When Children Trigger Previous Trauma

The Role of 12 Steps With Betrayal Trauma Recovery

Why Someone Telling You To Work On How You're Contributing To The Problem While Being Abused Is Counterproductive And Unethical

How Do I Choose A Professional To Help Me?

How Do I Support A Women In Betrayal?

Should I Get A Betrayal Trauma Coach?

Change Does Happen When Seeking To Overcome Betrayal Trauma

Giving Tuesday At Betrayal Trauma Recovery

If this podcast is helpful to you, please rate it. Every rating increases our ranking on search engines and helps women who are isolated to find us. Similarly, leaving anonymous comments about your experiences and what you are learning in relation to a podcast on our site at btr.org/podcast will help women who find the episodes to know that others are experiencing similar situations.

Have you ever wondered why sexual betrayal feels keenly similar—yet remarkably different—to losing a loved one who’s physically died? In my work with women healing from sexual betrayal, I’ve identified two words that completely reframe the experience of loss and trauma we so poignantly share. Those two words are…

Abandonment Grief

Abandonment happens when one party seeks satisfaction outside of his committed intimate relationship—at the expense of his partner’s physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being.

As survivors of sexual betrayal, we’ve all been abandoned in some way or another, to varying degrees and in different ways. Spouses who commit adultery abandon us by choosing other women for sexual satisfaction. Partners who are addicted to internet porn abandon us as their preferred and primary sexual connection, choosing “sex with self” (and onscreen images) instead of sex with us in our own bedrooms. Those who have emotional affairs seek relational intimacy with alternative third parties, diverting emotional resources away from us and our children.

Your Own Kind of Grief

In other words, sexual betrayal doesn’t result in the same kind of grief that’s triggered by other losses. Betrayal trauma creates its own kind of grief, one that’s reflected well in this quote by author and psychologist Susan Anderson:

“Shattering is not unique to abandonment. It is the initial stage of all types of grief where significant loss is involved. But the shattering of abandonment is special. Your loss was not due to a death, but because someone acted on free will not to be with you.”

Inspired by Susan Anderson’s book, Journey from Abandonment to Healing, I’ve begun to employ her unique and effective model for abandonment grief recovery with the women I’m privileged to know and coach. I love this abandonment grief recovery model SO MUCH, I recently spent one whole week training directly with Susan Anderson, to expanding my collection of tools and techniques to help clients heal and grow through grief. Today I’m proud to utilize this training throughout my coaching practice, through Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group sessions and individual sessions like Grief: Why Do I Feel Like I'm Dying Inside? and Mourning To Move Forward.

Following are some excerpts from Susan Anderson’s 5 stage model for abandonment grief, paired with coaching questions I ask my clients to explore for each one. Check it out and see if you don’t love it as much as I do:

S.W.I.R.L. = An acronym which stands for the five stages of abandonment: S = Shattering W = Withdrawal I = Internalizing R = Rage L = Lifting

Shattering

Your relationship is breaking apart. Your hopes and dreams are shattered. You are devastated, bewildered. You succumb to despair and panic. You feel hopeless and may have suicidal feelings. You feel symbiotically attached to your lost love, mortally wounded, as if you’ll die without them. You are in severe pain, shock, sorrow. You’ve been severed from your primary attachment. You’re cut off from your emotional life-line.

What has shattering been like for you? Can you identify at least one specific incident when you encountered shattering as a grief response to sexual and/or relational abandonment?

 

The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Glossary helps women know the basics about

Betrayal Trauma.

If you’ve had it with your husband’s pornography / sexual addiction and related behaviors, such as lies, infidelity, gaslighting, narcissistic behaviors, Betrayal Trauma Recovery is for you.

The consequences of your man's sexual addiction may cause you to experience fear, anxiety, insomnia, depression, despair, hopelessness, or other mental distress, financial difficulties, and abandonment. You are likely suffering from betrayal trauma and need help.

Intuition and Gut Instinct Help Women Deal With Betrayal

Intuition Is a Warning Signal That Women Feel in Body and Mind

Women Have a Gift of intuition That Helps Them With Betrayal Trauma

I intrinsically feel that women have this gift given to us. I started looking into it because I thought, 'Is it true or do I just feel that women have it stronger than men do?'

Anne: That ‘quickly make decisions’ part is where at least I got tripped up in my betrayal trauma journey.

I remember the sense of intense dread, like someone's going to die. Something really, really bad is going to happen. I just thought, 'I must be crazy!"

