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Confronting Your Mate and Contemplating Your Future
Confronting a mate who you think is having an affair can be one of the most difficult challenges you'll ever face. Will your partner tell you the truth? Will he or she be willing and ready to end the illicit relationship if there turns out to be one? If so, are you willing to work through your feelings of anger and betrayal to repair the relationship if the two of you decide that's the right thing to do?
Adele Rogers St. John once said, "There is so little difference between husbands, you might as well keep the first." Though it sounds over-simplistic when it comes to dealing with the complications of an affair, statistically speaking the advice is sound. While most people know that the divorce rate in this country is around 50 percent, they are often surprised to learn that the failure rate for second marriages increases to 60 percent.
In their book Surviving Infidelity (Adams Media, 1999), therapists Rona Subotnik and Gloria G. Harris discuss the advantages of sticking things out, at least for a while. "Because we view an affair as a symptom of a problem rather than its cause, we encourage people to work through the marital or individual issues before calling it quits," they write. "If you try and you still are not able to make the marriage succeed, at least you will understand more about yourself and your marriage."
The Rebuilding Process 
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