Betrayed Partners

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 Have you recently discovered that your husband or wife has been viewing pornography, having an affair, or engaging in other sexual behaviors outside of your relationship—and now it feels like your world has shattered?

The person you trusted most has been living a life you didn’t know about, and you’ve been lied to—whether it was directly to your face or through omissions that kept you in the dark.

You may find yourself wondering, “Who is this person I thought I knew?” Suddenly everything feels uncertain.

It’s common to experience overwhelming anxiety, trouble sleeping, nightmares, panic, irritability, and even moments of feeling like life isn’t worth living. You may feel driven to constantly check up on your partner. You may wonder if you’re losing your mind.

Or maybe your partner has even told you that you’re “crazy.”

You’re not.

What you’re experiencing are symptoms of trauma.If you are visiting this page and you are in pain because your partner has been unfaithful, caught up in sexual addictive or compulsive behaviors and you may be feeling shame, guilt, abandonment, anger and depression. 

You may have initially focused on your partner’s problem but now realize that you feel hurt, confused, angry, and depressed.

As an affiliate of Hope Counseling Center, and as a trained Betrayal Trauma Therapist and Certified Sexaul Addiction Therapist (CSAT)I understand that a partner/spouse of a sex or porn addict experiences traumatic stress upon learning that the person she or he loved has been unfaithful, deceptive, lying and keeping secrets (some for years). 

We also know that the pain doesn’t go away on its own. You will likely go through all of the stages of  grief before you can feel trust and love.

You need support, understanding, a safe place to share your hurt, and to learn boundaries that you have a right to set in order to feel safe again.

I have completed the (APSATS) Multidimensional Partner Trauma Model training (MPTM) and (IITAP) Certification in Parter center healing. These training utilizes the trauma model perspective in treating the impact of sex betrayal on the partner or spouse.

 As part of the healing process, I, along with my fellow counselors at Hope are trained in helping couples complete a full disclosure or sometimes referred to as a healthy or "full" disclosure. We believe that this a an important part of the healing for both you (the partner) and your addicted partner and for the marriage. We prefer this to be accomplished early in the recovery and the partner is allowed to ask questions.

The Full Disclosure allows the addict and his/her therapist to write out the full history to make sure it is complete. Lies, half-truths, and secrets prevent healing and prevent the relationship to be fully healed and keeps the partner from ever having trust. Without the Full Disclosure, the partner doesn’t fully know what he/she needs to heal from. Sometimes the partner will request that the addicted partner take a polygraph withthe Full Disclosure.