In This article

• What is an Impact Letter and Why You Are Writing It
• What’s Ahead
• Step One- Inventory the Impact
• Step Two- Examine the Damage
• Step Three- Give Your Emotions a Voice
• Step Four- Own Your Needs
• Step Five- Be Heard

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“So God has given both his promise and his oath… This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls.” —Hebrews 6:18-19

Hey friend,

You’re here because the storm hit your home. Infidelity—whether an affair, porn use, or compulsive sexual behavior—blew through your marriage like a hurricane. You’re left standing in the wreckage, breathless, hurt, and disoriented. If you’re reading this, you’ve survived the full disclosure. That’s not a small thing. That’s holy ground.

And now, there’s a next step: the Impact Letter.

This is more than a letter. It’s a voice. Your voice. A God-given opportunity to speak truthfully, courageously, and redemptively about the pain you never asked for but now carry.

At MyCounselor.Online, our NICC-trained Christian therapists walk with individuals and couples through this exact moment—offering presence, process, and Christ-centered support when everything feels broken. And this letter? It can be part of your healing journey, not just another task to power through.

Let’s talk about what it means to write one.

What Is an Impact Letter?

An Impact Letter is a written expression of how your spouse’s betrayal has affected you. It follows their Disclosure Letter and provides space for you to name the emotional, relational, and spiritual aftermath of their choices.

But let’s be clear: this is not about lashing out. It’s about honoring your story. Making visible what’s been invisible. And opening a window into your wounded heart so healing light can get in.

Writing this letter isn’t easy. It will stir up grief, anger, and sorrow. But it can also be deeply transformative. We’ve seen clients move from silence to clarity, from stuckness to strength. Not overnight, but step by step. And always with support.

You don’t have to do this alone.

Why This Letter Matters (and How It Helps You Heal)

Infidelity isn’t just a relationship issue. It’s a trauma. Your nervous system has been shocked. Your soul has been pierced. This letter gives shape to the storm—helps your brain and body begin to process what happened.

From our Neuroscience Informed Christian Counseling® (NICC) perspective, this is more than an emotional purge. It’s a pathway to healing.

• It restores your voice. When betrayal silenced you, this letter reclaims your words.
• It honors your pain. Every emotion you write down is part of God’s redemptive work in you.
• It creates space for empathy. Your spouse can begin to see the wreckage they didn’t fully grasp.
• It invites Jesus in. He doesn’t bypass pain. He meets us in it.

As you write, remember: your job isn’t to fix the marriage right now. It’s to tell the truth. Truth sets captives free (John 8:32), and you deserve that freedom.

The Five-Step Framework

Writing your Impact Letter is a process. We recommend walking through it with your counselor. If you’re not working with someone yet, our team is here and ready to help. (Seriously, reach out.)

Here’s a framework to guide your writing:

Step 1: Inventory the Impact

Look at your life from a bird’s eye view. What areas have been affected? Trust? Emotional health? Parenting? Faith? List them.

Step 2: Examine the Damage

Zoom in. Describe how each area has been impacted. What changed? What broke? Be honest.

Step 3: Give Your Emotions a Voice

This is the hardest step. Move beyond facts and into feelings. Let your body speak. Anger, sadness, fear—they’re all valid. And God welcomes every one.

Step 4: Own Your Needs

What do you need now? What would restoration, respect, or responsibility look like from your spouse? Name it. Owning your needs isn’t selfish—it’s sacred.

Step 5: Be Heard

Put it all together into a letter. Read it in a therapy session with a NICC-trained therapist present if possible. The goal isn’t control; it’s clarity. Your heart deserves to be heard.

A Word of Encouragement

Hey friend, this isn’t the end of your story. It’s a chapter—a painful one, yes. But also a pivotal one. The God who sees you is not absent in your pain. He’s already moved toward you. And He’s provided companions for the journey.

If you feel overwhelmed or unsure how to do this alone, let us walk with you. Our NICC-trained therapists at MyCounselor.Online are here to support your healing, emotionally and spiritually. No shame. No pressure. Just compassionate, Christ-centered care.

You were not made to carry this alone.

Jesus is near.

And we’re cheering you on as you step toward your true self, your healing, and your future.

