Infidelity should never be forgiven

When you are cheated on, you are faced with many choices. One of those choices is whether or not to forgive them for what they have done. Forgiveness is a topic that I have periodically addressed here on the blog and in webinars, including the issue of forgiving too soon.

I thought it would be worth addressing the choice of not forgiving. When you choose not to forgive, what does it do for you? Holding onto the pain and hurt brings its own burden. many people, including you may not be able to carry that kind of pain.

Holding onto the pain often brings consequences in terms of the relationship, your health, your spirituality and your peace of mind. There’s a price tag associated with you choosing not to forgive.

All that energy you expend keeping emotions pent up, along with the power of those emotions build up. That energy eventually comes out either explosively in some form of outburst or in energizing illness or detrimental conditions. The energy will eventually work its way out, either in a good way or a bad way.

That energy may give you a temporary sense of power or self control. It will give you power in the relationship, although the price tag for that power is costly.

You may be choosing not to forgive as a way of punishing yourself or them. Even though you may have some other motive, by withholding your emotions from your spouse, you end up punishing them and yourself. You may tell yourself that you are just protecting them. The problem is that this kind of protection ends up being viewed as punishment by the other party.

When you decide to forgive, if you make that choice, what or who is it that you forgive? Have you ever considered that one? The act of infidelity should never be forgiven.

The only thing that actually can be forgiven is the person.Yes, only the person. People can be forgiven. They can repent, they can make turnarounds, etc.

Behaviors or actions do not repent. What is done is done and cannot be undone. People can change, but events cannot be undone.

What they did was wrong. Who they are and what they did are two separate things. Choosing to forgive the act often only encourages it to happen again. You are forgiving the cheater, not the act, not the behavior.

You can forgive them, which allows the relationship to be restored, yet still hold them accountable. It is not about punishing them over and over again. It’s about making a clear connection between ‘infidelity’ and ‘wrong’.

Wrong=Infidelity, Infidelity=Wrong, the connection needs to be clear. You love the cheater, but HATE what they did. The cheater needs to HATE what they did.

Letting go of the behavioral accountability makes the act less severe. You still need to love the cheater. Punishing them isn’t the answer ( I may need to do a whole blog post on that one). When I read about all the spouses who punish cheaters, I cringe. I know that that does not deal with the root issue and only sets the stage for more problems.

For more on forgiveness, the video “Forgiveness: Stop the Pain, Tear down the walls and Remove the Roadblocks” addresses the topic in greater depth. Order your copy today and start the forgiveness process in your life.

I will deal more with forgiveness in future posts. Until then,

Best Regards,

Jeffrey

You Might Also Like To Read:

4 Responses

  1. Hmm, I think this may be helpful. I’ll have to read it several times and roll it around in my head for a while. The problem is if I say I forgive him he’ll take it as me saying I forgive it all and it doesn’t bother me any more. So far he still lies about it all and doesn’t make any motion to help me cope or even act like he cares how I feel. He thinks I should always take into consideration what he needs and how he feels. He let TOW inform me they were a couple and I needed to get out of his life. He admits he thought he loved her but when I ask him for a divorce so they could go public he told me absolutely not. Then he tells her I would ruin his life and take everything from him so I wouldn’t give him a divorce. Of course she believes him. He says he loves me and only me, but he doesn’t act like it. he’s put nothing into fixing the wrong. It’s all up to me. I’m getting tired. He thinks I should forgive him and forget it all. This is his second affair I found out about. This was “love”. The other wasn’t. I do feel the need to forgive something. I haven’t been sure what though. This article may help me. Thanks

  2. Knotit,

    Many spouses do confuse forgiveness with approval. When you forgive them, they feel that all is fine and that the past is erased. They may feel relief at you forgiving them, but show little remorse on the matter.

    I can understand you feeling tired, It sounds like you are working harder at the relationship than he is. In terms of what to forgive, you can only forgive him, not the behavior.

    I will spend more time on that in a future post.

  3. Cheating is a deal breaker for me. If it happens to me, I may still care for the person, but the relationship would be over. I find that the approach of forgiving and trying to stay together in the end doesn’t work. The cheater thinks that everything’s fine again and they can go off and do it again. Once someone betrays and breaks my trust, there is no getting it back. Without that trust, there is no healthy way the relationship can survive.

    1. S,

      You’re not alone in cheating being a deal breaker. I’ve come across many people that feel that way.

      When you approach things from the ‘forgiving and trying to stay together’ mindset, I can understand how you have concerns. This is why I advocate a different approach in my approach to recovery. Honesty starts things going. Forgiveness is good, yet it’s an on-going process requiring honesty and accountability. It’s not an once and done proposition.

      I do believe that an affair does not mean the end of the marriage.

      For affair recovery to succeed, changes are needed in the marriage relationship, in how the two of you talk with each other and how the two of you resolve problems together, down to the root level. The two of you also have to work on changing the patterns in the cheater’s brain. If you don’t have that kind of accountability, I can see ho you view it as “in the end it doesn’t work”.

      Forgiving without the accountability and making changes leaves recovery half-done. The broken promises have to be dealt with, and the relationship has to be re-built. I advocate building a new foundation on communication, since the old one of ‘pure trust’ is broken.

      Trust can be repaired when you have all the pieces. My experience is that many people don’t know how to rebuild trust or understand how it works. They know when its working, they just don’t know how it works or why it does what it does.

      If the relationship is truly broken along with being severed on account of the affair and their is no hope of recovery, it presents some problems in a big way.

      One of the big ways is theologically. Applying the same logic to that field, you can see the dilemma. Theologically, it takes the position that once you are disloyal, you are damned forever, with no hope of second chances. That position puts everyone in trouble and little to no hope of any other outcome. It’s a very pessimistic view, although some people believe it very strongly.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Popular Posts