5 Affair-Recovery Hurdles

If you are dealing with the aftermath of an affair, you know firsthand about the emotional pain infidelity causes. Despite the distress and relational struggles couples face after an affair has occurred, rebuilding is possible. 

The affair-recovery process requires a significant commitment from both people — a commitment to do the tough emotional and relationship work required. During this post-affair period, there may be times when you and your partner feel stuck, uncertain about the future and unsure about the journey you are undertaking.

It’s important to raise awareness about the potential barriers that may arise during this difficult time—barriers that can make you feel hopeless about the possibility of meaningful change; barriers that can make you abandon the work that can be transformative to your marriage/relationship. 

5 barriers to healing from an affair

Assuming you cannot heal from the betrayal

The emotional pain and disorientation that occurs after discovering an affair leaves little room for optimism about a shared life together. You shouldn’t force an optimism that doesn’t exist; but you also want to be careful not to convince yourself that you will never be able to rebuild the trust needed for healing to take place.

While rebuilding your marriage/relationship after an affair isn’t a guarantee, it is a real possibility, and holding onto this possibility might be all that’s needed early on to set the healing process in motion.

Confusing anger with a loss of love

It’s easy to feel that the love that once existed has been lost after an affair. This is especially the case when there are intense feelings of anger, rage, despair and mistrust, a complex mixture of emotions that are the result of a traumatic betrayal. 

Feelings of love can easily be subsumed under these intense emotions, and when this occurs, it’s easy to conclude that the love you once felt for your partner no longer exists. As you work through your feelings of betrayal and as trust slowly starts to reemerge, feelings of love and tenderness may again enter into the picture.

Not giving the affair-recovery process enough time

The desire to accelerate the affair-recovery process is completely understandable.

You want the pain to stop; you may want your old life back, the pre-affair life that didn’t involve the mistrust and insecurities that are now part of your world. Time seems to move slower when we’re suffering, months feel like years, years like lifetimes. There is no artificial timeline that can be placed on the healing process.

To say that these issues should be resolved after a certain amount of time has passed is a setup for feeling frustrated and hopeless. It’s important to be mindful of the smallest — even  incremental — gains which can too easily be overlooked or discounted as no progress at all. Even the most subtle movement forward is significant on the road to affair-recovery. 

Shutting down strong emotions

The healing process often involves an oscillation between moving toward and moving away from the pain of the affair. At some point you may both cherish the respite of time together that doesn’t include a discussion about the affair. But you may notice that there are times when you have a strong urge to discuss what happened, even if this discussion (or some version of it) has already occurred.

Emotional healing involves repetition. It’s often the person who was cheated on (and traumatized by the betrayal) who needs to discuss and re-discuss the circumstances of what occurred. The rebuilding process can easily be stalled when the partner who cheated shuts down these conversations by becoming angry and defensive, thereby making it unsafe to have the sensitive discussions needed for healing to occur.

Drowning in guilt & self-blame

At some point in the healing journey, forgiveness needs to occur. This can never be forced, and there is emotional and relational work that needs to occur before forgiveness is possible. For some who have cheated, the act of betraying their spouse/partner haunts them long after the affair occurred. They are plagued by guilt and shame over what they’ve done.

“They should feel horrible for what they did” might be your reaction to reading this. The capacity to feel bad about hurting another person is a good sign (it is the sociopath who never feels guilt or remorse for their hurtful actions).

But unrelenting guilt that persists long after you’ve forgiven your spouse/partner for hurting you is problematic. Guilt and shame close us off from others, becoming potential barriers to the self-growth and self-understanding needed for real healing to occur. Self-forgiveness is required for relationship growth.

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The psychological and emotional fallout from an affair is considerable. And the affair-recovery process comes with its own twists and turns. The couples who commit to working on their marriage or relationship after an affair know this firsthand. And many also discover that meaningful change and healing is possible.

Information can help take some of the mystery out of the post-affair healing process: Information about why affairs occur; what to expect (having realistic expectations) about rebuilding trust and intimacy; as well as information about potential roadblocks that can stall the recovery process.

Richard Nicastro, Ph.D. is a psychologist who works with individuals and couples who are dealing with the trauma and emotional fallout of infidelity.

He offers online individual and couples counseling (teletherapy) for residents of Texas. 

**In addition to Texas, Dr. Nicastro is now offering teletherapy to people residing in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Washington DC, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.**