Here is a list of my personal recommendations after years of experience support literally thousands through affair recovery: Best books for healing after infidelity.
“I believe in you and your ability to think for yourself. One of the biggest keys to healing from affairs is educating yourself about affairs. Knowledge is power. The more you understand, the more healed you’ll be. As you read, take what works for you and disregard the rest. This is your healing journey.”
— Anne Bercht
Discovering infidelity can feel emotionally devastating. Many betrayed spouses experience betrayal trauma, emotional shock, obsessive thinking, anxiety, panic, and confusion after discovering an affair. One of the most healing things you can do during this time is educate yourself.
Over the years, thousands of people recovering from infidelity through Beyond Affairs have shared which books helped them most. This list combines those recommendations with the books that personally helped me, both in healing my own marriage after infidelity and in helping others professionally for decades.
Not every book will resonate with every person. Some are faith-based. Some focus more on psychology, trauma, communication, forgiveness, boundaries, or rebuilding trust after cheating. Take what helps you and leave the rest.
Many of these books became life-changing resources not only for healing after infidelity, but for becoming healthier, wiser, and emotionally stronger people overall.
Best Overall Books for Healing After Infidelity
My Husband’s Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me — Anne and Brian Bercht
This book shares our personal story of surviving and healing after infidelity. It was written to help people understand both the devastation of betrayal and the possibility of healing and rebuilding after an affair.
My Husband’s Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me by Anne and Brian Bercht
How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair — Linda MacDonald
A must-read for the spouse who acted unfaithfully. Short, practical, and incredibly insightful, this book clearly explains what betrayed spouses need emotionally in order to heal after infidelity.
If followed sincerely, this book can save couples tremendous additional pain.
How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair by Linda MacDonald
NOT “Just Friends” — Shirley Glass
This remains one of the most respected books ever written on emotional and physical affairs and rebuilding trust after infidelity. Shirley Glass explains how emotional boundaries slowly erode and why emotional affairs are often far more dangerous than people realize.
This is still one of my all-time favorite affair recovery books.
Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass
Love Must Be Tough — Dr. James Dobson
One of the best books I’ve seen on how to firmly and lovingly insist that an unfaithful spouse end contact with the affair partner. This book especially helps betrayed spouses stop operating from fear and desperation.
Love Must Be Tough by Dr. James Dobson
The Five Languages of Apology — Gary Chapman
This book will spare couples in affair recovery a lot of unnecessary grief. Often apologies are not received or even acknowledged because we do not understand our partner’s language of apology.
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Getting Past the Affair — Douglas Snyder, Donald Baucom & Kristina Gordon
One of the most balanced, sensible, and complete guides for couples healing after infidelity. This book offers practical direction whether you ultimately rebuild the marriage or not.
If you could afford only one “how-to” recovery resource, this would be one of my top recommendations.
Getting Past the Affair by Snyder, Baucom & Gordon
The Secrets of Surviving Infidelity — Scott Haltzman, MD
This is one of the best practical recovery books for both betrayed and unfaithful spouses. Dr. Haltzman helps couples move beyond arguing over definitions and semantics toward actual healing and rebuilding.
The Secrets of Surviving Infidelity by Scott Haltzman, MD
Can My Marriage Be Saved — Mae Chambers & Erika Chambers
True stories of saved marriages.
Can My Marriage Be Saved by Mae Chambers & Erika Chambers
After the Affair — Janis Abrahms Spring
A highly respected classic on affair recovery that helps couples understand the emotional stages of healing after betrayal. Also written by someone who has personally experienced marital betrayal, Janis.
After the Affair by Janis Abrahms Spring
Best Books for Betrayed Spouses
Shattered Vows — Debra Laaser
A compassionate and insightful resource for betrayed wives, particularly when sexual addiction or repeated betrayal is involved.
Codependent No More — Melody Beattie
Affair recovery often exposes unhealthy relationship patterns, over-giving, enabling, lack of boundaries, and people-pleasing tendencies. This book can help people begin reclaiming emotional health and self-respect.
Codependent No More by Melody Beattie
The Gifts of Imperfection — Brené Brown
Many betrayed spouses place enormous pressure on themselves trying to be “good enough.” Brené Brown’s work helps people move toward self-worth, authenticity, and emotional freedom.
The Gfts of Imperfection by Brené Brown
How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It — Patricia Love and Steven Stosny
A very insightful book on emotional triggers, fears, and emotional disconnection within relationships. Interestingly, this book explains the principles in the popular Christian book by Emmerson Eggerichs, “Love & Respect” but from a different angle, and backed up by sound research. It helps to explain how a man so easily rolls into debilitating shame, and a woman easily feels inner panic at the loss of emotional connection.
