Relationships: How to Rebuild Trust After You Have Betrayed Your Partner

Several years ago I wrote an article about rebuilding trust after a betrayal in a relationship focusing on the person who was betrayed. 

In the current article I'm focusing on how the person who betrayed their partner can try to rebuild trust.

Rebuilding Trust After You Betrayed Your Partner

How Can You Rebuild Trust in Your Relationship After You Have Betrayed Your Partner?

If you have betrayed your partner and your partner is willing to give you a second chance, be aware that this can be a delicate time in your relationship.

Even if you both want to try to work it out, it might not last. The reason for this is that many couples who try to work on their relationship after a betrayal discover the road to rebuilding trust is harder than they anticipated and they just can't get there.

Rebuilding Trust After You Have Betrayed Your Partner

If you're sincere and you're both willing to do the work, here are some suggestions that can help:

• Listen to Your Partner Express Their Pain: You need to listen to your partner express the pain you caused them without getting defensive or making excuses. This often involves more than just one conversation, but if you want to regain your partner's trust, you need to be attuned to their pain. Your partner might need time to fully realize the affect of this betrayal, what it meant to them and how they will express it to you. Allow them the time and space to do it.

Rebuilding Trust After You Have Betrayed Your Partner

• Acknowledge the Harm You Did and Validate Your Partner's Feelings: After you have listened attentively without getting defensive, be open and honest in acknowledging the pain you caused your partner. Let your partner know you're aware of how much you hurt them.  

• Offer a Sincere Apology: Saying "I'm sorry" once is unlikely to be enough. You might need to express your genuine remorse for your betrayal more than once and over time.

• Be Open to Talk to Your Partner About How the Two of You Got to This Point: It's important that you take responsibility for your actions without any excuses. But it's also important, when the time is right, for the two of you to talk about how you both got to this point in your relationship. If it's too difficult for the two of you to do this on your own, consider couples therapy where a a licensed mental health professional can help you both to have these difficult conversations, work towards healing and begin the process of rebuilding trust.

Rebuilding Trust After You Have Betrayed Your Partner

• Be Consistent and Dependable: Keep your promises. Maintain whatever commitments you made to your partner. These include both big and small commitments. Be predictable in your behavior--show up when you say you're going to show up and do what you said you would do. You need to demonstrate to your partner that you're trustworthy.

• Communicate Openly and Honestly: Share your thoughts and feelings and be an active listener when your partner communicates with you--even though it might be hard to hear how much pain you caused them.

Rebuilding Trust After You Have Betrayed Your Partner

• Reflect on Your Behavior and How You Need to Change: Examine your behavior and address patterns you need to change.

• Make a Commitment For Positive Change: Be sincere about making positive changes and then show your partner how you're making these changes.

Rebuilding Trust After You Betrayed Your Partner

• Provide Reassurance: In the aftermath of your betrayal, your partner will probably need more reassurance from you than before they discovered the betrayal. So, find ways to show you care. Create an atmosphere of safety so that, over time, your partner can regain trust in you.

• Work on Developing a Better Connection With Your Partner: Create positive shared experiences together to reinforce your bond.

• Be Patient and Allow Time For Healing: Healing after a betrayal is a process and the process can't be put on a timetable. There is no quick fix. Once trust has been broken, it takes time to heal and everyone heals in their own time.

What If You and Your Partner Discover Your Relationship is Beyond Repair?

As mentioned above, it's not always possible to rebuild trust--even when both people really try.

There are times when both people make a genuine effort to rebuild trust, but in the process they discover they have reached an impasse. 

Your Relationship Might Be Beyond Repair

For instance, your partner might realize they really can't overcome their hurt and resentment or you might realize you're not willing or able to make the necessary changes needed to rebuild trust.

At that point, you should both attempt to separate in a way that doesn't cause any additional pain.

Once you have decided to end the relationship, be clear about boundaries.

Take Time to Grieve

Take time to grieve the end of the relationship. 

Practice self care. 

Seek emotional support from people close to you.

Consider getting help from a licensed mental health professional to help you heal.

About Me

I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Somatic Experiencing, Parts Work Therapist (IFS and Ego States Therapy) and a Certified Sex Therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also see my article:

What Do You Consider Cheating?

What's the Difference Between Healthy Shame and Toxic Shame?

