As women experiencing marriage betrayal, what tends to hurt the most is that the trust and belief in the person closest to them has been shattered. It’s traumatic, to learn your husband has betrayed you and the marriage. And with this traumatic experience comes experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

What Does Marital Betrayal Look and Feel Like?

The trauma evoked by marriage betrayal typically manifest in one of the following ways:

•  Emotional lability (excessive emotional reactions and frequent mood shifts) – recurrent tearfulness, quick shifts from rage to sadness to hope and back again

• Hyper-vigilance that can manifest in self-protective behaviors like doing “detective work” (checking bills, wallets, computer files, phone apps, browser histories, etc.)

• Attempting to combine a series of unrelated events in order to predict future betrayal

• Being labile and easily triggered (think PTSD) into anxiety, rage, or fear by any hint that the betrayal might be repeated or ongoing – trigger examples include: the spouse comes home late, turns off the computer quickly, or looks “too long” at an attractive person

• Sleeplessness, nightmares, difficulty focusing on the day-to-day

• Obsessing about the trauma – struggling to focus, being distracted, depressed, etc.

• Avoiding thinking about or discussing the trauma (a common reaction to a traumatic experience)

• Isolation

• Compulsive spending, eating, exercise 

• Intrusive fantasy images or thoughts about the betrayal

These symptoms won’t just go away over time, they keep popping up and affecting us in negative ways until we seek out healing for them. While the husband that has been caught or confessed to the betrayal may feel a since of relief once the truth is in the light, the wife is often blindsided by this information. It is overwhelming to hear and learn the full extent of her husband’s behavior even if some prior knowledge was known. It can feel like a ripping apart of your emotional world with the lies, manipulation, and seemingly lack of concern for you and your family. Healing is possible. But it takes courage, for women to seek out help for their PTSD symptoms. It means acknowledging that this betrayal has affected and that a season to heal is needed. 

What can healing look like? 

It takes many forms but it can look like some of the following:

• Validate that the betrayal is trauma

• Work with a professional to find healthy coping skills and outlets for the gamut of painful emotions that follow a betrayal.

• Do not numb, ignore, distract from, or project your emotions on to others. Your emotions need to be acknowledged and worked through.

• Rekindle and renew your intuition and instinct.

• Learn and implement grounding techniques to help support the healing of the PTSD symptoms

• EMDR therapy which is designed to support the healing of trauma 

• Reconnect with your spiritual community 

• Create space for being emotionally drained, resist the urge to be busy

And just because it’s worth saying again.  Healing is possible. It does take work and seeking out help, but you are worth it.