Does My Spouse Deserve Another Chance After Betrayal?

“Give everyone a second chance” used to be my motto … until I sat in the excruciating pain of my husband's affair. How to work through infidelity wasn’t in my wedding vows, and it's probably pretty safe to assume it wasn’t in yours either.

So why on earth would anyone agree to give their unfaithful spouse a second or, heaven forbid, a third chance to pull it together? I talk to people nearly every day who are in the midst of recovery, and I experienced two particularly poignant calls last week:

Heartbroken and filled with frustration, a betrayed wife asked me how many chances I think an unfaithful spouse should get. Her husband was in a limerent affair that he was struggling to end, and she was at the end of her rope.

The very next day, I was on a call with an unfaithful woman whose husband had been willing to work through her infidelity … Crying, she told me: “I thought my AP (affair partner) was the answer to everything that was missing in my life. Now that I’ve really ended it with him for good, I hate him, and I hate what I’ve done to my husband and to myself. My AP didn’t love me, he helped me destroy my life. I love my husband, and I’m willing to do anything to save my marriage.”

I asked her, “Have you said that to your husband?” I told her how much I admired the clarity she’d found and how proud I was of her for finding the way out of her dense affair fog.

She responded, sobbing, “He’s done. He wants a divorce. How do I get him to give me another chance?”

I responded to her question with a question, “What are you willing to do?”

Sorting Through the Aftermath

For those of us sorting through the aftermath of a grenade we aren’t responsible for throwing … how do we answer that question?

I want to acknowledge there are a significant number of betrayed spouses out there who were never even given the chance to answer that question because that choice was made for them when their partner walked away. Even if your marriage wasn't given the second chance you hoped for, we do what we do at AR because we believe your life is STILL worthy of a second chance.

For those on the fence, wondering if they should stay or go, trying to decide how many chances should be given or taken before “the decision,” this article is for you. I’m not here to “should” on anyone today. I am here to respectfully point out that you might not have enough information to make an informed decision to stay in or end your marriage.

The question: “Does my spouse deserve another chance?” can only be answered after observing and assessing their actions over time. The Candace answering this question today sounds nothing like the traumatized Candace of five years ago.

Time Brings Clarity

What actions are they willing to take and sustain? You might think you know what they’re going to do, but they already shocked you at least once, right?

Let’s circle back to almost six years ago when I (quite unintentionally) gave my husband a chance I felt certain he didn’t deserve. Lucky for my husband, my desire to protect our daughters overpowered my desire to throw all his stuff out on the lawn and file for divorce the same day!

See, when the infidelity grenade went off in my life, my twin daughters had just turned 17 earlier that month. Life was already surreal thanks to covid. Highschool classes were all still virtual, the SATs kept getting cancelled, and their college applications were due. We were living in pure hell.

We were fortunate enough to find Affair Recovery within weeks of our first D-Day (Discovery Day). When I first heard their strong suggestion not to decide right away whether to stay or go, I had a few choice words for that recommendation.

I thought, These people are crazy! I’m not drinking this recovery Kool-Aid. They want me to hold off for at least six months before deciding? I can’t even picture myself looking across the dinner table at this man six days from now!

But I did wait. Not because I was willing to admit the expert advice was brilliant. I waited because, despite being shell-shocked, I decided within minutes of D-Day that I wasn’t willing to let my daughters know anything was wrong. I remember telling my therapist: “This man has ruined my life, but I’m not going to let him take our daughter’s future down too. I’m at least going to wait until they know where they’re going to college.”

So, he got to stay, and I unknowingly bought him time to pull it together and show me and himself that he was, in fact, worthy of another chance. As it turned out, I not only did our kids a favor, but I also did myself one. The best time to make what might be one of the biggest decisions of your life is not when you are in complete and total crisis mode.

In a crisis, you’ll make an emotional decision based on fear and anger instead of an informed, rational decision backed by observing behavior and actions over time.

Don't make a big decision
on a bad day.

This is why we strongly encourage people to assess progress month-over-month, or better yet, season-over-season, to gain a more accurate picture of which direction things are trending. For both spouses, we’re aiming for progress, not perfection.

