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"  My wife of five years has been having an affair with a coworker for more than six months. As far as I know, this was the first time she cheated on me. When I found out about it, I confronted her and gave her the choice to leave or stay. She decided to stay with me and work on our relationship, but only two weeks later I discovered she was back at the other guy&amp;#039;s house. Should I forgive my wife again? Will she really change, or will she continue to stray? We have two daughters. T.J., 32, Fort Collins, CO In the grand scheme of things, yes, you should forgive her. It is good for our own mental health to forgive people and move on. The more important question is, should you work hard to forgive her now? Probably not. To forgive someone truly from the depths of our hearts, we need to have worked through our feelings of hurt, betrayal, and rage. In other words, the mere idea of throwing a dinner plate at your wife&amp;#039;s head needs to be a long distant memory. Can you honestly say that&amp;#039;s true for you at the moment?  Given your wife&amp;#039;s recent behavior, it&amp;#039;s unlikely she&amp;#039;s going to change. Does that mean you should kick her out tomorrow and change all the locks? Maybe or maybe not. The fact is, the heart tends to be a slow learner. Sometimes we have to have it stomped on a half dozen times before we realize that it doesn&amp;#039;t deserve such abuse and we begin to pay more attention and do what we need to do to protect it. What this means in a practical sense is taking it day by day. Your wife will have to do a lot to earn your trust, and time will need to pass for her to show you if she&amp;#039;s capable of changing her ways. If you can, grant her this time but don&amp;#039;t allow yourself to be beaten up by the situation. What boundaries do you need to draw? What support systems can you set up to help you? You must also realize that if things continue on in the way they have up until now, the time will probably come when you&amp;#039;ve reached your limit. So while you wait for all this to play out in whatever way it does, be sure to invest in your relationship with your girls. Enjoy them and what&amp;#039;s going on in their lives. It&amp;#039;ll help the time pass and will benefit all of you immeasurably.  Karen Karbo is an award-winning writer and author of the new book The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons From the World&amp;#039;s Most Elegant Woman. She&amp;#039;s also a mom, a writing teacher, and a horse owner. For more advice from Karen, go to redbookmag.com/karenkarbo.  Need smart advice? Maybe your best friend is suddenly acting strangely. Or your parents or in-laws are making you nuts. Or your sister always takes your moms side in an argument, instead of yours. Whatevers bugging or perplexing you about your friends, brother, sister, parents, in-laws, husband, you name it REDBOOKs Karen Karbo has the smart advice you need. Email your questions, rants, and worries to her at karenkarbo@redbookmag.com and please include your initials, age, city and state. Letters may be edited for clarity and length. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/relationships/q-and-a/a5822/my-wife-cheated-on-me/>