A marriage is a commitment between two people. But if your spouse has cheated, should you stay together? An affair does not necessarily foretell the end of a relationship, but when should you cut your losses and move on? You will need to ask yourself several things to determine if your cheating partner and marriage deserve a second chance.
First, is this the first time that your spouse cheated on you, or is it a pattern? When a relationship is shattered by infidelity, the only way it can be fixed is by someone who understands not only what they did wrong, but also that their entire thought pattern before and at the time of the incident was wrong. They must be willing to completely change to create a well-balanced relationship. People do not change easily. If this was not an isolated incident, the chances that they will never cheat again are very slim. If you knew that things would never change, would your marriage deserve a second chance? If your partner does not own their bad behavior, but instead, makes excuses for it, it’s clear that they are not willing to put forth the effort it takes to change or to make the relationship better. No one can change what they do not acknowledge.
Is your partner sorry for the choice that they made, or are they sorry that they got caught? Being married means being mature enough to recognize that life is not always all about you and what feels good for you at the moment. When you get married and have children, you have an obligation that far transcends what feels good. You give up the right to be selfish. Cheating is a selfish act. Your partner needs to recognize that. Feeling sorry they cheated means that they regret what they did and understand how wrong it was. Feeling bad that they got caught is an entirely different thing.
One major thing that you need to ask of yourself in deciding whether your marriage deserves a second chance after infidelity is: if you reinvested yourself in this relationship and allowed yourself to trust again, and your partner cheated on you again, do you have the strength to recover from it? Would another incident leave you completely emotionally broken? You have to think about yourself. Do not allow yourself to get to a point where you won’t be able to trust another relationship. If your partner is a habitual cheater, it doesn’t matter how many chances you give them to change. Odds are, the relationship will eventually crumble. When it does, you do not want to be faced with life alone because you can no longer allow anyone to get close enough to hurt you again.
