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: 11 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 four 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 six is understanding what caused the affair. Understanding the why is step six because it's only appropriate after the wayward partner has cut off all contact with their lover, opened all accounts, expressed sincere remorse, has answered 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 seven 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 eighth 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 your resentments
Step nine is processing through your resentments, 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- Build up your skills
This is where couples need to build up their skills on how to have a great marriage. Not having tools probably contributed to the problems in their marriage in the first place because falling in love is easy but staying in love takes effort. That's where tools come in. Tools to foster emotional intimacy, tools to share power on decisions, tools to communicate openly, tools to resolve conflicts, tools to express complaints constructively, etc. No one teaches us these things. Therefore, this step involves training on effective marriage skills so couples can start fostering a healthy relationship filled with connection, openness, and partnership.
Step Eleven- Fill your love buckets
Step eleven 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
I found out about 4 months ago that my husband was cheating on me for a while. We have been married for 17 years and 3 young kids. I’m feeling so alone because I can’t talk to my friends in town about this – too small of a town and will come back to my kids. If I told my family they would disown him – again, not good for my kids. I’m looking for a support group or such of betrayed partners where we can sure our experiences and feelings…all in different stages of the game. I have a therapist but it’s not the same as talking to others that can directly relate. Is there such a group? Local or online? Thank you!
Thanks James, yes, most affairs begin innocent and catch us off guard. Your assessment is correct. No more contact with the young woman is required.
I’ve just ended an emotional affair with a young woman that I though of as my daughter. We met at a college where I was a community volunteer and she a student. For more than 6 years I took care of her, took her doctors and dental appointments, helped her move 3 times, hired her to work for me, an endless list of connections. My wife was very upfront about how this relationship I was having was an emotional affair. I fought with her and said that this young woman was the daughter I never had and I was lucky to have her in my life. The young woman shared every detail of her life with me, calling me her “real dad, and BFF”. She made me her emergency contact, and made me the beneficiary of her 401K plan and life insurance. She had a very bad relationship with her family of origin. They thought of her as cinderella- she actually worked in the Summer to pay her dead beat dads rent. This summer, at 26 1/2 years old her fiends signed her up on a dating app. This young woman never held hands, never kissed, never was on a date, never had sex, never smoked, drank or tried drugs. She was a trauma survivor and I really felt like her protector and care taker. One night in September my phone buzzed with a text, “had sex, it hurt, he’s big”. And for the next 2 moths she shared every detail of her sex life with me. I was scared for her. We created a code that she would text me if she got in trouble so I could come and rescue her. She was dating older men & practicing very risky behavior. I got her condoms, and asked for as much info on these guys as possible. All this time I was getting in deeper and deeper. It was exciting and at the same time troubling to see her begin a sexual awakening that was so extreme. Finally after having me intervene with these men, call her therapist, follow up with her panic attacks, watch her try a list of anti anxiety meds, and birth control, she met a young man that was her peer. I was so invested and emotionally caught up that I called the new boyfriend to have a “father to boyfriend” conversation. My young woman friend was furious. But I felt after 6 1/2 years of me being her primary person I was not wrong. My wife was sick of me attending to the young woman, and she called me out on having an emotional affair and we began couples therapy. I fought with my wife that it was not an emotional affair or affair of any kind. But all the signs were there: confidential conversations, secret phone calls and meeting, over-sharing very personal information, and more. I called the young woman and asked to create some boundaries around the personal information she was sharing about the new boyfriend. She exploded! Saying that she had already given me guide lines and that she needed me to accept anything she said, and that I shouldn’t ever contact the guy, or do anything without her permission. That was the end. After getting chewed out in a very angry exchange, I decided that I couldn’t stay in this relationship. I love her and worry about her. But that’s the nature of an emotional affair. I was so invested in out “father/daughter” partnership that I didn’t want accept the strain it was putting on my marriage or how I had given up common boundaries in order to have this person in my life. Now I literally feel like I’m detoxing from being on drugs. Like I was addicted to this person. I wish I could have figured this out sooner. I owe my wife a huge debt of gratitude for sticking with me though this. I wish there was some middle ground where me and this young woman could be friends, but reality dictates otherwise. Please let me know what you think
Wow Francesca, that sounds like a horrible experience for you. Affairs are crippling on so many levels. Sounds like a red flag that he lied to you many times that things were over and now he won’t be intimate with you. Be sure to see a local therapist for support.
Me and my partner are not married but have been together 10 years, honestly I thought this year was going to be the year we finally got engaged as we always talk about marriage. My partner is quite flirty and likes to go out with his mates and that has never been an issue for me because like he always said its me he’s coming home to. He used to say it’s harmless flirting but I told him it’s not because the girls think it’s more. So anyways we had lockdown so he was unable to go out like normal and see his mates and all the normal stuff. So once the bars and pubs reopened I let him go abit wild, I felt guilty for the fact he had been stuck home with me for 18 months. He enjoyed the freedom a little too much and met a girl. She tracked him down on Instagram and pestered him for his number, a few days later they slept together and then the affair carried on from there. Normally he tells girls he has a wife (he’s always called me his wife) but for some reason he never told her because they clicked the moment he saw her. He’s 33 she’s 20, he’s flashing his money and she’s fresh out of a controlling relationship which was also with an older man. The affair went on for a month before i found out. I had started to question where he was all the time as it stopped being just weekends and he started being out during the week and then started staying out all night. Then one morning on a day he had no work after the school run I noticed he had a missed call on his phone but I couldn’t check because he had changed his passcode. I confronted him and he called me crazy. A week passed and I found “cum” on his boxers in the washing basket. I confronted him again and he simply said I don’t love you any more. Then tried turning it on to me saying I don’t love him. But still wasn’t admitting to an affair or sleeping with anyone else. Eventually I tracked the girl down on his Instagram and she told me everything. But she was also trying to play me too! She told us both to leave the other and would bad mouth us to each other. He lied to her and said he wasn’t with me just sleeping on the sofa at mine until he gets a place of his own. He told me he ended it and then the affair carried on for another 4 months. In that time the girl had an abortion because obviously neither of them were using protection! Because they are both idiots. They were apparently madly in love and told each other everyday “I love you” this hurt me more than the pregnancy! He was also telling me daily. It has now been two months since he finally ended it for real with her. She got spiteful and sent me loads of photos and messages before he got home. He tells me multiple times a day that he loves me and that this is where he wants to be but it still took a week for him to block her. She plays games on her social media pretending they are still together, she even snuck into his van and made some TikTok’s while it was parked at his friends house! She is a red flag herself, she has multiple fake Instagram accounts and uses them to stalk us, She also has multiple phone numbers. I cry most nights because it all comes back to me but it also doesn’t help that my partner isn’t being intimate with me. He says isn’t my love enough for you? But simply saying I love you to someone isn’t enough after all of the hurt. He said some hurtful things during his affair, stuff he says he didn’t mean, he was just trying to push me away. But they still hurt! I think I need professional help, but I also don’t want to end up on medication. When I first found out I suffered with anxiety induced nausea and lost all appetite, I didn’t eat for 3 weeks. I started making myself eat because I nearly fell down the stairs I was so weak. I have 2 kids I couldn’t put them in danger. Through this affair I have lost 2.5 stone and dropped 2 dress sizes which is great I needed to lose weight but there are certainly betters and healthier ways for that to happen.