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Infidelity And Forgiveness

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Infidelity is defined as “a secret sexual, romantic, or emotional involvement that violates the commitment to an exclusive relationship” (Glass, 2002 as cited in Hall & Fincham, 2006). It is categorized as the accidental encounter, habitual philandering, romantic affairs, and marital arrangements. Infidelity has numerous other terms, including cheating, affair, adultery, unfaithfulness, stepping out, extra dyadic involvement, and extramarital affairs. Extra dyadic involvement (EDI) is usually used to describe sexual or emotional relationship with secondary partner while in an exclusive romantic relationship. Sexual EDI or Sexual Infidelity refers to sexual activity other than one’s long term partner (Shackelford, LeBlanc, & Drass, 2000). It …show more content…

For the transgressor to re-build the trust the offender and the victim should repair themselves. The process of forgiveness will help them to re-establish mutual trust (Freckie, 2011). However, forgiveness is not easy to achieve. Some people say that “Once a cheater, always a cheater” — this is usually said of the people to warn the victim of the transgression (DeSchiffart, 2013). Forgiveness is an intervention for different types of offenses in the relationship (Johnson, 2002). In forgiving, the couple relationships lessening of negative motivation alone are not sufficient for the relationship to fix (Kato, 2016). In the infidelity context, forgiveness does not need for the victim to excuse or condone the extradyadic involvement of the partner and the couple must reconcile. Instead, the goal of forgiveness is for the victim to have the balance view of the offender and the infidelity while the affect toward the offender is decreasing and the empathy is increasing (Gordon & Baucom, 1999). According to Fincham, Hall, and Beach (2006) forgiveness is not the same from accepting, excusing, or condoning an offense. Acceptance means that the victim perspective from the transgression has change, while forgiveness does not need to see the transgression as anything less than it is, be this unacceptable or even reprehensible. Forgiveness is also different from condoning or excusing an offense that behavior in question is needed to believe as if it was justified or

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