The Biggest Mistakes Couples Make After an Affair (That Keep You Stuck)

There’s something I see with many couples—but usually not right away.

It’s what happens after they’ve already tried to move on from an affair… and it didn’t work.

They come in months or even years later and say things like:

“We agreed not to talk about it anymore.”
“We just wanted to move forward.”
“We thought bringing it up would make things worse.”

And for a while, it might seem like that strategy is working. But then something starts happening.

An argument comes up about something minor… and suddenly it’s back. The fight blows up and the couple is back in the cycle they found themselves in months or years ago when the affair was originally discovered. They then find themselves in moments of disconnection and suddenly the disconnect is interpreted as another affair is happening and the questions and accusations begin all over again.

These reactions don’t quite match the moment… but the conflicts feel impossible to control.

And they’re left wondering:

“Why are we still dealing with this?”

Watch: The Biggest Mistakes Couples Make After an Affair

I recorded a short video walking through the biggest mistakes I see couples make in the early stages after an affair—and why these patterns often don’t show up right away, but end up keeping couples stuck much longer than they need to be.

If this feels familiar, this will help you understand what’s happening (and what to do instead):

Why This Pattern Shows Up Later (Not Always Right Away)

One of the most confusing parts of affair recovery is that sometimes things feel “okay”… at first.

Couples stop talking about the affair and they fall back into their same patterns and routines because they were likely good partners before the affair. They know how to run a household together, take care of their kids needs together, and share the same space without causing too much friction.

They try their best to move forward and they focus on getting back to normal because restoring the relationship to homeostasis feels like the best thing to do. For a period of time, it can feel like it’s working. But what’s actually happening underneath the surface is very different.

Infidelity doesn’t just create emotional pain—it disrupts your sense of safety.

And when that disruption isn’t processed, it doesn’t disappear.

It gets stored.

And over time, it begins to resurface in ways that don’t always seem directly connected to the affair—but are.

The Most Common Mistakes I See (And Why They Backfire Over Time)

1. Trying to Move On Too Quickly

There’s often pressure—on both sides—to get back to “normal.”

But when the pain is skipped instead of processed, it doesn’t resolve.

It lingers.

And often, couples don’t feel the full impact of this right away—but they feel it later in the form of ongoing disconnection, emotional reactivity, feeling tuck or stagnant and when they come back to the same argument over and over.

2. Agreeing Not to Talk About It

This is one of the most common patterns I see—especially in couples who come in after months or years of trying to move forward on their own.

They made an agreement:

“Let’s just not talk about it anymore.”

The partner who had the affair wanted the questions to stop.
The betrayed partner agreed because they didn’t want to lose the relationship.

And for a while, it seemed like the right decision.

But nothing actually got processed.

The pain didn’t go away—it just got pushed down.

And over time, it starts to show up again:

• In arguments that escalate quickly

• In tension that doesn’t make sense in the moment

• In reactions that feel bigger than what’s happening

This is when couples start to feel like they’re “back at the beginning.”

But they’re not.

They’re running into something that was never fully worked through.

Forgiveness isn’t something you decide your way into.
It’s something that develops after the pain has been processed.

3. Focusing on Details Instead of Emotional Safety

It’s natural to want answers.

But healing doesn’t come from information alone.

Underneath those questions is something deeper: the most important question, “Am I safe with you?”

And safety is built through emotional presence—not just facts. It comes from sitting together and moving through challenging conflict - as messy as it may be - together. Sitting with one another through the pain and not pulling away.

4. Defensiveness Instead of Connection

When pain resurfaces—especially later—the partner who had the affair often feels confused:

“I thought we already moved past this.”

So they explain, defend, or try to shut it down again.

But what actually helps is slowing down and staying present with the pain—especially when it comes back up.

5. Expecting Healing to Be Linear

When couples think they’ve moved on, it can feel frustrating when the pain returns.

But this isn’t a setback.

It’s part of the process.

Healing happens in waves—and sometimes those waves come later when things finally feel safe enough to surface.

6. Trying to Figure It Out Alone

Many couples try to handle this on their own first.

And when the “move on and don’t talk about it” strategy doesn’t work, they find themselves feeling stuck much later.

Because what you’re navigating isn’t just a relationship issue.

It’s trauma, attachment, and nervous system dysregulation—all happening at once.

Common Questions About Affair Recovery

Why does the affair keep coming up even years later?

Because it was never fully processed. When something disrupts your sense of safety and isn’t worked through, your nervous system continues trying to resolve it—often long after the event itself.

