Once you discover you've been cheated on and betrayed by the one you cherished more than anything in this world, granting forgiveness will certainly be a hard thing to do, and forgetting: not possible! This individual who you trusted, who spoke their vows to you, shattered each of the promises they made on your wedding day. You feel all alone. You feel embarrassed, upset, anxious and resentful. Above all else, you would like things to be the way they used to be, the loving relationship you had before the affair. Before they cheated you loved each other deeply, and had a great marriage. Now you want to rebuild what you had, but the truth is you don't believe that there's any way that you'll be able to forgive your spouse. The ache simply goes far too deep. The trust you had before in your spouse is entirely gone. You already know you should forgive your spouse, however you believe that if you do they might fail you once again, and you simply don't believe that you could live through that. The idea of going through this yet again is a lot more than you can take.
You understand that if you wish to cope with this, and rebuild your relationship, you'll need to learn how to forgive your spouse.
First, you have to understand that you will not be able to go back to what you had before. If you try, you're going to be doomed to failure. You can't send yourself back to the past and pretend that nothing happened. THIS DID HAPPEN. Something caused this to happen. This horrid time you have been made to experience has caused changes to you and your spouse: changes you'll want to account for. For better or worse, you're not the people you used to be. The relationship you remember, the one you dream to go back to, must now be simply a memory.
But you CAN move forward: even though you are not able to forgive an affair.
You can move towards making your new connection just as good, or possibly even greater than your old one has ever been. It won't be the same, it can't be. What it can be is healthy and joyful and even stronger then it was before. To get it to that point it's important to make use of everything you have learned and are now learning to build a far better and stronger foundation then you had before. Using this newly built, sturdy foundation, you'll be ready to rebuild your relationship.
But what about the whole: "Forgiveness thing"?
What should you do if you discover that no matter exactly how much you would like to rebuild your relationship, you just are unable to forgive? You can still make all of the moves to rebuild your relationship. You can continue to move ahead: even if you can't forgive being cheated on by your spouse. If you follow this path, forgiveness may well gradually come your way. This path is called acceptance. As a result of acceptance you might find your way to forgiveness. You will be in a position to acknowledge what happened... after all it did happen. Those who have never been where you are now may believe that one could simply just choose to forgive... flick a switch: "There! It's done!" Doesn't work that way.
You may make the choice that you're going to forgive, but that's totally different then forgiving. A lot of people who have never actually been through this, confuse the two. You can choose to acknowledge what actually happened. By making this decision, you are actually opening your heart up to the idea that you could possibly forgive in the future, but for the time being you're going to move past what happened. By addressing what happened, and moving past it, you're once more in a position to move ahead. You'll be able to get started on the whole process of beginning to reconstruct your relationship.
Once you have done this, you're ready to learn what to do next. No matter what it seems like, you aren't the first person to have to go through this, and there are some amazing individuals who can show you what you need to do now. You just need to see just what the next steps are so that you may put together that stronger, more loving relationship.