How To Overcome Infidelity And Rebuild Trust? A Social Psychology Podcast Episode.

Discovering your partner cheated on you, betrayed your trust and shattered your relationship is an awful feeling that no one should ever have to go through. It can lead the other partner feeling unsure who to trust, weakened and it can make them question everything they knew about the relationship beforehand. Yet it is possible to overcome infidelity and rebuild trust in the relationship so it can survive. Therefore, in this social psychology podcast episode, we’re going to look at how to overcome infidelity and rebuild trust so the relationship can survive and thrive. If you enjoy learning about relationships, social psychology and infidelity then this is a great episode for you.

Today’s psychology podcast episode is sponsored by Psychology of Relationships: The Social Psychology of Romantic Relationships, Friendships and More. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Note: like all podcast episodes, nothing on the podcast is ever any sort of official relationship, medical or any other form of advice.

Why Am I Talking About Infidelity On A Psychology Podcast?

I’m talking about this on The Psychology World Podcast, a podcast mainly dedicated to aspiring and qualified psychologists for three main reasons. Firstly, infidelity is a behaviour and psychology covers all of human behaviour so it makes sense for us to look at it.

Secondly, infidelity can happen to anyone even psychology students and professionals. That’s why we need to look at it in case any of you listeners or readers need this information in the future. As this podcast episode could help you heal, thrive and rebuild trust quicker compared to if you didn’t have this information.

Finally, if you’re an aspiring or qualified clinical psychologist or another mental health professional, then there is a chance you will come across infidelity in your clinical work. Therefore, this podcast episode might be a useful resource for you to think about in a therapy session so you can help your clients better. Especially if you haven’t encountered infidelity before.

How To Overcome Infidelity?

No one should ever deny that the healing process after infidelity is challenging, but the pain can be overcome and trust can be rebuilt using some knowledge.

You Need To Validate And Acknowledge Your Feelings After Infidelity

Firstly, when it comes to infidelity you need to validate and acknowledge your feelings, because you need to accept them and it is okay to feel what you’re feeling. You should always try to allow yourself to feel the full range of emotions that you’re experiencing like betrayal, sadness, anger, confusion amongst others. Due to it is normal to have these sort of reactions to infidelity because it is a confusing time and infidelity should never happen. This is why it might be an idea to get support from a trusted friend or family member who can provide a safe space for you to express your emotions without judgment.

This is something I’ve learnt a lot about recently since it’s been 8 weeks since my sexual assault, and I tried for so, so long not to allow myself to feel certain ways. I tried to force away the confusion, the anger, the hate and the more assault-related emotions that infidelity doesn’t bring up. Yet it did no good for me, it affected my mental health badly, it didn’t help me heal and it only prolonged my struggles.

My point is you need to allow yourself to feel your emotions otherwise you will do real damage to yourself and your mental health in the long term.

You cannot pretend everything is fine after infidelity.

You Need To Allow Yourself To Grieve

I know we’re only on the second point but I’m realising that there is a lot of overlap between overcoming infidelity and a lot of other mental health difficulties and negative experiences. So this is something we should all be trying to focus on and learn from, especially as infidelity can happen to anyone.

As a result, infidelity is a loss and you need to allow yourself to grieve the loss of trust, the lost future and effectively the shattered dreams that you and your partner had together. Also, you need to allow yourself to grieve for the relationship itself because even if you work things out, it has still changed and you will need to heal and go through the ups and downs too.

Overall, you need to give yourself time to heal at your own pace without suppressing your emotions nor trying to rush this stuff.

Personally, it is that rushing of healing that in my experience is the most damaging and it causes a lot more distress. I have tried to rush my healing from the trauma of my assault, I have tried to be okay and perfect and like nothing has happened so I can live a perfectly normal life again. Yet that simply isn’t possible and that’s okay, because I need to heal at my own pace.

After infidelity You Should Self-Reflect

Considering that infidelity is all about loss, it might be a good idea to engage in some kind of self-reflection so you can reflect on the relationship itself and any factors that contributed to the infidelity. This is and will be about blaming yourself or your partner for what happened but self-reflection can be helpful for identifying any vulnerabilities or personal patterns that might have existed within the relationship.

Overall, if you’re able to recognise these patterns and continue self-reflection then this can be useful for personal growth and developing healthier relationships in the future.

You Need To Take Time For Self-Care

I am rubbish at self-care and doing all the different things that you’re meant to do as part of that.

However, you need to engage in self-care and look after yourself because you’re likely to be going through a hurricane of different emotions so you need to look after yourself too. You could focus on activities like exercise, hobbies, spending time in nature or anything else that you enjoy. 

In addition, you should make sure your body is nourished with healthy food and have a good sleep pattern as well as consider seeking professional help to help you work through your emotions.

Personally, as part of Self-care, I’m making sure that I’m being kind to myself when things pop up, I’m seeing friends a lot and I’m doing things that make me happy. Like writing, podcasting and other psychology-related topics.

You Need To Establish Boundaries

When it comes to trying to rebuild trust, a key part of this is setting clear boundaries for your relationship and yourself. You could set boundaries in terms of guidelines on communication, you could talk about the need for you both to go to couples therapy or have boundaries about the amount of transparency needed going forward.

Boundaries are critical to overcoming infidelity in because they help you create a sense of safety as well as security for yourself as you go through the healing process.

Whilst I can’t add too much to this section because I’ve never been in a relationship, let alone experienced infidelity, but I know I glad to have a lot of boundaries in the future with any boyfriends or partners. I will have to have boundaries no matter what and my boyfriend will have to understand that we cannot do certain things until I’m ready because of my assault. If they can’t respect that then I’m going to have to kick them to the curb.