Shame is an emotion that is hardwired in all mammals, including humans, from the time of birth.  But not all shame is alike, and being able to distinguish healthy shame from toxic shame is important to your overall well-being (see my articles: Healing Shame in Therapy and Understanding the Difference Between Guilt and Shame).

What's the Difference Between Healthy Shame and Toxic Shame?

Why is Shame Hardwired in All Mammals?
Being able to experience healthy shame can help us from making mistakes that would otherwise alienate us from our family, friends and communities.  This was true even when people lived in small communities or tribes when an individual couldn't survive outside of the community.

The ability to feel healthy shame when we have made a mistake, especially a mistake that was damaging to another, enables us to feel remorse so that we can make amends to the person who was hurt by our mistake.

An Example of Healthy Shame
For instance, if Bob says something that is unkind to his friend, Joe, and can see that the Joe looks hurt, Bob feels a sense of healthy shame for hurting his friend.  As soon as he sees the hurt look on Joe's face, Bob blushes and feels a pang in his stomach because he really cares for Joe and he would never intentionally hurt him.  Bob's sense of empathy is what allows Bob to put himself in Joe's place to sense how Joe feels.

In addition, these physical cues (e.g., blushing and the pang in his stomach) and the feeling of shame are indications to Bob that he needs to apologize to Joe to repair their relationship.  Bob realizes that he was in a bad mood and he took it out on Joe, so he explains this to Joe and gives him a heartfelt apology.  Realizing that Bob's remark is uncharacteristic of Bob, Joe accepts Bob's apology and they go to lunch.  After the apology, their friendship remains intact and they go on as they had before.

But imagine if Bob didn't feel healthy shame, and he made unkind remarks to Joe without any sense of remorse.  You can imagine that sooner or later Bob wouldn't have Joe or many other friends left because he would have alienated them with his unkindness.  And, worst of all, he wouldn't try to repair things with his friends because he had no sense of remorse.

There are some people, who have narcissistic tendencies, who lack empathy for others, and this makes it difficult for them to sense what others are feeling.  As a result, they often don't have a healthy sense of shame, and this complicates their relationships with others.

An Example of Toxic (or Unhealthy) Shame
Ida is an artist, and she enjoys painting. Her friends often compliment her artwork and encourage her to have a gallery showing.  One of her friends, Marie, owns a gallery and she has really been urging Ida to show her work in her gallery.

Whenever Ida gets compliments from her friends, she feels ashamed, especially when Marie invites her to show her work in the gallery.  When she hears these compliments, Ida blushes and her stomach feels queasy.  Sometimes, she feels numb emotionally.  Her first thought whenever she gets compliments on her work is, "I'm really not a good artist.  I wish they would stop complimenting me because it makes me feel so uncomfortable, and my work feels so unimportant."

One day, Marie brought an art dealer to Ida's art studio without telling Ida in advance.  When the art dealer praised Ida's work and offered to represent her, Ida's shame was so acute that she felt like she was going to faint.

On an intellectual level, Ida knew that the art dealer wouldn't be making this offer unless she really thought Ida's work was superior.  But on an emotional level, Ida felt so ashamed that she wanted to hide.  She managed to pull herself together enough to take the art dealer's business card and tell her that she would call her within the next few weeks.

Afterwards, when Ida and Marie were alone, Marie told Ida that she couldn't understand why Ida was so hesitant to take the art dealer up on her offer, "Ida, I know you want to sell your work, and Susan is one of the top art dealers in New York City.  Why aren't you jumping on this?"

Ida wasn't sure how to respond because she felt confused about her own emotions.  When she explained this to Marie, Marie suggested that Ida seek help from a psychotherapist to find out what was blocking her emotionally.

A week later, Ida began therapy with an experiential therapist, who was recommended to her.

Over time, when Ida and her therapist traced Ida's sense of shame to Ida's childhood history, Ida remembered her mother's reactions whenever Ida tried to show her mother her artwork, "My mother would scold me every time, and she would tell me that there were much more important things in life than doing artwork.  Then, she would tell me about children who were starving in other countries and that my sense of pride about my artwork was shameful in the face of the suffering that other children had to endure.  She told me that I was being a showoff."

As Ida talked about this with her psychotherapist, she remembered feeling mortified that she was excited about her artwork.  She continued to do artwork, but she stopped showing it to her mother and she never felt that sense of joy or pride in it. Instead, she felt toxic shame for working on her art.  And whenever someone complimented her artwork, the toxic shame that developed in childhood got triggered.