Is it bad that we tried to move on and not talk about it?

No. It’s a very understandable response. Most couples are trying to protect the relationship. It just tends to delay healing rather than create it.

Why does it feel like we’re back at the beginning?

Because the underlying pain is just now being accessed—not because you’ve failed, but because it wasn’t processed earlier.

Can we still heal if it’s been years since the affair?

Yes. Healing is still absolutely possible. In many cases, couples are finally in a place where they’re ready to process it in a deeper, more effective way.

Do we have to keep talking about it forever?

No. But there is a phase where it needs to be processed in a way that creates understanding and safety. Once that happens, the intensity and frequency naturally decrease.

You Don’t Have to Stay Stuck Here

If you’re in this place—where it feels like you’ve tried to move on but it keeps coming back—you’re not alone.

And you’re not doing anything wrong.

You’re running into something that simply needs a different kind of support.

With the right guidance, couples can move through this in a way that actually creates resolution—not just temporary relief.

If you’re ready for that, I offer intensives and longer sessions specifically designed for affair recovery.

You can book a free consultation to talk through what’s happening and what support could look like for you.

Alicia Taverner, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps couples heal after infidelity, years of resentment, and the exhaustion of feeling stuck in the same painful patterns.

Her work helps partners begin to understand each other again, rebuild appreciation, and create lasting change with a focused, supportive approach. Alicia uses brain based techniques, including Brainspotting and ketamine assisted psychotherapy, in an intensive format that gives couples more room to heal without the start and stop of weekly sessions.

Learn more about Alicia’s work with affair recovery intensives, relationship therapy, and ketamine therapy, or visit her About page.

When Good People Cheat: The Unmet Needs Affair

“I never meant for this to happen,” is what I typically hear when I sit down with someone who has been unfaithful to their partner.

I genuinely believe them when they tell me this because doing this work, I’ve heard from plenty of partners who have strayed in some fashion, and this is a common thread. They are good people, and they’ve made a mistake, and it’s not my job to judge, but to help them understand what lead to their behaviors so that they can prevent it from happening again.

There are many types of affairs. The most common one that I see is what Mira Kirchenbaum calls, the “unmet needs” affair. In her book, When Good People have Affairs, she outlines many types of affairs and I often recommend her book to clients who have or are having an affair because it can really help them understand their behaviors better, in conjunction with the work we do in session.

The unmet needs affair happens when you feel as though there is something missing in your relationship with your partner.

It could be sex, intimacy, or intelligent conversation. But focusing on one aspect of the relationship that is missing is a trap, and many times people only come to realize what they’ve been missing after they’ve already crossed the line.

When you look outside of your relationship for that one unmet need, you are essentially negating all of the many other positive aspects that likely exist in your relationship.

A whole, healthy, relationship only includes sex or conversation as a very small piece that makes up the relationship, however the trap occurs when you begin to see this piece as a gaping hole – it has the potential to become everything, and with the help of an affair partner, you begin to negate the many other positive aspects that you once based your relationship on.

Getting involved with someone else in order to fulfill this unmet need is typically clouded by the electrifying rush that happens in new relationships. It’s quite normal for people to see their affair partner as the most amazing person they’ve ever met, however an affair relationship is only a façade – it exists in a vacuum, and lacks much of the other important aspects that secure, long-term relationships need to survive.

Using another person to fulfill that one aspect that was missing from your marriage is fundamentally flawed because without fully knowing your affair partner, you are unable to see all of their true characteristics, as this relationship will also have missing aspects to it.

If you think back to the beginning of your marriage, I’m sure there were fireworks. Things in the beginning of relationships tend to be intense and full of passion.

I once read that falling in love has the same impact as a drug on the brain. It’s easy to become addicted to that feeling, and those intense emotions cloud your judgment.

The beginning of a relationship is when you go out of your way for that other person – you stay up all night talking even if you’ve got to be at work at 7am, you write silly love poems, and drive an hour both ways just to spend an hour in the arms of your love.

If you’re stuck in the difficult spot of having already crossed the line and engaged in an affair to fulfill a need that was lacking in your marriage, you’re not alone. I know that there is a great deal of shame and pain that comes from making that decision, but there is also support for you to right your wrongs.

Although the road is long and difficult, I’ve seen some wonderful things come from those who are willing to look at themselves, their decisions, and learn from their mistakes.