At the end of the day, boundaries are about respect and if your partner cannot respect you especially after they’ve committed infidelity then they don’t deserve you.

I think it’s as simple as that.

Have Support and Communicate With Trusted Others

I would never ever want you to go through infidelity alone because this will make your mental health suffer, it will cause you a lot of distress and you cannot keep something as horrible as infidelity locked away inside you. Therefore, you need to have and reach out to your social support network of your family and friends, or a mental health professional if you need it.

If you share your emotions, your thoughts and your pain with someone you trust then this can help you to lessen the burden of infidelity.

This is even more important if you and your partner decide to stay together, because you’re going to have to have good, effective and open communication. You’re going to need to talk about how they hurt you, your boundaries and your expectations of them going forward.

The healing process can be seriously helped by developing clear and respectful communication so you can both understand each other.

Whilst we can understand that effective communication is important for life in general, I want to stress here that respectful communication is critical in all relationships. For example after what happened to me happened, I had two very clear experiences of communication. I tried to communicate what happened to my social environment (a polite way of saying it without naming names) and I was shut down, I wasn’t listened to and I did not feel supported whatsoever. This only negatively impacted my mental health, I hated it and my distress was increased dramatically because of it.

Whereas when I spoke to my friends including my best friend, they listened to me, supported me and made me feel valued. That was critical at the time and it’s even more important now moving forward in the healing process.

Give Yourself Time To Rebuild Trust

Regardless of what you’ve been through, you need to give yourself time to heal and rebuild trust in people. It’s taken me way too long to understand that and I partly wish I had understood how long things take sooner, because I probably would have been further along in my healing if I had expected this time factor sooner.

When it comes to infidelity, you need to realise that rebuilding trust is a slow process that takes patience, time and consistency. You are not going to forgive your partner overnight because that isn’t how forgiveness works in this case, so you need to give yourself the time and space to heal and rebuild trust at your own pace.

Moreover, if you’re still with your partner then watch their partners over time and look for consistent efforts to rebuild your trust.

For trust to be rebuilt, you both need to be committed to communicating openly, addressing any underlying issues in the relationship and being transparent with each other.

That is the only way your relationship can improve.

Social Psychology Conclusion

If you’re someone who’s experienced this, when it comes to overcoming infidelity, the healing process will be challenging because of the emotions, your confusion and the lack of trust you feel. Yet if you have patience, open communication and do self-care then it is very possible that you can overcome this infidelity and you can rebuild your trust for future relationships. Also, your healing journey will be unique and there isn’t a time limit, so please, just go at your own pace as annoying as that might be.

You need to heal at your own pace, and overcome the hardship of infidelity.

If you’re a listener or reader who hasn’t experienced infidelity then I hope that doesn’t change and I hope I never experience infidelity in the future. Yet this is still useful to know about in case this does happen to us, our friends or our family. If this does happen then I hope this podcast episode might be a useful resource for all of you, and if you encounter infidelity in your clinical work then I hope you now know that your client can rebuild their life, their trust and they can go on to have great relationships in the future.

Something that probably seems flat out impossible in the moment and aftermath of the infidelity, but it is so possible. It really is.

So never ever give up on relationships because they really can be amazing especially after experiencing something as awful as infidelity.

I really hope you enjoyed today’s clinical psychology podcast episode.

If you want to learn more, please check out:

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Have a great day.

Social Psychology References and Further Reading

Altınok, A., & Kılıç, N. (2020). Exploring the associations between narcissism, intentions towards infidelity, and relationship satisfaction: Attachment styles as a moderator. Plos one, 15(11), e0242277.

Anwar, S., Riaz, M. N., & Ahmed, F. (2022). Relationship between Attitude towards Infidelity, Difficulty in Emotion Regulation and Mental Health Issues among Married Individuals. Pakistan Languages and Humanities Review, 6(2), 536-548.

Blow, A. J., & Hartnett, K. (2005). Infidelity in committed relationships I: A methodological review. Journal of marital and family therapy, 31(2), 183-216.

Fincham, F. D., & May, R. W. (2017). Infidelity in romantic relationships. Current opinion in psychology, 13, 70-74.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-angry-therapist/202306/healing-wounds-how-to-overcome-infidelity-and-rebuild-trust

Nemeth, J. M., Bonomi, A. E., Lee, M. A., & Ludwin, J. M. (2012). Sexual infidelity as trigger for intimate partner violence. Journal of Women's Health, 21(9), 942-949.

Raftar Aliabadi, M. R., & Shareh, H. (2022). Mindfulness-based schema therapy and forgiveness therapy among women affected by infidelity: A randomized clinical trial. Psychotherapy Research, 32(1), 91-103.

Roos, L. G., O'Connor, V., Canevello, A., & Bennett, J. M. (2019). Post‐traumatic stress and psychological health following infidelity in unmarried young adults. Stress and health, 35(4), 468-479.

Shrout, M. R., & Weigel, D. J. (2018). Infidelity’s aftermath: Appraisals, mental health, and health-compromising behaviors following a partner’s infidelity. Journal of social and personal relationships, 35(8), 1067-1091.

Shrout, M. R., & Weigel, D. J. (2020). Coping with infidelity: The moderating role of self-esteem. Personality and individual differences, 154, 109631.

Warach, B., & Josephs, L. (2021). The aftershocks of infidelity: a review of infidelity-based attachment trauma. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 36(1), 68-90.

Weigel, D. J., & Shrout, M. R. (2021). Suspicious minds: The psychological, physical and behavioral consequences of suspecting a partner’s infidelity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 38(3), 865-887.

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