Three things rebuild trust: transparency they can verify rather than promises they have to believe, consistency held long enough to be boring, and support for them that doesn't come from you. The one habit that undoes all three is pressing them to be finished being hurt. Nothing else you do will outrun that.
What your partner is actually carrying
Before the tactics, the thing most people get wrong about the timeline.
You've had months or years to get used to this. They found out on a Tuesday. Their sense of what the last few years were is now in question, which is a different injury from the behaviour itself and takes much longer to settle.
The scale of it is worth seeing. A 2024 survey of 297 sexually betrayed partners found that [87% reported self-blame and 43% considered harming themselves](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38351527/), that 84% described anger more intense than anything they had felt before the discovery, and that 39% weren't offered any specific help with that anger by the professionals they turned to. It also found 83.5% were still in the relationship, which is worth holding onto on a bad week.
Two practical consequences. First, if your partner says anything about not wanting to be here, treat it as urgent that day. Samaritans is 116 123, free, any hour, and in England 111 then option 2 reaches urgent mental health support. Give them the number rather than assuming they'll find it.
Second, be careful with the frameworks people will hand them. There's a strand of writing that labels partners codependent or treats them as having contributed. A review of that concept found ["the CD concept lacks an empirical basis and lacks consensus about a definition"](https://cdspress.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Kimberly-A.-Calderwood-Anne-Rajesparam.pdf) and that labelling people this way "increases their grief and guilt". Your partner is a person something was done to. That's the whole description.
One: transparency they can verify
An apology is a claim about the future. Verification is a fact about the present, and only the second one does anything at this stage.
- **Blocks and passcodes that someone else holds.** Not you. The point is that the arrangement doesn't depend on your word. [Blocking porn on every device](/guides/pornography/blocking-porn-on-every-device) covers the stack and where each layer leaks.
- **Accountability reporting to a named person.** It blocks nothing and reports what happened, which is exactly the right shape here.
- **Answering questions without flinching.** Including the fifth time. Including the version asked at midnight in a tone you don't enjoy.
- **Telling them things before they find them.** A surfaced charge on a statement, an old account you'd forgotten, anything you realise you didn't include. Volunteering it is worth more than the content of it.
One caution. Your partner checking your phone every night is understandable and it isn't a system. It puts them in the job of policing you, which is exhausting and quietly makes them responsible for your behaviour. Better that the arrangement runs through a third person, so their role can go back to being your partner.
Two: consistency held long enough to be boring
Trust doesn't come back in a conversation. It comes back through a stretch of unremarkable weeks in which nothing you said turned out to be untrue.
That means the small things carry the weight. Being where you said you'd be. Attending the appointment you said you'd booked. Not going quiet for two hours with your phone face down. None of it feels like repair while you're doing it, which is why so many people abandon it around week six and conclude nothing is working.
Expect the shape to be uneven. Good fortnight, then a hard day for no visible reason, often triggered by an anniversary, a photograph, or an advert. That isn't backsliding and it isn't evidence your effort is wasted. It's what recovery from a shock looks like from the inside.
Keep your own work running in parallel, and let it be visible without being performed. If you haven't set the practical layer up, [how to stop using porn](/guides/pornography/how-to-stop-using-porn) is where to start, and [when do you reach for porn](/guides/pornography/when-do-you-reach-for-porn) is the pattern work underneath it.
Three: support for them that isn't you
You cannot be both the source of the injury and the person they process it with. It's an impossible position and trying to hold it makes both of you worse.
So actively help them get their own. A friend they can call without editing the story. Their own counsellor, someone who is not also yours and who isn't reporting back. A partners' group if they want one. Offer to pay if money is the obstacle, and then leave the choice of person entirely to them.
That last part matters. Choosing their therapist for them, or asking what was said, converts their support into another thing you're managing.
The one thing that undoes all of it
Pressing them to be over it.
