After Betrayal: Supporting Individual Healing and Relational Repair (Episode #133)

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Welcome to the Human Intimacy Podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Michaelis, licensed clinical social worker. Marianne, one of the things that we have been talking about are, you know, individuals who they've, you know, last week we talked about the disclosure process and that time between discovery and disclosure. And many times people think that that might be the end. They're like, okay, we've finally got to the truth, right? We should start being able to connect now. And yet there's still struggles. There's still emotional differences and challenges. And so today our topic is really important is what do we do when we still feel like, man, we've done all the things, we still need help? Your thoughts, Marianne?

Well, Dr. Skinner, as you and I were talking before we started, this is something that as therapists, of course, we, we want to help our clients and we want to have them have the very best outcomes. And it can feel really frustrating when we have supported and helped our clients get to this point. And I think the questions that we come back to are, is this an individual? Is this an area that we need to do individual work? Is this an area that we need couples work? Is it both? And these are questions that as therapists we have to ask. And I think as individuals, as if we're a client or somebody who's gone through or experienced betrayal, we also have to ask like, where am I? And really what's my part or what's my role? Where am I in this as well?

You know, and the hard part there is we have different roles. Like if I'm, if I'm the person who is the betrayer, I broke the trust. Then what is my role? And if I just went down a list of things, first of all, I got to figure out how I got down that place where I was unfaithful and deceptive and hiding my behaviors. But I also have to figure out how to stop the behavior. And then I have to figure out how to stay consistent with dealing with a partner who's been hurt by my behaviors and may be struggling emotionally themselves, or most likely is struggling With fear and worry and concern. And so to be able to hold them in that space and learning how to do that productively in a kind and caring way, in a compassionate way, as we've talked about, those are just some of the things that roll off my mind as we talk about, well, what's my individual role here? So that's, I think, is the betrayer's things that they can start working on or continue working on. What about the betrayed?

Well, Dr. Skinner, I think before we jump to the betrayed, can I, can I talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah.

I have been seeing with some of my clients almost a catch-22 for the individual who's betrayed, where, you know, I will talk with my client in session and say, you know, I really think this would be really helpful for you. Like, let's talk about you getting some more support. We really want to work on your sobriety. Here's some meetings. And then my client will talk to their spouse or partner who's been betrayed. They'll say, I don't want you to do that. That's really triggering for me. And so my client's saying, well, I need to work on my sobriety, but my partner's triggered. And so I'm stuck in the middle. What do I do here? And one of the hard conversations I think in this space, and I know I want to be really sensitive here because every situation is a little bit different, but I think there's this space of personal responsibility in that my clients who have betrayed or who are struggling with some unwanted sexual behaviors, their job is to figure out how to not have those behaviors and how to work through that.

Yeah.

And the example that I use with my clients is if they're sitting in a movie theater or they're at a party or they're somewhere where there's something that is triggering or difficult for them, Their job is they've got to address that. Like their choice is I can go down that road, but that's not a, that's a road I'm choosing not to go down. So they may have to get out of like, stand up and leave the movie theater and go call somebody and work through their triggers. Now, if they do that, their spouse or partner might be embarrassed, might feel abandoned, might feel really hurt, might have a lot of emotions.

Mm-hmm.

And be really upset that they got up and left. Once again, this is where I'm talking about this personal responsibility of both have emotions, both have their own work that they need to work through. And it's so difficult if I'm trying to hold my spouse's pain and navigate their triggers, which is what I want my betraying partners to do, but also figuring out At what point do I also have to manage my own work and let my partner— they might be triggered and they might have emotions and they're going to also need to reach out and find their supports for that and work through that because I have some of my own work I've gotta do in this space too.

