Why Some Partners Will Forgive Infidelity

Infidelity is one of the most painful, traumatic experiences someone will ever encounter. Relational betrayal breaks hearts, shatters dreams, and destroys trust. Both men and women are guilty of being unfaithful, yet many are forgiven. Infidelity does not have to mean the end of a relationship; it is often the beginning of a deeper partnership in terms of understanding the necessity of love, loyalty, honesty, and respect. Why do some partners decide to forgive the unforgivable? Research has some answers.

Categories of Cheating

Within relationships, people are unfaithful in different ways. Ashley E. Thompson et al. (2020) explored the variables that determined what types of infidelity were forgiven more easily than others.¹ Studying the relationship between behavior, gender, and forgiveness, among other variables, they found that men forgave infidelity more than women and that the most forgivable behaviors were solitary, followed by emotional and online. Sexual behavior was the least forgivable.

Posttraumatic Growth

Ashley Heintzelman et al. (2014) looked at post-infidelity trauma, forgiveness, and growth among couples who stayed together.² They note that both clinicians and researchers recognize that people can heal from infidelity trauma and embrace both forgiveness and personal growth, which they defined as “posttraumatic growth” (PTG). Examining a group of people who remained in a relationship after a partner had been unfaithful, they examined trauma, forgiveness, and relationships of differentiation of self from family of origin. They found that differentiation was positively related to forgiveness and moderated the relationship between trauma and forgiveness. Arguably of particular significance to the ability to continue a relationship post-infidelity, Heintzelman et al. found that forgiveness was the only significant predictor of PTG.

Post-Infidelity Persuasion

Menelaos Apostolou and Nikolaos Pediaditakis (2022) examined post-infidelity persuasion tactics used to win a second chance.³ Are such tactics successful? Sometimes, if they are persuasive. They cited one previous study (Apostolou and Demosthenous, 2021) that identified 32 reasons likely to lead people to forgive infidelity, classified into four broader factors, in order of likelihood: (1) when the partners’ children in common asked the innocent spouse to forgive his or her partner, (2) when the innocent spouse (this time) had also been unfaithful in the past or was planning to be in the future, (3) when there was reduced likelihood of future infidelity, and (4) when the innocent spouse was financially dependent on the wayward spouse.

In their research, Apostolou and Pediaditakis found that, sure enough, the tactics that were used to solicit forgiveness significantly mirrored the factors that led people to forgive infidelity in the previous study. They did, however, find significant sex differences in the use of tactics. Specifically, except for the tactic of enlisting the assistance of relatives and friends, women were more willing to use persuasion. They speculate that this might be due to the physical strength difference between men and women causing women to rely more on psychological manipulation.

In every case, forgiveness is a careful, prayerful decision to extend grace based on a variety of relational factors, unique to each couple—a decision that takes all relevant factors into consideration and that, optimistically, should only need to be made once.

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