I don't know that therapy is necessary for real change, and I also know that simply going to therapy does not make someone change.
The change has to come from within them. You can't love someone hard enough to make them change. You can't threaten them enough to make them change. You can lead by example, but even that only shows them a possible path. They still have to choose to walk it.
Real change requires a person to look directly at some of the worst things about themselves and accept that those things are actually true.
So many of the problems we are dealing with here involve cognitive distortions. They are the stories people tell themselves to make something acceptable that, somewhere underneath it all, they already know is wrong. Blaming the marriage. Blaming stress. Blaming loneliness. Convincing themselves they deserve something. Convincing themselves no one will get hurt if no one finds out.
Changing means confronting those stories instead of continuing to use them as protection.
That is difficult work because it often means facing shame, insecurity, entitlement, resentment, avoidance, old wounds, or whatever else a person has spent years protecting themselves from. Some people are better equipped to do that than others. Sometimes therapy helps enormously. Sometimes religion helps. Sometimes mindfulness, recovery programs, books, mentors, or simply being forced to confront the consequences of your own behavior can help.
And some people are so invested in protecting themselves from what they might find that they never really do it.
I also think there is an important distinction between never cheating again and actually changing.
Some unfaithful partners will have one affair, see the devastation it causes, and never do it again. That is certainly better than repeating it, but it does not necessarily mean the underlying person has changed. They may still blame other people for their choices. They may still avoid uncomfortable truths. They may still seek validation in unhealthy ways, make destructive decisions, maintain poor boundaries, or repeatedly put themselves in situations where trouble becomes more likely.
They may have learned, "Never do that again," without ever learning why they were capable of doing it in the first place.
Other people really do change. They begin healing whatever is broken or unresolved inside themselves. They stop protecting the distortions that allowed them to justify destructive choices. They become more honest with themselves, not just with their spouse. They learn to recognize the thoughts and impulses that used to lead them somewhere unhealthy and deal with them before those thoughts become actions.
They face the shadows instead of running from them.
Therapy can be an extremely useful tool in that process, but it is still only a tool. The therapist cannot supply the willingness, honesty, humility, or courage required to actually change.
So for me, the more important question would not be simply, "Is he going to therapy?"
It would be, "What evidence do I see that he is genuinely confronting himself?"
If therapy was something he specifically promised to do and then quietly stopped doing, that matters too. Not because therapy itself is magic, but because following through on commitments is part of demonstrating that the desire to change is real.
