Eroticism After Infidelity: Desire, Betrayal, and the Possibility of a Different Relationship
By Arin Clarke-Visser, MCP:AT, CCC
Infidelity can profoundly alter the experience of intimacy within a relationship. For the partner who discovers an affair, sexuality may become associated with comparison, rejection, deception, or the fear that they were somehow not enough. For the partner who had the affair, there may be guilt, shame, confusion, or a recognition that parts of their sexuality or identity had been neglected within the relationship. Some couples experience a renewed intensity of sexual desire after discovery, while others experience an abrupt or prolonged loss of desire.
There is considerable variability in these responses, and none of them should be treated as inherently healthier or more appropriate than another.
Esther Perel's work has been particularly influential in examining the relationship between infidelity, intimacy, and eroticism. In Mating in Captivity and The State of Affairs, Perel challenges the assumption that emotional intimacy and erotic desire operate according to the same psychological conditions. Her work suggests that long-term relationships involve a tension between our need for security and our desire for novelty, autonomy, mystery, and psychological distance.
This framework can be useful following an affair, but it requires a gentle approach. Understanding the erotic dynamics surrounding an affair is not the same as explaining the affair away. A relationship may have contained unmet needs, sexual difficulties, emotional distance, or significant relational strain. At the same time, the decision to deceive a partner remains the responsibility of the person who made it - and both realities can co-exist.
Infidelity changes the meaning of intimacy
The discovery of an affair is often experienced as a profound relational injury. Gordon, Baucom, and Snyder described infidelity as a “traumatic relationship event that can alter the way partners process information about one another and disrupt established patterns of interaction.” Their integrative treatment model emphasizes the cognitive, emotional, and behavioural consequences that can follow an affair.
This helps explain why a person may continue to experience distress even after the affair has ended.
The injured partner may become preoccupied with details, comparisons, timelines, or questions about what happened sexually. They may repeatedly revisit conversations or memories in an effort to establish a coherent understanding of the relationship. Sexual contact can become particularly complicated because it may activate both attachment and threat.
For some people, there is a temporary increase in sexual activity following discovery. The intensity of the crisis can produce a powerful desire for reassurance and closeness. For others, touch may feel unsafe or emotionally intolerable.
Neither response necessarily tells us whether a couple will ultimately recover.
Research examining couples who remain together following infidelity has found that injured and involved partners can have considerably different experiences of the recovery process, particularly around sexual relationships, responses to reminders of the affair, and needs for comfort. At the same time, both partners identify communication and the rebuilding of safety and trust as important components of recovery.
This is one reason that sexual reconnection cannot reasonably be treated as a requirement of reconciliation.
Perel's distinction between intimacy and eroticism
A central theme in Perel's work is that the conditions that support attachment are not always the same conditions that support erotic desire.
Long-term attachment tends to involve familiarity. We know our partner's routines, vulnerabilities, habits, responsibilities, and history. We develop a shared life. This familiarity can provide considerable psychological security, but it can also change the experience of eroticism.
Erotic desire can involve novelty, anticipation, imagination, separateness, and the experience of encountering another person as someone who remains somewhat unknowable. Perel's argument is not that intimacy destroys desire or that couples need emotional distance to have satisfying sex. Rather, she draws attention to a tension within long-term relationships: we want to feel deeply known and securely attached while also wanting to experience our partner as an autonomous, desirable person rather than simply as the familiar person with whom we organize our lives.
This tension becomes particularly relevant when considering an affair.
An affair often takes place outside the ordinary structure of domestic life. The people involved may encounter one another primarily in circumstances that are different from those of a long-term partnership. There may be anticipation, secrecy, fantasy, novelty, limited exposure to everyday responsibilities, and an opportunity to experience a different version of oneself. This does not necessarily mean that the affair relationship was more intimate, more compatible, or more authentic, but that the conditions surrounding it were different.
Novelty, desire, and the research
There is empirical support for some of the broader ideas underlying Perel's discussion of eroticism, although the research is more nuanced than the popular version of the argument sometimes suggests.
Research on sexual functioning has examined the effects of familiarity and novelty, with evidence that sexual arousal and desire can change in response to repeated exposure and novel stimuli. A review by Morton and Gorzalka found that sexual arousal and desire tended to decline with greater partner familiarity and increase in response to partner novelty, although these effects varied across studies and appeared to be more pronounced among men. These findings offer one explanation for the role novelty can play in sustaining erotic interest within long-term relationships, but they do not suggest that desire inevitably diminishes with familiarity. Rather, they raise a broader question about how couples continue to experience one another as developing, changing people over time.
Self-expansion theory offers one way of understanding this process. Self-expansion refers to experiences that broaden an individual's sense of self through new activities, perspectives, skills, and experiences. Research suggests that when couples engage in novel, self-expanding activities together, they may experience greater sexual desire and relationship satisfaction. More recent research suggests that part of this effect may come from seeing a familiar partner differently. Goss and colleagues found that self-expanding experiences were associated with sexual desire through both increased closeness and the experience of seeing one's partner in a new light.
