Infidelity Therapy
Is Your Marriage Suffering After Infidelity?
Are you struggling with the pain of betrayal after the discovery that your partner had an affair?
Have you been trying to rebuild trust with your partner and feel stuck with lingering doubt?
Do you struggle between feeling connected and angry, wondering if your marriage will survive the rift in your relationship?
If your partner has had an affair, you are likely grappling with symptoms of betrayal trauma, like obsessive and intrusive thoughts, nightmares, or flashbacks, and also mourning the relationship you thought you had. You might feel exhausted and overwhelmed most of the time.
If you engaged in infidelity, you might be grieving, carrying a deep sense of shame, and may be struggling with your identity. It might not feel okay to talk about how you feel about the affair. Though you may love your partner, you might be wondering how you'll regain your partner’s trust.
Infidelity Can Happen For Many Reasons—It’s Complicated
Stepping outside of a relationship is often tied more to one’s inner struggles than to their partner. As renowned psychotherapist Esther Perel notes, infidelity isn’t always about seeking someone new. It’s often about seeking something new within oneself.
Affairs can stem from trauma, attachment issues, or unmet emotional needs, which can go unspoken in a culture that upholds high expectations for romantic relationships. They might begin gradually and seemingly innocently with what looks like a budding friendship.
Regardless of the reason for infidelity, a therapist can offer a space to explore what happened, the meaning behind the affair, support healing, and help couples decide where they want to go from here.
Infidelity Can Make Couples Feel Lost And Alone
Feeling isolated is not uncommon after the discovery of an affair. For some people, the pain they experience sends them racing toward support from friends and loved ones. For others, the shame they feel that it happened to them leaves them hiding their pain and feeling unseen and alone.
Sometimes when partners seek support from others and do so quickly, they find themselves in the strangely ironic position of now defending their partner, eliminating the potential for seeking support.
Withdrawing from social circles and the pressure to perform and pretend that "everything is okay" can leave couples feeling resentful and angry about isolation or feeling contained.
Talking About Infidelity Directly Can Be Challenging
It's not easy to talk about infidelity because of the shame and stigma in our culture around cheating and affairs, whether you are the one who had the affair or have been hurt by an affair.
Society's rules are not the same for men and women causing the experience of infidelity in both roles to be experienced very differently between genders. Additionally, certain cultural expectations may inform and influence silence around infidelity. And of course, it is incredibly painful to discuss.
This tricky and complicated relational landscape can be supported in therapy as a couple works together to heal the trauma of the experience, rebuild trust and empathy, and create a new vision for your relationship.
Counseling After Infidelity Can Help You Heal—And Create A Stronger Marriage
For couples starting infidelity therapy, rebuilding trust with honest, appropriate disclosures and accountability is a priority, and I’ll create a supportive, safe space to begin this process.
I apply a trauma-focused approach to couples therapy for infidelity, which includes addressing betrayal, relational, and attachment trauma and alignment on what happened, what it meant, and the path to healing. Over time, you may begin to view this rift in your relationship as an opportunity to grow together and build the marriage you really want to have.
What To Expect In Infidelity Therapy Sessions
In your counseling experience, we will work through three distinct phases of affair recovery, including the crisis phase, the insight-oriented phase, and the vision phase. I’ll support you in addressing the emotional fallout that follows the discovery of an affair and provide you with valuable psychoeducation that relates to the experiences and symptoms you may be experiencing.
We will explore how and why the infidelity happened. This includes exploring the narrative of the infidelity, events leading up to the infidelity as well as what it meant for each of you and both of you together.
We’ll build skills you can use outside of sessions to reduce rumination, manage emotional triggers, improve communication, increase closeness, set healthy boundaries and make time for self-care.
Infidelity dramatically alters a couple’s erotic connection, and we will work toward reviving this part of your relationship while honoring the challenges of renewing trust and vulnerability. We will make space for exploring the sexual relationship and healing through this part of your relationship.
You’ll have space to grieve “marriage #1,” the marriage you had, and we will work toward a mutual vision for “marriage #2”—the marriage you want. This will include rebuilding trust, improving communication, fostering empathy, and creating transparency around your monogamy agreement, protecting your marriage against future infractions.
Treatment Approaches To Infidelity Counseling
I pull from a wide range of therapeutic techniques to help you and your partner find a path to genuine repair and understanding, without rushing to forget or forgive, but honoring what you need to heal.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) can help you move beyond anxiety-based narratives influenced by infidelity, empowering you to shift your perspective as a couple.
Through Internal Family Systems (IFS) informed interventions, you and your partner will learn about barriers to connection related to self-protection and emotional wounding.
Strategies like Imago dialogue and nonviolent communication allow couples to truly listen to each other with compassion, which reduces conflict and blaming language.
Tammy Nelson’s approach on monogamy helps couples define and negotiate boundaries, expectations, and commitments around sexual and emotional exclusivity to reduce assumptions and the potential for future infractions.
Esther Perel’s insights on erotic intelligence create opportunities for couples to revitalize intimacy through honest, reflective conversations centered around desire.
Infidelity shakes the foundation of a relationship, yet many couples find that working together to heal from an affair in therapy offers a recovery process that can lead to a stronger, more satisfying connection. For couples seeking to end a relationship, a therapeutic process can also support a compassionate closure and amicable ending to this part of your story.
But You May Still Have Questions About Infidelity Therapy…
Will it take a long time for therapy to make a difference?
Therapy timelines can vary, but the more intentional and committed you are, the more you'll get out of the process and the faster you'll experience changes. I regularly check in on my clients’ progress and welcome feedback. I want my clients to experience relief quickly, and we work toward that goal as a team.
What if we go to therapy, but the infidelity happens again?
Infidelity breaks trust, and concerns about reinjury are natural. Therapy helps you both understand how infidelity happened in your relationship and what led to this breach of trust. We will be working toward creating healing and improvements to your relationship that are meant to safeguard against relapse. However, if infidelity occurs again, we will address what happened and what it means for your relationship.
I’m worried that therapy will be too expensive.
Working on your relationship and future together in counseling is a powerful step towards creating a deeper connection. Many couples find that investing in therapy is preferable to continuing to struggle in their marriage. If your insurance plan is out-of-network, I provide statements for potential benefit reimbursement that you can submit to your insurance company.
Through Therapy, You Can Rebuild Your Relationship After Infidelity
In counseling, you can cultivate a new foundation of trust in your marriage. If you’d like to book your first session, I invite you to fill out the contact form on my website or reach out to my office at 415-517-4506.
Recent Posts
