Infidelity and Betrayal Trauma
The discovery of an affair does not just damage a relationship. It dismantles the version of reality you were living in. The timeline you thought you knew. The person you thought you understood. The life you thought you were building together.
Whether you found out yesterday or six months ago, whether you are the betrayed partner or the one who strayed, whether you are trying to save the relationship or trying to find your footing as it ends, you are in the right place.
This is one of the most specialized and demanding areas of couples work. It requires clinical precision, genuine experience, and the capacity to hold both people in the room without judgment. That is exactly what this practice offers.
What You Are Likely Experiencing
If you are the betrayed partner: The ground has shifted. You may be oscillating between rage and grief, between wanting answers and not being able to hear them, between wanting your partner close and not being able to tolerate their presence. You may be questioning your own perception of reality, replaying conversations, looking for the signs you missed. This is not weakness. This is the specific and disorienting experience of betrayal trauma, and it deserves to be treated with the same seriousness as any other trauma.
If you are the partner who strayed: You are likely carrying your own crisis. Guilt, shame, confusion about what you want, fear about what comes next. You may feel that you have no right to your own pain in this situation. You also need support, clarity, and a space to be honest about what happened and why, without that honesty being weaponized against you.
If you are both trying to figure out what comes next: You don't have to know yet. The pressure to make an immediate decision, to either recommit or leave, is one of the most damaging things about the aftermath of infidelity. This work is designed to create enough stability and clarity that whatever decision you make is one you can stand behind.
Phase One: Stabilization
In the immediate aftermath, emotions are volatile, information is incomplete, and the impulse to either leave immediately or pretend nothing happened are both understandable and both premature. Before anything else can happen, we establish enough safety and stability to function. That means managing the flooding, establishing basic agreements about behavior during the process, and slowing things down enough to make any decision worth making.
How This Work Is Structured
Affair recovery and infidelity counseling in this practice follows a phased approach. The phases are not rigid, but they reflect the reality of how this kind of trauma moves.
Phase Two: Disclosure
Partial truth is often more damaging than the original betrayal. The slow drip of information that surfaces over weeks or months, each new revelation reopening the wound, is one of the most destabilizing experiences a betrayed partner can go through. I guide couples through a structured disclosure process that gives the betrayed partner what they need to regain their footing and gives the unfaithful partner a clear and contained path toward genuine accountability. This is one of the most important and most frequently skipped steps in rebuilding trust after infidelity.
Phase Three: Understanding
Once the crisis has stabilized and the full picture is on the table, we turn to the harder questions. Not to assign blame, and not to suggest that any vulnerability in the relationship justified the betrayal. But to understand the conditions, both individual and relational, that created the opening. This understanding is what makes it possible to build something different rather than simply hoping the same thing doesn't happen again.
Phase Four: Decision
Rebuilding or separating. Both are legitimate outcomes. Neither should be made reactively. By this phase, both partners have enough clarity, enough honest information, and enough understanding of what actually happened to make a decision they can live with. This practice supports both paths with equal seriousness.
The Philosophy of Repair
My approach to rebuilding after infidelity is influenced by the Japanese art of Kintsugi, the practice of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer rather than hiding the break. The philosophy is that the fracture is not a flaw to be concealed. It is part of the object's history, and the repair can become the most beautiful and resilient part of what remains.
The relationship that existed before the affair is gone. Attempting to return to it, to pretend the betrayal didn't happen or to paper over it with renewed commitment, does not work. What is possible is something different: a relationship rebuilt on radical honesty, genuine accountability, and a level of conscious intention that most couples never reach without being forced to by a crisis.
Not every couple gets there. But the ones who do often describe their rebuilt relationship as more honest and more solid than anything they had before. That possibility is real. It is not guaranteed. And it requires both people to do serious work.
Why This Practice
Betrayal trauma therapy and infidelity recovery require a therapist who can hold the full complexity of what is happening in the room without collapsing toward either partner, without rushing toward an outcome, and without bringing their own judgment about what the couple should do.
I am a licensed marriage and family therapist with advanced training in trauma-focused therapy and the Gottman Method, a trained mediator, and a former lawyer. That combination matters in this work. I know how to hold a room under pressure. I know how to structure a process that feels chaotic. And I have worked with enough couples navigating affair recovery and betrayal trauma across Los Angeles, the South Bay, and California to know what actually moves this work forward and what keeps people stuck.
This is not a space for judgment. It is a space for clarity, honesty, and the kind of work that makes whatever comes next something you chose rather than something that happened to you.
This practice serves individuals and couples navigating infidelity recovery and betrayal trauma in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, Palos Verdes, and across California via telehealth. Evening and weekend availability.