Can You Be Friends after the Affair?

    When Loren Ekroth, a former marriage and family therapist, and his first wife divorced in 1985, he knew he had to forgive her actions, which led to their demise. “A big part of it was that we shared a child,” says Ekroth. “But I also felt and feel strongly that the extent to which I was unforgiving was harming me. It is always the person who nurses the grudge or hatred who suffers and it would have made it difficult to live with equanimity.”   

So Ekroth did what some may think impossible: he forgave. In fact, more than 20 years later, he is now an “uncle” to his ex-wife’s son by her second marriage. And while they are not “a big happy family,” Ekroth says, they found a way to co-parent and even be close despite a divorce that was at times “very painful” for Ekroth.  

To be sure, forgiveness after an affair is no easy task. “When an affair leads to divorce, the person who’s been cheated on usually feels humiliated, bitter, and enraged,” says Mira Kirshenbaum, a marriage and family therapist as well as the author of many books on the topic, including the most recent, "When Good People Have Affairs." “This is not a favorable setting for the two people to remain friends. And in fact the evidence is that divorces caused by infidelity are one of the least favorable settings for people to remain friends,” Kirshenbaum says.  

Despite the difficulties, Kirshenbaum does believe forgiveness after an affair is possible. But several factors, including a deep understanding on the part of that cheater that was he or she did was painful to the other party, must be present.   

“What’s often not understood is that forgiveness is a process that requires the best efforts of two people,” Kirshenbaum says. “The person seeking forgiveness has to work hard to earn it. That usually means going through a very long period of eating crow listening at length to how his partner has been hurt, living with her anger, facing the enormous cost of the affair. And he or she has to take specific and often hard measures to earn back her trust. But even if he does the utmost to earn forgiveness, his partner has to have a talent for forgiveness. This includes the ability to regain trust when it’s been hurt.”  

For Donald of Walla-Walla, Wash., forgiveness was not an option when it comes to his ex. “I hope the best for her in a theoretical way,” Donald says. “But I am not sure I could ever trust her given that she kept a secret of that magnitude from me.”  

While the two are hardly still at each other’s throats, they have barely spoken since their divorce was finalized after six months of marriage more than five years ago.  He agrees with Kirshenbaum that a strong mea culpa might have helped him toward forgiveness. “I think she felt bad,” he said. “But she was not sorry.”   

The two are so estranged that at a recent dinner -- in which both were invited -- both were uncomfortable, but he has no regrets. In part because he says their friendship would be pointless. “We had many great times,” he says. “But that is over.”   

Couples without children have fewer ties to their ex-spouse and less reason to try to remain friends, she says. If there had been children, Donald says, “We would have found a way to make it work.”