Affair Recovery: What an "Unmet Needs" Affair Does and Doesn't Mean About Your Marriage

Affair recovery is rarely as simple as people imagine. If you're on either side of an affair that developed around unmet emotional needs, it's easy to make quick, painful conclusions about what happened and what it means about your marriage.

"If I had just been more affectionate, this wouldn't have happened."

"If they really loved me, they never would have done this."

"This must mean our whole relationship was a lie."

These thoughts make sense. When betrayal enters a relationship, our minds immediately begin searching for certainty. We want a clear explanation for something that feels impossible to understand.

But unmet needs affairs usually don't begin with one catastrophic decision. More often, they develop slowly through countless small moments of disconnection, avoidance, loneliness, and conversations that never quite happen. They often reveal more about how two people learned to cope with pain and distance than they do about whether love ever existed between them.

None of this excuses the betrayal. The hurt is real. The shock, the nausea, the racing thoughts, the sleepless nights, and the feeling that your entire world has shifted beneath your feet are all real experiences. Understanding how an affair developed is not the same as minimizing it. Rather, it's the first step in meaningful affair recovery because it helps us understand what needs to change if healing is going to happen.

Many of the couples I work with discover that beneath the affair were years of conversations that felt too frightening to have, patterns of shutting down or becoming defensive during conflict, and differences in emotional or physical needs that neither partner knew how to express. When we slow the process down enough to understand these patterns, we begin to see the affair in context—not to remove responsibility from the partner who crossed the boundary, but to create a roadmap for rebuilding trust if both people choose to move forward.

Affair Recovery Begins by Understanding Why Affairs Feel So Intense

One of the reasons affair recovery feels so overwhelming is because affairs often create an emotional intensity that stands in stark contrast to everyday married life.

The secrecy, novelty, and feeling of being deeply seen in one particular way can feel intoxicating. The brain becomes flooded with chemicals that convince us we've finally found what has been missing. Meanwhile, long-term relationships are filled with mortgage payments, parenting responsibilities, work stress, household chores, and unresolved arguments that have quietly accumulated over time.

Side by side, the affair can begin to look like technicolor next to a black-and-white movie.

One of the greatest challenges in affair recovery is separating this neurochemical intensity from reality. The betrayed partner often concludes that the marriage must never have been real. The partner who had the affair may convince themselves they've finally found the relationship they were always meant to have. In reality, neither conclusion is usually the whole story.

Slowing the process down allows both partners to understand what happened without minimizing the betrayal or avoiding accountability. Healing begins when we stop asking only, "How could this happen?" and begin asking, "What made our relationship vulnerable, and what has to change if we choose to rebuild?"

Is Affair Recovery Possible After an Unmet Needs Affair?

This is the question I hear more than any other.

"Can our relationship actually survive this?"

There isn't one answer that fits every couple.

Some relationships do end after an affair. Others become more honest, emotionally connected, and intentional than they have ever been.

From my experience helping couples through affair recovery, healing becomes possible when the affair has truly ended, the partner who had the affair is willing to take full responsibility without defensiveness, the betrayed partner has space to experience their grief, anger, and questions, and both people become willing to honestly examine the relationship patterns that existed long before the betrayal occurred.

Successful affair recovery isn't about pretending nothing happened or forcing forgiveness before trust has been rebuilt. It is about creating enough safety for the truth to be spoken, understanding how the relationship arrived at this point, and building entirely new ways of communicating, connecting, and responding to one another.

This work is incredibly difficult to do alone. Most couples are trying to navigate overwhelming emotions while also fearing that every conversation could make things worse. That is often where therapy—and particularly therapy intensives—becomes invaluable.

When Weekly Therapy Feels Too Slow for Affair Recovery

For some couples, traditional weekly therapy provides exactly the support they need. But the more affair recovery work I do, the more I recognize how difficult it can be to create meaningful momentum within a 50-minute session.

Often, just as we begin reaching the heart of the issue, it's time to stop.

You leave emotionally raw, carrying difficult conversations back home with no therapist present to help you navigate the next six days. The same arguments continue. The same questions replay. Both partners remain flooded, desperately wanting relief but unsure how to create it together.

It can feel like trying to put out a house fire with a spray bottle.

Affair recovery often progresses much more quickly in couples therapy intensives because there is enough uninterrupted time to move beyond crisis management and begin real healing. Instead of stopping just as vulnerability begins to emerge, we have the time to stay with difficult conversations long enough for understanding, regulation, and repair to occur.

During an intensive, we are able to carefully slow down overwhelming emotions, explore the full story of the affair in a guided and contained way, identify the unmet needs and relationship patterns that made the marriage vulnerable, begin rebuilding emotional safety, and create a concrete roadmap for what healing will look like moving forward.

