How Affair Recovery Counseling Actually Works 

Learning of a partner’s unfaithfulness is one of the most confusing events that could befall any human. The ground of your relationship changes overnight. Trust collapses. Your memory and intuition is questioned, to your future. You either betrayed or caused pain, whatever it is, things get complicated in front of you.

That’s where affair recovery counseling can help.

This isn’t regular couples counseling . It is a process and procedure for special relationships that are broken due to infidelity. If you’re not sure if this type of help can be successful and how it works – this guide takes you through each step of the way.

What Makes Affair Recovery Counseling Different

A lot of couples tend to believe they will fix any relationship that was harmed by infidelity after a few weekly sessions of couples therapy. Betrayal therapy is an extension of the general relationship therapy principle that focuses on communication between people and dealing with conflict. Recognizing infidelity is a trauma issue, not an issue to solve.

A good marriage therapist specializing in infidelity is aware of both partners’ problems, but in quite distinct ways. The partner betrayed is experiencing: hypervigilance, rage, grief, and shock. Often the third one who cheated is suffering guilt, shame and confusion as to how it got to that state. Educational approaches to conventional psychotherapy don’t often intervene simultaneously, or with the acuity they need to tackle both of these truths.

Affair Recovery counseling provides a framework that allows for the acknowledgment of both realities – neither the affair nor the non-affair one – without ignoring the past, without giving up hope for healing.

Stage 1: Crisis Stabilization

The first step in affair recovery tips is to stop the bleeding. They are at this stage because they have been working to calm down the immediate chaos: all of the fighting, the insomnia, having to constantly check phones and messages.

Your relationship specialist will assist you with a few fundamental guidelines for communicating these initial days. This is the reason. This is no time to finish all of the work all at once. Attempting to do so at an early date is likely to cause further damage, rather than less.

Goals in the crisis stabilization phase are:

• Determining whether to stay together while going through the treatment or not
• Establishing limits with the affair partner
• Building emotional safety so that both parties can do deeper work, can feel safe enough

The period of time can vary from a couple of sessions to a few weeks, depending on the situation, the extent and duration of the infidelity.

Stage 2: Understanding What Happened – and Why

After the initial crisis subsides, the next and often most significant and challenging step in cheating therapy is to learn about the offense.

This is not an excuse for it. It involves looking at the circumstances which enabled it to occur – within the relationship and within each person. That’s the place where an experienced marriage counselor is beneficial. But if you do this job on your own, this conversation invariably becomes a blame game, defensive behavior or a game of emotions.

Some questions considered in this stage might be:

• Did there have to be unexpressed needs or an unspoken disconnect in the relationship?
• What might have been the case against mental health or addiction?
• Did he do this only once, or did it happen more than once?
• What actually did each person know about the relationship prior to the start of the affair?

Why this is the most difficult time for couples usually, is also the most clarifying stage. Often, they come to know aspects of their own relationships and themselves that they have never had to encounter before. Genuine recovery of couples is possible when this clarity is experienced despite the pain.

Stage 3: Processing the Trauma

True emotional hurt comes when you experience the betrayal of marriage. The betrayed person might have intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, have emotional numbness, or maybe hyper-aroused, which are likely to be signs of PTSD. Healing at this point is not the relationship anymore, it is the individual.

A strong relationship therapist may advise having individual sessions with them in addition to the relationship sessions. This provides them privacy to feel their anger, grief, guilt or shame, without causing distress to their partner at the time.

In this stage there is also work performed by the partner who cheated. If the affair has to go beyond looking for surface changes, then knowing their own patterns, motivations and what they actually need to do to actually change is all important.

Typical tools used during this stage in a healing therapy include:

• Processing trauma with EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
• Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) to release information and transform patterns of attachment
• Skill-building strategies for coping with intrusive thoughts
• Somatic strategies which release built up stress and tension in the body

Stage 4: Rebuilding Trust

It isn’t a complete restoration of trust after infidelity. It’s gradual, done in little chunks, over a long period. After a couple cheats, the emphasis for the couples therapy is not to just hope for this as it is to be clear about this.

Your marriage therapist will help both you and your spouse change your goals to become transparent in your marriage – not promises, but actions that are actually transparent in practice. This typically involves:

For the partner in the position of the one who cheated:

• Full disclosure information (all therapists recommend this, but when and how is important)
• Complete openness regarding their location, messaging, movements, etc
• The ability to be patient with the hurt spouse’s need to be reassured repeatedly
• Being accountable without having to ask for forgiveness. Accountability, without asking for forgiveness.

For the betrayed partner:

• How to know the difference between healthy worrying versus checking out aggressively
• Explicitly articulating their needs instead of assuming their partner will understand their needs
• Realizing that forgiveness is an on-going experience, not an occurrence, and not a mandate for remaining together.

Losing trust is the longest aspect of affair healing counseling. It can take couples 12-24 months of steady effort to reach this point of feeling secure again in the relationship.

Stage 5: Redefining the Relationship

The last step in betrayal therapy is a conscious decision the couple can make together: What kind of relationship would you like to have in the future?

Some partners realize that they had some underlying issues with one another that existed before the affair that caused the problems in their relationship. They decide to break up knowing that there are a few problems that need to be worked out in order to continue as co-parents or as friends. Affair recovery counseling aids in this as well.

Other couples create something truly new. Not the relationship they were in prior to the affair; that’s dead – but some relationship with mutuality of communication, greater honesty, and a base in firmness than there was before. Even after recovery, the relationships of many couples in these situations make the post-recovery relationships even better than before.

The outcome is not a fairytale one. It’s the product of strenuous, difficult work with an experienced marriage therapist who knows how to keep both parties at ease throughout the process.

How to Know If You’re Ready for Affair Recovery Counseling

But there’s no perfect time. The minute both partners agree to go, even when one is feeling unsure or angry about the relationship, or doesn’t think it can work, it can start.

When couples’ recovery is possible it is when:

• Both partners desire to handle the attempt at least one of them will attempt
• The affair has been concluded (or you wish that to be a precondition for starting)
• Both are comfortable in the process and share their valid input

The most significant opportunity to succeed is not the extent of the hurt to the party that suffered from the betrayal. It comes down to both parties being ready to be “in the room” and to work-led by a relationship counselor who is an expert in infidelity healing.

Working with a Specialist Makes All the Difference

This type of therapy isn’t for all therapists. It takes a particular skill set to cheat so for something to be successful. It takes one to hold both partners without taking sides, it takes one to be able to avoid getting things escalated in his or her high conflict sessions and it takes a partner to know how to make it go without overloading either side.

Phil DeLuca has a background of over 45 years working with couples over the most challenging moments in their relationship. His approach is not simply talk therapy, but is evidence-based and body-centred – and looks beyond the words and focuses on the impact of betrayal.

Both live and online classes are offered if you live in the Midland, Concord or Charlotte, NC region or any part of North Carolina.