Marriage Counseling After an Affair: Couples Therapy for Affair Recovery

After the discovery of an affair, life gets intense. If you just found out about an affair, you may be lost in disbelief. Everything you once thought you knew is now false, and your entire relationship is being examined under a microscope. Emotions can feel like a rollercoaster: from angry to depressed, from hopeless to hopeful. This traumatic event needs quick action. Marriage counseling after an affair may be what you need to recover.

There are many definitions of what constitutes infidelity. It can often mean that one person had a sexual and/or intimate relationship with someone outside of the marriage. However, an affair might also mean that someone cheated emotionally — an emotional relationship in which one person has a strong emotional connection with someone outside of the relationship can also create strife. Yet other affairs may include online relationships or pornography.

According to VeryWell Mind, men are more likely to seek physical affairs, while women are more likely to seek emotional ones. However, we believe it can be more complex than that. Blurred boundaries, uncommunicated resentment, unresolved childhood neglect, and other issues create coping mechanisms in individuals that harm relationships.

In my San Diego marriage counseling practice, many times I see that a couple has two different definitions of what infidelity is, and the views often create another added stress. Either way, trust has been broken in the marriage, and healing needs to start after an affair.

Infidelity is a serious issue for couples and should be worked through delicately. I recommend marriage counseling after an infidelity because it helps couples find healthy ways to heal the attachment injury. Time is of the essence. You should take quick action if you really want to heal your marriage after an infidelity.

Table of contents

For Partners Who Had an Affair:

How to Decide If You Want to Repair After You Had the Affair
How to Repair After You Had the Affair
How to Boost the Fighting Chance of Your Marriage

For the Hurt Partner:

Cheating Partners Checklist: Common Suspicious Signs
Steps for Trust Recovery After an Affair
After Infidelity: How Couples Therapy Can Help

For the Partner that Had The Affair

There are two sides to every story. If you’re reading this, you’re at a crossroads on what to do next. Do you want to come to terms with the separation? Or commit to saving your marriage? Whatever the case, let us help you decide how to take healthy and respectful action for you and your partner.

How to Decide If You Want to Repair After You Had the Affair

There are reasons why you had the affair. Maybe you’re unhappy with your marriage. But is your marriage still worth saving? Here are steps to take if you want to pursue marriage counseling after infidelity.

Understand why and where things went wrong in your marriage.

Get to the root of it. A couple’s issues, individual or not, can make for a dynamic that causes resentment or dissatisfaction. Meet with a relationship counselor to sort through it in a confidential environment without judgment.

Put the other person on hold until you determine your next step.

It’s best to close one door before you open the next. Your guilt won’t fully go away until you make a clean break with your spouse or affair partner. So, stop communicating with your affair partner until you figure out if you’ll give it a shot with your spouse.

Read the book “Too Bad to Stay, Too Good to Leave”.

This book can help you sort out your feelings. Sort through the feelings about staying in your marriage or leaving to be with the new person (or to be alone).

Decide whether you want to give healing your marriage a chance.

Fixing your relationship after an affair isn’t easy – but it can be done. Infidelity doesn’t have to signal the end of your marriage, but it does mean that something is seriously off course, and you need to work together to get it back on track. The guilt can be overwhelming, even to the point where it impacts your physical health, so it’s important to deal with the issue head-on and make a decision about staying in or walking away from your marriage. If you decide to stay and make it work, we recommend couples therapy to open communications and learn tools to address relationship issues.

How to Repair Your Marriage After You Had the Affair

While infidelity is rated as the most serious hurtful event a couple can face, many marriages and relationships can survive the storm and sometimes even make it through even stronger than before the affair occurred. Let’s face it, though. It will be a tough road ahead to overcome the damage of infidelity. Both partners need to be truly motivated to heal.

When affairs are not addressed and successfully repaired, the residual injury from the affair can corrode the couple’s sense of connection, safety, and trust, making it hard to restore or keep a bond strong. The way the affair is handled will be critical for healing. You may at times feel discouraged or as though healing is too far out of your grasp, but hang in there and remember to keep in mind the reasons you are fighting for this relationship.

You may be grappling with questions like: “How did this even happen?” or “How will we ever get over it?” While there may be a range of reasons why the affair occurred, the most important next steps will be to make the relationship the number one priority. If you choose to continue working on the marriage, these steps are for the partner who had an affair and how to rebuild trust.

Here is advice on how to repair after cheating:

End the affair right away.

