Recovering From Affairs in Couple’s Therapy

Some things even viruses don’t stop – for example, affairs.

As a marriage and family therapist working with couples in crisis, I see a fair percentage of clients who come to therapy because one of the partners has had an affair. The Gottman Institute reports 10-15% of women and 15-43% of men have been unfaithful, and while COVID-19 certainly complicated social engagement around the world, adultery survived.

Understanding the Trauma of Betrayal

Trying to reconcile feelings for a mate who has done the unsayable often leaves the betrayed partner frozen in a pattern of shock, disbelief, and fury. Betrayed clients nearly always report severe distress, as they cycle through piercing feelings of anguish, hurt, disgust, confusion, and the like. Experts on the topic of affairs compare the betrayed partner’s experience to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), replete with flashbacks, difficulty concentrating, trouble regulating emotion, sadness, and diminished joy in daily activities including work and parenting.

For real healing to begin, both the betrayer and betrayed need to understand how the trauma of the affair has affected the betrayed, and how reactivity may be triggered in often unpredictable ways until trust is firmly re-established. This requires time, patience, and a delicate balance of openness and safety. Working with a counselor trained not only in relationships but also in trauma may prove beneficial. While the couple remains the focus of the therapist’s attention, individual sessions are often provided to assist the client work through the difficult symptoms, and to show the partner how to respond effectively, not defensively.

Good therapy carefully paces what details of the affair are disclosed, and how, to avoid re-traumatization of injured clients, while ensuring they receive sufficient information to assess the facts, in an effort to restore trust. To help clients cope, I often integrate therapeutic journaling (what I refer to as “mindfulness with a pen”) -- a demonstrated way to help clients clarify thoughts, reduce stress, and create new narratives as they pick up the pieces of shattered trust. The journal never tires of hearing the story and also never says “enough.” It can also aid a therapist working with the couple, detailing progress and setbacks between sessions.

Phase 1: Atonement.

As a therapist trained in Levels I and II of the Gottman Method, I lead couples through three important phases of recovery from an affair: Atonement, Attunement, and Attachment.

The first phase of recovery, Atonement, asks the betrayer to atone for the breaches of trust. It begins with a commitment that the betraying partner has cut off all contact with the affair partner, and a negotiated agreement as to how the couple wants to handle any attempts at communication by the affair partner from whom the betrayed has separated.

In individual sessions with each partner, we outline what they perceive is needed to repair the betrayal wound. I discuss transparency and the efforts taken so far to expose the factual background of the affair. I encourage the parties to read Shirley Glass’s NOT Just friends: Rebuilding trust and recovering your sanity after infidelity, or otherwise discuss her guidance for safe, but not unbounded disclosure.

I provide other books or articles of interest, as this often has a normalizing and soothing effect on the betrayed. Although nobody can say precisely how long, or exactly what it takes for trust to be revived after an affair, Glass found in her own clinical sample that couples who stayed in therapy more than 10 sessions had a much better chance of staying together than couples who terminated earlier.

Disclosure and Fair Fighting

Research suggests couples wait far too long to seek help from a relationship specialist, and that many people think talking about the affair will only make matters worse. But as Glass notes, “Trying to recover without discussing the betrayal is like waxing a dirty floor.”

Disclosure of the affair during Atonement usually involves sharing data and access to phones, computers, applications, social media, credit card purchases, and other methods of external proof needed to soothe the suspicions of the betrayed. I have some partners who search meticulously for every cue of indiscretion since their relationship began, while others drop the investigation much sooner, finding it robs them of too much energy or dysregulates them in ways they prefer not to experience.

Each couple is unique and can establish what works for them. However, my sobering advice to the betraying partner is “Come clean, when asked” as transparency seems to work. According to research by Dr. John Gottman, when the betrayer agreed to answer questions and opened up to disclosure, the couple stayed together 86% of the time.

Therapists working with couples need to be comfortable tracking and monitoring, but not stifling, the betrayed partner’s need-to-know, while also guiding the parties to fight fairly and avoid the understandable desire to attack or punish the betrayer. The therapist must be careful not to overlook the needs of the betraying partner, who is often flustered and frustrated, impatient to move o