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The Gift of Betrayal
How to Heal Your Life When Your World Explodes
An In One® Series Book by Eve A. Wood, M.D.
CHAPTER 1:
When your world explodes: What is betrayal? How does it feel? And, where can it take you?
What is betrayal?
Betrayal is a breach of trust. What you counted on to be true is false. You were living a lie. When you've been
betrayed by your beloved, your spouse, or life partner your world shatters. The person you thought you could believe
in has deceived you. You are alone. You've been abandoned. You are at risk. The vows and commitments you made to
one another become meaningless. You don't know who you are anymore, or who that other person really is. Your whole
notion of your life history is challenged. What was real and what was not?
One of the most common and devastating forms of betrayal involves extra-relational intimacy of an emotional and/or
physical nature. Conservative estimates are that 40 percent of women and 60 percent of men will have an affair.
When you have been betrayed in this way, your life-partner has chosen to share themselves with someone else. He
has lied to you about his whereabouts and activities. He has led you to believe one thing when in reality the truth
was something totally, and devastatingly different. |
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You may find out about the betrayal when your
partner tells you the truth, or you may trip over evidence, be told by someone else, or discover your partner in
the act of deception. But, no matter how the reality begins to come to you, it will rock you to your very core.
In fact, betrayal may well be the cruelest and most painful relationship challenge you will ever face. It's devastating.
And, it has the potential to undermine and destroy you forever…if you let it! Here's an example of how betrayal
can derail a life.
When she began seeing me for counseling, Pam was a beautiful, creative, vibrant 32 year old successful professional.
She came to me 2 years after her divorce, because she was still depressed and highly self critical. She was pining
for her ex-husband who had told her during their honeymoon that he wasn't sure he loved her, and who within 9 months
of marriage had told her he wanted a divorce. Additionally, she learned that during their marriage he had been
having an affair with the woman he was about to marry. Two years later, she still missed her ex-husband and resented
his happiness. She felt personally robbed of the possibility of a future as a wife and mother. She saw no chance
of any joy for her self down the line.
I wondered about the history of her relationship with the ex-husband. How had she come to choose him? And, why
was she idealizing such a dishonest and hurtful man? I was extremely concerned about how much power Pam was giving
her ex to write the script for her future, and I was grateful she had come to learn how to heal her own life in
the aftermath of such devastation.
Betrayal feels awful…and it brings forth many different emotions. Pam's story illustrates a few of them.
Let's look at some of the common reactions, questions, and experiences that arise in response to betrayal. While
we can't cover everything, you will probably see yourself in some of these descriptions and stories. And, some
of what you've lived may be missing from this short list. No matter what you've been through, you are not alone.
Others have been there too!
How does betrayal feel and where can it take you?
It can't be true.
Often the first reaction people have upon discovering they've been betrayed is shock, denial, or minimization of
the full reality of what they have learned. Weird as it may seem, this reaction makes a lot of sense. Our survival
as a species depends on us maintaining a certain amount of healthy denial. We can't walk around focusing on all
the scary, bad, and negative things that could happen to us in life, or we'd never get out of bed in the morning,
cross the street, or turn on our car ignitions. Some denial or minimization of risk is necessary to healthy functioning.
Without it we'd never let our children out of sight, invest our money in the stock market, or change jobs.
It's healthy to take negative news in with a grain, or even salt-shaker full of doubt. "Maybe it's not true,
or maybe it's not as bad as all that", we tell ourselves. "Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves…let's
calm down". The worse the news is, or the more threatening or devastating it has the potential to be, the
more likely we are to push it down or even out.
So, for example, when Jenny discovered that her husband, Jack, had been engaging in homosexual banter with men
on the internet, it took her a few days to wake from sleep with a start. All of a sudden, she realized that Jack
may have been involved in sexual activities with those men he was talking to. When, to her horror, she learned
that he had in fact participated in many illicit homosexual trysts, it took her a few days to register the extent
of the health risks to which she had been exposed, and the necessity of getting her self 'checked out' for a gamut
of STD's. (Thankfully she was found to be clear of all diseases. She is currently divorced, and well on her way
to realizing her heart's desire.)
Here's another example. I call it the phone call from hell. Alice answered the phone. John was on the line. He
introduced himself and told Alice he was calling to tell her that Dan, her husband, had been having an affair with
his wife. She hung up on John, and totally pushed the call out of her mind for several days. She forgot it! Why?
She couldn't even contemplate the possibility of infidelity. When, several weeks later, the memory re-emerged,
she confronted her husband. To his credit, Dan admitted to her that John was speaking the truth. (Not all partners
will come clean…not at first…or at all.)
Because Dan was anxious to salvage his marriage, he pushed for marital counseling! Alice and Dan became my patients
and each took on the reality of their issues and marital challenges. Each spent some separate time in a rehabilitation
program - Dan for sexual addiction and Alice for co-dependency. They went through a long marital separation as
well. After much individual therapy and couples counseling, they eventually reconciled. Years of work led to a
stable and satisfying marriage.
