Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Unfortunately, many folks are struggling to deal with infidelity, cheating, and affairs. Many go into this process with the belief that infidelity always destroys the marriage. I often hear things like: “Well, I guess this means the end of my marriage. I can’t believe he would do this to us. I hope he’s happy because he’s destroyed our family.”

Another example is: “I never thought that infidelity would happen to me or my marriage. This blindsided me. It’s my fault that I wasn’t more observant. And now I have to just watch as this pretty much destroys my marriage.”

Many people see it as a given that as soon as cheating happens, the marriage that it happens to is going to be irretrievably broken. I understand this because I had these same assumptions. But I can tell you with a great degree of confidence that infidelity doesn’t always have to destroy your marriage. Many marriages survive it and some emerge even stronger and better as the result. Mine is one example. I will discuss this more in the following article.

Cheating, Infidelity, And Affairs Don’t Always Destroy The Marriage. But Often You’ll Have To Fight To Keep The Destruction At Bay: I’m not going to tell you that infidelity won’t negatively affect your marriage, at least at first. This wouldn’t be true and you’d never believe me anyway. Finding out that the person who you should be able to trust the most betrayed you is completely devastating and this affects everything in its wake.

The result is often a great deal of pain, shock, and struggling. This may also mean that your marriage is in real trouble, especially if you don’t do anything to save it. But, beneath the rubble can come rebuilding. I know this first hand because I’ve experienced it but also because I know that many of the folks who have contacted me have eventually experienced it as well. I’m not saying that saving a marriage marred by infidelity is easy. It really is not. It’s a process rather than a quick fix and there are often extremely difficult days. I’m also not saying that all marriages make it. They don’t. Sometimes, the cheating is just too much for the marriage.

But, I don’t want for you to feel as if you don’t have any control over what happens to your marriage because you most certainly do. You don’t have to just blindly make the assumption that infidelity means the end of your marriage. This is not the sum that always comes from the equation. There are plenty of marriages that do make it. With some effort and skill, yours can certainly be one of them.

What’s Typically Necessary To Keep Infidelity From Destroying Your Marriage: Sometimes, people tell me that they’re sure their marriage is over because they just don’t have the faith or belief that their marriage is going to survive. Sometimes I hear comments like: “Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people who is determined to save the marriage, nor do I wholeheartedly believe that we are going to make it no matter what. I know that this is necessary for success, but I just can’t convince myself that it’s true.”

This is perfectly OK. It’s normal and natural to have doubts. And, having them doesn’t mean that you can’t save your marriage. You don’t have to go into the process knowing the outcome. You just have to commit to doing the best that you can and continuing to keep going even as the doubts occur.

None of this means that you won’t struggle or that any of the healing will come easily and quickly. But, what eventually needs to happen is that both people are open to understanding why the infidelity happened so that they can fix the issues that left them vulnerable. It means working very hard to reestablish the trust and commitment. It means having patience with yourself and your spouse even when things aren’t going as planned. And it means taking inventory, reevaluating, and using what works for you and discarding what doesn’t so that you can create a marriage that is worth fighting for.

I often tell people that dealing with infidelity in your marriage is going to teach you a lot about yourself as an individual. That’s because infidelity brings out self doubt, fears, and past issues – some of which really don’t have all that much to do with your marriage. But this truly can be an opportunity to ask yourself what you really want out of your marriage and your life. As painful as this can be, it is an opportunity to start again with a deeper knowledge of your marriage and of yourself. This isn’t always destruction. It can be rebuilding. And sometimes it really does help to try to take a step back and see it for the opportunity that it is, even if it is a painful but necessary one.