Affair Recovery
Someone cheated. Everyone is hurting. Now what?
Your beloved has cheated. You’ve been confronted with a hoard of evidence and your guts are churning. The shock is visceral, and you’re completely preoccupied with the pain of discovery. You cannot think of anything else. How could this be happening? You don’t know what to do.
Maybe you have been feeling like something is off? Things just aren’t adding up. No matter how hard you try to talk about what you feel, you’re not getting anywhere. Maybe you’ve even found something, confronted your partner, and their answers aren’t making sense. You’re not crazy but you are doubting yourself.
Maybe you’re the one hiding or unsure of what to do now. Uncertain of what you want, you wrestle internally in angst. Do you tell your partner? How? Will they hate you? Will it be the end of the relationship? It’s scary.
The moment betrayal is discovered, the couple enters crisis mode. The relationship is in critical condition and needs immediate help.
When people find out their partner has been lying to them, there is sometimes a gap between finding out, and seeking help. People try to resolve the problem, wait to see if it was a onetime offense, or are struggling with depression or other feelings. It’s hard to ask for help. Facing a trust violation evokes feelings of anger, rage, shame, embarrassment, humiliation, fear, blame, guilt, and anxiety.
It’s important to ask for help as soon as possible. A skilled infidelity therapist acts as the triage unit at the emergency room, helping the couple deal with the urgency of a severely broken promise.
Therapy for affairs, infidelity, or other trust violations must be done carefully and effectively to stop ongoing transgressions, heal each partner, and prevent relapse.
The reality of affairs is they end the relationship as we currently know it. Some couples eventually discover they cannot heal together and decide to separate. Others learn to forgive, rebuild, and create a new relationship founded on principles that work. I would be happy to help you navigate during this vulnerable time.
As a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, I’ve helped countless couples face themselves and each other. It’s important to work with someone who understands affairs thoroughly and helps you feel safe. Affairs are indicators of larger, core problems that must be resolved. Affair recovery is a specialty in the world of counseling and involves multiple stages of treatment to be successful.
Affairs are common, can totally blindside people, and cause intense emotional reactivity.
Affairs occur more frequently than most people realize or care to admit. They devastate relationships and cause long-term pain for everyone involved. Immediately following the discovery of cheating, people are wrenched into a painful vortex of confusion, disbelief, anger, rage, sleeplessness, and preoccupation. Some people become physically ill and experience stomach issues, vomiting, panic attacks, depression, and/or loss of appetite.
If the distress continues people report weight loss, difficult concentrating, and problems at work or with their children, family, or friends. Everyone wrestles with a loss of personal identity. It’s common to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms including:
1. Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories about the affair. Remembering the day, time, or season you discovered the infidelity. You may go over and over, an exorbitant number of times, the evidence you have found, the day you found out, the story of the betrayal as it unfolded.
2. Recurrent nightmares. Nightmares are common during recovery as people are wrestling through the disintegration of the life they once knew. Even with successful recovery, sometimes people will dream in metaphors about previous times in their lives when things were stressful. It’s common years after healing from an affair to encounter something stressful but unrelated to the affair and have nightmares about someone cheating. These are cheating dreams, or more commonly referred to as anxiety dreams.
3. Hypervigilance and increased startle response. The phone rings, messages ding, your partner quickly shifts from using the phone to putting it down when you enter the room.
4. Flashbacks: recurring intrusive and distressing thoughts and feelings that pop up unexpectedly. You’re at a restaurant wondering your partner brought their affair partner here. You’re at a soccer game remembering the evidence you found of your partner involved in the affair partner’s life.
5. A shift in perception about yourself. Feelings of worthlessness, doubt, fears of being inadequate. You might worry if your partner ever loved you or if anyone else ever could.
6. A shift in perception about others. You may have ongoing trust issues, fears about it happening again or with someone new.
7. Avoidance of internal and external cues. You might want to avoid people, places, things, music, etc. associated with the affair or the affair partner. Maybe they had sex in your house, and you can’t even stand to be there; maybe you even decide to move.
