From Betrayal to Renewal: How to Overcome Infidelity Together

Have you or your partner committed infidelity? Are you having a tough time keeping your relationship because your partner, who was betrayed, wants to leave? Do you want to stay married but don't know how to deal with betrayal and reestablish trust in your partner?

Healing after infidelity in a relationship or marriage is hard. If you have been unfaithful, it may take years for your spouse to forgive you and give you another chance.

However, restoring a marriage after infidelity is not impossible. Relationship coaching can be a safe place to address infidelity, understand its causes, and develop strategies to rebuild trust and rekindle connection with your partner.

Why Do People in Relationships Cheat?

Adultery is the ultimate violation of trust and security in a relationship. We establish our relationships on trust, believing that our partners will not treat us disrespectfully or betray us.

Still, affairs occur in more than 46 percent of monogamous partnerships, according to a 2021 Health Testing Centers poll.

Infidelity involves not just the loss of a relationship but also the loss of trust, self-esteem, and security. It has an impact on children and everyone else involved. An affair causes the betrayed partner to question everything they thought they knew, leaving them hurt, desolate, and angry.

People in relationships cheat for a variety of reasons. A study of 495 people who admitted to cheating in their relationships shows that people turn to extramarital affairs for eight key reasons:

• Anger

• Self-esteem

• Lack of love

• Low commitment

• Need for variety

• Neglect

• Sexual desire

• Circumstance or situation

Types of Infidelity

Cheating can take many forms, and it’s not limited to sexual encounters. Furthermore, what one individual considers adultery may not be considered infidelity by another. Partners may have a different understanding of what is considered cheating. For instance, you might see an emotional connection without physical attraction as a close friendship. In contrast, your partner might see it as an affair.

So, it would help if you defined what infidelity involves in the context of your relationship.

Sexual Infidelity

Sexual infidelity involves engaging in any sexual relationship outside your marriage, whether it be a one-night stand or a long-term sexual affair.

Emotional Affairs

Most of the time, people think of sexual cheating when they hear the word "infidelity." However, infidelity does not have to involve sex. An emotional affair involves a strong sense of connection, intimacy, and attraction with someone who is not your partner or spouse.

Emotional affairs may not involve sex, but they can be just as damaging to a relationship because you become far more emotionally invested in an emotional affair than in your actual relationship.

The desire to feel connected to someone else can pull you away from your marriage. However, around half of emotional affairs end up developing into sexual relations. At some point, you may find yourself fantasizing about that other person because it is natural for sexual attraction and desire to come up sooner or later in emotional affairs, turning your intimate friendship into a full-scale sexual infidelity.

Online Cheating

Infidelity does not have to involve face-to-face encounters. Cyber infidelity is a form of emotional infidelity in which people have secret extramarital affairs with intimate and sexual connotations. With all those messaging applications, email, chat rooms, and social media, modern technology allows you to meet people and keep in contact conveniently and confidentially.

Infidelity may also involve casual sex, such as a one-night stand, strong desires and/or fantasies about someone else, and compulsive sexual behavior.

Can a Relationship Survive Infidelity?

Deciding whether to walk away or stay after infidelity is something that many people believe is a straightforward decision. If your partner cheats on you, it's probably best to walk away.

An affair has the potential to create a great deal of chaos. It almost always has a domino effect of adverse outcomes. If you have children, keeping them from becoming involved in whatever is going on may be difficult. If you cheat on your partner, your children may view either you or your relationship differently. While younger children may grow more sensitive and anxious, older children may not want to live with you or spend time with you, experience issues with relationships and academic performance, or engage in risky behaviors.

But, like most things in life, this situation isn't just black or white. There is also no quick fix for it. Many couples come to couples counseling because they want to work through the challenges of infidelity and restore their relationship.

Esther Perel, a well-known sex and relationship therapist, believes many couples may heal after infidelity. She does, however, underline the stigma of staying when one may leave, discussing the shame that the deceived spouse who chooses to stay with an unfaithful partner experiences.

Perel says that when a deceived partner feels ashamed for staying in a relationship, they usually bottle up their emotional suffering, not wanting others to judge their adulterous spouse. This puts the wounded partner in a double bind, generating additional distress.

So, how do you restore trust after infidelity and heal?

What Does a Couple Need to Overcome Infidelity?

If you were the one who cheated, it is important to understand that there is no easy solution to this situation. It may take years to restore trust if your spouse is willing to forgive. Forgiveness means their readiness to let go of the hurt and distress your infidelity caused and to move on. However, forgiveness does not mean forgetting.

If your spouse highly values your relationship, their desire to repair can motivate them to forgive infidelity. But if they choose to suppress their hurt and anger, they may never be able to forgive genuinely. This will only aggravate your already strained relationship.

However, it is critical to avoid going into the sensitive details of the affair without expert supervision since doing so may further harm your relationship.