Rather than taking one small step each week, couples have the opportunity to immerse themselves in one to three days of focused affair recovery work that often creates breakthroughs impossible to reach in shorter sessions.

What Affair Recovery Therapy Looks Like in a Couples Intensive

Every intensive is tailored to the unique story of the couple sitting in front of me, but each one is built around creating enough emotional safety to tell the truth while remaining connected.

We spend time understanding the history of your relationship, exploring both partners' experiences of the affair, addressing the questions that feel too frightening to ask at home, and working directly with the nervous system so conversations can happen without becoming overwhelming. We also begin rebuilding transparency, clarifying boundaries, and discussing what rebuilding trust will actually require moving forward.

Throughout the process, we move at a pace that honors both the profound injury experienced by the betrayed partner and the accountability required from the partner who had the affair.

The goal is never to rush forgiveness or push you toward staying together. The goal is clarity, honesty, and creating a path forward that aligns with your values.

Every affair recovery intensive is designed to help couples understand the betrayal, rebuild emotional safety, and create a realistic roadmap for healing—whether that ultimately means rebuilding the relationship or separating with clarity and respect.

Affair Recovery for Couples Traveling From Out of State

Because affair recovery requires focused, uninterrupted work, many of the couples I see choose to travel from across California and throughout the United States for an intensive.

Stepping away from home often allows couples to temporarily leave behind the daily responsibilities that make it difficult to focus on healing. Without work obligations, household demands, or parenting routines competing for attention, they are able to fully immerse themselves in repairing their relationship.

If you're traveling, we'll spend time preparing for the logistics of your trip, discussing where to stay, planning emotionally for the intensive, and talking through what you might want to share with children, family members, or friends while you're away.

Many couples tell me that simply creating dedicated space for their relationship becomes healing in itself.

What Happens After an Affair Recovery Intensive?

An affair recovery intensive can become a powerful turning point, but it is not the end of the healing journey.

The intensive creates the foundation. Together we develop shared language, deepen understanding, begin repairing trust, and establish new patterns of communication. From there, we discuss what ongoing support will best help you continue integrating the work.

For some couples, that means additional intensive sessions. Others transition into ongoing couples therapy, individual therapy, or continue working alongside a trusted therapist closer to home if they traveled for the intensive.

Healing doesn't happen because of one conversation. It happens because the conversations you begin during the intensive continue changing the way you relate to one another long after you leave my office.

You Don't Have to Navigate Affair Recovery Alone

If you're reading this because you've had an affair, or because you've just discovered your partner has, I want you to know that you are not the only couple who has walked this path.

Your confusion makes sense.

Your grief makes sense.

Your anger makes sense.

Whether you're looking for ongoing affair recovery therapy, weekly couples counseling, or a focused intensive designed specifically for infidelity recovery, you don't have to figure this out on your own.

If you're searching for an experienced affair recovery therapist, I'd be honored to help you explore what healing could look like for your relationship. During a brief consultation, we'll talk about where you are today, what you're hoping to accomplish, and whether weekly therapy or an affair recovery intensive is the best next step for you.

If something inside you is wondering whether your relationship could become different than it is today, that's a meaningful place to begin.

Call (909) 600-0306 to schedule a consultation. There's no pressure and no obligation—just a conversation about what support might look like for you and your relationship.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Affair Recovery

How long does affair recovery take?

Every relationship heals at its own pace, so there isn't a universal timeline for affair recovery. For some couples, the initial crisis begins to settle within a few months. For others, rebuilding trust may take a year or longer. The length of the healing process depends on many factors, including whether the affair has completely ended, the willingness of the partner who had the affair to be transparent and accountable, and both partners' commitment to understanding the deeper relationship patterns that contributed to the betrayal. Healing isn't about getting back to the relationship you had before the affair—it's about creating a healthier one moving forward.

Can a marriage survive an affair?

Yes. While not every couple chooses to stay together, many marriages do survive infidelity. In fact, some couples describe their relationship after affair recovery as being more honest, emotionally connected, and intentional than it had ever been before. That doesn't mean the affair was necessary or beneficial. It means that when both partners are willing to do the difficult work of rebuilding trust, healing is possible.

Is affair recovery possible if the affair lasted a long time?

