According to the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory – a ranking by US psychiatrists of the most stressful events a person can face based on how likely they are to lead to illness – divorce and marital separation from a mate are second and third on the list (after the death of a spouse and ahead of major personal illness, imprisonment or getting fired from your job).
When that divorce or separation is due to your partner cheating, it can ramp up your anguish even more. And the shock of finding out about their affair can have serious consequences, especially in
the first hours and days.
Therapist Steven Dromgool, director of Relate Counselling in Auckland, compares betrayal to a tsunami, sudden and overwhelming and says it demands strategies for survival and recovery
Most people don’t have a plan of action ready to go to help them through the devastation and they can feel utterly swamped.
“What happens with relationship betrayal is that you’re in shock,” says Steven.
“It’s awful and it’s serious – it dials up your nervous system to 22 out of 10 and that can cause problems. But the good news is that shock is short-term and it can be effectively treated.”
Talking to a therapist can help you process everything that’s going on in those tumultuous early days, but often you may need to wait days or even weeks for an appointment. Steven has put together a free resource called Betrayal First Aid, available on Relate’s website, to help people in those crucial and devastating days after they first find out about their partner cheating on them. It includes PDFs and videos providing strategies to manage short-term emotional pain and shorten recovery time.
Here, Steven shares his knowledge about the effects of being betrayed and how to deal with it in those early days.
Kiss cam scandal
It was a particularly brutal way to find out your other half is cheating on you. Megan Kerrigan found out her husband, Andy Byron, was having an affair with his colleague Kristin Cabot when a kiss-cam at a Coldplay concert caught them cosying up.
The video of their horrified response to being caught out went viral and sparked discussions around the world about infidelity. Thankfully, most people don’t learn their partners are unfaithful in such a public way. But regardless of how you find out, being cheated on is still incredibly distressing.
Understand that this is not your fault
Your partner chose to have the affair. They may blame things you’ve done for influencing that decision, but no matter what you did, your partner always had other choices.
“It’s not your fault – you didn’t force them into it,” points out Steven.
“They chose this and you don’t deserve the pain you’re feeling.”
What happens when you’re lied too
Many people get angry at themselves when someone lies to them.
“They’ll feel like they’ve been stupid and that can be a difficult thing to process,” says Steven.
“They’ve been gaslit and that creates a reality problem. They start wondering what is true and what is not. “It’s like you’ve been living in a house you thought was safe, but then you find out there’s a secret basement, a chamber of horrors you didn’t know about. Then you can’t look at any other houses without thinking, ‘What’s underneath?’ It screws with your cognitive processing so that you feel like you can’t trust your reality. It takes truthfulness, testing and consistency over time to rebuild that sense of trust.”
For more, see relate.online/pages/betrayalfirstaid-com
What you might experience
The shock of finding out that someone you love has betrayed you can trigger the “fight, flight or freeze” response, which sends your nervous system haywire. This in turn affects other parts of your body and you may notice symptoms such as:
- Digestive issues, ie feeling sick, unable to eat.
- Inability to sleep.
- Tight chest and lightheadedness.
- Feeling physically weak.
- Racing heart.
This is a normal response that will pass, says Steven.
“It might feel like you’re going to die and this is a time when there is a risk of suicidal thoughts because your brain is processing the disconnection you’re feeling like a death threat. “This is normal and you need to understand you’ll be okay. I’ve worked with thousands of couples in the 20 years I have been a therapist and I can guarantee that you won’t stay like this. Over the days, then the weeks and months, you will feel significantly better.”
Emotional first aid
In that first week, you should prioritise just being able to function. Steps you can take to deal with the impact of the fight or flight response include:
- Practising controlling your breathing. Shock can make your body think you’re in danger and that can lead to hyperventilating, which in turn affects your ability to sleep and eat. Steven recommends the 5×5 breathing technique, which involves inhaling for five seconds, holding for five seconds, exhaling for five seconds and holding for five more.
- Finding someone to talk to. It’s important to not only be able to get your feelings out but to have someone you feel safe with. When a partner has betrayed you, you can feel you’ve lost your main supporter, so it helps to know there are still people you can vent to.
- Eating suitable food. Fight or flight makes you burn more energy and upsets the digestive system so you often can’t face food. Smoothies are a great way of balancing the nervous system and getting the nutrition you need, and the sugar content will give you the energy your body is rapidly burning. Similarly, dark chocolate provides energy and boosts serotonin, the chemical that regulates mood and aids sleep and digestion.
- Getting some exercise. Movement regulates hormones and calms the nervous system – just don’t overdo it. A 20-minute walk each day can have a massive impact on your wellbeing. Sunlight is also good for you, so try to do it when the sun is out.
- Finding things that make you feel better, whether it’s soaking in the bath or hugging the dog. Try to minimise external pressures that can add extra stress. People with jobs requiring high levels of focus should take time off, especially in those first few days.
What NOT to do in those first weeks after finding out you’ve been cheated on:
- Don’t go on social media. You may want to use it to lash out or to access support, and while some of the responses might be helpful, others could be less supportive and amplify your pain. And if you do try to get the relationship back on track, scathing posts you put on social media could mean extra repair work.
- Don’t tell the kids. Eventually, they will need to know, especially if the infidelity means the end of the relationship, but in those challenging first days, you can end up dumping your intense emotions on them and that’s not their load to carry.
- Don’t interrogate your partner to find out why they cheated. Knowing the details can wait until you are better able to deal with that information. At the start, it’s helpful to know who the other person is and whether the relationship was physical or emotional, but other details won’t help now. Write down all the questions you have so you can ask them later.
Sophie’s choice
Sophie* had absolutely no idea her husband was cheating on her until she opened Facebook Messenger one evening while preparing dinner to read: “I think you should know, your husband is having an affair with my wife.”
She recalls, “I thought it was spam and was about to delete it. Then I recognised the sender’s name. It was the husband of a woman from a sports club my husband belonged to. I felt sick.”
Sophie messaged the man back and he said her husband Nick* had been seeing his wife for several months. She confronted Nick the moment he got home from work and he came clean. After Sophie “lost the plot” at him, Nick left to stay with a friend.
“I remember hearing his car driving off and lying on the living room floor, bawling my eyes out,” she says.
“People talk about having the rug pulled out from underneath you and that was literally what it was like. I couldn’t stand, I was in a heap on the floor.”
The next few days were a blur of emotions.
“I felt numb, I felt sick, I felt angry, I felt like an idiot for not realising he’d been cheating.”
Too upset to work, she took a week off.
“Thankfully I had a supportive employer and really good friends who rallied around me. I was a mess.”
Nick wanted to try to save the marriage and Sophie agreed to see a relationship therapist, “mostly because I wanted the truth about why he’d had the affair.
“He said it hadn’t been serious – he called it a distraction – but to me, that made things worse. If he’d fallen in love with someone because they were amazing, I could have understood that. But it was just a bit of excitement, a distraction from the stresses he was dealing with. That made me feel like I wasn’t enough for him and never would be.”
The couple, who’d been together for five years and married for two, divorced and Sophie’s now in another relationship. She confesses to fearing another betrayal.
“If he goes out with his colleagues for a drink after work, there is this little voice in my head saying, ‘Is he really with them?’ When you’ve had an unfaithful partner, you prime yourself for it to happen again. At least if it did, hopefully this time I would see it coming and be better prepared.”