The answer to whether your unfaithful spouse deserves another chance is going to be less about what happened, and much more about what happens next.

Marriages can end over one isolated incident of acting out, or they can be reconciled and rebuilt after decades of infidelity. Early into recovery, I didn’t see it that way.

Know Better, Do Better

I’m a big fan of the idea: know better, do better. By that I mean you’re informed. You’ve learned how to create safety for yourself, your spouse, and your marriage. You’re not putting yourself into the same situations that landed you in unfaithful waters the first time.

But what if you didn’t get the right help, or enough help? What if you are treating cancer with an aspirin. Maybe you went to marriage counseling with a therapist or pastor who wasn’t an expert in infidelity. Maybe you spoke about how each of you felt, but the unfaithful spouse didn’t set boundaries. Maybe you heard remorse, but the unfaithful spouse needed a complete change in lifestyle. People aren’t just born knowing how to do this.

I will never condone infidelity in any way, shape, or form. But I will say the unfaithful spouse can’t be expected to just magically pull it together all on their own. If they’ve been in an affair of some length, had multiple affairs, or been battling an addiction, they are going to need specialized, professional help. This may or may not shock you: By the time most participants come to us at AR, on average, they’ve already had two or three affairs.

Do they have the tools they need to treat a second or a third chance like the precious gift that it is? Do they have the resources they need and are they willing to put them into place? Only time will tell. And if they aren’t given an opportunity to try, neither of you will ever know.

I am blown away by the number of calls I get where the betrayed spouse is open to getting help just to see what's possible, but the unfaithful spouse is unsure of what they want, or they say they want the marriage, but they are completely unwilling to do the recovery work. They are literally being handed a winning lottery ticket for a second chance, and they don't redeem it.

That One Detail

Then there’s the calls where I hear the betrayed spouse was willing to work though the infidelity until they learned about “that one particularly heinous detail.”

That particularly heinous detail varies greatly from person to person. For me, this was the worst of the worst of wretched things I’ve ever known. I spent hours upon hours ruminating about it with my therapist – what it meant to me and why it felt too traumatic to ever recover from.

She pointed out in the most loving way possible that I was going to need to work through the drama and trauma whether I stayed married or not. Time alone wasn’t going to fix this for me.

About 10 months into my own recovery, I remember calling my dad, who lives on the other side of the country, to give him a high-level overview of the train wreck my life had turned into. I hadn’t practiced what I would say, but it came out with honesty and self-awareness.

I said, “Dad, I don’t know if I’m going to file for divorce. I’m still sorting through the rubble. I went from changing my mind 20 times every day to now leaning in one direction or the other for almost a whole day at a time. Now that I’ve had some time to calm down and get professional help, I’m thinking I should probably feel one way or the other for at least some consistent amount of time before making the decision.”

I wanted to have peace in my soul when I made that final choice for myself and for my daughters. We here at Affair Recovery want that for you too. I hear people say far too often that they want a divorce because they just can't take the pain and they’ll never get over it. Now it’s my turn to say in the most empathetic way possible: You will need to recover from this trauma either way.

Time Will Tell

It takes two years, on average, for people to recover from a divorce. It takes 12 to18 to 36 months, on average, to recover from infidelity. You didn’t do anything to deserve this, but it is yours to heal from either way. As unfair as this might sound, you’re going to have to pick your hard.

On this side of it now, I could not have imagined the change I have seen in my husband. It was unthinkable at the time. But I'm grateful I didn't come to a quick decision and allowed the opportunity to see what happened next.

Whether you have the opportunity for a second chance or not, there is still life on the other side of this.

If you are the unfaithful spouse sleeping in that guest room or the betrayed spouse staring at the ceiling and wondering how your life became your worst nightmare, please hear me: It is okay that you don't know what tomorrow looks like. In fact, that’s actually ideal.

The uncertainty is also a placeholder while you catch your breath and observe. Focus on taking the next step. Be gentle with yourself. Give your soul time to find its footing. Not sure where to turn? Reach out to us for help with next steps.

To healing…