After Betrayal: What is the Voice of the Betraying Spouse (Episode #137)

There's something about you that I can't help but smile when you smile and laugh when you laugh.

Something's around you. Welcome to the Human Intimacy Podcast. Dr. Kevin Skinner with Marianne Michalis, licensed clinical social worker. In today's episode, Marianne, we're going to be talking about something that we really haven't talked about yet, and it's the Person who's been acting out betrayed their spouse in some ways. What's their voice? Is it okay for them to disagree? Is it okay for them to? What do we do with their own feelings, their experiences, their emotions that they still have? But what happens when they maybe express their voice or afraid to express their voice because they don't feel like they deserve a voice because of how bad they've hurt their partner? Today, we wanna talk to those individuals who are scared to speak or don't know if they even can speak because of how much they've hurt their partner. Your initial thoughts, Marianne?

I think this is a really timely and really important conversation. And for our betrayed partners who are listening, I know this might be a little bit more of a hard conversation because it often feels like you have hurt me. Therefore you need to pay. You need to fix this. And oftentimes when we're working, trying to be really trauma sensitive, we're really trying to say all of your feelings are valid. Everything that you're feeling is valid and you need to figure out how to honor those emotions. And it can often feel really lopsided, especially for the partner who was betrayed, saying like, yeah, I've just got to kind of grovel. Yep. I just need to fix. I just need to repair. There's not really a lot of space for me to have a voice here because I have egregiously hurt my partner and that needs to be repaired. And that is all on me. And so I need to do that work. And so I know as we're just saying, here's our topic we're going to be talking about today, for a betrayed partner, it might be hard to hear, hey, we're also going to be talking about what that betraying partner, what they need with their voice. And talking about this balance.

And it's such a hard thing because the betrayed partner wants to be heard and validated. The betraying partner, we're trying to help them develop compassion. We're trying to help them be able to sit with their partner's pain. But what happens when they don't agree with something that maybe they've been accused of? And what do I do when I'm being accused of something and it's not accurate? It's not true, but my spouse believes it is true no matter what. And I'm like, I didn't do it. They may say, I've heard this one over and over again. I didn't do it. What I'm being accused of, I've never done that. And so they're trying to say, what do I say when I disagree with what I'm being accused of? Or something that, like, for example, the common one, really common one, you've never loved me. And so that one is maybe a tougher one. Like, my actions didn't show love, but What does love mean then, Marianne? I hear that one often. You've never loved me.

And I can hear that as you said that, you know, my mind's thinking like, what does that mean here? And if I've been betrayed and you just disclosed to me for the past 15 years you've been acting out, it makes sense that I would say you never loved me because love for me means being honest. Being trustworthy, being faithful. And I just found out you haven't been doing those things for 15 years. So it makes sense that my interpretation of your behaviors would be that you don't love me. That makes a lot of sense.

And this is where I see couples getting stuck because the person who was acting out, well, of course I loved you, right? And I hear that statement over and over. Now we're trying to define what love even is.

And I might be saying, okay, now you have to show me. That you love me. And that's not going to be by you protesting.

What do you mean I did, right? I mean, that's not going to go very well, right? And that's what we're trying to talk about here is what is that true voice? Because I may have thought that I loved you. I may have thought that, right? All of those things that I think, right? I mean, I've had those feelings. We've done all these things, had children. We paid bills together. We've moved across the country together, whatever it is. So what is the voice? What is the accurate voice? And that's the work of the betraying spouse to figure out what truth is and speak that truth in a way that's validating and understanding. So I may hear you say, you're right, I did not show love for those 15 years. My actions, they were not loving. They were not how I want to show up. Can it be both? Can I have had loving feelings for you and have let you down?

I appreciate that duality, Dr. Skinner. I think so many times we might look at things through this black and white lens. It's either or. And I'm hearing you introduce and say there could be some duality here of both. And shifting just a little bit, I also want to recognize that when I've been betrayed, Oftentimes because of the PTSD symptoms, because of the way that I'm interpreting everything that I did not expect and learning that you have betrayed my trust, everything that I thought that I knew is gone. My window of tolerance, meaning my ability to, meaning my reactions and what I interpret, it's going to look differently. And so something is in Hold Me Tight, Sue Johnson talks about. Where something that you might say, normally I experience like just a breeze blowing through, but because of the betrayal, I might experience your words like a hurricane.

Mm-hmm.

And, and, and that's just where I might be in my state of emotional response and reception. So that's really normal as well. And that adds another element of difficulty into these conversations.

