Overcoming INFIDELITY: For the Partner Who Was Betrayed

It’s About What Was Done To You

By Mark D. Lerner, Ph.D.

Chairman, The National Center for Emotional Wellness

Principal Consultant and Creator, AI-Integrated Emotional Wellness

Infidelity is not about what your partner did. It’s about the impact of their actions on you and your life.

After learning that you’ve been betrayed, you may feel like you're drowning in shock, confusion, grief, rage, and a desperate need to know the truth.

It’s OK not to be OK right now. You may be trying to make sense of the senseless—and your mind is responding to a profound violation of trust. The emotional pain of infidelity doesn't just go away. I know a man who has struggled with his spouse's years of infidelity and betrayal—every day—for decades—and it continues today.

Betrayal shatters the story of your relationship, your partner, yourself, and your life. It’s natural to fear that learning the truth will hurt even more. But healing can't begin in the absence of reality.

Truth doesn't cause the trauma of infidelity; ongoing betrayal, deception, and lies do.

Demanding full disclosure of what happened, why it happened, where it happened, and with whom it happened is not an obsession, weakness, or punishment. It’s an act of self-protection and self-respect. It takes courage to want and hear the truth. Without knowing the truth, trust can't be rebuilt because the foundation of your relationship has been shattered. Imagine trying to build a structure on a bed of broken concrete.

Many who betray disclose partial truths, often mixed with outright lies, over time to protect themselves. As one woman said to me after decades of deception, “I need to preserve my dignity.” This is known as "Trickle Truth," which doesn't protect their partner—but continues to traumatize them. Each new partial disclosure forces the injured partner to relive the betrayal, compromises their sense of reality, and prevents healing. Trickle truth is ongoing betrayal.

Infidelity can shatter not only your trust in others—but also your sense of self—leaving you repeatedly asking, often relentlessly, “Why wasn’t I good enough?”

Here’s a reality that took me several decades to begin to grasp. What your partner did was likely not about you. It was about them. Their lack of clear boundaries, sound judgment, integrity, decency, and, in particular, respect for the person they claim to love.

Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) can provide accessible, practical strategies and tools to help you understand what's happening to you—present mindfullness, breathing exercises and coping strategies to interrupt obsessive images, intrusive thoughts, and rumination—in an effort to help you regain a sense of emotional control.

However, overcoming the overwhelming pain of infidelity will take more than acquiring techniques. AI-Integrated Emotional Wellness (AIEW) offers a step beyond: a path toward overcoming infidelity and, potentially, growing from your experience. AIEW incorporates the benefit of a critical human need—the genuine, authentic presence of others.

Find people in your life with whom you can sit down and share your thoughts and feelings: people who listen with empathy and look into your eyes with compassion—not those who tell you what you should do. People who do this are trying to help themselves feel better quickly. I frequently share with others, "It's not what people say that helps us the most. It's what they don't say."

Your partner’s actions were not a mistake—they were a decision. And now you have the right to decide what to do next—“Do I share my feelings, or do I keep them close to my chest?" "Do I speak with a therapist, or do I turn to a friend?" "Do I stay in this relationship, or do I go?”

The answers to these questions are complex and will require you to determine if the infidelity is continuing and to learn the truth—the reality of what happened during your relationship. This is your right. And if your partner is unwilling to be honest and forthcoming with you, it's time for you to make decisions.

A client shared with me that he decided that being intimate with his wife was just too painful. He couldn't "turn off" the intrusive thoughts and detailed obsessive images of his wife being intimate with her lover when he was with her. He made the decision to avoid intimacy with his wife until she was honest and fully transparent with him—until he heard one consistent story of what occurred—the truth—reality—before reengaging emotionally or physically.

Having decades of experience addressing infidelity, I’ve learned that the most common emotion experienced by those who’ve been betrayed is anger. Anger is not pathology—it’s energy. Think of your anger as fuel. Don’t turn it inward. Despair and self-destructive thoughts may offer temporary relief, but they deepen your suffering over time.

You didn't cause this betrayal. You're responding to it.

Knowing the truth—the reality of what happened—is not only your right, but your responsibility to yourself. Until the whole truth is known, the betrayal continues—and so does your pain.

I strongly recommend having the benefit of speaking with a mental health professional who is experienced in helping couples grappling with infidelity. PsychologyToday offers a search engine that can help you find a counselor or therapist in your area.

It may be too soon in your journey to read this—or it may never be right for you—but I'll offer it in closing. When the whole truth is fully realized and addressed, some couples who've endured infidelity and betrayal choose to harness their pain and sublimate—channel their energy into rebuilding a stronger relationship. I believe this possibility exists only after full disclosure—honesty and transparency.

One last thought: infidelity and betrayal do not define you. What you choose to do with your pain often does. Some who have been betrayed find healthy outlets to fill the void in their broken relationship—including helping others who have indured infidelity and betrayl.

Betrayal does not end when the affair ends. It ends when the whole truth is told.