Three Stages to Affair Recovery

Most experts would concur that there are two basic types of infidelity: physical and emotional. There are at least three people involved in infidelity, namely, the involved partner, the hurt partner, and the affair partner. Physical infidelity would be defined as any acts of physical acts committed by the involved partner without the consent of the hurt partner with an affair partner(s). Affair recovery involves all three persons at some level.

Emotional infidelity involves the disclosure of information to an affair partner by the involved partner without the consent of the hurt partner or withholding information from the hurt partner and disclosing it instead to the affair partner. It could be argued that cyber infidelity would constitute infidelity if the hurt partner did not authorize the involved partner to engage in cybersex and self-gratifying measures.

For this article, the writer will focus on physical and emotional infidelity, because treatment of cyber infidelity often involves pornography and/or sexual addiction. Both pornography and sexual addiction require different treatment strategies from affair recovery.

In 2017, John and Julie Gottman developed the “Trust Revival Method”(Cole & Cole, 2024). When infidelity occurs, the original relationship is destroyed. According to the Gottman “Sound Relationship Model”, in affair recovery, every level of the sound relationship needs to be rebuilt completely.

Various stages of affair recovery

Thus, a clinician trained in the Gottman “Trust Revival” and “Sound Relationship House Models” would help the involved partner and the hurt partner (1) to rebuild their friendship, (2) reinvest in their emotional Love Bank, (3) turn toward one another for needs, (4) slowly shift the negative sentiment to positive sentiment, (5) manage conflict, (6) identify any unrealized dreams between the couple, and (7) develop new rituals and ceremonies of connection with one another. These goals are accomplished in three stages: atonement, attunement, and attachment.

Atonement

Atonement was a practice required by God in the book of Leviticus. Atonement required the Israelites to bring a burnt offering to God each year. In the book of Hebrews, the author calls Jesus the high priest who makes atonement for our sins. Atonement is quite costly to the one who is offering it.

Before affair recovery therapy ends, an atonement must be made by the involved partner to the hurt partner to pay for their transgressions. During the atonement stage, Cole and Cole (2024) point out that it is important to discover what happened and not necessarily why it happened yet.

To describe this process, allow me to give you one common example given by the Gottmans. A man goes to an office party and gets drunk. While drunk, he sleeps with a woman from his office. The next day, the man confesses to his wife what he has done.

During affair recovery therapy, the wife requests that her husband drink water every time they are in public with friends. The couple would have dinner with friends at least once a month. The husband would order water to drink, and tears would come to his eyes. He softly apologized to her, because he had betrayed her.

Atonement requires that the involved partner take full responsibility for his or her actions. Moving forward cannot take place if the involved partner is blaming the hurt partner for the infidelity. The involved partner mustn’t become defensive or stonewall as the clinician is working to decrease criticism and contempt from the hurt partner.

The antidote for defensiveness is to take responsibility for one’s actions. The antidote for stonewalling is to self-soothe by taking breaks of a minimum of thirty minutes up to twenty-four hours with the goal of re-engaging with the hurt partner.

While the clinician works with the involved partner to take responsibility, the clinician also works with the hurt partner to treat the PTSD-like symptoms from the shock of discovering the infidelity. During this process, the hurt partner works on decreasing intrusive thoughts of the infidelity; avoidance of people, places, things, and ideas associated with the infidelity; negative alterations of thought and behaviors deriving from the infidelity; and numbness.

As stated above, the clinician helps the hurt partner to decrease criticism and contempt toward the hurt partner. A third goal is to help expose everything about the affair through questioning. The hurt partner can ask any question of the involved partner with two important exceptions.

It is strongly encouraged that the hurt partner does not ask questions about specific physical activities that occurred while the involved and affair partners were having sex (i.e. sexual positions, etc.). It is equally important that the affair partner does not ask about jewelry, lingerie, or perfume worn during intercourse between the involved and affair partners. Both inquiries lead to further traumatization of the hurt partner.

From the beginning of therapy, the involved partner must rebuild trust with the affair partner. As the first step, the affair must end or at least be in the process of being terminated before the therapy starts. Trust cannot be established unless four requirements are met. First, the involved partner must be honest about everything. Truth, even though it is uncomfortable and painful, must come out.

Second, the involved partner must be completely transparent. The involved partner does not hide anything. Third, the involved partner must be accountable and reliable. Owning your actions and being where you say you will be go further in rebuilding trust.