And so part of the challenge is how do I respond if I'm the betraying spouse and I'm, my spouse is really angry, really upset. How do I respond? Options. I deserve it. And so just throw it at me, just whatever. Right. And so it's almost like, yeah, beat me up, you know, throw things at me, whatever it is, do those things because I am such a bad person. Now notice the language. I am such a bad person. The shame of that, then my mind, I deserve this, whatever. But that doesn't necessarily help. Like the angry person throwing things or punching or grabbing, that doesn't help the relationship. It speaks to the pain, but it hurts the relationship, Marianne, profoundly. And so the concept of I deserve Whatever comes at me, that's not productive for self and for the relationship. And I'm going to say, and for the relationship, if you're hurting your spouse, it's not helpful to you to do so. And that's a hard thing to say, but in truth, if you're hurting your spouse physically, that still is going to be abuse. And that's also hard, but abuse is abuse. And I know that's hard for people to listen to, but it's not okay. Learning how to communicate does not have to include violence.

So, you know, Dr. Skinner, as we're talking about this topic, I also want to make sure we're addressing or acknowledging that the psychological abuse that comes with the gaslighting is so damaging. And the research, and I know you can, you can speak more to this, but the research tells us that it's more damaging than the physical, than physical abuse could be. But do you have some research on that that you want to speak to? Yeah.

Well, yeah, the psychological manipulation, what we're referring to here is gaslighting. I think the most appropriate term is actually reality distortion. When you've distorted my reality, my senses go up and the, the, that in and of itself feels abusive when you've been manipulative, hidden, hiding behaviors. No question about that. So again, we go both directions. It's not— physical abuse is not okay. And psychological abuse is not okay. Because a healthy relationship, you can't grow in that environment because you don't feel safe. And so the research that I have on gaslighting, it is one of the leading things that lead to increased post-traumatic stress symptoms. So that's just based upon the research, no questions asked. That's the reality. But in this case, If I feel like I deserve it, I'm the acting out partner. I have to own my deception. If I was psychologically manipulative, lying, hiding behaviors, I need to own that. That's my job. I can't, I can't be expecting a healthy relationship if I've done those things and not owning it and being accountable.

Right. And as I hear you say that, Dr. Skinner, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. In my mind, it's a, it's This is a gray area. I would love for my partners who've betrayed their spouses or partners to, to stop lying. I would love for them just to get honest, but usually they struggle with this. And my belief is because they have patterns where this has been going on for so, so long that it may be really difficult for them to figure out what is my distortion. What is truth? What is reality? Because I've been telling so many lies for so long or twisting and distorting things that it's really hard to know what isn't, or it's such a pattern. I remember talking to one of my clients' spouses and she said, well, he's a chronological liar. And I was like, oh, okay. And I asked my client about that. He said, yeah, yeah, I lie all the time.

Hmm.

And I had another client's husband who said, yeah, I lie all the time. I don't know why, I just do. And so I think adding this part into the conversation, it would be great if it was black and white. Now I'm not doing these behaviors and I'm being completely honest, 100%. But I don't see with my clients that they are— it's not a light switch. They've gotta start recognizing and learning, wait, hold on a second. That's not true. And they've gotta start really challenging their thinking. Because they've been thinking in maybe some distorted ways that validate the lies.

So in this context, what you're describing here, Marianne, is the person who has chronically been lying, the person who's trying to figure out how to be honest, that might be a different personality than the person who says, I deserve whatever you give me, right? And so the personality there, very different. Like the person who's chronically lying, They may not even recognize that they're lying because they're so used to it, so accustomed to it. And so when their spouse gets angry, they might go into the fight mode, like, I'll fight back.

Right.

In contrast with the person who says, I deserve whatever you give me, just right, I don't care, punch, hit, grab, whatever, yell, scream, belittle. And so you have different responses to the betrayal. Some people own it and they feel like they deserve anything. But even that's not a healthy self. I don't deserve to be punished. I deserve to own it and I need to be accountable for it. But there's things that we don't deserve. Like a betrayed spouse does not deserve to be betrayed, lied to, manipulated. In a healthy relationship, as we try to move towards that, that means 2 people are working to be in a relationship that is safe. That statement is the ultimate answer. And I can express my pain. I can express my anger. I can acknowledge my deception and lying, looking at the betrayed and the betraying. I can look at those things and I can still show up in a way that's gonna be more productive in the relationship. And to me, that's the harder thing as a therapist to help them to get to is like, you can have a relationship, but we have to break the patterns. We have to break unhealthy patterns. Nobody deserves to be abused, whether it's psychological or physical.

Right. And I'm also hearing a space right here in, if my partner shows up as you're talking about and says like, hey, I'm here. I'm ready to engage. You and I commented on this or talked a little bit about this in our podcast we did on betrayal rage. I may feel like shortchanged if I'm the betrayed partner. Like, wait a second. Now you're showing up ready to engage. And I wanna fight about this. I wanna protest about it. I want you to pay. I want you to have the pain for this. You can't just show up and do it perfectly now and not be in the doghouse. You've gotta be in the doghouse. I might feel like there needs to be some punishment here.

Yeah.

And I might feel so upset because I'm not getting that.

