Dr Kathy Nickerson

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Laguna Beach, CA
Dr Kathy Nickerson

Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Author, Affair Recovery & Infidelity Specialist
More at: https://linktr.ee/drkathynickerson

12/18/2025

After an affair, it is not enough to just say you are sorry. If you cheated, you need to express genuine remorse to your partner, you need to be very safe and consistent and predictable for them. You also need to focus on exploring the root causes for why you engaged in infidelity. Then you need to show your partner changing behaviors and demonstrate that you are truly committed to making sure an affair never happens again. I hope this helps you, I believe in you, keep going! It absolutely is possible to recover from an affair or infidelity.

12/18/2025

Betrayed partners need to talk about their pain. And if you want your best shot at healing together as a couple, one of the most powerful things you can do for them is listen.

The trauma of betrayal brings many intense, sometimes conflicting feelings along with it for betrayed partners. Anger. Sadness. Confusion. Shock. Fear. As the one who strayed, you can make an incredible difference in their healing by listening to, validating, and reassuring them when those feelings arise.

Talking about feelings doesn't come easily to everyone. I get that. For you, it's probably uncomfortable or even painful to reflect on that time, and your first instinct might be to shut down and avoid it entirely. But ignoring those feelings and pretending they don't exist won't make them go away. If anything, it will just make them worse — for both of you.

By listening to them and making space for their pain, you are proving that you love them, that you want to heal from this, and that you are someone they can feel safe with again 💜

12/18/2025

It's one week until Christmas and 3 more nights of Hanukkah! Hoping you are enjoying the season. Please remember to take a moment for yourself, slow down, and be where your feet are. ❤️

12/17/2025

This is the video that I wish every cheating partner who wants to heal their relationship after an affair would watch on repeat! What betrayed partners really need is for their feelings to be heard and validated. Of course there are many other things that they need, but what's most important is for them to see that you hear and understand and care about their feelings. The formula for doing this is to listen, validate, and reassure. If you focus on doing this, you will rapidly accelerate your affair recovery journey. I hope this helps you and I wish you both the best!

12/16/2025

Sometimes a cheating partner leaves and we do not get any closure, this compounds our feeling of betrayal. we often wish that we could chase them and get the answers we need to put this behind us. Truth is they may not even know those answers because they have not done much self reflection to find those answers. So it's much better to give yourself the closure you seek after infidelity. You can learn about why people have affairs, I have a great blog post about this if you're curious, and try to answer your questions yourself. Hope this helps you on your affair recovery journey, sending you a big hug.

12/16/2025

Did you know that the PTSD from infidelity is worse than the PTSD from military combat? It's true, at least it's true for many people. I was talking to a veteran the other day who explained that the trauma he felt from discovering his wife's affair was far worse than the PTSD from combat. I started to think about a few reasons why this might be the case, and why affair recovery is so complicated. Let's talk about this a little bit further, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Wishing you all the best on your infidelity recovery journey.

12/12/2025

If you're having an affair, how do you know when it is limerence or when it's true love? This is a question that many cheating partners ask me and when I answer, I would ask you to look at the origin of your feelings. Are your feelings based in reality and real experiences or are they based in fantasy and projection? Limerence is about imagination and wishful thinking and projection. True love is rooted in real experiences and reciprocal feelings. So what do you think about this? are you struggling with Limerence? How do you think limerence is different from true love? Please remember that less than 2% of relationships that start as affairs turn into long-term relationships.

12/12/2025

When betrayal isn't just a one-time thing, you might be wondering if your partner could be dealing with compulsive behavior or an addiction. But the key isn't simply adding up the incidents. We really need to understand the underlying patterns, what's driving the behavior, and the potential emotional triggers behind it all. Here is how to tell the difference, and if you or someone you know is dealing with this, here is what you can do to find support 💜

12/11/2025

Replying to - I'm so sorry that you are going through this and that people are punishing you for choosing to stay after the affair. Even though most people do choose to reconcile after an affair, almost everybody tells them that this is a poor decision and questions their logic. I think people mean well, but they don't know what they don't know about betrayal. So if you have people who are giving you a hard time and you want to ask them to support you instead, here's what I suggest you say. Sending you a big hug on your infidelity recovery journey.

12/11/2025

After an affair, you may need to do some repair work with friends and family. I typically advise people to tell very few people about the affair because it makes healing more complicated, but sometimes people find out and sometimes we have to tell people to get the support we need. So if you cheated in your relationship and you are working to make things better, here's a script you can use to make things right with the family of your betrayed partner. Sending you a big hug!

12/09/2025

Your relationship will never be the same after an affair and we don't want it to be! We want it to be better. Before the affair, the cheating partner was struggling with a variety of things, including poor coping skills and difficulty regulating emotions. We want many of these issues to improve so that you can have a much better relationship after betrayal. If you're on this journey, please keep going, people can and do heal from it all the time. I believe in you!

12/06/2025

One good thing that came from my affair recovery journey, and the trauma I've been through in my life, is that I've done some good self reflection. I realized I was anxiously attached and I would chase my partner during fights for resolution. This made the conversations get bigger and worse, That darn anxious avoidant trap! So now I have one rule that really helps me and I hope it might help you too, whether you're healing from infidelity, cheating, or betrayal drama. I find a lot of people really struggle with falling into the anxious avoidant trap. Sending you a big hug.

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