Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapist · AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist · Practicing Therapy Since 1988
Couples Therapy After Infidelity in New York City
Online couples therapy after affairs and infidelity for New York couples in NYC and all five boroughs
If you’re the partner who was betrayed…
You found out your partner was having a sexual affair. As devastating as that was, you’re now learning that the two of them were emotionally close, too.
They weren’t only meeting for sex. They talked throughout the day, shared personal stories, and told each other things they weren’t telling anyone else. Your partner turned to this person with worries about work, frustrations at home, and news about their day.
Now you’re thinking about all the times you tried to have a conversation with your partner and got little more than a distracted answer. You remember evenings when they were sitting next to you on the couch, looking at their phone. At the time, you thought they were answering work messages or scrolling through social media. Now you wonder how often they were talking to the affair partner.
You keep coming back to questions you never imagined you’d have to ask. Did your partner fall in love? Did they tell the affair partner they loved them? Did they talk about leaving you? Did they imagine a future together?
And there’s another question that’s harder to ask: when your partner tells you they love you now, what does that mean if they were saying the same thing to someone else?
Your partner tells you the affair is over and that they want to repair your relationship. You want to believe them. But you still don’t understand how they could have shared so much of themselves with another person while coming home to you every night.
If you’re the unfaithful partner…
You ended the affair, and you want to repair your relationship. But your partner keeps asking about the feelings you had for the other person, and those questions are harder to answer than you expected.
You know the affair wasn’t only about sex. You looked forward to the messages, enjoyed having someone to talk to throughout the day, and shared personal things you weren’t discussing with your partner. At the time, you didn’t think about how much of your attention and emotional energy you were giving to someone outside your relationship.
Now your partner wants to know whether you were in love with the affair partner. You may not know how to describe what you felt. You know you were attached to this person, but you’re not sure whether those feelings were love, excitement, or something else. You’re afraid that whatever you say will make your partner question whether you ever really loved them.
Your partner also wants to know what you shared about your relationship. Did you complain about them? Did you tell the affair partner things your partner had told you in confidence? You feel ashamed remembering some of those conversations, and you dread having to repeat them out loud.
You tell your partner that the affair is over and that you want to be with them. You mean it. But when they ask how you could have felt so close to someone else and still love them, you struggle to explain yourself without sounding as though you’re making excuses.
You want to answer honestly, even when the answers are painful. You’re afraid that admitting how emotionally involved you became will convince your partner that your relationship can’t be repaired.
hope after Infidelity
When an affair involved both sex and emotional closeness, finding out what happened can be especially painful. You may be able to understand that your partner was sexually attracted to someone else, but learning that they shared personal thoughts, looked forward to talking, and developed feelings for that person raises an entirely different set of questions.
One of the hardest is whether your partner was in love with the affair partner.
The answer isn’t always as simple as yes or no. Attraction, excitement, attachment, and romantic love can be difficult to separate, especially when someone is trying to make sense of feelings they had during an affair. That doesn’t make the betrayal less serious, and it doesn’t mean those feelings weren’t real.
In therapy, I’ll help the partner who had the affair talk honestly about the emotional relationship, including what they felt, how close they became, and what they understood about those feelings at the time. I’ll help the betrayed partner ask the questions they need answered without the conversation turning into another argument.
We’ll also talk about what those feelings mean for your relationship now. Having felt attached to someone else doesn’t automatically mean your partner no longer loves you or that your relationship can’t be repaired. But rebuilding requires more than reassurance. We’ll work through what happened, what has ended, and what each of you needs to know before you can begin trusting each other again.
How affair recovery works
How I help NYC couples repair their relationship after infidelity, betrayal, and affairs
When you come to couples therapy because of an affair, we won’t spend months discussing older relationship problems before addressing the betrayal. After our initial three-session assessment, we’ll begin working directly on the affair, the questions that still need answers, and the hurt it’s caused.
There’s a clinical reason for starting here, too. Even when you’re trying to talk about problems that existed before the affair, the betrayal can affect how you hear and respond to each other. We need to address what happened before we can work effectively on those older problems.
I’ll guide you through the recovery process in this order:
A three-session assessment
Repairing the betrayal and hurt caused by the affair
Repairing older hurts and vulnerabilities in the relationship
Giving your sexual relationship more focused attention after addressing the betrayal and older relationship hurts
Read more about the full process I take couples through after infidelity here →
How Couples therapy after infidelity can change your relationship
With Kate McNulty, LCSW, LICSW | Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapist & AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist
Learning that your partner had a sexual affair is painful enough. Finding out they also developed feelings for the other person can leave you questioning what your relationship meant to them. At home, conversations about those feelings may end in arguments, with neither of you knowing how to answer the other’s questions.
