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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.

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Help Surviving Infidelity

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Restore Lost Trust

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Therapy for Couples After Infidelity

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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.

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Help After Marital Infidelity

Help After Marital Infidelity

Anxiety, Depression, Grief, Relationships

Need Help with Marital Infidelity?

Help With Betrayal & Trust

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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

How Does Marriage Counseling Work?

How Does Marriage Counseling Work?

Relationships

How Does Marriage Counseling Work?

How it Can Help

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How does marriage counseling work?

If you’ve never done marriage or couples counseling, you might wonder how it works. The way I work with couples is this – I like to take the first session and meet with a couple together. I assess the way you interact, listen, respond or react and the reasons you are coming to therapy. I want to understand each person’s perscpective and get a sense for the issues you are struggling with. At the same time, I will assess what happens when you are discussing the problems and to see if you interrupt, agree, disagree and understand. The second and third appointments I like to meet with each person individually to get a sense for their background and experience. It helps me to connect one-on-one to learn more about what each person feels and needs and what they are not getting in the relationship.

I also like to understand what each person experienced growing up when it comes to roll models for relationships. I will often ask how did your parents or other significant caretakers treat one another and how did they treated you. It gives me a good idea of how each person was “conditioned” to relate and how tow people from different backgrounds can have different views and expectations around relationships. You may want to repeat or avoid they way people treated each other when you were growing up. It is impoprtnt to undestanding how the past affects the present when it comes to relationships.

Many people that have gone through traumatic experiences growing may face have more challenges in their love relationships and therefore may need more help creating a more satisfying and stable relationship. I do want to understand attachment style and how secure or insecure you felt growing up how secure or insecure you feel in your marriage or relationship now. Understanding all of this and then helping you both understand the patterns and dynamic of your relationship is what we work on in the couples therapy.

Many people ask how long is couples therapy or how long will it take. Without knowing each of you and your dynamic…without knowing what each of you bring to the relationship from your past, it’s hard for me to answer that question other than to say the work that we do is short term in nature. Anywhere between 8-20 appointments for most couples. Some couples are in therapy longer. Typically session one is together with the couple so your therapist can assess you communication style and dynamic. Then th therapists will meet with each person individually to assess each person to leanr more about each person. Then the couples will meet together again session 4 on to work on issues. So I hope this helps as you’re searching for a couples therapist and trying to understand how therapy works if you are new to the process.

Just know that changing patterns and behavior takes time, awareness and consistent effort. Pain is a great motivator and usually people are much more willing to change something when there is a threat of losing your spouse or partner. Ultimatums like “i want a divorce” or “I can’t do this anymore” will make many people very scared and ready for counseling. The real challenge is staying what is most importnat to your partner or spouse – learning what they really need and responding rather than reacting. We do this together to help each person really understand and respond to needs of the other person without discounting, neglecting, defending, criticizing or invalidating when you don’t understand. Understanding and responding to each other rather than reacting is critical to building a stronger and ongoing connection with one another. I hope this helps as you’re searching for a therapist to understand the process of marriage counseling or couples therapy.

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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

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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.

Online Cheating Threatens Relationships

Relationships

Online Cheating & Cyber Affairs

Dealing with Betrayal

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Online Cheating, Affairs and Cyber Infidelity


When a husband, wife or partner has an affair, the betrayal can be devatating. Online cheating can also cause a tremendous amount of pain in a relationship.  So seductive and easily accessible,  the Internet and mobile devices are an opportunity anytime, anywhere to fill a void and get attention you are not getting elsewhere.

Is this you?

  • you hide your phone because you are sending inappropriate texts at all hours
  • you suspect your spouse or partner is connecting with other men or women online or on their phone
  • you feel guilty about cyber cheating and need help ending something that could ruin your relationship
  • the attention is so seductive, tempting and it’s so easy to start something with a coworker or friend
  • you want to come clean and admit the cyber affair before it’s too late
  • it’s hard to stop because it makes you happy and feels very good
  • your spouse or partner keeps accusing you and feels insecure
  • you don’t think it’s all that serious and deny anything is going on
  • you clearly see how it is hurting your relationship and need help

If online cheating is hurting your relationships, get in touch.

Online Cheating

Betrayal & Trust Issues

Caught Your Spouse?

Dealing with An Online or Emotional Affair?

Relationships

Need Help with
An Emotional Affair

Online Cheating
With Social Media?

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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.

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