After the Affair: Couples Therapy for Infidelity Recovery
Integrative and Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) — UK & Online
When an affair comes to light, it can destabilise both the relationship and each partner’s sense of safety. Shock, anger, grief, shame, and fear often emerge simultaneously, leaving couples unsure how to speak to one another or what comes next. For many, the betrayal disrupts not only trust in the relationship, but also confidence in themselves and their emotional ground.
Couples therapy after an affair provides a structured, contained space to process what has happened, understand the relational and emotional dynamics surrounding the betrayal, and carefully assess whether -and how - the relationship might be repaired. This work is not rushed. It involves attending to injury, accountability, emotional regulation, and the conditions required for trust to be rebuilt over time.
If you are seeking couples therapy after infidelity, support with affair recovery, or therapy to rebuild trust following betrayal, I offer specialist, depth-oriented work that recognises the seriousness of attachment injury and the care required to address it.
The Aftermath of Betrayal
In the aftermath of infidelity, many couples find that familiar emotional and relational reference points no longer hold. Both partners may feel altered by the experience, reacting in ways that feel unfamiliar, overwhelming, or difficult to regulate. This period often brings heightened emotional intensity, confusion, and a loss of internal stability.
If you are experiencing any of the following responses, they reflect common reactions to a significant relational injury:
For the Betrayed Partner
Your attachment system is in crisis mode, producing intense reactions that can feel frightening or out of control but are actually your brain’s attempt to restore safety. The betrayed partner might be experiencing:
Intrusive thoughts and images - replaying details, imagining scenes, and obsessing over questions
Physical symptoms - inability to eat or sleep, panic attacks, feeling physically unwell
Emotional whiplash - rage one moment, desperate need for closeness the next, then numbness
Hypervigilance - checking phones, accounts, or whereabouts compulsively
Loss of self - questioning your judgment, attractiveness, worth, or reality itself
For the Involved Partner
You may find yourself oscillating between genuine remorse and defensive self-protection, struggling to hold both accountability and self-compassion at the same time. The involved partner might be experiencing:
Crushing guilt and shame - heavy emotions that feel unbearable
Fear of losing everything - the relationship, family structure, self-respect
Disorientation - feeling confused by your own actions and wondering what you truly want
Defensive reactions - even when you want to take responsibility
Emotional paralysis - not knowing what to say or how to help
For Both Partners
The relationship you once knew has fundamentally changed, leaving both of you navigating unfamiliar emotional territory without a map. You might both be experiencing:
Not recognising your relationship - it feels like a stranger has replaced your partner
Uncertainty - asking, Can we survive this? Should we even try?
Difficulty talking about what happened - without escalation, shutdown, or cycles of conflict
Isolation and shame - feeling unable to tell anyone what you’re going through
These reactions are not signs of weakness or dysfunction. Experiencing infidelity can be a significant attachment trauma. Regardless of your role in what happened, you and your partner can experience a destabilisation that affects your sense of reality, your future, and your understanding of who you are.
Why Infidelity Hurts This Much: Understanding Attachment Injury
Infidelity generally refers to secret emotional, sexual, or romantic behaviours that breach the explicitly or implicitly agreed-upon exclusivity of a romantic relationship. When a couple experiences a betrayal of trust, it’s a rupture of the attachment bond, the deep emotional connection that makes you feel safe, seen, and secure in your relationship.
An attachment injury occurs when one partner’s fundamental need for safety and responsiveness is met with unavailability, betrayal, or abandonment at a moment of heightened vulnerability. The injury becomes encoded in the nervous system as evidence that this person cannot be fully trusted when it matters most.
The Science of Betrayal
Humans are neurobiologically wired for attachment. When your primary attachment figure - your partner - becomes the source of danger rather than safety, your entire system goes into crisis mode. This isn’t dramatic or ‘overreacting’ - it’s your attachment system responding to a genuine threat to your emotional survival.
