Affair survival, Marriage revival.

I was reading the magazine, Simply Her (Oct 2009 issue) when i chanced upon this article on a real life encounter.

In the article, a lady, Grace (not her real name) shared about how she was able to forgive her husband, Peter despite him cheating on her several times. First, he had an affair with his married colleague which she eventually forgave him after he denied it and quit his job. Upon starting his own business thereafter, he had frequent late nights out which she suspected that something was up. Even when she was pregnant, he did not seem to care and it finally got her to engage a PI to follow him. She found out 2 years later that he was still having the affair with his ex-colleague. However, despite all these, she still forgave him and gave their marriage a second chance.

Upon reading this article, it made me ponder about interpersonal communication, a quantitative approach whereby a series of exchanges between two person slowly progressed into a point where they become a part of a unit which means to say a couple.

Communication in relationships is an interesting topic to venture in since it is part of our daily lives. In the case of this article, the couple seemed to be at the relational dissolution stage whereby different hurdles start to appear in the marriage to threaten the relationship. Betrayal like what Peter had committed is only one out of the many such hurdles. Like most girls, betrayal would probably be the top on the list of what I cannot accept in a relationship. In my view, betrayal can cause trust to be lost almost immediately and finding back that trust will be a challenge.

It is definitely not easy for Grace to overcome her own emotions to forgive her husband and put her trust in the marriage once again. Thankfully for her, the marriage began going on the right track after that. When being interviewed on how she was able to do this, she mentioned that she did not push the blame to her husband but questioned herself on whether she was doing her best as a wife. She said, “Instead of complaining all the time, I focused on all the good things I had going for me. I tried my hardest to be a nicer person – less confrontational and argumentative.” This is something that perhaps we as ladies should learn since we are the ones who are more sensitive than guys. In most relationships, the ladies would probably be the ones complaining, I have to admit that I too fall under this category. Hence, if we were to focus on the good things rather than the bad, we will probably have a better interpersonal communication?

The green portion of the article talks about the view of counsellors on such situations, whether or not the marriage is worth saving after an affair. From the interview of one counsellors, she said this, “The couple needs to be transparent and open with each other when they decide whether they’re still committed to the marriage.”

True enough, without openness and transparency, it is hard to maintain the relationship as conflicts will then happen quite often. In addition, she mentioned that the building of trust and stay vigilant is the most important thing to protect the marriage from failing again. In such relational problems, it is really subjective to different individuals. Some are able to be like Grace, accept what went wrong, forgive and move on to building a better relationship while some choose to end it and move on to finding and forming a new relationship.

I personally feel that it is only right that we know what communication in relationship is all about, from the relational formation and development to the relationship maintenance process. It is only when we understand that we learn how to battle relational dissolution. Relational dissolution is not something that we can easily prevent and it is not a bad thing, it is about how we work on it and make the better out of it!

Since it is such a subjective issue, it will be interesting to know what different individuals actually think of this, so do share your views here! (: