The dust has settled, you’ve decided to stay together and work things out and begin the process of moving forward…it can seem like an impossible task.
While I don’t think that ether is every really a justification for an affair, if you are going to reconcile successfully, you both need to take a hard look at your marriage and see the areas where you had problems. Because this can be a very difficult experience to go through, I suggest that you wist until the initial “rawness’ of finding out about the affair has faded a bit.
This is not the time for holding back. You both need to be completely up front and honest about you needs and which o them you feel aren’t being met. Decide together how you will both go about meeting them.
I’ve found that one of the biggest misconceptions about marriage is that spouses somehow “complete” each other. When you think about it, that’s asking someone to commit to a task that’s truly herculean, which is really quite unfair. No one can “complete’ someone else, and expecting them do do so can leave both spouses feeling very frustrated.
I prefer to see it more as spouses compliment each other. They are two halves to the same puzzle ( marriage) . Their edges fit together, and if they don’t they find a away to make it work.
There’s also a misconception that a good marriage is happy all the time, there’s no fighting and that everything is all love and romance. The truth simple is that it’s not. married people can have periods of unhappiness, they may fight, there may be days when love and romance may seem out of the question. That’s okay. As long as you two recognize that this too shall pass, that you make sure to talk to each other about how you are feeling, that you make yourself heard, you can weather the storm.
One of the biggest lies about marriage that I’ve ever heard is that ” if she loves me, she’ll know how I’m feeling, i  don’t have to say I’m sorry,  she just knows I love her” ( or him, as the case may be).
That is so untrue! No one can read someone else’s mind, saying sorry can make a big difference in how someone feels, and everyone needs to hear ” I love you” from their spouse…especially during the difficult times.