BRIEF REPORTS Infidelity and Behavioral Couple Therapy: Optimism in the Face of Betrayal

Infidelity is a common issue with which distressed couples and their therapists grapple. However, there are no data on the efficacy of commonly used therapies to treat couples in which there has been an affair. In the present exploratory study, the authors examined the therapy outcomes of a sample of infidelity couples (n 19) who had participated in a randomized clinical trial of marital therapy (N 134). Results show that infidelity couples began treatment more distressed than noninfidelity couples; however, evidence suggests that couples who had an affair and who revealed this affair prior to or during therapy showed greater improvement in satisfaction than noninfidelity couples. Implications for therapy with infidelity couples are discussed. The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places. —Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms For many couples, the discovery of a partner’s infidelity1 is experienced as a betrayal that shatters one of the most fundamental assumptions of a relationship: its exclusivity. Yet, therapists have little empirical guidance in treating couples who have had a