Infidelity and spousal betrayal have been shoved into the spotlight with the Tiger Woods episode and the subsequent drama continuing to play out around it. Therapy experts working with betrayed spouses are evolving a deeper understanding and better tools to support these women who are often emotionally abandoned and even blamed for their own husband’s infidelities.
One promising therapy stems from the idea that discovery of betrayal by a long-term spouse is a form of profound psychological trauma for those who endure it, similar to suddenly losing a job, child or home. Cutting edge treatment simply supports the spouse in working through grief and trauma of what they are going through, placing much less initial focus on the details of her past or even the history of the relationship.
The spouse who is cheated-upon is also often the spouse who has had her reality denied for years by being lied to and by having her accurate feelings invalidated by a cheating husband. The wife who accurately senses and repeatedly asks her husband about his emotional unavailability and sexual distance, only to be told that she is making things up, too jealous or just plain crazy is going to feel crazy after a while. When the truth of his behavior finally becomes known and her worst fears are suddenly realized, betrayed spouses can become emotionally and sometimes physically violent, threatening and looking like an out-of-control roller coaster of emotion.
One spouse now several years past treatment reflected:
“Looking back I can see that I went totally bananas when I finally uncovered my husband’s 11-year secret of hidden affairs, online porn and sensual massage. I raged at him, withdrew from him, kicked him out and threatened divorce one day, only to ask him to have sex with me and work it out the next day. I felt crazy at the time, but now if makes sense to me. He denied my reality for so long and what I felt and sensed was ridiculed and diminished throughout our relationship. When the truth finally came out-my emotions were at hurricane force-I couldn’t control them if I tried.”
This type of emotional abandonment, denial of reality and just plain hurt can lead to a wife who has been cheated-upon to look initially more crazy than the husband who has been doing the cheating — unless the therapy looks beneath her reactive behavior to validate and normalize her intense feelings of pain and loss.
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