It’s one thing to understand how to forgive when someone lies to you or apologize for being dishonest. You are entering a whole new ball game when you are trying to “get over” the lying all together. You may want it to just go away, but that’s not necessarily going to happen. Stopping the act of lying and/or putting away the hurt and symptoms of being lied to may take time.
After much thought, research, and work with couples over the years, I believe an apology is important, but must be done in the right way. When you apologize to your husband or wife, it is important to be genuine and direct, to validate their feelings of hurt and fear, to understand their needs, and to state a plan of how you will work not to hurt your partner in the future. These 5 different aspects to apologizing will help your husband or wife to know that you are sorry for your actions, you care about their feelings, and you desire to make sure you change, not only, how you act, but how you are going to make it right.