My Partner Had an Affair. Now what?

What happens after infidelity—and whether it’s possible to rebuild trust after cheating

You found the texts. Your partner told you. Someone else told you. Or maybe you’ve had a nagging feeling for months that something wasn’t right, and you finally learned that you weren’t imagining it.

What am I supposed to do now?

My answer may be a relief: You probably don’t have to decide right now.

You don’t have to decide whether you’re staying

People sometimes arrive in my office believing they should already know whether their relationship is over.

They don’t.

You can love your partner and be furious with them. You can want desperately to save your marriage on Monday and wonder why on earth you’re still there on Tuesday. You might want your partner to hold you and, ten minutes later, not want them anywhere near you.

That can be confusing for both partners.

But think about what has happened. The person who has been one of your primary sources of safety and security has also become the source of tremendous pain. Of course you’re going to have conflicting feelings about whether to move toward that person or away from them.

Unless there’s an immediate safety concern or another reason a decision has to be made quickly, you can give yourself some time.

You don’t have to figure out the rest of your relationship or marriage this week.

Why can’t I stop thinking about the affair?

This is one of the things people find most unsettling after discovering infidelity.

They become detectives.

They check phones. Reconstruct timelines. Look at old photographs. Suddenly remember that strange conversation from two years ago. Ask a question, get an answer, and then ask it again three hours later in a slightly different way.

It can feel obsessive.

From an attachment perspective, though, there’s a reason for it.

We depend on our most important relationships for emotional safety. When you discover that your partner has been keeping a significant secret from you, your brain suddenly has a problem to solve:

What was real? And is this person safe for me now?

That’s why “I already told you everything” often doesn’t settle things.

Your partner has information that you didn’t have. Your understanding of your own life has just changed. Your brain is trying to make the pieces fit.

That doesn’t mean checking a phone 37 times a day will ultimately help you heal. It probably won’t. But the impulse itself isn’t particularly mysterious.

Should I ask for all the details?

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask questions.

If the two of you are going to figure out what happens next, you need a shared understanding of what actually happened. Continued lying, minimizing, withholding important information, or revealing the truth a little bit at a time can make an already terrible situation much worse.

At the same time, there are details that don’t necessarily help with affair recovery.

Sexual details, for example, can create vivid images that are difficult to get out of your head later. There’s a difference between knowing what you need to know to understand the nature and scope of the relationship and knowing every detail of every encounter.

And this conversation doesn’t necessarily have to happen at 1:00 in the morning after neither of you has slept for two days.

Sometimes slowing things down is useful.

If you had the affair, you’re probably on a different timeline

This is something I wish more couples understood.

The person who had the affair has known about it all along.

They may have spent months—or longer—thinking about what they were doing, worrying about being discovered, rationalizing it, feeling guilty about it, deciding whether to end it, or trying not to think about it at all.

Then the affair is discovered.

For the involved partner, the secrecy may finally be over. There can even be relief in that.

For the betrayed partner, however, this is Day One.

That’s why “How many times are we going to have to talk about this?” generally doesn’t go over very well.

Probably quite a few times.

The betrayed partner may ask questions you’ve already answered. They may seem fine for several days and then get flattened by something seemingly small—a restaurant, a song, your phone lighting up, a work trip, a date on the calendar.

If you’re the partner who had the affair and you want to repair the relationship, part of the work is learning how to stay present when that happens rather than becoming defensive or insisting that it’s time to move on.

And, of course, the affair actually has to end.

That means ending the secrecy too. “We’re just friends now,” disappearing messages, secret goodbyes, or withholding information because I knew you’d get upset aren’t very compatible with rebuilding trust.

Can a marriage survive an affair?

Yes.

I have worked with couples who have recovered from infidelity and gone on to have strong, connected relationships.

But I don’t think “getting back to the way things were” is a particularly useful goal.

Something significant has happened between you. You can’t unknow it.

The work is to understand what happened, repair the injury, and—if both of you choose the relationship—build something that feels safe and trustworthy again.

This is also where an important distinction needs to be made.

Understanding how an affair happened is not the same as excusing it.

Perhaps the relationship had been lonely for years. Perhaps you had stopped having sex. Maybe you fought constantly. Maybe one of you felt unimportant to the other. Or perhaps the relationship was actually pretty good and the betrayed partner had no idea anything was wrong.

