Moving on after adultery

How do you move on after adultery? How do you deal with the feelings you both then struggle with? In this blog, we explain which approach can help. If you decide to move on, you will have to give the jumble of feelings a place. Or taking another step back: you first examine whether there is still a basis for moving forward.

It’s complicated, working on your relationship after adultery. Partners follow their own process that involves grief and pain for both. Some have to deal with the partner’s cheating; others have already distanced themselves from the relationship. Either way, it is important to reconnect.

But yes, the heart still aches. Still, it is good to dwell on this and other negative feelings. The cheated partner may also need to revisit the adultery from time to time, to ask questions about it. Do you manage to bear this, to accept that this crisis is there?

Where do we want to go?

How nice it would be to once again find comfort with each other and feel that the other person is truly choosing you. Is it not then better to bury the lot and continue from a new starting point?

We know from experience that it helps not to choose angry, dark emotions in the end. As logical as it may feel, wanting to know everything about the adultery makes little sense. Wanting to make your own picture fit actually drives you further apart.

Actually, we ask the following questions. What happened? What place does this event deserve within our relationship? Could it enrich us? What expectations do we have and what do we need in our relationship? And ultimately, new connectedness is central, the search for a new shared story.

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