How to Forgive Yourself for Betraying Your Partner

A relationship is forever changed the moment a person cheats on their partner. One choice, often fueled by deep issues that went unseen, causes trauma, heartache, and often the dissolution of a relationship or marriage. As the guilty party, you can more easily navigate this chapter if you remain humble, honest, and willing to face the consequences of your choices.

Though you have caused much grief and pain, and even if things will never be the same again, you are not beyond redemption. A part of anyone’s journey to becoming a better person involves learning how to forgive yourself for some of your worst mistakes.

Why did you do it?

There are a million reasons why people cheat, and none of them are a justification for doing it. However, when you are forced to think honestly about why you crossed a boundary in a relationship or marriage, it is the beginning of understanding yourself and your beliefs.

You might have felt entitled to do it, you might have been impulsive about it, or you might have been calculating in your actions. Before you can learn how to forgive yourself, you need to know what you are forgiving yourself for.

Infidelity is not always sexual in nature. Even when it seems entirely about physical attraction and sex, there is often something deeper that is ultimately motivating you to cheat. Betrayal doesn’t happen by accident, even when it escalates from an impulsive choice. You had forethought, intention, and, deeper than that, a belief about the relationship you’re in and the partner you’re with.

For example, you might believe that a bit of flirtation is fun and harmless. Maybe you’ve seen your partner flirt with others. You might think that the relationship has become stale to the point that a secret tryst wouldn’t affect your partner. You might believe that you have become so unattractive in your older age that anyone who looks at you with desire is hard to resist.

Beliefs like these are like the rudders on a ship. They are small and unseen, but they determine the direction of the ship. If you were to ask yourself why you cheated, what answer would you give? When you have answered honestly, consider how your answer reflects your beliefs about the relationship, your partner, or yourself.

Hard Truths About Forgiveness

It may take months and even years to discover what motivated you to betray your partner. Despite this, your partner will often demand it of you as they try to understand your choices. You owe them an explanation, even when you haven’t understood your own actions. In moments alone, try as much as you can to reflect on yourself, your choices, and your underlying beliefs. That will help you communicate with your partner, though they might not understand or accept what you tell them.

Here are some hard truths about forgiveness:

Your partner is not obligated to forgive you

They are their own person, with their own issues, making their own choices. It’s true that if they don’t forgive you, it will likely affect them negatively for the rest of their lives and affect their future relationships. But they are not obligated to forgive, and likely will not soon forget. Betrayal is a form of trauma, and even the simplest trauma takes between three and five years to move on from.

Forgiveness is complex and might not repair the relationship

Forgiveness is a complicated, messy journey that goes back and forth through tangled emotions and sometimes makes things more complicated. Like with physical injuries, betrayal trauma leaves a scar long after the wound has healed. It serves as a reminder for the person not to trust so easily again, or to be less generous with their heart.

Forgiving and forgetting hardly ever go hand in hand. You might have changed their life forever, not for the better.

You cannot move on until you’ve found forgiveness, and that means you have to learn how to forgive yourself

They might not find it easy to forgive, but you must learn how to forgive yourself. Self-forgiveness does not come easily. All too often, people are crippled by the shame and guilt of what they did. Other times, people protect themselves by being proud of their choices, believing they don’t require forgiveness.

You need to come to the point where you can acknowledge where you went wrong and recognize that you are better than your worst choices.

How to Forgive Yourself

You might have wrecked everything and changed people’s lives forever. You are still worthy of forgiveness. You can still move forward, making better choices, even when you can’t make up for the mistakes you made in the past. People often think that forgiveness is the same as wiping the slate clean and starting over again. It can be that, but never in the case of infidelity and cheating.

You haven’t made a mess on the counter that can be cleaned up and forgotten. You have taken an ax to a tree and hacked away, even if the cheating was a singular event. You have not only changed the relationship forever, but you have changed the way your loved one sees you, and the way you see yourself. It will take years for that tree of trust to grow back, if it ever does.

Here are some steps you can take to walk toward healing and learn how to forgive yourself:

Be honest

The first step to coming clean is honesty. In this instance, honesty begins with confessing what you did, and continues with reflecting on what motivated you, and what you want. It might feel shameful to admit to failures and weaknesses in your character, but it’s more shameful still to pretend, lie, and gaslight. Learning how to forgive yourself begins with being brutally honest about your choices and your character.

Accept blame

It’s tempting to point your fingers at your partner and your relationship, but you will never learn how to forgive yourself if you blame everyone else for what happened. If you are both willing to work on the relationship, you will both have to take responsibility for rebuilding it. That cannot happen until you have taken ownership of your failures, regardless of your partners’ mistakes, faults, and flaws.

Continue working on yourself

You have a future, even if your relationship does not. Your choices might have destroyed the chances of a future with your loved one, but there is still a future for both of you, even if it is apart. Regardless of how it feels, you do not have to forever live in the shame and guilt of what you did. You still have an opportunity to go forward armed with a deeper knowledge of where you are broken, and most importantly, what you want in the future.

There is hope

You might have made the biggest mistake of your life, and it might affect you for years to come, but you are not beyond hope. There might be a long way to go as you try to make things right, and ultimately, it might not work out. What matters is that you are willing to be honest, to accept the blame for what you did, and to work on yourself in the future.

You can still learn how to forgive yourself and move on as a changed person. You might be a little scarred and heartbroken, but your greatest mistake can teach you how to be humble, honest, and willing to do what it takes to make things right.

It’s not always easy to talk about your failures, even with friends. When you meet with a counselor, you are meeting in a confidential space with someone who will listen and reflect, but never judge. That doesn’t mean the sessions will always be easy, because working on yourself never is. However, if you would like to start counseling to move toward healing and hope, please contact us for more information.