Dealing with Infidelity

Extramarital relationships happen more often than you may think. Most extramarital relationships, whether emotional or sexual, actually go undiscovered. However, whenever it does come out, the consequences are usually very severe. Couple therapists deal with affairs and subsequent trust issues on a daily basis. 

Society tends to either accuse involved partners of committing something unethical or blame the betrayed partners for not satisfying the partner’s needs. Both stances are unhelpful for understanding why affairs happen and for couples to recover from the affairs. There are also a lot of myths around infidelity. Common ones include:

  • Affairs only happen in unhappy marriages. 
  • Affairs happen because of sexual attractions. 
  • When the unfaithful partner apologizes, the betrayed partner should just forget about it and move on. 
  • It’s mostly men that cheat. 
  • The relationship can never be fully healed. 

Debunking these misunderstandings about affairs is the first step to healing from them. 

Finding out about affairs can shatter a person’s self-identity and trust in the world. The betrayed partner usually displays symptoms like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: there can be a lot of anger, rumination, self-blaming, and flashbacks. The unfaithful partner may experience guilt, shame, and regret. 

Before couples can heal from infidelity, they first need to build a solid emotional foundation. The attachment injury repair model in Emotionally Focused Therapy is effective in building such a foundation and unpacking the affairs. Partners need to learn how to express their feelings and needs in a non-threatening way and empathize with the other partner. When the relationship is not a safe place to express emotions, people tend to bottle up feelings and hide things from the partners in fear that they get mad and start attacking them. To be able to process the affairs, couples need a basic level of self-esteem and emotional regulation skills. 

There is hope to recover from affairs and make the relationship even stronger than before. Dealing with affairs could become an opportunity for couples to express repressed feelings, discuss unmet desires, explore hidden aspects of themselves, and establish a new shared identity and meaning in life.