Is It Possible to Forgive Your Spouse Too Early after Infidelity?

[Music] today I'd like to have a discussion with you and answer the question that I think not every betrayed spouse struggles with it but a lot of them do especially when you are looking at forgiveness and reconciliation and should you restore the marriage and what does that look like it's basically the question of can you forgive your spouse too early the answer is absolutely I do believe that you can forgive your spouse too early now that might be to the chagrin if you will of the unfaithful spouse who may go oh gosh Samuel really like why can't you just applaud the fact that they're forgiving us and move on because if I do that I'm not taking notice of the fact that that could be an incredibly monumental mistake which actually unfaithful spouse will cause more harm and pain and difficulty for you in the future you see it is possible to forgive too soon and when you forgive too soon there is a series of pitfalls there's a series of struggles that come your way that we're going to talk about today a bit of a disclaimer what I'm not going to be saying is that you should hold forgiveness over your spouses head to manipulate them or make them do things or make them do a B and C that's not what I'm saying there has to be a very pure heart that says when should I forgive how should I forgive I'm not going to hold this over their head but I'm not going to lay out this cheap forgiveness because that will cause more difficulty for you as well but today I want to talk to you about what happens when you forgive too soon I hear it pretty frequently you know Samuel I found out my spouse cheated and within you know a week or so I just made the commitment I was going to forgive them and I just forgave them but now things are so hard things are so difficult and the true this when you try and forgive too soon you put this unreasonable expectation upon yourself as a betrayed spouse because you struggle with will look I forgave them right if you come from faith you prayed a couple prayers if you don't come from faith you just made the internal decision to say yeah I'm going to forgive you but then nothing really changed it's still hard it's still painful it's still difficult and then you're finding out new information and so then you struggle with will do I need to forgive the new information as well and so there's this overwhelming confusion you see when you try and just forgive too soon it falls under this unreasonable expectation that you should very coherently like a shopping list okay I'm gonna simply make the decision not feel any emotion and just decide okay I'm just gonna forgive and then I'm gonna be happy and everything's gonna work out great it doesn't work that way you're putting this unreasonable weight upon you and then you get these other people right that will sit with you whether there are pastors whether they're from whatever vocation or friends or even some therapists that'll say look you just need to forgive them and everything will get better or here's another one look until you forgive them and get over it nothing's gonna change now I will tell you that forgiveness is a key component to the recovery process but only when you're ready and only when there's been safety by the unfaithful spouse for a pretty significant period of time should you venture out into the waters of forgiveness but anybody that rushes you to forgive probably doesn't have your best interest at heart and they don't understand that forgiving too soon makes you feel like you should just all be better now and that's just simply not the truth the next thing we do when we forgive too early is we make it harder on ourselves and we send confusing messages to both our self and the unfaithful because we think we'll I've forgiven them everything should be easy now it doesn't work that way you see forgiveness is a process and there are layers to forgiveness that's why someone may genuinely forgive their unfaithful spouse and then two three four six months later they start to deal with more anger and they start to feel this sense of resentment well up inside of them and they're confused and it's almost paralyzing where it's like look we did this recovery work and I forgave my spouse but now it's like I'm really angry and rage and resentment and I don't know why well it's a very common scenario that maybe you're coming up against a new level or a new layer of pain and hurt and trauma that you didn't even know was there and so now it's about maybe forgiving that layer maybe it's forgiving new information maybe it's you have processed more about the infidelity in our realizing man like I don't even know about that level of pain or consciousness if you will and it's time to forgive that new level it doesn't mean that you haven't forgiven them because in many ways you can only forgive what you are aware of you can only forgive what you know is going on inside of you so if you don't know that there's another level of trauma or pain or hurt or violation if you will that's out there you don't necessarily know that you need to forgive it and so some would say we'll look there should just be a blanket forgiveness I forgive the unfaithful and I move on down the road it doesn't work that way