It’s no exaggeration to say that infidelity is one of the most devastating things that can happen to a committed relationship, if not the most devastating. Successful intimate relationships are built on trust, and the betrayal of an affair shatters that trust.
With patience and dedication and hard work on the part of the betrayed as well as the partner who cheated, many couples go on to repair their relationships. However, for some, repair isn’t possible, and this article will explore some reasons why those who have been betrayed may not be able to forgive their partners and move past the rupture. If you’re in your own affair recovery journey, it may be useful to understand what prevented some couples from successfully rebuilding after their betrayal trauma.
Some notes about forgiveness (patience, patience, patience)
Infidelity aside for a moment, when we do something that we know is wrong, and when someone else is made aware of that wrongdoing, we may experience a level of shame that feels intolerable. In those moments, we can feel desperate for the other person to tell us we’re forgiven. Immediately.
That can work for some far less significant or less personal transgressions, but infidelity is not one of them.
Genuine forgiveness for something as devastating as infidelity is not instant, nor should it be. The betrayed spouse/partner must heal and must feel they can trust their partner again (and the partner who hurt them must prove they can once again be trusted), and that all takes time. Even if the partner who cheated is expressing sincere regret and remorse for the affair (which is a good start), that doesn’t mean forgiveness just “happens.” It’s crucial for the partner who strayed to understand this.
Internally, the partner who cheated might feel unable to sit with feelings of self-loathing or remorse for very long. And this might cause them to pressure (implicitly or explicitly) their spouse/partner to get to the forgiveness stage long before they’re ready.
Along with that, it’s important that the unfaithful partner get in touch with why they want forgiveness to occur so quickly: it can feel excruciating to witness their partner’s pain, pain they caused. Internally, the partner who cheated might feel unable to sit with feelings of self-loathing or remorse for very long. And this might cause them to pressure (implicitly or explicitly) their spouse/partner to get to the forgiveness stage long before they’re ready. This pressure is never acceptable, and can serve as a stumbling block to relationship recovery. Unabated, it can prove to be an insurmountable roadblock.
Let’s look at some examples of individuals who, ultimately, couldn’t forgive their partners after an affair.
Jess: unanswered questions, weak apology
Jess and Giovanni are in their forties and have been married for twelve years. They have two kids in elementary school. Jess learned about Giovanni’s infidelity after his affair partner messaged Jess on Facebook, incensed because he had ended the affair.
“I’ll never forget that moment,” Jess said. “I was in line with a full grocery cart, waiting to check out. And I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I mean, I just couldn’t make myself understand it. I thought this woman must be making a mistake, messaging me. But that denial didn’t last long. It was clear through things she said that it was my husband she was talking about.”
Jess reported that when she confronted Giovanni, his first approach was to deny the whole thing. Eventually, though, he was forced to admit to the truth of what the affair partner told Jess.
“This already started us off on the wrong foot,” Jess said. “That he so convincingly swore it wasn’t him, that he’d been faithful. And when he couldn’t do that anymore because there was proof of what he’d done, it was like he wanted good-husband points for admitting to it. In the middle of suddenly not trusting him after learning about the affair, he tried to gaslight me and that made trust feel a million miles away.”
Like many betrayed spouses/partners, Jess had so many questions. Part of the recovery process can include wanting to know who/what/why/where. Not every person needs or wants details of the affair, but for those who do, a partner unwilling to answer, or annoyed by the questions, can signal a partner not committed to repair.
“It didn’t take me long to realize that Giovanni wasn’t telling me the truth,” Jess said. “I wanted to believe him, but his accounts were at best, incomplete, and at worst, wildly inconsistent. I couldn’t help but remember my father’s advice: ‘If you tell the truth, you don’t have to have a good memory.’”
“Even more painful than that,” she went on, “was how weak his ‘apology’ was. It was as if he was apologizing for forgetting my birthday or ruining one of my sweaters when he put it in the dryer. And when I said that, and brought up ‘atonement,’ he practically scoffed. He took on this self-righteous tone and said if I needed something as dramatic as atonement, maybe I should talk to my therapist, because that’s not how the world worked.”
Despite Jess’s initial desire to repair the relationship and ultimately forgive Giovanni, his resistance to answering Jess’s questions, coupled with an apology that felt rote and insincere to Jess (and his refusal to do the work of earning her forgiveness), led Jess to end the marriage.
Milo: a hollow promise
Milo and Lucy have been together for eight years. Milo is fifty-two, Lucy is fifty-five. “Happy years,” Milo recounted. “At least so I thought. Which is why Lucy’s infidelity was all the more shocking.”
