Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: Many wives who are dealing with their husband’s affair are somewhat clear on the fact that, one day, they would like to be able to offer forgiveness. Many hope that one day, the will just find forgiveness on their doorstep. They might wake up one day and find that the burden and the pain of the affair has lessened enough that they feel comfortable enough to offer this one little gift. When this doesn’t happen, it’s very easy to become impatient. So you can start to think that forgiveness is simply a choice that you must make. I hear from a lot of wives who have made the conscious decision to forgive their husband and they now want to communicate the same to him. Many know that they are going to break down and stammer if they try to say this face to face, so they decide to write a letter.

But they aren’t sure how to write the letter or even if it is good idea. Many go through several drafts of a letter and still aren’t comfortable giving it to their spouse. I might hear a comment like: “I have finally made the decision that I would like to save my marriage and forgive my husband for his affair. This is not a decision that I came to easily. Not at all. I went back and forth about this for months. And there was a time when I was getting ready to file for a divorce. It really came down to a couple of things. I’ve never had so loyal a friend as my husband has been to me and I don’t want to give my children a broken family. For the last two years, I have struggled with illness and my husband stuck by me for ninety eight percent of that. He had an affair with one of my health care professionals but not until I pushed him away for months out of fear. I am not defending his having an affair by any means. But I can see how it would have happened. Anyway, I have decided to forgive him and I want to tell him this. Should I write him a letter and, if so, what should it say? I have had friends who have told me that such a letter is giving him a free pass. They think this is a stupid idea.”

Understand That The Letter Is Just One Step: First of all, this isn’t a decision for your friends to make. It is a decision that you must make. You are the only one in this scenario that has to live with your decision, not your friends. You can certainly write a letter. I get a lot of correspondence asking about the best way to do it. I think it is important to understand that one letter isn’t likely to heal the marriage. It is the behaviors and the actions that come after the letter that will save the marriage. But, the letter can lay the ground work.

Make Sure He Knows That You Still Have Expectations: I think that is very important to stress that although you feel that you are ready to offer the forgiveness because you feel that it is the best decision for your family, you also want to define what you need from your spouse in order to make this happen. I am not saying that this reader’s friend was right – that the husband was getting a free pass. But very frankly, you don’t want to just proclaim that all is forgiven and then not require anything else from him because he may well not put forth any more effort. And, if your marriage is going to make it, it is going to require continued effort, so it is very important to set the stage for this.

A suggested script might be something like: “I want you to know that I have not come to this decision lightly. It was very difficult to move past the pain in order to see clearly. But I have decided that I truly do want to save our marriage and in order to do this, I want to offer my forgiveness. This doesn’t mean that I am completely over the pain or that I don’t need for you to keep trying to make this right. More than ever, I need to see and feel affection and reassurance from you. I need to see trustworthy behavior and complete commitment. In exchange, I am going to let go of score keeping and resentment. Forgiving you doesn’t mean that I will forget or that the slate is wiped clean as if there was no wrong doing. It means that I want to do my part in order to move forward. And I realize that my part means looking forward instead of behind.”

I really can not stress enough that a letter truly is only the beginning. You can write lovely words and you can craft a letter that is going to touch his heart, but if you don’t follow it up with the repeated behaviors meant to heal, then it may not be worth the paper it’s printed on.

I will admit that I wrote a letter or two after my own husband’s affair.  But it wasn’t the letter that saved us.  It was the behaviors.  If it helps, you’re welcome to read more on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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