We all know that marriages often hit trouble. In fact if you’ve been married for any length of time and your marriage hasn’t had its ups and downs, then you’re either very lucky or very blessed. Pretty much no marriage exists that hasn’t had a problem at some point.
But if you’re at that point, when your marriage is struggling and yet you both still care for each other and love each other, how do you rekindle the love in your marriage?
Well firstly understand that your marriage might be struggling, the love might have dimmed, but it doesn’t mean that the love has gone for good. The intensity of love is not a constant thing, it has its ebbs and its flows.
To rekindle your love here are a few tips:
Take the time to really reconnect with your other half. What does that mean exactly? Well you’re going to have to make time in your life to include your spouse and spend time together.
Make sure that the two of you are talking to each other. That means sharing your day with each other, talking about your hopes, fears and dreams and it also means listening to your spouse so that you will be granted that same level of respect when it comes your turn to be heard.
Spice up your love life by making an effort with your appearance and hit the gym if you need to drop a few pounds.
Show respect to your spouse and it will come back to you in kind.
Learn how to disagree and argue with each other without fatal or dangerous wounding.
Spend time/the odd evening apart with your respective friends, so that when you come back together you will have lots to say and you will have missed each other.
Trust your spouse to make the right choices that are good for your marriage.
From time to time surprise your spouse with a romantic meal, a getaway or just a small little token gift to remind them how you feel about them.
Tell your spouse you love them!
Just because things are currently not what they were in the marriage, it doesn’t mean that things have to stay that way. All it takes is a little consistent and continuous work on both your parts for the marriage to get right back on track.
When an affair happens in a marriage, it will often cause a rippling and devastating affect on the marriage and on the relationships around the marriage. From children, to extended families, friends and colleagues - all can be dragged into dealing with the painful aftermath of an affair.
Often there are feelings of betrayal, anger, loss and even self blame can play a part - and those feelings are not all exclusive to the spouse who has been cheated on!
With that said, it is possible to rescue your marriage after you or your spouse has had an affair. Many do! Some obviously more successfully than others, but for those who do manage to pull off rescuing their marriages, how do they do it?
Well they basically sit down together and talk! It’s that simple.
Let me clarify - there’s nothing ’simple’ about the act of rescuing a marriage, but there are some basic and ’simple’ steps you can take to give yourself the best shot at saving your marriage.
Steps to Staying Married After an Affair
The cheating spouse MUST end the affair and break all contact with their lover! You cannot make a fresh start if the affair is still going on.
Get ready to talk about the affair and how/why it happened. Whether it was you or your spouse who had the affair, you have to talk about it! There’s very little point in not exploring what caused the affair in the first place. It’s very easy to blame the spouse who cheated, but a set of circumstances came together to make an affair seem like a good option for the cheating spouse and if you don’t find out what those circumstances were, how are you going to ever guard against them in the future?
The talking will take many hours, days perhaps even weeks or months. So don’t attempt to have one sit down meeting to discuss EVERYTHING! It won’t work and you’ll likely cause more problems for yourself than good. So put a time limit on how long you talk and never start a conversation when either of you are tired.
Make sure that if you do decide to save your marriage, that the two of you have decided to do so TOGETHER. If you need time to think about what you need, what you want to do, then take the time. There is no point in one spouse believing there’s hope in saving the marriage and the other has decided it’s over.
Is sex a problem in your marriage? It’s true the affair doesn’t necessarily have to be about wanting more sex or wanting to feel needed or desired, but it might well be! So if you and your spouse are having sexual problems, then those problems need to be addressed.
You both have to make a commitment to spend more time together and grow together rather than apart.
Forgive! Whether the affair was yours or your spouse’s, you have to forgive them or forgive yourself. You cannot make a fresh start to your marriage if you have not found a way to forgive. Of course this won’t happen over night, so give yourself time to get there.
Think long and hard about getting some solid relationship advice to help you and your spouse stay married and stay happily married - here’s the best online guide I know for that Save My Marriage Today!
It’s true that an affair at the heart of your marriage is not going to be an easy thing to get beyond and recover from. The trust that has possibly taken years to build up has been shot down in one swoop, building it back up will require commitment from both the cheater and the cheated upon.
Mark Sanford, the South Carolina Governor, has admitted to cheating on his wife with a “dear friend!”
Human beings will always be drawn to what they shouldn’t be, that’s a given! The trick is resisting what you shouldn’t be and getting help from your spouse or an expert to help you when you’re tempted to stray.
Clearly there was a problem after 20+ years of marriage and that problem wasn’t addressed at all or addressed significantly. The tragedy for Mark Sanford was that he had so much to lose when found out - and I don’t just mean his political career!
