Infidelity Trauma has a shattering effect. The deeply known and relied-upon, what was essential to your life, are violently eradicated. And as a result, a complex traumatic reaction occurs. What was once a relationship built on safety quickly morphs into something precarious. Relationship survival is now uncertain and emotional safety the top priority. A relationship that was built on love and gave deep meaning to life is called into question.
These seismic relational and emotional shifts are traumatic for the betrayed partner (and often the wayward partner as well). In the wake of infidelity, life can take on a surreal, dreamlike (nightmarish) quality—what once felt solid and sustaining has been torn apart.
Such a betrayal trauma leads to a host of painful struggles that may include intrusive and obsessive thoughts about the infidelity, disorientation, sadness/despair and a profound sense of loss, anger/rage, as well as physical symptoms and major sleep disturbances. This can make it difficult to function and get through the day, especially early in the acute post-betrayal phase of recovery.
Healing after infidelity: The inevitable role of acceptance
As the new reality begins to set in and you explore your options (Do I want to stay in the marriage/relationship? Can it be saved? What resources exist to help us? Will I ever be able to trust again?), there are numerous individual and relational dynamics that will require close examination. The pathways to healing after infidelity are multifaceted, with different issues arising that will require attention.
For those choosing to work on their relationship, at some point in the infidelity recovery process they arrive at the difficult task of acceptance:
- Can I accept not completely knowing/understanding why my partner cheated?
- Can I accept living with some level of uncertainty about the future?
- Can I accept opening my heart again to someone who caused me enormous suffering?
- Can I accept that infidelity will always be a part of our history?
These are just some of the questions the betrayed individual must grapple with as the healing process unfolds—questions that can plague them with painful rumination and anxiety.
The journey begins: seeking clarity and coherence in the storm of uncertainty
There is a natural tendency to find coherent explanations for the experiences of our lives. Finding cause-and-effect connections helps bring order and predictability to life. (“I didn’t really prepare for that job interview, that’s why I blew it.”; “I feel so much better emotionally when I keep up with my yoga practice.”)
Our preference for understanding—for making sense of events—takes center stage when couples are working to rebuild their relationship after an affair. The betrayed spouse/partner needs answers, they want to know how the person they’ve trusted and built a life with can violate their history, their shared vision and their planned-for future. The betrayed partner’s instinctive search for answers can become all-consuming, a search that is driven to protect and reestablish the safety that’s been lost.
Understandably, the betrayed partner wants answers after a betrayal trauma because clarity and certainty can help them feel safe again; ambiguity tends to keep people stuck in a threat response.
Understandably, the betrayed partner wants answers after a betrayal trauma because clarity and certainty can help them feel safe again; ambiguity tends to keep people stuck in a threat response.
But the reality is that clarity and a cohesive narrative often remain elusive as couples unpack their relationship and the wayward partner explores the reasons for the destructive decisions they’ve made.
The challenges of making sense of why someone cheats
The reasons that lead someone to cheat on the person they love are complex and not always easy to decipher. I have written numerous articles on the role of childhood trauma and later infidelity where I’ve attempted to shine a light on the complex relationship between developmental traumas (emotional, physical, sexual abuse, severe neglect) and how these early abuse dynamics are resurrected in one’s intimate relationships in adulthood.
Efforts to understand what drove the wayward partner to create a secret life of acting out is never a justification for what has occurred. In order to build back relational safety, both the betrayed and wayward partners often try to reach a shared understanding of the betrayal(s), an understanding that helps them make sense of how and why the unfaithfulness occurred. This gives both partners a blueprint that can inform the affair recovery process.
This part of the infidelity healing comes with its own challenges. Reaching a consensus of understanding is inherently difficult, since the betrayed partner has no sure way of knowing if further gaslighting is occurring. The wayward partner’s consistency over time is what reduces this fear. But even when the wayward partner is being completely open and honest and trust is being rebuilt, it is often difficult for the betrayed partner to wrap their head around their partner’s discoveries about why they’ve cheated—even when these discoveries come from intensive infidelity counseling.
The shared understanding that may emerge from infidelity healing is best thought of as a “good enough” narrative, one that both of you can live with without distorting or dismissing the reality of the devastating injury.
Let’s examine several challenges that may merge in your attempts to find a good enough understanding of the infidelity.
Over-relying on logic/rationality to make sense of cheating dynamics
Many of the wayward partners I work with (both men and women) are devastated by what they’ve done. They feel deep shame and regret and there is often considerable self-loathing that arises when they take full stock of the damage caused by their actions. This raises the question: why would someone who loves their partner deeply, who knows right from wrong and has a moral compass, do such a thing? These are central questions that have guided my work, and they are often essential for many in their infidelity recovery.
When childhood trauma plays a central role in the secretive acting-out of the wayward partner, there may be numerous psychological factors that made them affair-prone that are hard to place in a fully coherent, explanatory narrative. Behaviors that arise from unconscious conflicts, avoidance patterns, dissociation/compartmentalization and childhood trauma reenactments have the power to bypass an individual’s sense of agency and values, causing profound disruptions to their life’s trajectory.
This psychological careening during secretive acting-out is often driven by unmetabolized shame and unintegrated parts of the personality, an inner battle to manage the pain from the past that leads someone to act against themselves and their own best interests.
