There is a saying that I hear a lot in my work as a couples therapist that I really disagree with: “time heals all wounds.” Even if we take that statement literally, it just is not true. Oftentimes wounds fester or get infected, and time actually makes them worse, not better. You have to start by cleaning the wound, dressing it, and only by making sure that the wound is healthy as can be that time starts working and moving through the healing process.
Betrayal in relationships is the same. If you just bury or ignore the wound, rather than addressing it, I can almost guarantee that it is not going to get better. Instead of healing, time is going to build resentment and hurt, and you will find that both you and your partner will drift apart or end the relationship, rather than improving and moving on. This is especially the case with one of the biggest betrayals in relationships: infidelity or having an affair.
Why Couples Therapy Matters in Affair Recovery
When discussing affair recovery, I highly recommend seeking out couples therapy for support during this transition. It is an incredibly painful and difficult time to navigate. Having that extra support with someone trained in betrayals is immeasurably valuable. You do not have to go through this alone. I know it can be scary to reach out for help during this time, and that is why I wanted to write this article: to give you a bit of an idea of what you can expect from a therapist’s support during this time.
What Defines an Affair?
Whenever I talk about something, I like to start by defining what exactly it is. Defining an affair may seem like a simple task, but it is far more nuanced and often depends on the specific agreements and boundaries of the relationship involved. For some partners, an affair can be entirely emotional, occurring when one person relies on someone outside the relationship for emotional intimacy while shutting their partner out and keeping them in the dark.
More commonly, when couples come to me for affair recovery, the affair has included physical or sexual overtures. What ultimately defines an affair is that it poses a threat to the relationship or causes one partner to feel deeply betrayed.
That sense of betrayal is key: an affair occurs when the behavior violates the explicit or implicit rules of the relationship.
For example, if a couple has previously agreed that sex outside the relationship is allowed, there may still be unexpected feelings of hurt, but it would not be considered an affair because there was no betrayal of agreed-upon boundaries. Factors such as when the affair happened, how long it lasted, or whether the betraying partner felt it “meant something” are not what determine its impact. In many cases, infidelity involves deception or duplicity, which only intensifies the experience of betrayal and deepens the negative impact it has on the relationship.
The First Phase of Recovery: Accountability, Atonement, and Restoring Safety
The first phase of affair recovery centers on the betraying partner atoning for their actions, with the primary goal being to create enough safety for healing to begin. During this stage, all emotions are allowed, but not necessarily all ways of expressing them. Your therapist will support you both in learning how to communicate feelings in ways that can be heard, such as using clear “I feel” statements, rather than criticism or disguised blame. This phase makes room for pain, fear, uncertainty, and grief, while steering away from attacking each other or questions that function as accusations.
The betraying partner is asked to fully own their choices, acknowledge the violation of their values, and clearly recommit to prioritizing the relationship. Honesty and transparency are essential, but they must be purposeful; excessive details that fuel intrusive images or rumination are typically unhelpful at this stage. Because trust is at its lowest point, words alone are rarely enough.
Concrete agreements around transparency and the absence of secrets help restore a sense of security. The betrayed partner may need more reassurance and be more rigid around boundaries they have initially, which is a normal part of rebuilding trust. Over time, this foundation allows the couple to move toward acceptance — not absolution, but a grounded acknowledgment that the affair happened and that trust is beginning to renew. Signs of progress include the ability to remain a team when triggers or minor missteps arise.
The Second Phase of Recovery: Reconnection and Rebuilding the Relationship
After this accountability and atonement occurs, therapy transitions to helping the couple reconnect and rebuild their relationship. In this phase, both partners work on sharing their worlds together, and building a relationship based on connection, rather than the disconnection that was present previously. A key shift is learning to communicate positive needs rather than negative ones.
Learning to Communicate Positive Needs
When I talk about “positive” versus “negative” needs, I am not speaking in a moral sense, but in a practical one. Negative needs aim to stop something (“stop yelling”), while positive needs clarify what is actually being asked for (“I need a softer voice because raised voices overwhelm me”). Using positive needs helps partners respond in ways that truly foster connection rather than merely avoiding unpleasant or distressing behaviors. These skills are practiced not only during moments of tension, but as a regular part of daily relationship life. This is also the time where your therapist will help you also develop healthy problem-solving skills for issues that genuinely require solutions.
Rebuilding Intimacy, Joy, and Shared Experiences
Partnerships are not just about communication. This is also a time to start rebuilding shared experiences and intimacy to make you partners and lovers again. This phase of betrayal recovery also includes intentionally noticing and celebrating positive experiences, such as shared successes, enjoyable date nights, or individual accomplishments, and striving to create more positive experiences together. Therapy during this phase is not only about navigating hard conversations, but also about helping couples rediscover joy, playfulness, and shared meaning. Because affairs often involve partners turning away from one another and losing a sense of shared life, attunement is where they begin to turn back toward each other—engaging in deeper, open-ended conversations, sharing their inner worlds, and rebuilding a sense of partnership rather than simply coexisting.
The Third Phase of Recovery: Creating Shared Meaning and Emotional Security
Once you feel more connected and close, your therapist will help you move towards the final stage, where the focus shifts to rebuilding (or in some cases creating for the first time) a deep sense of shared meaning, and emotional security. Affairs often severely damage a couple’s shared world and value system, and in some relationships, that shared meaning may never have fully existed to begin with. Because each partner brings their own beliefs about themselves, relationships, and the life they want to live, committed partnerships require the intentional creation of a shared worldview. When this is absent, partners tend to drift apart, and when an affair occurs, it shatters whatever shared meaning and values were in place.
In this phase, couples intentionally strengthen rituals of connection, both small, everyday moments and larger, meaningful experiences, recognizing that the meaning behind these rituals often matters more than the ritual itself. Your therapist will also help you practice turning toward one another. Oftentimes after an affair both partners will turn away from each other when in crisis, leading to feelings of loneliness. This work emphasizes rebuilding fondness and admiration, helping couples shift from negative sentiment override, where neutral or positive actions are interpreted negatively, to positive sentiment override, where goodwill and generosity are assumed. This includes explicitly appreciating each other, engaging in activities together that highlight each partner’s strengths or passions, and creating space to genuinely enjoy one another again.
Sexual and emotional intimacy are approached carefully and at the couple’s pace, with the understanding that hesitation is normal and that pushing too quickly can be retraumatizing, particularly for the hurt partner. Throughout this phase, your therapist will support you in engaging in consistent, structured conversations that prevent resentment from quietly rebuilding and allow successes and concerns to be addressed as they arise. Finally, your therapist will help give you the tools to maintain your progress and keep the new relationship strong going forward.
Healing Is Possible
Affair recovery is possible. It is not an easy road, but with support from a trained couples therapist, you can not just bring your relationship back to where it was, but actually rebuild a new, stronger relationship where you feel more connected than ever before.
If an affair has impacted your relationship, reach out to us to discuss how a trained couples therapist at Wildflower can help.
For any providers interested in looking into getting their own training on how to support clients with affair recovery, our Wildflower Center for Learning has a training available on this exact topic.
