by Amy Goodyear

Created on: May 17, 2008

It is highly unlikely that an affair would ever be forgotten, so if you cannot forget, how can you possibly forgive? Adultery is far from being a forgivable sin.'

One of the most important elements of a marriage is trust and once one partner in that marriage has cheated and broken that trust, it is impossible to get it back. Some people claim that time is a great healer and that you can learn to trust again, maybe that is true but I find it hard to believe that it would be that easy.

Once someone has been cheated on, even if they choose to 'forgive' the person who cheated, it will always be on their mind, weeks, months, even years down the line. When their partner stays out late, the questions will start; where are they; who are they with; what are they doing? The paranoia will eat away at them until it becomes an obsession and they cannot function unless they know the whereabouts of their partner at all times.

If this is how the cheated party feels, can they really have forgiven the wife or husband who cheated on them? Forgiveness is supposed to free you from the anger and hurt, but surely that would only apply if you choose to stay with the partner who cheated on you. If you stay with them you have to continue to see them everyday and that would be a constant reminder of what they did to you and how much they had hurt you. How can forgiveness possibly help?

No matter how much you love someone, if they share the intimacy with someone else, that should only be shared with you, the pain and hurt is not something you can easily recover from. Once they have caused that much pain how is it possible to look at them in the same way, let alone love them?

Regardless of whether or not the couple stay together, the marriage could never be the same so adultery effectively puts an end to a marriage. There can be no trust after a betrayal therefore the foundations of marriage are no longer there to hold it together.

I know that if my partner cheated on me it would be over, no second chances. I love him and trust him never to hurt me so if he betrayed that trust, I could never forgive him.

Why should an adulterer be forgiven? It is almost giving them the green light to do it again, if they have been forgiven once then why not a second, third or even fourth time? Maybe they won't cheat again but is that something that can be relied upon? There are too many questions leaving too much doubt and as I have heard many times before, once a cheat, always a cheat!'

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