This psychological careening during secretive acting-out is often driven by unmetabolized shame and unintegrated parts of the personality, an inner battle to manage the pain from the past that leads someone to act against themselves and their own best interests.
Logical explanations too often fail to help us understand these complicated dynamics, rationales such as: “If you truly loved me, you would not have cheated”; “You knew it was wrong and would hurt me; that alone should have stopped you”; “We were in a committed relationship and that should have been enough to prevent this” make complete sense, but sadly, one’s love, moral code and conscious commitment may buckle under the powerful force of unresolved childhood trauma.
This does not in any way excuse these behaviors, but in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of what has occurred, we need to explore why love, morality and commitment weren’t enough to prevent infidelity.
Self-referential comparison
As the betrayed partner is trying to make sense of why the person they trusted has cheated, they may find themselves thinking some version of: “I could never have done that to you” or “If you felt so out-of-control, why didn’t you come to me or get some help? I certainly would have.” The most intuitive way we often try to understand someone else’s behavior is by using the only frame of reference we have: our own psychology.
For many, the infidelity trauma is so outside the betrayed partner’s mental and emotional reality that no explanation for why the cheating occurred makes sense. The shock and devastation caused by infidelity is so shattering that it cannot be easily resolved by intellectual understanding of what may have driven the wayward partner to be unfaithful.
For the betrayed partner, there are three types of self-comparison that can occur when trying to make sense of the reasons why their partner cheated:
- The level of the attachment/love and commitment the betrayed has for their partner can be used as a comparison point. This comparison takes the form of: “I could never be unfaithful to you because I love and care for you. . .you must not love me in order to do what you did!”
- Another self-comparison involves use of one’s own moral filter to interpret the actions of another. Relationship integrity rests on loyalty and exclusivity; a sense of responsibility to protect the bond; empathy and emotional consideration for the partner; and honesty and openness. When these shared values are violated, the betrayed partner experiences a profound moral injury. A significant part of the betrayed partner’s trauma stems from this moral wound and the struggle to understand what the wayward partner’s actions mean in relation to these core values.
- We each have a psychological braking system, one that inhibits certain behaviors while allowing other behaviors to proceed. These internal inhibitors are often influenced by our value system (knowing right from wrong); “healthy” guilt that reminds us of the paths we want and don’t want to travel down; as well as empathy and our concern about hurting others. The betrayed individual may reflect on the times they didn’t violate relationship boundaries, the moments they intentionally didn’t cross a line for the sake of the relationship.
The trap of seeking certainty and an airtight understanding
When we are traumatized, our priorities quickly shift and safety jumps to the top of the list. Just like someone who is in physical danger and is seeking shelter from harm, the victim of infidelity is attempting to find any semblance of psychological shelter to help deal with the devastating fallout. Healing after infidelity requires grieving for what was lost while trying to find solid footing to ensure that no further betrayals occur. Both are necessary for rebuilding to occur and each offers unique challenges that must be worked through in the infidelity recovery process.
In order to secure relational and emotional safety in the present and future, some level of understanding about how and why the cheating occurred is necessary. Without this knowledge, the partner who cheated may remain vulnerable to further acting out. But the reality is that the insights and self-understanding that arise from the wayward partner’s own therapy or self-work may not feel adequate to the betrayed partner and therefore they will not bring the desired solace and sense of security they need to move forward.
After an affair, the betrayed partner is traumatized and in survival mode; and as a result, their attunement to danger is heightened. What they may desperately want is an explanation that is complete, that offers guarantees that the unfaithful behavior won’t be repeated, and that has a clear internal logic to it. In short, they want certainty to help them feel safe. This trauma-driven need for certainty makes complete sense considering the reality they’ve been thrown into.
But this level of certainty is often impossible to achieve, leaving the betrayed individual feeling trapped in a no-win situation.
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As couples work to heal from infidelity, they will process many different issues related to the betrayal. We’ve explored the important need for the wayward individual to engage in an ongoing level of self-examination that will help them and their partner make sense of their actions. The partner that strayed will work on this individually and the couple will work on this jointly, with the betrayed partner asking questions as they both try to make sense of the drivers that led to this new devastating reality.
The truth is that for some, no explanation—no matter how insightful and hard-fought to achieve—can bring back the safety needed for the marriage or relationship to survive. This is not a failing on the part of the betrayed partner; it’s simply a fact about the enormity of the pain and disruption caused by infidelity.
Others do find that they’ve settled on a “good enough” set of explanations for why the affair occurred, and this gives direction to the work needed to move forward. But for those who are seeking absolute certainty rather than clarity, the search turns into its own form of suffering. It becomes an attempt to regulate intolerable feelings through information, a feedback loop that can keep you stuck as you wait for the next piece of information you hope will bring you relief.
Working toward increased clarity (rather than certainty) may help you break free from this painful cycle.
The work on finding greater clarity is a process. One should not easily settle on a comfortable explanation (“Oh, this is why I had the affair”) as a static truth that shuts down further exploration, but rather view this as an unfolding process where deeper insights and pieces of the puzzle may gradually come together through the challenging, ongoing work of self-examination.
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Rich Nicastro, PhD, is a clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience supporting individuals and couples as they navigate betrayal trauma and other emotional challenges. He offers teletherapy to clients throughout the United States. To work with Dr. Nicastro and join his waiting list, please email him at Rich@RichardNicastro.com.