8. Depression. You may experience a loss of interest in people, places, hobbies you previously enjoyed. This feels like a deep abyss. Nothing seems to bring you joy, or give you peace. Nothing seems to matter. You lose track of yourself, your goals. Friends and family notice you’re not yourself.
9. Other changes. Irritability, angry outbursts, you’re mad at everything or for no apparent reason. Difficulty concentrating. Difficulty sleeping. Increases in self-medicating including increased use of alcohol, marijuana, spending sprees, or eating that leads to weight gain.
As humans, we write a story about everything we experience. Affairs disintegrate our stories, destabilize our realities, and unravel our identities.
So many people tell me they would never have expected infidelity from their partner and cannot believe what has happened. Others are shocked by their own choices, unable to relate to who they have been: “This isn’t me; I've never been a cheater. I’m not that person.”
Betrayal has been on the planet for as long as humans have. Nowadays, the opportunities for transgressions have skyrocketed. Technology and social media make it easier than ever to connect, experience temptation, act on invitations for attention, and hide or lie about it.
Many moons ago we might have discovered an unrecognizable scent or lipstick smear on a collar. Now we open a phone or tablet and are blasted by viscerally disturbing photos, texts, and a wall of evidence of intense exchange that we can never unsee. Unable to cope with the shock, we proceed down that rabbit hole into the abyss of confirmation that our loved one has not been acting in a loving way.
Experiencing infidelity is excruciating as it invites a trauma response. We don’t know who we are, what to think of ourselves, our past, our futures, or ourselves. The process of disintegration has begun and it’s a long journey back to reintegrating our sense of self, stability, and wholeness.
Why would someone cheat? What happened?
Trust violations occur in many forms including emotional or physical affairs, hiding, lying, texting, social media, and other boundary violations. They occur about money, intimacy, health issues, etc. They occur for so many different reasons.
Affairs are caused by many factors and cause people to feel unloved, rejected, betrayed, or like a failure. Common causes of affairs and trust violations include:
Desire
Regulating desire in long-term relationships is difficult. After the chemical impact (butterflies) wear off and responsibility increases, people can find themselves struggling to maintain that “in-love” feeling. Without knowing what is normal or how to resolve desire issues, people sometimes slip into allowing themselves to be interested in someone else who grabs their attention. Desire is tricky to understand and regulate over time.
Unmet needs
Chronic, systemic issues and unmet needs in the relationship lead to deterioration over time. This is a common struggle. Most couples don’t know how to communicate well, or express and respond well to each other’s needs. After time, people feel can feel lonely and question if they matter. When people have invested time and energy into their relationship but cannot resolve the unmet needs or problems, they sometimes have affairs. Usually, they want their partner and to be in a relationship with their partner but have been unable to access them sufficiently enough to resolve the underlying problems. Rather than leave, they slip out the side door. Affairs are often unintentional acts that start out as friendships and slowly turn into something else.
Differences in values and personality styles
Differences in values and personalities accumulate overtime in the form of miscommunications and disconnections. People try to change each other and argue in circles, never resolving the differences. Eventually, the connection is eroded, and people end up feeling lonely, hopeless, and helpless. Rather than talk to each other directly about resolving the relationship or dissolving it, someone gets worn out and steps outside of the relationship boundaries. This results in affairs, hiding, lying, etc. Sometimes there is an awareness of this and sometimes not. Often, a trust violation is the first noticeable symptom that alerts couples to problems in the system between them.
Narcissism, manipulation, and other egocentric thinking/behavior
Some people don’t know how to get their needs met without receiving a constant influx of validation from other people. What starts out as an amazing relationship can turn dull and boring for the narcissist. Then the narcissist/egocentric thinker steps out of the relationship because they need a fresh perspective of themselves. Without regard for the feelings and wellbeing of the partner, they get their own needs met at the partner’s expense.