In therapy, I’ll help you have the conversations that keep turning into fights at home. I’ll help the partner who had the affair explain the emotional relationship honestly, while making sure the betrayed partner’s questions and concerns are addressed. When one or both of you becomes overwhelmed or defensive, I’ll help you continue the conversation without making things worse.
Here’s what can change in your relationship as we work together:
For the betrayed partner, you can get the answers you need to understand what happened and trust your own judgment again.
You may not trust your own memory of the last year. The evenings when your partner seemed distracted, the conversations they didn't want to have, and the times they seemed more interested in their phone than in talking to you all look different now. You wonder how much of your relationship was affected by their feelings for someone else.
In session, you can ask the questions you need answered. When did the affair start? When did it become more than sex? What did your partner tell the affair partner about you? I help your partner answer directly, including questions they’ve previously avoided out of fear or shame. When your partner becomes defensive, minimizes what happened, or tries to change the subject, I intervene and bring the conversation back to the question you asked.
With the whole story, you can look back at moments that confused you at the time: the evenings your partner seemed distant, the messages they were exchanging while sitting beside you, or the personal news they shared with someone else before telling you. You can begin to understand what was really happening in your relationship during those months, instead of continuing to question why things felt so different.
For months, you sensed something was wrong, but you didn’t know about the affair. You may have questioned whether you were reading too much into your partner’s behavior or worrying unnecessarily. Learning the truth helps you understand why you had those concerns, even though you didn’t have the information you needed to make sense of them at the time.
You may still feel angry, and you may need to ask some questions more than once. I help your partner understand why you need to hear those answers again, rather than treating your questions as an accusation or expecting you to move on. As your partner continues to answer honestly and follows through on the agreements you make together, you can begin to feel more confident that what they’re telling you is true.
If you’re the unfaithful partner, your hurt and dissatisfaction can be heard and taken seriously, too.
You may feel tremendous shame about your decision to have an affair while also feeling angry about how your partner treated you. And you may worry that whenever you describe something hurtful they did, the conversation will return to your infidelity, and your complaints will never receive serious attention.
In therapy, I’ll help you express how your partner’s behavior hurt you, including things you may have struggled to communicate before the affair. I’ll help you explain what happened and how it affected you without suggesting that your partner was responsible for your decision to be unfaithful.
This makes it easier for your partner to hear what you’re saying without feeling blamed for the affair. They can begin to understand the impact of their behavior, take responsibility where they’ve hurt you, and offer meaningful apologies, even when you remember parts of your relationship differently.
You can receive genuine understanding and apologies for the pain you experienced, even though you were the partner who had the affair. You’ll also learn how to express dissatisfaction and painful feelings directly, rather than withdrawing, avoiding difficult conversations, or keeping your unhappiness secret.
if you’re the unfaithful partner, you can learn to answer difficult questions without shutting down or becoming defensive.
You may genuinely want to repair your relationship, but when your partner brings up the affair, you feel overwhelmed by guilt or shame. You change the subject, argue about details, or go silent. To your partner, those reactions can look like you’re still hiding something or refusing to take responsibility.
In session, I help you recognize when you’re becoming defensive or overwhelmed, and guide you through answering the question instead of avoiding it. You learn how to listen to your partner’s anger and hurt without immediately explaining yourself, correcting their version of events, or asking them to stop bringing up the affair.
Over time, your partner can see that you’re willing to have these conversations, even when they’re painful. Instead of relying on another apology or promise that things will be different, you demonstrate your commitment by answering honestly, listening without arguing, and taking responsibility for what happened.
You can talk about the affair, even when you’re both angry or hurt, without every conversation turning into a fight.
Right now, a conversation that starts with a question about whether your partner loved the affair partner can quickly turn into an argument. One of you presses for a clearer answer, the other becomes defensive, and before long you’re fighting about how you’re talking to each other instead of addressing the original question.
In session, I help you recognize when a conversation is starting to escalate and show you how to stop an argument before it gets worse. You learn to bring up concerns without criticism, listen without immediately arguing back, and stay focused on one issue instead of bringing up every other disagreement you’ve had.
When either of you becomes too overwhelmed to continue, I teach you how to take a break without leaving the other person feeling abandoned or dismissed. You agree on when to resume the conversation, and you follow through. At home, this means you can bring up something painful, work through the disagreement, and return to your evening together instead of spending hours fighting or going to bed without speaking.
You can decide together when and how to resume sexual intimacy after the affair.