As the tales of Jenny and Alice illustrate, denial and minimization are often the first responses people have to
being betrayed. And the experience comes in waves and stages. Those defenses will arise over and over again to
protect you. "It's real…it's not real. Maybe this part is true…but that part can't be…maybe I'm blowing it
out of proportion", etc. you will tell yourself.
You've probably gone back and forth already. Remember, you can only let in and process so much at a time. Be gentle
with yourself as you block out and progressively allow yourself to register more and more of what is… And don't
beat yourself up as you navigate through the process. Moving back and forth is inevitable to keep yourself sane
and functional.
How could you have?
Another response to betrayal that also comes in waves is horror, anger, and disbelief. "How could you possibly
have done that?" we may rage…"Who do you think you are, anyway?...How dare you?...Don't you care about
me, our children, your reputation? You are a horrid beast. I hate you."
In raging, questioning, and even name calling, we are trying to make sense of the unfathomable. Our world can't
be exploding. How dare anyone devastate us so much? We need safety. We want to annihilate the annihilator. We need
to be able to trust in the stability of our worlds and in the reliability of our intimates. When those closest
to us threaten our very existence, we respond in shock and rage. It's self-protective and inevitable. We need to
take control, take charge, and take action. It's empowering and deeply healing. So let it rip…as long as it doesn't
go on too long…and no one gets physically injured in the process. Let's look at an example together.
When Hannah discovered that her live-in lover, Ron, was sleeping with her best friend, she opened every one of
Ron's dresser drawers and dumped the contents onto their living room floor. She then took every suit, shirt, and
pair of pants of Ron's in the closet and threw them in a heap on the kitchen floor. In describing the scene to
me, Hannah said that hurling one item of Ron's clothing after another felt empowering and healing. "I kept
imagining that I was throwing the clothes at him," she said. "It felt really good!" And, when every
stitch of clothing was out of the bedroom, she wrote and placed a note atop on the clothing piles. It said: "I
hate you. Get out and stay out. I never want to see you again."
When Ron came home several hours later, with flowers and an apology card, she felt ready to hear what he had to
say. Having felt, and enacted her anger, she was able to be receptive to his remorse…and to her pain. It enabled
her to move to another level of processing.
In order to move forward in healing, we need to make space for our shock, horror, anger, and even rage. It's human
nature to experience all of those feelings. For some of us they will emerge right away…for others of us they may
remain quiescent for a long time. While I described an active, intense show of anger in Hannah's tale, some of
us tend to become steely cold and put up a huge wall when we are betrayed. We may tie our lover's clothes up in
a bag, leave the bag on the bed with the implied message, "Take your stuff and get out." But we won't
say anything. We might even go out and party with our friends to distract ourselves. We'll do what we need to do
to ensure that we don't have to deal with our betrayers in person.
Anger can be scary…and some of us will retreat in fear and self-blame rather than feel anger towards those who
hurt us. We may not even be aware of our anger at all. Fearfulness of anger is especially prominent if we have
been abused in childhood. And, we may not recognize the existence or extent of our childhood abuse experiences
until our betrayers are well out of our lives.
Each one of us experiences anger differently. Be gentle with yourself as you visit the waves of shock, disbelief,
and anger. Know that your feelings will emerge as they are meant to. Honor them as they come up...learn from them.
Your healing is dependent on this. No need to control…just let them be…without judgment.
What did you do? Where? When? Why?
We need information to understand and make sense of our betrayal. Who knows about the betrayal? Who was involved?
Who will stand by us? Has our main support become our greatest threat? What does this mean?
In asking these questions, we are trying to figure out how much of our sense of reality, our take on past experiences,
can be trusted. What is actually real? We need to feel in control. How broken is our world? Is it like Humpty Dumpty?
Can it ever be put back together again? Do we even want to try? What risks do we face? What will our future be?
Renée and her husband had dealt with, and worked through, an episode of infidelity early in their marriage.
He had ended the affair and committed not to stray again. So, when Renée discovered that her husband of
15 years was back in touch with the woman he had been sexual with, she was devastated. She had been happy in her
marriage for twelve years. She was a retired executive without a separate income. She had been through a painful
divorce in her past. Her husband was her family. She had no children and her only sibling, a sister, lived in a
foreign country. She desperately needed to know what she could trust. And, she was extremely fearful of what leaving
the marriage would mean for her ability to provide for herself. She couldn't decide what to do - to stay or to
go? She sought counseling to make sense of her experience, and chart the best future course for herself.
For many of us, we need to know details to make sense of our pasts, presents, and futures. We need a certain amount
of information to heal our lives after betrayal. And our need may change over time.
But, I want to introduce a caveat here. Anyone of us can get so caught up in learning and sleuthing out the details
of our betrayal experience that we lose track of our own reactions, self-care, and growth process. I will share
more about this concept in the next chapter, but it can't be emphasized enough.
We women are experts at shifting our attention onto others and away from ourselves and our own needs and challenges.
