Trust and Infidelity
An affair has come out, and nothing feels solid. Whether you cheated or you were cheated on, you're probably in more pain than you've ever been in together.
The first thing to know
Infidelity is common, and it doesn't have to end your marriage. Terry Real writes that two-thirds of marriages survive an affair.
As soon as the cheating stops, repair can start. That's the beginning of repair, not the end of it. Not having an affair doesn't mean you have a good relationship. The goal is to build a relationship so good that neither of you worries about infidelity again.
If you were cheated on
- Accept what happened. Let yourself feel it, usually in your chest or stomach, without rushing to make it stop.
- Focus on the present. Your brain will want to rehash everything you thought was real. That's normal, and it doesn't solve much.
- Don't be mean. You'll be tempted to say things designed to hurt. If you care about your partner, don't.
- Don't control. Monitoring your partner won't prevent the next affair. Watching what they choose to do will tell you much more.
- Don't ask too many questions. Some questions matter, but you'll have to answer most of them for yourself.
- See your partner as an equal. There are probably things on your side of the relationship that do as much damage.
If you cheated
- Earn your own self-respect. It will be a while before your partner approves of you. Ask yourself each morning what kind of partner you want to be today.
- Focus on behavior, not words. There's not much you can say that will help. What you do will.
- Reveal your mind. An affair takes a lot of hiding, and the habit of hiding stays after the affair ends. Practice saying what's actually in your head.
- Learn to care more. Not just showing care, but actually becoming more interested in your partner's well-being.
There's more on each of these in How to Rebuild Your Relationship After Infidelity.
How therapy helps
About one-third of the couples I work with are recovering from infidelity. I help them learn how to earn their own self-respect so that they can stop leaning on each other for approval and agreement. I also help them gain a more solid understanding of how the affair came about in the first place.
The core of affair recovery is increasing how much you care about each other and how open and honest you are with each other. This happens equally on both sides of the relationship.
I will also help you work on accepting each other just the way you are, and on blending that acceptance with a strong desire for growth.
Rebuilding trust: four short videos
These four videos each come with a few questions to write about. Work through them on your own, with your partner, or before your first session.
1. Rebuilding Trust After Infidelity
When you discover your partner’s infidelity, you lose trust in your partner, and also in yourself. You thought you had a good idea of how trustworthy your partner is, and now you have learned that you were not as good at reading the situation as you thought you were.
Infidelity presents an opportunity to learn more about yourself and your partner. You won’t be able to trust your partner more unless you improve your ability to correctly assess how trustworthy they are.
Exercise: write down three times you saw one of your parents act in a dishonest or deceptive way. Was that kind of behavior normalized in your family? Did either of your parents ever recruit you to help them deceive the other, or to deceive someone else? As you get more clear on what you witnessed as a child, your ability to detect dishonesty as an adult will improve.
2. Earning Your Own Self-Respect
If you have cheated on your partner: it will be a while before your partner approves of you or trusts you again. This gives you an opportunity to start earning your own self-respect, and to start leaning more on your own approval than on your partner’s approval.
Exercise:
- Where do you feel your partner’s disapproval in your body?
- What kind of a person do you want to become?
- What is the next step on that journey?
- What will you do today that will get you closer to becoming the person you want to be?
- Without relying on your partner’s approval, how will you measure your progress toward your goal?
3. Observe, Don’t Control
You may be tempted to control and monitor your partner’s behavior after an affair. It’s actually best to take the opposite approach, and set your partner free to do what they want to do, so that you can gather more information on what kind of a person they want to be.
Exercise:
- How have you tried to monitor your partner’s behavior in the past?
- How would you take care of yourself if you discovered ongoing infidelity?
- Is there any evidence that you won’t be OK if your partner doesn’t remain true to you?
4. Jealousy and Infidelity
Your brain is wired to survive childhood, not to thrive in adult relationships. Infidelity triggers a survival-level fear because the parts of your brain that manage adult relationships were designed more for managing child and parent relationships. If one of your caregivers had left you when you were very young, that would have been a survival-level problem, and your brain continues to perceive it that way in adult relationships.
Exercise:
- How will you take care of yourself if your partner cheats on you again?
- What happens in your body when you think about your partner’s unfaithfulness?
- Do you feel less safe than you really are?
- Do you feel confident in your ability to take care of yourself if your partner remains unfaithful?
Your next step
Whether you stay together or not, you can come through this with integrity. You don't need to have anything figured out before a first session. You just need to be willing to look at what's true.
Your first session is $30. Schedule it here or call 916-292-8920. I see couples in my Roseville office and by video anywhere in California, and I offer online coaching outside California.
Related topics
50-minute sessions cost $300
Your first session is $30
I don’t take insurance