How to Reconnect with your Spouse After an Emotional Affair

Not long ago, an extra-marital affair was just that – getting involved with someone outside marriage. However in these times when spatial distances are easily bridged by Skyping and chatting, affairs can be possible even without any physical connection. Then there is the good o’ “we’re just friends” model where one can have an affair with a co-worker, a high-school pal, and earlier neighbor without being sexually involved. All these are instances of emotional affairs. And while the lack of sexual component may make an emotional affair appear less a threat, the effects can be equally damaging to a marital relationship. If your marriage has gone through such a breach, here are a few ways you can reconnect with your spouse.

Be prepared for hard work

If you wish to reconnect with your spouse even after evidence of an affair, presumably it is because you wish to save your marriage. However before you start on this journey, it is best to realize that you and your spouse will be required to put in some hard work into the effort to reconnect with each other. Getting past an affair and rediscovering your love for one another will simply not happen overnight, no matter how sincere the straying partner’s regret and generous the other one’s forgiveness. It will take time for you both to work through the distrust and pain caused by the affair and reach out to one another again with genuine love and respect.

Get back with your ex with this step-by-step guide.

If you were the one to stray, explain why

After your affair has been discovered, your partner is bound to ask “why”. Answer calmly and clearly why you felt dissatisfied enough in your relationship to seek outside support. Examine the reason for your indiscretion to see whether you were simply seeking novelty or looking to fill a vacuum in your relationship. However be careful not to justify your actions or make them out the result of your partner’s supposed inadequacies. Admitting the reason why you strayed will assure your partner of your honesty and help to rebuild trust.

Consider what drove your partner to the affair

On the other hand, if it was your partner who strayed into the emotional affair, consider why. Is it because you have been too busy juggling a career and home and lately have not been able to spend time with your spouse? Or is it because he/she was attracted to someone apparently more intelligent and charismatic than you? See if your spouse’s emotional affair is a sign of a midlife crisis when he/she needs reassurance from a third person. Going over the reasons of your partner’s emotional involvement will tell you which areas in your marriage need to be nurtured so that you both can feel connected to each other again.



See what you can do to set things right

No two people are perfect and every relationship has its weak spots. If it was a physical disconnect with your partner that drove you to someone else, explain clearly that you want a more intimate relationship. Suggest ways that will keep you romantically interested in each other. On the other hand, if your husband started seeing too much of a childhood pal after the birth of your second child, try to be more of a wife to him. Let somebody else take over some of the childcare responsibilities and spruce up yourself for him.  However if the emotional affair was the result of increasingly differing priorities, examine what are the common rallying points in your relationship and put them first. This is a conversation that the two of you should have had much before which may have then prohibited either one of you from seeking comfort elsewhere. But remember, better late than never. Moreover if your partner sees your sincerity in making amends, you have a better chance of regaining his or her trust.

Discover mutual interests

Many emotional affairs begin as platonic friendships based on mutual interests with a member of the opposite sex. In order to stop that from going further, get to know what interests your spouse him and see if you can share his/her pursuits. Your partner will be glad to find a co-enthusiast in you and may suggest doing things together. However this is not to say that you have to suppress your likes and dislikes and only follow his/her hobbies. Simply widen the limits of your interests and have more things to do and discuss with your spouse.

Expand your mental horizons

After several years of marriage, most couples tend to fall into a domestic routine. The only things they talk about are kids, bills and chores to do around the house. It is only a matter of time before one of them begins to seek some mental stimulation outside marriage. He/she may begin by spending more time with friends and co-workers, among which may be a person of the opposite sex. If your partner’s affair was a result of this lack of intellectual compatibility, look for ways that you can bridge the disconnect. Take up a new course or learn a new language. Read up on varied subjects and try to offer him/her opportunities for intelligent conversations at home. Your spouse will be pleasantly surprised by your new personality and head for home earlier than before. Alternately, if you had been tempted into an affair on account of another’s vibrant personality, suggest ways that you can spend more satisfying time with each other – take up chess if your partner likes it or join a debating club if your spouse is more inclined socially. Forming a bond other than physical or emotional will not only help you reconnect to each other as individuals but increase the respect and interest you have for each other.

Finally focus on little ways to express your love. If the affair was your doing and now you are sincere in making it up to your spouse, explore ways of showing your love like sending her a bunch of flowers at work or tucking in hand-written romantic letter in his lunch box. Initially your partner may still seem skeptical of these overtures but over time he or she is sure to be warmed by your attempts to make up. The essential thing is to keep trying to convince your partner that you really do care.
On the other hand if it was your spouse who had strayed, you can still make use of small gestures of love to show your marriage means a lot to you. Understand that you cannot rewind things to exactly how it was between you two. Above all look upon these efforts as a way of reconnecting you’re your spouse to build a newer, stronger and more mature relationship, one that like gold has been tested by fire but emerged the finer for it.