Likewise, the prospects of giving up the affair are similar to those of giving up a drug. You’re going to feel all the feelings you were trying to avoid by engaging in the affair. When you are feeling down and out or when you are in emotional pain, the way of escape you became accustomed to won’t be there.

You must have faith that when you end the affair (just like when you stop using a drug) and you start working on yourself and your issues, at some future time you will be in better shape and feel better than you ever have. You might not be having that experience at this moment, but keep the faith, and you can get there. In drug programs, they call this long-term process “recovery,” and it has to be a life-long plan.
If you haven’t ended the affair, now is the time to do so. There simply is no way that you can repair your relationship, your honesty, your integrity, and your life if you are still engaged in an affair.

That is sometimes easier said than done. If you have been having an affair for some time, you could be quite attached to the person you have been seeing. If this is the case, you might not “want” to the end the affair for some “potentially” good relationship with someone you currently doubt can create a good relationship. This is similar to the way an addict doesn’t “want” to give up their drug of choice for some “potentially” better life that wasn’t there for them in the past. But if you truly want to rebuild your relationship, there is no other way but to completely and unwaveringly end all communication with your paramour.

To complicate the personal difficulties you face with ending the affair, you may be concerned about the way your lover is going to react. Or, perhaps, you have already told them and they are overwrought, so you have maintained a connection with them to help them overcome their distress.
Whatever the case may be, you must now forgo all contact with your former lover. You must cross that bridge and burn it behind you. The relationship must cease in all its forms. If this doesn’t happen, your partner will not trust you again any time soon, and may never trust you again.
If you have not yet informed your lover that you are going to end the affair, then you might have to contact them one last time and tell them so. There are four possible ways you can approach this.

1. Simply do not contact them again at all.
2. Talk with them on the phone.
3. Send them a letter.
4. Send them an e-mail.

Do not meet with your lover in person to end the relationship. This never turns out well. Often the lover will try to convince you to continue the relationship or at least have one last sexual encounter. (After all, if the affair wasn’t fulfilling them on some level, they wouldn’t have been involved in it.) In addition, there is no practical way to be honest about this kind of meeting with your partner without arousing suspicion. Because ending suspicion is such an important part of the healing process, a meeting like this can serve no good.

Regardless of the way you choose to contact your lover, you should make this final contact in the presence of your partner. If you are going to have a telephone conversation, invite your partner to listen to it. If you choose to send an e-mail or write a letter, allow your partner to read this final correspondence and offer suggestions prior to sending it. The purpose of the final correspondence is primarily to begin to re-establish your trust with your partner. Therefore, you want it to meet your partner’s needs even though it will be hurtful to the paramour.

Whichever way you approach it, the tone of this final contact should be business-like, not friendly. For example, you should close your letter just with your name, not “love” or “fondly” or any other friendly or loving reference.

The message you are trying to get across should be permanent, not temporary. For example, you shouldn’t say, “I’m going to try to make our relationship work for now.” Instead, you should say, “I am recommitting to my partner. Do not contact me again for any reason.” Doing these things will show your partner in a tangible way that you are ending the relationship.

The Six Critical Rules for Ending an Affair

The following six rules are critical when you are ending an affair.

1. Make it clear that this permanently and unconditionally marks the end of the relationship and that you will not be in contact with them after this. You need to make it clear that you will not respond to any attempts at further communication. You might need to repeat these necessities a number of times during your final contact with your paramour. I urge you to write down some of the potential responses that you will want to repeat so you can respond quickly and in a decisive manner by just reading them.

2. If your ex-lover has questions about why you want to repair your relationship or how you are going to make it work, you don’t have to answer. Indeed, you don’t have to answer any of the questions your ex-lover may ask you.
Rather, you can repeat that the affair is over and that you want to make your relationship work. Stick to this line throughout the course of the conversation, repeating it as often as necessary.

3. You should inform your ex-lover that if you see them again (for example, if you had an affair with someone in your office), you will not respond in the way they are accustomed. You must let them know that you will not be friends with them. You can’t be friendly in the ways to which they were accustomed. In fact, you can’t even be friendly in ways that may come naturally for you with most people.

4. You have to be clear that if you do see your ex-lover in person again and they press you to respond to them in an intimate or comforting way or they draw you aside to talk with you out of the hearing of others, it is your responsibility to draw the line and let them know that this is not appropriate.

5. Remember, your tone should be business-like. There is no need to be cold if the situation doesn’t require it, but be cold if you need to be. Whatever you do, you must be firm. Make it clear to your ex-lover and to yourself that this affair is over and that any remaining connections you have to one another must end as well.

6. Close the conversation as quickly as possible; be rude if necessary.

In some extreme cases, the lover will continue to attempt to contact you by various means. Sometimes they will call you at home or at work. Sometimes they will try to contact you by e-mail or the post. Some people try to send messages through friends to their ex-lover. If this happens to you, you need to take immediate action.

If these attempted communications come in the form of phone messages, e-mails, or letters, show them to your partner, and don’t respond to them in any way. Some message systems allow you to delete messages without opening them or listening to them – I recommend this option if you and your partner agree to it.

if your ex-lover continues to attempt to contact you, even when you are ignoring them, block their number, change your number, or change your e-mail address. Do whatever is necessary to ensure that all communication comes to an end. Sometimes this even means quitting your job, changing your gym, or changing your schedule. This might sound extreme, but keep in mind that your relationship is at stake.

If you want it to work, you have to do what it takes. If your ex-lover’s friends attempt to get in contact with you, let them know that you have ended the relationship and will not be going back to it. Also inform them that you have no interest in knowing what your ex-lover is doing, where they are going, or with whom.

None of this will be easy. You will likely face quite a lot of emotional difficulty when you end the affair. Nonetheless, it is necessary to face this pain in order to restore your relationship.

*** Dr. Frank Gunzburg is a licensed counselor in Maryland and has been specializing is helping couples restore their marriage for over 30 years. He is also the author of How to Survive an Affair, a step-by-step healing system that can help a couple repair their relationship after it has been shattered from an affair. If your relationship has been damaged by an affair and you would like a step-by-step system for repairing your relationship, then please visit Dr. Gunzburg's site for more information: http://www.surviveanaffair.com