because you're not even necessarily in touch with some of the pain that is going to come six months or a year down the road so does that mean that you shouldn't forgive right now no when you feel safe when there's momentum by the unfaithful when you feel healthy enough it's vital that you can say look I'm wanting to forgive and you can extend forgiveness and you can extend mercy and you can forgive the unfaithful for what they've done that doesn't mean that everything's over you may have to do that again a few more times it just really depends upon the severity the situation and if there's new information or as you progression your recovery you might be more acquainted later down the road with some feelings and emotions that you didn't even know we're there and it's going to be essential that you then move through them with forgiveness additionally when you forgive too early you minimize the pain that you're actually in you see so many people want to just forgive early on not necessarily because they want to forgive but they want to kind of throw a blanket over the fire and think that man if I just forgive all of this will go away and I understand that it doesn't work that way though because you are in the middle of trauma and there's no magic wand and so grief trauma has to be worked through you don't necessarily just grieve and feel hurt and go kam done now you carry on with that grief and it will get better as you do grief work it doesn't necessarily magically disappear but you do get stronger and healthier and you do do experience healing in a way that causes you to to say you know I'm doing okay I'm making it I'm getting stronger I'm not struggling every single day to just find hope and a reason to live I'm actually smiling I'm getting a new life back there is no magic one and forgiveness isn't a magic one and forgiveness cannot be used to just go look I don't I don't want to process the pain on I don't want to process I don't I just want to kind of stay in denial of the enormity of what I'm feeling so I just I'm just gonna forgive him and move on I'm sorry that's gonna come back to you and probably six to twelve months and really traumatize you even more because you'll be so confused as to I thought I forgave them why is the anger the emotion the pain that hurts so intense another reason to be careful about forgiving too early as you could be subjecting yourself to relapse and the unfaithful continuing to act out because in their mind will you've forgiven them so the impact wasn't that significant it really wasn't that bad oh this is all I'm going to suffer well that may minimize the recovery work that they do that may minimize the intensity of their work ethic and what they're willing to do to get healthy that may minimize their urgency their passion their desire to get healthy because there wasn't much of an impact now that that does not mean that you have to somehow torment them harass them shame them for their actions and somehow make them suffer because that will actually work against you finally I don't know that this is the most important but I think it's one of the most weighty principles about forgiving too early is you as a betrayed are extending something so private so precious so close to your heart you're extending your forgiveness to the violator the wound er the unfaithful spouse it's the essence of who you are it's your willingness to give up having a better past it's your willingness to give up the right to continually use it against them it's deciding that you're going to choose to live with the consequences of their actions that's not cheap that's everything close to your heart if you just flippantly throw that out if you just say yeah okay let's just you know trying to erase it and move on you are more than that your forgiveness is more than that your desire your love the essence of who you are as a man or a woman is essential it's vital it's not something that you want to casually throw out you want to make sure that you have navigated through those emotions you've prayed or you've meditated or you've consciously cest what you are doing forgiveness is wonderful as someone who's been the recipient of another woman's forgiveness for diabolically shattering our vows let me tell you that forgiveness is almost just impossible to put into words to describe the incredible willful decision to extend mercy to another human being when it comes to something as awful as infidelity you don't want to hand that out cheaply unfaithful you don't want to take something so precious something so close to you're betrayed spouses heart and step on it drop it treat it with this familiarity treat it with this sense of yeah and trample on it I mean it is something that's so vital to them it comes from one of the most vulnerable places of their being and they are extending it to you if that isn't something to hold precious I don't know what is you you

Channel: Affair Recovery

Views: 16,390

Rating: 4.945055 out of 5

Keywords: infidelity, overcoming infidelity, infidelity scars, samuel, surviving infidelity, beyond affairs, betrayal, beyond betrayal, angry cheater, anger, anger management, strong emotions

Id: BrLE8RuIK0U

Length: 12min 52sec (772 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2019