Absolutely. The length of the affair doesn't automatically determine whether recovery is possible. Long-term affairs often create deeper wounds and require more time to process, but healing depends far more on what happens after the affair is discovered than on how long it lasted. Genuine remorse, consistent honesty, and a willingness to understand what led to the affair are much stronger predictors of recovery than the timeline itself.

Should we start weekly couples therapy or an affair recovery intensive?

It depends on where you are in the healing process. Weekly couples therapy can be incredibly helpful for many relationships, especially when the crisis has begun to stabilize. However, immediately after discovering an affair, many couples feel overwhelmed by intense emotions, constant questions, and repeated arguments that are difficult to address in a 50-minute session. An affair recovery intensive provides uninterrupted time to slow everything down, answer difficult questions, begin rebuilding safety, and create a clear roadmap for healing. Many couples continue with weekly or ongoing therapy after the intensive to support long-term change.

Is it normal for the betrayed partner to ask the same questions over and over?

Yes. This is one of the most common experiences after infidelity. The betrayed partner's brain is trying to make sense of a traumatic event that shattered their sense of safety. Repeating questions is often part of the nervous system's attempt to understand what happened and determine whether it is safe to trust again. Rather than viewing these conversations as a sign that healing isn't happening, it's often more helpful to learn how to answer them in a way that promotes understanding instead of creating more pain.

Will we ever trust each other again?

Trust rarely returns all at once. It is rebuilt through hundreds of small moments of honesty, consistency, and follow-through over time. Rebuilding trust doesn't mean forgetting what happened or pretending the affair never occurred. It means creating enough emotional safety that both partners begin experiencing one another differently. While the process requires patience, many couples find that trust can become stronger than it was before because it is built intentionally rather than assumed.

Do you work with couples who travel for affair recovery intensives?

Yes. Many of the couples I work with travel from throughout California and across the United States for affair recovery intensives. Spending one to three focused days away from the demands of everyday life often allows couples to fully immerse themselves in the healing process. If you're traveling, I'll help you prepare for the intensive, discuss logistics, and create a plan for continuing your progress once you return home.

How do I know if we're ready for affair recovery therapy?

You don't have to know exactly what you want before reaching out. Many couples contact me while they're still uncertain whether they want to rebuild the relationship or whether healing is even possible. If you're feeling overwhelmed, stuck in the same painful conversations, or unsure what the next step should be, a consultation can help clarify your options. Together, we'll explore whether weekly therapy or an affair recovery intensive is the best fit for your relationship.

Alicia Taverner, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist who helps couples heal after infidelity, years of resentment, and the exhaustion of feeling stuck in the same painful patterns.

Her work helps partners begin to understand each other again, rebuild appreciation, and create lasting change with a focused, supportive approach. Alicia uses brain based techniques, including Brainspotting and ketamine assisted psychotherapy, in an intensive format that gives couples more room to heal without the start and stop of weekly sessions.

Learn more about Alicia’s work with affair recovery intensives, relationship therapy, and ketamine therapy, or visit her About page.

Am I to blame for my partner’s Affair?

Hindsight is always 20/20. Always. It’s just too easy to look back on an event and not see the signs, find the flubs, and scrutinize the details that were missed.

When you discover that your partner has had an affair, it’s common to press rewind on the last year of your life together and look for all the signs you should have seen and things you missed. The times they were out late and didn’t invite you, the times they were on the phone way too long with their work colleague and you gave them the benefit of the doubt, not wanting to rock the boat.

When hindsight is 20/20, it’s easy to place blame on yourself for missing the signs, or not acknowledging them or acting on your gut feeling in the moment. But the truth is, relationships are generally built on trust and it isn’t foolish to trust someone you love and are committed to.

As much as you’d probably like it to, the past can’t be erased, and the future of your relationship is what matters.

Many times I have clients who say things like, “I guess the last year was just one big lie. When we took that romantic vacation, and he said all those wonderful things to me, it must’ve been a lie!”

I beg to differ. Your partner saying they love you, and having an affair are not dependent upon one another. People can compartmentalize things in such a way that makes this possible. While I acknowledge that it’s confusing, I don’t believe that what is said in a moment of romance between you and your partner isn’t true for them. Just as what’s happening for them in the moments they share with someone they are having an affair with are also very real.

What you do in the aftermath of an affair is what matters most. How you handle and set new boundaries for your partner moving forward is where you can take charge, and ask for what you need.

I have seen clients that feel as though it is now their duty to punish their partner at all costs after discovering their affair. They tell their kids, they tell their friends, their family, and anyone else who will listen in an attempt to get their partner to feel shame for their transgressions.