Clinically, this distinction is important. Sustaining eroticism within a long-term relationship does not require creating artificial distance or introducing instability. It may instead involve allowing each person to continue developing as an individual and creating opportunities to encounter one another outside the familiar roles and routines of the relationship.
This becomes particularly relevant when considering infidelity. The goal is not to recreate the conditions that made an affair feel compelling, but to understand what the affair may have revealed about desire, identity, autonomy, novelty, or unmet relational needs without confusing that understanding with an explanation that excuses betrayal.
The affair partner can become a symbol.
For the betrayed partner, the affair partner can begin to occupy an outsized psychological space. They may become a point of comparison, representing everything the betrayed partner fears they are not: younger, more attractive, more sexually adventurous, more interesting, less demanding, more confident, or somehow more desirable.
This kind of comparison is understandable, particularly when the details of the affair have left the betrayed partner questioning their own desirability and the history of their relationship. Over time, however, it can become deeply corrosive. The relationship between the partner and the affair partner existed under very different circumstances from the primary relationship. It did not carry the same shared history, responsibilities, routines, vulnerabilities, or accumulated disappointments. The betrayed partner may therefore find themselves comparing the full complexity of a long-term relationship with another relationship that existed within a much narrower and often highly idealized context.
Recognizing this difference does not diminish the significance of the betrayal or the pain it has caused. It can, however, help create some separation between the question of "What happened?" and the much more personal and painful question of "What was wrong with me?"
They are not the same question.
An affair does not, in itself, establish that the betrayed partner was sexually inadequate, unattractive, emotionally deficient, or incapable of meeting their partner's needs. The choices made within the affair belong to the person who made them. Understanding the relational context may be important in therapy, but that context should not be confused with diminished responsibility for the betrayal.
There is also room for the experience of the involved partner
It is equally important to make room for the experience of the person who had the affair without minimizing the impact of their choices. An affair may have been accompanied by a powerful sense of aliveness. Someone may have felt desirable, sexually confident, spontaneous, independent, or more connected to parts of themselves that had become less accessible within their primary relationship. Those experiences may hold important psychological meaning, but they do not negate the deception, breach of trust, or harm experienced by the other partner.
Therapeutic exploration can therefore move beyond the question of whether the affair was simply "about the relationship" and consider what was happening within the person who entered into it. What did the affair allow them to experience? What had become inaccessible in their sense of self? What were they avoiding or seeking? What needs had become difficult to acknowledge or communicate? And why did secrecy become the way those needs were pursued?
These questions can help develop a fuller understanding of the circumstances surrounding an affair, but they should not be used to redistribute responsibility for the decision to the injured partner. Relational difficulties may provide context, but they do not cause someone to choose deception. Understanding the context of an affair and holding responsibility for the choice to have one are not competing positions, and both can be true.
Reconciliation is not synonymous with forgiveness
There can be considerable pressure on couples to decide quickly whether they are going to "work through" an affair. In practice, there is often value in allowing some time before making decisions about the future of the relationship. The period immediately following discovery can involve intense emotional and physiological reactivity. A person may not yet know whether they want to remain in the relationship, may move between wanting closeness and needing distance, or may feel certain about leaving one day and uncertain the next.
This does not necessarily represent pathological indecision. It can reflect the difficulty of making significant relational decisions while simultaneously trying to understand and process a profound rupture in trust and attachment. For some people, clarity develops only after the initial intensity of the discovery has begun to settle.
Research on couple therapy following infidelity suggests that recovery is possible for some couples, but that the process is neither simple nor uniform. Therapeutic approaches commonly focus on understanding the impact of the affair, establishing accountability, rebuilding trust and emotional safety, and examining aspects of the relationship that may be relevant to its future. Importantly, understanding those relational dynamics does not require assigning responsibility for the affair to both partners.
Recent research has also emphasized the value of understanding recovery from the perspectives of both the injured and involved partners, rather than assuming that there is a single pathway through infidelity. A 2026 international mixed-methods study involving more than 5,000 people affected by infidelity similarly highlighted the considerable variation in how people experience recovery and what they find helpful in therapy.
For some couples, this work may eventually support reconciliation. For others, it may provide the clarity needed to separate. Neither staying nor leaving is, in itself, evidence of therapeutic success or failure. The measure of the work is whether each person is able to understand what has happened, make informed choices, and move forward with greater clarity and agency.
What happens to sexuality after betrayal?
Sexuality often needs to be approached as its own area of healing rather than as a measure of whether a relationship is recovering. For an injured partner, sexual touch may no longer feel emotionally or physically safe. They may experience intrusive images or comparisons, difficulty becoming aroused, changes in orgasm, avoidance of sex, or, conversely, an increased desire for sexual contact and reassurance. These responses can fluctuate considerably over time, sometimes shifting from one extreme to the other.
