What is affair recovery?
Affair recovery is the process of healing a relationship mentally, emotionally, and physically after it has experienced infidelity. Affair recovery usually takes anywhere from six months to two years and is often a painful process yet a possible one for couples who possess humility, compassion, and tenacity.
An affair can be anywhere from an emotional affair all the way to a sexual affair. The emotional affair is when you develop an inappropriately close emotional attachment with someone other than your spouse and that person becomes your best friend, your soul mate. You share everything with them and you start falling in love with them. With an emotional affair, it's usually just a matter of time before it turns sexual unless it's stopped. Obviously, a sexual affair is when there's sexual contact. Emotional affairs are usually more difficult to recover from instead of one night stands because of the attachment. In an emotional affair, a strong attachment has formed, which can be hard to break. In contrast, a one night stand often involves little to no attachment so is much easier to break.All forms of affairs are highly traumatic to marriages across the globe. The number one thing that rocks the foundation of security in a relationship is infidelity. No matter what language you speak, no matter what color of your skin, no matter what ethnicity or cultural background, infidelity rocks the foundation of relationships like nothing else. The betrayed partner usually develops symptoms akin to PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, because of the massive pain and loss of control. A lot of the symptoms can include intrusive thoughts, irritability, panic attacks, flashbacks, feeling numb to life, etc. The following steps are designed to help your relationship heal.
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Affair Recovery: 10 Steps
Step One- Cease all contact
The first step is you have to stop all contact with the person you've had the affair with. That may require a variety of things. Depending on your situation, this may include quitting your job, moving to a different neighborhood or state, changing churches, etc. You have to cut out all contact with the affair person because if you don't, the affair will linger. A lot of people are under the misconception that they can stop the affair but still be friends with the person or still see them once in awhile. That is impossible. An affair is an addiction. The feel good chemicals in your brain were low because of things going on in your life and your marriage. Then, this person came around and met your needs and flooded your brain with feel good chemicals, which turned them into an addiction. Just like any type of addiction, whether it's heroin or cocaine or whatever, if you get around it, you're going to fall back into it. Likewise with affairs. If you've had an affair with somebody, that person has become your addiction so if you come in contact with them on any level, most likely you're going to fall right back into the affair. In addition, each time you have repeated contact with the affair person it will retraumatize your spouse and all healing in your marriage will be lost.
If the wayward partner won't end all contact with their lover, the first round of defense is to expose the affair to strategic family and friends who are close with your wayward partner. The intent is not to shame your partner but to have trusted people in their life confront them about their infidelity so they realize how hurtful they are behaving. When you're in an affair, you often don't realize how devastating your behavior is because you're living a fantasy. Therefore, having trusted family and friends confront your behavior can make you wake up to what you're risking.
If that intervention doesn't work and the wayward partner still won't cease contact with their lover, the second round of defense is to get a separation with zero contact until the wayward partner can prove they have no more contact with their lover. This is important for two reasons. First, it allows the betrayed partner to protect themself from emotional abuse caused by their partner staying involved with their lover. Second, it gives the wayward partner a chance to see what life without their spouse would be like so they can make up their mind. Many wayward partner's want to stay involved with their lover and stay married and that's impossible. You have to decide between one or the other. If after 3-6 months the wayward partner still won't cease all contact with their lover then move forward with a divorce.
Also, it's important for the wayward partner to take an STD test in case they contracted a venereal disease during the affair. It's important for the betrayed partner to go with them to hear the results firsthand. This should be required even if the wayward partner promises it was only an emotional affair and nothing physical happened. You don't want to take any chances. The only thing worse than recovering from an affair is also getting an STD from your partner because of their affair.
Step Two- Open all accounts
Step number two is you have to share all accounts and your phone with your partner to show you have no more contact with your lover. This is also recommended for couples where there's been no infidelity to foster trust and transparency. It communicates, I have nothing to hide. You have to voluntarily give your phone over whenever your spouse desires it. You've broken trust. To earn that trust back, you have to open up all accounts. Sometimes it can be tempting to have secret accounts. But if you really want your marriage to recover, there's no point in having any secrets. You have to turn it all over. It will help your betrayed spouse slowly start trusting you again because at this point your word means nothing. You've broken trust, you've lied. What you say doesn't matter. Your actions are what matters. Voluntarily opening up all accounts and sharing your phone with your partner will help them start to heal. They can't start the healing journey until they know you have no more contact with your lover. Practicing openness also helps the wayward partner because affairs thrive in secrecy. Therefore, if there's no opportunity for it to grow in secrecy it will eventually die.
