Areas › Your marriage › Rebuilding trust
After a betrayal, heal by talking the injury through together, fully, rather than skipping past it in silence.
Couples who avoid the subject drift apart; those who talk it through, honestly and thoroughly, are the ones who make it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not mix truth with falsehood, or hide the truth when you know it (Quran 2:42). Healing begins where the truth stops being hidden.
وَلَا تَلۡبِسُواْ ٱلۡحَقَّ بِٱلۡبَٰطِلِ وَتَكۡتُمُواْ ٱلۡحَقَّ وَأَنتُمۡ تَعۡلَمُونَ
Do not mix truth with falsehood, or hide the truth when you know it
Qur’an 2:42read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
Couples who recover from an affair are the ones who talk about it thoroughly; those who try to move on without discussing it tend to break apart. Avoidance, not the conversation, is what deepens the wound.
Gottman, J.; Coan, J.; Carrere, S.; Swanson, C. (1998). Predicting Marital Happiness and Stability from Newlywed Interactions. Journal of Marriage and the Family doi
Newlywed interaction patterns; accepting influence; soft start-up.
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
Talking through a betrayal openly, rather than burying it, is what predicts a couple staying together.
Where this sits: Gottman method, Trust and Commitment; Treating Affairs and Trauma, Phase 1: Atone (talk it through).
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Let the hurt partner set the pace of healing. It takes as long as it takes; there is no rushing trust back.
A betrayal is the choice of the one who made it. Unhappiness never forced it, and it is not the hurt partner's fault.
Atonement is not only apology; it is changed behavior over time. Let your actions become the apology.