The question I would want to ask in that situation of the betrayed partner, that you bring up is what is triggering for you if they're reaching out. Help us understand that trigger for you. Because maybe it's, you know, you're going to this group and you're doing all these things and I've got the children at home and I'm exhausted and tired and you're not helping. Right. But understanding what that trigger is. So we mutually understand what those triggers are. How do we support each individual? Because we know just as from a research perspective, We know that support groups and a sponsor are 2 of the leading things that successful people do. And many people won't get into a group. They'll try to do it, you know, individually or solo rather than getting support. And so we know that from a research perspective, having supports, having a sponsor, those are 2 things that really are helpful. But what happens when a partner says, hey, that's too triggering? That's where we have to really dig in and say, what's going on? What are those fears? And And we need to look openly. Both partners are doing some individual work there. Like, what is that trigger?

Right.

Where is the pain? And that's just one example, but there's many other examples where, you know, so much complexity here that I think people can get overwhelmed. And so we need to do it in bite-sized ways. We need to pace ourselves so we're not rushing through this healing and recovery process. And we need to have really what I'm going to call realistic perspective. It is a continuation of learning and growth over time. And the people who are most successful, they just say, this is a learning journey that we're just going to be on of how to be great in relationships.

I love that you brought that in because healing is relational. And as you said, every scenario is going to be different. And we have to look at, how do I do this? And is this— if I'm going to group, because group's great and I love my support, but I'm going and it's at the expense of my partner who's feeling dumped on with the kids and overwhelmed. Like that's also not going to be helpful for my relationship.

Right.

And so that part that I love that you brought in is saying, how do we sit down and look at the problem together and say, how do we sort through this? I have this need that my support and the betrayed partner saying, and I need support too, because I'm taking care of the kids or Whatever it is. And how do we work together in a mutual way to figure out how to support each other's needs?

Yeah.

Right.

And so it's maybe I adjust my schedule so I can be at an early morning group, or it's when everyone's asleep at night and I go to this group from 9, you know, 9 to 10 my time, whatever it may be. The point is, is we look for as many options as possible, but really what we're saying here is every individual needs to say, to themselves, what is it that I need to take responsibility for in this journey? And that then goes to that question that I asked you earlier, like, how about the betrayed partner who's been hurt, struggling with trusting almost anybody, saying, yeah, there's work that you get to do too. Ouch.

Oh yeah.

Ouch.

So what do we mean by it, Marianne?

Well, Dr. Skinner, I think a very basic place that we need to look at is really looking at what are my PTSD symptoms? What are my reactions? What's going on for me? And how do I get support from that? I think one of the challenging parts of this is if my partner has been the person that I've turned to, that I've trusted, that they're my attachment person. If they're not there, where am I turning in healthy places to Work through and sort through and find my validation and understanding to work through all of the triggers and make sense of my reality. And so that work that you're talking about is I do have to figure out, basically I've got to get back on my feet. I've got to figure out how to keep going, how to get out of bed, how to continue working through my life while I'm grieving. Well, I'm putting things on hold and hoping and waiting and watching and seeing, is my partner doing the work? We, it's so easy to get frozen and stuck. And the work we're talking about is finding the supports and being able to continue moving forward, whatever that looks like. And there's no judgment or shame here. I wanna be very clear that there's none of that because Every partner has a very distinct experience, but work is, I don't think we use that word lightly.

No.

So recently, as I was getting on an airplane, I've heard this metaphor, but it really hit me. I'm getting on this airplane and they're going through the, you know, the normal protocol of oxygen mask. And to both partners, I'd say, it's not your job to put the oxygen mask on your partner. Right. And so after discovering a partner's sexual betrayal, the oxygen that you need first is really to step back. You're going to maybe need to understand boundaries and how to protect yourself. And just without information, maybe you're slowing some of the things down in the relationship, just really trying to observe what's happened here, but you need that oxygen yourself. So how— this is the question— how has the discovery of my partner's sexual behaviors influenced me? And that's really a first question of like, how is it influencing me? And what I find is that we can become so focused on what our partner's doing that we stop taking care of self in some of the most basic ways, like eating, sleeping, or trying to sleep. Or in some situations, I have stopped going with my friends, or I've stopped doing things because I'm so uncomfortable in social settings. And so it's just taken everything out of me that I used to be.