Why ‘Just Talking’ Often Makes Things Worse
Without structure, attempts to discuss the affair typically spiral into:
Demand-withdraw cycles - One partner desperately seeking information and reassurance while the other shuts down from overwhelm
Defensive blame loops - Attempts to explain become accusations that trigger more pain
Re-traumatisation - Each conversation reopens the wound rather than allowing healing
Premature closure - Pressure to ‘get over it’ before the injury has been properly tended
Therapy provides what home conversations cannot: emotional containment, structure, and skilled guidance through the most painful terrain a relationship can face.
What Research Shows About Infidelity Recovery
Success rates for couples therapy following an affair
Studies demonstrate that 60-75% of couples who commit to infidelity-focused therapy report significant improvement in relationship quality and reduction in trauma symptoms. Importantly, these positive outcomes are most pronounced when couples disclose the affair and engage fully in the therapeutic process rather than keeping secrets.
Time frame for couples therapy
Most couples need 3 to 12 months of weekly therapy to process an attachment injury fully, typically requiring 18 to 20 sessions over 4 to 6 months. Research shows that couples who terminate prematurely often return months or years later when unprocessed pain resurfaces, highlighting the importance of completing the full therapeutic process.
Predictors of healing following betrayal
A systematic review of infidelity recovery research identified five critical factors that predict successful repair:
Genuine accountability and remorse (not just guilt about being caught)
Complete transparency and willingness to rebuild trust behaviorally
Patience from both partners for the healing timeline
Consistent therapeutic engagement to process the trauma
Shared activities that rebuild connection
What Couples Experience Through Infidelity Recovery
While every relationship is unique, couples who commit to this specialised therapeutic process often report:
Less volatile reactivity - Conversations about the affair that once spiralled into conflict become more contained and productive
Feeling less alone with the pain - Both partners experience being truly seen in their suffering - the betrayed partner’s devastation and the involved partner’s remorse
Greater emotional honesty - The capacity to speak truth without defensive shields or protective lies
Deeper understanding of each other’s inner worlds - Insight into fears, longings, and vulnerabilities that were hidden even before the affair
How Couples Therapy for Infidelity Works
My integrative approach to couples therapy provides both emotional depth and an evidence-based structure. Integrative therapy has been demonstrated to provide both the emotional depth and clear containment structure that healing from betrayal requires.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT)
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT) is one of the most researched approaches to couples therapy, with specific protocols for healing attachment injuries like infidelity. Research shows that 62.5% of couples with attachment injuries who receive EFCT achieve resolution, with improvements in trust, forgiveness, and relationship satisfaction maintained at three-year follow-up.
EFCT understands infidelity not as a ‘communication problem’ but as an injury to the attachment bond - the deep emotional connection that makes you feel safe and secure. Healing requires more than apologies or promises; it demands a structured process of emotional repair that rebuilds safety from the ground up.
Psychodynamic Therapy
Psychodynamic therapy is an exploratory approach that examines how unconscious patterns and early experiences influence your present-day feelings, behaviours, and relationships. We explore how past relational experiences - early attachment patterns, family-of-origin dynamics, previous relationship wounds - shape how each of you responded to disconnection and why the affair may have felt like an escape or solution in the moment. We’ll work with shame, defences, and unconscious patterns that keep you stuck in cycles of hiding, attacking, or withdrawing.
In our work together, we will:
Create immediate stability - Establish clear boundaries, manage intrusive thoughts and hypervigilance, and reduce harm from uncontained conversations at home
Process the attachment injury - Allow the betrayed partner to express the full depth of pain, fear, and rage in ways that can be received; help the involved partner hear and absorb this without collapsing into defensiveness or shame
Move toward genuine accountability - Guide the involved partner beyond explanations to authentic remorse, emotional presence, and understanding of the profound impact of their actions
Understand what happened beneath the surface - Explore (without justifying) the relationship vulnerabilities, unmet needs, or individual struggles that created openings for betrayal
Rebuild trust through consistent responsiveness - Develop new patterns of transparency, honesty, and emotional availability that prove reliability over time, not just through words
Is this the right kind of couples therapy for you?
