Mr.Green in the Street

It might seem unfathomable when you first find out about your partner cheating on you, but it is possible to repair your relationship and emerge as an even stronger and happier couple. The success of your relationship after an affair hinges on both partners wanting things to change, and on knowing the right areas to focus your efforts on. Follow these top tips on how to have a happy and healthy relationship after an affair:

Have realistic expectations.

No relationship will magically be healed over night. Overcoming an affair takes hard work, commitment, and lots of time, but you can have a good relationship after cheating. Keep your expectations reasonable and don't expect things to improve right away. There's a long road ahead when it comes to mending a relationship after it's been rocked by a cheating scandal so be patient and prepare yourself for the work to come. There will be times where you feel your progress is moving backwards, times where you're frustrated with each other, and times where you feel like giving up. Stick with it and make the promise to each other that you're going to put your relationship first, no matter what. Creating a happy relationship after an affair is a journey that you'll both need to take, and the end result is worth it if you can put the time and effort in together.

Communicate, communicate, communicate.

The importance of communication cannot be stressed enough. It's a critical for any couple, especially when you're working on fixing your relationship after cheating. Both people need to learn to express their emotions and not keep them silent or letting them build up inside. Your partner will never know how you feel unless you tell them, and they can't do anything to change the way you feel if you stay quiet. Communication is easy once you get into the habit of saying what's on your mind and letting your partner know how you're feeling. Work through the complicated feelings during the aftermath of an affair by talking it out and keeping things in the open.

Have separate interests.

It may seem counterintuitive but doing things apart can actually help a couple be closer together. Life can get dull when if you do everything together. Keep things interesting and fresh in your relationship by ensuring that you both have your own lives as individuals. When you do spend time together you'll have more to talk about, find each other more interesting, and have more respect for one another. It's more exciting to spend time with your partner when you have new things to tell them or they can teach you something new that they've learned on their own.

Make sex a priority.

While it might be hard to be intimate right away after your partner cheats, there will come a time when you're ready for sex again. If you want to create a happy relationship after an affair you'll need to make sex and intimacy one of your top priorities. This means carving out time to make it happen, making sure you both initiate it, and putting extra effort into attracting and enticing your partner. Remember how the sex was when you first started dating and try to keep that spirit alive as you work towards repairing your relationship. New couples have sex often and have fun doing it while people in long-term relationships tend to be more complacent and sex becomes monotonous. Act like newlyweds and put sex at the top of your to-do list. A healthy sex life is a major indicator of a happy and successful relationship, and any couple can achieve this, even after an affair. It's simply a key component to fixing a relationship after cheating.