Do You Think We’ll Make It? Dealing with Infidelity

Nothing causes a marriage to collapse faster than a case of infidelity. Finding out that your partner’s loyalties have wavered can significantly impact your relationship, leaving you heartbroken and unable to trust them again.

Statistics show that approximately 40 percent of American marriages experience an incident of infidelity. Studies also show that men are more likely to cheat than women, but they both often do it for the same reasons.

Regardless of how you perceive infidelity, you have to deal with it. One of the best ways to come to terms with your partner’s infidelity is by rethinking the meaning of infidelity itself. Here’s how counseling can help couples work through infidelity and re-emerge stronger than before.

Perceiving Infidelity

Typically, the most frequent reason why people in relationships cheat is that their partner isn’t helping fulfill their needs – whether emotionally, sexually, or otherwise. Although the cheating partner is the one at fault for breaching trust, the fact is that the problems resulting in infidelity began long ago.

Suffering from infidelity can cause you to question your self-worth and identity. However, in most cases, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your partner doesn’t love you anymore. If you want to salvage your relationship, you should talk with your partner and ask them for their reasons for cheating. We recommend seeking couples counseling to help you through this moment of crisis because there is often a delicate line between balancing a need for disclosure and reconciliation. A licensed therapist can help you navigate through these stages safely.

Atonement and Rebuilding Trust

Saving your relationship may seem like an impossible task when confronted with the reality that your partner has cheated on you. However, couples manage to move forward with the help of couples’ therapy. The first step to rebuilding your relationship entails atonement from the unfaithful partner.

The unfaithful person needs to acknowledge their role in hurting their partner and acknowledge they could have communicated their problems with their relationship more healthily. Couples need to realize that blissfully happy relationships don’t face infidelity because those relationships don’t have issues resulting in infidelity.

Seeking marriage counseling can help you flesh out your relationship and identify the problems in it. Marriage guidance counseling can also aid you in becoming closer to your partner. For instance, hugging your partner for sixty seconds every time you come home after work can help realign both of your nervous systems, making you feel more in touch.

A couple’s therapist can also assist you in overcoming childhood wounds to improve your relationship. Many people often cheat because they have excess childhood baggage weighing them down. A licensed therapist can help you confront those past wounds so that they don’t plague your current relationship.

Repairing Your Relationship with Marriage Counseling

If your partner isn’t willing to go to therapy with you, it’s a red flag that your relationship may be unsalvageable. However, many couples manage to restore faith and intimacy in their relationship with the help of a licensed therapist.

If you’re seeking a marriage counseling therapist in Palo Alto, we can assist you. Silicon Valley Marriage Counseling is a professional institution that provides counseling and therapy for couples in the Bay Area. Couples seeking relationship therapy meet with Azizeh E. Rezaiyan, an English and Farsi-speaking psychologist with over twenty years of experience.

Contact us today to help get your marriage back on track.