Relationship experts reveal three-step method to save your relationship after cheating - and say an affair can make your union stronger

World-renowned relationship experts have claimed an affair can save your relationship - and dismissed the idea of 'the one'.

American doctors John and Julie Gottman appeared on a recent episode of The Diary Of A CEO podcast, hosted by entrepreneur Steven Bartlett, and claimed couples can actually repair the relationship after an affair.

The duo, who have been married for 36 years and have spent the past five decades studying love and what makes it last, also revealed there is no such thing as 'the one'.

Julie claimed 75 percent of relationships can it be 'treated' and 'cured' after infidelity successfully and the experts developed a three-step model to help restore the marriage. 

Julie said: 'We developed a model based on our research called atone, attune and attach. The AAA model and here's what in a nutshell it involves.

'First the person who did the betraying needs to respond totally transparently to every question the hurt partner asks them, however the hurt partner shouldn't ask about the kind of sex they had.'

The expert explained that every person who suffered through an affair has post-traumatic stress disorder from it and will suffer from 'flashbacks' and too much intimate information can 'plague her to an even greater degree'.

She said: 'So, atone is answering the questions and then saying I'm sorry a thousand times and really meaning it.'

Later the betrayed partner must express their emotion without criticism and out of contempt.

Julie, speaking as if she was a partner who had been cheated on, said: 'I feel destroyed, I feel like my world has fallen apart, I feel so empty, so abandoned, so rejected, so she has to describe or he has to describe their own feelings... so that's the atonement phase.'

In the attune phase the couple have to look at the actual marriage or relationship itself and what was wrong with it.

The expert said: 'A lot of times what you see are couples who at first might have had terrible conflict, it was so bad they started avoiding conflict, once they avoided conflict, they got more emotionally distant and the person who did the betraying got lonely.

'So oftentimes the affairs are not about just getting more sex, they're about loneliness and beginning to talk to somebody else about how unhappy they are.'

Julie said the third phase, which they call attach, is about recommitting to the relationship.

She said: 'In many cases, I've seen the sexual relationship doesn't resume until phase three, especially if the woman is the one who's been betrayed, but there are some where the woman will kind of throw herself at the man sexually to compete with the affair partner and be better than the affair partner, so you know it can be both.'

Steven asked if the experts had ever seen cheating help a relationship, Julie replied: 'Very often when they get help.

'If they don't get help, it's not going to, you know it's worse, but when they get help  it can help them change all the patterns in the relationship and help them learn who the other person really is, what their needs really are, how they want you to turn up in the relationship that they had no idea of before, so it can create more intimacy, different kind of trust of course, but more intimacy and more connection.'

Speaking about the initial effects of an affair on a partnership, Julie said trust is eradicated. 

She said: 'What affairs do is they turn the hurt partner's world upside down, everything they believed about the partner is wrong, everything that they thought they shared in terms of values is wrong.

'So you know you can't trust the person says because they weren't staying at work late they were going to so-and-so's apartment.'

The experts said the stats for women having affairs has pretty much caught up to men in 2024. 

Julie said: 'Here's why, before the '70s and the women's liberation movement, women were stuck at home they weren't out in the world working, they didn't have access to others. 

'Once they entered the workforce then they had access to a whole field our potential people out there.'   

Julie claimed looking for 'the one' is a bad idea because 'there is no perfection' and we are all flawed human beings. 

She said: 'Inevitably they snore at night or they eat with their mouth open, something that drives you crazy. Let's see each other as human beings.

'We are all flawed, we all have cracks in us and those can be seen as beautiful too, we don't have to be perfect to be loved.

'When I have somebody coming into my office that says ''I want to find my soulmate'', it's like huh, what's a soulmate, I mean in the US we have what 350 million people there's probably 500,000 of them that you would find wonderful and attractive.'