Can Your Relationship Survive After Cheating?

Is it really possible? Or is trying waste of time?

Should Getting Cheated On Lead to a Breakup?

When a person gets cheated on, it’s normal for them to get a sudden influx of support from empathising friends and family members. It’s not uncommon for these people to be outraged and angry because of the pain that’s caused to the victim of cheating. Some of them may suggest or even impose that the couple break up, because what is love without trust, right? But not everyone throws in the towel after such a traumatic experience.

So the question is, can your relationship still survive after cheating?

You cheated on your partner, but your relationship does not necessarily have to end. Even though admitting infidelity to your partner will cause much heartache and anger, your relationship can survive if you both want it to.

But repairing a relationship after infidelity can only happen if you truly regret your decision to cheat. If you decide to confess to your partner, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons, not just to ease your own guilt.

The short answer is it depends. There’s a lot of factors that affect a couple’s ability to resolve and navigate around issues as significant and as sensitive as cheating. We’ll discuss some of them here today, so you can learn more about relationships and how cheating changes the way couples go forward with their partnership after infidelity.

Has the Affair Ended or Are There Plans to End It?

For cheating that has been going on for a long time, it’s necessary that it ends for the couple to start working on their relationship. That doesn’t mean that one time cheating incidents are okay, though, because it’s not the number of offenses that matter here; an act of betrayal will hurt regardless of how many times it’s been done.

The guilty party has to end the affair or make plans to end it if it hasn’t. This is the most important step if they are to try to salvage their relationship. The person who cheated on the other has to stop seeing the person they cheated with again and do everything in their power to avoid them. This is a crucial part of moving on.

Some people go as far as moving cities, transferring to another country or finding another job to prove that they have no plans to see the person they cheated with again. Showing their partner the great lengths they’re willing to go through can potentially mark the beginning of their partner’s healing. After all, it’s useless to fix a relationship if the cause of the problem is still within sight.

Is the Cheater Willing to Bare It All?

The person who cheated has to make sure that the affair is over. But moving on doesn’t stop there. The person who got cheated on deserves the right to have all their questions answered. This part is crucial because it gives the person information, and having so many unknowns is a scary place to be in when someone just cheated on you.

That’s why to try and save the relationship, the cheater has to be completely honest and bear all. They should be patient to answer however many questions their partner asks. The party cheated on will want to know if it had something to do with them and they will want to know if it’s their fault (it never is). This normal cycle of self-blame can be stopped if the cheater comes clean, tells their partner what really happened and gets the chance to properly apologise.

It might take some time for the other person to receive that forgiveness and sometimes, they might not accept it at all. But if the relationship is important to the person who cheated, they should be willing to wait for that time.

Is There Room for Trust to Be Rebuilt?

For people who have been betrayed several times, it might not be possible to rescue the relationship after cheating. Some people just don’t have the mental, emotional and psychological capacity to go through the ordeal again. But there are also people who have room to forgive and the willingness to rebuild what was torn down by a mistake.

Part of the rebuilding process is being more open about personal things. And yes, that means showing emails, texts, phone logs and other communication apps. The betrayed person needs consistent reinforcement of trust and that includes reassurance by giving them access to their partner’s phone or computer, especially if they are the gadgets that led to and eventually made the cheating possible.

While rebuilding trust, the cheater has to understand that they will inevitably be treated like they’re on probation.

This is in no way a good feeling, but it’s necessary for their partner to slowly give back the trust that was lost. But what about privacy? A cheater may ask. Privacy is a privilege and a right that’s given to people who are trustworthy. In a relationship, once the other person cheats, these rights have to be revoked for a while to help the hurting person slowly learn to trust again.

Some people will even give up all their passwords and PIN to their partners to reassure them that they are not doing anything wrong and that they will not cheat anymore. Some married cheaters even show their spouses their bank statements so they can prove that they’re not doing anything behind their partner’s back or spending on another person.

It doesn’t help that technology can lead to more doubts because people can always delete messages or use apps that are meant to hide proof of communications, that’s why if the cheater really wants to fix things, they’ll take drastic measures to prove that they can still be trusted. If this doesn’t work, then the couple should consider some form of intervention like relationship coaching.

Are There Underlying Issues to Be Resolved?

A relationship coach should be able to pinpoint the issues that lead to cheating. To be clear, no relationship problem will ever justify cheating. There is no excuse for a person to betray the person they love and who loves them. But addressing these issues can lead to both parties owning up to their mistakes and being fully responsible for the hurt they have caused.

The above mentioned factors can predict whether a relationship can persevere despite betrayal, which brings us back to the question: