Maplewood Counseling
Surviving Infidelity With Effective Relationship Therapy

Surviving Infidelity With Effective Relationship Therapy

Anxiety, Depression, Relationships

Need help surviving infidelity and Healing from Betrayal ? We offer in person session in Maplewood near South OrangeWest OrangeLivingstonMillburnSummitSpringfieldMaplewoodWest CaldwellMontclairBloomfieldCranfordChathamCliftonNewarkShort HillsRoselandJersey CityUnion. We can also provide therapy wherever you are located in New Jersey.

N

Help Surviving Infidelity

N

Restore Lost Trust

N

Recover and Rebuild

N

Therapy for Couples After Infidelity

Maplewood Counseling has experienced and licensed therapists in the New Jersey Area 

Get Started
Help Surviving Infidelity Maplewood Counseling
On This Page

8 Ways to Heal and Move Forward After Infidelity

Infidelity can disrupt the very foundation of a relationship, leaving deep emotional wounds that may feel insurmountable. Whether discovered through confession or happenstance, the pain is profound for everyone involved. But here’s the truth you need to hold onto: healing is possible. You can move forward, and you don’t have to do it alone.

This guide shares eight thoughtful steps for processing the hurt, rebuilding trust, and determining the best path forward—whether that leads to repair or turning the page. However you’re feeling right now, know that your emotions are valid, and recovery is within reach.

Understanding Infidelity

Infidelity comes in many forms and is rarely straightforward. It can be physical, emotional, or even stem from breaches of trust that don’t fit neatly into traditional ideas of cheating. Understanding the causes behind infidelity, though painful, often provides clarity and helps both partners make sense of the betrayal.

Why Does Infidelity Happen?

While there’s never an excuse for breaking trust, understanding the reasons can sometimes open the door to healing. Common causes include:

  • Lack of emotional connection: Feeling unheard or invisible in the relationship can drive one partner away.
  • Unresolved personal struggles: Low self-esteem, stress, or unmet needs can lead someone to seek external validation.
  • Temptation and opportunity: Loose boundaries may create opportunities for unfaithful behavior.
  • Relationship challenges: Ongoing conflict, lack of intimacy, or unmet expectations can strain a partnership.

It’s imperative to recognize that while external factors may play a role, infidelity is ultimately a choice. Accountability lies with the partner who broke the trust, and healing requires addressing these actions head-on.

Immediate Steps After Discovering Infidelity

The moment infidelity comes to light is often filled with overwhelming emotions such as heartbreak, anger, and confusion. Here are three steps to ground yourself in the immediate aftermath:

1. Pause and Breathe

Take a moment to process what’s happened. Your emotions are valid, but resist acting impulsively. Giving yourself time for reflection can pave the way for meaningful conversations and decisions later.

2. Establish Open Dialogue

If both partners are ready, start talking about the infidelity—but set boundaries for respectful communication. Focus on expressing feelings rather than placing blame. Kindness can be an anchor in even the stormiest conversations.

3. Delay Major Decisions

It’s tempting to make snap decisions about whether to stay or leave, but big choices need time and thoughtful consideration. Take time to weigh your feelings and evaluate the long-term health of your relationship.

Seeking Professional Support

A neutral third party can make a world of difference when emotions are running high and the road to understanding feels blocked. Counseling offers a safe space to unpack the issues and begin the healing process.

Why Therapy Helps

  • Express yourself freely: Share feelings honestly in a space that prioritizes understanding and avoids judgment.
  • Identify root issues: Work through personal or relational factors that contributed to the situation.
  • Learn tools to rebuild: Gain strategies for communication, trust-building, and emotional healing.

Remember, therapy isn’t just for couples. Individual sessions can help you process your personal emotions and uncover what you need to move forward, alone or together.

Rebuilding Trust

The foundation of healing a relationship after infidelity is trust. Restoring it is hard work that demands vulnerability, consistency, and grace—from both partners.

4. Be Transparent

The partner who broke trust must commit to openness. This includes clarity around intentions, consistent communication, and, if needed, a willingness to share access (e.g., passwords) to rebuild confidence.

5. Celebrate Progress

Rebuilding trust is not an overnight process. Look for small wins, like open conversations or moments of shared vulnerability, and celebrate the steps toward healing.

Practicing Self-Care

Healing from infidelity isn’t just about fixing your relationship; it’s about nurturing yourself, too. Prioritize your emotional and physical well-being during this challenging time.

6. Address Your Emotional Health

  • Allow yourself to grieve fully.
  • Explore your feelings through journaling to better understand and release them.
  • Lean on trusted friends or family for support in moments of vulnerability.

7. Care for Your Body

Physical wellness can have a surprisingly strong influence on emotional healing. Eat well, stay active, and prioritize rest. Simple self-care habits can help you find strength and stability within.

Deciding the Future of Your Relationship

Infidelity often leads to a crossroads. Determining whether to stay and rebuild or move on separately is deeply personal, and there’s no single “right” answer. What matters is making a decision rooted in what’s best for both partners in the long run.

8. Evaluate the Relationship’s Foundation

Ask yourself tough but necessary questions:

  • Are both partners committed to healing and moving forward?
  • Can forgiveness be genuine, or will resentment linger?
  • Is this relationship built on a foundation that can be strengthened, or do deeper issues run too deep?

Both reconciliation and separation can lead to growth and happiness. For some couples, working through infidelity can solidify a stronger bond. For others, moving apart opens the door to healthier opportunities for the future.

Finding Hope After Infidelity

Infidelity doesn’t have to define your relationship or your life. Healing is an ongoing process that requires patience, honesty, and both partners working toward a brighter future. And remember, recovery doesn’t happen in isolation. Whether through counseling, loved ones, or trusted resources, support is always available.

If you’re struggling to find the next step forward, a licensed counselor or relationship therapist can guide you. Infidelity may feel like the end, but it can also mark a new beginning for growth, understanding, and hope.

You are not alone. Healing is possible. Trust in the next step, wherever it leads.

Schedule Appointment
Get infidelity Counseling

Find us on Psychologytoday.com and Marriage.com

Help After Marital Infidelity

Help After Marital Infidelity

Anxiety, Depression, Grief, Relationships

Need Help with Marital Infidelity?

Help With Betrayal & Trust

Get in Touch

Coping with Relationship and Marital infidelity

Are you a couple dealing with marital infidelity? Are you feeling desperate to get help after an affair? Do you realize you made a huge mistake and don’t know what to do?

Many people involved in an affair feel trapped in lies, covering up for selfish reasons and for fear losing their relationship. Even though it is initially painful and devastating once an affair comes out, most couples can work through these issues if both are open and willing to the healing process. It does take time.

After Marital infidelity

It’s never an excuse, but most affairs are usually a symptom of a problem in a relationship – a lack of connection or not communicating what you need and feel. This is not an excuse, but feeling disappointed, neglected, angry or alone can make up a couple very vulnerable in this way. Sometimes it is other issues and many times we hear “I don’t know why I did it” and for many people, this is true.

Honesty is certainly the best policy when it comes to many things in life and marital infidelity is no exception. Most people fear coming clean and will lie and hide things even when their spouse or partner senses something is wrong. Some people actually will say “you’re crazy” or “you’re paranoid” or “you are ridiculous”, when questioned and accused. Lying can do a number on both people – and the betrayal is very damaging to the relationship.

So it is harmful for you to lie and harmful to your relationship to not be honest and tell your spouse about the marital infidelity. It’s understandable because you certainly don’t want to risk losing the marriage or relationship over it, but the damage done by the lying makes things much more painful and harder to work through when the truth is revealed.

Finally, admitting the affair – how did your partner find out?

Sometimes people feel so guilty and want to be honest they tell their partner about the affair. Other times, the affair is discovered by seeing something on your cell phone bill, credit card charges or just tracking device or even private investigators. Even worse, the person you are or had an affair with has threatened to email or call your wife or husband and tell them – and followed through on that threat.

When you find out from the person who your spouse or partner has been having an affair with, You literally feel shocked, numb, devastated, in a rage – any number of things. As a result, your marriage or relationship is truly in crisis for a period of time and you’re not sure what to do. Also, relationship and marital infidelity causes such extreme pain when it is discovered. Maybe your wife or husband might even demand you take a polygraph or lie-detector test since they have lost all trust in anything you say and cannot trust even themselves.

Most couples turn to a trained and experienced therapist the help them get through the shock, anger, sadness, need for space – a range of intense emotions. They need help with the next steps.

If you need counseling for relationship and marital infidelity, feel free to get in touch.

Call 973-902-8700 Maplewoood Counseling

 

 

Can We Survive Marital Infidelity

Trying to Heal After An Affair? Need Help?

Trying to Heal After An Affair? Need Help?

Anxiety, Depression, Relationships

Therapy After An Affair

Helping Couples Heal

Contact Maplewoood Counseling

How to Heal Your Relationship After an Affair

Need marriage or relationship therapy after and affair? Can your relationship heal after this level of betrayal? Is it really possible for the relationship to survive cheating, or is a divorce or a break-up inevitable?

The news is better than you might think. It is possible to heal your relationship after an affair, but only if you both are willing and committed to doing the work necessary to fix the damage: both the damage that the affair caused, as well as the damage which caused the affair. According to “Surprised by Love” by Jay Kent-Ferraro Ph.D., MBA, “Marriages don’t end because of infidelity; they end because of how infidelity is dealt with.” Is your love and commitment strong enough to overcome the profound failure of cheating? Here are ten critical steps couples must take to survive the damage of an affair and emerge with a stronger relationship.

