How to Heal Your Relationship After a Betrayal

Healing After Infidelity and Betrayal

I see many couples in the practice because of infidelity, affairs, cheating and/or betrayal.

In these deeply painful experiences, couples not only struggle with the most fundamental concept of commitment but also with attempting to maintain their love during their crisis.

When Ashley Madison was hacked in 2016, an interview on NPR revealed that affairs occur in at least 20% of all marriages yet other reports state affairs occur in at least 60% of all marriages.

Most couples have no map, no fallback plan, no direction on where to go once the affair is discovered or revealed.

“NPR revealed that affairs occur in at least 20% of all marriages yet other reports state affairs occur in at least 60% of all marriages.”

If you’ve experienced infidelity or betrayal, the pain endured by both of you can feel insurmountable.

Restoring commitment in its most fundamental sense can feel nearly impossible for you.

Yet, with attention, intention, effort, and patience, I’ve seen couples move from near divorce to complete healing.

Couples may seek therapy at different stages of this journey.

 

Here are some examples of when partners contact us:

  • One partner suspects the other is cheating. Rather than sit alone with his concerns, he’ll use therapy as a means to explore what to do and how to handle it.
  • One partner is on the brink of having an affair or actively having one. She’ll use therapy to try to gain clarity about her conflicted feelings.
  • A betrayed partner discovers an affair and experiences a crisis of emotions. Feeling total devastation and loss, she’ll immediately seek out couple’s therapy for guidance.
  • A betrayed partner cannot get past a previous affair discovery. It may be years later and the couple struggles to move on. They may schedule for themselves to see how they can “get past” what happened.

Transparency, Accountability and Time

Initially, it will be important for couples to practice transparency and accountability.

If you are the betrayed partner, you hold a whirlwind of emotions that must be expressed.

Critical to healing, you’ll need to express your anxiety, anger, fear, disappointment, shock and overall devastation.

It’s natural for you to ask questions about the affair, remain suspicious for a period of time, and to question everything.

If you are the involved partner, you must hold yourself accountable for the decision to step outside the relationship, even if you feel justified in doing so.

You may have your own separate emotional experience that can also include fear, sadness, desperation, relief and concern.

It’s natural for you to avoid answering questions but you cannot avoid all questions.

Most importantly, you’ll both need to value time.

Time will help you move out of a crisis state, develop insight into your relationship and possibly envision a future together.

“Time helps couples move out of a crisis state, develop insight into their relationship and envision a future together”

Is it Possible to Experience Intimacy During a Crisis?

In therapy, as couples move through these phases, they learn how to practice the behaviors associated with “loving” while healing from an affair.

Amongst the many skills learned, couples practice communication, empathy, vulnerability, transparency, care for the welfare of the other, honesty, trust-building, and forgiveness.

Learning these skills isn’t a guarantee that you will stay together.

For some couples, the best decision, while difficult, is separation.

Before you move into those big decisions alone, please consider seeking therapy.

Therapy provides a space for couples to explore the healthiest way for them to heal.

Therapy shows couples how to practice “loving”, whether they choose to stay together or to separate.

 

 

Research tells us that couples will wait five years before they seek out relationship help.

 

The Silent Divide

For many affair couples, they unknowingly experienced a silent divide, a slow and steady series of actions and inactions that laid the groundwork for the affair(s) to occur. 

Remember, commitment isn’t a one-time act. It’s a series of behaviors that nurture your relationship over its lifespan.

This happens on the days when life feels ordinary, mundane and fine, as well as when you struggle to be in each other’s company.

With so many tools/resources at your disposal, from articles and books, podcasts and courses, and/or therapy, it’s easier than ever to stay attuned, connect and practice loving every day.

What resources do you use to practice “loving”, consistently, even when your relationship feels hard?

Forgiveness Will Change Your Life

On a show called Story Corp of National Public Radio, a mother shared her life story of how her young adult son was shot and killed by another male. As her narrative unfolded, she spoke of her incredibly deep sorrow. She attended the court hearings daily in an attempt to understand this person who caused her such unbearable pain. Once the court sentenced him, she began to visit him in prison…often. When they released him, he had no resources. She took him into her home and helped him get an education. She said, “I gave him the education that I couldn’t give my son”.

As I remember her voice, I feel tearful, as I did when I listened to her story. How is it possible to experience such a deep, profound loss and not only forgive the person who hurt us, but love them? How do we release the chains that bind us and open our hearts toward compassionate, loving forgiveness?

All of us have been hurt by someone at some time in our life. Mom, dad, aunt, sibling, friend, teacher, neighbor, spouse, boss, clergy, stranger. Some wrongs, we’ve forgotten about and let go of. Others seem to have become a part of our identity. Who would we be if we let go these wrong doings? How would our life change?

I remember a client who once said to me, “If I forgive him, then I’m accepting what he did and I don’t accept it.  It’s not okay”. Let’s consider another perspective. This client was partially correct. For her, this behavior was NOT okay. But forgiveness does not equal acceptance or approval. The act or behavior is so unacceptable that it requires forgiveness. You don’t forgive acts or behaviors that feel good. You only consider forgiveness when you’ve been hurt.

Forgiveness requires you to move through grief before letting go. For the mother in the story who lost her son, her grief is obvious. But what about for the person whose mom was extremely critical? Or who has the aunt that touched them inappropriately? Or for the spouse whose wife/husband had an affair?

In those examples, you grieve what was supposed to be, what you wanted. You wanted a loving, non-critical mom. She didn’t deliver that to you. You wanted your aunt to respect your body. Instead, she crossed your physical boundary. You wanted your spouse to be faithful. Instead, he/she stepped outside of the relationship. The mother in the story wanted her son alive.

When you hold onto the old or recurring story of hurt, you may experience increased anxiety or depression. However, when you forgive those who hurt you, you experience increased hope and increased self-esteem.

Scientific research is now studying how forgiveness changes the brain. Specifically, they are finding that forgiveness effects the regions of the brain associated with emotional regulation, moral judgements, perceptions of physical pain and decision-making.

Imagine how this mother might have lived if she did not open her heart, develop compassion and forgive the man who murdered her son?  Her decision to forgive this man changed her life. If she did not take control and choose to forgive, her life would have been shaped by anger, resentment, depression and loneliness. Instead, she gave this man the life she could not give her son.  She chose love.

Forgiveness may be one of the hardest decisions you make. If someone in your life continues to hurt you, you can forgive them while also drawing healthy boundaries and necessary distance if needed. Forgiveness does not mean tolerating hurt. It does mean that you stop that hurt from shaping your future experiences.

Forgiveness requires you to practice compassion, for yourself and for others. It also requires you to live in the present. When you forgive and let go, you create a new narrative, a new way of life.