All of that can eventually be explored.

The decision to cross the boundary into an affair still belongs to the person who made that decision.

Couples therapy after infidelity has to be able to hold both of those realities at the same time.

Can you rebuild trust after cheating?

Usually, people want a checklist here.

Share your location. Hand over your phone. Give your partner your passwords. Come home when you say you’re coming home. Don’t have private contact with the affair partner.

Some of those things can be very important, particularly early on.

But transparency and trust aren’t exactly the same thing.

You can know your partner’s location every minute of the day and still not feel safe with them.

Rebuilding trust after infidelity happens through repeated experiences of discovering that your partner is emotionally available, responsive and truthful—even when telling the truth is uncomfortable. Because trust = consistency over time.

It happens when the hurt partner says, in one form or another, This still hurts and I need you, and the other partner can stay there rather than defend, minimize, counterattack or disappear.

And it happens over time.

There really isn’t a shortcut around that part.

Should we tell the kids?

Children generally don’t need the details of a parent’s affair.

They may, however, need an explanation for what they’re seeing.

Kids notice when their parents suddenly aren’t speaking. They notice someone sleeping downstairs. They notice crying, closed doors and tension at dinner.

Exactly what you tell them depends on their ages and circumstances. But the goal is usually to give children enough truthful, age-appropriate information that they don’t have to invent their own explanation—without making them confidants or asking them to take sides.

If you’re not sure what to tell your children, that’s a good thing to talk through with a therapist before having the conversation.

Be thoughtful about whom you tell

You need support. This is not something you necessarily need to carry by yourself.

But I’d choose your people carefully.

The friend you call tonight may still hate your spouse three years from now—even if you’ve repaired your relationship and would really prefer that everyone stop glaring at them over Thanksgiving dinner.

Look for someone who can tolerate your uncertainty.

Someone who doesn’t need you to leave immediately.

Someone who doesn’t need you to stay.

Someone who can be on your side without turning the situation into a referendum on what you should do with your relationship or marriage.

What does couples therapy after infidelity actually look like?

It isn’t about forcing the betrayed partner to forgive.

It isn’t about determining who’s the bad guy.

And it definitely isn’t about telling someone they need to “get over it.”

In the beginning, infidelity counseling is often about stabilizing things enough that the couple can begin talking about what happened without causing a new injury every time they try.

In Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), we understand an affair as something that can create a profound attachment injury.

The person you depended on to have your back wasn’t there in the way you believed they were. For some people, that discovery changes their entire sense of safety in the relationship.

An apology matters. But an apology by itself usually isn’t enough to repair that.

Over time, we work toward conversations in which the injured partner can express what’s underneath the anger, questioning or withdrawal—and the other partner can really hear and respond to it.

That’s very different from having the same three-hour fight about the affair every Saturday night.

Eventually, there’s also room to understand the relationship that existed before the affair and what was happening for each partner.

But you don’t have to rush there.

First, we deal with the injury.

And sometimes the question is simply: Do we want to try?

You don’t have to walk into couples therapy knowing that you want to save your relationship.

Sometimes people come because they genuinely don’t know.

One partner may be leaning toward staying while the other isn’t sure. You may both want to stay but have no idea how you’re ever going to get past what happened.

That’s enough to begin.

If you discovered an affair yesterday, today’s assignment doesn’t have to be decide whether I’m staying married for the rest of my life.

Make today’s assignment smaller.

Eat something. Sleep if you can. Talk to someone you trust. Take care of whatever actually requires your attention today.

There will be time for the bigger questions.

And if the two of you decide you want help figuring out what comes next, that’s a perfectly reasonable place to start couples therapy.

Trying to figure out what comes next?

If you and your partner are dealing with the aftermath of infidelity, you don’t have to know yet whether your relationship can be repaired. We can start by talking about what’s happening and whether couples therapy with me might be a good fit.

Currently accepting new clients in person in Minneapolis and online in Minnesota and Iowa.
Limited appointments are reserved for couples who prefer to be seen more quickly. Availability varies.

Have a question before scheduling? Contact me.

AUTHOR BIO
Lisa Kleingarn, LMFT, is a Certified Emotionally Focused Couples Therapist and owner of Relation Works Therapy in Minneapolis. She specializes in helping couples understand and change painful relationship patterns and works with couples experiencing infidelity, betrayal, disconnection and relationship distress.