Betrayal Trauma Can Temporarily Hinder Intuition and Gut Instinct

That's the impact of gas-lighting. When we're a victim of gaslighting that's what happens.

Anne: Right. Had he told me the truth in that moment. If I had I said, ‘something really bad is going to happen’, and he said, ‘yea because I'm having an affair’. Or whatever it was. I still don't know to this day what it was about but had he told me the truth in that moment I would have thought, "oh, I'm not crazy!"

Rebuilding Intuition After Betrayal Trauma Is Challenging

This can be difficult in partner recovery, trying to re-establish your relationship with gut instinct and experiencing a trigger, and your gut instinct is sending off these red flares that something is going on, the question then is, 'Is there ongoing trauma that you're having this gut instinct reaction to, or is it a trigger from the past?’

Here at Betrayal Trauma Recovery we try to help women understand the related behaviors so that you can watch what he's doing and not necessarily have to trust his words.

Re-establishing Intuition After Betrayal Starts With Love And Kindness With Self

Sometimes as women we want to be hard on ourselves. We are like, 'Why didn't I see that? " Or, 'Why didn't I know?"', Or ' Why did I ignore that red flag?" Or whatever the list is that can be read to ourselves.

When you think about actually being in a relationship with somebody else, if there's been a break in trust, you have to rebuild that trust. There's a process of rebuilding that trust.

There's probably been some gaslighting going on. And especially then you're just like, ‘Woah where is my radar? What just happened?’

Practicing Mindfulness Helps The Process Of Rebuilding Intuition After Betrayal

Welcome the feeling whatever it is. Like saying hello to that feeling. So if you're feeling anxious you say 'oh, I'm feeling anxious!' and I say hello to that.

Anne: Hello anxiety!

Piper: Yea! Hello anxiety! I think this is so important because, especially when we're talking about gaslighting or breakdown in gut instinct.

I was thinking, 'Piper, you're not anxious! Get over it!' I'm actually denying that I'm feeling anxiety at that time.

So instead if I'm like, 'Okay I'm feeling anxious. Hello anxiety!' Even if you don't know the feeling, ' I'm feeling some feelings. Hello feelings!'

I'm actually validating my body and my mind, spirit, whole being and what you're experiencing in that moment. And that actually is little moments of re-establishing trust with your mind and your body and gut instinct.

Trusting Ourself and Our Intuition Builds Confidence After Betrayal

Learning To Trust Your Intuition After Betrayal Starts With The Little Things

Acknowledging Successes While Learning To Trust Intuition After Betrayal

Read more at btr.org/podcast

Women In Abusive Relationships Can Find Online Support 

If you’ve had it with your husband’s pornography / sexual addiction and related behaviors, such as lies, infidelity, gaslighting, narcissistic behaviors, Betrayal Trauma Recovery is for you. 

The consequences of your man's sexual addiction may cause you to experience fear, anxiety, insomnia, depression, despair, hopelessness, or other mental distress, financial difficulties, and abandonment. You are likely suffering from betrayal trauma and need help. 

Betrayal Trauma Recovery professionals can help you establish emotional safety and peace in your home. You are not crazy, you don't have mental health problems. You are likely a victim of abuse and you need to heal. 

If your husband has confessed his lies, compulsive sexual behaviors, and emotional abuse, promised to change, Betrayal Trauma Recovery APSATS Coaches will give you tools to know if the changes are real.

Welcome to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, I’m Ann!  We have Jen from Utah with us today to talk about her journey to heal from betrayal trauma. She worked with Coach Cat in one of our Intimate Treason Facebook Groups, so Coach Cat is joining our podcast today as well. 

Welcome Jen and Cat! 

Before we start today I just want to mention that women from over 35 different states and 7 different countries have scheduled support calls and joined our BTR Support groups! So wherever you live, our live online services are here for you! 

I think that it’s really exciting that Jen got to work with Cat even though Cat lives in the UK and Jen lives in Utah! We’re happy to have you both on the call today!

Jen’s Experience With Betrayal Trauma 

So Jen, let’s start with how you discovered your husband’s addiction. Can you tell us your story?

Jen: Looking back, I went through ten years of consistent disclosures of physical affairs. With each disclosure, he would give me there was a lot of like gaslighting and emotional abuse. It was my fault, I was to blame, not good enough physically, emotionally or sexually. 

He would eventually come out and tell the full truth, swearing he would never do it again, that this was the last time.  I didn't know at the time that this could be an addiction. 

