A betrayal hurts so badly. The pain reaches to the very core of your being.

Infidelity throws into doubt everything about your relationship. It even makes you wonder whether you’re in a broken marriage that can ever be repaired.

If you have experienced a recent betrayal and want to save your marriage, then counseling is the key to moving forward.

Yes, you should have a therapist for yourself. However, both of you need to attend relationship counseling as well.

If either of you is in doubt about the benefits of therapy, here’s how couples counseling can save your marriage.

Identifying How Arguments Happen

One of the ways counseling can save your marriage is by identifying behavior patterns that harm your relationship. For instance, the triggers that cause both of you to spiral into an argument. You might not realize these patterns yourself, as you are so caught up in the moment when they occur.

Interestingly, those behavior patterns might manifest themselves during the counseling session! This may seem embarrassing to you, but it’s actually useful. The therapist can observe, in real-time, how both of you argue and what each of you do to respond to the other.

You and your partner can use this information to begin creating new patterns that don’t damage your relationship.

Letting Go of Resentment

Even if you have experienced a recent betrayal, resentments may have existed much longer in your relationship. To save your marriage, you both must learn to let go of those resentments.

The word “toxic” is often thrown around to describe something that causes a relationship to decay or is harmful. Certainly, resentment falls into this category. It’s very hard to forgive someone—let alone love them—when you hold onto resentment.

Rebuilding Lost Trust

Infidelity causes a loss of trust. But trust is so critical for a marriage to succeed. You need to be able to trust your partner without having double guess yourself (and vise versa).

To make this happen you certainly need to let go of anger and bitterness and know how arguments happen. However, it also means knowing that your partner is going to react appropriately when stress mounds. In essence, it requires you to use the tools you acquired in counseling to work through differences, instead of coping in unhealthy ways.

Building Communication Skills

To acquire those tools, couples need to build, refine, and continually expand their communication skills. Communication, in one form or another, is another term that’s often thrown about when trying to save a broken marriage. And that’s not to be cliché. Rather, communication is very important to save your marriage.

If you and your partner can’t communicate effectively with one another, then there’s no way to productively solve conflict or disputes between the two of you. What happens then? You each try to cope the best way you can. Yet, those “ways” are not always the best for the health of your marriage.

Providing A Safe and Neutral Space

Finally, couples therapy supplies a safe place for you and your partner to do all of this work. Your therapist will not take sides. Instead, they can provide an environment where the two of you can vent your frustrations and talk openly about your feelings.

Also, a therapist can furnish the occasional but necessary check for when things start to get heated. That way those discussions don’t spiral into arguments, and thus, cause further damage.

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To save your marriage after a recent betrayal, it will require a commitment from both you and your partner. Many broken marriages have resulted from infidelity. However, that doesn’t have to happen.

If you would like professional support to deal with infidelity, contact me for information about how couples counseling can help you both put the pieces back together.