How do we repair our relationship after an infidelity?

Affairs are usually very painful experiences. Part of what makes a relationship so special for many people is that we share certain things only with our partner, such as secrets, intimate thoughts and feelings, and physical intimacy. When one partner breaks this exclusivity, we can be left wondering why it has occurred and if it is possible to ever heal from this and repair our relationship. Below is some information that may help with this question.

What is an affair?

An affair forms part of what we call an 'attachment injury', sometimes also referred to as an emotional wound or relationship injury. An attachment injury occurs when we are particularly hurt by someone that we are close to (while this can be with any person who is important to us such as a father, mother, or close friend, I will use the example of a romantic relationship in this article). While an infidelity is one cause of the big attachment injuries couples can experience, attachment injuries can also be created by many other events such as betrayals of trust, our partner not being there to support us when we really need them, a partner ending the relationship, or saying something particularly hurtful.

There are two primary types of infidelity: sexual and emotional. A sexual affair is when we are physically intimate with another person while an emotional affair is when we form a competing close bond with another person who could be a partner. While most people would agree on certain things that constitute an affair (e.g. that having sexual relations with another person is an infidelity), there is a 'grey area' with affairs (e.g. looking at pornography or going to a strip club may feel like an infidelity to some people but not others). What is important is how it feels to the person. If they feel wounded by the event, then they have experienced an attachment injury.

As a result of the attachment injury, the person may do some things to protect themselves from either being hurt again (e.g. not engaging with the partner or surveilling them) or having their wound touched on. They are also likely to have a strong reaction if something touches on their wound, be it a situation, a behaviour, a comment, or even just a memory. Unfortunately, time has essentially no affect on an attachment injury, they will last for decades unless they are healed. They are also not something that the person can simply decide to forgive, there is an emotional process that is needed to heal from the wound.

Why did it happen?

Affairs are often a result of problems in the relationship that the person did not know how to resolve and so dealt with them by stepping out of the relationship. They have been referred to by Dr Sue Johnson as ‘an unfortunate solution to a problem’. The unfortunate part is that they not do not resolve the problem but usually add a lot more hurt and suffering and problems to the relationship. By viewing an affair as a reaction to problems in the relationship, it by no means justifies or excuses the behaviour.

How can we heal and repair our relationship?

In many cases, couples can successfully heal from an affair, although they will need to go through a ‘healing process’ in order to be able to effectively move on from this painful event. This is the emotional process needed to be able to get to a place of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not like a light switch that we can simply choose to turn on or off, there is a very important emotional component to truly be able to forgive our partner.

The first step in the healing process is that the person who has experienced the attachment injury, needs to share with their partner how they have been impact, the emotional impact of the event. The therapist will help to be able to share this impact in a way the other can understand and help the partner hear and understand it. Once it feels the person impacted that their partner really gets it, that they understand how they have impacted their partner, we move onto the next step. In this part, we need to identify how this event could have occurred. Once we identify the cause, we move on the third and final step of addressing that cause, whether it is something in the person or in the relationship. It is important to identify the cause and then address that issue as otherwise the relationship will not feel safe as we will always have the sense that it could happen again.

After they have healed from the infidelity, many couples describe their relationship being much better than it was even before the incident occurred. In a sense, an infidelity brings to the surface something that has not been working well in the relationship, perhaps for some time.