It rarely arrives as a demand. It arrives as a sigh at the fourth question. As "I've said sorry, what more do you want". As pointing out how hard you're trying. As going quiet and wounded so they end up comforting you about the thing you did to them. As "how long is this going to go on for".
Every one of those transfers the discomfort back to them, and it teaches a specific and expensive lesson: bringing this up costs me something, so I'll stop bringing it up. What follows isn't trust. It's silence with the same contents.
The alternative is unglamorous. Take the question, answer it, don't editorialise about how many times you've answered it. Your discomfort in that moment is not an emergency and it isn't theirs to solve. If you can't sit with it, that's a real thing to take to your own support, which is exactly why you need some.
Language that makes it worse
Small phrases that reliably land badly, and what to do instead.
- **"It wasn't about you."** Usually true, and it plays as a dismissal of their experience. Say the true thing about them first, then the mechanism only if they want it.
- **"Everyone does it."** Even where it's arguable, it's an argument against their reaction rather than an answer to it.
- **"You're making this bigger than it is."** Never once helped anybody.
- **"I told you everything."** Only say this if it's completely true, because if a fourth revelation surfaces later, this sentence is the thing that does the damage, not the revelation. Partial disclosures in sequence are far more corrosive than one hard conversation, which is why [telling your partner about porn](/guides/pornography/telling-your-partner-about-porn) spends most of its length on doing it once.
If it doesn't survive
Some relationships don't, including ones where the person did everything on this page. That isn't a sign the effort was wasted, and it isn't a reason to go back to how things were.
If it ends, the work still stands on its own terms. The behaviour was costing you something before anybody found out, and it will keep costing you in the next relationship if it's untouched. Keep the friction, keep the person who knows, keep the appointments.
And if you're in the position of wanting help yourself, professional support is worth checking properly. In the UK psychotherapists ["are not regulated by law, but can choose to join an Accredited Register."](https://www.professionalstandards.org.uk/practitioners/psychotherapist) Ask which one, look it up yourself, and ask what they think about pornography in general before the second session.
Common questions
**How long does it take to rebuild trust after porn use?** Longer than feels fair and there's no published number to give you. What's consistent in accounts is that it's measured in months of ordinary weeks rather than in conversations, and that asking how long is left tends to reset the clock rather than move it.
**Should my partner check my phone?** It's understandable and it's a poor long-term arrangement, because it makes them responsible for policing you. Better to hold the transparency through a third person or an accountability tool, so their role can return to being your partner rather than your supervisor.
**They keep asking the same questions. Is that normal?** Yes. Repeated questioning after a shock is ordinary, particularly when the answers have changed before. Answer the same way each time without commentary about the repetition. It usually settles as the answers stop changing.
**Should we go to couples therapy?** Often useful, and generally not as the only support. Your partner needs somewhere of their own where they don't have to manage your feelings, and you need somewhere to take your shame that isn't the relationship. Couples work sits on top of those, not instead of them.
**They said they forgive me but nothing feels different. What now?** Forgiveness and repaired trust aren't the same event, and the second one is slower. Keep doing the boring version: verifiable transparency, consistency, no pressure. Feeling different tends to arrive well after the decision to stay.
Sources
- [Hollenbeck and Steffens, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 2024](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38351527/). A survey of 297 betrayed partners: self-blame, self-harm ideation, intense anger, and unmet need for professional support.
- [Calderwood and Rajesparam, on the codependency concept](https://cdspress.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Kimberly-A.-Calderwood-Anne-Rajesparam.pdf). The concept lacks an empirical basis, and labelling people with it increases their grief and guilt.
- [Assessment and treatment of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, Sexual Medicine Reviews](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11214846/). Expert panel guidance opposing approaches that increase stigma and moral incongruence.
- [Professional Standards Authority](https://www.professionalstandards.org.uk/practitioners/psychotherapist). Psychotherapists are not regulated by law in the UK.
