Surviving An Affair: Your 5-Step Emergency Guide

Everyone who arrives here has been handed a label that comes with a non-negotiable assignment. It reads betrayed, unfaithful, or both, and the assignment is recovering from the devastation that has been caused.

Betrayed spouses, what happened is not a reflection of who you are. Infidelity trauma will not define you forever, but right now it does, and I respect the betrayed too much to say otherwise.

Unfaithful spouses, stepping out of your terrible situation and showing up is a huge step. It means you are committing to the next right decision today, and every day after. The past cannot be changed, but the direction you are going can.

From circling the drain to finding life on the other side, following are five S’s for the beginning of your recovery roadmap.

1. Shock

Both spouses are in some level of shock. Some betrayed spouses, like me, suspected and accused for years. Others were blindsided on an ordinary Tuesday, a day they would give anything to go back to.

Unfaithful spouses are in a great deal of shock as well. Betrayed spouses who are saying, “Shock! How could they possibly be shocked?!? They should have known the catastrophic damage their affair has caused!”, I can assure you they never thought that far ahead. As crazy as it seems, they did not anticipate the discovered text message, the call from the affair partner’s spouse, or the affair partner deciding to tell.

An unfaithful husband told me recently, “Candace, if I had known all the damage this would cause, I would have cut off both of my own thumbs before I had an affair.” That has lived rent free in my head ever since.

None of this excuses the behavior. It simply acknowledges that the unfaithful spouse is likely reeling too.

Constant crying, feeling too numb to shed a single tear, raging, unable to speak a word—this is grief. It’s the same grief that follows a death. The stages do not arrive in order, which is why it feels like losing one’s mind. Raging at two o’clock, completely numb by four.

This is grief. It’s the similar denial, anger, bargaining and depression that follows a death.

My husband used to hold his breath walking into a room, because he never knew which version of me he’d find. Country Crazy Candace, Detective Candace, Inconsolable Candace, or get-away-from-me Candace. These were the early stages I would cycle through: suspicion, confirmation, vengeance and despair.

So to get out of this cycle, how do you work toward healing?

2. Show Up

Early in recovery, I turned my walk-in closet into a private evidence room, and spent hours in there investigating. I didn’t cry in there. I had full panic attacks in my closet.

One day I was going over the same evidence I had consumed the day before and the day before that. Then, I heard:

“I am so incredibly sorry that you’re here. You didn’t deserve this, but no one is coming into this closet to scoop you up during your next panic attack and resuscitate your life. It’s going to have to be you.”

That was the last panic attack I had in my closet.

So, with great compassion, even when the pain was not caused by the person sitting in it, recovery still requires steps of their own. The work of healing falls to the wounded, and time alone will not do it.

At least once a week I speak with an unfaithful spouse whose betrayed partner wants nothing to do with recovery. “Go fix yourself, come back when you are better, and that will heal the marriage,” they say. It seems fair, but fair does not apply here.

Here is the analogy I keep coming back to: A driver obeying every traffic law is hit by a reckless driver. Surgery follows, then months of physical therapy. On no planet can that injured driver say, “You did this, so you go to the damn physical therapy.” It does not work that way. Neither does infidelity trauma.

3. Safety

Trust is the first thing to go and the last thing to return. It can take two to three years, but the unfaithful spouse can begin living honestly and transparently immediately.

Honesty is answering truthfully. No more lies, no more deception. “Where did you go after work last night?” is answered by, “The gym, and then the grocery store.”

Transparency is allowing oneself and one’s actions to be “seen through.” It is offering passwords, locations, and updates without being asked. Transparency answers before the question arrives: “I’m going to the gym after work, then to the store for groceries. I’ll be home by 6:30.”

The goal for the unfaithful spouse is to answer first, creating safety by thinking a step ahead for both people, staying mindful of triggers, and being where they said they would be. Day by day, in ordinary conversations like those, without the word ever being mentioned, trust and safety get rebuilt.

4. Space

This is likely the most traumatic experience of a person’s life, and there has to be freedom to be not okay for a season—in my case, more like five seasons.

The temptation is to believe that deciding to stay or go will end the pain. It will not. Unless physical safety is at risk, hold. Give it week after week, and a trend will emerge that makes the decision more informed.

Space also means space to come together for intentional conversations about the infidelity. Now I can hear the unfaithful: “There is no way I am bringing it up, they ask about it enough already.” That may be true, but initiating the conversation and answering the questions shows accountability and is a game changer!

We usually associate PTSD with war or a life altering accident. Infidelity sits in its own league, because for the betrayed spouse, it changes more than the present and future. It changes what we thought we knew about the past.

Our life was being written in two books, one we knew about and one we did not.

So to the unfaithful spouse, be honest, be open, do not minimize, and do not justify. Rather than growing frustrated, sit in it. Be a witness. Be a partner. Be there. If your spouse is not in the picture at all, space means making time for your own healing.

5. Support

The instinct is to isolate and hide from the pain. But wherever a person goes, the weight of the trauma is crushing.

Not everyone has people who are emotionally equipped to support. I wish I had universal advice, such as: tell the best friend but not the siblings. It is nowhere near that clean. When evaluating if someone can be part of your support network, here is the practical test: Have I ever watched this person handle sensitive, private information? Did they treat it with grace or like gossip? Can they listen and be there, without issuing judgement or instructions?

That level of care is rare, which is why support among people walking through the same thing matters. Sharing the weight, called load sharing, makes it easier to carry.

Imagine being told to run a marathon. Most people would panic. Put them in a small group of others who have never run either, and the panic eases. Give that group the right support, and they start by walking, then jogging. On the days someone wants to quit, the group is there. Recovery works the same way. We recover best in community.

My Final Stage

After cycling repeatedly through suspicion, confirmation, vengeance, and despair, I found my fifth and final stage of recovery: reclaiming. It was the moment I chose to take the worst thing that ever happened to me and decide I would use it to reclaim my life.

One of my favorite quotes is, “I have to get back up. I don’t have a back up. I am the back up.” I had me. I had me to walk myself out of that closet and find help.

One day at a time. Scared is allowed; do it scared. Be curious. Be open. Be willing.

To healing.