Going to marriage therapy can facilitate forgiveness and help rebuild trust. Your counselor can provide tools and skills to help you navigate, acknowledge, process, and accept difficult feelings. This will help you both get through the healing process faster.

How Can Relationship Coaching Help a Relationship Heal After Infidelity?

In couples counseling, unfaithful and betrayed spouses are both considered wounded due to infidelity. Marriage counseling can help you openly and honestly discuss what's been going on without blaming or criticizing each other, understand why the infidelity happened, and move on from resentment, guilt, shame, anger, and grief.

Your counselor can help you and your partner work on being kinder to yourselves, forgive yourselves and each other, and find ways to rebuild trust and strengthen your bond.

1. Explore What Caused Infidelity

Understanding why infidelity happened is the first step in regaining trust. A relationship coach or counselor may help you examine the reasons for infidelity and understand the underlying difficulties in your relationship. 

The following are some questions to ask yourself to gain clarity about your motives for infidelity:

• Did I have some hurtful experiences in the past? How did they contribute to my unfaithfulness?

• How do my partner and I feel about being vulnerable with one another?   

• Do I or my partner feel emotionally disconnected?

• Is our relationship lacking a sense of space and freedom?

• Does our relationship feel like a roommate's marriage?

• Do we have communication problems?

• Do we experience intimacy issues?   

• Is one or both of us preoccupied with other things, such as career or children, rather than prioritizing our relationship?

• Do we have different values, beliefs, and expectations?

During marriage counseling, your therapist will encourage you to dig deep into these and similar questions to unravel the background of infidelity in your marriage.

It may be quite difficult to explore and discuss infidelity without making accusations or placing blame. Even though a therapist will never rationalize or defend infidelity, taking sides is not something that happens in couples counseling. Your relationship coach will support you, keep open communication, and encourage you to express your feelings.

However, for your relationship to heal, you and your spouse must be dedicated to repairing the damage and rekindling the connection.

2. Work Through Your Feelings

Examine and acknowledge your feelings. You may feel embarrassed and guilty. You might experience anger at yourself or your partner for the circumstances that led to infidelity. Many people feel regret and fear after having an affair. Your fear of the consequences may lead to anxiety and depression. You may struggle with conflicting emotions, having feelings for both your partner and the person with whom you had an affair. This can generate emotional distress.

Being honest with your spouse about your feelings is necessary. Your partner may experience a similar roller coaster of emotions. You have to acknowledge their emotions, demonstrating empathy and understanding.

3. Accept Responsibility

For your relationship to move forward and heal, you have to show true repentance and be able to verbalize what you did wrong. Regaining your partner's trust is only possible if you are willing to be honest, demonstrate trustworthiness, and put the relationship first. 

Conversely, your partner needs to be willing to let go of their resentment and anger and forgive.

4. Be Open and Honest

Dealing with the aftermath of infidelity can be challenging for everyone involved. However, honesty and open communication are critical to repairing your relationship after infidelity. To rebuild trust, you and your spouse first need to understand why you concealed information, lied, and got involved with another person. Listen carefully to what your spouse says and demonstrate that you are willing to address their questions, regardless of how uncomfortable they may be.

5. Allow Your Partner Time   

After discovering lies or infidelity, feelings of anger, humiliation, betrayal, despair, and guilt might cause a breakdown in communication. It is, therefore, critical to give each other space and avoid making decisions before both of you feel ready to have a calm and sensible conversation free of emotionally charged arguments. Also, it may take time for your partner to decide whether or not they can forgive you and stay in the relationship. Respect that. 

Why Decide to Forgive Infidelity?

If you are the betrayed partner, you will have to make an important decision whether to continue the relationship or end it.

However, it is essential to have this conversation about whether your relationship is worth saving only with yourself and your counselor. Listen to no one, including your friends, neighbors, and social media influencers, no matter how well-meaning they may be.

Only you can make that decision.

Ask yourself some critical questions. Do you still think about what the future might be like with your partner? What makes your relationship worth fighting for? Will you be able to trust them again? Are you considering saving your marriage because you're worried about being alone?

Have you decided to stay because of the kids? For many people, their kids are the biggest motivation for forgiving infidelity and working on the marriage. So, it's important to be true to yourself.  Consider whether your children are the main or only reason for forgiving them.

We deliberately choose to forgive the person who has hurt us so we can let go of resentment and hurt, find peace, and move on. Forgiveness is the only way to make peace with the past and move forward. When you're thinking about forgiving your partner for cheating, it's important to remember that you should focus more on yourself than just them and what they did.

When you consciously decide to forgive, you let go of resentment and negative emotions, which can improve your relationship.

Empowering Yourself to Overcome Infidelity and Rebuild Your Connection

Infidelity does not necessarily mean the end of a relationship. Couples counseling might provide a safe environment to go through this challenging event and begin the healing process if both spouses are committed to healing and repairing their marriage after infidelity. 

Although challenging, this experience can also be enlightening; the reward could be a stronger connection and a more meaningful marriage.