Posted on 4th January, 2023 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

It’s crazy. You thought you knew your partner. You thought the relationship was in a decent place. Sure, you have your fights from time to time. But this? How could they have cheated on you? […]

Posted on 2nd June, 2022 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

You cheated on your partner. You feel terrible. Between the guilt, the fear of discovery, the anger at yourself, and the rest of the crazy feelings, you don’t want to go on with the secret. […]

Posted on 5th May, 2022 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

If you’ve discovered that your partner has been having an affair, you may feel like your whole world has been rocked; your illusions have been shattered; your emotional life has been devastated. It is a heavy blow to bear, and for many people it spells the end of the relationship or marriage.

One of the hardest questions a person asks themselves when they find out about their partner’s infidelity is, “can he cheat and still love me?”

Posted on 5th May, 2021 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

At the end of the day, the decision whether to tell your family is up to you. It is wise to consider the pros and cons before making such a choice. Pros include family support and helpful outside perspectives. Cons include the ramifications for the future of your relationship, and the possibility of getting “help” you don’t want, including pressure and judgment, from your loved on.

Posted on 6th April, 2021 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

Okay, so you blew it. You stepped outside your relationship and had an affair. And you feel terrible about it. Now what? Do you tell your partner what happened? Move on and hope they never […]

Posted on 26th January, 2021 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

False. Well, that was easy, right? Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that. Life is not black and white. So let’s understand what we’re looking at here. For the purposes of this post I […]

Posted on 22nd July, 2020 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

Infidelity is as old as the institutions it violates. Many, many people throughout history have been hurt by a partner’s choice to step outside the boundaries of their relationship. Understandably, many betrayed partners are plagues […]

Posted on 22nd July, 2019 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

In our last post I offered some ideas on how parents can go about reconnecting with adult children who have become distant and disconnected. In this post I’d like to talk a bit more about […]

Posted on 29th October, 2018 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

Crushed. Devastated. Hopeless. These are some of the emotions you may be experiencing if you have recently discovered that your partner has been having an affair.

Posted on 27th July, 2016 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

If you’ve just discovered your boyfriend or husband watching porn online – perhaps extensively – you may be feeling shock, anger, disappointment, betrayal, and more.  You also may be confused about what this means for […]

Posted on 31st May, 2016 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

When someone has an affair and is discovered or comes clean on their own, their instinct is often to soften the blow and/or minimize the damage, especially if they still care about their partner and […]

Posted on 10th December, 2015 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

A common dynamic that I encounter in doing marriage counseling is that one partner will want to convince the other of some aspect of him/herself and get frustrated/angry/hopeless when they can’t seem to do so. […]

Posted on 19th October, 2015 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

In the short video below, renowned relationships researcher John Gottman discusses recent findings on the science of trust.  Significantly, he explains that betrayal is not the opposite of trust, and that one of the key […]

Posted on 24th September, 2015 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

In the wake of the Ashley Madison leak, I got a lot of questions from friends and colleagues about the extent of the infidelity problem in America (at least, for those who consider it a […]

Posted on 23rd January, 2015 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

Here’s another article I wrote on managing a relationship after an affair – this one directed at the cheater: https://www.wellness.com/blog/13274483/how-to-recover-from-an-affair-when-you-re-the-cheater/raffi-bilek Learn more about our work with couples and infidelity here.

Posted on 15th December, 2014 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

An affair is often thought of as a death blow to a marriage –the worst thing that could possibly happen to the relationship, from which there can be no recovery. The truth is that a […]

Posted on 8th October, 2014 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

It is commonly thought that adultery is a certain death blow to a marriage. After all, what could possibly do more injury to a relationship than an affair? It strikes us as the worst thing […]

Posted on 3rd September, 2014 By Raffi Bilek, LCSW-C

Many people aren’t sure how to answer this question. When a married man is sending inappropriate text messages to another woman (or vice versa), does that “count” as an affair? The answer is really a […]