It might seem strange to be focusing on the betraying spouse. After all, they weren’t the ones who were victimized. However, if the betraying spouse does not grow as a result of the wrong they did, that leaves their betrayed spouse vulnerable.

So yes, it is vital for you, the betraying spouse, to help your partner cope with the fallout of your betrayal. But in the aftermath, you too must focus on your own healing process as well. In this way, you take tangible steps to safeguard your spouse from the possibility of betraying them in the future.

Balanced Coping is Important

Betraying your spouse opens up your marriage to many interpersonal conflicts for you to address. How you choose to cope with these conflicts will largely determine the future of your marriage.

One common tendency might be to focus solely on the needs of your betrayed spouse. It’s easy to devote all your efforts towards calming them down. The risk in this approach is you keep yourself from dealing with the fact that you betrayed them. You don’t address why you did it in the first place, much less how you can prevent yourself from repeating the past.

Or you might even ignore the effects of the betrayal altogether. You act as if nothing happened, turning a blind eye towards the elephant in the room. You think that perhaps the storm will pass, and life will go on as it did before.

Or you might take it to another extreme and focus all of your attention on yourself. You become so self-absorbed in your frustration and even self-pity because of the realization that you have betrayed someone. You force your spouse, intentionally or not, to take care of you instead of leaving them room to deal with their own needs.

This is where balance comes in. In the aftermath of your betrayal, you will need to accommodate both your spouse as well as your own issues. Despite the tension between the concern for your spouse and concern for yourself, you cannot simply focus solely on one or the other. To address both, use an integrated, balanced approach.[1]

Having balanced coping is necessary for the long-term health of your marriage. In the first days following betrayal, your spouse will need extra attention to help their healing process. But as they heal, start concentrating on your own journey of growth so that you do not repeat the betrayal.

In cases of severe or even profound betrayal, it is ideal if both of you have your own individual counselors, with a third counselor who sees you as a couple. This way, you each have someone on “your side” helping you grow while a neutral third party can help you navigate the crisis between the two of you.

Dealing With Shame and Guilt From Betrayal

When you do something you are not proud of, shame and guilt are two very common emotional reactions. They help regulate moral behavior by increasing your self-awareness and stress, helping to make it more difficult to do things that go against your own values.

However, researchers have found that guilt and shame also influence how you handle problems in your relationship.[2] As a result, it’s important to understand how to deal with these emotions.

Understanding Shame

How do you see yourself? When you’ve done something you deeply regret, how do you see your character and identity? After you’ve betrayed someone, shame may tell you that you are a betrayer, a cheater, an immoral person, or something like this.

Shame makes you feel hopeless because it talks about you as if this is who you have always been and always will be. It frames your betrayal as more than an act: as an integral part of your identity.

While it is crucial to recognize the magnitude of your betrayal and its effect on your spouse, it is more important to focus on the behavior and consequences rather than on shame-based identity motifs.

Rather than pushing you to change and to become a better person,