The 3 Stages of Rebuilding Safety After Betrayal

The most significant need partners have in the aftermath of betrayal is for their sense of relational and emotional safety to be restored. Infidelity lays siege to a betrayed partner’s attachment system, rupturing the sense of safety that being securely bonded with a primary partner usually provides. This in turn affects every other part of the partner’s life, as the secure base that allowed that individual to go out into the world with confidence and stability has been wiped out, and she is left wobbling about on a Jenga-like structure undercut with lies and secrets.

If you are dealing with sexual betrayal, it is important to understand exactly what the process is for restoring a sense of safety in your relationship. The good news is that if you and your cheating partner are willing to do the hard work of recovery, you can rebuild your relationship on a truly secure base.

To do this, you must pass through three stages of building relationship safety: getting help, getting honest, and getting vulnerable. We are going to look at the first two tasks this week. Next week we will discuss the third (and most important) task.

Getting Help

To rebuild relationship safety, the first thing that must happen is that your cheating partner must acknowledge that they have a problem and get help. Real help. Help, as defined here, is not about going to individual therapy for 50 minutes every week, sitting on the couch, talking about themself, and leaving—having checked the box for the week. That degree of help is not going to create significant change. It is just going to cost time and money and make your cheating partner feel like they are doing something positive while they continue to engage in problematic behaviors.

The kind of help that I am talking about here is more intensive and requires your cheating partner to change the way they do life and relationships. Individual therapy will very likely be a part of this help. But so will group therapy, 12-Step meetings, working with a sponsor, and recovery-focused homework assignments. Ideally, you will see your partner calling people from their new community of support as they learn how to live life in consultation and relationship with others, rather than in the isolated fashion that fed their cheating.

There is a saying that an addict’s best thinking is what brought them to the bottom. For you as the betrayed partner, there is no safety when they continue to rely on their own thinking. For you, safety lies in knowing that your significant other has opened themself up to and created a circle of accountability for themselves, in knowing that they now have other people helping them to think more clearly and make better choices. Seeing your partner take these steps is where safety begins to be rebuilt.

Getting Honest

The next step in rebuilding relationship safety occurs when your partner gets fully honest. You have a right to know what has happened in your relationship and who your partner really is. You have a right to know about the history and events that have impacted your relationship, so you can make fully informed decisions about how to protect yourself appropriately and whether to proceed (or not) in the relationship.

This means your cheating partner must come to a place where he is ready and willing to tell the entire truth about their unfaithful behaviors, the ways that he lied, the ways that they covered up their behavior, the ways that he manipulated you, and any other issues that have been part of their secret life (i.e., financial secrets, health secrets, work secrets).

Watching your cheating partner work through the process of giving you a full disclosure of their behaviors is a vital step in rebuilding safety. There can be no safety in a relationship without honesty. Giving disclosure lays a new foundation of honesty on which the relationship can be rebuilt.

In addition to giving disclosure, you need to see a new level of honesty in all that your cheating partner says and does. The lies and manipulation that accompany infidelity are like an insidious weed that winds its way through all areas of a cheater’s life. As a result, you may be used to seeing your partner lie about all kinds of things both related and not related to the betrayal. Now, however, they do not get to be selectively honest or dishonest. They must live with honesty as a core value that permeates all of their dealings and interactions. Until that happens, safety in your relationship cannot be restored.

So, another step on the road to safety is that you will begin to see your cheating partner be more honest in all their dealings and affairs, not just around the betrayal. When you see that happen, it creates a sense that you are dealing with a partner whose behavior is congruent with their values, and this will in turn create a new sense of safety and trust with them.