There may also be grief for the sexual relationship that existed before the affair. Sex may have once represented intimacy, familiarity, reassurance, or a shared history, and the discovery of an affair can alter the meaning attached to those experiences. What once felt private or mutually understood may now be experienced through the knowledge that another sexual relationship existed alongside it.
For some couples, erotic reconnection eventually becomes part of rebuilding the relationship. This does not necessarily mean trying to restore the sexual relationship exactly as it was before. Once the reality of the affair has entered a relationship, that knowledge cannot simply be removed, and attempts to return to a previous sense of normal may not account for what has changed.
Instead, if a couple chooses to remain together, the question may become whether they can develop a sexual relationship that acknowledges what has happened while creating something that feels safe, mutual, and genuinely chosen. That process may take time, and it cannot be separated from the broader work of rebuilding trust, restoring agency, and determining what each partner wants from the relationship going forward.
Rebuilding eroticism requires choice
Eroticism depends, in part, on agency. After an affair, sexual connection can become complicated by the desire for reassurance, comparison with the affair partner, or a wish to restore a sense of closeness. A partner may find themselves wanting sex as a way of feeling chosen again, while another may need considerable time before sexual contact feels comfortable. Neither response needs to be understood as a problem. Similarly, the partner who had the affair may experience uncertainty about how to approach sexuality while trying to repair trust and understand what has happened.
Sexual reconnection is more likely to become meaningful when both partners have room to make genuine choices about intimacy, rather than feeling that sex needs to serve a particular purpose in the recovery process.
For some couples, this may eventually involve introducing greater novelty into their shared life. For others, it may mean creating more room for individuality, developing new interests, changing established relational roles, or allowing each person to be encountered outside the predictable routines of the relationship. Research on self-expansion supports the idea that novel experiences can contribute to relationship satisfaction and sexual desire, while research on individual self-expansion suggests that personal growth can also influence passion.
This does not mean that every couple needs to become more adventurous or sexually experimental. Novelty is not a treatment for betrayal. Rather, it is one possible part of creating a relationship in which both people continue to experience themselves and one another as psychologically alive, autonomous, and capable of change.
The relationship may not be the only thing that needs rebuilding
After an affair, much of the therapeutic attention understandably focuses on the relationship, but there is also an individual process.
The injured partner may need to rebuild a sense of self disrupted by comparison and betrayal, and the involved partner may need to develop a more coherent understanding of their own behaviour and take responsibility for the ways they managed desire, conflict, dissatisfaction, or vulnerability.
Both may need to reconsider assumptions they held about commitment, sexuality, autonomy, and what it means to be a long-term partner.
A relationship can survive an affair without returning to the way it was. In some cases, the most meaningful outcome is not a restoration of the previous relationship but the development of a relationship that is more explicit about boundaries, sexuality, individuality, expectations, and emotional responsibility.
In other cases, the healthiest outcome is separation, and good couple therapy should leave room for both.
There is no single correct response to infidelity
Infidelity is often discussed in binary terms: stay or leave, forgive or do not forgive, divorce or marriage. The psychological reality is considerably more complex. A person can remain deeply in love with their partner while also experiencing profound hurt, anger, grief, or a loss of trust. Someone may come to understand the circumstances surrounding an affair and still decide that the relationship is no longer one they wish to continue. Reconciliation does not require immediate forgiveness, and forgiveness, when it occurs, does not necessarily mean remaining together.
Research also suggests that remaining together after infidelity is not uncommon, although the available statistics vary considerably. A representative U.S. study using data from more than 16,000 participants found that more than half of people who reported extramarital sex had subsequently separated or divorced, meaning that a substantial proportion did not. In a five-year study of couples receiving behavioural couple therapy, some couples who had experienced infidelity remained together and showed increases in relationship satisfaction over time that were comparable to couples without infidelity, while other couples experienced significant deterioration and divorced. These findings are important because they challenge the assumption that an affair necessarily determines the future of a relationship in either direction.
The partner who had the affair may experience genuine remorse while also needing to examine the relational and personal circumstances that contributed to their choices. Understanding those circumstances is not the same as excusing the behaviour or shifting responsibility onto the injured partner. Similarly, choosing to remain together does not require viewing the affair as necessary, constructive, or beneficial to the relationship.
Research with couples who have remained together following an affair suggests that recovery is often shaped by the rebuilding of safety and trust, open and meaningful communication, commitment to the relationship, and the ability to respond to one another's needs. At the same time, partners may experience the recovery process very differently, particularly around sexuality, comfort, and responses to reminders of the affair.
