Q&A: How do I learn to trust my spouse again after an affair?
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Java with Juli: 3 Things Christians Do That Shut Down Healing After Betrayal, #593
Blog: How Do I Rebuild Trust After Betrayal?
Full Transcript
If you’ve experienced sexual betrayal in your marriage, if you’ve walked through an affair, the reality of it is your covenant promise has been broken and God has created sex in such a way that when there’s an infidelity, it’s like an earthquake in the marriage.
There are a lot of ways that we can hurt each other within marriage but nothing is as deep and or profound is breaking your covenant promise and that’s by God’s design, because He wants us to understand the importance of keeping our covenant. Now if that describes your marriage, let me just say you can’t immediately put your marriage back together. You can’t immediately say we’re gonna go back to intimacy. I’m gonna forget and forgive and just move on with life. Something profound has been broken, and it’s gonna take time to repair. Most marriage experts would say that it takes between two and four years for a couple to fully heal from an infidelity, and take that seriously. One of the mistakes I think people make is they rush that process. Again God has designed it so that recovering from an infidelity is difficult because that speaks to the preciousness of a covenant.
And so what do you need to do?
First of all, I would encourage you to work with a marriage counselor who has experience with navigating betrayal because there is a road you need to walk and having a guide on that road can be very helpful. You need to walk through what really has been done, both on the end of the person who’s had the affair to experience true repentance and confession and sorrow, as well as the person who has been betrayed and to really experience the pain of what has been done. You know, that’s part of the healing process is acknowledging what has been broken and then trust will take time to rebuild. This is not rebuilt in a day. It has to take time, and some people would say go back to the beginning, you know, go back to dating again, go back to establishing trusting relationship again, and don’t rush that process. You know, my encouragement to you is that I know many couples who have not only recovered from an affair, but they would say that their marriage is 10 times stronger than it was before the betrayal ever happened. And so God can do an amazing work in your marriage, but you have to be willing to go on the journey, and to really lean into Him as you rebuild that trust.