Affair Fog Part Two: How to Move Forward After Being Cheated On
By Jordan Kurtz, MA, LPC, Denver Trauma Therapist
Welcome to part two of our Affair Fog series. In this blog, we explore the trauma that can follow infidelity and the layered process of trying to move forward after being cheated on.
If you’re here, you may be sitting with questions that don’t have easy answers - how this happened, what it means about your relationship, and what you’re supposed to do next. Alongside the pain, many people also find themselves navigating shock, shifts in their sense of self, and the need to reevaluate foundational aspects of their life.
In this post, we’ll walk through what healing can begin to look like after betrayal, from rebuilding stability and making sense of your partner’s behavior, to reconnecting with yourself and your needs.
Why Infidelity Feels So Traumatic
Trauma is defined in many ways, and one of its characterizations is something that profoundly disrupts our sense of psychological safety and wellbeing. Our relationships with core people in our lives - partners, family members, friends, and mentors - fulfill our desires for validation, reassurance, companionship, and much more.
Romantic partners play a specific and significant role as those who feed our needs for physical and emotional intimacy. Besides our emotions (and perhaps because of our emotions), we also invest many resources into our romantic partners: time, money, and physical space.
All this being said, partners contribute profoundly to our sense of self and health, and when we experience a betrayal trauma such as infidelity, it can be devastating.
So how do we begin to make sense of what’s happened - and take steps forward after such a profound rupture? Below, we outline three ways to begin this process.
Three Ways to Heal After An Affair
1) Rebuilding Stability and Reducing Shame
Whether one chooses to remain in a relationship or leave after infidelity has been exposed, many foundations of life are put under the microscope due to the violation of trust.
Common renegotiation themes include: privacy, communication expectations, social media conduct, division of finances and other resources, access to children, sexual engagement, and more.
Shock and other painful emotions that an affair elicits can inhibit our ability to think, plan, and prioritize; your therapist can lend a hand in helping you organize new norms surrounding basic needs (like money and lodging) as well as emotional needs at each stage of reconciliation or transition out of the relationship.
For many, though not all, shame or an impaired sense of self-worth is a consequence of infidelity. If they could do this, that must mean I am worthless, not enough, not valuable, too needy, stupid, etc.
Shame can feel paralyzing and incredibly dense to work through. A trauma therapist can play a helpful role in offering a broader perspective - supporting you in beginning to reallocate accountability and stay connected to your feelings of hurt, rather than internalizing blame or minimizing your experience.
2) Making Sense of Their Behavior: Affair Fog Explained
Affair Fog describes an unfaithful partner’s altered state of mind while involved in an affair. Essentially, our partner becomes fundamentally different and unrecognizable in some way, be it a change in beliefs, emotional expression, core values, or daily habits.
Our partner may appear more connected and present in the relationship than usual, or the inverse: detached where they have formally been feeling, checked out where they have formally been present.
While affair fog refers to the mind state and behaviors of an unfaithful partner, “fog” is also an appropriate metaphor for how many of us feel while our partner is involved in an affair: dazed, confused, lost, and lacking clear-headedness or a sense of what’s “normal”.
What Affair Fog Is not
Affair fog is not an excuse for the pain invoked by a partner’s betrayal. Unfaithful partners sometimes describe their experience within affair fog as being “out of body”, or like “someone or something else took over”. While involvement in an affair can alter physiological, mental and emotional states drastically, affair fog is not a medical or psychological condition with a diagnosis and does not impair someone’s objective perception of reality.
As trauma therapists, our team at CZTG resonates with the concept of affair fog because it validates the intuitive and observational knowing of the wounded partner.
Unfaithful partners may reiterate their commitment to the relationship or discredit anxieties of the other person to preserve their sense of wellbeing. This can impact the wounded partner by making them feel gaslit, overly cautious, assuming, or naïve.
Receiving affirmation for changes you noticed as a wounded partner from someone outside the relationship is central to reestablishing trust in your perspective.
3) Reconnecting with Yourself After Betrayal
Many identities we hold are uniquely and individually our own, such as a spiritual identity, racial identity, sexual identity, or gender identity. However, other identities we hold are built in relationship to others (i.e. we are a sister to our brother, a mother to our daughter, a teacher to our student).
Experiencing infidelity can disrupt a shared identity you’ve held with a partner, whether in a marriage or a long-term relationship. Losing that shared foundation can feel deeply isolating, unfamiliar, and daunting, even if you have other supports in your life.
Part of healing involves slowly reconnecting with yourself outside of the relationship—your values, your needs, and your sense of identity.
For many, therapy can be one space where this process is supported. To give you a sense of what this could look like, here’s a glimpse into how we structure trauma therapy in Denver with our clients who have experienced infidelity.
In sessions, we may explore with the significance of sharing a joint relationship with your partner, as well as the impact of the loss or change of it upon your worldviews on intimacy, trust, self-esteem, and more.
We may also facilitate reorientation to your core values, needs, and desires that may have been lost within or denied by the affair - recentering these things reaffirms our capacity to be self-sufficient and instills hope and confidence for what we want to give and receive in future relationships.
Healing After Infidelity
Healing after infidelity is rarely linear. There may be moments of clarity followed by moments of doubt, grief, or confusion. Over time, with the right support and space to process, it is possible to begin rebuilding a sense of stability, reconnecting with yourself, and making decisions that feel aligned with who you are and what you need.
We encourage you to lean into your supports - whether that’s family, friends, therapy, or other spaces that feel grounding - so you don’t have to navigate this process alone. Just as we are often wounded in relationship, we also heal in relationship. Our brains and bodies are wired for this connection and it’s a key part of the healing process.
Additional Readings for Betrayal Healing
If this article resonates with you, be sure to check out parts one and three of our affair fog series:
Affair Fog Part One: “My partner had an affair and seems like an entirely different person. Why?”
Affair Fog Part Three: “I cheated on my partner and don’t know why. What do I do now?”
Trauma Therapy in Denver
If you are navigating the wounds of infidelity and feel ready to seek support, reach out to explore trauma therapy in Denver as a potential avenue towards healing. Follow these three steps to get started:
Reach out to schedule a free 20-minute consult call.
Connect with the trauma therapist of your choice via a phone consult.
Begin your path towards healing and growth.