6 Ways to Restore Sexual Intimacy After Infidelity

If you are in the unfortunate and very painful circumstance of dealing with infidelity within your relationship but are choosing to go ahead and stay with your partner, one of the major aspects you will notice is the profound effect that the affair has on your sexual intimacy.

In most cases, sexual intimacy will go one way or the other, either the betrayed spouse will seek copious amounts of sex as a way to deal with their intense pain or there will be a fear of intimacy.

A fear of intimacy will coincide with behaviors that create tension, such as losing interest in sexuality, being overly critical of your partner, feeling resistance at being close, withholding affection, or becoming paranoid and indifference to affection or positive acknowledgement.

In this article, we will take a look at six ways you can use to help restore sexual intimacy after infidelity once you have decided to go ahead in staying with your partner.

Step One: Choose to Address The Unworthiness That You May Feel.

This is aimed at the unfaithful partner, who, if truly remorseful for their actions, will feel a sense of guilt, shame, and unworthiness in their sexual intimacy with their partner.

This struggle will come about because either the affair hasn’t ended or they are grieving because they have lost their affair partner or rather the loss of their feelings that they had towards the affair partner.

To get beyond the unworthiness that one may feel, there must be a lot of inner reflection, acceptance, and remorse towards themselves. If you are the partner that has been betrayed, you too will feel unworthy and perhaps disgusted which can lead you to not wanting to engage in sexual intimacy – rightly so.

Please remember that your partner’s affair is more than likely a result of them enjoying the attention they got and the reflection they received of themselves in the eyes of another. It does not necessarily have anything to do with you, however, this line of inquiry should be followed up in therapy.

Step Two: Do Not Compare Yourself.

It is very easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to the affair partner. Unfortunately, as one would have it, everyone is unique, and each individual has their strengths and weaknesses. You are always going to find someone that is sexier, prettier, or funnier.

Comparing yourself is setting yourself up for failure.

To get beyond this, you must understand that you are loved and found desirable by your partner, not because you are better than someone else, but because you are strong and unique.

Step Three: Understand That Restoring Intimacy is a “We” Issue.

When it comes to fear of intimacy, it is not the betrayed spouse’s problem and it is not the unfaithful partner’s problem; it is a couple’s problem.

In order to restore sexual intimacy after infidelity, both individuals need to connect on a deeper level, comfort one another, heal, reconcile, build self-esteem, express love in a profound way to one another, and choose to make one another feel attractive, sexy, and valued.

Step Four: Do Not Consider Sexual Intimacy as Direct Reconciliation

Although having sexual intimacy after infidelity is critical in terms of bringing the couple back together, it should not be considered a direct reconciliation with one another. If sexual intimacy is put on hold for too long, it can be hard to heal and thus, sexual intimacy is a tool for helping the healing and recovery process.

Having sex does NOT mean that everything is good, and all is forgiven though. Understand this loud and clear.

Step Five: Discuss Sex Openly With Your Partner

It is very important that if one or both individuals are experiencing a fear of intimacy that it is discussed with one another in an open, honest, and non-judgemental fashion.

If you are finding that you are able to have intimate times but have issues during intimacy, do not bring them up while engaged in sex. If you need to stop engaging in intimacy at that point in time, do so in a polite and non-criticizing way.

Then choose to have an open discussion with your partner about the issues you are experiencing.

Step Six: Focus on What Drew You Together in the First Place

Explore what attracted you to one another originally. What were those initial experiences all about, what were the things you enjoyed together, and what type of dates did you go on?

Review these beginning moments as a way to see why you both began to trust one another in the first place. You can do this by getting out old photographs, writing out date lists, looking at timelines, and revisiting old places.

Why do this?

This will help heal the emotional traumas by allowing you to choose to reinvest into your relationship. Reconciliation and healing will need to come first before sexual intimacy can really take hold.