If you were unfaithful, ending the affair immediately is crucial to starting the healing process. You will also want to minimize triggers and things your partner may still see as threatening to the relationship. Stop all interaction or communication with the other person. If the affair involved a co-worker, limit contact strictly to business or get another job. Letting your partner know you will protect them from another injury is essential to healing.

Acknowledge the hurtful behavior.

Be accountable for the affair and any lying or deceitful behaviors that may have occurred when concealing the affair. You may believe it was justified because you were unhappy in the relationship. Although it will be necessary to address your sources of unhappiness in the relationship during the healing process of the affair, justifying yourself and/or blaming your partner will make it difficult for your relationship to heal and for your partner to feel like you understand the devastation that this action has caused.

Listen to your partner’s hurt.

Really hear your partner’s pain and try to understand his/her perspective. While you may have your own reasons, you must truly acknowledge the damage caused. Whether the infidelity was one night after too many drinks or a long-term affair, your partner’s hurt really Hurts, and they are struggling with the fact that they have lost some degree of trust or safety through this injury.

Help in rebuilding the trust.

This will be a critical time for the partner who cheated to take practical action to demonstrate sincere remorse and show that the relationship is a priority worth fighting for. This may entail increased transparency, such as access to email or phone calls, or an increased priority to follow through on big and small promises. Complete Honesty, Consistency, and Dependability will be key ingredients to rebuilding the trust that has been broken and showing your partner that they can start to trust in you again. Do what it takes to protect your partner from repeated hurt.

Give your partner time to heal.

Facing the affair’s aftermath may feel never-ending, but hang in there. It won’t be this way forever. It will take some time for your partner to recover from what has felt like a legitimate crisis to them, the relationship, and their sense of safety. Your partner wants to move forward, too. It just gets difficult to fully trust that they can let their guard down when their body is telling them to protect themselves from getting hurt again.

How to Boost the Fighting Chance of Your Marriage

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; there’s no telling how long. Variables like the type or circumstances of the affair, the length of the marriage, 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 marriage, both of you must hang in there long enough to see positive results.

Remember, marriage counseling gives couples a much better chance at affair recovery, and couples therapy can help the betrayed partner navigate the trauma more healthily.

If you are in San Diego and trying to rebuild trust in your relationship, affair counseling can help. Schedule your appointment with one of our therapists at Estes Therapy, and we will help you get your relationship to the next level. You can learn how to repair after an affair…and it is possible!

For the Hurt Partner

Maybe you have never seen it coming. Or maybe you have seen it coming because of your dry spell of a dead bedroom. If you’re reading this, you may wonder what you can do next. Here are signs you may need to look out for and what you can do now.

Cheating Partners Checklist: Common Suspicious Signs

Are you seeing things? Or are you noticing changes in your partner’s usual routine and habits? If you feel that something is off with your relationship, it is best to communicate with your spouse and have an expert help with any shortcomings. By addressing things early, the better you and your partner can cope and the lesser the damage of possible infidelity.

Here are the signs that you and your partner need an early intervention with a marriage counselor.

Your internal alarms are going off

Do you have that sick-to-your-stomach feeling that something is just not right? Our intuition is there for a reason and is rarely wrong. If your instincts are telling you something is off or your partner is having an affair, it might be right. You may not be able to put your finger on it, but you must trust your internal alarm system. One sign that your partner is cheating is that you will instinctively know that something is off.

Hygiene and grooming changes

Does your partner look a little too good to be going to a yoga class? You may have noticed they focus on getting ‘done up’ a little more than usual before doing tasks, such as going to a friend’s house. Or you might have noticed your partner has been spending more money on new clothes and lingerie. Commonly, hygiene and grooming improve dramatically while people are courting outside of the relationship. This can include an increased effort with shopping, style, and overall appearance. If you have noticed the hygiene and grooming changes, this can be another sign that your partner is having an affair.

Phone phobia

Did your partner’s iPhone passcode just mysteriously change from your anniversary date to another code for no apparent reason? Or do they hold their phone close to their chest when texting as you walk into the room? Is their phone attachment over the top? Increases in technology use didn’t necessarily increase cheating behaviors, but they definitely altered how the cheating process can take place. Texting someone under a fake name or having hidden dating profiles are ways to engage with lovers outside of the relationship. In couples counseling, we believe in an ‘open phones’ rule- so that if a partner wants to see what is in their partner’s phone and asks permission first, they should be able to see it. If this request is met with defensiveness, or these other behaviors are present, this can be a red flag that your partner is having an affair.

Disappearing acts

We all know it shouldn’t take 2 hours to go to the grocery store, right? (Well, unless you are going to Costco on a Sunday). Cheating partners must get creative about finding ways to escape the relationship to meet their mates. One thing to look out for is time that isn’t accounted for.

