Four things help: transparency they can verify rather than promises they have to believe, their own support that isn't you, amends that change something concrete, and time held without asking how much is left. The single most damaging move is asking them to be finished being hurt, in any of its disguises.
What is actually happening to them
You've lived with this knowledge for years. They got it on a Tuesday, and it didn't just change the present, it retroactively changed what they thought the last several years were. That second injury is the one that takes longest, and it's the one most people underestimate because it isn't about the behaviour at all.
The scale is documented. 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 given any specific help with that anger by the professionals they went to. The same survey found 83.5% were still in the relationship, which is worth holding on to on a hard week.
Two things follow immediately. If your partner says anything about not wanting to be here, act on it that day. Samaritans is 116 123, free, any hour, and in England 111 then option 2 reaches urgent mental health support. Hand them the number rather than assuming they'll look for it. And take the self-blame figure seriously, because it means the most likely thing your partner is doing right now is silently working out how this was their fault.
The two models, and why one of them is not neutral
Your partner is going to be handed a framework by somebody, possibly by a service you're both paying, and the two on offer are not equivalent.
**The trauma framing** treats a betrayed partner as somebody who has had something done to them, and treats their reactions as ordinary responses to a shock rather than as symptoms of their own disorder. The 2024 survey describes exactly this shift, noting that partners were previously viewed "from a pathological lens" and are now understood as traumatised individuals.
**The co-addict framing** treats the partner as a participant in the pattern, whose own characteristics helped sustain it, and whose recovery therefore involves examining their part. It's still in circulation and it is not a neutral synthesis of the evidence. It's a position, and it puts a share of responsibility for your behaviour onto the person your behaviour was done to.
Closely related is the "codependent" label, which is applied to partners constantly. A review of the 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), that it has never appeared in any edition of the DSM, and that labelling people this way, mostly women, "increases their grief and guilt".
Your job here is small and it matters: don't apply either label to them, don't let a service apply it to them without saying so, and don't hide behind it when they're angry.
The four things that help
**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 moves anything at this stage. Blocks and passcodes held by a third person rather than by you. Accounts genuinely deleted rather than apps removed. Accountability reporting to someone named. Volunteering things before they surface, especially the ones you'd forgotten and are now dreading. [Cutting off access: apps, cash and contacts](/guides/sex/cutting-off-access-apps-cash-and-contacts) has the routes.
A caution: your partner checking your phone nightly is understandable and it's a poor system. It hands them the job of policing you, which is exhausting and quietly makes your behaviour their responsibility. Route it through a third person so they can go back to being your partner.
**Two: their own support, not yours.** You cannot be both the injury and the place it gets processed. Help them get a friend who hears the unedited version, and their own counsellor, someone who is not also yours and who doesn't report back. Offer to pay if money is the barrier, then leave the choice entirely to them. Don't ask what was said.
**Three: amends that change something.** Amends are not apologies. An apology is words. Amends are the money paid back, the test results, the appointment kept, the contact actually blocked, the job change, the account closed. Ask what would make a material difference rather than deciding for them, and then do that thing without narrating how hard it was.
**Four: time, held without a clock.** The work is a long stretch of unremarkable weeks in which nothing you said turns out to be untrue. It won't feel like repair while you're doing it, which is why so many people abandon it around the second month and conclude nothing is working.
What makes it worse
Pressing them to be over it, which almost never arrives as a demand.
It arrives as a sigh at the fourth repetition of the same question. As "I've said sorry, what more do you want". As pointing out how much you've changed. As going quiet and wounded until 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 teaches a specific, expensive lesson: raising this costs me something, so I'll stop raising it. What you get after that isn't trust, it's silence with the same contents.
The alternative is dull. 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 is not theirs to solve. If you can't sit with it, that's the exact reason you need your own support, which is where [shame, and the loop it keeps running](/guides/sex/shame-and-the-loop-it-keeps-running) starts.
Two other reliable ways to make it worse. Partial disclosure in instalments, which resets their sense of reality every time. And pushing for sex as evidence that things are fine, which converts intimacy into a progress report.
The pace, and the days that come out of nowhere
Expect the pattern to be uneven. A good fortnight, then a hard day for no visible reason, often triggered by a date, a photograph, a place, or something on television. That isn't backsliding and it isn't proof the effort is wasted. It's what recovery from a shock looks like from the inside.
Expect anger to keep arriving after the sadness seems to have settled, sometimes months later. The 2024 survey found 84% of partners describing anger more intense than any they'd experienced before. Anger that has somewhere to go is a considerably better sign than a partner who has gone quiet.
And expect your own work to be part of the repair rather than separate from it. Keep the meetings, keep the appointments, keep the person who gets the true version weekly. [The first thirty days, and what changes](/guides/sex/the-first-thirty-days-what-changes) covers the early shape of that.
If it doesn't survive
Some relationships end, including ones where the person did everything on this page, and that isn't evidence the effort was wasted.
If it ends, the work still stands. The behaviour was costing you before anyone found out and it will cost you in the next relationship if it's untouched. Keep the friction, keep the support, keep the honesty. And if you're choosing professional help, check who you're paying: in the UK, 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. An international expert panel also opposed treatment approaches that ["increase the experience of discrimination, stigma, and moral incongruence"](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11214846/), which is a reasonable standard to hold any service to.
Common questions
**How long does it take to rebuild trust after betrayal?** Longer than feels fair, and there's no published number worth quoting. What's consistent 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 advance it.
**Should my partner get their own therapist?** Yes, and ideally not yours. They need somewhere they can say the whole thing without managing your reaction to it. The 2024 survey found 39% of betrayed partners weren't given specific help with their anger, so it's worth checking that whoever they see is actually addressing it.
**Is my partner codependent?** The label doesn't hold up. A review of the concept found it lacks an empirical basis and consensus about a definition, has never been in the DSM, and increases grief and guilt in the people it's applied to. If a service applies it to your partner, that's a reason to question the service.
**They keep asking the same questions. How do I handle it?** Answer them the same way each time, without commentary about the repetition. Repeated questioning after a shock is ordinary, particularly where the answers have changed before. It usually settles once the answers stop changing.
**Should we go to couples therapy?** Often useful, and rarely sufficient on its own. Your partner needs a place 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 two, not instead of them.
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, relationship continuation, and unmet need for support.
- [Calderwood and Rajesparam, on the codependency concept](https://cdspress.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Kimberly-A.-Calderwood-Anne-Rajesparam.pdf). No empirical basis, never in the DSM, and the label increases grief and guilt.
- [Assessment and treatment of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, Sexual Medicine Reviews](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11214846/). Expert panel opposition to 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.
