How To Restore Trust In Your Relationship After Cheating

As countless cheating spouses have learned the hard way, the rebuilding of trust in a relationship after cheating is one of the biggest hurdles to leap in repairing the damage caused by infidelity. It is going to take a great deal of work and effort. It can take a lifetime to build a strong level of trust in your marriage, but all it takes is just one selfish act to shatter it and undo all that effort.

To rebuild a relationship that has been shredded by lies and deceit, you need to create a new foundation of trust, one stone at a time. If you are the injured spouse you need more than an "I'm sorry" from your cheating mate. You want to know that he or she is working toward a change of character, from his or her deepest depths inside to the most obvious behavior on the outside. You just want to be able to trust again and know that he is not lying to you anymore.

One of the negative side effects of losing trust in your relationship after cheating is that so many other wonderful aspects of your marriage go with it - the feelings of connection and togetherness, your ability to open up and freely express your feelings with your spouse, and your hope and belief that he or she will do the same with you. But now you've drifted apart, grown distant from each other and you don't know how to get back what was lost or how to move on to something new.

The difficulty in healing after an affair is that, at some point, you and your spouse have to begin sharing your thoughts and feelings again in order to repair the damage and rebuild your marriage. Considering the state of your relationship, this may seem like an insurmountable task, but it can be done. The solution to restoring the trust in your marriage is to be transparent or open with your spouse. If you are the cheater that means that you become free of pretense and deceit and that your words and actions are also free of pretense and deceit, so that your spouse can recognize that you are indeed telling the truth. If you are the cheated on spouse, you can also learn how to open up and become more transparent yourself.

Working on incorporating transparency in your marriage is an important element in restoring the trust back in your relationship after cheating. There are other considerations and additional steps that you need to take to create a marriage that is better than ever.