If your partner refuses or is angry about sharing all accounts and their phone to prove they have no more contact with their lover remember the two steps of offense above. Expose the affair to all friends and family to create social pressure and if that's not enough for them to cooperate get a separation until they do. If your partner is angry or resistant about sharing everything with you it's probably because they are trying to stay in touch with their lover and don't want to end it.
Step Three- Discuss the details
People often wonder how much detail should be shared about an affair. Some betrayed spouses want to know every detail while others only want a summary. Usually the wayward spouse doesn’t want to share any details, so the betrayed spouse keeps asking for them, sometimes for years. Each time the affair gets brought up, it re-traumatizes the relationship. The betrayed spouse should be in control of how much detail is shared, not the wayward spouse. However, remember the more detail you hear the more devastated you may become. Therefore, consider carefully how much information you need to know and why. For example, do you really need to know what positions they tried or what noises they made in bed? Probably not. Those details will be difficult to erase and will prolong the healing process. Step one, make a list of all the questions you have about the affair for your wayward partner. Some request their wayward spouse to answer the questions while connected to a lie detector test to increase the trustworthiness of their answers. That's a personal decision up to the betrayed partner. If you're the wayward partner, your job is to work much harder at healing the marriage than your spouse so if they request a lie detector test, do it with a willing attitude! Step two, the wayward partner answers the questions. Step three, the betrayed partner agrees to not ask any more questions about the affair because doing so prevents the marriage from healing. However, that doesn't mean they can't discuss their triggers of the affair. Triggers are OK and are covered in step six.
Step Four- Show remorse
Step three is you have to show sincere remorse for your decision to cheat. One way to think about affairs is the person who steps outside the marriage and has the affair, that's 100% their fault. However, the climate in the marriage that made them susceptible to stepping outside the marriage is usually both partner's fault. If you've had an affair then act indifferent toward the impact it's had on your spouse, recovery is not possible. You have to take ownership for how devastating this has been to your relationship. Even if you were unhappy, even if your needs weren't being met, you broke your vows to your spouse and betrayed them. Infidelity is a decision because no one forced you to cheat. Therefore, it's critical to take ownership for your decision. If you don't take ownership and show remorse for your decision to cheat, it's going to be next to impossible for your partner to forgive you.
Step Five- Manage triggers
Part of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is getting triggered. Those who have been in combat will often experience flashbacks of the horrors they went through. Those who have been through natural disasters will often experience flashbacks of the devastation they experienced. Likewise, those who have been betrayed by an affair will often have flashbacks of the pain they suffered. Therefore, learning how to manage triggers is important for all couples who have experienced an affair. When triggered, the betrayed spouse must avoid two extremes. The first is not mentioning the trigger and suffering in silence, which will make you withdrawal emotionally. The second is becoming verbally aggressive toward your partner, which will lead to conflict. The third and recommended approach is to express each trigger with your tender underbelly. The tender underbelly is the tender feelings underneath your anger, such as sad, hurt, insecure, fearful, etc. For example, a tender underbelly statement when triggered could be “I was watching a movie last night that involved an affair and it triggered me with your affair and brought up all the feelings of sadness, hurt, and fear.” The job of the wayward spouse is to respond with empathy, an apology, and reassurance, such as “I can definitely see how the movie would have triggered your feelings of sadness, hurt, and fear with the affair and I’m so sorry I hurt you, and I promise never to do something like that again.” This type of response to triggers creates healing opportunities for the marriage and if handled in this way triggers will decrease with time. The opposite is also true. If the betrayed partner expresses triggers with anger and the wayward partner responds with defensiveness, triggers will increase with time.
