After you discovered your spouse’s affair they still may not have completely broken off the relationship. Sometimes a cheater might leave the door open for the possibility of cheating again. When you are the victim this can leave you feeling powerless.
You are already devastated by the news of the affair and not sure how you can move forward from here. Now you must consider how to end your spouse’s affair. You can take heart in knowing that you will survive this and have the strength to get your spouse to end all contact with the other person.
What can you do to make sure your spouse’s affair is over for good? It is actually your spouse’s responsibility to end it. It would do no good for you to try calling the other person and telling them to back off, they will not listen to you. Your spouse will have to cut them off.
You are going to have to get through to your spouse that if they want to save the marriage between, you they will have to display a vested interest in your relationship. If the person they were cheating with happened to die tomorrow would your spouse continue to cheat on you with someone else? This is the behavior that must be changed before you can save your marriage.
At this point you might feel powerless because you think your spouse can end the affair now or continue it, or save your relationship or leave you. This feeling can leave you in a state of shock not knowing what to do at this point.
Your self-esteem has been bruised but do not let it get you down. If one of your first reactions after finding out about the affair was anger then that would be good. This shows you have a great sense as to what is right or wrong when it comes to how your spouse has treated you.
Believe it or not your spouse is probably very confused at this point as well because they did not expect to get caught. They were living this fantasy while cheating thinking it was the perfect relationship, now they must make a choice between that and reality. The reality would be you and your marriage.
If your spouse is moving back and forth between saving your relationship and keeping their affair going you need to be the one that is clear thinking. Steer them towards making the right decision and ending the affair for good and focusing on saving your marriage.