How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It by Patrick Love and Steven Stosney
Shattered Dreams — Larry Crab
A brilliant and honest book, with real life stories, to help you deal with, well, your shattered dreams. It looks how life sometimes just doesn’t turn out anything like we thought it would, and how to grieve, deal with the unhelpful things well-meaning “friends” often say, and how to eventually accept and live well again.
Shattered Dreams by Larry Crab
Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) — Tavris & Aronson
Explains self-deception, rationalization, and how people justify hurtful behavior to themselves.
In many ways, this book helps explain the psychology behind affair fog.
Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Tavris & Aronson
Best Books for Spouses Who Have Acted Unfaithfully
How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair — Linda MacDonald
A must-read for the spouse who acted unfaithfully. Short, practical, and incredibly insightful, this book clearly explains what betrayed spouses need emotionally in order to heal after infidelity.
If followed sincerely, this book can save couples tremendous additional pain.
How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair by Linda MacDonald
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy — David Burns
One of the hardest parts of betrayal trauma is dealing with obsessive thoughts, emotional flooding, anxiety, and depression. This book provides extremely practical tools for managing destructive thinking patterns.
We recommend this book constantly.
Feeling Good by David D. Burns, MD
Top 5 Marriage Books That Belong in Every Couples Library
Love & Respect — Emerson Eggerichs
One of the top relationship books I recommend to married couples. The central concepts are profound and have helped many couples understand destructive relationship cycles more clearly.
I cried through much of this book because it was one of the few books I felt could genuinely have impacted my marriage before the affair happened.
Love & Respect by Emerson Eggerichs
The Five Love Languages — Gary Chapman
A classic relationship book that helps couples better understand emotional connection and how people experience love differently.
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Getting the Love You Want — Harville Hendrix
One of the most respected relationship books ever written. Excellent for understanding emotional patterns within marriage.
Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix
His Needs, Her Needs — Willard Harley
A very helpful relationship book, although I caution betrayed spouses not to fall into “super need-meeter” mode believing they can control another person’s behavior by perfectly meeting needs. Affairs are not always caused by unmet needs.
Also a caution here, in that some readers will find the book dated, as it relies heavily on traditional marriage roles – the husband as leader and provider, the wife as stay-at-home-mom. That said, there seems to be a new version by Willard Harley’s son, which I haven’t read yet. Perhaps it is culturally updated.
His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley, Jr
The Seven Desires of Every Heart — Mark & Debra Laaser
After healing their own marriage after Mark’s battle with sexual addiction, which became very public and devastating, Mark and Debra went on to not only heal, but help many others through their ministry, “Faithful and True.” This book lays a foundation upon which they built their own healing, but could’ve prevented the infidelity in the first place.
The Seven Desires of Every Heart by Mark & Debra Laaser
Best Books for Dealing with Sexual Addiction
Your Brain on Porn — Gary Wilson
This book looks at pornography and the effects it has on your brain- and consequently the body. The book is not overly technical, but easily explains to the layperson how the brain is rewired and detrimentally changed by porn. Wilson is not a Christian, and does not address the morality of porn, simply the havoc pornography reaps on all who are seduced by it. I like this book because men who feel they “can’t live without it” are often numbed to the sickening depravity of the porn industry. They are so enamored with the high it gives, that morality has long been abandoned. When they realize how much it destroys their own sexual gratification it lessens the deluded fantasy that “porn does not really hurt anyone.” For the spouse of a sex addict, it thoroughly demonstrates their sexual addiction is a brain problem of the addict.
Your Brain on Porn by Gary Wilson
Worthy of Her Trust: What You Need to Do to Rebuild Sexual Integrity and Win Her Back — Stephen Arterburn & Jason B. Martinkus
How can you ever trust a sex ADDICT? This book gives practical steps to re-building trust. The amends matrix in the book is powerful. It shows the betrayer how to daily acknowledge the myriad of wounds that repeatedly surface throughout the day due to sexual infidelity/addiction. When the spouse who acted unfaithfully has put in all the work to rebuild trust over time, refusal of trust is a miserable prison. It masquerades as safety, but the fear, withdrawal, and anxiety refusal of trust requires, kills you. Be brave. Read the book. Let them earn trust back over time, so you can be free.
Every Man’s Battle — Stephen Arterburn & Fred Stoeker
This is a faith based sexual addiction recovery guide. For those that are stuck in the throws of trying to stop acting out sexually, and failing repeatedly, this book offers practical help. It shows sex addicts step by step processes on how to disrupt the habitual behavior patterns that lead to acting out. So many Christian books offer such a high level view of sex addiction that they fail to offer practical help -this was a refreshing change. The effort you put into this material is what you will get out of it. If you read the book, do the workbook, it is invaluable. A helpful note: the 20th anniversary edition includes the workbook, older copies do not.
