Curated Resources for Couples After Betrayal

Books

• Getting Past the Affair — Douglas K. Snyder & Donald H. Baucom with Kristina Coop Gordon The most clinically grounded self-help book available on infidelity recovery. Written by researchers who developed and tested a structured protocol for couples after affairs. It doesn't minimize how hard this is or promise easy repair — it maps the actual process with real fidelity. Useful for both partners, though it's explicitly designed for the couple to work through together.
• Not Just Friends — Shirley P. Glass Glass was a therapist and researcher who spent decades working with couples after infidelity. This book covers how affairs start, how they develop, and — critically — how they affect both partners. It's particularly useful for understanding the psychological mechanisms involved, including why the unfaithful partner often doesn't fully understand what they've done until they see it through the lens Glass provides. The chapter on what the betrayed partner actually experiences is one of the clearest accounts in the literature.
• Hold Me Tight — Sue Johnson Not specifically about infidelity, but foundational for understanding why betrayal wounds so deeply. Johnson's Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) framework centers attachment — the bond between partners — as the organizing structure of a relationship. When you understand a relationship as an attachment bond, infidelity becomes readable as a profound rupture of that bond, which clarifies both the injury and what repair would require. Essential reading for anyone working in an EFT-informed therapy context.
• After the Affair — Janis Abrahms Spring A practical, warm, and non-prescriptive guide for both partners navigating the aftermath of an affair. Spring is honest about the difficulty and avoids the false optimism that characterizes much of this genre. The sections on forgiveness — what it is, what it isn't, and why it cannot be rushed or demanded — are particularly strong.

Therapy Approaches Worth Seeking Out

Not all couples therapy is equally suited to the aftermath of betrayal. These three approaches have the most meaningful evidence base for this specific context:

• Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) Developed by Sue Johnson, EFT works with the attachment bond between partners — the underlying emotional structure that intimacy depends on. It's designed to identify and shift the negative interaction cycles that keep couples stuck, and to create new experiences of emotional safety and responsiveness. It has among the strongest evidence bases of any couples therapy modality, with significant improvement rates in multiple controlled trials. When seeking a therapist, look for ICEEFT-certified practitioners.
• Integrative Behavioral Couple Therapy (IBCT) IBCT combines acceptance-based work with behavioral change strategies. It's particularly useful for couples where one or both partners need to develop more capacity to tolerate difference and ambiguity — which is relevant in infidelity recovery, where the betrayed partner's ongoing distress can trigger the unfaithful partner's defensiveness, creating a destructive cycle. Developed by Andrew Christensen and Neil Jacobson.
• Gottman Method Couples Therapy Based on decades of observational research on what distinguishes stable relationships from those that dissolve. Gottman-trained therapists work with specific skills — conflict management, building friendship and intimacy, shared meaning — and apply a structured assessment. The Gottman Institute has also developed specific protocols for working with couples after infidelity (the "Gottman Affair Recovery" protocol). Look for Gottman-certified or Gottman-trained therapists.

For the Betrayed Partner Specifically

Couples therapy is not the only support needed. The betrayed partner is often experiencing symptoms of trauma — intrusive thoughts, hypervigilance, emotional flooding, numbness — that may warrant individual trauma-informed therapy alongside or before couples work.

Individual therapy modalities with evidence for trauma include EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), CPT (Cognitive Processing Therapy), and trauma-informed CBT. Not all therapists who describe themselves as trauma-informed have training in these specific approaches — it's worth asking directly.

On Finding a Therapist

• ICEEFT Therapist Directory (iceeft.com) Find EFT-certified therapists by location. Being certified means they've completed supervised training, not just a workshop.
• Gottman Referral Network (gottman.com/couples/find-a-therapist) Find therapists trained in the Gottman Method, with the option to filter by specialty area including infidelity.
• Psychology Today Therapist Finder (psychologytoday.com/us/therapists) The broadest directory; filter by "Infidelity" as an issue and look for therapists who list specific modalities (EFT, IBCT, Gottman) rather than general relationship counseling.