Do the whole inventory alone first, then say it once, completely, in a single conversation you have prepared for. The lasting damage in these situations is rarely the first revelation. It's the third one, six weeks later, which teaches your partner that nothing they've been told is final. Health information and anything involving shared money are not optional and not negotiable.
The inventory you do before you open your mouth
Sit down alone, with paper, and write everything you would have to say for there to be no more surprises. Everything. Not the version you can bear to say out loud, the actual list.
You are not going to read this document to them. Its job is to make sure that when you speak, you know the full size of what you're deciding about, so nothing surfaces later that contradicts what you said.
Then sort it into three piles.
**Must be told, without exception.** Anything that affects their health. Anything involving money that came out of shared finances or debt in their name. Anything with legal weight. Anything they have asked you directly about and been given a false answer to. Anything ongoing.
**Should be told.** The shape and duration of the behaviour, honestly. Roughly how long. Roughly how often, in unflattering terms rather than generous ones. Whether other people were involved and in what broad way.
**Should not be volunteered.** Names, places, specific descriptions, comparisons. Detail is where people go wrong from a sincere motive, believing that total disclosure proves total honesty. What detail actually delivers is a set of images your partner will carry for years, and it very often serves your need to be absolved rather than their need to understand.
If they later ask for specifics, that's their choice to make. Answer honestly, say once that in most accounts it makes things harder to live with afterwards, and then respect their decision either way.
The health conversation is separate and it comes first
If there has been sexual contact with anyone else, your partner needs that information before anything else, because it's a decision about their body and they're currently making it without the facts.
Get tested first if you possibly can, so the conversation includes results rather than only fears. Sexual health clinics are free, quick and used to this. You don't have to explain anything about why you're there.
Then tell them plainly, and support them to get tested themselves without turning it into a project you're managing. This part is not about the relationship's future. It's a health matter that stands on its own regardless of what either of you decides afterwards.
Why one complete account beats a careful one
The pattern that wrecks recoveries is staged honesty, and it almost always comes from a decent motive: you're terrified, you're trying to limit the harm, so you tell the smallest true version.
Then something surfaces. A message, a charge on a statement, a mutual friend. So you tell them a bit more. Then it happens again.
By the third round, your partner isn't reacting to the content any more. They're reacting to the discovery that reality keeps changing shape, and that injury takes considerably longer to heal than the original behaviour. Every partial disclosure resets their sense of what is true, and each reset costs more than the last.
So the standard is simple and hard: say something you will never have to amend.
Doing it well, practically
**Get support in place first, for both of you.** Their friend, on standby for that night. Ideally their own counsellor, someone who is not also yours. If a professional can facilitate the conversation, that helps a lot, particularly where there's a great deal to say. In the UK, check anyone you pay: psychotherapists ["are not regulated by law, but can choose to join an Accredited Register"](https://www.professionalstandards.org.uk/practitioners/psychotherapist), so ask which register and look it up yourself.
**Choose the time deliberately.** Not last thing at night, not before work, not with children about to come in, not on a significant date. An evening with nothing after it.
**Say what it is in the first sentence.** Preamble is cruel. "There's something I've been hiding from you and I need to tell you about it now" is kinder than ten minutes of them watching your face and working out that something is coming.
**Use plain, owned language.** No "it happened", no passive constructions, no explaining how stress or your sex life contributed. Even where those are true, raising them now reads as blame, because it functions as blame.
**Then stop talking and let them react.** Rage, silence, laughter, questions that feel unfair. Don't manage it, don't correct the details of their anger, don't ask them to reassure you.
**Don't ask for a decision.** Say explicitly that they don't owe you an answer tonight about the relationship.
**Say what you're doing about it, once, briefly.** What's already in place, what you've booked. Not as a defence and not as a bid for credit. Then leave it.
What your partner is going to be carrying
Understand the scale of this before you decide how much space your own feelings are going to take up.
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/). It also found 84% describing anger more intense than anything they had experienced before the discovery, and 39% saying no professional had given them specific help with it.
So two things are your responsibility on the night. Make sure they have a person to call who is not you. And if they say anything at all about not wanting to be here, treat it as urgent that day. Samaritans is 116 123, free, any hour. In England, 111 then option 2 reaches urgent mental health support. Give them the number rather than assuming.
Be careful, too, about the reading material that will land in their lap. Some of it labels partners codependent or treats them as having played a part. 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". Nothing was done to them by their own personality.
The weeks after
Expect the following week to be worse than the conversation, and expect questions to arrive in waves with calm stretches between them that end without warning.
The thing that repairs this is not the apology. It's transparency they can verify rather than promises they have to believe, held for long enough to become boring, while their support comes from somewhere that isn't you. [Repairing a relationship after betrayal](/guides/sex/repairing-a-relationship-after-betrayal) goes through what actually helps and the habit that undoes it.
Keep your own work running. Disclosure is not treatment and a conversation is not a plan. If the practical layer isn't in place, [cutting off access: apps, cash and contacts](/guides/sex/cutting-off-access-apps-cash-and-contacts) is the fastest version, and [how to stop compulsive sexual behaviour](/guides/sex/how-to-stop-compulsive-sexual-behaviour) covers defining what you're actually stopping.
One note on a thing you'll be offered. Polygraph testing is marketed within parts of this field as a way of proving a disclosure was complete. We found no retrievable evidence supporting its use for that purpose, and it's worth being cautious about buying certainty that may not be for sale.
Common questions
**Should I tell my partner everything?** Everything that affects them, yes, and that includes health, money, lies you told directly, and anything ongoing. Explicit detail is a different question, and volunteering it more often serves the person confessing than the person hearing it. Complete is not the same as graphic.
**Is it better if they find out on their own?** No. Discovery consistently lands worse than disclosure, and it removes any chance of you controlling the honesty of the account. If there's a realistic route to them finding out, that shortens your timeline considerably.
**Should we do the disclosure with a therapist?** Where you can, yes. It slows the conversation down, gives your partner somebody in the room who isn't you, and reduces the odds of a chaotic first hour. Check credentials before you book, since these titles aren't protected in the UK.
**What if they ask a question I don't want to answer?** Answer it. The moment you start editing, you're back in staged disclosure and you'll pay for it later. If the question is asking for graphic detail, you can say once that you'll answer anything and that in most accounts specifics are harder to live with afterwards. Then follow their lead.
**What if I've already done a partial disclosure?** Then complete it, deliberately, once, and say plainly at the start that you're doing so and why. It will be a bad conversation. It's considerably better than a fourth instalment arriving by accident in two months.
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 the label increases grief and guilt.
- [Professional Standards Authority](https://www.professionalstandards.org.uk/practitioners/psychotherapist). Psychotherapists are not regulated by law in the UK and may choose to join an Accredited Register.
- [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.