  1. Honesty

When cheating is brought to light, it is important that the wronged member of the relationship talks openly and honestly to their partner. Overcome with feelings of grief and distrust, this member must put their pain and hurt into words to let their partner know what they are feeling. By the same token, the partner who had the affair must respond to questions truthfully; attempting to minimize your partner’s pain by understating the facts will only lead to more distrust when they inevitably learn the truth.

  1. Bear Witness

Just as significantly, if not more so, the cheating partner must prepare to face the pain and heartache that their behavior has brought on. In many situations, the unfaithful party can feel paralyzed with guilt, and see the affair as damage that cannot be repaired. This causes them to push their partner to put the pain behind them rather than take the time to grieve to help heal. Dr. Janis A. Spring, clinical psychologist and author, insists that the offender “bear witness” to the pain they have brought on instead of trying to defend or deflect. Taking responsibility of this wrongdoing is vital to rebuilding trust in the relationship.

  1. Atone

After bearing witness to the hurt and pain they have caused, the unfaithful partner must express remorse. This is key to rebuilding a relationship after an affair, and without this step there is no way the relationship can be repaired.

  1. Get it in Writing

After the person who had the affair has listened and understood the pain they caused their spouse or partner, Spring suggests that they write out their apology in their own words. This detailed letter to their loved one can help prove to their partner that they understand the pain that they have caused. Spring explains, “Verbal reassurances, promising you won’t do it again, that means nothing after cheating. They have to prove they’ve heard and understood their partner on the deepest level, and that means citing very specific examples of how they’ve hurt them and then taking actions to prove they will not do so in the future.”

  1. Forgiveness Isn’t Cheap

Sometimes, the offended partner—desperate to salvage the relationship or too scared to be alone–will forgive before they have had any chance to grieve. This “cheap forgiveness” actually can hurt the relationship by interrupting the healthy grieving process. Avoid this “cheap forgiveness” as it can set you up in a place where you do not deal with the hurt, your partner does not come to understand your pain, and in turn they can continue to be unfaithful in the future.

  1. Who’s Responsible?

In relationships where one person has strayed, both parties may bear some measure of responsibility for the problems which led to the affair. While the unfaithful person must own up to 100% of the guilt, the wronged member of the relationship must accept some responsibility for cultivating an unhappy relationship. Not only the cheater, but the hurt person has to see how their role played a part that made their significant other decide to have an affair, and take progressive steps to provide more emotional intimacy in the future. That being said, no matter what the couples’ problems were, only one partner cheated, and this step cannot be used to deflect responsibility for that conscious and deliberate decision.

  1. Full Disclosure

After the cheater understands their significant other’s feelings and owns up to their 100% of the guilt for cheating without being defensive, the cheater must fully disclose everything. While uncovering all secrets may be painful, this allows for a blank slate where both parties have been transparent and vulnerable.

Couples that are healing after an affair need to get insight in what went wrong without just blaming each other. During this step, some partners will feel anger, hurt, pain, and betrayal when they learn what their lover has done, but full disclosure and honesty is the best way to get back trust and intimacy.

  1. No “Second Chance”

Not only does the person who is responsible for the affair need to end the affair, they need to end all contact at all with his or her lover. This “no second chance” rule may seem over-the-top, but it will discourage cheating.

  1. Gain Support

Once both partners have forgiven and are ready to rebuild their relationship, they both must make the relationship a top priority. As part of this new obligation to value each other, the couple should go public with the state of their relationship and gain support from the people closest to them. Let these people know that, despite the affair, they are recommitted and are rebuilding trust.

  1. Get Physical

The last step is about being able to reconnect with your partner physically. If the couple wants to stay together, the rebuilding must reach the bedroom, too. According to Dr. John Gottman, “Without the presence of sexual intimacy that is pleasurable to both, the relationship can’t begin again.”

Healing your relationship after an affair is a difficult process, but it can be done. The process can be helped along with an experienced therapist to help you repair and strengthen your relationship. Call 973-902-8700 if you are a couple needing help in Essex County, New Jersey.

Dealing with An Online or Emotional Affair?

Relationships

Need Help with
An Emotional Affair

Online Cheating
With Social Media?

Contact Maplewoood Counseling

Having an emotional or online affair?

Have you been sensing distance in your relationship? Do you feel like your spouse or partner has been acting unusually cold and distant? Do you suspect they might be having an emotional or online affair? Maybe more?

Men and women can usually tell when something’s not right. It can cause tremendous amount of insecurity and suspicion. Some people resort to checking emails, texts and cell phone records and even purchasing programs that try and help them make sense of what’s going on. Confronting your spouse or partner with your suspicions can be met with “you’re crazy” or “that’s ridiculous”, which can make you feel crazy and really doubt yourself. It can cause frequent fights and arguments that never get resolved.

