What is Betrayal Trauma?
The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies - Anonymous.
Betrayal trauma is what we feel upon discovery of your partner’s secretive sexual life. Betrayal damages our sense of safe attachment to the person who is supposed to love us. We depend on this person for safety and protection but instead have discovered they are causing immense fear and distress.
Feeling confused and unsure of what is real is common among the partners of those with sex or porn addiction and compulsive sexual behaviour. The deception, gaslighting and manipulation that comes with sexual betrayal, is deeply wounding. A person who wounds you is abusing you. Repeated harmful behaviours after being asked to stop is emotional abuse. Betrayal and deception are disempowering because they rob you of informed consent in the relationship.
People with secret sexual behaviour often become masters of deception and manipulation to protect their secrets and avoid responsibility. They instinctively know how to make you doubt your sanity or perception of reality, a tactic known as gaslighting which is the worst form of emotional abuse. It’s not you. The person with the secrets also tries to avoid the emotions that come from taking responsibility and owning the consequences of their fidelity violations.
Betrayed partners often report experiencing:
- Avoidance
- Intrusive images
- Withdrawal
- Mood swings
- Panic attacks
- Dissociation
- Confusion
- Hypervigilance
- Denial
- Phobias
- Flashbacks
- Restlessness
- Oversensitivity
- Inability to eat
- Overeating
- Reliving the event
- Anxiety
- Nightmares
- Rage
- Health problems
- Chronic fatigue
- Immune/endocrine system problems
- Insomnia
- Hyperarousal
- Hyperarousal
Source: Your Sexually Addicted Spouse: How partners can cope and heal by Dr Barbara Steffens and Marsha Means
KNOW IT CAN BE A ROLLER COASTER – The emotions from significant partner betrayal are intense. It’s a trauma similar to being in a live battlefield, a violent car accident, or witnessing or being the victim of a violent crime.
You are likely experiencing triggers, physical flashbacks, and feeling that your life and self have been shattered.
Give yourself kindness and patience. Don’t beat yourself up for the sadness, depression, anger, fear, physical effects and confusion of still feeling love for your partner. You might feel fine one minute and crash the next.
Over time and with recovery efforts, you will experience different phases. These emotions won’t always feel as strong as they do now. Recovery works and you’re worth it.