A clinically useful approach makes room for these complexities without reducing the work to a question of who is right or whether the relationship should survive. The focus is on understanding the impact of the betrayal, the experiences and needs of each person, the choices that were made, and what each person wants moving forward. For some couples, this work supports reconciliation and the development of a different relationship. For others, it brings greater clarity that separation is the healthier choice.
Neither staying nor leaving is, in itself, evidence of therapeutic success or failure. The more meaningful measure is whether each person can understand what has happened, take responsibility for their own choices, make decisions with greater clarity, and move forward in a way that is consistent with their values and wellbeing.
Moving forward
Esther Perel's work is useful in this area because it asks questions that extend beyond the immediate facts of an affair. What happened to desire? What happened to the individual's sense of self? What did the affair make possible psychologically? What was missing, wanted, avoided, or unspoken? And what might intimacy and eroticism look like now?
Contemporary research adds important context to these questions. Infidelity can be experienced as a significant relational injury, and recovery often requires sustained attention to trust, communication, emotional processing, and accountability. At the same time, research on desire suggests that erotic connection within long-term relationships is not necessarily dependent upon perpetual novelty. Shared growth, new experiences, and the capacity to encounter a familiar partner in new ways may all contribute to maintaining desire.
For some couples, this becomes part of rebuilding a relationship after betrayal, and for others, the work is about understanding what happened, establishing boundaries, grieving the relationship, and moving forward separately.
There is no requirement to make the affair meaningful before you are allowed to acknowledge that it was painful, and there is also no requirement to return to the relationship you had before - whatever that means for you.
The more useful question may be what becomes possible once the immediate crisis has been understood: what kind of relationship, sexuality, boundaries, and sense of self do you want to build from here?
Further Reading
Perel, E. (2006).Mating in captivity: Unlocking erotic intelligence. Harper.
Perel, E. (2017).The state of affairs: Rethinking infidelity. Harper.
References
Atkins, D. C., Eldridge, K. A., Baucom, D. H., & Christensen, A. (2005). Infidelity and behavioral couple therapy: Optimism in the face of betrayal. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 73(1), 144–150. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.73.1.144
Gordon, K. C., Baucom, D. H., & Snyder, D. K. (2005). Treating couples recovering from infidelity: An integrative approach. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61(11), 1393–1405. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20189
Morton, H., & Gorzalka, B. B. (2015). Role of partner novelty in sexual functioning: A review. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 41(6), 593–609. https://doi.org/10.1080/0092623X.2014.958788
Muise, A., Harasymchuk, C., Day, L. C., Bacev-Giles, C., Gere, J., & Impett, E. A. (2019). Broadening your horizons: Self-expanding activities promote desire and satisfaction in established romantic relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(2), 237–258. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000148
Goss, S. C., Raposo, S., Balzarini, R. N., Rosen, N. O., Benyamin, V., & Muise, A. (2022). Feeling close and seeing a partner in a new light: How self-expansion is associated with sexual desire. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 39(8), 2478–2506. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075221081137
Carswell, K. L., Muise, A., Harasymchuk, C., Horne, R. M., Visserman, M. L., & Impett, E. A. (2021). Growing desire or growing apart? Consequences of personal self-expansion for romantic passion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 121(2), 354–377. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000357
When Texting Feels Like a Relationship: Understanding Breadcrumbing, Attachment, and the Psychology of Modern Dating
“We text every day… but we’re not actually together.”
It’s a sentence I hear with increasing frequency in my therapy office.
One pattern I’ve been noticing in my practice is not simply “ghosting,” casual dating, or dating app fatigue. Rather, it’s the emergence of relationships that exist almost entirely through ongoing digital connection. Clients describe spending weeks or months exchanging messages from the moment they wake up until they go to bed. They know each other’s routines, celebrate promotions, comfort one another through difficult days, share childhood stories, exchange affectionate nicknames, and become one another’s first point of contact for both joy and distress.
Yet despite the emotional closeness, the relationship itself often remains undefined.
There are no conversations about exclusivity, and if there are, they are often defined as “getting to know each other.” Plans to spend time together are inconsistent or repeatedly postponed and the future remains vague. One or both people continue to keep their options open while maintaining a level of emotional intimacy that closely resembles a committed partnership.
By the time these clients arrive in my office, many are carrying profound confusion.
“Why do I feel heartbroken when we weren’t technically together?”
“Why can’t I stop thinking about this person?”
“Why do I feel guilty for wanting clarity?”
Perhaps the question I hear most often is this:
“Why did I let this happen?”
I don’t believe that’s the right question.
The more helpful question is:
What happens in our brains and nervous systems that allows emotional attachment to develop before a relationship has actually been established?
Understanding this can change everything.
The modern dating paradox
We have never had more ways to communicate with one another than we do currently. We can send hundreds of messages a day without ever sharing a meal, navigating a disagreement, meeting one another’s friends or families , or building a life together.