I truly thought he's just a jerk. I'm not good enough. He's just looking for something better because I don't amount to what what he's looking for. I went through about ten years of that. 

Hitting Rock Bottom Led to the Recovery From Betrayal Trauma

My latest big disclosure which was the big tipping point and led us to find recovery was two years ago. A religious leader pointed us to a counselor who ended up being specialized in this specific addiction. 

When she said the words like, ' You have an addiction. You need to go to group.', It was still hard for me to grasp because I had told myself the story for ten years that it's me, I'm the problem. I would never tell anybody,  not even therapists that we would go to. 

I was so ashamed and mortified and was sure that the therapist would say ‘Yea, you're not doing this and you're not that’, and give me a list of all the reasons why this is happening to me. 

So he had disclosed about a physical affair with a women at work. He continued therapy and I continued therapy. He went back and forth from, ‘Yes I want recovery, this is an addiction’ to ‘This is not an addiction and I don't want this’. 

He hit his rock bottom and made a decision, and his choice fortunately for us was that he truly did want recovery. We were able to start our recovery journey. That is what has led me to where I am today. 

Support Groups Help Recovery From The Trauma Of Abusive Relationships

Read more at btr.org

Without doubt, triggers are a pretty universal experience for women who have suffered sexual betrayal trauma and the related behaviors of lying, gaslighting, and narcissistic behaviors.

Triggers can pop up when you least expect it and in ways you would never have dreamed of. When they do, they can be genuinely paralyzing, distressing and panic inducing. They are also, sadly, unavoidable (for the most part) and so having a strategy or two for dealing with them is a wise move for your healing.

Today we'll unpack some of the science behind triggers, how and why they happen, and how to recognize them in her individual sessions. She will invite you to increase your awareness of your own personal triggers and the impact they have on you, - the first step to learning how to confidently recognize and face a trigger.

You'll learn how tracking triggers can help you prepare for unavoidable triggers and anticipate triggering situations (and even prepare for them pro-actively). BTR coaches can teach you simple and practical techniques for regaining your personal power over triggers with effective tools and strategies.

There is no doubt that you will leave these sessions with a clearer understanding of why and how you are triggered, what you can do about it and with new tools in your toolbox to aid and enhance your healing.

Managing Triggers When Experiencing Trauma From Your Husband’s Lies, Porn Use, and Emotional Abuse

We are going to talk about understanding and managing triggers. All of us who have experienced betrayal trauma have experienced triggers on some level so I am so glad you are here to talk about this today. 

 

Common Triggers For Women After Discovering Husband’s Secret Sexual Behavior

Triggers are unpredictable but there are some universal ones that women experience. Depending on what their husband’s sexual behavior and addiction has been, often it is clearly pornographic images or even just the media images we are exposed to now. We can be standing in the que at the supermarket and we can be exposed to very sexualized images. This can be a really big trigger for many in the early stages after we discover our husbands have an issue with sex and lust.

Another trigger women experience is just being around their husband or partner who has been causing the pain that they are in. Even being in the same place as this person can be a big trigger for women. 

Anne: Are there also triggers associated with the emotional abuse, the gaslighting, the manipulation, and the lies that are taking place?

We can experience those triggers at the hands of other people, beyond just our own husbands and the people who have been committing the most obvious abuse in our life.

We can become very sensitive to dishonesty, to really any kind of shifty behavior that makes us feel uncomfortable. We can experience it with our husband but also the work environment or in our friendships.

These kinds of behaviors become quite sensitive points for us. Lying is one of the biggest triggers that women universally experience.

What Triggers You The Most After Discovering Your Husband’s Addiction?

Anne: There are so many different aspects to triggers and the way we are triggered related to the lying and the emotional abuse we have experienced.

For our readers, will you please scroll down and comment about your experience.

How do I find peace – emotionally, physically, mentally, sexually, and spiritually – while navigating the often messy and confusing journey of being in relationship with someone recovering from a pornography/sexual addiction? The foundation for finding peace is understanding and implementing healthy boundaries.  In this group, Coach Sarah will:

Guide you through key topics relevant to the way betrayal trauma impacts boundaries.

Help you learn how to identify where you need boundaries put in to place.

Teach you how to craft a boundary request. 

Guide you through the process of deciphering when a boundary is a “non-negotiable” or “deal-breaker” boundary.

Work through the often most difficult aspect of boundaries – what to do when there is a “boundary violation”.

In each group coaching session, you’ll experience a safe place to voice your questions and receive feedback, validation, and encouragement – plus have reading and homework to maintain your momentum during the week.

