O: Open yourself emotionally
Once you have completed the first step and have come clean about your offence, then the next step is to be open emotionally. What this really means is that you need to listen to the sincere thoughts and emotions from the person you have hurt.
Listen with empathy.
Avoid any knee-jerk reactions to defend yourself. They need to get these words off their chest to process their hurt.
Listen with a heart that is willing to see what you did wrong, a desire to never hurt them in this manner again, and a willingness to help them process their hurt by simply listening with empathy.
Ask for forgiveness.
It won’t be a one time thing to ask for forgiveness. Especially when the other person is talking about how you have hurt them. The necessity for more apologizing will correlate with the level of hurt you inflicted on the other person.
What you are apologizing for is the various ways you have caused the hurt. For example, your spouse may now realize that you weren’t actually going to late night business meetings and skipping family dinners, you were having an affair. The truth of the affair and infidelity is one hurt, it is another hurt that that you lied about skipping dinner.
Furthermore, it is a compounded hurt because you made this other person (the person with whom you cheated) more important than your own family. Apologizing and listening with empathy will help the healing process to begin.
This is also a time when you, the offending party, need to do some soul searching.
What was it that caused you to cheat? Resist the temptation to blame others. Seek understanding from within yourself. Look to your inner fears and you are likely to find some answers.
For example, if you cheated you may have done so out of fear of abandonment issues. Your fear of being alone caused you to seek out another relationship as a back up to your current relationship. Understanding your fear of abandonment and getting professional help for your own hurt is imperative in the healing process.
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