Sample Letter

The final step in crafting your Impact Letter is to put all the pieces together into one coherent narrative. This is the letter you will read in session with your therapist and spouse and is your opportunity to allow your wounds to be honored, your needs to be met, and your voice to be heard. Regardless of what your partner chooses to do with this letter, be proud of yourself for coming this far. It was a courageous journey that you endeavored to take inventory of the impact, examine the damage, give your emotions a voice, and own your needs. These are each enormously heavy tasks and I have no doubt that you have felt the emotional impact of writing this letter. Now you have reached the end of this leg of the journey and will bravely bare your heart to your partner. I am praying for you, and holding you and your pain in my heart as you do.
Below is an example letter with all the examples provided above stringed together into a narrative. To do so, I added the emotional impact from Step 3 to the “how” from Step 2 and ended the letter with the needs of Step 4. You can follow this same process, or if you would like, you can add a need to be met (Step 4) for each of the sections of the inventory.

Dear John, 
First and foremost, my trust has been broken by your unfaithfulness. I can no longer believe that what you are saying is true. Everything from you telling me that you love me, to telling me where you are going and who you are with is affected. You deceived me so much, I don’t know what to believe anymore. Part of me wants to trust you, it would be easier if I could. But there is always this nagging voice in the back of my mind reminding me of what you did and all the lies you told me. You were so convincing with your stories and cover-ups, that I don’t trust myself to trust you. Every time you pause or hesitate, I think you are lying all over again, because that’s exactly what you did when I questioned you before. I live with the constant feeling that you are lying and I will never actually know if what you are saying is the truth. I do not feel secure in being your wife, partner, or friend. In fact, I would say that the best I can do most days is to distract myself from the insecurity of this relationship. When I think of how my trust in you has been affected by your affair, I’m angry. How could you steal something from me that is so foundational to our marriage? How could you betray me and leave me alone and in the dark as you gave your heart and body to someone else? And I suppose that if I’m honest, and I don’t want to be honest with you, I am also sad. So sad and so forgotten. So sad that when I took vows at the altar, I never thought I would have to share you. Our sacred space has been defiled. 

As a result of this, our connection has been severed. When I am close to you, I still feel distant from you, and I can’t seem to make that feeling go away. My body is tense and I can’t make it relax. I have had to learn deep breathing and have to exercise and stretch every day just to get my anxiety (emotional/mental health) to a level where I can manage my daily responsibilities. You used to be the place I would go for comfort, my best friend who I shared everything with; the one place I felt accepted and loved, but now there is only a wall between us and I’m not sure when it will come down. Every conversation feels forced and awkward at best, and I feel irritated and full of rage at worst. I find myself always assuming the worst as I read you, never giving you the benefit of the doubt as I once did. I am plagued by loneliness and want so badly to reach for you, to feel the connection again, and yet I can’t let myself do it because I cannot trust you with my heart. Not yet. So I am stuck in this limbo, living between two worlds, riddled by anxiety and fear. Fear. I guess I am afraid; afraid to be alone and afraid to stay. Afraid it will all happen again if I let myself trust you, afraid to let you in again, afraid to start over. And the fear paralyzes me. 

Perhaps the worst part of all this has been the way my story, our story, and God’s story of our lives will never be the same after this. All I wanted growing up was to have a loving family, a secure job that I loved, and contentment in a life that would glorify God. When I found you, I thought I found the person I could build that life with. I always hoped that our story would be one that God was pleased with, one He could use to tell the story of His love and goodness to the world. Slowly but surely I could feel that slipping away. I couldn’t put my finger on how or why, but when it all came out, it made so much sense. This is why you always seemed to be busy on Sunday mornings and could never make it to church. And now this story has been marred with the scarlet letter and I’m not sure that God can redeem it. I’m not sure if this is the end of the chapter, the end of our story, or how our story will end. I’m devastated that you stole something from me that I can never get back and that I didn’t deserve. I knew what I wanted, and you knew what you were getting when you met me. You were the one who decided that wasn’t enough and decided to find more somewhere else. That was not my choice but I am having to live with the consequences of your choices, and I am wrecked by it. My heart is broken and there is a heaviness that won’t lift and there are moments when I cannot stand under the weight of it. Why? I just can’t understand why. 

As I share this with you, I am aware of my fear of sharing this with you. It makes me scared to put myself out there this way, knowing you could hurt me again. So I guess this is my step of faith in you and in us. Right now, I need you to see me. To see my pain and the hurt and weight that I carry with me all day, every day. And I need to know that this affects you and I need to see it in your eyes. All this time I have believed that I don’t matter to you. How could I if you could do what you did? So if you really do care, if I do matter, I need to see it, to feel it. I need you to show me. I need you to take responsibility for the pain you have caused me and the responsibility to do what you can do heal it. I need you to be the man I married. He got lost somewhere along the way, if he is still in there, I need to see him. I need to remember what it feels like to be loved and adored, to be put first, to be protected and provided for more than just physically. I need you to fight for us spiritually and see you get right with the Lord. With all I have left,

Jane

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