Self-esteem
If we don’t like ourselves, attention from others can serve as a nice ego-boost. Sometimes we meet someone who gives us a reflection of ourselves we have never experienced before. This is refreshing and teaches people they matter. Often, it’s a result of low self-worth that stems back to early development. This isn’t the same kind of attention-seeking as seen with narcissism or manipulation. People with low self-esteem are not usually chronic offenders and feel massive amounts of guilt when they have an affair. These people usually describe themselves as, “I would never have expected myself to do something like this. It wasn’t intentional. It just happened. We were genuinely just friends, and then we weren’t.”
Impulsivity
Monogamy is an intentional act that requires a lot of self-discipline. When people struggle with impulsivity, they often do and say things that hurt others. Affairs result in the form of one-night stands, violations on social media, texting, or sexting. Often there is a pattern to the behavior that repeats itself overtime.
Low commitment
Commitment is a choice that must be owned. When someone is wrestling with commitment, it may be hard to see until a trust violation occurs. Commitment issues run deep and are often a result of fears that happened in earlier development.
Effective affair recovery requires a multi-faceted approach.
Affair counseling addresses a multitude of factors for all parties involved. Since the majority of affairs often represent much larger, long-term problems, they need to be addressed fully in order to heal both partners. My approach to affair recovery involves several parts.
Deal with the immediate emotional crisis. Emotional reactivity is at its height and out of control.
Immediately after the affair is discovered, the couple is in crisis. The relationship needs immediate assistance dealing with the emotional reactivity that ensues. Couples need help identifying and expressing their emotions.
The betrayed is usually full of hurt, anger, rage, and vindictiveness. They are wrestling in the first several stages of grief: shock, anger, and bargaining. They oscillate between wanting to repair the relationship and unleash their emotions on their partner without regard for the impact. In their eyes, their partner deserves anything they can dish out.
The partner who created the betrayal usually begins by doubling their efforts to prevent the truth from being known. This creates an onslaught of trust violations the betrayed cannot cope with. The betrayer struggles with their identity, in disbelief of their actions, and struggling to shoulder the weight of accountability for how hurt their partner is. They may be cooperative for a short time, trying to be transparent and comforting to the hurting partner. With only so much ability to manage the torrent of accusations, suspicions, and reactivity, they begin to get worn out and need coaching to remain helpful to the recovery process.
This process is often done in a combination of joint and individual sessions. It is facilitated by coaching, journaling, supervised letter-writing, and compassionate work on accountability on both ends. Eventually both partners need to be able to self-soothe and make decisions about who they want to be and what the want for the future.
Ensuring the affair has stopped.
The relationship with the affair partner is real. Sometimes it takes time for partners to disengage and that’s painful for everyone involved. There is a stepwise process to ending the relationship with the affair partner. Usually there is a grieving process involved that must be completed successfully. The betrayer must decide who they want and what they want with complete ownership. Otherwise, the couple ends up going in circles, and more trust violations occur.
Understand what led to the affair and heal both partners.
Affairs often excavate long-term problems in relationships or within the self. The person who discovers the affair is in shock, hurting, angry, etc. The partner involved in the affair has likely been hurting for a very long time either because of something lost in the relationship or something lost inside the self.
Delicate and structured care needs to be taken to help both parties recover, and decide what they each want and need. Not all couples decide to stay together. The goal of affair recovery is to heal both partners and allow them to decide what they want and need for their futures.
Preventing relapse and dealing with triggers.
Understanding what led to the affair leads to solutions that prevent relapse. Although you may get 98% of the way back to trusting your partner, you’ll never fully forget what happened or what led to the affair. Triggers happen throughout life and remind people of the pain they have endured. It’s imperative to know what to do and how to handle those experiences so they don’t interfere with relationship functioning or create a prolonged PTSD response.
For couples who decide to separate, care must be taken to understand what happened and why. The statistics on second marriages and beyond are discouraging. The last thing we want to do is take an unresolved problem into the future and invite a recurrence.
Affair recovery is achieved through radical accountability and empathy.
Mending the relationship requires that both partners be willing to stop all behaviors that have led to deterioration in the relationship, and own their role in the problem. It takes time and effort to restore trust and reliability.