Are you having an emotional or online affair?

If you’re having an emotional affair and you don’t know what to do, you’re going to need help if you want to save your relationship or marriage. It’s not easy to let go. Most likely the emotional or online affair happened gradually and innocently. It felt good to get some attention, to be noticed. But then things developed and got out of control and now the connection is difficult to let go of, but you don’t want to lose your marriage or relationship because if it.

There are many couples that come in trying to cope with an emotional affair or online affair. Emotional affairs can certainly trigger intense emotions and feelings of rage, anger, sadness and betrayal as a full-blown sexual affair. Your spouse or partner loses trust in you and you certainly can feel pretty lousy about yourself as well.

Letting go of an emotional or online affair and reconnecting and your marriage or relationship.

It’s going to take patience. It’s going to take understanding. It’s going to take to working through the pain and finding out how to repair things and rebuild trust.

If you need help dealing with an emotional affair or online affair, let us know. We are located in Northern New Jersey in Essex County and we also offer online therapy if you are located anywhere in NJ.

Contact Maplewoood Counseling

Infidelity Therapist to Help You Tell Your Partner

Infidelity Therapist to Help You Tell Your Partner

Anxiety, Depression, Relationships

INFIDELITY THERAPIST NEAR ME
HOW TO TELL YOUR PARTNER
MAPLEWOOD, NEW JERSEY 

 

Need a Infidelity Therapist
to help you tell your partner?
We Can Help

 

Contact Us | Trusted Infidelity Therapy

Get in Touch Today

Need an Infidelity Therapist?

Want to tell your partner about an affair, but don’t know how?

Contact Maplewoood Counseling

How an Infidelity Therapist Can Help

Coming Clean and Being Honest

Want to know what to do about infidelity and how to tell you partner or spouse before they find out? Infidelity is extremely difficult to admit to, but continuing to be dishonest, lie and deny things can be even more harmful not only to the relationship, but the person having the affair. So many men and women who start affairs can’t even believe the Made such. mistake. “It is never something I thought I would do”, “I can’t believe I’m here”, “I’ve always been faithful and thought affairs happened to other couples”. And now you find yourself in an affair and the guilt is destroying you.  You may need an infidelity therapist to help.

Understanding Infidelity

Is this You?

  • you were vulnerable to infidelity because of lack of connection, passion and feeling like you don’t matter
  • the kids, work, everything but the realtionship was a priority
  • we became so distance in your marriage over the years and felt unhappy and alone
  • there is/was some kind of thrill and adrenaline rush – maybe feeling alive again
  • it just felt good to be wanted for the first time in a long time
  • the infidelity may be masking an underlying issue such as depression, grief or trauma from the past

When things aren’t going well at home other things can happen. The insidious effects of the lack of connection can often start the process with what feels like is harmless flirting, texting and talking. Slowly you start wanting to do it more and more. Secretly you find ways to connect with the other person. Sometimes your spouse or partner senses something and starts questioning you, but you deny things when your spouse questions you, which really feels lousy.

When couples feel disconnected, forming a connection with someone else can (unfortunately) happen. Some couples realize they have lost the connection and choose therapy to help them and work on reconnecting before it goes down that path. Others may not really be aware of what they’re doing. Not feeling good about the marriage or relationship and then someone else pays attention to them – it can happen easily in these situations.

Once lines are crossed…

The toll an affair takes on the person having the affair can be huge. Good marriages and people do end up here. It usually happens over time – a couple becomes disconnected. Circumstances of busy lives, raising children, pressures at work, and trying to manage it all. Finding it difficult to maintain your connection and giving the relationship the attention it needs is very challenging. Depression, disappointment, anger, loneliness, not feeling like a priority, no sex or intimacy, frequent fights can all take a toll on your relationship.

How do I Tell My Wife, Husband or Partner About Current or Past Infidelity?

It’s not an easy thing to do. You may need an infidelity therapist to help.

Are you still having the affair? Are you trying to end it? Is the affair in the past, but guilt about the betrayal is eating away at you?

Fear of losing your marriage and family is the biggest reason people don’t want to admit to infidelity. So much pain it will cause and so much to lose if things can’t be worked out. Also, ending something that has given you much needed attention can be very difficult. It can cause men and women to feel grief, especially if you formed an attachment to the other person. You find yourself in a really hard place to be. Letting go of the affair may be painful (or not) and telling your spouse will be painful.

You may be ready to take the steps to end an affair and/or tell your spouse about the infidelity. You may need help doing this in the most sensitive and safe way possible. An infidleity therapist can help you do this in a safe place. You can take the steps to repair the damage, understand, talk and reconnect.

Need help healing your relationship? Contact Maplewood Counseling in Essex County New Jersey and let an experienced infidleity therapist help you take the steps to heal infidelity.

Contact Maplewoood Counseling