What do you do if you definitively learn that your spouse has been cheating? It’s one thing to suspect an affair, but to have the proof in front of you is quite another. Can a marriage ever recover from such a blow?
It is actually possible to save a marriage that has been shattered by infidelity. But for the marriage to succeed after one partner has been unfaithful, both spouses must be fully committed to salvaging the relationship.
That means putting in the time and doing the work to discover just what went wrong for infidelity to occur in the first place. Then, the wronged spouse has to be completely transparent in their actions to allow their spouse to begin to trust them once again.
That can mean different things in different marriages. If the affair was a work dalliance, it could mean changing jobs. It might mean giving your spouse unfettered access to your phone at all times or cutting ties with certain friends who may have helped you hide the affair.
But the wronged spouse has to also commit to forgive freely and not fling the affair back at the cheating spouse every time there are harsh words. That can be difficult to do in the heat of the moment.
Counseling may help get a couple’s marriage back on track. But there is no magic formula to restore the trust once it has been broken. Indeed, even with the best of intentions and counseling, some couples come to the conclusion that the marriage is irretrievably broken.
When that happens, the best course of action is for both spouses to seek the counsel of their own California family law attorneys to hash out the terms of their divorce.
