Presented by Tammy Nelson, PhD

Infidelity can profoundly destabilize a relationship, affecting trust, safety, intimacy, identity, and each partner’s understanding of the relationship itself.

In this experiential two-hour clinical training, Tammy Nelson, PhD, will present an integrative framework for understanding affairs, betrayal trauma, and the process of relationship recovery. Participants will examine different types of affairs, the three essential components of infidelity, and the role that secrecy, dishonesty, unmet needs, and the presence of a “third” can play within the relational system.

Dr. Nelson will introduce three phases of affair-recovery treatment—crisis, insight, and vision—and explore interventions appropriate to each phase. Particular attention will be given to therapist bias, countertransference, and collusion, including how clinicians can unintentionally shame or retraumatize clients when they become aligned with one partner or rely on overly rigid victim–perpetrator–rescuer formulations.

The program will also address accountability, trust, forgiveness, erotic recovery, and the difference between implicit and explicit monogamy. Participants will learn ways to help couples repair the immediate rupture, understand the relationship more deeply, and create transparent, sustainable agreements for the future.

Participants will gain

• A structured clinical map for working with couples after infidelity
• Strategies for reducing shame, bias, collusion, and retraumatization in treatment
• Interventions for rebuilding trust, intimacy, and relational safety
• Tools for helping partners create explicit and sustainable relationship agreements

Learning Objectives

By the end of the program, participants will be able to:

1. Define infidelity using a three-part framework and describe its impact on partners in a marriage or committed relationship.
2. Identify manifestations of betrayal trauma and explain how therapist bias, countertransference, and collusion can affect treatment.
3. Apply the crisis, insight, and vision phases of affair recovery to clinical case conceptualization and treatment planning.
4. Distinguish between implicit and explicit monogamy and facilitate conversations about relationship expectations and agreements.
5. Select interventions that support accountability, trust, erotic recovery, and long-term relational repair following infidelity.