Nothing seems more devastating than finding out your partner is having an affair but does it have to mean the end of your relationship? Could this broken relationship be salvageable?

Important components to consider in the healing process:

1. You want to stay – even though your ego, family and friends are telling you to go.

• Ask yourself, “Why do I want to stay?”
• Is your partner remorseful? The answer needs to be yes.
• And although you can never be held responsible for someone else’s bad behavior, do you accept responsibility for your behavior?
• Did you know there were problems and did you look the other way and not want to confront them? You cannot stay if you stay in that victim mentality.

1. You must be willing to get professional help – both as a couple and individually.

• Couples therapy by itself does not work. Both of you need to do individual work.
• Cheating is NOT a sexual issue but a character issue. And refusing to deal with “red flags” puts one in denial.

1. Stop telling everyone your story to gain consensus. We all know it was a bad thing to do and besides repetition makes the hurt worse.

• The more you tell your story the longer you will feel victimized.
• Re-hashing the details hard-wires the dysfunction even more.
• If you want to heal, you need to zip it.

1. You once had good chemistry with one another.

• Now is the time to be really honest with yourself. Did you once have good chemistry with your partner or was that a part of the relationship that was never so great?
• If the chemistry was never there to begin with, now might be a good time to end the relationship.

1. Going through the process allows us to forgive.

• You need to feel the hurt AND remember the good times – both are important in the healing process.
• Nothing is either all good or all bad – simply “what is”, and if we are able to deal with reality, we have a chance for a re-do.

In a national competition, Chandra Alexander, MSW, was selected by THE OPRAH MAGAZINE as the Life Coach to deliver a series of coaching sessions to the grand prize winner of their prestigious Toyota Moving Forward contest. She also spent five years on NBC/TV “DAYTIME” giving a weekly “Reality Check”. Chandra has been living and teaching authenticity for the last 30 years and is the founder of Coaching for Authenticity, a place to explore and discover the essence of who you really are.

1. No one really cares what you do. People are busy living their own lives.
   • It’s an incredible revelation when you realize no one is really thinking of you all the time.
   • It is our ego that causes us to think we are so important in other’s lives.

1. People interfere in your life to the degree that you let them. Set boundaries.
   • Are people in your business that don’t belong there? If so, set boundaries.
   • Being defined by what other people think is nonsense. Only you know what is right for you.

1. Doing what someone else thinks you “should” do never works. You will always have a raging inner battle if you do this.
   • Our need to be accepted fights with our need to be authentic. This inner battle will cause us much grief.
   • Take should and ought out of your vocabulary.  Whenever I hear the word should, I instinctually know what I want to be doing is the opposite. 

1. Be brave. No one really knows what you need but you. Trust that.
   • Sit quietly and still the mind. We access truth through a quiet mind.

In a national competition, Chandra Alexander, MSW, was selected by THE OPRAH MAGAZINE as the Life Coach to deliver a series of coaching sessions to the grand prize winner of their prestigious Toyota Moving Forward contest. She also spent five years on NBC/TV “DAYTIME” giving a weekly “Reality Check”. Chandra has been living and teaching authenticity for the last 30 years and is the founder of Coaching for Authenticity, a place to explore and discover the essence of who you really are.