Learning that your spouse has been cheating on you is emotionally devastating. It is common in this situation to feel a sense of immense grief and loss because the marriage you have is so different from what you thought it was, and you may also feel rejected, undesirable, and like you can never trust your spouse again. While incredibly painful, it is important to remember that these feelings are not permanent, and it is possible to heal your marriage and stay together after an infidelity. Here are four tips for healing your marriage after an affair:

Seek Marriage Counseling

Recovering from an affair requires a lot of work from both parties, a great deal of honesty, and time. You can help make the process easier and more effective for both of you by enlisting the help of a qualified marriage counselor. A marriage counselor won't take sides and assign blame, but they will help make sure you both understand the complicated reasons that led to the infidelity.

They will also teach you specific relationship tools to regain trust, rebuild intimacy when you are ready, gain empathy for each other, and build a much stronger and more honest relationship than you had before.

Foster Openness and Honesty

In order to begin the process of forgiveness and rebuilding trust, you must first know that your partner is being completely transparent and honest with you. After so much secrecy and deception, it's crucial to build a relationship built on honesty. Your partner should be willing to answer all of your questions regarding their affair, no matter how far out of their comfort zone this is.

Under the guidance of your marriage counselor, you may want to implement new rules in your marriage, including being able to have access to formerly private email accounts, texts, etc., at least for the time being. This isn't so you can attempt to "catch" your spouse cheating again, but rather so you can regain trust and see that they have nothing to hide, and so that your partner can get out of the habit of keeping things from you.

Take Care of Yourself

You can't save your marriage if you are emotionally, spiritually, and physically depleted and without strength. It's so important to take care of yourself during this time and to begin working to rebuild your own sense of worth. This will look differently for everyone, but may involve seeing a therapist on your own (in addition to your marriage counselor), working out and doing yoga, eating a healthier diet, and deliberately taking mental breaks each day from thinking about your marriage and the affair.

You will be happier and stronger, making it easier for you to tackle the hard work of rebuilding your marriage. At the same time, taking good care of yourself means that if your marriage doesn't survive in the end (after all, only 31% of marriages last after the discovery of an affair), you will be healthy and whole, and able to manage life on your own.

Don't Rush the Process

It can be tempting to rush the process of rebuilding your marriage. After all, facing the many painful emotions that infidelity brings up, committing to months or years of marriage counseling, and truly forgiving your spouse is a long and difficult process. If you are conflict-averse and afraid of losing your partner, you may be especially prone to rush past the hard part and superficially "forgive" your spouse without ever actually processing your feelings.

This is a mistake because those painful feelings don't actually disappear. Instead, they will just get buried temporarily and pop up at inopportune times in the form of resentment toward your spouse and deep insecurity. It is much healthier to let yourself be angry and sad for as long time as it takes, while always working with your marriage counselor to process things in a healthy way.

Healing a marriage after an affair is difficult, but it's far from impossible. By following these tips, you will know you've done your best to recover trust and love in your marriage. For more information on marriage counseling, contact a counseling center like Associates For Counseling & Psychotherapy.