7 Steps to Rebuild Trust After Infidelity

1. It’s important that the person who caused the pain takes responsibility and accountability. Let your partner know that you really understand the pain you caused. 

2. The hurt person needs to share all of their feelings of anger, disappointment, sadness and ask all the questions you feel you really need to ask.

3. Make a plan to rebuild trust: turn on location services, schedule text or phone call check ins, and/or FaceTimes/video calling everyday. This can be annoying or frustrating to the person who broke the trust, but it can show that you are committed to the relationship and committed to change.

4. Discuss ways to handle questions from loved ones. Family and friends might have questions or notice a change in your relationship. Get on the same page about how to talk to them and what you want them to know.  

5. Discuss how you both want the relationship to be different moving forward. Many couples feel that they have to start over and date again. Make the relationship different so the infidelity won't happen again. There might be hard requests the person who broke the trust might have of the person who's trust was broken. Sometimes there was something missing in the relationship that you might both want to address.  

6. Forgiveness. This takes time and obviously you can never forget. You can have empathy for the person who broke trust and start to see that you have made mistakes in your life too.  

7. Seek therapy: Emotion Focused Couples Therapy and the Gottman method for couples can be useful approaches to hearing each other and healing. 

It’s important to validate both feelings and know that this will be a long healing process. Most couples take 6 months to a year, or longer to heal from infidelity depending on how deep the wound is.