Technology has dramatically expanded opportunities for connection while also creating new forms of relational ambiguity. Psychotherapist Esther Perel has written extensively about the tension between connection and autonomy in contemporary relationships, while social psychologist Eli J. Finkel has described how modern dating technologies increase both opportunity and uncertainty. We are more connected than ever before, yet many people describe feeling increasingly unsure about where they stand.
This ambiguity is detrimental because the human attachment system was never designed for prolonged uncertainty- in fact that’s when it works hard to pull us closer to someone.
Your attachment system doesn’t wait for commitment
One of the biggest misconceptions about attachment is that it somehow begins only once two people become “official”, or we’ve decided to be “exclusive.”
But attachment begins whenever another person consistently becomes a source of comfort, reassurance, predictability, and emotional regulation.
That means every “good morning,” “How did your meeting go?”, every vulnerable late night conversation, all those messages sent during moments of loneliness or stress, all teach our nervous systems something important:
“This person helps me feel safe.”
Attachment theory suggests that our brains are constantly evaluating who can serve as a secure base during times of uncertainty. Traditionally, these bonds developed through repeated face-to-face experiences. Increasingly, however, they are being formed through digital communication.
This is one reason people often feel embarrassed by the intensity of their emotions after a “situationship” ends.
They tell themselves,
“It was just texting.”
But this was actually a period of emotional intensity, activation of our nervous systems, hormone and neurotransmitter fluctuations, and countless small biological processes acting together to create a bond between two people.
The illusion of a relationship
One concept I often discuss with clients is what I think of as relationship simulation.
Relationship simulation occurs when the behaviours associated with a committed partnership begin long before commitment itself. The relationship feels real because many elements of a healthy relationship are already present, such as frequent communication and access, emotional disclosure and vulnerability , shared humour, daily routines, mutual support, affection and sometimes future oriented conversations.
Yet, some of the most essential pieces are missing here. Things like mutual clarity, commitment, certainty, shared decision-making, integration into one another’s lives, and open communication of needs and expectations.
The relationship has become emotionally dense without becoming structurally secure, and this distinction is important because emotional intimacy and relational progression are not the same thing.
Many people assume that increasing emotional closeness naturally leads toward commitment. This is a harmful trope often presented to us through media and romantic fantasy, because committing to another person requires far more explicit communication than any amount of implicit knowing or romantic magnetism.
Digital communication makes it possible to experience the feelings of a relationship without the behaviours that actually build one.
You can exchange twenty thousand messages and still know remarkably little about how someone responds to disappointment, conflict, accountability, repair, generosity, or long-term partnership.
Why these relationships become so difficult to leave
You’ll notice I am defining this as a relationship- because no matter how fearful we might be of what this title represents, it simply recognizes this as an interplay between two people with the presence of emotional closeness. I find that truly naming it can normalize the emotional intensity and confusion that can occur when these patterns inevitably start to crumble.
Often, clients criticize themselves for becoming “too attached.” Naming it as clinginess, neediness, or being too “overbearing.”
From a psychological perspective, their emotional attachment usually makes perfect sense, and several well-established psychological processes converge to make these relationships extraordinarily difficult to leave.
First is the attachment activation. Once someone becomes an important source of emotional regulation, distance naturally produces distress. This is simply evidence that a normal human attachment system has become engaged.
Second is intermittent reinforcement, one of the most powerful learning mechanisms identified in behavioural psychology. When affection, attention, and reassurance are delivered unpredictably rather than consistently, our brains often work harder to regain them. The uncertainty itself strengthens the pursuit.
Third is ambiguity. Relationships with clear endings allow a natural grieving process to begin, but ones defined by “maybe,” “not yet,” or “I’m just busy”, often prolong hope indefinitely. Without a clear ending, many people remain emotionally suspended between possibility and loss.
Finally, there is the sunk-cost effect. After months of emotional investment, vulnerability, and hope, walking away can feel like abandoning all that effort. Many people continue investing not because the relationship is becoming healthier, but because they have already invested so much.
Taken together, these processes create a powerful psychological trap because the human brain is remarkably good at protecting attachment.
Emotional labour without relational security
One of the most painful patterns I observe is when someone gradually assumes the emotional responsibilities of a committed partner without experiencing the security that commitment itself is meant to provide.
They become the person who listens after difficult days, remembers important meetings, celebrates successes, offers reassurance during moments of self-doubt, provides comfort during family conflict, becomes emotionally available, reliable, and deeply invested.
None of these behaviours are unhealthy, in fact, they are often the very qualities that make someone a thoughtful and emotionally attuned partner.
The question is whether that emotional labour is developing alongside reciprocal investment and increasing clarity. Healthy relationships tend to move toward greater definition over time, but when emotional labour continually expands while commitment remains static, many people begin carrying the emotional weight of a relationship without the relational security that helps that investment feel safe.