Milo reported that Lucy was incredibly remorseful when she confessed she’d had an affair with a coworker on a business trip. “She promised to never betray me again,” he said, “and she said she’d do whatever it took to prove that I could trust her again. In that moment, it felt like she was telling the truth.”
As the couple worked on repairing the relationship and rebuilding trust, Lucy told her partner something she hadn’t shared before: that she had been sexually abused by a family member when she was a child, and the abuse occurred over many years.
“I was stunned,” Milo said, “since I’d thought we had shared all the important things about our pasts. But more than that, I felt so badly for Lucy, having lived through that trauma, and having been impacted by it so much that she hadn’t trusted her life partner enough to tell about it.”
Although Lucy had been reluctant to attend couples counseling sessions at first—she said “this is something we can fix on our own; I’ll never do it again”—it was important to Milo, and so she agreed. Lucy had shared the fact of the childhood abuse inflicted on her with Milo privately, but he urged her to bring it into therapy, and also, to get an individual therapist for herself so she could explore that fully.
“She blew up at that,” Milo said, “saying she regretted telling me in the first place, she should’ve never told me about it, it had nothing to do with the affair. And during that horrible fight, she slipped and told me about another brief affair she’d had when we’d only been together for a year, something I had no clue about.”
Not every trauma survivor becomes an unfaithful adult, of course, nor is every unfaithful adult a trauma survivor. But for some, early trauma can make someone vulnerable to becoming affair-prone, and Milo was correct in guessing that this was something that would benefit Lucy—and the relationship—if it was worked on in therapy.
“She swore she’d never do it again,” Milo reflected, “but ultimately, she was unwilling to deal with her painful past in therapy and how that might have made her more likely to cheat on me. So how could I possibly trust her promise in the long run?”
Milo finally ended the relationship, despite his sadness at no longer living with the woman he loved. “Lucy made her choice. Our relationship wasn’t important enough for her to do the scary thing of looking at her past. I had to make a choice to protect myself from future betrayal. It’s been six months and I’m still sad, but I’m getting better, and I don’t regret my decision.”
Pilar: a partner who tried to turn the tables
Pilar and Amy are in their mid-thirties and have been married for six years. They have one daughter, age three. Pilar is a partner-track attorney in a large firm, and Amy is a freelance editor who works from home.
Pilar discovered Amy’s affair when Amy accidentally sent a text to Pilar that was meant for the affair partner. “It was just before court was in session, and I immediately knew what it meant, and yet I had to go through with arguing the case.”
Amy had been having an affair with one of her clients, someone who was writing a novel series. It began as an emotional affair and lasted over a year, and then they met in person and the affair became physical as well.
“Amy ended the affair when I confronted her. She said she was almost relieved I’d found out about it, that maybe a part of her wanted me to find out so she’d have to end it. She was teary and remorseful and said she didn’t want to do anything that would threaten our family. So I had thought we were on the right track.”
The roadblock appeared when Amy began implicitly blaming Pilar during arguments. “I thought I was hearing things,” Pilar shared. “She said something like, ‘Well you know, if you hadn’t worked such long hours. . .’ I was floored. And furious. I said, ‘What, you would’ve been faithful if I’d been home more?’”
The roadblock appeared when Amy began implicitly blaming Pilar during arguments. “I thought I was hearing things,” Pilar shared. “She said something like, ‘Well you know, if you hadn’t worked such long hours. . .’ I was floored. And furious. I said, ‘What, you would’ve been faithful if I’d been home more?’”
This was particularly hard for Pilar to take, since at the start of their marriage, they discussed what their life would look like if they were to have kids, and they both agreed that Pilar would continue to pursue partner at her firm and that Amy would continue working from home, on her own schedule, which made her the most logical stay-at-home parent. “We agreed to this arrangement!” Pilar said. “So to have my long hours thrown in my face, when it’s my job that’s providing health insurance and a college fund for our daughter. . .well, it’s just pain on top of pain.”
Although Pilar and Amy did attend several sessions of couples counseling, Amy seemed to grow more defensive with time, and rather than deepening her initial remorse and regret, and rather than accepting true accountability for her actions, she went in the other direction, sending messages—some subtle, some not-so-subtle—that Pilar was the cause of Amy’s affair.
“This made me think I wouldn’t be able to trust her going forward,” Pilar said, “if she could seriously point the finger at me for this massive breach of trust.”
Perhaps Amy found her feelings of guilt intolerable and subconsciously had to shift the blame onto her partner to restore inner equilibrium. Whatever the reason, Amy’s attempt to project her cheating onto Pilar quashed any hope of true forgiveness.
Daria: the loss of safety
Daria and Ian are in their sixties and had been partnered for eighteen years when Daria learned of Ian’s affair. A close friend of Daria’s spotted Ian and the affair partner at a lunch spot two towns over, and after much thought, finally brought the information to Daria.
