You have just discovered your husband's pornography addiction or the other woman. Your safe world or life as you know it has shattered/come crashing down. We want to provide you with some essential truths and tips/strategies for coping with this sudden devastation and also talk about what you can expect of yourself in the moments and days immediately following betrayal.

Today I’m happy to introduce you to Sharon Snooks. Sharon is an Associate Therapist here at Therapevo. She is a Registered Social Service Worker in Ontario Canada and Sharon has a real passion for working with clients who are recovering from trauma.

Of course, betrayal is one form of trauma and so I will often refer betrayed wives to Sharon and her work with them has been very much appreciated. So today Sharon is going to sharing five things betrayed wives need to know when they are confronted with the very real, very raw emotions and the profound impact of betrayal.

Let’s jump in here by just setting the stage a little. We’re speaking mainly to wives, although some of this could be translated to betrayed husbands too, and to wives who really have just discovered their husband’s betrayal and are staggering under the shock and really feeling like their world has been shattered. Maybe just give us a quick overview of what you’re going to cover and then let’s dive in!

We’re going to look at what you can expect from yourself in the immediate aftermath of this discovery, what is normal including betrayal trauma reactions and first steps in your healing journey including creating safety - a safe place and setting boundaries and basic self-care.

Betrayal is a deeply traumatic experience: your life is going along as normal and then suddenly there’s a big discovery which changes everything. This discovery becomes a turning point: you think about your life before the event, and how things are different afterward. With infidelity, your view of your life, and of who your husband is has to totally change. This change becomes a real threat to your sense of safety and you begin to feel a sense of hopelessness.

My first message to the betrayed wife - it is not your fault! You could not have prevented this - husband is responsible for his behavior. It’s normal to feel dumb - how could I have missed this? Some wives even start to feel like they’re going crazy due to the overwhelming shock of the discovery. On top of that many people will start to look back on their life in the run-up to the discovery, and interpret things through this new filter of “my husband betrayed me”, which totally changes how they see things. You start to question everything you thought you knew about your life.

It’s normal to trust your spouse. It isn’t normal, in a healthy marriage, to scrutinize everything your spouse does as if they might have an affair. So the way you acted up until the discovery was perfectly normal. You were living a normal life, and are now in abnormal circumstances. You couldn’t have seen it coming.

Another thing it’s really helpful to look at is betrayal trauma symptoms. Knowing what these are, and what to expect, can help validate this experience. Trauma has physical, emotional, behavioral, and even spiritual effects. Physically it can stop you sleeping, and create feelings of nausea. Emotionally, it can either create extreme feelings of anger or lead to a sense of numbness where you don’t really feel anything. Grief is also a factor: wives grieve for the marriage and husband they thought they had. Worry is also a huge issue as now you start to wonder how your life is going to look now.

On the behavior side, many women withdraw from their social circle due to the embarrassment and shame around an affair. Mentally you often end up feeling flooded and drained, just being overloaded by every thought in your head. Spiritually, some wives struggle with feeling betrayed by God: if you believe you married the right person,