What I offer is particularly well-suited to couples who:
Understand that rebuilding trust requires both partners to commit fully to the relationship and the therapeutic process
Want to understand why they relate the way they do
Value insight, reflection, and emotional honesty
Are open to exploring emotions, not just behaviours
Couples therapy is not appropriate when there is:
Ongoing infidelity - For couples therapy to be effective in healing from infidelity, the affair must have ended completely. If a partner is unsure whether they are ready to end the affair, individual therapy or another form of counselling may be more appropriate as a first step.
Ongoing or untreated addiction or severe mental health instability
Active or recent domestic abuse or coercive control
A separation is already underway or emotionally finalised
Formats
Online Couples Therapy
I offer weekly online couples therapy via secure video. Working online allows us to meet consistently and supports the depth and continuity needed for meaningful relational change. Infidelity recovery often requires 3 to 6 months of weekly sessions, sometimes longer for complex situations.
In-Person Couples Therapy Intensives
For couples seeking focused, immersive work, I also offer 2-day in-person couples intensives in Bristol and selected UK locations. Intensives provide extended time to work through entrenched patterns, gain clarity, and stabilise your relationship.
About your couples therapist
I’m Francesca Sciandra, a qualified couples therapist and integrative counsellor with specialist training in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFCT). My work focuses on helping couples repair attachment injuries caused by conflict, emotional disconnection, or betrayal.
I commonly work with couples experiencing:
Recurring conflict and communication breakdowns
Emotional distance and attachment-based disconnection
Intense relational emotions such as anger, jealousy, fear, loneliness, or shutdown
Infidelity, betrayal, and attachment injuries
My work is grounded in a clear therapeutic frame that supports sustained, careful engagement with relational patterns over time.
Couples Therapy for Ovecoming an Affair and Infidelity Recovery
If you and your partner are considering couples therapy, you are welcome to request a consultation.
Consultations are 20-minute conversations held separately with each partner and offer space to:
Clarify what you are seeking support with
Assess whether this approach is appropriate for your situation
Discuss how the work might be structured moving forward
References
Atkins, D.C., Eldridge, K.A., Baucom, D.H. and Christensen, A. (2005) ‘Infidelity and behavioral couple therapy: Optimism in the face of betrayal’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73(1), pp. 144-150. doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.73.1.144
Coan, J.A., Schaefer, H.S. and Davidson, R.J. (2006) 'Lending a hand: Social regulation of the neural response to threat', Psychological Science, 17(12), pp. 1032-1039. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01832.x
Giacobbi, E., Saita, E. and Canale, N. (2025) ‘Unpacking trust repair in couples: A systematic literature review’, Journal of Family Therapy, 47(1), pp. 126-147. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6427.12483
Gordon, K.C., Baucom, D.H. and Snyder, D.K. (2004) ‘An integrative intervention for promoting recovery from extramarital affairs’, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 30(2), pp. 213-231. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0606.2004.tb01235.x
Halchuk, R.E., Makinen, J.A. and Johnson, S.M. (2010) ‘Resolving attachment injuries in couples using emotionally focused therapy: A three-year follow-up’, Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 9(1), pp. 31-47. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/15332690903473069
Lonergan, M., Brunet, A., Rivest-Beauregard, M. and Groleau, D. (2021) ‘Is romantic partner betrayal a form of traumatic experience? A qualitative study’, Stress and Health, 37(1), pp. 19-31. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/smi.2968
Makinen, J.A. and Johnson, S.M. (2006) ‘Resolving attachment injuries in couples using emotionally focused therapy: Steps toward forgiveness and reconciliation’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74(6), pp. 1055-1064. doi: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.74.6.1055
Mitchell, E.A., Wittenborn, A.K., Timm, T.M. and Blow, A.J. (2020). Examining the Role of the Attachment Bond in the Process of Recovering from an Affair. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 49(3), pp.221–236. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/01926187.2020.1791763
Rokach, A. and Chan, S.H. (2023). Love and Infidelity: Causes and Consequences. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, [online] 20(5), p.3904. doi: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20053904
Vrtička, P. and Vuilleumier, P. (2012) 'Neuroscience of human social interactions and adult attachment style', Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, article 212. doi: https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00212