At a glance
Affair recovery runs in an order: the affair ends and is told about honestly, then the relationship it happened in is examined, and closeness returns last. It takes longer than either of you wants and it moves in waves. A bad week several months in is ordinary.
Clinical insights from 20+ years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 20+ years in practice.
- How much detail to ask for. My answer is usually less than the betrayed partner wants and more than the other one would like to give.
- Never a straight line. Recovery rarely moves in a straight line, and I say so early rather than after the first bad week.
- Explaining before atoning. The couples who stall are most often the ones where the person who had the affair is still explaining themselves before they have atoned.
Clinical notes: These observations are anonymous and compounded from session notes since 2004.
What does affair recovery actually involve?
It involves 3 kinds of work in a fixed direction: honesty first, then the relationship, then closeness. The Gottman Institute sets these out as 3 stages, which it calls the Trust Revival Method: atonement, attunement and attachment.
- Atonement. The 2 of you work through the anger, fear, guilt and shame.
- Attunement. You build a relationship that works.
- Attachment. The closeness returns.
- One model among several. It is one organisation’s model, and real couples move back and forth through it.
The direction is the useful part. Closeness that arrives before the truth usually has nothing underneath it. If what happened was closeness without sex, and the 2 of you disagree about whether it counts, read more about whether an emotional affair is cheating.
What does the person who had the affair have to do first?
End the affair, end contact with the affair partner, and stop managing the truth. Without that, nothing after it is real, and both of you know it.
- End contact. Where contact cannot simply stop, because you work together or share a child with that person, say so at the start and do not let it be discovered.
- Keep what remains visible. Contact that has to continue is minimal, practical and visible to your partner.
- Be transparent. The Gottman Institute’s standard is to be open about why it happened with that particular person, and where and how it happened.
- No half-truths. Relate states that recovery after an affair is always worse if lies or half-truths are offered.
- Atone before you explain. Explaining has its place later, when the betrayed partner is asking; early on it lands as a defence, whatever it was meant as.
Half a story keeps the wound open far longer than the whole one would. The whole thing then has to be told again later, with less trust to tell it with.
How much detail should the betrayed partner ask for?
Ask for the facts you need to stop imagining worse: how long, with whom, and whether it is over. Transparent does not mean exhaustive.
- Your questions, your choice. Which questions get asked is for the betrayed partner to decide.
- Nothing true is withheld. The standard is that every question asked gets a true answer, and volunteering every detail is a different thing.
- Blow by blow detail. It tends to give you images you cannot put down, and most people regret asking for it.
- Agree a window. Set a time each day for the questions, chosen by both of you, so the subject does not take every evening.
- Take breaks from it. Relate makes the same point: you need to talk about it and you need a break from it, or you go round in circles.
Read more about jealousy, checking and imagining.
Why look at the relationship the affair happened in?
Because without it you are trusting willpower alone to hold the coming years together. This is the stage people get wrong, because it sounds like blaming the betrayed partner. Nobody is responsible for another adult choosing to lie.
- What went quiet. You look at what had gone quiet between you and what was never said.
- How each of you handled it. One of you stopped raising things, the other stopped asking, and the silence became the arrangement.
- Ordinary couples work. In practice it is how you argue and what you avoid.
- Responsibility stays put. Understanding the relationship does not move the lie onto the person who was lied to.
Read more about why the same argument keeps coming back.
How long does it take, and does it work?
There is no fixed timetable, and the Gottman Institute says so directly. Most couples I work with think in months for the first stage alone, and in seasons for the whole thing.
- Be careful with numbers online. The Institute reports a 75 per cent success rate for this method in an initial uncontrolled trial.
- Uncontrolled. There was no comparison group, so the figure is encouraging and unsettled.
- Relate’s more modest claim. Many couples recover very well after a discovery, and nobody is asking you to forget.
- Who comes through it. From my own practice, it is rarely the couples with the mildest affair; more often it is where the person who lied stopped defending themselves early.
- It does not go back. The relationship does not return to exactly how it was; what gets built is one where difficult things are said out loud.
How do the 2 of you start to rebuild after an affair?
Take the stages in order, and let closeness come last.
- End it properly. The affair and the contact both stop before anything else begins.
- Tell the truth once, fully. Answer what is asked without trimming it.
- Contain the questions. Keep to the daily window you agreed, and leave the rest of the evening alone.
- Decide together who knows. Once a parent or a friend knows, they keep their opinion long after the 2 of you have moved on.
- Give it time before deciding. No forgiveness on a deadline: just long enough to see whether something is changing, for those who want to find out.
- Raise sex. It is the part nobody wants to raise, so it sits there for months after everything else has moved.
- Offer reassurance unasked. Reassurance offered before it is asked for, plans made again, an ordinary evening that is just an evening.
Recovery is one option, and I take no side on whether you stay. Deciding that you do not want to rebuild this is a legitimate outcome.
These steps fail when the story is still being managed, or when every question turns into an interrogation and a defence. That is what the session is for.
Questions people ask
Should I ask for all the details?
Ask for the facts you need to stop imagining worse: how long, with whom, and whether it is over. Blow by blow detail gives you images you cannot put down.
How long does affair recovery take?
There is no fixed answer, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. Think in months for the first stage and longer for the whole thing, with the worst of it at the start.
Does anyone else have to be told?
No, and decide it together, never in anger. Once a parent or a friend knows, they keep their opinion long after the 2 of you have moved on.
Does the relationship ever go back to how it was?
No, it does not go back to exactly how it was. What gets built is a relationship where difficult things are said out loud.
Do I have to forgive my partner?
No, nobody has to decide about forgiveness on anybody else’s timetable. For those who want to try, a period of work gives more information than an early verdict.
You may also find these helpful
Sources
- The Gottman Institute, Practical, Science-Based Steps to Heal from an Affair
- Relate, “How can we cope with the aftermath of an affair?”
How this article was written. I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.
