Category: Infidelity

If you choose to stay together, how do you recover and come out stronger?

The Gottman Method, a popular research-based approach to couples therapy, breaks down the process of how to reconnect after an affair into three main steps: atonement, attunement, and attachment.

In the second phase, partners begin to make each other a priority again. At this point, both partners can look at reestablishing what they want in a relationship and in each other.

Relationship expert Rachel Madorsky, LCSW, explains that once you’ve decided to move forward together, “it’s important that both people begin to look at how they co-created the relationship and subsequently the affair. Once you’ve done this, miracles begin to take place.”

The idea isn’t to blame the person who experienced the betrayal but rather to examine the problems that happened between the two people in the relationship that preceded the affair since it’s easy to allow the affair to eclipse all else that happened prior to it.

“Cheaters are not necessarily looking for someone else; they are looking to become someone else,” Dr. Tammy Nelson, psychotherapist, board-certified sexologist, and author of When You’re the One Who Cheats, writes at mbg. “A person may be cheating because they like who they are when they’re with their affair partner. They might feel sexier, smarter, more charming, and more alive when they cheat. With their spouse at home, they might feel invisible, dull, boring, or old. An affair can counteract a person’s negative self-talk, through no fault of their partner.”

The events and context that led up to an affair don’t excuse the cheating, but they do offer clarity as to why it happened—and a path forward toward healing for both parties.

With that in mind, an important part of the attunement phase is each person regaining trust and unconditional positive regard for the other. Harville Hendrix, relationship psychologist and creator of Imago Relationships Therapy (another popular couples therapy method), recommends one great exercise for rebuilding trust in his book Getting the Love You Want: Each person writes down 20 small acts of kindness they would like their partner to do for them. These can include giving small gifts such as flowers, writing love notes, spending quality time together making breakfast, trying a new restaurant, or cuddling in bed on a Sunday. Once each person has their wish list, they exchange them and attempt to perform one of these acts a day for their partner. Over time, these acts of kindness help couples to rebuild rapport and trust. Slowly they can begin to appreciate and enjoy each other again, even it feels forced in the beginning.

For the person who was cheated on, Madorsky says that learning to trust your partner again can be difficult, but it can also be empowering: “When you don’t own how much power you have in your life, you’re left to feel like a victim. It actually feels better to trust than not to trust. So as long each partner is committed and taking positive action, consider giving yourself the gift of trusting again.”

As you begin rebuilding your relationship during this phase, David Ley, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Insatiable Wives: Women Who Cheat and the Men Who Love Them, stresses the importance of avoiding online discussion groups about cheating. “Like the rest of the Internet, they tend to be filled with angry, toxic people who are gleeful when your relationship ends in the same flames of rage that torched their own,” he writes.

He also warns against lie detector tests: “There is unfortunately a steady business out there that promotes the idea that ‘this is only way you’ll ever really be able to trust your partner again.’ Those tests are invalid and merely breed greater antagonism and one-sided coercion.”

Rather than focusing on the negative aspects of the affair, Ley says it’s better to shift your focus onto the good times you’ve shared in the past and all the new ones you’ll find together in the future.

Once you’ve begun to feel positive toward your partner again, you can begin to work toward the future and regaining your intimate connection. Because healthy sex is based on a strong emotional connection, you want to get to know your partner again only after attunement has taken place.

“It’s important to remember that recovering from infidelity requires us to be able to understand and recognize our own sexual and intimacy needs, and to communicate them to our partner, listening to them, and respecting them as they do the same to us,” Dr. Ley writes.

One exercise that works to help develop and deepen emotional intimacy involves answering that popular series of questions developed by Dr. Arthur Aron and prominently featured in the New York Times‘ Modern Love section. By taking a romantic evening and answering these questions together, you reacquaint yourself with who your partner has become. This exercise can be particularly powerful for couples that have been together for many years.

(If you want more ideas, here are five other ways to connect with your partner again.)