This isn’t about assigning blame as sometimes both people drift into this dynamic without recognizing it. Differing attachment styles, fear of vulnerability, competing life circumstances, or uncertainty about compatibility all contribute to prolonged ambiguity.
But it’s important to remember that our intent matters less than its impact. Regardless of how the pattern developed, it deserves attention because of what prolonged uncertainty does to our emotional wellbeing.
Questions to ask yourself early
If you notice yourself becoming deeply invested in someone, pause and ask yourself:
Is our communication creating greater clarity or greater confusion?
Are we building a relationship, or maintaining the feeling of one?
Does this person consistently make space for me in their real life, or primarily in their phone?
Are words becoming actions?
Is emotional intimacy developing alongside commitment?
Do I feel increasingly secure over time?
If our texting stopped tomorrow, what would actually remain?
Am I becoming someone’s source of emotional regulation without knowing whether they genuinely want to build a life with me?
If you are experiencing fear or hesitance about being direct about commitment discussions, it may also be worth examining why. What feels risky about asking for clarity? What are you afraid might happen if you express your needs openly?
A mature, emotionally vulnerable conversation is not an unreasonable expectation in a healthy relationship. It is one of the ways two people learn whether they are aligned.
It may also be worth asking yourself:
Would I want to build a partnership with someone who is afraid of having honest conversations about commitment, needs, and emotional vulnerability?
Choosing clarity over uncertainty
There is nothing wrong with emotional openness, enjoying daily conversations or developing feelings for another person. The goal here is not to become more guarded but to become more intentional about where your emotional investment is being placed.
Healthy relationships do not require you to earn clarity through patience or prove your worth through emotional availability. They should become clearer with time, integrate conversation with action, pair intimacy with consistency, and allow trust to develop alongside commitment rather than asking attachment to grow in the absence of it.
If you recognize yourself in this pattern, I hope you’ll respond with compassion rather than criticism.
The invitation here is simply to ask one additional question before giving someone access to your emotional world:
“Is this relationship becoming clearer, or am I becoming more attached to uncertainty?”
References
Finkel, E. J. (2017). The All-or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work. Dutton.
Perel, E. (2017). The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity. Harper.
Turkle, S. (2011). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Basic Books.
Levine, A., & Heller, R. (2010). Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find and Keep Love. TarcherPerigee.
Freedman, G., Powell, D. N., Le, B., & Williams, K. D. (2019). Ghosting and destiny: Implicit theories of relationships predict beliefs about ghosting. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(3), 905-924.
Navarro, R., Larrañaga, E., Yubero, S., & Víllora, B. (2020). Psychological correlates of breadcrumbing and ghosting experiences in emerging adults. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(3), 1116.
Grief, in Colour: An Art Therapist’s Practice for Sitting with Loss
In my work as an art therapist, and through my own loss, I’ve seen how grief lives not just in our minds, but in our bodies, gestures, and even the colours we’re drawn to. Art can offer us a language for grief when words feel too small or too sharp.
This gentle grief practice is something I’ve used myself and with clients navigating the aching landscape of loss. Whether you are grieving the death of a loved one, a relationship, a season of life, or a version of yourself that no longer fits—this is a space to come home to yourself.
Free Grief Art Practice Download
Inside this free printable PDF, you’ll find:
A brief introduction to art therapy and grief
A journaling prompt to explore the nuances of your loss
An art activity designed to externalize and express your grief visually
A dialogue prompt to engage with the piece you create, offering insight and reflection
Why Art Therapy for Grief?
Grief often bypasses language. You may find yourself repeating, "I don’t even know what I’m feeling"—and that’s valid. Art therapy allows for non-verbal processing, making space for the parts of us that don’t know how to name what we carry.
Using imagery, colour, and symbol, we begin to make sense of the sense-less. We honour what was lost, and we honour what still lives.
A Glimpse Into the Practice
Journal Prompt: What has grief changed in you? What hasn’t it touched?
Art Activity: Choose a medium that feels accessible—pencil, pastels, collage, paint. Create an image of your grief. Let it take form without judgment. This might be abstract or representational. Let the materials lead.
Dialogue Prompt: When you look at your piece, ask:
What do you want me to understand?
What do you need from me?
What do you want me to carry forward?
Write down the responses as if your artwork were speaking directly to you.
Final Thoughts
This practice won’t erase your grief, but it can help you feel less alone in it. You might revisit the same prompt weeks or months later and notice how your inner landscape is shifting. That is the quiet, slow work of healing.
If this practice resonates with you, you’re welcome to explore more grief-informed tools through my blog or therapy services.
With tenderness,
Arin Clarke, MCP-AT, CCC (Art Therapist & Counselling Therapist)
Grief, Healing, and the Quiet Work of Coming Back to Ourselves
Grief isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s quiet—woven into your mornings, your body, your relationships. Sometimes it doesn’t look like grief at all. It looks like burnout. Disconnection. Anger. Numbness. Or a deep sense of being lost.
