5 Partner Responses After Sexual Betrayal

Discovering your sexual addiction and acting out is traumatic for your wife or partner. Let’s walk through some of the trauma responses she may be experiencing. In Courageous Love, Stefanie Carnes discusses eleven. I cover five here. Part two discusses six more.

5 trauma responses your partner may experience

Intense shame

This should not surprise. Your wife may experience a deep feeling of unworthiness. Shame is the very uncomfortable sense and belief that something is wrong or defective with you as a person.

“I’m bad, I’m wrong, I’m broken.”

For her, it could manifest as not feeling good enough, attractive enough, sexy enough, that some deep flaw is irreversible and permanent and that this was the reason you acted out in the first place. Shame may express itself in her as withdrawal, her body closing in on itself, shutting down emotionally, or having little to say or not being able to articulate what’s going on inside. Shame disconnects and looks like isolation. Your wife may even experience shame that she continues to stay in the relationship and that others are judging her for staying.

Self-blame

Discovering your acting out can be highly traumatizing.

Self-blame is closely associated with shame. If you come to believe you are deeply flawed as a person, then naturally you would blame yourself for a loved one’s wrong behavior, even if you know better intellectually. “If I was a better wife, if I loved him more, then he would not have done this to me. He would have been faithful.”

Confusion

Your wife may be confused by what actually happened. You’ve been looking at pornography? For how long? Why didn’t you tell me? You cheated on me? How did it happen? Did you pursue her? What does she look like? She may be confused about the timeline, what happened when and where she was at the time. She may also be confused about your relationship. Do I stay? Can we get through this? Does he still love me? Can he become trustworthy?

Additionally, many men lie and gaslight to cover their acting out. Stefanie Carnes writes,

“Gaslighting, in case you’re unfamiliar with the term, is a form of psychological abuse that involves the presentation of false information followed by dogged insistence that the information is true. Over time, gaslighting causes betrayed partners to feel crazy and to question their perception of reality.”

If you’ve gaslighted your wife, her confusion may be pronounced.

Fear and hypervigilance

Your wife may be experiencing fear and hypervigilance. She may be afraid you’ll do it again. Could it be happening even now? Is he really at work? Is he messaging someone after I fall asleep? She now feels like she has to constantly be on the lookout, paying attention to every little detail, or else she may be sideswiped again. It’s like a bomb went off and she’s now walking through a minefield. Being hypervigilant about what you’re doing and when and why—though she hates it and is exhausting—feels necessary for her survival.

A lack of social support

There are traumatic events in life where the natural response is to reach out to loved ones for support and solace and help. Betrayal trauma though can be hard to open up about. The stigma, the shame, the embarrassment can cause partners to withdraw and isolate themselves, the opposite of what they need. Isolation can make the other trauma responses feel worse. I write about the importance of group work for men in recovery, but a similar network of mutual love and understanding is just as healing for partners.

Have you witnessed any of these? There’s a good chance you have. Do what you can to understand her experience. Doing so will demonstrate you love her and want to change. Even ask her directly about these responses as it may open up a needed conversation.

Read part two.