Discovering your spouse cheated or had an affair is one of the toughest things to go through in a marriage. If your partner has cheated on you, there will be a wide range of intense emotions you are bound to go through: sadness, anger, fear, confusion, embarrassment, hurt, and paranoia are just a few. Facing up to the reality of what they have done and deciding how to move forward takes a lot of strength. No matter which direction you go after infidelity, you will have to learn how to heal and actively participate in your affair recovery.
These are some tips on how to recover from infidelity and take steps to rebuild trust for the hurt partner.
4 Tips on How to Recover from Infidelity
Recovering from an affair is no easy task. But with a clear head and emotional maturity, we can always choose love over fear to master the turbulent emotions of the heart.
Tip #1: Aim to stay calm after finding out about the affair
Although your emotions and reactions make total sense, it will be important to express how this injury has impacted you in an organized way. Try to have some compassion for yourself; this is really hard.
In this “raw wound” phase, it may be beneficial to seek support from an individual or couples therapist at this time to think and express yourself more clearly.
When flashbacks or painful memories occur, don’t try to go through them alone—let your partner in on what’s going on, ask for reassurance, and let them know how they can help you start healing from their infidelity. It may seem hard to believe since they caused the pain, but your partner is going to have the biggest impact on helping you recover from an affair.
Tip #2: Don’t ask about specific details
Ask for important details about the affair, but not microscopic ones. You may want to know every detail, but this likely won’t be helpful in healing from infidelity. Discuss what is necessary for rebuilding trust. You do need to know how long the affair went on, if your safety and health could be at risk, and how emotionally involved your spouse was in it. Try your best not to push for additional details that will only create more sting and add to the trauma.
Tip #3: Realistic expectations in rebuilding trust
After infidelity, a marriage is in a very fragile state. Your emotions will be too. While healing after an affair, your emotions may fluctuate uncontrollably from week to week, day to day, or from one hour to the next. This turbulence can confuse your partner, so set realistic expectations and boundaries about what you need to start rebuilding trust and feeling safe again.
Although you intend to prevent this from happening again, try to avoid statements like “always” and “never” (“I want you to have your phone on and available 24/7” or “I never want you to come home even 5 minutes late”).
Don’t set yourself up to fail when you know certain expectations are unrealistic. Research shows that it will take some time for a couple to recover from the negative effects of an affair fully. Don’t set yourselves up for disappointment by expecting your relationship to return to normal by a certain date. Learn more about the Anatomy of Trust in our podcast.
Tip #4: Acknowledge that your partner still has feelings
This step is crucial. It may be tough to do when you feel so hurt and betrayed, but the couples who are most successful in affair recovery are both able to consider each other’s views and feelings. You may be totally unaware that your partner is struggling with deep-seated feelings of shame, guilt, and embarrassment.
Both of you need to empathize with each other’s feelings and understand how those feelings affect the healing process. To create lasting recovery from an affair, the couple also needs to attend to what was going on in the relationship before the affair occurred and have open communication without attacks on the other. This doesn’t excuse the affair in any way, but it shows how space was made for a threat to enter.
In Esthes Therapy, one of our methods is the Gottman Method, which provides partners with a space to talk and listen without conflicting verbal communication. It helps couples validate their pain, open their hearts, and follow the path to respect, forgiveness, and understanding.
The couple may also need individualized therapy to address issues that affect the relationship, such as trauma, depression, unhealthy boundaries, and more.
High relationship quality acts as a protective factor against infidelity. When couples feel really close and secure in their relationship, there is far less room for a third party to get between them. Work to rebuild your sense of safety and connection.
If this is a difficult step in healing, couples counseling, specifically affair therapy, can help guide communication positively and healthily.
Factors for Healing After an Affair
Try your best not to abandon your marriage prematurely without allowing sufficient time for the healing process to take place. Yes, this may take some time, and there’s no telling how long healing from infidelity can take.
Variables like the type or circumstances of the affair, the length of the relationship, the amount of lying or deceit that took place, whether injuries like this have occurred before, and other factors can further increase the length of time it takes to heal. If you want to save your relationship, both of you must hang in there long enough to see positive results.
Help in Healing From Infidelity: Affair Recovery With or Without Your Partner
Ensure you communicate and engage in constructive discussion about how you feel. This may be a helpful time to seek help from a skilled couples therapist who has experience working with infidelity and affairs. A trained couples therapist will help organize how the affair happened, help you move past and heal from the injury, and come up with specific ways to strengthen and restore your relationship connection, in addition to keeping it strong to face any challenges that may come your way moving forward.
Whether you need support while navigating healing after an affair or want to rebuild your relationship, we can help. We at Estes Therapy work with many couples of all marital statuses, genders, and sexualities, as well as monogamous or consensually non-monogamous individuals in Oceanside or Mission Valley, San Diego, CA. We also provide other health program counseling and care for affected parties, such as children.
Contact our Care Coordinator with a free 10-minute matching call, and let’s take the first step toward gaining the tools you need to put your relationship on the track you want and deserve.
