Marriage Counseling After Infidelity

You are here because something shattered. Maybe you discovered the affair, or maybe it was disclosed. The relationship you thought you had is gone, and the question in front of you is whether anything honest can be built. I use a structured three-phase method based on Dr. John Gottman's research on affair recovery and on Emotionally Focused Therapy.

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• Infidelity therapy for Fairfield County couples

The Aftermath of Betrayal

What is left, in the first weeks, is pain and a question that does not have a clean answer yet. Some couples rebuild, and they do more than patch the hole: they build a relationship that can hold the truth. Others decide the breach is too deep. You need support that will help you see which path is yours, without being pushed toward either one.

Why Generic Couples Therapy Isn't Enough

An affair is an attachment injury, a rupture in the trust the relationship depends on. Treating that injury as a communication-skills lesson misses it. Therapists without specific training in affair recovery often move to forgiveness before the hurt partner has processed the trauma, stay on the story of the affair and skip the pattern underneath, blame the hurt partner, or shrink the betrayal so the session stays calm. Those moves leave the wound open.

An Evidence-Based Approach to Recovery

The three phases follow Gottman's affair-recovery research and Emotionally Focused Therapy, and the order matters. You do not skip ahead because the crisis is uncomfortable.

Phase 1 - Atonement: The unfaithful partner takes full responsibility, with no minimizing and no shifting of blame. The hurt partner needs real answers and genuine remorse, and defensiveness in this phase restarts the injury.

Phase 2 - Attunement: Once the crisis stabilizes, we look at the patterns that were there before the affair, so both of you can see what was missing and how you got here. This phase is for understanding, and it does not build a case against the hurt partner.

Phase 3 - Attachment: You build on transparency, emotional safety, and a connection you can feel. The relationship has to be able to hold the truth, which the version that hid the affair could not.

What Recovery Actually Looks Like

Healing from infidelity depends on the work you do between sessions, and there is no honest week-count to put on it. We generally start weekly, because that stretch is where trust is rebuilt or spent, and as the changes become consistent, we space the sessions out. With that work, the intrusive thoughts and the constant checking loosen, trust comes back through behavior you can see, and the affair becomes part of the story instead of the only story you tell.

Is Your Marriage Worth Saving?

Not every marriage should continue after an affair. Sometimes the clearest decision is to end it. I do not push a predetermined outcome. My job is to help you get clarity, whether that is rebuilding together or separating with a real understanding of what happened. If you are unsure whether to stay or go, that is a normal place to start, and you do not need the answer before the first session.

I only see couples. Sessions are 90 minutes on Zoom and cost $750. I am licensed in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, and you need to be physically in one of those states during the session.