adminHie Tete,
I am a 35-year-old married lady with three children. My husband had an affair with my best friend three years ago and I cannot get over it. Tete, I am failing to forgive him. Please help me in finding ways to forgive because it has affected my intimacy with him. I cannot start to imagine how he had a relationship with my married friend behind my back. I have since parted ways with my friend because I could not stand seeing her again after this betrayal.
Response
First, I would like to applaud you for staying in your marriage, it shows you respect your union and you are sticking by your vows for better for worse. I cannot say I understand how you feel, but I will tell you that since you have been staying with him for the past three years after the affair and he hasn’t showed you any reason for you to doubt him, I believe he has realised his mistake and wants to stay in the marriage.
Don’t put your mind too much on what happened but try to concentrate on the future and look for the positives in your relationship. Stop beating yourself up about this. You have got to know that this has nothing to do with you.
You are not the one who made the decision to break your commitment to your partner and cheat. You have nothing to do with your partner making the immature, inappropriate, self-destructive choice to turn away from you to someone else.
If you want to get past this stop thinking if there is a payoff you will receive from the situation? Do you enjoy playing the victim or subjecting your partner to a life sentence? Do you fear that if you forgive a partner who truly is remorseful and has changed his behaviour that you are “letting them get away with it?”
Try assessing your level of commitment, you can either handle being vulnerable with your partner again or you can’t. And if you can’t, you need to get out of this relationship and move on. And if you can, then you need to let him earn the trust back and start putting this relationship together again.
If you have children, your decision will affect them as well. You do have responsibility here for what you do next. You have to make a decision about whether or not justice is best served by allowing your partner to re-earn your trust, or if it’s better not to subject your family any longer to the current situation.
Forgiveness is a choice. It doesn’t mean what your partner did is OK. How much you trust your partner is in part about what your partner does, and in part a function of whether you have confidence to handle it if he disappoints you. If you find out that he strays again, can you handle that?
When you choose the behaviour, you choose the consequences. If you continue to throw this in your partner’s face, you will eventually run him off. Ask yourself if this is going to be a life sentence for your partner. Can you heal from this and forgive? If not, don’t continue to live in anger and/or be with someone who causes you pain.
Tete
Online Reporter