The fourth requirement is safety. The involved partner must show the hurt partner that it is safe to be vulnerable again with him or her. Gottman and Gottman (2024) describe this safety in a simple question: “Will you be there for me when I need you?” (p.118)

Attunement

Once the hurt partner’s PTSD-like symptoms have been substantially reduced, the hurt partner’s questions have been answered, and the hurt partner feels that the involved partner is remorseful and is beginning to re-establish some trustworthiness, the attune stage can start (Gottman & Gottman). During the attunement stage, the involved and hurt partner try to figure out what conditions formed the atmosphere for the infidelity.

The involved partner is accountable for the infidelity itself. However, the conditions for infidelity may form when the couple avoids conflict or intimacy, the involved partner feels that his or her needs were sublimated for the sake of the “perfect” family, the involved has an active sexual addiction, or the involved partner has an affair to exit the relationship (Peluso, 2024).

As stated above, this article will not address sexual addiction, because it requires a different type of therapy. If a person engages in an affair to exit a troubled marriage, they are unlikely to engage in affair recovery, because he or she already has planned to leave the relationship. In exit affairs, it is important to help the hurt partner gain closure and both partners to have a civilized relationship, especially if there are children involved.

The goal for the attunement stage is to undo the negative conflict-avoidance and negative intimacy-avoidance patterns in the couples’ relationship and listen to one another (Cole & 2024). For the involved partner experiencing a “mid-life” crisis, the goal would be to convince the involved partner that his or her needs could be met through relationship #2 (Cole & Cole, 2024; Peluso, 2024).

Attunement requires that each partner have non-defensive listening, understanding, and empathy (Gottman & Gottman, 2024). As a result, a couple can have intimate, deep discussions (Gottman & Gottman 2024; Cole & Cole, 2024). Common themes of these discussions are attachment injuries, loneliness, and failures within the relationship (Gottman & Gottman, 2024)

Attachment

During the attachment stage, a clinician would work on traditional couples therapy issues as described above: rebuild the friendship, reinvest in their emotional Love Bank, turn toward one another to get needs met, slowly shift the negative sentiment to positive sentiment, manage conflict, identify any unrealized dreams between the couple, and develop new rituals and ceremonies of connection with one another.

At the end of this stage, trust and commitment can be reestablished. The partners would focus on each other needs and work toward mutually beneficial goals (Cole & Cole, 2024). Often during this stage, couples begin to engage in physical intimacy (Gottman & Gottman, 2024). Both partners must be comfortable before it can begin again. Trust must precede physical intimacy to restore sexual attachment.

Many couples will renew their vows or create something to memorialize their journey through this difficult time. Ripley and Worthington (2014) describe an intervention called a Joshua memorial. The Joshua memorial comes from Joshua 4. In Joshua 4, the Israelites had just exited the desert and were going to enter the land promised to them by God.

Joshua ordered the twelve tribes of Israel to get one stone for each tribe to remind them of the hardships of the desert and to encourage them to look to the future. Likewise, couples need to remember the struggles and hardships created through infidelity and understand that God can heal the brokenness in relationships and restore them.

During the Attachment stage, the hurt partner may choose to forgive the involved partner or accept what happened. Forgiveness does not absolve the involved partner of his or her actions. Forgiveness does not mean that the hurt partner must forget what happened.

Forgiveness does not entail the hurt partner condoning or excusing the involved partner’s actions. Forgiveness compels the hurt partner to let go of resentment and retribution in exchange for repentance and restitution from the involved partner.

Acceptance

Acceptance occurs when the hurt partner decides to take control of his or her pain. Acceptance requires the hurt partner to make sense of the injury inflicted by the involved partner. The hurt partner then carves out a relationship with the involved partner that works for him or her.

Acceptance may occur in relationships where the hurt partner is aware of the involved partner’s transgressions (i.e. a long-term affair of 10-20 years.). The hurt partner condones the affair, because he or she cannot meet the needs of the involved partner, does not want to expose the infidelity to protect the couple’s children, and/or does not want to leave the involved partner due to financial stability. Even though marriage appears to be stable to the public, it is not a traditional marriage.

Help for affair recovery

Infidelity work is not intended to be done alone or as a couple. It requires someone to do a deep dive into the issues that a couple faces, to determine what tasks need to be done to rebuild a marriage and to help the couple prevent infidelity from happening again.

This type of work is like a person using a soldering iron to put two broken wires back together. These wires are fragile and require the right touch to reconnect. At Spokane Christian Counseling, several clinicians have the right touch to put your marriage back together again.