One of you may miss being physically close while the other isn’t ready to be touched. You might both want to have sex again but feel unsure about making the first move. Even an ordinary kiss or affectionate touch can raise questions about what the other person expects.
As an AASECT-certified sex therapist, I help you talk openly about those concerns without either partner feeling pressured to have sex before they’re ready. We discuss what kinds of affection feel comfortable right now, how to initiate physical contact without assuming it will lead to sex, and how to respond when one of you isn’t interested without turning that moment into another argument.
You can begin enjoying physical affection again at a pace that feels comfortable for both of you, knowing that physical affection doesn’t have to lead to sex and that saying no won’t automatically create distance between you. When you’re both ready for sexual intimacy, you’ll have a clearer understanding of what each of you wants, what feels uncomfortable, and how to talk about those differences.
Who is a Good Fit for this Service?
I work with every form of infidelity: physical or emotional affairs, a secret online relationship or sexting, hidden pornography use or visits to strip clubs, secretly paying for sex, or a broken agreement in an open or non-monogamous relationship.
Therapy with me is for couples where both people want to repair the relationship.
If there is ongoing domestic violence in your relationship, couples therapy is not an appropriate service. Individual therapy is a safer starting place.
Infidelity therapist & certified Gottman method couples therapist
I’m Kate McNulty, LCSW, LICSW
I’ve been a licensed therapist since 1988, and affair recovery has been a central part of my couples practice for more than two decades.
An affair is a crisis, and most couples who come to me have already spent months trying to resolve it on their own, leaving them feeling even more disconnected.
Infidelity creates a specific communication breakdown that good intentions can’t fix. The betrayed partner often needs to talk to process what happened; the unfaithful partner can shut down out of guilt, shame, or defensiveness.
Attempts to resolve the damage caused by the affair without outside intervention reinforce that breakdown rather than interrupt it. I provide a research-supported structure of repairing your relationship after infidelity.
If the description on this page sounds like your relationship, I’d like to help.
Logistics
Pricing, scheduling, and online Couples Therapy sessions
All sessions are conducted by secure, HIPAA-compliant video. I work with couples across New York City and all five boroughs.
Sessions are private pay, billed at $500 per hour and $750 for 90-minute sessions. Extended sessions (3+ hours) are available for couples who want to make faster progress.
I am not in-network with insurance and cannot bill them directly. For more information about pricing, please see the pricing page.
How to get started in couples therapy
To schedule your first appointment, please choose a day and time on my secure, HIPAA-compliant calendar by clicking the button below.
After I approve your request, typically within one business day, you and your partner will receive new client forms via email, which you’ll both review and digitally sign before we meet.
Areas Served in New York City
I’m licensed in New York as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW #086198), and I work with couples by secure, HIPAA-compliant video in all five boroughs.
This includes:
Manhattan, including the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, Midtown, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, the West Village, Tribeca, the Financial District, Harlem, and Washington Heights
Brooklyn, including Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg, Carroll Gardens, Fort Greene, and Prospect Heights
Queens, including Astoria, Long Island City, Forest Hills, Sunnyside, Jackson Heights, and Flushing
The Bronx, including Riverdale, Pelham Bay, and Throgs Neck
Staten Island, including St. George, Great Kills, and Tottenville
If you’re anywhere in New York City, I can work with you.
Common Questions about couples therapy after infidelity in New York City —
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Having feelings for someone during an affair doesn’t necessarily mean your partner stopped loving you or that your relationship can’t be repaired. But it also doesn’t mean those feelings were insignificant.
I’ll help you talk about what those feelings meant, how the emotional relationship developed, and whether your partner imagined a future with the other person. The partner who had the affair can explain their experience without having to deny what they felt, while the betrayed partner gets to ask the questions they need answered.
We won’t assume that having feelings for someone else tells us everything about what the affair meant or what it means for your relationship now.
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Even after an affair ends, you may worry that your partner still misses the other person, thinks about them, or wishes the relationship had continued.
In therapy, I’ll help you talk directly about whether those feelings are still present, whether contact has ended, and what your partner is doing to maintain that separation. We’ll also discuss what you need from your partner to begin feeling confident that they’re committed to repairing your relationship.
You won’t be asked to ignore your concerns or accept reassurance without having a chance to discuss what’s behind them.
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Yes. You can join from separate locations using the same secure video link. You don’t need to travel across the city or arrange to meet in the same place before your appointment.
You’ll each need a private space and a reliable internet connection, and you’ll both need to be physically located in New York State during the session.
Still Have Questions about Couples Therapy for Infidelity?
Contact me using the button below. I’ll respond within 2 business days.