Testimonials

"I worked the boundaries group with with Coach Sarah. This course specifically addresses setting boundaries for partners of sex addicts, but its principles are applicable in all areas of our lives. An intimate group of amazing women represented different stages of discovery and grief cycles. We came from various backgrounds and bonded together to find solutions to the challenges women face after the initial shock of disclosure -- when we are unable to make sense of reality.  When I recognized that the feelings attached to the experience of trauma are universal in nature, but there are some unique, heightened and very personal pain-points around this particular addiction, I was able to sort out truth from fiction and find coping tools. Coach Sarah is instinctual and intuitive. She is unafraid to be flexible as the group congeals. This isn’t a cookie cutter group with an unmovable agenda – there isn’t one way to approach the challenge of boundaries. Sex addiction is real. Treat yourself to this healing experience. Transcend the past, move past the “crazy” and stand in your own truth in sisterhood."

"I just happened to find a BTR podcast in the midst of finding out my spouse had been lying and cheating - again - actually #6 that I know of. The deepest, darkest moment of my life. Words can't express how listening to the podcast truly saved my life and made me feel like there are others out there -  I wasn't alone! The words of encouragement, education, support & knowing this situation is for real and I wasn't crazy was so comforting! After searching the BTR site, I noticed courses were offered that could help even further. At that moment, a Boundaries course was coming up within a few weeks. I decided NOW was the time and signed up with Coach Sarah. Words truly can't express how this experience helped in my life! I will miss my Tuesday evening meetings with Coach Sarah & the brave women that also enrolled in this course. Each story & experience shared from the others touched my life in so many ways! The encouragement, education, & knowledge received from Coach Sarah & our group will forever be a part of my life! I wish I would have found BTR sooner, but know it simply was in God's timing to bring this organization into my life! I look forward to continuing coaching & enrolling in future courses! Thank you BTR (Anne) & Coach Sarah for everything!" 

"I was referred to Coach Sarah (and BTR) by my personal counselor. I didn't know what to expect, but from the first day, I could feel the support of other women and a great experience of Sarah. Women in our group were experiencing similar challenges, so it was easy to share with them and support them. It was a great source of healing for me. I highly recommend any BTR support group that Coach Sarah leads, because it helped me to feel much better during difficult times." 

Read more at btr.org

In this 15 week Facebook group, Coach Laura will walk with you as you travel your own path to

healing and joy. The suggested reading and healing exercises included in this workgroup will

help you to better understand and process the trauma you’re experiencing. During these 15

weeks, you will walk alongside other women who share in your pain, your struggles, your hope,

your victories, and ultimately your joy. We will explore together why labels like “codependent”

don’t really serve us on this journey – even if we are, because it’s trauma that we’re healing

from.

In the safe community of this group, you will

Come to terms with your reality, so that you can better face it, address it, and grow in it

Explore and process the many emotions you are struggling with – anger, shame, sadness, fear, decreased self-esteem, loneliness – and develop a plan and learn strategies to handle these feelings in a way that is healthy and authentic

Learn the beautiful freeing practice of detachment and develop skills leading to your personal empowerment

Develop a self-care plan that goes beyond “eating right, sleeping well, and exercising” (though those are important, too), but also includes supportive, nurturing relationships, within and outside of this group, dealing with our negative thoughts, false beliefs, managing triggers, and finding and practicing ways to relax and find joy, exploring what it means to be who you are, what your values are and how to put those into practice

Grieve your losses

Create and enforce boundaries through the development of effective consequences

Explore the idea of forgiveness without pressure to act before you’re ready or before it’s healthy

What it takes to trust again

How to get your needs met

Find your voice and speak your truth

Begin to develop a plan to live a life of authenticity based on your values, rather than your fears

By the end of 15 weeks, you will have a plan in place for your healing, and yes, even for joy. You will have grown in your bond with this community of women who share in your struggles, and you will recognize within yourselves and each other your strengths and your unique gifts that will enable you to thrive beyond betrayal.

Read more at btr.org

Lisa Taylor is here with us today. Lisa is a pastoral sexual addiction specialist and a post-grad counseling student living in New Zealand. She has spent the last several years counseling and supporting women whose lives, like our own, have been impacted by husbands with sex addiction, sex offending, or sexual integrity issues. Her books on this topic include Beyond Betrayal, Beyond Betrayal Couple’s Guide and There's What On My Phone? - a fictional story for youth who struggle.

She also runs an online community blog for partners at beyondbetrayal.community.