And Dr. Skinner, I'm, I know, you know this, but you just described criteria E, criteria B, and criteria C of the PTSD criteria. So this is my hypervigilance. I'm wanting to control. This is my intrusive thoughts. This is my, I'm so worried. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. And this is my isolation. And so like, that's what you just described. And this is such a normal— this is the betrayal trauma.

That's the outcome. That is what happens. And so at the end of the day, what I'm trying to help everybody understand in this situation is, is let's understand the PTSD symptoms and let's work as much as possible through those. So we understand what's happening to us. That's some of— I don't know if work's the right word, but that's the healing. I need to be able to go through this. So I can make sense of what's happening to me and not feel like I'm going crazy and have a plan of here's some things I can do to feel some normalcy. And I'm not talking normal, normal. I'm just talking some normalcy. Like today I recognized that there were some leaves changing colors outside type of normalcy. I haven't seen that in months, right? So some basic things that maybe I've missed because of the shock of the betrayal.

And I really love that reframe that you put there from work that I was saying, it's the work and you're saying, It's the healing. And, and I want to go back just as you were describing that I'm not sleeping, I'm not eating. These are normal reactions to my body being in fight, flight, or freeze. I don't eat. My digestive system basically shuts off and I'm not sleeping well because I'm wondering, I can't trust anybody and I don't know if I'm safe. And so these, this is my body. Trying to protect me. And so whatever I can do to start grounding myself, and as you're talking about, if I'm not knowing that I'm safe, I probably got some tunnel vision and it's going to be really hard for me to notice the leaves because I'm just focused on high level. Am I safe? What's going on? I got to figure out, maybe I'm really focused on what my spouse is doing. And once again, the healing comes from when we're able to step back and say, hold on a second.

Yeah.

And I think there's a trust component and we're talking about all trust has been eroded. And I know I'm saying trust here, but I think I'm hoping that there's some trust that I can't fix my husband or my partner. I don't have the tools, but I hope that I can at least have hope or trust that there are therapists, that there's support group, that there are people that are helpful, that are qualified, that will be helping them so that I can let go of that. So that I can catch my breath and focus on what I can do. 'Cause I can't crawl in their head. I can't reroute their brain and their work is going to take them, their healing is going to take them a while.

And what you just described is a very important shift because I often tell my partners who've been the betraying spouse, I'm like, look, you need to understand something. Your spouse needs to catch you doing as many good things as you can possibly do. Right. That may be that you are reaching out to a group member, or maybe you're talking with a sponsor, or they see you learning about recovery and/or you're coming to them and saying, hey, I learned something I'd like to share with you. So they're proactively showing progress because many betrayed partners, they don't know what's happening. They don't know what the progress is. And so that That desire for knowledge, like, what are you doing? What is changing? They want to know what's changing. And that's why that proactive approach is one of the things that you can do in a relationship. So there's really 3 lanes here, Marianne. My lane, both partners. So those are 2 separate lanes. And then we have our lane. And both partners need to drive down their lane as far as they can so they're showing up the best way they possibly can. And if I'm dealing with the PTSD symptoms, that doesn't mean you're forgiving. That doesn't mean that you're just absolutely moving on. But my lane is to learn how to take care of my nervous system and learn how to deal with the PTSD in a productive way. So I'm communicating as effectively as I possibly can. I'm still speaking to the hurt. I'm still creating boundaries. I'm doing all of those things from my lane, but I'm doing it in a productive way. I'm the acting out partner. I'm not only taking care of sobriety, I'm doing everything proactively to show that I want to be trustworthy. I want to be the person that I can be.

Right. And if I go back to that initial example where I was talking about my partner is triggered, doesn't want me to go to this meeting, I think I left it a little bit abruptly at like, you both have to go do your own work. But I think this ties into what you're saying in that Yes. Healing work and recovery work for the acting out partner is, yes, I have to do my work. And part of that is my partner's triggered and I need to sit with my partner. I don't wanna say it's okay that they're triggered, but we understand that with betrayal, there are triggers and I get to choose, how do I manage my emotions while my partner's triggered? How do I sit with my partner and understand what their trigger is? This is the relational part. How do I sit with and understand where my partner is and have that empathetic compassion that I need right here for them?

