The Hard but Worthwhile Road of Infidelity Recovery

“Can I ever get past this? Can we ever get past this? Can I ever trust again? Do I want to try?” These are questions I’ve heard painfully asked often as couples deal with the raw emotional pain of infidelity.

There was a powerful letter from Brenda Mohan in the Winnipeg Free Press paper today. With the added pressure of her husband John’s infidelity hitting the front page of the paper last year, she was, first and foremost, a woman who’d been cheated on. And that hurts. A lot.

This is what she says:

For me, the decision to remain with John was never a question at all. I remember the moment I looked into John’s eyes, and saw a very broken, hurting man. That glimpse into his soul is what gave me the determination to stay and walk through this journey with him. In order for us to move forward, I knew I would need to forgive him.

But how?

I soon came to learn that forgiveness begins with the choice and desire to forgive, followed by a continued process of forgiveness. The choice to forgive was made much easier by the remorse and regret that John expressed immediately after he told me what he had done. But all kinds of questions remained.

Was he sincere? Would it last? Could I trust him? Did he really want to be with me? Was I second choice?

These kinds of questions take time to be answered, for trust to be rebuilt and for forgiveness to be extended in its fullness. My deep faith in God as one who restores and offers grace to each of us (myself included) when we fail was the foundation upon which I drew my hope. In spite of what John had done, God still loved him and I needed to love him, too.

I also believed that through this we could have a marriage better than we ever dreamed possible. That God has a way of bringing good from things that look pretty disastrous to us.

Along with the help of our therapist [Todd Sellick], I have also done a lot of reading. Stories of others who have gone through similar situations and came through successfully, books that helped me to understand human nature and why we respond the way we do. But most of all it was important for me to know that I was not the only one to experience pain, that every day many people are experiencing severe pain and hurt for one reason or another and many had successfully moved on and not stayed in their pain. This gave me hope that I could, too. Most of all I want other women to know their marriage is worth fighting for and there is hope after betrayal.

This woman has “been there”, and in many ways is still in the middle of “there”. The shadow of infidelity lingers for a long time in a relationship. She has earned the right to speak to the issue of recovery through the school of hard knocks. Thanks, Brenda, for your words of wisdom. Of hope. Of healing. Of forgiveness.

They do a soul good to hear.