Welcome, Lisa.

Lisa: Thank you, Anne.

Women Who Are Betrayed Have Every Right To Question God

Anne: Lisa, you did a survey a couple of years ago on the topic of spiritual crisis in the lives of partners of sex addicts. Can you tell us about that?

Lisa: A couple of years ago when I was still working on Beyond Betrayal, it struck me that this was an important topic to get some information about to include in the book and at the same time Marsha Means who runs The Circle of Joy was interested in starting groups for people who are struggling with this aspect of the journey. We got together and asked what we all wanted to know and put together some questions, then we sent it out to Marsha’s mailing list and we had over 100 women get back to us and share their stories with us.

Anne: I bet you had a lot of pain that came back to you.

Lisa: Absolutely, a lot of incredible stories.

Anne: What was your particular interest in the topic?

Lisa: I guess the reason why I really felt like I wanted to include something about this in the book was because I had experienced this; I had a background since I was a little kid. Those who know me a little bit more know I am in my second marriage right now to a man who is recovering from his porn addiction.

My first marriage didn't make it. And particularly as that first marriage was falling apart, I was very active in my local church. I hid a lot of abuse and went through a deep spiritual crisis that would last for years. I really questioned if God could still love me because I was being rejected by the church for making a stand and walking away from this poisonous relationship with a man who was not willing to get help for his sex addiction. He wasn't even willing to stop lying. I really felt this was some of the lowest points in my life. I think having my faith pulled out from underneath me was part of why this was such a low, low time for me. I really felt that had there been support, had there been people talking about this, perhaps I wouldn't have hit such a low point, perhaps it would have been an easier journey.

Anne: When you say you hid abuse, do you mean that you were abused by the church?

Lisa: Yes, unfortunately. Mine is one of many, many stories; they are all slightly different but a similar thread runs through all of them: somehow, it's not the man's fault, it's the woman's. If she decides to set a strong boundary that she is leaving if he does not get help....I got threatening letters form a pastor throughout the 4-5 years I was single, living as a solo mom in a different city with a full-time job. Eventually this resulted in a death threat. It was interesting because my mother, who also had to leave my father due to his infidelity, went through almost exactly the same thing. She got threatening phone calls and ultimately a death threat as well. I was really blessed that I had learned from her how to stand up to some spiritual abuse. She ended up bringing in the authorities over that. I basically had to stand up to this particular pastor who had been sending me these emails and said the same thing. I told him that if I continued to hear from him, I would bring in the authorities and share his letters with them because what he was doing was actually criminal.

Anne: My experience with my particular church leader was that he was in so far over his head he did not understand what was going on. Instead of referring out to adult protective services, he took it upon himself to play the "he said, she said...how do I decide who's telling the truth?" When that happens, because sex addiction and lying are not a communication issue--they are an addiction issue, an abuse issue--it sets the woman up for more abuse by her church or church leaders.

In your survey, what did it reveal about spiritual crisis in partners of sex addicts?

Lisa: What is revealed was that over the 100 women who answered, more than 63% felt they had gone through a significant spiritual crisis as part of their journey--usually pretty close around their time of discovery. The only thing surprising about this to those of us behind the survey was that the number was this low. It was interesting to watch the women answering the questions. Some of them started out saying they didn't go through spiritual crisis but as they continued to answer the questions, by the end where there was an open comment field, they wrote that they had not thought they had gone through a spiritual crisis but that they could then see that perhaps they actually did. This makes me realize that sometimes the types of trauma a woman is facing--including numbness--can be so overwhelming that they may not even realize they are having a crisis of faith, that their larger spiritual framework has become shaky in this. That was quite interesting just on its own. 

What we were also hearing was that for some women, the spiritual crisis centered around their broader belief in God, a Higher Power, but for a lot it was around the church and others who share their faith. For some women, it was both. When we looked at the women who were really feeling distrustful of God or their Higher Power, they felt they were "being duped" by Him. They talked of feelings of injustice--they had been solid, faithful women in their faith community and why would something like this happen to them? They had been solid and faithful in their marriage, why would something like this happen to them; it wasn't fair. There were also women who talked about feelings of rejection from God or judgment. Some talked about feeling abandoned by God. A lot of them were experiencing similar things in the church--rejection at church and in their faith community, abandonment, and sometimes outright persecution...similar to my story and that of many women.

Anne: It is so sad, especially because the women are in so much pain and they want to go to their faith to feel comforted and understood. They have been rejected by their spouse and then they feel like they are rejected by God or their faith community so it feels so alone and so isolated and "who will help me?" It feels terrible. 