So there's so much more that can be said on this. And I know in many of our podcasts, we've talked about different concepts here. But really, if we could summarize, right, individuals have their lanes that they're trying to approach recovery and healing in. I usually say recovery with the person who is acting out, healing in the betrayed. That's how I typically describe it. So recovery and healing lanes, if we want to label them. And then there's our lane. And sometimes the our lane takes us a significant amount of time to get to. But if I work on my own lane, I'm more likely to be better in the relationship, but it does not mean I know how to be relational yet. And so we still have to figure out the R lane of how our relationship is going to move forward. And that, Marianne, is not an easy task. I could be in recovery and I could be in healing. It does not mean the relationship is going to move forward automatically. And that's a mistake that many people, they just misunderstand it. We still have to learn to be relational. We still have to learn how we're going to individually show up. Even if I'm working on my own stuff, I've got to figure out how to be better in this relationship.

And I agree with that. I think we're talking though about, we've both got to get stable in our own lanes. We've got to get our own stability in our own lane. It's so hard to try and be relational if I don't have my own stability in my own lane. If I'm swerving all over out of my lane everywhere, that's not safe for anybody. So once I've got that Demonstrated reliability, I've worked through, I've done some of my own learning how to communicate and manage my emotions and regulate, then that makes it so much easier for me to be able to come and work through with my partner where I'm at, to be able to, they can hold my pain. I can express my pain and I can have space for them. And we can begin that, that together part, kind of that dance that we do together in the middle.

Yeah. So what you're describing there is chapter 1 and chapter 2 of my new book, The Intimacy Repair Method, right? Stabilization, safety, how to take care of those elements in the relationship so we can now prepare. Because if you don't have a safe relationship, we have to stabilize, we have to figure out our lane, and then we have to figure out how to be relational. And that's really what The Intimacy Repair Method is all about, is these core concepts that unfortunately so many times we're getting stuck in. I want to be very clear here. So if you've been the betrayed partner, we're not saying forgiveness. We're not saying you've got to just automatically move on, but your lane is actually gonna lengthen your life, not shorten it. In other words, when you've been in high trauma, if we don't pay attention to that, then we stay in a physiological state where our nervous system is constantly in a state of stress. And if you're the betraying partner, you need to do everything you can to help your partner's nervous system. Get as relaxed as possible through the betrayal, through a conversation and through that work. And that work, work is intentional here, Marianne, is learning how to be with your partner's pain.

And that's a tremendous task, especially if you are drowning in shame.

Yeah.

Drowning in the enormity of what have I done and how do I change and what do I need to do? And maybe even panic. There's an enormous task there that we're talking about. And yeah.

All right, Marianne, this conversation, thank you for your time. Very meaningful. Hopefully to those who are watching or listening, that this has given you some things to think about. If I could leave with one final question, what am I doing in my lane to improve myself? Your final thoughts, Marianne?

I just want to thank our listeners and viewers for being here with us. For your time and Dr. Skinner for this conversation. As you said, Marianne, you just shared chapter 1 and 2 with me and I just kind of had to laugh a little bit. And, you know, as we have these conversations, we're sharing principles. These are principles of healing. And so if you've heard them before, we hope that you find value from them and that there might be something from our conversation today that will be beneficial to you. So thank you for being here.

All right. Thank you, everybody. Final shout out to our listeners. Our number 2 country is Canada, followed by Australia and Singapore. Thank you for those who are listening to us in those countries. We are genuinely glad that you are listening and sharing it with others. And those who are here in the United States, we genuinely appreciate all of you for being a part of the Human Intimacy Podcast. You guys take care and have a good week.

And I can't help but. Smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh. Something's around you. It's like you're shining, you're starring.