How to rebuild trust in a relationship after cheating, lies or broken promises

To rebuild trust in a relationship, the partner who broke it tells the whole truth, owns it without excuses and then keeps proving it with changed behavior and openness, while the partner who was hurt sets the pace. There’s no shortcut and no set timeline, because trust grows back from evidence, and evidence takes time to pile up.

Psychologists John Rempel, John Holmes and Mark Zanna described trust between partners as three things: predictability, dependability and faith.¹ Predictability means you can tell what your partner will do, because they act consistently. Dependability means you see them as someone you can count on: honest, cooperative, caring. Faith is confidence about your future together that goes beyond the evidence so far.²

In their model, the three build on each other over time,¹ moving from confidence that your partner is predictable toward confidence in their values and intentions.³ A 2025 study that revisited the model found trust was no lower in relationships of six months or less than in ones of five years or more, and its authors suggest evidence matters most when something contradicts that trust.² A betrayal does exactly that, and it can knock out all three at once, so it makes sense to rebuild from the bottom up: predictable first, in small ways your partner can check, with faith last.

Trust also grows in particular moments, which researchers call strain tests: you depend on your partner, what’s best for them isn’t what’s best for you, and they come through for you anyway.³ In two studies that followed close relationships over time, people came to trust partners they saw acting for the good of the relationship at some cost to themselves, like making a sacrifice or staying constructive when provoked.⁴ Daily life is full of small strain tests, which is good news for repair.

Not every breach is physical. Researchers define infidelity in many ways, from emotional involvement with someone online or in person to kissing or sex,⁵ and one couple therapy study counted a relationship as an emotional affair when it involved secrecy, romantic or sexual feelings, and got in the way of the couple’s own relationship.⁶ Our guide to boundaries in relationships can help you two name your lines.

If it was cheating, you’re less alone than it feels. In the General Social Survey, a national survey of US adults, 16.3% of people who had ever been married said in 2016 that they’d had sex with someone else while married, and the share who had in the past year held steady at about 3% from 2000 to 2016.⁷

Some trust trouble starts before any breach. People who are less securely attached or lower in self-esteem tend to trust their partners less,³ so a new hurt can press on an old one. Our guides to anxious attachment and fearful avoidant attachment can help you tell the two apart.

If you broke the trust, rebuilding it is mostly your job: end what needs ending, tell the whole truth, own it, and then show it, consistently, for as long as it takes. It’s hard, and it’s doable.

Cheating and lying are breaches of honesty rather than honest mistakes, and those are harder to mend. When 333 adults and 422 business students rated apologies for a breach of trust at work, apologies for knowingly doing wrong were rated less effective than apologies for an honest mistake.⁸ And in a lab trust game played by 262 young adults against a partner whose moves the researchers scripted, trust hurt by selfish moves recovered once the partner behaved well consistently, but trust hurt by selfish moves plus lies never fully recovered, even after an apology, a promise and a run of good behavior.⁹ So plan on your actions doing most of the talking.

1. 1

   End it, fully

   Stop the affair, the lying or the secret spending, and tell your partner how you ended it. The other person is often close by: in the same national survey, married people who reported an affair most often named a close friend (53.5%) or a neighbor, coworker or long-time acquaintance (29.4%),⁷ so ending it can mean changes at work or in a friend group.

2. 2

   Tell the whole story, once

   Truth that arrives in pieces can reopen the wound each time. In a five-year follow-up of a couple therapy trial with 134 married couples, four of the five couples whose affair stayed secret during therapy divorced (80%), compared with 43% of the 14 whose affair came out and 23% of couples without infidelity.¹⁰ Answer what your partner asks, and don’t make them dig.

3. 3

   Own it, no “but”

   Say what you did, plainly, as your choice. The next section has what a real apology sounds like.

4. 4

   Answer the questions, again

   Your partner may ask the same thing many times. One affair-recovery treatment, tested in a small study, deliberately helps the partner who strayed tolerate the hurt partner’s continuing emotions and need to know why it happened,¹¹ so expect the questions and answer them without sighing.