If we work together in therapy to heal from an affair or trust violation, I will gently help both partners express their feelings, address the underlying core problems, and work toward resolution. Both partners are people who deserve to be treated with respect. There are many layers to healing. A non-shaming, non-judgmental therapy space to heal from infidelity or lying behavior is essential. Mending relationships in this stage is a delicate process.
Common concerns about starting therapy for affairs and trust violations.
Can my relationship be saved? How long will therapy for affair recovery take?
The anxiety that results from affairs and trust violation is massive. There are many factors that influence recovery.
Duration and intensity of the violation:
Onetime offenses are different than long-term, chronic violations. Whether it be an affair or other trust violation, the length of time it has been occurring, and the breadth of the violation influences recovery. Often where there is one lie, there are many. People don’t often disclose everything up front, or at all. After being caught in a lie, their defenses are high and they’re struggling to cope. It leads to slow disclosures (partial truths) that frustrate both parties.
Empathy level of both partners:
The person who experienced the violation is reeling from shock and is angry. They feel violated. It’s easy to blame the partner who violated the relationship for everything, especially the trust violation that just surfaced.
Often the person who had the affair felt justified in having it because they have been hurting for a very long time. It’s hard to be empathic to the partner because they feel like they have been feeling that way for years.
Affairs happen for a reason. The level of empathy from both partners influences the rate of healing, and success of therapy.
Accountability and transparency:
Radical accountability and transparency are essential in affair recovery. Once someone lies, they must provide transparency and radical accountability to reestablish trust. This takes time. Putting a time-limit on how long the hurt person’s trust issues last is a sure way to sink the relationship.
Resilience:
Defined as the capacity to withstand or recovery from difficulties. Recovering from trust violations or affairs is difficult. It takes time, commitment, patience, and a lot of work. Both parties must work together to own their role in what led to the problem, and create a new relationship founded on principles that work.
What if we end up deciding to separate?
Sometimes people spend a lot of time in therapy. Answering the questions, “Can our relationship be saved? Do I want to stay? Is it OK for me to leave?” is part of the process. If one partner determines this relationship is over, that is painful. I help people through separation when necessary. If children are involved, care is taken to minimize harm and impact. Ethical separation is the focus.
I never tell people to stay or leave. That is a violation of the therapist’s role. It’s your job to decide what you want, and I’m happy to help you journey safely to that answer. I am relationship-friendly and understand the importance of healthy relationships and repair. I work with people until they have the answers in their hearts they need to decide.
Regardless of whether you stay or leave, whatever brought you to this place needs to be understood and resolved. Otherwise, the chances of it recurring in the future is high. We take ourselves with us wherever we go. To leave one problem and start anew without resolving the original problem increases the chance of relapse.
My partner won’t attend. Will you still see me?
Absolutely. I welcome all who want to be productive and need help. Not all partners are willing to face themselves or their partners. Sometimes one partner will be hurting and need help but the other isn’t ready. It’s important to ask for help in whatever stage of recovery you are in.
I also work with a lot of people in unhealthy relationships riddled with narcissistic or other manipulative abuse. These frequently include infidelity. Often, the non-narcissistic partner will seek me out for clarity. It’s hard to understand manipulation especially when it’s chronic, covert, or feels inconsistent. One moment they are so nice, and then the rug gets yanked out from under you. It’s hard to keep your feet on the ground.
I’m the one having the affair (or) I'm involved with a married/committed person. Can you help me figure out what to do?
I frequently journey with people actively involved in affairs or trust violations. I help them wrestle with what they want. It takes time to discover what makes sense and find clarity. I’m happy to be kind, patient, and non-judgmental as people resolve their angst and come to conclusions.
Let’s navigate the pain of affairs and trust violations together.
If you’re hurting and need help mending your relationship, feel free to give me a call. I personally answer my phone and return calls the same day or within 24 hours.
It’s important to feel comfortable with your counselor. I will take my time, answer your questions, and help you feel comfortable with the process of affair recovery. I can be reached at 810-397-4861. Let’s see if we are a good fit.
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