“I was shocked,” Daria said. “And furious. At first, furious with Janelle, who I thought was mistaken—since I didn’t think she’d make something like that up on purpose just to hurt me—but then, when reality sunk in, furious with Ian. I honestly thought infidelity was something that happened to other couples. Not us, never us. We were so close, so compatible.”
When a couple is serious about and committed to repairing the relationship post-affair, it’s vital that the betrayed partner is asked what they need to rebuild the trust that has been shattered.
When a couple is serious about and committed to repairing the relationship post-affair, it’s vital that the betrayed partner is asked what they need to rebuild the trust that has been shattered. This often requires the unfaithful partner to demonstrate—via certain behaviors—that they are trustworthy. For example, giving their partner the passcode to their phone or perhaps their email password; checking in at periodic times during the day; changing jobs or job locations if the affair partner is a work colleague. Not all of these are always possible or necessary in every situation; the point is that the betrayed partner should be given the opportunity to ask for reasonable and doable behavior modifications from their mate.
In Daria’s case, she asked Ian to start working out at home, instead of the gym, because even though his affair partner wasn’t someone he met at the gym, he used the cover of his time working out as a way to conceal the truth of where he was.
“So many times,” Daria shared, “I’d be at home and think of him working out and really proud of him for doing so, because his father died of a massive heart attack when he was in his fifties. I’d get this warm feeling; Ian was exercising after a long day at work because he wanted to be around for me. For us.” She took in a shaky breath, let it out slowly. “To find out that so many of those times were a lie. He wasn’t at the gym. He was with her.”
Ian agreed. He said he understood. They purchased some lightly used gym equipment and installed it in their garage. “It was such a relief,” Daria recalled, “to hear the elliptical machine whirring or the dumbbells clattering from my home office, which shared a wall with the garage. I knew where he was, I knew he was so serious about fixing what he’d broken that he’d given up his gym membership.”
Eventually, however, Ian began complaining about using the garage for exercise when the weather turned colder. “I researched space heaters,” Daria said, “and looking ahead, a decent AC we could install. But more and more, he seemed to resist working out in there.”
Ian pushed Daria to allow him to rejoin the gym, an approach that left her baffled, angry, and wounded. “Here I’d felt good that he could give up something to allow me to heal over what he’d done to our relationship. I felt so stupid that I ever thought his sacrifice could last.”
Ian encouraged Daria to buy her own gym membership and attend along with him, so that she could see he wasn’t cheating any longer. He didn’t get that that wasn’t the point, no matter how much she tried to explain. Ian’s ultimate refusal to sustain one of the behaviors Daria needed to rebuild trust served to keep her pain alive. He went back to the gym, spending hours there most weekday evenings and weekend afternoons. Although she hadn’t found evidence of repeated betrayals, with Ian back to doing the same thing he’d previously used to disguise time spent with his affair partner, Daria found that she had no place for her trust to land.
“I no longer felt safe,” she reflected. “Not emotionally safe, that is. Trusting Ian felt completely out of reach.”
In conclusion
It’s important to note that the healing journey after a betrayal trauma is not without its twists and turns. Healing is an ongoing sequence of feeling understood and connected to your partner with momentary breakdowns in that understanding and connection. It is the repair of these breakdowns that is essential to rebuilding.
Healing is an ongoing sequence of feeling understood and connected to your partner with momentary breakdowns in that understanding and connection. It is the repair of these breakdowns that is essential to rebuilding.
In the above four examples, the breakdowns described were protracted, and for a variety of reasons, repair did not occur. This left the injured partners feeling unsafe, despite their best efforts to get the unfaithful partners to truly understand and prioritize their concerns and their needs. When it became apparent that these barriers could not be overcome, the betrayed individuals made the difficult and painful decision to end the relationship.
Each of the above examples show what the betrayed partner needed in order to reestablish a sense of emotional security. Without this security, healing is impossible. There might be particular issues discussed in this article that are essential to your own recovery process, while others may not resonate as strongly. That is to be expected, since each person requires something specific from their partner in the affair recovery process. If there were scenarios that spoke to you, it might be helpful to share this information with your partner, and, if you are in therapy, with your couples counselor. This can create a roadmap to healing that is unique to you and your needs.
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***The profiles above are drawn from themes and patterns observed during my three decades working with couples healing from infidelity. These scenarios were created to highlight the dynamics that can get in the way of healing. They are not based on real people. ***
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Rich Nicastro, PhD is a psychologist with over twenty-five years of experience working with individuals and couples. He offers teletherapy to clients throughout the United States.