Did you notice if there was any particular type of partner?

Lisa: Yes. What came up in our results was that the more deeply a woman was involved in her faith community, particularly if she was like the spouse of the head of the community or was involved in some kind of ministering within the community, the more she felt it, particularly those wives of leadership; they really had their world rocked. We can only guess as to why this is. I have talked to a number of them about this and in examining their results to us, I would say that so much more of their world leans heavily on the acceptance of their faith community and a certain type of image. They had so much more to lose I guess from their husband's story coming out. Most of them that I have dealt with over the years have to keep a high level of anonymity because of the fear of loss of their world if the issue should be discovered.

Another type of wife or partner who was likely to be hugely impacted were wives who had had a difficult past and had come to faith as adults. Often for these people their understanding of the world was that they had suffered a lot in their relationships in the past because they didn't have faith and the faith community. They often think “Now I have this relationship and I've met a man who has this relationship so now we are going to have the ideal marriage.” When they find out that their ideal Christian husband or husband of their faith is actually struggling just as much as any guy they have dated previously or were married to, it really causes a crisis because they had a false understanding about what it would be like with someone who had faith. This is not to imply that they were naive or anything like that because churches teach that these kinds of problems don't happen--it's not implicitly stated but it is implied. So it's really not a wonder how people that belong to a faith community don't understand that this actually isn't the case.

Another type of wife or partner who struggled a lot were those who had been spiritually abused or persecuted by the church--which we kind of already talked about--but the other was wives whose husbands had been very spiritually abusive to them over the course of the marriage. This is sadly all too common with sex addicts.

Read more at btr.org

What Is Relapse Preparedness When It Comes To Betrayal Trauma?I hear on a daily basis the deep fear and anxiety women express that their guys might relapse: in other words, that their partners will step away from recovery and healing, returning instead to their previous patterns of compulsive and secretive sexual behavior. So, at a very basic level, I’ve always known that relapse is a topic of significant concern to us women who are surviving and healing from sexual betrayal trauma.Even if the job of preventing a relapse doesn’t fall within our reach and responsibility, that doesn’t mean we need to sit back passively and leave our emotional fate in the hands of the sex addicts or porn addicts with whom we share life. That planted the seed for me to begin asking myself and my colleagues, “So if we can’t actively prevent the pain and trauma of a possible relapse, what kind of productive and proactive actions can we take, on our own behalf, in the meantime?"To see our individual sessions facing What If He Relapses? click here.How Can We Heal From Betrayal Trauma While Also Preparing For The Worst Case Scenario?Relapse is something women tend to fear deeply—and with good reason: it’s something that does happen, and when it happens, it brings with it a whole deluge of painful emotions.For women who choose to stay in their relationships after experiencing their husband's abusive behaviors stop, there’s an incalculable amount of emotional risk involved. When that emotional risk is met with ongoing incidents of abuse, the wounds from a woman's initial discoveries often deepen, worsen and fundamentally destabilize her past, present and future efforts toward betrayal trauma recovery. Women describe it as . . .* ripping the scab off their wounds* pulling the rug out from under me* stabbing me in the back* taking me for granted* betraying me with a kiss* breaking my heart all over again* knocking me back to square oneHow Did You Feel When You Found Out Your Husband Was Lying to You?We’ve all heard that saying, “Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool me twice. Shame on me.” That concept is deeply and organically present for women who decide to try and salvage their traumatized relationships. I often hear my clients say they feel stupid for believing that their guys might successfully change. They often say they feel “pitiful and pathetic” (the two P words) for choosing to stay and for hoping to experience healing rather than a recurrence of harm.In the aftermath of a relapse, a client may feel like she somehow asked for or allowed this to happen, expressing fear that she did something to trigger to the relapse, or she’ll express regret over something she didn’t do to support his recovery. Without a doubt, across the board, clients express an increase in their emotional distress and a decrease in their  hope and faith in recovery—which makes sense, especially when their early attempts at healing within the relationship are seemingly invalidated by this sexual relapse and the betrayal trauma that accompanies it.What is a “relapse,” anyway. Is it different than a "slip?" Does it matter what we call it? And what if my husband and I disagree about this?When addiction specialists use the term “slip,” they’re often describing a one-time or short-term lapse back toward compulsive sexual behavior—a lapse that ends with some kind of swift and serious self-intervention. When an addict “slips,” he generally gets his butt “back on the wagon” relatively ...