5. 5

   Make openness the default

   Offer access before you’re asked: your phone, the statements, where you are. In interviews with 11 women who stayed with a partner after an affair, one said her partner’s offer to let her look through his phone, which she never took up, showed her she could trust him.¹²

6. 6

   Back the promise with behavior

   In the trust game study, a promise to change sped recovery up, but after lies, promises worked less well.⁹ The late night you text about, the app you delete and the budget you stick to will say more than any vow.

7. 7

   Agree on the new rules together

   Decide as a couple what changes: who you stay in touch with, how money gets tracked (our money questions for couples are a good start) and what openness looks like. Writing it down helps when memories differ: The Couples Contract, which isn’t legally binding, covers what exclusive means to you both and what counts as crossing the line, and asks for your plan to build more trust. Think of it as a record of what you both said yes to.

A real apology names what you did, owns it as your choice, shows you understand how it hurt and offers to make it right, with no “but” anywhere in it.

In the studies of apologies for a breach at work, people rated six possible parts: regret, an explanation, owning responsibility, a promise not to repeat it, an offer to repair the damage and a request for forgiveness.⁸ Apologies with all six were rated most effective, owning responsibility ranked among the top three parts in both studies, and asking to be forgiven came last in both.⁸

So don’t count on “Can you forgive me?” to do the work. An apology isn’t a request for a verdict, and forgiveness is theirs to offer, if and when it comes.

A review of research on apologies describes good ones as complete and non-defensive: no justifications, no blaming the person you hurt.¹³ People often hold back because apologizing threatens how they see themselves or because they doubt it will work, yet people who did the hurting tend to underestimate how much an apology helps.¹³

Small words count, too. When 1,118 people read about a hurt such as a broken promise, apologies that named who or what did the harm (“I’m sorry I offended you”) left a better impression of the person apologizing than ones that left it out (“I’m sorry you were offended”).¹⁴

Then back it up. In three studies of married couples and people who were dating, amends by the partner who caused a betrayal went with more forgiveness, and both went with the betrayal getting resolved.¹⁵ Women who stayed after a partner’s affair described the apology the same way: necessary, but not enough without changed behavior behind it.¹²

Watch for evidence, and give your feelings time to catch up: your partner does what they say, tells you things before you have to ask, and answers your questions without getting defensive, week after week.

Finding out can feel less like a fight and more like a trauma. The affair-recovery treatment mentioned above was modeled on recovery from interpersonal trauma, and its authors describe hurt partners’ reactions as often including rage, shame, depression, trouble concentrating and replaying what happened over and over.¹¹ A review of infidelity research links it to poorer mental health, especially depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.⁵ Those reactions are common, not a sign you’re overreacting. Look after the basics, like sleep, food and one friend who knows, which is part of that treatment’s first stage,¹¹ and consider a therapist of your own.

Checking is normal, too. Trust researchers expect people to set up deliberate tests when something unexpected or suspicious makes them question their partner.³ Over time, the aim is to need fewer of them. The women interviewed after a partner’s affair described learning to trust themselves as well, including trusting that they could resist the urge to check up on every move.¹²

Forgiveness is a separate question, and it’s yours: it isn’t owed, and it isn’t the same as staying. In two studies of married couples, forgiveness turned out to be several things rather than one: easing off the urge to get even, feeling goodwill again and, in the second study, easing off the urge to keep your distance.¹⁷ You might let go of the urge to get even long before the goodwill arrives, and that’s fine.

When you’re both ready (and not before), rebuilding warmth matters too. Our guide to emotional intimacy and these deep questions for couples are gentle ways back in.

Longer than either of you would like, and no one can honestly give you a number: we found no study that sets a timeline for rebuilding trust. What research offers instead is a few landmarks.

