When One Partner Stops Trying: Why Couples Therapy Is Crucial for Rebuilding Trust After Infidelity
Couples therapy can be helpful even where one partner is checked out, hurt, or unable to recommit after betrayal or substance misuse. Fortunately, I am a couples therapist in San Diego, CA, who specializes in this department and can see that many couples are not ready at the exact same time, or one may need more support with their relational issues while the other one works on their individual therapy. No matter what, couples therapy can be highly effective.
What to do When Love Feels One-Sided…
This is a normal feeling to feel scared or powerless in a relationship after infidelity. This can be so impactful to call out as a normal feeling of uncertainty when your partner emotionally or behaviorally checks out. Being able to understand trust and commitment from the Sound Safe House theory allows you to turn towards and understand how to rebuild it effectively for your relationship.
Why Commitment Breaks Down
So many reasons can be discussed as a form of violation of agreements in a relationship (affairs, hidden addictions, emotional withdrawal, deceit), and how that can become something that breaks down a relationship's safe, sound house. So many of my clients have trauma, avoidance, and ambivalence type traits due to their own inner child shame cycles from attachment wounds from childhood that they are uncovering in their romantically in their adult relationships. Understanding how you are avoiding true intimacy through avoidance by control or caregiving is the only way to understand why the commitment occurred and can be healed.
Infidelity & Addiction as Attachment Wounds
Betrayal through affairs and substance use can be so traumatizing for loved ones impacted by it. They are often unaware, suspicious, but unable to determine the detriment to the issues, and feel like it’s a never-ending cat-and-mouse type of behavior. This is toxic and a desperate plea from the inner child to have some type of control over their adult, unloving part. This is an IFS, Gottman Method, and Inner Child approach to understanding addiction and infidelity wounds, causing major interference in each other’s shame cycles without true awareness. Please do not be ashamed to get help; many people are not taught how to love effectively and kindle the inner safety of a sound, safe house. Thankfully, the Gottmans came up with an excellent script for this.
Signs It’s Time for Couples Therapy, Regardless of the Avoidance
If anyone in the relationship is stepping outside of the relationship emotionally, that can be emotional abandonment, which can be terrible for the individual's psychology and the couple's psychology. Emotional abandonment, chronic lying, and lack of effort all have deep impacts on our souls over time when we don’t feel seen, loved, or considered. When you feel “we’ve tried everything, but we’re stuck” moments. Call out Gottman Method Couples Therapists, I highly recommend anyone in that track with a scope that feels helpful to both parties.
What Couples Therapy Can Do (And What It Can’t)
There is so much reward in watching the rebuilding of emotional safety and connection. It really lights up the joy and miracle receptors in my brain, and I’m in awe almost every day at work when I see the unfolding of the process before my very eyes. Rebuilding emotional safety is everything in relationship building, and it’s about having goal posts and pillars of values to rely on that make the space more emotionally safe to go towards vulnerable places together. There is so much more to therapy about understanding accountability versus rescuing or criticizing each other; there is transparency of harm with betrayal of relationship agreements. Both parties must have consent to the healing process to go there and to allow help at the right time; it takes a true ability to be vulnerable.
Couples Therapist’s POV: What I See in My Practice
So many people are hurting right now. They are hurting in different ways, and it’s often the most difficult thing to express ourselves without hurting another person effectively. I recommend the dance be squashed with love and compassion only, celebrating the similiarities and the differences when it can be used to hurt them instead, its powerful to be loved through the weakness and to shed off the defensives of humor, deflection, projection, escaping, fantasy, and other types of distractions to avoid the real intimacy of discussing these differences compassionately so each person understands themselves. Are we ready for couples therapy with Amy Anderson Therapy? Schedule for a call.
Rebuilding Trust When One Partner Has Checked Out in Couples Therapy in San Diego, CA
Couples therapy in San Diego, CA can help you move past betrayal, rebuild trust, and create a safe space for emotional reconnection. Whether you’re struggling with emotional withdrawal, hidden addictions, or the pain of infidelity, healing is possible with the right support. At Amy Anderson Therapy, you’ll find compassionate guidance rooted in proven methods to help you and your partner reconnect. Follow these three simple steps to get started:
Schedule a free 15-minute consultation to see if couples therapy is a good fit.
Begin meeting with compassionate couples therapist, Amy Anderson.
Start rebuilding trust with your partner!
Additional Services Offered at Amy Anderson Therapy
Amy Anderson Therapy offers a warm, supportive, and trauma-informed environment for individuals and couples seeking meaningful change. My work with couples includes helping partners rebuild after infidelity, navigate ADHD-related relationship challenges, process unresolved trauma, and cultivate deeper emotional closeness. I also work with individuals facing anxiety, betrayal trauma, infertility struggles, and the unique experiences that come with neurodivergence. The practice is inclusive of polyamorous relationships, non-traditional family structures, and those in high-pressure fields such as healthcare, military, emergency response, and law enforcement. For clients interested in nontraditional methods, I provide walk-and-talk therapy to combine movement with mindful dialogue, as well as psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) to support transformative healing. You can also explore the blog for resources on relationship repair, trauma healing, and whole-person wellness.