We are self-sacrificing, caring, loving, other-oriented beings. We make great mothers, spouses, friends, and volunteers.
And, we often treat our pets, plants, and neighbors better than we treat ourselves. We're used to ignoring our
own joys, hurts, and pains and focusing on those of others.
I urge you to learn only as much as you need to know about your betrayal experience in order to heal your life.
Be careful of what you ask for…you may get more information than you need…or even want to have. Remember - healing
is about and for you!
What's wrong with me? Am I not enough?
All too often we respond to being betrayed by doubting in ourselves and our own values. We wonder how desirable
we are. We may even begin to believe that we are not enough-- - thin enough, pretty enough, attractive enough,
smart enough, giving enough, easy-going enough, sexy enough, loving enough. We quickly and readily take on the
responsibility for our partners' choices to look elsewhere for sex or intimacy. We rush to blame ourselves for
someone else's actions.
We women are bombarded by the media with constant messages that we are not good enough. And, given our feminine
natures - our relational, harmony-seeking orientation - we are apt to take on the blame for others' decisions and
actions. Furthermore, our betrayers often fuel our self-critical mentality by finding fault with us and criticizing
us for all sorts of perceived short falls.
Know now, and hear me, LOUD AND CLEAR - you are not responsible for your partner's choices and actions. YOU ARE
FABULOUS, LOVING, and ENOUGH. You definitely have things to learn about how you got to this point in your life,
and where you are meant to go from here. And you will learn them! But, you are not to blame for this crisis in
your world. You are more than good enough! And, there is NOTHING wrong with you!
I'm not surprised. I knew something was going on.
In the midst of the horror of discovering they've been betrayed, some women feel validated and even relieved. Even
though their worlds are falling apart, they are developing clarity. They've been experiencing the fall-out of betrayal
- the energetic results of their partners' secret lives. Yet, they haven't known how to respond to their experiences.
They've been misled and lied to and maybe even criticized for the suspicions and concerns they've raised. They
have known - without totally knowing - that their partner was betraying them.
Cassandra's story is a case in point. "I finally found the evidence I knew was there," she told me during
our first visit. Her volunteer firefighter husband had inadvertently left his computer on when he had to rush out
of the house for a fire call one morning. When she approached his desk to retrieve his empty coffee cup and half-eaten
muffin, her jaw dropped. There, displayed on his computer screen were a series of images of children engaged in
sexual activities with adult partners. With a few clicks of the mouse, Cassandra discovered a huge file of child
pornography, and evidence that her husband was part of a pornography ring.
Deeply disturbed, but relieved to have found validation for her sense of foreboding, and an explanation for her
husband's erratic behavior, Cassandra came to see me for advice and guidance. "What do I do with all this
information?" she wanted to know. "And, where do I go from here? Is it even safe for me to confront him?
Who should I tell? I have to say, weird as it seems, I'm relieved to discover that I'm not crazy. Maybe this came
now to tell me that my marriage is over. I've been thinking that I need to get out for a long time. But he kept
telling me I was imagining things. After awhile, I stopped knowing what to trust! I lost touch with myself. Thank
God for the clarity I'm getting now."
In Cassandra's case, the validation of her gut sense, and the specific evidence she found, was helpful in enabling
her to move on. But you can also be validated by what you learn, and want to try to heal your partnership. Relief
can come in the truth being revealed…no matter where you ultimately choose to take it.
Now what? Where do I go from here?
When our worlds explode, it's inevitable that we worry about what will come next. From our positions of panic,
we ask "What now? Where do I go from here?" Often my patients say, "I don't know what to do."
When I learned of my husband's infidelity and scary behavior, I felt as if I'd been hit in the gut with a bowling
ball. I sat at my desk in shock, horror, disbelief, and relief all at once. I had no idea what to do…and I knew
exactly what to do. I needed support. I needed to talk. I needed validation. I needed not to feel so alone!
I called a dear friend who, 22 years before, had been betrayed in a similarly egregious manner by her first husband.
She was the perfect one to call. Her loving support and moral indignation was just what I needed to experience
at that moment in time. After about half an hour on the phone with Shirley, I felt better; I was connected, buoyed
and comforted. "I'm not alone in this," I thought. "Many others have been through challenges like
this, have survived, and even thrived. I'll get through this…with the help of my friends." And so I did…as
have many others.
The road to healing your life after betrayal is through love, support, and hope. You may not know "what to
do" in a big way for a long time. But, day by day, you will! Reach out to your friends, trusted relatives,
colleagues, therapists, mentors, religious leaders and any other spiritual resources that speak to you. You will
gain clarity, love, and support.
And, you have a choice about how to proceed. While you can't direct the winds, you can surely choose how you respond
to them. You direct your sails! In the next chapter, you'll learn the lesson of choice. Do you grow or shrink,
learn or blame, or leave or stay? You actively choose your future…one minute at a time. And, you absolutely can
create the world of your dreams. Are you ready? Let's go!
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