I’ve come to believe that grief is not just about death—it’s about change, rupture, and the pain of living in a world that doesn’t always make space for what we’ve lost.
I see grief in breakups and divorce. In the ache of estrangement. In the invisible weight of parenting after loss. In the nervous system, after a trauma. In the slow mourning of a self we no longer recognize.
And I see how powerful it can be to have a place where that grief is allowed to exist.
A Bit About Me
I grew up in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where the landscape still shapes my sense of rhythm and rest. I'm a parent, a partner, and someone who has walked through my own seasons of loss and rebuilding. I know what it’s like to feel like the ground has shifted beneath you—and to wonder how you’ll ever feel steady again.
In my work as a therapist, I bring together years of clinical training with something more personal: a deep respect for the messy, beautiful, nonlinear work of healing. I’m trained in somatic therapy, art therapy, and trauma-informed approaches, and I’m especially passionate about supporting people navigating grief, relational wounds, and life transitions.
Outside of work, you’ll often find me sewing, painting, weaving, or making something with my hands. Creativity has always been how I process the world—and I invite my clients into their own creative ways of making meaning, too (no art skills required).
Who I Work With
I work with adults navigating:
Grief after death (including perinatal loss and complex family grief)
Breakups, divorce, and relational pain
Estrangement or the slow grief of disconnection
Trauma recovery, including grief following sexual violence
Parenting transitions, identity loss, and burnout
Neurodivergence, sensitivity, and emotional overwhelm
I offer a space where you can be messy, unfinished, tender, and still held. A space for both the ache and the hope.
My Approach
You don’t have to have the right words. You don’t have to be “over it” by now. I work at your pace, drawing on somatic regulation, creative expression, and trauma-informed conversation to help your nervous system feel safer and your story feel more whole.
Grief is not something we fix—it’s something we move with. And you don’t have to move through it alone.
If this resonates with you, I’d love to connect. I offer both virtual and in-person sessions, a free 20-minute consultation, and a sliding scale for those who need it. Reach out when you're ready—I’ll be here.
What Is Containment? Building Safety in the Body Through Somatic Therapy
Learn how containment in therapy helps create internal safety and support nervous system regulation. Explore somatic strategies, boundary work, and opening and closing rituals to build emotional resilience.
Containment: A Somatic Foundation for Safety and Regulation
When big emotions or traumatic memories surface in therapy, it’s not always about “getting them out.” In fact, too much too soon can overwhelm the nervous system. This is where containment comes in.
Containment refers to the ability to hold emotional experience in a way that feels tolerable, manageable, and safe—especially in the body. It’s not about avoiding or suppressing feelings, but about creating boundaries and practices that support emotional integration without flooding.
In somatic therapy, containment is the gentle structure that allows the nervous system to settle, even in the presence of distress.
Why Containment Matters
Many people enter therapy feeling raw, unmoored, or dysregulated—especially if they’ve experienced trauma, chronic stress, or boundary violations. Without a sense of containment, emotional work can feel chaotic or unsafe.
Containment helps you:
Stay present during difficult emotions
Build nervous system capacity
Develop a sense of control and choice
Feel more grounded and resourced
Safely explore trauma or pain without becoming overwhelmed
How Containment Is Created
Containment is co-created in therapy through:
Relational safety: The therapeutic relationship itself is foundational—attuned, non-judgmental, and boundaried.
Clear boundaries: Knowing when therapy begins and ends, what’s expected, and how emotions are handled builds predictability and trust.
Somatic awareness: Learning to notice and name sensations helps clients identify when they’re approaching overwhelm and when to slow down.
Pacing and titration: Working in manageable pieces (“going slow to go fast”) avoids retraumatization.
Ritual and structure: Predictable rituals help cue the body that it’s entering or exiting emotional work.
Boundary Work and Containment
Containment and boundaries go hand in hand. Boundaries aren’t just interpersonal—they also exist within your internal world.
Therapeutic boundary work can involve:
Identifying emotional or energetic “leaks”
Practicing saying no (even internally)
Learning to differentiate between your emotions and others’
Setting limits on how much you explore in a single session
Clear boundaries support containment by helping you feel more in control of what you allow in and what you release.
Final Thoughts: Containment as a Compassionate Skill
Containment isn’t about shutting down or toughing it out. It’s a compassionate practice of holding—of offering your body and mind a safe place to experience and metabolize what was once too much. Over time, your capacity grows, your system becomes more flexible, and healing becomes more sustainable.
If you’re looking to deepen your own sense of internal safety and containment, you’re not alone—and you don’t have to figure it out by yourself. This is foundational work I do every day with clients in my therapy practice.
Want a downloadable handout on containment strategies?
Check out my Etsy shop for printable tools, or get a free PDF when you join my email list.
Listening In: What Is Interoception and Why Does It Matter?