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Step Six- Understand the why
Step seven is understanding what caused the affair. Understanding the why is step seven because it's only appropriate after the wayward partner has cut off all contact with their lover, opened all accounts, expressed sincere remorse, has listened effectively to your hurts, has cooperated with answering your questions about the affair, and has responded well to your triggers. Only then does it make sense to start working on understanding what caused the affair. Click here for a list of common causes of infidelity. There are four questions to answer. First, what about your partner's upbringing or past may have influenced their affair? For example, many adults raised in a home where they felt inadequate are at higher risk for an affair because an affair makes them feel extremely wanted and important. Second, what about your partner's circumstances may have influenced their affair? For example, the more stress people are under the less willpower they have to resist tempting situations. Third, what was your pattern of behavior that may have increased their susceptibility to an affair? For example, perhaps you had been avoiding emotional or physical intimacy for an extended period of time. Fourth, what about your past is getting activated by the affair? For example, perhaps you have a history of feeling rejected or abandoned growing up so that's heightening your reaction to the affair. The goal of the questions is to help you understand all the variables that contributed to the affair. If you don't understand what caused the affair, it's difficult to move forward.
Step Seven- Watch your self-talk
Step eight is reflecting on what you think the affair says about you. The betrayed spouse will often have negative thoughts, such as, "If I stay in this relationship I'm a fool" or "I'm unlovable or else they wouldn't have cheated." These statements are generalizations and need to be adjusted. The wayward spouse may also have negative thoughts about themselves, such as "I'm a piece of trash for cheating" or "I don't deserve a second chance." How we think determines how we feel and how we behave. Therefore, getting our thoughts straight is paramount. To adjust your negative thoughts start by writing them down so you can look at them more objectively. Next, think of an alternative statement that's more balanced and truthful beside each original thought. For example, if the original thought is "If I stay in this relationship I'm a fool" an adjusted thought could be "If my partner hadn't cut off all contact with their lover, opened all accounts willingly, and expressed sincere remorse, I would be a fool for staying in this relationship. However, they have done those things so my decision to stay in the marriage is warranted." Another example, if the original thought is "I'm a piece of trash for cheating" an adjusted thought could be "I made a very poor decision to cheat that was extremely hurtful to my spouse; however, it doesn't mean I'm a piece of trash. I was in a bad place in life and made a terrible decision."
Step Eight- Develop boundaries
The last step on recovering from an affair is discussing what boundaries you both will follow moving forward to reduce your affair risk. What's that going to look like for your relationship? For example, how should boundaries look when you're traveling away from one another? How should it look if you're going out with your friends for the night without your partner? What boundaries should you have around colleagues? What about at the gym? What should your limits be with alcohol when you're not together? What's not acceptable to discuss with the opposite gender? Working through these questions is vital to develop a unified front against future affairs. So many couples fall into affairs because they put themselves in risky situations without realizing it. Don't let that happen to you. Discuss what your boundaries as a couple will be to fortify your marriage from affairs moving forward.
Step Nine- Process the hurts
Step four is processing through your hurts, which may go both directions. Obviously the betrayed spouse is going to have a lot of hurt they'll need to express. But the wayward partner may also have hurts because perhaps one of the reasons they had the affair is their needs were unmet repeatedly for years despite their frequent complaints. So both of you need a method to get out your hurts. I teach couples a conflict resolution method called the reunite tool, which is a set of guidelines on how to keep conversations safe. When the hurt is not fully vented and released, it will come out in destructive ways through yelling, harsh comments, and contemptuous remarks, which will only make matters worse. Hurt people hurt people but that just damages the relationship further. So, having some type of method to work through your hurts constructively is key. You may need to work with a relationship coach to effectively do this.
Step Ten- Fill your love buckets
Step nine is discovering the top things you need to fill up your love bucket to feel loved and satisfied and the top things your partner does that drains your love bucket. We all have a love bucket inside of us and we all need certain things to fill it up. Some common fillers include adoration, affection, sex, emotional closeness, thoughtful gestures, etc. Some common drainers include criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, contempt, not sharing power, etc. When you're dating you naturally fill up your partner's love bucket. However, after you're together for awhile most people stop filling their partner's love bucket and start draining it instead. Before long, the full bucket that made you fall in love with your partner becomes more and more empty until it's dry. Dry buckets increase susceptibility for affairs. Therefore, one of the best ways to affair proof your relationship moving forward is making sure you're both excelling at your partner's fillers they desire while minimizing the drainers they dislike to keep your buckets full. Here's an article to learn more about this model and reversing a loveless marriage.