When this happens, it creates a space that is no longer safe. Trust is one of the most difficult things to rebuild after infidelity, but when the injured partner creates a space of punishment at every corner, things can truly backfire and this often sends the straying partner back into the arms of the other.

So while you are not to blame for your partner straying in the first place, it is your responsibility to create a space and relationship after the affair where communication is open, and you are both able to be authentic as you push towards creating a new normal.

Looking back on the signs that you missed won’t do a lot of good. What will be beneficial is to identify your responsibility and contributions towards the rocky patch in your relationship that lead to your partner’s affair.

Did you stop communicating? Did you put your job ahead of your relationship? Did you stop nurturing the friendship between you and your partner? Once you can identify your role, you will have a good place to start the healing process.

You can only control yourself, and you can only work on changing yourself in the aftermath of an affair. You can change how you relate to your partner, how you communicate with them, and how you show up in your relationship, but without looking at yourself and really taking an inventory of what you need to change, there is no starting point.

Starting over can be a challenge, whether you’re starting over after an affair, or starting over completely, I’d like to help with the launch of my new e-course, The Starting Over Series. To get on the interest list and to receive more details about this at-home course that will be launching in the very near future, click here. 

Why? And other questions after Infidelity

There are so many questions that come up after one partner has an affair, and the main question that I hear when working with couples struggling to move forward is, why? This is usually one of the main questions asked by the injured partner, however it is typically something that the participating partner has the most difficulty answering.

There are various ways in which couples deal with affairs, they either 1) ignore the problem and hope to push past it without truly delving into discussing it explicitly 2) spend even more time together, and try to “love it out” in a sense, or 3) they separate in an attempt to stop fighting about it.

Wanting to know why your partner did this to you seems as though it will unlock so much, and help you to move forward. But in my opinion, and in the work that I do with couples I’ve found that there isn’t always one definitive answer that’s really good enough for the injured partner, and it typically takes a great amount of time for the participating partner to truly understand why they decided to look stray. 

This can be extremely frustrating for the injured partner, and difficult to understand, however I suggest more important things to focus on while getting to the “why?”:

1.     What about us? In the initial phase of healing from infidelity it is important to set boundaries for daily living and talk about how you will continue to be in the same household during this emotional time.

2.     Have you considered leaving the relationship? Although it isn’t vital to have a definitive answer at this point, it is helpful to find understanding in your partner’s feeling about staying in the relationship and working through the infidelity.

3.     What level of intimacy feels ok right now? Considering what normal activities feel right at the time and discussing them with your partner are essential in creating healthy boundaries in the initial phase of recovery. Deciding to do things like have coffee together in the mornings, hug, kiss, hold hands, and sleep in the same bed, and being vocal about what feels right will help keep everyone on the same page. I also suggest that you talk about what happens if you begin to feel uncomfortable with anything that you’ve agreed to try.

4.     What are we committed to doing in the short term? Creatinga short term plan to work towards healing and moving past the affair may be all you can commit to, and that’s ok. While there isn’t a definite time frame for this, it should be something both partners agree to and feel comfortable with. Within this commitment should be parameters about how you will work to improve the relationship and might sound something like, “I propose we work intensely on our relationship for the next 3 months and then reassess. That means attending weekly counseling, completing all homework set forth by our therapist, and continuing to stay in the home together, and making our relationship our top priority to see if we can indeed get past this.”

5.     Are you committed to a process of learning about how we each contributed to this affair happening? If so, are you willing to take responsibility? Are you committed to learning more about us individually and as a couple? I know this is a three-part question, but in order to move forward you must have all three components. This should also be something that each partner will commit to doing in small increments of time. While the larger question is always whether or not you should stay together, it is a process that occurs in order to find the answer.

Secrecy plays a huge role in an affair and is what the injured partner typically has the most difficulty dealing with and so if the participating partner is willing to be honest about their feelings and their commitment to move forward, this will help greatly in creating a new normal and in rebuilding trust.

Communicating after infidelity can be incredibly challenging. I see many individuals and couples struggle to find the appropriate way to move forward after their partner has been unfaithful, and so I’ve created a FREE guide titled, “My husband cheated: Communicating with your partner in the wake of Infidelity” and you can get it by signing up here. Whether you are the injured or participating partner, there is great info for both in learning to communicate after infidelity, so I hope you’ll get your copy!

If you could use more support and want to talk about the possibility of couples counseling, please give me a call at (909) 226-6124. I’m happy to chat with you about the benefits of counseling and how you can begin to move forward.