Hello Jan. Are you in your husband also in marriage counseling? Do you both have a strong mentor in your life that can help you guys as you seek to rebuild your relationship?
Getting over hurt and pain is very challenging. My wife and I are trying to stay together. I’ve been married for 14 years, have 4 kids and the last two years have been very rocky, mostly due to me 🙁
You never really get over the old memories. As time progresses, they are more and more replaced by good memories and positive feelings of hope. The good stuff simply outweighs the bad stuff..
The challenge here is that the bulk of the burden will be on you. Since you were the wronged party, the pace of the restoration will naturally be set by you. Rebuilding trust is very difficult and often times, we over-estimate our capacity to forgive and forget.
Depending upon how long you’ve been in the relationship and what is at stake, its often times easier for the parties to give it up entirely vs working to make something that is horribly broken and FUBAR’d a viable relationship again.
If you and your husband are serious, I suggest you enter into a new relationship (not the old one) with rules, boundaries and guide lines. Your husband needs to understand and anticipate that you are still recovering from the damage that he did. He will need to be extra patient, extra loving and extra careful. You also need to understand that HE IS TRYING HARD. If he brings you a cup of coffee in the morning or runs out to the store late at night to get you something to eat because you are hungry; those are efforts for you. Sometimes, the offended spouse in this kind of recovery is quick to list out everything that other spouse is doing wrong but omit the things that he/she is doing right or his or her efforts. There needs to be rules that govern what happens when someone is angry or frustrated. What should that person do? You need keywords that both of you will respect and honor. Finally, I think you both need to set a timetable. IF 3 months down the line, you find that you are very unhappy and things are simply not working, its ok to both admit that you tried. I don’t believe God intended for folks to stay married and unbearably unhappy for the rest of their lives for the sake of staying “married”.
I sincerely hope this helps.