As you can see, the road to affair recovery is narrow, but there is a road! Couples who follow these steps faithfully will discover the answers to "how to get over cheating."
For further reading check out the articles below.
How to fix a broken relationship
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Leave a comment below on which step you feel is hardest in affair recovery and why.
81 comments
My SO and I have been together 15+ years, known each other for 20+. We have one child together. He was cheated on previously, by two of the 3 women in his most significant relationships. Because of this, he was always very distrustful, jealous, and often accused me of cheating or wanting to/thinking about cheating. I was the opposite. I have always made a concerted effort not to bring baggage from past relationships along with me to the next. So, although I was cheated on by my high school love, I never accused my SO of cheating, was never jealous, did not restrict who he talked to or hung out with or where he went. When I found out about his affair, he left me for her, then bounced back and forth between us for several months. It was torture. There were so many lies. He finally went NC a few months ago, the AP is blocked, and I have access to his phone and email accounts. However, when I attempted to get disclosure about he affair, he either outright refused to answer or only half answered a number of my questions. Also, a few of his “answers” were ‘I don’t know/don’t remember.’ He refused to go to therapy, citing negative past experiences, and I actually understand that and don’t blame him. However, he also would not do any of the exercises/workshops I found online. He has apologized, and given the obligatory promise to never do it again. I’ve tried to work on things myself, and we’ve had some stretches of happiness…but they keep getting interrupted by darkness when I’m triggered or we fight. He also sees much of what I’m doing or asking him to do as some sort of attack or threat to him. For example, my keeping a journal is actually “keeping notes on him, so I can use them against him later.” I genuinely do not want to keep bringing up his affair, but it damaged me so profoundly, mentally, emotionally AND physically ( the stress caused me to lose so much weight so quickly, I started losing my hair and having fainting spells. My hair still hasn’t grown back), I’m almost hyper sensitive, on edge, and I feel like we haven’t addressed the root of the problem. I don’t know how to express to him that I am drowning and he’s just watching me flail around. The further we get from the discovery of his affair, the more it seems like he expects me to be over it…but I feel like I’m getting worse as worse precisely because he’s refusing to support me the way I need.
Hi Lane, Wow, this is devastating! At the minimum, have him tested for STD’s and be with him when he gets the results. Also, you’ll want to consider a tracker so you know his location at all times plus access to all accounts including financial to slowly rebuild trust. If he resists this get a separation until he cooperates. Plus, he should be meeting with an addictions counselor to process through his destructive pattern. Last. be sure to click the link in this article for my free masterclass on the top affair recovery mistakes to avoid.
My husband has slept with over 50 hookers since our second child was 1 month old and been 100% addicted to porn. He would park in empty parking lots to watch porn and “take care of himself” mid work day. Our second child just turned 9 – I found out about all this in March 2022. My husband says he’s sorry and shares his phone reluctantly. He says he’s only been with me and not watched porn since I found out in March. I don’t believe him but I don’t have proof. What is your advice on sexual addiction affairs?
Hi Megan, very sorry to hear this. For your marriage to heal and to avoid the risk of your husband rekindling the romance with her, it’s essential he has zero contact with her. In these types of situations, I recommend getting a separation until he cooperates.
My husband had an emotional affair at work with a woman who he refuses to end all contact with. He has limited contact but it’s not completely gone. They work too closely together for it to everyone be nothing. She will not leave and he will not do anymore than what he feels he has already done. He says he wants to work on our marriage and be with me but it’s so difficult to know everyday he leaves to work with her. How do I get past this? Is this even something I can get past? We have been married for 13yrs and have two kids. My husband and is the owner of the company and feels too much responsibility for what he believes would happen to the company of this woman were to leave. It feels like work and this woman are more important than our family and our marriage.