Couples Betrayal Recovery
The discovery or disclosure of your partner’s affair or compulsive sexual addiction is a shocking and devastating life event. You keep it to yourself because of the shame of not knowing who you can confide in and trust. Betrayal is based on a mind game of smoke and mirrors of manipulation, gaslighting, and emotional abuse where the betrayed partner experiences a shattering of trust, questions everything that you know to be true, and needs to find safety in the loss of confidence of the person that you love. Betrayal can be either an emotional affair establishing emotional connections by sharing conversations, confidences, personal subjects, or spending quality time with someone outside the relationship or marriage. A physical affair includes rendezvous with sexual intimacy, connection, placing emphasis on the affair partner rather than your spouse, and living a double life of deception and lies. Betrayal trauma symptoms are similar to post-traumatic stress disorder and may include the following:
BETRAYAL TRAUMA SYMPTOMS
- PTSD Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Hypervigilance
- Flashbacks
- Intrusive thoughts
- Nightmares
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Dissociation
- Difficulty focusing and concentrating.
- Emotional dysregulation
- Questioning your intuition and instinct
The betrayed partner will need support in managing your trauma symptoms, learning to identify gaslighting, manipulation, and managing crisis issues, including medical health conditions, family issues, and financial impact. Therapeutic support helps establish empowerment, learn how to use your voice effectively, establish safety, and create healthy boundaries.
HOW DOES COUPLES THERAPY HELP REBUILD A RELATIONSHIP AFTER INFIDELITY?
Couples therapy plays an essential role in the healing process after the discovery or disclosure of infidelity, whether by affair or sexual addiction. It provides a safe, confidential, and supportive framework where partners can feel they have a safe space to express their concerns, feelings, worries, and desires bravely and honestly. A therapist supports the couple in navigating the restoration of shattered trust, repairing the ruptures, establishing safety and boundaries, and restoring connection in the relationship.
Essentially, these steps include helping the couple navigate the deep emotional impact of the betrayal trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, supporting partners in the process of the grief and loss of the relationship and marriage as it once was, processing complex and difficult emotions in the aftermath, and progressively moving toward compassion and acceptance, and creating a new 2.0 relationship.
A therapist can help the couple rebuild the shattered trust and establish a safe foundation by utilizing strategies and exercises designed to support couples in repairing and restoring trust, emphasizing authenticity, accountability, consistency, and responsibility. Therapy can teach the partners to establish effective communication, empathy, and compassion and constructively communicate their requirements for a healthy and safe relationship without criticism, shame, or judgment, encouraging a deeper connection.
COUPLES BETRAYAL RECOVERY
There are many issues to navigate as a couple, whether you decide to stay in the relationship, establish an in-house separation, or separate and divorce. The aftermath and ripple effect of discovery or disclosure of an affair or compulsive sexual addiction rips the fabric of the foundation of the relationship as the betrayed partner seeks answers to their questions. Individual therapy for partners and couples is recommended to navigate the complex process.
Couples betrayal recovery provides therapeutic guidelines to work together to restore healing, repair the rupture of trust, and reconnect with your partner. I provide compassionate and effective couples’ betrayal recovery therapy for healing the suffering and heartbreak of shattered trust due to affairs or sexual addiction. I support partners in the aftermath of the discovery of emotional and sexual betrayal and the process of the couple’s healing, repairing, and restoration of their relationship. Contact me today to start your healing journey.
