You might think it’s impossible to save your marriage from divorce after cheating. You might feel that this is the one betrayal that you simply should not be able to forgive from your spouse. The thing is, marriages do manage to overcome the common stigma associated with divorce each and every day. You can save your marriage after cheating has ripped it apart too.
The statistics about marriage and cheating are staggering. Despite the rising number of affairs in marriages (nearly 60% of married men will cheat on their wives and 40% of married women will cheat on their husbands), only 17% of divorces in the U.S. are the result of extramarital affairs. This means that a lot of couples are able to work out their differences and stay together even after the cheating has been discovered.
These numbers indicate a few things. The most positive, from where you sit, is that many couples do manage to work things out after one of them has an affair. It should give you a great deal of hope for your situation but that doesn’t mean you don’t have some work to do for the sake of your marriage and ensuring that your marriage doesn’t wind up in this position again in the future. There’s one method that works; it’s called building a better marriage.
Building a Better Marriage
You have to focus on things that will make your marriage better from this moment forward if you want to save your marriage from divorce after cheating. Much of this effort begins in the mirror. Your spouse may have been the one who cheated but generally this is a sign of deeper problems in the marriage.
What can YOU do to make your marriage better than it has been in a long time? Can you make it even better than it’s ever been? Here are just a few small changes you can make that will have a huge impact on the success of your marriage now and in the future.
- Learn to dance outside of your comfort zone and take risks for the sake of your marriage. Life is one huge risk and marriage, the life you build with the one person you love above all others, is not the time to play it safe. Take risks as an individual and make a leap of faith together.
- Make your marriage a priority in your life for a change. Too many people lack a plan or direction of any sort for their marriage. Some people feel that marriage is the destination but that leaves a lot of empty road ahead. Make marriage the journey and set up a series of road trips, detours, and hot spots along the way.
- Love out loud. Let your spouse know how much you love, appreciate, admire, and respect him or her. It’s important to your spouse and can have a positive impact on your marriage and the future you have together.