Every Man’s Battle — Stephen Arterburn & Fred Stoeker
Best Books for Rebuilding Trust After Cheating
Torn Asunder — Dave Carder
Written by a pastor with decades of experience helping couples recover from affairs, this book offers practical guidance for rebuilding trust and healing emotionally after betrayal. Dave Carder is a Pastor, who felt a personal calling to specialize in helping couples recover from infidelity.
Torn Asunder Workbook — Dave Carder
An excellent companion workbook for couples who want structured healing conversations and exercises.
Torn Asunder Workbook by Dave Carder
Best Books for Emotional Affairs
NOT “Just Friends” — Shirley Glass
Shirley Glass spent more than 30 years of her life helping couples heal from the painful aftermath of marital betrayal. She understands the dangers of “friendships” with members of the opposite sex and how easily such “friendships” can become affairs, even if both parties didn’t initially think it ever would. This is one of the best books for understanding and healing from emotional affairs.
NOT “Just Friends” by Shirley Glass
Best Christian Books for Affair Recovery
Marriage Undercover — Bob & Audrey Meisner
A powerful real-life reconciliation story after infidelity and public scandal. Particularly meaningful for Christian readers. In this story, the wife was the one who acted unfaithfully and also became pregnant with the affair person’s child. With God’s power, no marriage restoration situation is impossible.
Marriage Undercover by Bob & Audrey Meisner
Avoiding Greener Grass Syndrome: How to Grow Affair-Proof Hedges Around Your Marriage — Nancy C. Anderson
Nancy was a Christian Wife who acted unfaithfully, something she once imagined she never would or could. She and her husband went on to restore their marriage. She offers practical Christian help for affair recovery and almost more importantly, affair prevention.
Avoiding Greener Grass Syndrome by Nancy C. Anderson
Best Books for Boundaries, Self-Esteem & Personal Growth
Good Boundaries and Goodbyes — Lysa Terkeurst
One of the most loved books by betrayed spouses. Heartfelt and solid help from one to another, yet Lysa’s guidance comes with sound professionalism. It’s not just someone’s opinions.
Good Boundaries and Goodbyes by Lysa Terkeurst
Boundaries — Henry Cloud & John Townsend
Learning healthy boundaries is often one of the most important parts of healing after infidelity.
Boundaries by Henry Cloud & John Townsend
Love Is a Choice — Hemfelt, Minirth & Meier
One of the most practical books for understanding codependency, unhealthy relationship patterns, and emotional growth.
Love is a Choice by Hemfelt, Minirth & Meier
Love Without Hurt: Turn Your Resentful, Angry or Emotionally Abusive Relationship Into a Compassionate, Loving One – Steven Stosney
Steven Stosney is one of America’s foremost experts on understanding abusive anger, especially in men, and what both the wife and husband can do to overcome this highly destructive pattern. Dr. Steven Stosney explains the many forms of verbally and emotionally volatile relationships. My clients are not in physically abusive relationships, but they are often in “walking on eggshells” relationships, where anger from one is silencing the voice of the other. This book is a must-read for any man or woman in an emotionally abusive relationship.
Love Without Hurt by Steven Stosney
Redeeming the Post-Affair Divorce — Linda J MacDonald
Finally, the best book I have ever seen for those who end up facing an unwanted divorce after infidelity
Redeeming the Post-Affair Divorce by Linda J MacDonald
Best Marriage & Relationship Books
Why Marriages Succeed or Fail — John Gottman
John Gottman is renowned for his “Love Lab” at the University of Washington in Seattle, where he has studied couples and relationships for more than 30 years. He can predict within 5 minutes whether a couple will make it or not. He offers sound guidance on what to do and what not to do, if you want your marriage to succeed.
Why Marriages Succeed or Fail by John Gottman
Sacred Marriage — Gary Thomas
A much deeper and more insightful book than the title initially suggests. This book challenges people to grow emotionally and spiritually through marriage rather than simply pursuing happiness.
Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas
The Passion Trap — Dean C. Delis, Ph.D.
There is a push and a pull in relationships – pursuing and being pursued. Healthy marriages find a balance here. However, many marriages, especially when dealing with infidelity are out of balance. That won’t work. Many betrayed spouses have found this book to be a game-changer in saving their marriage.
The Passion Trap by Dean C. Delis, Ph.D.
His Needs, Her Needs — Willard Harley
A very helpful relationship book, although I caution betrayed spouses not to fall into “super need-meeter” mode believing they can control another person’s behavior by perfectly meeting needs. Affairs are not always caused by unmet needs.
Also a caution here, in that some readers will find the book dated, as it relies heavily on traditional marriage roles – the husband as leader and provider, the wife as stay-at-home-mom. That said, there seems to be a new version by Willard Harley’s son, which I haven’t read yet. Perhaps it is culturally updated.
