive rather than destructive to help you release all of the negative emotions you’re going through.

Marriage Lifejacket Tip #5: Rebuild trust through open access

If your spouse is sincere in wanting to help your marriage survive after an affair, this shouldn’t be too difficult. Insist that you have access to their e-mails, cell phones, business phone, personal accounts, business and personal credit card account information and online social networking sites. Feel free to check these things as often as you need to to help you regain a feeling of control and trust. Eventually you won’t feel the need to check as often. Your heart won’t stop and your imagination won’t run wild every time your spouse is a few minutes late, goes out of the house without you or whenever you need to leave them alone.

Use these lifejacket tips as often as is necessary so that you can eventually navigate toward calmer relationship seas as your marriage does survive after an affair.

About the Author

Lucy Morgan-Rowe is the main writer of a save my marriage.com a marriage site that discusses ways on how to Save Marriages that are on the brink of divorce and provides reviews of other general marriage After Affair resources available on the web.

affairs and marriage