Should We Discuss the Details of an Affair?: The Path to Affair Recovery
When infidelity is uncovered or disclosed, it can rock you to your core. You begin to question your sense of reality, your sense of worth, you dissect every interaction, retroactively notice clues, and go through a natural grieving process. Denial usually comes before the discovery or disclosure, it’s the tuning out the gut or discrediting signs. Then, comes white hot anger. When you only get pieces of the story, it stunts your ability to properly grieve and heal. Your mind rushes with questions and visions to fill in the details.
Often, the person who had the affair knows they’ve done wrong and out of guilt, shame, or instinctual self-preservation tries to avoid giving details. Typically, they claim (and may believe) that not sharing details will benefit the wronged party. However, as I see time and again in working with couples, this is not true.
Not disclosing tends to create another layer of mistrust. The wronged party, if they choose to stay, is only able to forgive to a point, and even less likely to forget. You might be able to avoid talking about it at times. There might be weeks or months where things seem “normal” between you and then, BAM! Intrusive thoughts and questions come swirling; they might begin to feel angry or insecure all over again.
Essentially, the person who cheated has disempowered their partner twice. The cheated-on partner thought they were on the same page and operating the same way. Then, they’re disempowered by the initial deception and again disempowered by not having fully informed consent of what happened and how to move forward.
Commonly, people find out about affairs through phones, being contacted by the affair partner, or standard blood work at the doctor’s. To find out you’ve been betrayed while also realizing that your bodily autonomy has been violated and you now might have a diagnosis to deal with is a lot! It’s natural and valid to flip out a bit. There are physical, mental, and emotional effects from infidelity.
For the unfaithful partner, it makes sense to be scared of sharing. If your partner knows everything, some detail might be too much, and they might choose to leave. Maybe the guilt has been eating away at you. Maybe it hasn’t. Maybe you shove it down and try to pretend it never happened attempting to keep the peace. Ignoring a partner’s pleas for understanding or calling yourself an asshole and living in guilt only joins your partner in a place of disempowerment and is not true accountability. Any temporary peace bought by avoiding is an illusion. And the details in the dark become landmines.
In affair recovery, the order of sharing and being heard is vitally important. The person who was wronged needs to be heard first and fully. To the partner who had the affair, this is going to feel at times deeply uncomfortable, sometimes tedious, maybe repetitive. If the wronged party has questions, it’s best to answer them honestly and to the level of detail requested.
They might ask again. They might be hot and cold. Ultimately, they were betrayed and in a storm of processing in their own way and pace. If you cheated and now want to move forward with your established partner, you’ll need patience to help build a ship to weather the storm and get you both charted for the right destination.
As the person who had the affair, you might have a list of reasons why you looked to someone else to meet your physical and relational needs at the time. That list is real and will not be ignored. Your concerns and missed bids for connection will be honored. If the affair was extended, you might be struggling with the loss of connection with your affair partner. A good couples therapist will hear you out about these things. They will also explain the value of prioritizing hearing the thoughts, complaints, feelings, and questions of the wronged person. You will be heard. You have to be patient and wait your turn.
Which brings me to another scenario of both parties cheating, possibly concurrently or at different times. Then, it is more difficult to judge who needs more care or should be heard first. Typically, not knowing other context, I would say that the person who has known and has been carrying the hurt the longest needs to be heard first. Did one cheat to retaliate? How often and for how long has this pattern occurred? These are all factors and motivations to explore.
At the Center for Couples Counseling, we use systemic couples work and one of our policies is “no secrets” relevant to the goals of the couple. In the case of infidelity, the goals of the couples are usually to find a way to rebuild trust, repair, and stay together. This doesn’t mean you have to spill your guts on the first session. A good therapist will support you sharing at your pace and will convey the value of transparency.
Based on the structure of our sessions: having a joint intake, two individual sessions, and a joint feedback session, the individual sessions are a great opportunity to share what happened from each perspective. If you cheated, why? Where is the hurt? What is the distribution of accountability? A skilled couples therapist uses this time for goal setting and to gauge in what order it’s best to hear each party.
One of my favorite on-screen relationships is Lily and Marshall from How I Met Your Mother. For a sitcom, they have a lot of practices I think benefit couples. Something Lily says that applies to the theme of information sharing is “Where’s the poop?”
If you’ve cheated, that’s what your partner wants to know. If you were cheated on, it’s a valid question to ask. The best thing a cheating partner can do is dig up the shit to be examined, so over time their partner doesn’t have to be a bloodhound, but treated with care and respect as an equal. Allowing all parties to move forward together with integrity.
Therapist’s Note: For more resources on how to repair from any type of “relational norm violation,” I highly recommend Rebuilding Trust by Morgan Johnson.
My name is Sky Yeater and I am a Licensed Professional Counselor Associate at the Center for Couples Counseling. I am passionate about helping couples and individuals pause, evaluate, set goals, and heal. To set up your free phone consultation so we can determine fit, call (832) 827-3288. Our Center serves couples and individuals in League City and Houston, Texas and all residents of Texas online!
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