His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley, Jr
Getting the Love You Want — Harville Hendrix
One of the most respected relationship books ever written. Excellent for understanding emotional patterns within marriage. Could it be that a subconscious part of us will be attracted to a person who in a certain sense is least likely to meet our needs, but in the exact same sense has the capacity to bring healing to the parts of us that were broken in childhood? This book explains.
Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix
Hold Me Tight — Dr. Sue Johnson
An outstanding book for couples wanting to rebuild emotional safety and connection after infidelity.
Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson
Best Books on Communication & Conflict
Why Aren’t You More Like Me — Dr. Ken Keis
This book explores the four basic personality types, their needs, fears, compatibility strengths and weaknesses with other styles, and each types top values. While written in business language for business relationships it applies to marriage relationships and is foundational for the level of communication it takes for couples to heal from infidelity.
Why Aren’t You More Like Me by Dr. Ken Keis
The Power of Two — Susan Heitler
One of the clearest and most practical books I’ve ever read on healthy communication. This book explains complex communication struggles in a remarkably understandable way.
If my husband and I had this resource during our affair recovery, it would have significantly shortened our healing process.
The Power of Two by Susan Heitler
The Dance of Anger — Harriet Lerner
One of the best books to help you process your anger in healthy ways, understand it, and stop the unhealthy fighting and communication cycles that aren’t getting you anywhere. Very practical, and well written.
The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner
Best Books for Understanding Sexual Intimacy
The Sex Starved Marriage — Michelle Weiner Davis
While it’s not every couples story, unfortunately it’s much more common than you think. One of the best kept secrets in America is that 75% of couples experience significant problems in their sex life. That’s sad. This book offers real, practical guidance to restore and enjoy sexual intimacy together.
The Sex Starved Marriage by Michelle Weiner Davis
Mating in Captivity — Esther Perel
A thought-provoking exploration of intimacy, desire, long-term relationships, and emotional disconnection. Big CAUTION here. This is not a good book for any betrayed spouse early on the journey. It will make you angry, because it doesn’t come from the moral perspective that affairs are always wrong – and in places almost implies they are good for the marriage. I DO NOT AGREE WITH EVERYTHING, Esther writes. That said, I believe that she has stumbled upon the “elephant in the room” when it comes to understanding why 75% of married couples in America struggle significantly in their sex life.
Mating in Captivity by Esther Perez
Best Books on Forgiveness
Forgiving What You Can’t Forget — Lysa Terkeurst
I’ve read a lot of great books on forgiveness (and some not so good ones). This is by far the best. Lysa has personally lived through her husband’s cheating, and after trying hard to reconcile, the unwanted subsequent divorce. She truly leads you through an honest healing journey, and how to survive and thrive on the other side.
Forgiving What You Can’t Forget by Lysa Terkeurst
The Book of Forgiving — Desmond and Mpho Tutu
Before, Lysa Terkeurst wrote her book on forgiveness, this was my favorite. So now it’s my 2nd favorite. Desmond and Mpho lived through an unspeakable betrayal and trauma. They share their courageous story of forgiveness and healing on the other side with plenty of practical insights for readers.
The Book of Forgiving by Desmond and Mpho Tutu
Forgive for Good — Dr. Fred Luskin
I’m not one to give up on a couple easily, but I came pretty near with one particular couple. Reading this book became their game-changer. They went on to not only heal after infidelity, but forgive and build a much stronger marriage on the other side. Since it’s been a game changer for many others as well. Learn how to stop giving the person/s who hurt you rental space in your brain that they don’t deserve.
Forgive for Good by Dr. Fred Luskin
FAQ’s
What are the best books for healing after infidelity?
Some of the most recommended books for affair recovery include NOT “Just Friends” by Shirley Glass, Getting Past the Affair, How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair, and Forgiving What You Can’t Forget by Lysa Terkeurst.
What books help betrayed spouses heal?
Initially a book that describes a true story written by a betrayed husband or a betrayed wife, or a couple who has healed their marriage after infidelity, because you need to know that you are not alone – someone else understands how you feel. Then books focused on betrayal trauma, emotional healing, boundaries, communication, and rebuilding self-worth are often most helpful for betrayed spouses.
What books help couples rebuild trust after cheating?
Books that focus on honesty, communication, emotional safety, affair recovery, and long-term relationship rebuilding are often most effective.
Should both spouses read affair recovery books?
Yes. Betrayed and unfaithful spouses often need very different insights and healing tools during affair recovery. Reading together can also create understanding and healthier communication.
Healing after infidelity is not a straight line. Some days you will feel strong and hopeful. Other days you may feel emotionally exhausted and discouraged. Be patient with yourself.
The good news is this:
many people not only survive infidelity, but eventually become wiser, healthier, emotionally stronger, and more authentic because of what they learned through the process.
Knowledge truly is power.
By Anne Bercht