Every relationship can be negatively affected by infidelity. A betrayal of this nature can have long-lasting and devastating consequences. The character of your relationship can suffer from infidelity over time. Infidelity can entail sexual or emotional affairs with a third party outside of the relationship agreement between the couple. You may have strayed on your partner and been astonished by the repercussions, or you may have been the recipient of infidelity and find it difficult to move on. You may ponder if you can move on after an infidelity, as well as how it may affect you, your relationship, and your mental health.

Pain associated with infidelity is typically unavoidable, and it can have emotionally debilitating effects. If you believe you are grieving, you probably are, and that is acceptable. There are various types of human loss, and no one has the right to minimize your sorrow. However, you can recover. If you two so choose, the affair can be resolved. However, both parties must be willing to do the necessary work to rehabilitate. Keep in mind that your partner may continue to grieve and be triggered for an extended period of time than you are comfortable with. It is beneficial to remain with their suffering, communicate openly, and periodically assess their emotional health.

If you have been deceived on, it may take some time for you to recover. Long after the event, you may experience chronic anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression, and mistrust of others. Insofar as it is a dopamine factory and euphoria generator, love can feel addictive to the brain. Therefore, the rejection induced by infidelity can result in several changes in the brain’s neural pathways similar to those that occur during withdrawal in substance abuse disorders. Rejection can have both short- and long-term effects on brain chemistry.

Our brains produce more oxytocin and dopamine when we are in love, and infidelity can disrupt the pathways that trigger the release of these compounds.

Before an infidelity, the relationship breach may not have been accompanied by symptoms akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. Common symptoms include flashbacks, nightmares, and preoccupation with the traumatic event. You may also experience hyperarousal and react to perceived threats to yourself or your relationships. As a result, you may experience disturbed feeding and sleeping patterns.

Regardless of who you are, infidelity can still affect you. A study examining gender differences in responses to infidelity revealed that women are typically more distressed by emotional affairs, while men are typically more distressed by physical affairs. This difference in response to emotional infidelity versus sexual infidelity is supported by a large-scale study involving approximately 64,000 participants, which yielded similar results. This study also investigated the effects of infidelity on lesbian, homosexual, and bisexual individuals. Among LGB+ individuals, there was no significant difference between the sexes in terms of the degree of distress over infidelity.

Infidelity can have long-lasting effects on partners and offspring of the couple. Grief can result in neural alterations, future behaviors, and mental health conditions such as anxiety, chronic stress, and depression.

Time and counselling have enabled some families to overcome infidelity. To move on, both partners must actively address the underlying cause of the infidelity. Not every couple is suitable for working through it, but those who are willing can rehabilitate.