Ida was relieved to know that there was a coherent explanation to her toxic shame and that she and her therapist were able to trace it back to its origins.  But she also knew that this toxic shame was so emotionally debilitating to her, and she wanted to know how to overcome it.

As an experiential psychotherapist, Ida's therapist used many different therapy modalities, including AEDP, which stands for Accelerated Experiential Developmental Psychotherapy and EMDR therapy, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.

As part of the AEDP modality, the therapist explained that everyone has a multiplicity of selves, including a here-and-now adult self and all the various selves throughout a lifetime, including a young child part, a teenage part, etc (see my article: Understanding the Different Aspects of Yourself).

Then her therapist asked Ida to focus on her internal emotional world and access her adult self in order to speak to her mother from an adult perspective, as opposed to speaking from the frightened child self (see my article: Looking at Your Childhood Trauma From an Adult Perspective).  She encouraged Ida to imagine her mother in the room and asked Ida what she wanted to say to her mother about how she shamed Ida.

Ida was able to access her adult self and felt righteous anger about how her mother shamed her.  From this perspective, Ida imagined her mother in the chair next to her in the therapist's office and she told her mother, "How dare you shame a child like that!  I was only five years old when you started telling me these things.  I wanted you to be proud of my work and to encourage me.  But, instead, you turned my artwork into something ugly, as if I was selfish. I no longer accept your words of shame."

In AEDP, this is imaginal work is called a portrayal, similar to "chair work" in Gestalt therapy or other forms of experiential therapy.  At first, a client might feel awkward about speaking to an imaginal figure in the room.  But most clients eventually become comfortable and feel a sense of relief after they do a portrayal.  Pent up feelings that have been stored in the mind and body for many years are released.

It often takes more than one portrayal to complete this work, and in our example, Ida did a number of portrayals over time in therapy by speaking to her mother and addressing her anger and sadness about the way her mother shamed her.

Her therapist also helped Ida to do "parts work."  She explained to Ida that, whereas portrayals are inter-relational work between the client and someone else, parts work is intrapsychic work.

In Ida's case, she remained grounded in her adult thoughts and emotions and she imagined her five year old self sitting next to her in the therapy session.  She even brought in a picture of herself at the age of five to show her therapist before they began doing the parts work.

Her therapist explained to Ida that Ida's five year old self was the "container" for the toxic shame, and that this younger self needed the help of her adult self to heal.  So, Ida imagined herself talking to her younger self and soothing her with a hug.  She and her therapist repeated this work a number of times in their therapy session.

Then they did EMDR therapy to work through the traumatic emotions that were stored in the five year old self (see my articles: What is EMDR Therapy?, How EMDR Therapy Works: EMDR and the Brain and Overcoming Trauma With EMDR Therapy When the Past is in the Present).

After Ida worked through her toxic shame, she was able to feel joy and exuberance again about her artwork.  She no longer felt ashamed.  Instead, she felt a healthy sense of pride about her work.  This enabled her to show her work at her friend's gallery and contact the art dealer for representation.

Conclusion
Whereas healthy shame is hardwired and a necessary part of functioning well in society, toxic shame is traumatic.  Toxic shame often has its origins in childhood when a child was dependent upon his or her parents to survive and had little in the way of healthy defenses to ward off the shame.

Although toxic shame can be emotionally and physically debilitating, experiential therapy can help people with toxic shame to overcome the trauma which led to the development of this unhealthy shame.

Getting Help in Therapy
Regular talk therapy can help clients to develop intellectual insight as to why their shame is toxic, but it's often unhelpful in terms of allowing these clients to change on an emotional level (see my article: Why Experiential Therapy is More Effective Than Regular Talk Therapy to Overcome Trauma).

Experiential therapy, like AEDP, EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, parts work, and clinical hypnosis, are modalities that help clients to shift out of toxic shame.

If you're experiencing toxic shame, rather than continuing to suffer, you owe it to yourself to work with an experiential psychotherapist, who can help you to work through your problems so you're free of toxic shame.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, Somatic Experiencing and Emotionally Focused therapy (EFT for couples)  See my article: The Therapeutic Benefits of Integrative Psychotherapy.

I work with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many clients to overcome toxic shame so they could live happier, more fulfilling lives.

To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.