Yesterday I wrote about a woman who found out that her partner had cheated on her. I suggested that she should confront him with her knowledge. But what would happen then? If he accepted his fault and if he asked her to please forgive him, could they really fix their relationship? Is there a way to forgive and forget this kind of thing?
My short answer would be: in general yes but it is extremely difficult.
The reality is that the trust, which is in my eyes the base on which love can grow, was just destroyed. Imagine that love is a plant which grows in a pot full of earth. One day you just take away the pot of earth and leave the plant lying there, the roots in the air. The plant will start dying, losing flowers and leaves and if you are not quick enough, it will die and nothing on earth can revive it. In most cases, this is what happens because a breach of trust hurts very deeply.
If there is however a last bit of earth, like the memory of the trust you once had, and if you act quickly, you can place this plant into a new pot and fill new earth into it. The plant has suffered, you cannot deny that, but if you take much care of it, it may start growing and blooming again.
You have to have the chance to express your pain and hurt and the other one has to have a chance to regret and tell you about this feeling. In order to forgive, it obviously has to be very clear that whatever your partner had with anybody outside your relationship is over once and for all. He or she has to see clearly that it was a mistake, something to regret and never to do again. This honest commitment to be true to each other is the only point where you can start from if you want to forgive and forget.
At this point I want to answer the question whether it is at all possible to forget. I think you have to. Only if you forget about it, only if you manage not to let this event disturb you anymore, you can come back to a normal relationship. Forgetting does not mean suppressing! Forgetting here means that you know it but it becomes less and less important so that you don’t keep on recalling it again and again.
If you don’t forget, you will have problems like imagining your partner having sex with someone else while you want to get intimate with each other again. Maybe you would ask your partner again and again about that other man or woman. Doing this would not be fair if you both decided to start over new.
If you decide to forgive the other one, to trust and to believe him or her that it won’t happen again, you need to let the past go. It won’t happen overnight. It is a process that can take years and even then, it is possible that the infidelity of your partner is still like a small scar on your skin, a little reminder of a bad time. If you want to try it together however, you have to have the will power to work through the emotional mess you are in, find the love that you have for each other and go through the presence into a future in which the past has been healed.
Love is a strong plant and it can survive. But it needs much care and a good soil, trust, to grow on.