*Note from Mark and Jill: We’re so glad to share that the No More Perfect Podcast is now available on YouTube! We love finding new ways to connect with you, and we hope you enjoy the added experience of watching along as you listen.
Experiencing infidelity or broken trust in your marriage is one of the hardest challenges a couple can face, but that doesn’t mean it has to be the end your relationship. In this conversation, we are wrapping up our series on what it looks like to heal from betrayal in marriage, and this time, we are talking about the final step—how to move forward.
The road to restoration and reconciliation is not an easy path to take, but if both spouses are committed, all the hard work is so worth it. From personal experience, we can say that it is absolutely possible to transform your marriage into something that’s even better and healthier than it was before. We call this achieving a “2.0 marriage.”
To get there, you have to go through the four phases of affair recovery: rupture, repentance, reconciliation, and finally rebuilding trust. The fourth one is typically the longest phase of the journey, and that’s the chapter we’re focusing on today.
In this episode, you’ll hear:
- The elements of a healthy apology
- What it means to “push accountability”
- Why personal growth is an important part of rebuilding your marriage
- And more!
We hope that hearing our personal story of crisis, repair, and recovery has been helpful to you! If you’ve been walking through infidelity or broken trust, our goal with this series was to provide a valuable resource on your road to rebuilding your marriage.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Prefer to watch this episode? You can now view and subscribe to our YouTube.
- BONUS: Intent vs. Impact | Episode 170
- What Does It Mean to Push Accountability? | Episode 255
- BONUS: Why Marriage Should Be 70/30, Not 50/50
- FREE Rebuilding Trust On-Demand Webinar
- Rebuilding Trust Course
- [BOOK] No More Perfect Marriages
- [BOOK] My Heart is Broken
- [BOOK] I Really Messed Up
- As a thank you for listening, get your 3 free eBooks
My Key Takeaways:
1) Trust needs to be rebuilt on both sides. The person who is responsible for the affair or broken trust in a marriage isn’t the only one who needs to rebuild trust. Even if you didn’t commit the action that harmed your relationship, it can still be valuable for both spouses to reflect on how they may have contributed to the dysfunction in their marriage so that positive changes can be made going forward. For the person who broke the trust in the marriage, part of your job when rebuilding that trust is to understand what caused the behavior so you can avoid repeating it in the future. This is a deeply individual process, as there are so many ways trust can be broken besides infidelity. We explore some of those in this episode of the podcast: What Broken Trust Looks Like Outside of Infidelity | Episode 90.
2) Rebuilding trust takes time. We like to use the analogy of filling a bathtub with water—with the water representing the trust in your marriage. When trust is broken, it’s like the spouse who committed the betrayal pulled the plug and drained most, if not all, of the water out. As a marriage goes through the process of rebuilding trust, it’s like refilling the “trust water”, one spoonful at a time. It isn’t a quick process. It’s small, consistent action over time that fills up your tub.
3) There cannot be growth in your marriage without personal growth. One of the lessons we discovered on our journey is that there would be no Mark and Jill 2.0 if there was not first a Mark 2.0 and a Jill 2.0. Before we could elevate our marriage, we each had personal work to do so that we could unpack the baggage we both brought into our relationship. This baggage included things like false beliefs, unhealthy coping mechanisms, poor communication tactics, and experiences from our childhoods. It’s not until we take the time to identify and address these areas that we can move forward as a healthier version of ourselves and work towards a 2.0 marriage.
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