“I am sure he is cheating!”

I hear this all the time. It could be, “I’m sure she is cheating” just the same. The point is that there is a breakdown in trust and its quite possible that there is no way back from that. Trust is earned. How does one earn trust when that sort of breakdown occurs? It’s not like you can simply pretend that everything is fine, and go about a trust building exercise and have it all work out, right?

So, where to begin. First of all, all relationships are made up of three parts, affinity, which is to say, the degree to which you like to share space with your partner. Reality, which is to say, the degree that you and he have agreements about the way the world works. And, communication, which is to say, the manner by which you share ideas, understand each other and acknowledge each other. My advice is to start by taking a look at where the break occurred. Was it simply that you fell out of affinity? Or was it a break in reality? Or was it a breakdown in communication? By identifying where the breakdown occurred, you can begin there to build bridges.

Now, building a bridge does not let him off the hook. In order to make any progress at all to restore your relationship, he is going to have to make amends. He is also going to have to acknowledge the infidelity, speak to the impact on him, on you and on others that his infidelity caused, and on top of that, he is going to have to make amends to you, so you should consider how that would look. Making amends might be simple enough, or you might need a more complex process to play out. You might want him to sleep in a different bedroom, or even out of the house. You might feel that if he made you dinner and got you some flowers that would be fine too. I am not here to dictate what you need for you to feel that he has made amends.

The hard part is going to be dealing with the impacts. No doubt, he will minimize the impact on him, but don’t let him off the hook. Help him see the impact on him. Things like, he now knows himself as someone that does not keep his word. He knows he has lost your trust and will have to build it back. He understands that you might tell his family and yours and so on. There is definitely an impact on him that he has to address. Almost more important though, is that he address the impacts on you. You know him as someone who is not trustworthy. He has lied to you. He has misled you. He has broken his vow to you. These are big things and he has to deal with all of them to your satisfaction.

Let assume he is appropriately apologetic and deals with the impacts to your satisfaction, then its going to come down to the two of you putting your heads together to create an action plan to get back on track. By all rights, the actions should be his to take, but, in the event that you have some liability, for example, perhaps you have been distant and unavailable to him sexually, in that case you should be in action as well.

Remember, he has broken your trust, and now its up to him to restore it. It’s not an overnight thing. Trust building takes time. I am sure that It’s going to be some time before you feel ready to welcome him into your bed again.

One thing I will say about this is that in the event that you hold him in contempt, the data has shown that there is a high likelihood that you two will soon be separated. It’s important not to pretend that everything is ok if in reality, you hold him in contempt, because there is no way back from that. With that in mind, as you confront your partner, its best to work out the WPPSS scenario, or, the worst possible possible scary scenario BEFORE you open that pandora’s box. You have to be OK with the worst possible outcome if you are going to confront his infidelity. He may freak out and leave and if that is OK with you, then push on.

It’s never easy to deal with breaks in trust. It is important to know yourself. What your limits are. What the red line is. If he crossed that line, then its important for you to know what you need to let him back into your life.