Forgiveness, which isn’t trust but is a close cousin, moves fastest early. In a study that followed 372 college students for weeks after a recent hurt, including cheating partners, forgiveness rose quickly at first and then more slowly,¹⁸ so later progress is real even when it’s harder to notice.

The structured help that’s been studied runs for months, not weeks. The affair-recovery treatment is built for about 26 sessions over six months,¹¹ and in the couple therapy trial mentioned earlier, couples had up to 26 sessions, with the last one about 35 weeks in on average.⁶

It can keep improving long after that. In the five-year follow-up, couples who stayed married after infidelity didn’t differ in satisfaction or stability from couples without it, and couples who stayed together grew more satisfied over time either way.¹⁰ The researchers saw two paths: some couples kept getting better, while others got markedly worse and divorced.¹⁰

Things that slow it down:

• New lies, even tiny ones. After lies, promises lose some of their power.⁹
• Defensiveness. Every “yes, but” restarts the clock. If your talks keep sliding into criticism, defensiveness, contempt or stonewalling, our guide to the four horsemen shows what to do instead.
• Secret contact. A hidden text is a fresh breach, not a slip.
• Pressure to be over it. Rushing the hurt partner toward forgiveness can backfire on them, as the last section explains.
• Small letdowns that pile up. Trust can also wear away through minor disappointments that add up, researchers suggest.² If one of you keeps “not being good at” shared jobs, our guide to weaponized incompetence explains the pattern.

Couples therapy is worth trying when you’re stuck: the same fight keeps coming back, the questions never get real answers, or one of you wants to rebuild and the other isn’t sure. The research on it is encouraging, though thinner than you’d hope.¹⁰

In a clinical trial of marital therapy with 134 married couples, the 14 whose affair came out before or during therapy started out more distressed than couples without an affair, improved at least as fast, and by the end looked like other distressed couples on average.⁶ Most of the 5 couples who kept an affair secret fared poorly, and the authors stress that 19 infidelity couples is a small group.⁶ A larger study of everyday couple therapy in Germany and Austria found a similar pattern: 145 couples dealing with infidelity started out more distressed than 385 couples in therapy for other reasons, kept improving for six months after therapy, and by then were statistically indistinguishable from them.¹⁹

The affair-recovery treatment described above was tested with only six couples and no comparison group, so it’s a promising start rather than proof: most of the couples were less distressed by the end, and the hurt partners reported more forgiveness.¹¹ Some therapists use named approaches. John and Julie Gottman, for example, train therapists in a three-phase model for affairs they call atone, attune and attach.²⁰

Fit matters. Among the 11 women interviewed after a partner’s affair (8 of them mental health professionals themselves), couple therapy got mixed reviews: half of those who tried it didn’t find it helpful, one described a therapist who wanted to stop talking about the affair after the first session, and others found it essential.¹² Look for a licensed couples therapist with real experience treating infidelity, one who makes room for the hurt and keeps both of you safe. Therapy on your own can help either of you, too.

Rebuilding trust only makes sense once the reasons for distrust have stopped. If the lies continue, the affair goes on or the same harm keeps happening, trust isn’t the thing that needs fixing, and choosing not to rebuild is a real, valid outcome.

Research on forgiveness shows why. In a study of 72 newlywed couples over their first two years, being more forgiving went with staying more satisfied when a partner was rarely negative toward them, but with steeper drops in satisfaction when a partner was often negative.²¹ And in the same couples followed for four years, spouses who tended to forgive saw their partner’s psychological and physical aggression hold steady, while less forgiving spouses saw it decline.²²

Forgiving before amends can also cost you. Across four studies, forgiving went with higher self-respect when the other person had shown the forgiver would be safe and valued, for example by making amends, but with lower self-respect and a shakier sense of self when they hadn’t, a pattern the researchers called the doormat effect.²³

None of this tells you whether to stay or go, and no article can. Even the affair-recovery treatment described earlier ends with the couple making an informed decision about how to move on, and if they part, the last sessions help them do it in the least hurtful way.¹¹ Whatever you choose, you’re allowed to choose it slowly.