If these signs are happening and you feel like your relationship is on the brink of a breakup, you need to know that every move counts right now.

Steps for Trust Recovery After an Affair

Rebuilding trust after an affair can be extremely difficult, especially for the partner who was deceived. For your relationship recovery to be successful, the involvement of both participants in the relationship is absolutely necessary.

Initially, the person who shattered the trust must work hard to rebuild it. Showing remorse, consistency, and understanding his partner’s pain are all crucial to rebuilding the once solid foundation. Don’t just ignore the affair and pretend nothing happened after cheating. It’s important to acknowledge their pain and help the hurt spouse heal after cheating.

The unfaithful participant must also prove to the other partner that he is once again trustworthy and emotionally safe.

On the other hand, the deceived partner will also need to do some work. Anger, grief, and low self-esteem from the affair will need to be addressed.

Here are a few tips to help you relearn how to trust in your partner after the affair:

Notice when your “radar” is on.

The person who was cheated on can often have heightened anxiety and may become obsessive in their search for untrustworthy behaviors. For example, a man and woman are out to dinner, and the woman knows the exact location of every beautiful woman. She may watch his eyes and wait to catch him when his gaze wanders. This behavior is very common and can be very toxic.

Don’t be unrealistic.

If you expect your partner to be available every minute, you set him/her up for failure. Your partner cannot be expected to stop his life, but he can make a more concerted effort to keep you involved. Don’t expect that every time your partner is doing something wrong every time he doesn’t answer the phone.

Keep your mind on track.

Since trust was broken, insecurity and worry about the relationship may arise. When your thoughts go down the ‘what is my partner doing right now’ path, redirect them and assure yourself. These ongoing and otherwise destructive thoughts can create a cycle of anxiety, all of which can prevent the future growth of the relationship.

Choose your lens.

People see the world through different lenses. Don’t let your lens be a ‘lens of mistrust.’ You have a choice regarding how you want to see the world.

Tell your partner what you need.

You may need some concrete evidence that your partner is sincere with his words. Let your partner know what you need for comfort, but ensure all requests are realistic and unobtrusive. Your partner can’t read your mind, so make your needs as clear as possible.

Avoid hinting.

Hinting is not an effective means of communication and often causes more problems during distress. Your partner might not get the hint as quickly as you would like, and the lack of understanding might set him up for failure. Be clear and to the point.

These steps might not be sufficient for Recovery if you have a history of broken trust. The past can impact your current relationships and prevent you from moving forward.

After Infidelity: How Couples Therapy Can Help

Each reaction and conflict will impact the relationship positively or negatively. Get into therapy to address issues as quickly as possible to ensure your relationship has the highest chance of affair recovery.

Couples Therapy has been proven to help couples recover from cheating and affairs. Unfortunately, most couples wait too long to get help from therapists. At Estes Therapy, we value both partners’ perspectives and help both feel seen, heard and understood as we work toward healing together. Recovery from infidelity is possible, but noticing the problem is the first step. Don’t wait to reach out. We are already looking forward to meeting you.

Marriage Counseling After Infidelity: Couples Therapy in Healing

If you can’t seem to stop thinking about the affair and constantly feel like you are walking on eggshells, see a professional therapist or counselor. Marriage counselors are trained to help couples get back on track after relationship trauma and help the couple’s healing.

San Diego Marriage Counseling Can Benefit Your Relationship after an Affair

Learn how to rebuild trust and the relationship through actions and words effectively
Get to the root of why the affair became an option and happened in the first place
Understand the steps to get reassurance from your partner (or give reassurance) when haunting memories pop up
Recover from hurt and blame, and learn how to forgive
Heal the attachment wound from the affair and create a secure attachment
Learning how to watch and catch signs to prevent future infidelity pains
Show remorse and ask for forgiveness that is effective

If you live in San Diego and recently found out about an affair, I suggest you act quickly and find a counselor that best fits your needs. I provide marriage counseling after an infidelity in Oceanside and Mission Valley of San Diego County.

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It’s been nearly 20 years since I first became interested in studying psychotherapy. I began practicing the scientific approaches to psychotherapy in 1997 and I was hooked from then on.

I earned my Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family psychotherapy in 2004 and I am currently licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist MFT (LMFT#47653) with the Board of Behavioral Sciences (BBS).

I focus my practice upon the empirically-based and proven research methods of Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

I’ve seen these techniques consistently get results and I truly believe they are the most effective at creating positive, long-term change.

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