Individual therapy for betrayed partners after infidelity and affairs.
Individual Therapy for Partner Betrayal Trauma in Cambridge
Online therapy across Massachusetts for partner betrayal, including emotional and sexual affairs, paid sex, pornography, and more.
Individual Therapy for Betrayed Partners After Infidelity in Cambridge
You keep going back through your relationship trying to find the point where what you were told stopped matching what was happening. The sabbatical semester when your partner seemed distracted, was that when the affair started? The conference trips they said were mandatory, were they alone the whole time?
Every answer you come up with makes you trust your own perception a little less. You’ve always prided yourself on noticing details, and missing something this big has you second-guessing your judgment and sense of reality.
When your partner’s laptop opens, your shoulders tense, and when they mention a colleague, you’re watching their face for any sign they’re lying.
You imagine things you’ve never actually seen, pieced together from an email, a hotel receipt, or a conference schedule, and those pictures come to mind even when you actively try not to think about it. You keep wondering why your partner chose the other person or people, and if you’ll ever feel chosen by them again.
You check your partner’s screen time, their location, and their email, and you keep a mental list of every discrepancy between what they said and what you can verify. You don’t like who you’ve become, but you still can’t stop checking. You grind your teeth at night, your stomach hasn’t felt normal in weeks, and you have headaches most afternoons.
Like most of my clients, you’ve probably found that knowing the facts about the affair hasn’t made healing from it any easier.
→ Learn more about how I work with betrayed partners after infidelity.
Find out if betrayal trauma therapy is right for you by watching the video here…
Talk Therapy Falls Short for Infidelity and Betrayal Trauma
Accelerated Resolution Therapy is a body-based trauma modality.
The reason it works is because the effects of betrayal “live” in different parts of the brain than insight, skills, and understanding.
Having a clearer understanding of the affair, talking it through, or building better coping skills can be useful, but those don’t fundamentally change how your body responds when unwanted thoughts of the infidelity pop up in your day-to-day life.
What makes ART different from most therapy is the pace. Change happens within a session rather than across weeks or months, and many clients tend to describe the memories and images becoming more dull and losing their emotional intensity.
What Life Looks Like After You Heal Betrayal Trauma at the Root
Your body stops being on high-alert for more bad news. The jaw clenching, the stomach problems, the tension headaches, the 3am wakeups with your heart pounding stop being your “new normal”. You sleep through the night and your appetite returns. You wake up thinking about the day ahead, not about what your partner did. The normal grief and sadness about what happened is still there, but it becomes possible for you to concentrate at work and show up for your children.
The images stop popping up. The scenes that have been showing up in your head when you’re trying not to think about them — the texts you found, the moment your partner admitted to the infidelity, the bank statements that didn’t make sense — stop coming up randomly. And when you do think about them, they feel dull. After the intensive, clients describe the thoughts and images as feeling distant, like something that happened in the past, instead of something that keeps happening to them now. This means the anxiety and rumination stop on their own, without you having to “try.”
You stop measuring your worth by what your partner did. When you think about the affair now, you think of it as something your partner decided to do, and you stop asking what’s wrong with you every time the memory comes up. You feel sad that this is what your partner chose, but it no longer reflects on how “good enough” you are. Whether or not your partner chooses you going forward, you know you’re worth choosing.
You trust your own judgment again. You make a decision about your relationship, your finances, or your living situation, and you don’t need to run it past three friends and your sister to make sure you’re not crazy. The fog of “what if I’m wrong about everything else too?” clears. The intrusive thoughts that have been telling you not to trust your partner, not to trust yourself, that you’re going to make a permanent mistake, lose their authority. You can recognize them as betrayal-driven, not as truth.
You have bandwidth to spend on the people you love. Your daughter tells you about her math test on Friday afternoon, and instead of “how was it, mm-hm, that’s great,” you’re listening. As she’s talking, you notice she’s gotten taller. If you’re rebuilding your relationship, you can sit across from your partner and have the hard conversation without feeling like you’re going to throw up. If you’re leaving or if your partner left, you can sleep through your first night in the new place without staring at the ceiling, mentally replaying every sign you missed.
The facts of the betrayal don’t disappear, and you’ll still remember what happened. You’ll think about the discovery, the texts, or the affair partner as something that happened in the past instead of something that keeps happening to you.
If you’re ready to learn about pricing and scheduling, see the rates page.
How We Heal Partner Betrayal Trauma at the Root in One Half-Day
Accelerated Resolution Therapy is an evidence-based trauma therapy. It uses back-and-forth eye movements.
You don’t talk about the betrayal in detail. Instead, you visualize the situation in your mind, as if you’re watching a scene of a movie.
During the session, we work to change the images and physical sensations your brain has stored, so that they stop intruding the way they have been.
In ART we say, “keep the knowledge, lose the pain.” You will keep the facts, but the facts will lose their emotional intensity.
By the end of the session, you’ll still know what happened and remember all of the facts. What you’ll lose is the uncomfortable bodily sensations, the unwelcome thoughts, and other symptoms that have been part of your daily life.
About Allyson Clemmons, LICSW
Cambridge, MA Partner Betrayal Trauma Therapist
My specialization in partner betrayal trauma emerged from years of treating infidelity as a couples therapist.
While couples work was essential for the relationship, I noticed betrayed partners also needed specialized individual therapy that wasn’t available.
Now, I work with betrayed partners in a half-day intensive format so that they can keep the knowledge of what happened and lose the pain that came with it.
You don’t need to manage infidelity trauma indefinitely. You can actually heal it.
Independently licensed in Massachusetts, LICSW #126480
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Self-Schedule or Contact Me Below
If you already know you would like to get scheduled, please do so using my secure, HIPAA-compliant calendar below. No need to contact me first unless you want to.
You’ll choose your preferred day and time for your intensive and pay your booking deposit. Within 24 hours, you’ll receive an email invitation to complete your new client forms. Then we’ll meet on your scheduled day!
Have a question about logistics before scheduling?
See my FAQ page, or use the contact form to ask me directly (scroll down to use the form). I respond within 1-2 business days, but usually much faster.
For questions, please contact me using the secure, HIPAA-compliant form below.
Individual therapy for partner betrayal trauma in Cambridge via secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth
Cambridge Area Coverage
I provide online partner betrayal trauma therapy to clients throughout Cambridge and the neighboring towns.
Cambridge squares: Harvard Square • Central Square • Kendall Square • Inman Square • Porter Square
Cambridge neighborhoods: Mid-Cambridge • Cambridgeport • Riverside • The Port • East Cambridge • Wellington-Harrington • Agassiz • West Cambridge • North Cambridge
Somerville: Davis Square • Union Square • Teele Square • Ball Square
Nearby towns: Arlington • Belmont • Watertown
Independently licensed in Massachusetts, LICSW #126480
Also offering partner betrayal trauma therapy in Boston, Quincy and the South Shore, and throughout Massachusetts.
freedom from betrayal trauma
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freedom from betrayal trauma —