how to heal from an affair

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Dealing with Triggers As A Couple - Especially During the Holidays

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Dealing with Triggers As A Couple - Especially During the Holidays

“Pre-assurance” — offering reassurance before your partner is triggered, is a proactive way to help them feel emotionally safe. It communicates awareness, care, and emotional leadership, especially after betrayal. It's one of the most compassionate things an unfaithful partner can do to rebuild trust.

You can remember it like this:

“I see you. I’m here. You matter.”

Any version of that,  in word, tone, action, or affection,  offers safety before the fear can set in.

Use Gentle Physical Affection (If Welcome)

Sometimes just holding their hand, offering a hug, or sitting near them without pressure says:

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Physical presence, when safe and consensual, is a direct way to soothe nervous system reactivity — especially in the early hours.

Here are practical examples of how to offer pre-assurance across different common triggering situations…

Finding Motivation to Continue When You Feel None

In behavioral economics, there’s a phenomenon called the “expectancy effect.”

You expect something to work, and—surprise—it’s more likely to.

Not because the thing itself changed, but because you did. Your behavior adapts.

You show up differently. You make different choices, even in the smallest moments.

And those small moments—those are the ones that quietly bend the arc of a life.

Now apply that to a marriage sitting in the wreckage of an affair.

You’ve got two people—shell-shocked, arms crossed, emotionally bleeding out.

Trust is in the negative.

Intimacy feels like a distant planet.

Every look is loaded, every silence says more than words ever could.

But then something small happens.

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