Can a relationship survive infidelity? Advice from an expert

Nic Beets shares advice regarding infidelity. Photo / Getty Images

If you are in the horrible position of having discovered an infidelity, then I believe that the question you need to answer is not “can I trust my partner?” In the short term, the answer is a clear “no”. At this point, your partner has proved to be untrustworthy. However, that doesn’t mean you need to end the relationship. It may be possible to rebuild trust.

For that to happen, you need to be able to trust yourself. Will you be able to look after yourself if the worst happens — if your partner breaks faith again? Will you stay sane? Will you be able to forgive yourself for taking additional emotional risks? For most people, even though it would be exquisitely painful should their partner again break the contract and deceive them, they would survive. With time, they could process it, learn the lessons they need to and move on. In that case, they can afford to risk seeing whether rebuilding trust in the relationship is possible.

If you genuinely fear that you will have a breakdown or become suicidal; if it would render you unable to function in society if you tried to rebuild trust and were further let down and deceived, you probably need to end the relationship. The potential costs are too high. Some people who have had traumatic upbringings or abusive early relationships are not in a position to deal with the further betrayal of trust, which is completely understandable.

Why should you bother?

If your partner cheats on you, many people advise you to end the relationship immediately. “A leopard won’t change its spots” and “once a cheater, always a cheater”, they will say. If you are the one who has broken the contract and damaged trust, you may fear that there is no way back, that the relationship is irreparably damaged.

I have worked with hundreds of couples who are processing infidelity, and in my experience it does not warrant the fatalism and cynicism of this kind of attitude. I find that working with infidelity is powerful because we can harness the massive disruption to take the relationship to a deep level of intimacy in a very short time. Much quicker than can happen under “normal” circumstances. I’m not saying that this is easy or inevitable, and I certainly don’t recommend it as a way to deepen your relationship, but it is possible.

The crucial thing to understand is that you are committing to a process of exploring what’s possible in this relationship, not re-committing to being together forever. In most cases, the old relationship is dead. Typically, the old contract proves to be “not fit for purpose”, because in tolerating a lack of intimacy it allowed too much room for avoidance, self-deception and betrayal. Your task for the short- to medium-term is to determine whether you can rebuild trust and create a new relationship that maintains the good things about the old one but works better for both of you. If it helps, you can put a specific timeframe on this process. For example, “I’ll give it 12 months and see if I feel safe enough at the end of that time.”

If there have been repeated breaches of trust, obviously, greater caution about the prospect for change is warranted. It’s important not to be naive. There certainly are bad actors out there — people with no conscience who are selfish in the extreme. Some of these people have deceived me as successfully as they did their partners (contrary to popular opinion, psychologists are not mind-readers).

It all comes down to whether the contract-breaker is genuinely ready to take themselves on. If there are indications that this is happening (for example, they have made a much fuller, less defensive explanation than in past instances, or if the infidelity is confessed rather than discovered), then it may be worth exploring what is possible going forward. Remember, you are not committing forever; just to see what is possible if things change.

When something you feared greatly has happened, and you discover that you have survived, that life goes on, it can be very liberating. If you have betrayed not just your partner’s trust but also your own integrity, it can be a powerful incentive to understand yourself — to get a profound and satisfactory answer to: “How did I end up in this situation?’ By the same token, when the person who betrayed your trust can support you and be there for you as you process the pain they caused, that can be hugely healing.

So, if there has been an infidelity in your relationship, it is worth finding out whether you can turn this crap into compost and grow something new and beautiful in your relationship.

How to rebuild trust

When there has been a major breach of the relationship agreement, it is up to the contract-breaker to do what’s necessary to begin the process of restoring their partner’s trust. This has to happen first, before any other issues in the relationship are addressed. There may well be serious issues in the wider couple dynamic, including major areas of dissatisfaction for the contract-breaker — these will have to wait.

When there has been a significant infidelity, the person who has had their choices taken away by the unilateral action of the contract-breaker is left in a hugely vulnerable position if they choose to remain in the relationship. They are keeping their life bound up with someone who has proved to be untrustworthy.

To re-balance the relationship, the contract-breaker must make themselves vulnerable. Most people go into self-protective mode when you uncover their infidelity. They feel exposed, and the last thing they want to do is risk more vulnerability. It’s a crucial example of the need to be vulnerable, even though you feel vulnerable. Coming from a vulnerable and caring place is what begins the work of healing.

In my decades of working with infidelity, I have developed a set of guidelines that outline the crucial tasks you need to accomplish to restore trust. It is addressed to the contract-breaker, but can also act as a guide for partners about what to reasonably expect.

A formula for rebuilding trust

When you have significantly hurt your partner and betrayed their trust by breaking your relationship agreement and deceiving them about it, it can be hard to know how you can rebuild that trust. Over the years, my clients have taught me there are four key elements that you need to offer your partner consistently over a long time (think in terms of a couple of years of doing this).

Intimacy

The most powerful way to reassure your partner that you have changed is not to make promises. Saying “I won’t do it again” never reassures anyone. Instead, be self-aware of the forces working within your psyche, especially the ones that led to you breaching trust. You also need to share these in a vulnerable and open way; and your sharing needs to include a clear and coherent plan of what you will do to prevent you from breaking the contract when those forces act on you again.

If your partner believes they know what’s going on in you in-depth, they will feel confident that they know what you are going to do next.

Reliability

You can reinforce your partner’s confidence by being reliable — someone they can lean on. One part of this is being reliable practically: being a person of your word, who does what they say they will, goes where they say they are going, turns up when they said they will, etc. This extends to the small things, such as being reliable with household chores or coming home on time. In cases of infidelity, it can be even more vital that you don’t do what you said you wouldn’t do and don’t go where you said you wouldn’t go.

The other part is being reliable emotionally — being supportive of and caring to your partner. Offering support is crucial when they are upset, even angry, about the hurt you have done to them. If you want to rebuild trust, you have to tolerate facing the consequences of your choices over and over again. Your partner doesn’t want to keep remembering or being tormented by questions, so don’t treat them as being deliberately difficult when they bring their pain to you. Instead, see it as an opportunity to rebuild.

Empathy

Showing you care about the pain, confusion, self-doubt and anger you have caused is essential to rebuilding trust. Your partner needs to know that their distress affects you and matters to you. Being able to show this kind of emotional empathy consistently is the best way to make amends.

However, it is also essential to show cognitive empathy; to explicitly recognise that your partner’s feelings make sense in the circumstances. So often, when our partner’s distress triggers our own shame or embarrassment, we try to minimise or undermine the reasons why they are upset.

Persistence

It takes time to rebuild trust. You must keep doing these things repeatedly, typically long past the point when you think it’s fair or reasonable. Your partner’s pain is not yours, and only they can judge when they feel they can trust again. So if the relationship is precious to you, just keep going.

Extracted with permission from Make Love Work: A Practical Guide to Relationship Success by Nic Beets, (Allen & Unwin, RRP $36.99).

Make Love Work book cover