I Had an Affair and Can't Stop Feeling Guilty

The affair has ended, and this time it's over for good.

Maybe you decided to end it, or the outcome wasn't by choice. You may be in couples therapy now trying to rebuild, or a separation or divorce is already in process. Whatever the circumstances that closed this chapter — the immediate distress has been slowly decreasing, decisions to be made are done or in progress, the affair itself is behind you and the situation feels somewhat more contained.

But the guilt is still ever present.

Why You Can't Stop Feeling Guilty

There's an assumption that once next steps are being taken — once you're further from your last contact with this person and working through the aftermath — you should be able to pick up and keep going.

For many people, that's not their reality when guilt feels unrelenting. Even though:

You've done everything you were supposed to do. You've taken accountability. You've "faced the consequences."

And yet the guilt continues to run in the background — surfacing when the opportunity arises. You've tried locking it away because no one wants to hear about it, and you'd rather its pain be wiped out of existence.

But locking something away does not mean it's resolved. And that may be exactly what you're asking yourself — why won't it just go away?

The Shame Underneath the Guilt

What makes shame harder to parcel out from guilt is that although it can arrive alongside the guilt, it's a more private pain — where the thought of expressing it openly feels unimaginable.

This is because shame lives in the negative beliefs you hold about who you are as a person — not just in having had the affair, but in what you believe it reveals about you fundamentally. And shame didn't start because of the affair. Shame was most likely already present, rooted in your life's experiences — imprinting such beliefs as viewing yourself as defective, not good enough, not OK as you are, or unworthy of love.

These beliefs didn't form in adulthood. They were cultivated in the relational experiences of childhood, in what was modeled, in what was said and what wasn't, in the moments that taught you what you were allowed to need and what you weren't. By the time you reached adulthood they became indistinguishable from your true self. And they became the lens through which you saw yourself and your autopilot in how you live in the world around you.

What the affair did was exacerbate those shame-based beliefs — giving them a reason to feel true in the present, when they are really connected to what your experiences in your history led you to believe about yourself.

This is what our work focuses on — processing the shame that's held in the body and mind, and its related experiences — not just in what you understand about them intellectually — so you can be free of the self-judgments that have shaped how you see yourself.

Brainspotting is one of the primary tools I draw on — a brain and body based approach that accesses and processes experiences that talk therapy alone doesn't always reach.

You don't have to keep the guilt and shame private. I work with women in midlife living in the emotionally complex and multilayered aftermath of their infidelity. I offer online therapy in New York, New Jersey, and Florida.