Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapist · AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist · Practicing Therapy Since 1988
Couples Therapy After Infidelity in Rochester, New York
Online couples therapy after affairs and infidelity for New York couples in Rochester, Pittsford, Brighton, Penfield, and Fairport
If you’re the partner who was betrayed…
Your partner had an affair with a coworker, and the two of them still work together every day.
Each morning, you watch your partner leave for work and dread the day ahead. They may work on the same team, sit in the same meetings, or post in the same team chat. The affair partner still gets hours of your partner’s attention every day, and you get whatever time is left at night.
You can’t see what the two of them say to each other at work, so you spend the day imagining their conversations. A late meeting or a client dinner used to be an ordinary part of your partner’s workday. Now a text that says “staying late tonight” makes your stomach drop.
The story of the affair has also come out in pieces. At first, your partner said they had a few drinks together after work and that the affair ended months ago. Then you learned that it lasted longer than they admitted, and that the two of them kept talking at work after it ended.
Each new detail brings back the shock and hurt of the day you first found out. You believed the first version of the story, and now you feel foolish for believing it. You’re also angry that you had to learn the truth one piece at a time.
The story has changed so many times that, even when your partner swears you’ve heard everything, you wonder what you’ll find out next.
If you’re the unfaithful partner…
You ended things with the affair partner, but you still see them at work. You keep conversations short and leave meetings as soon as they end, but you know your partner has no way of seeing those efforts.
After work, you don’t know how much to tell your partner about your day. When you mention the affair partner, your partner has a terrible night. When you leave the affair partner out and your partner hears about the meeting later, the omission looks like another lie.
You’re willing to change jobs or teams. But you don’t know how soon a change is possible, or how to handle each workday until a change happens.
You also told the story of the affair in pieces. You were afraid the whole truth would end your relationship, so you shared only the parts you thought your partner could handle. Each time another part came out, you saw how much more the delay hurt your partner.
You feel ashamed of what you did. You see the pain on your partner’s face and can hardly believe you’re responsible for it.
Some days, you shut down when the affair comes up. Other days, you get defensive. You hate both reactions because you can see how much more they hurt your partner.
You want to repair the relationship, but every difficult conversation leaves you wondering whether your partner will ever be able to trust you again.
Hope after infidelity
When the truth about an affair comes out in pieces, it’s sometimes called “trickle truth.” Each new detail can bring back the hurt of finding out. And when the affair partner is also a coworker, each workday can give you another reason to worry, because the two of them still see each other when you’re not there.
Together, the new disclosures and ongoing workplace contact can make it difficult to believe the affair is really over.
I’ll help the partner who was betrayed ask the questions they need answered. I’ll also help the partner who had the affair answer honestly, without becoming defensive, blaming their partner, or shutting down when the questions are painful.
We’ll also make specific agreements about contact at work: which interactions are unavoidable, what contact needs to stop, and how your partner will tell you about meetings or conversations with the affair partner.
You won’t be expected to trust your partner simply because they’ve promised the affair is over. We’ll work on rebuilding trust through honest answers, clear agreements, and your partner consistently doing what they’ve said they’ll do.
How affair recovery works
How I help Rochester 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
Each new detail about the affair can bring back the shock of finding out. At home, a question about your partner’s workday can turn into another late-night argument, with one of you sleeping in a different room.
In therapy, I help you have the conversations that keep turning into fights at home. I make sure your questions get addressed, help your partner respond without becoming defensive, and step in when the conversation starts to escalate. You’ll also learn how to handle these discussions differently when you’re on your own.
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 late nights and feeling as if your partner was distracted all look different now. You can’t always tell which parts of your relationship were real.
In session, you can ask the questions you need answered. When did the affair start? How often did the two of them meet? 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 nights your partner came home late from the office, the distance you felt between the two of you, or the fights at home that seemed to come out of nowhere. 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 your partner’s workday can quickly turn into an argument. One of you raises your voice, the other becomes defensive, and before long you’re fighting about how you’re talking to each other instead of addressing the original concern.
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 Rochester and all of New York.
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.
Online Couples Therapy in Rochester and Western New York
I'm licensed in New York as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW #086198), and I provide secure, HIPAA-compliant online couples therapy throughout Rochester and Western New York.
I work with couples in Rochester and surrounding communities, including Brighton, Pittsford, Penfield, Fairport, Perinton, Webster, Henrietta, Victor, and Canandaigua. My services are also available to couples in Buffalo, Niagara Falls, and other communities throughout Western New York.
Because sessions take place online, you and your partner can attend from anywhere in New York State.
Common Questions about couples therapy after infidelity in Rochester —
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You can begin therapy even if your partner hasn’t been able to change jobs or teams. The affair itself needs to be over, but you may still be dealing with unavoidable contact at work.
I’ll help you agree on what contact is necessary for work, what contact needs to stop, and what your partner will tell you about interactions with the other person. We’ll also discuss what needs to happen if the two of them are assigned to the same meeting, project, or work event.
That way, when your partner has to attend another meeting or work event with the affair partner, you both already know what’s been agreed upon and what to expect.
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When you’ve already been told that you know everything, finding out something new can make it difficult to believe anything your partner says.
If additional information comes out during therapy, we’ll address it before moving forward. I’ll help the partner who had the affair answer questions directly and understand why withholding information, even out of fear, makes it harder to rebuild trust.
We won’t move on to the next part of therapy until we’ve talked through what you’ve learned and how it’s affected both of you.
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Yes. You can each join from a different location using the same secure video link. 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.