When we talk about healing—whether from stress, trauma, or simply the overwhelm of daily life—we often focus on thoughts and emotions. But there’s a quieter, often overlooked part of healing that begins deep inside the body: interoception.
What Is Interoception?
Interoception is our ability to notice internal sensations—like the flutter of anxiety in your stomach, the warmth of connection in your chest, or the ache of exhaustion behind your eyes. It’s how your brain reads signals from inside the body to understand what you need. Are you thirsty? Do you feel safe? Are you holding your breath?
These may seem like small things, but they are foundational to self-awareness, emotional regulation, and feeling grounded in the present moment.
Why It Matters in Therapy
For many people—especially those who have experienced trauma, burnout, or chronic stress—the connection between mind and body can feel frayed. We may become disconnected from our inner signals as a survival strategy. This can make it harder to identify emotions, set boundaries, or know when we need rest.
Building interoceptive awareness is a gentle, powerful way to return to ourselves. In somatic and trauma-informed therapy, we often use body-based practices like breath work, mindful movement, or guided noticing to help clients re-establish this internal connection.
Over time, this helps to:
Improve emotional regulation
Reduce overwhelm and reactivity
Increase a sense of safety and agency in the body
Support nervous system resilience
How to Start Noticing
You don’t need to be an expert in body signals to begin. Start small:
Pause and notice your breath—is it shallow or deep?
Scan your body for areas of tension or ease
Place a hand on your chest or belly and see what you feel
Name your sensations without judgment (e.g. “tight,” “fluttery,” “warm”)
This is interoception in action: learning to listen inward, with curiosity and care.
Final Thoughts
Tuning into your inner landscape may feel unfamiliar at first—especially if you’ve had to numb or override it in the past. But with time and support, it becomes a powerful resource. Your body holds so much wisdom. Interoception helps you access it.
If you’d like to explore this more in therapy, I’d be honoured to walk alongside you. I offer somatic and humanistic counselling in-person in Okotoks, AB and virtually across Alberta.
Contact: arin.clarke21@gmail.com | 587-220-4174
Book online: www.warpweftcounselling.com
Psst….Want a Printable Resource?
I’ve created a beautifully designed, therapist-approved handout on interoception. It includes:
A simple definition
A body-based practice
Sensation vocabulary
Journaling prompts
A curated reading list
You can grab the full printable version in my Etsy shop here. Perfect for personal use, therapy clients, or wellness professionals.
Are you a current client? Ask me in session for access to this printable for free.
What Is Somatic Therapy?
(A Gentle Guide for Beginners)
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed, stuck in your head, or disconnected from your body, you’re not alone — and somatic therapy might be a good place to begin.
Somatic therapy is a body-based approach to healing that recognizes that our thoughts, emotions, and nervous systems are deeply interconnected. Rather than focusing only on “talking it out,” somatic work invites us to listen to our bodies, attend to sensation, and move at the pace of safety.
What Does "Somatic" Mean?
The word “somatic” comes from the Greek word soma, meaning “body.” In therapy, this means we pay attention to more than just your thoughts — we tune into your breath, posture, muscle tension, body temperature, and what’s happening inside, even if you don’t have words for it yet.
Why Work with the Body?
When we experience stress, trauma, or overwhelm, our bodies hold the imprint — even long after the moment has passed
You might notice:
Chronic tension or pain
Shutting down or numbing out
Feeling “too much” or “not enough”
Getting stuck in survival patterns like people-pleasing, perfectionism, or freeze responses
Somatic therapy helps us gently rebuild connection with the body, regulate the nervous system, and create new patterns that feel safer, softer, and more supportive.
How Does It Work?
In my practice, I blend polyvagal theory, interpersonal neurobiology, and humanistic counselling with somatic tools to help you feel more grounded, connected, and choiceful.
This might include:
Guided breathwork or grounding exercises
Noticing and naming internal cues (e.g., “my chest feels tight”)
Tracking nervous system states like fight, flight, or freeze
Creating rituals of safety, movement, or stillness
Learning how to listen to your “felt sense” and trust your body's signals
We always move at your pace, and you’re always in control of what we explore.
Who Is It For?
Somatic therapy can be especially supportive for people who:
Struggle with anxiety, panic, or overwhelm
Have experienced trauma or complex relational wounds
Feel disconnected from their bodies or emotions
Want to move from survival into greater ease and embodiment
Identify as sensitive, highly empathetic, or neurodivergent
Final Thoughts
Somatic therapy isn’t about “fixing” you — it’s about reconnecting with your inner wisdom, learning how to listen inward, and creating space for healing that includes your whole self. If this feels like a curious next step for you, you’re warmly invited to reach out.
Ready to begin?
I offer somatic and trauma-informed therapy in Okotoks and virtually across Alberta.
You can book a free 15-minute consult here or get in touch if you have questions.