Perhaps the wife got too involved in her work, or maybe the husband started spending more and more time watching sports with the guys. Regardless of the motivation, there is an unfortunate chance that over the course of some relationships, one person might be tempted to cheat. And in some truly terrible cases, such temptation can turn into action. With divorce rates climbing steadily throughout the United States, the question then becomes: Is it possible to recover from such a situation and save the marriage?
According to licensed professional counselor Elliott Connie, yes, it is. But in order to understand this answer, it is important to realize where Dr. Connie is coming from. Dr. Connie believes in Solution Focused Therapy, which focuses on developing a positive resolution to problems rather than focusing on what went wrong. It is a type of therapy that is rooted in the notion that hope exists in all situations, and that people truly have the ability and intelligence to talk their way towards positive solutions.
Therefore, when Dr. Connie states emphatically that this type of marriage can be saved, he says so because he believes that every marriage, relationship, person, and situation can be saved or resolved. However, don’t mistake Dr. Connie’s response for simple rhetoric. While a marriage in this situation can be saved, it is not one that can easily be saved. The parties involved will really have to make an effort to work together to overcome the hurtful events of the past in order to create a solid, loving future.
Let’s take a situation where a husband cheated on his wife. The first thing that this couple will have to do is work together to re-establish trust. The husband will especially have to do his part to prove that the affair or incident in question is truly a thing of the past. At the same time, the spouse who was cheated on will need to re-learn how to trust her husband. Once that husband-wife trust is re-established, the next step towards repairing the marriage is forgiveness. In our scenario, it is easy to assume that it’s simply up to the wife to forgive her husband for his infidelity. However, the husband can – and should – play an active role in this vital step by forgiving himself for his indiscretion and doing his part to prove to his wife that he is truly worthy of forgiveness.
The road to forgiveness in this type of situation is rarely smooth, but with the proper attitude and communication, Connie is confident that any couple in question can get there. By committing to reinvesting themselves in the relationship, spouses can work together to eventually move forward from such an incident. In situations like these, the couple must stop focusing on the incident that almost destroyed the marriage and instead focus on where they would actually like to be in their relationship. Chances are, both members of the couple in question do not actually want to be in a place where they are fighting. Rather, they want to be in a place where their marriage is strong. It sometimes takes an outside therapist such as Dr. Connie to point this out because people often get so caught up in the negative that they lose the ability to help themselves. By discussing the situation and reaching a verbal agreement as to where they would like to be, the spouses can then work together to get there.
But in the wife’s case, isn’t this easier said than done? Well of course it is, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. Infidelity is a hard thing to forget, but if the wife in our situation ever wants to move forward, then she’s going to have to convince herself that the future is what matters, not the past. Harping on the incident will only send the forgiveness process in a backward direction. Elliott Connie believes that when something in a relationship doesn’t work, then the person or people involved should simply decide to stop doing it. In this case, if asking repeated questions about the affair only feeds the hurt, then the wife needs to make the decision that she is going to stop talking about it and instead move past it.
Of course, this situation is not the type in which one can simply snap his or her fingers and just get over it. However, people, on a whole, do possess the ability to talk themselves into helping themselves. By making the decision to move forward, the spouses involved can grant themselves the power to save the marriage. It might not be easy, but with the proper outlook and communication, eventually, they can get there.
