How Do You Recover From Betrayal?

Betrayal – intentional obfuscation, hurtful omission, or infidelity – was not part of my divorce story. A client once described her marriage as death by a thousand cuts, and that probably describes my experience as well. There was no big surprise.

It was someone I dated seriously after my husband. And it was not overt infidelity. It was omission and obfuscation. But it left me rudderless, confused, and feeling a kind of self-loathing that shocked me.

The short version is that within a handful of months of ending our relationship, he bought a home with another woman. I had obviously missed something…major.

So I get it. And I write on this admittedly intimate topic here because I want my clients to know that.

Heartbreak is relentless. But betrayal, or even the suspicion of betrayal, has a sting marked by its own unique relentlessness. The rumination is invasive, consuming, and unpredictable. You reckon with the past and the present like a game of Russian roulette where every chamber is full.

As for the past, you imagine conversations and plans you didn't know were happening. You may try to recreate them or slot them in time alongside tender or loving exchanges you had with your former partner.

As for the present, if you are currently going through this, you imagine your partner showing up for someone new in a way they never showed up for you.

And that's the fear, right? That there was something about you that made it unappealing for your partner to try in the way you imagine they're trying now.

(The thing is, people can change – but only with a tremendous amount of effort, discipline, and dedication. Most people don't have that. Most people are loyal to their delusions, distractions, and self-destructive behaviors. While a new person will get a slightly different version of your former partner, it will not be unrecognizable to you.)

Underlying the almost compulsive assessment of past and present is a central theme - we blame ourselves. I don't know why. I'm not a therapist. But in my experience, the most intelligent, charismatic, lovable people grapple with the same thoughts.

What was wrong with me? What was unworthy in me? Why wasn't I enough? Why wasn't I worth fighting for? Why wasn't I worth being honest with? If I had just done something differently, could I have fulfilled their needs?

But the real question is - how unreal was my reality?

We tend to start trying to answer that question by imagining what our partners were or are thinking and feeling.

And maybe without us even knowing it, that becomes the foundation of the story we’re trying to create that reconciles what we thought was real and what was actually real.

The thing is, when the story comes from what we imagine someone else is experiencing, it will always fall flat. That’s the seed of rumination – we revise the draft over and over again because we know deep down it’s a shaky, projected foundation.

We will never know what someone else thinks and feels – especially if they are no longer available to tell us or we don’t trust what they say anyway.

Which is why the answer is to shift the protagonist from them to us. The person who matters is you. Your thoughts and feelings. And then you start writing the story from that lens. (Easier said than done.)

What worked for you in the relationship? OK, we take that forward. What didn't work for you in the relationship? OK, that's what we remind ourselves of when we're nostalgic or obsessing or romanticizing or self-flagellating.

Because as the protagonist you are accessible to yourself completely. It is the only place an abiding truth you can commit to is going to come from.

To do that, though, we have to remove the shame around our grief. In our culture we are told that grieving someone who mistreated you, disrespected you, or rejected you is shameful.

But what if thinking about them, grieving them, and sitting in that for a period of time is actually the way to the other side? What if we shame ourselves right into prolonging the suffering?

I’m convinced the reason the whole world loves Taylor Swift is because she celebrates processing the grief of even the shortest romance with no shame. Her experience is THE experience.

A therapist I love said heartbreak is an expensive education. But what I’ve seen work with my beautiful, resilient clients is the same thing I experienced myself. I learned so many humbling lessons from being with someone who omitted truth that I never could have learned any other way.

In divorce, we think the work is figuring out the house, the kids, the retirement accounts, and that’s true to an extent. All of that will get done.

But at Redefining Family, we prioritize what is happening in the heart. Is it broken? Because if we ignore that work, we waste the opportunity to know ourselves more deeply, to surprise ourselves with our resilience, and to truly get to the other side.