That's so incredibly important what you just said, because how do we help the betrayed, the hurt, the pain? How do we stay with that? And that's where I think we have 2 parts here. One is usually the betraying spouse can't hold that anger or that rage. And the next part of that is learning how to be with it without it overwhelming your nervous system. It's a skill. That's why most people need therapy to go through that. So the rage, the anger can be heard, felt, validated, witnessed, understood, whatever term you want to use there, it needs to be understood. Sometimes the betraying spouse can't initially be that person because they don't have enough emotional strength to do that. Learning how to do that is a skill, but when they can be with it, it actually can soothe it. It can because they're finally understanding it. So there's a balance there. But most couples in that can't deal with it. And that's where they actually begin to feel hopeless because that's a skill and it's learned. And that's where most people need therapy.

And I think we're also talking about if I, as the betrayed partner, I'm letting you have it. If you're the betraying partner and you're trying to come from a place of humility, holding my pain, It doesn't mean that I might not say words that hurt you.

Right.

And you're going to have emotions around that. And the crux, I think, of our conversation then is what does that betraying partner do? That betraying partner, I do not think is going to magically say, I'm not acting out anymore. And so I have all of this strength and resilience to hold all of your pain and When you lash out at me, I'm just fine.

Right.

Because there are painful things that are said in relationships when we're betrayed. And it's tricky for that betraying partner to have the capacity to do all of these recovery behaviors and to hold it and to be in a good space to be able to do that. And there is pain that they experience, even though I've hurt you, when you say unkind things back to me. It still hurts my heart too. And what do I do with that? And can I even express that or honor that, or even say that hurt me because I hurt you and your pain's so much bigger than mine. And so I don't feel like I have a right to even feel that pain, but it's there and I do feel it.

And I think the capacity to sit with that and recognize I hurt this person. And whatever they're saying right here now, it makes sense that they're hurting and they're explaining what they're feeling. Yes, it may be enraged and yes, it may be, I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. You're no good for nothing. Whatever that is, I hear the pain. If you can get to that point where you're able to hear it, what's actually being said, I hate you hurt me. I hate that you did this, versus I hate you. And maybe in those moments there is some hatred towards you. But my experience is that is not most of the time. Most of the time it's the way of saying, you hurt me so deeply. Can you feel my pain?

Right.

That's more often than not what's being said. And so instead of saying it personally, because you could now go to a therapist or your friends and say, my spouse hates me. And I could be the victim of that. And then they're always so angry. And they're always upset and they just don't know how to forgive. You could be the victim of that. Well, that's not going to get you anywhere either. The ability to say, of course they're hurting. I created pain. I did that. I have to own that. That makes sense that you don't like me right now. My interpretation of hate. I hate you. I understand you don't like me, right? I understand that you hate me right now. That makes sense. I hurt you. Whatever emotion you have right now, You're in, you can have that emotion. I hope it doesn't stay this way, cuz I kind of love you and I didn't show it.

I wanna go back to just a few minutes ago, we were talking about that space of ideally, because as therapists we're saying, here's what we are looking for. Ideally, we're looking for a place where both partners can show up and say, here's where I'm at.

Mm-hmm.

And they can hold the pain. And if I'm that betraying partner and you've said something that in sharing your emotions that is hurtful to me, I really hope that I've got really good supports where I can go and process through. Because if I show up defensively, that's not gonna help the betrayed partner. Right. Right. And my goal is to repair, to repair the damage that's been caused and also to manage my own emotions. And can I share? I mean, health in a healthy place. Of course I want to, we both want to be able to share and reciprocate. But if I am trying to repair something, that is something that is focused on my partner, not focused on me. Therefore, I do need to have the places where I can still work through and validate my own pain. So if I'm holding my partner's pain, who helps me hold my pain? Because my partner is not in a place for me to dump my pain on her or them. So where do I have my pain held? And that usually needs to come from really good supports because we all need that.

Yeah.

Just as human beings, we need that.

And so after discovery, after disclosure, whatever version it's been, making sure that you have a support team just to help you stay in a place where you don't feel like I've got nobody and I feel hopeless or helpless, that can lead to another relapse, to the shame cycle, right? Like, no, it doesn't matter. You're already angry at me. So what does another relapse mean? And so being able to have enough emotional force, strength to say, I am going to choose not to do this. And I understand that there's upset and I have a support system, somebody that I can talk to, and I don't have to do this solo. Such an incredibly important part.

I know we've talked about a lot of different topics and they, I know they were sequential for us, but I want to tie back in that abuse part that we were talking about. As you said, abuse is never okay. Oftentimes it comes out through our words. And I think this is where it's really important. Even if I'm the betraying partner, if my partner is abusing me verbally, there's a point where I have to be able to say, we've gotta have some boundaries in our relationship of what's okay and what's not. You talked about that psychological abuse, that, that component. And when we're calling names, when we're demeaning, character and demeaning people, that, that's never helpful. And that's usually harmful. And so it can be really important to be able to say, I hear your pain. I want to hold your pain. I want to be with you in your pain. But there's also a place where we might need to say, and I can't stay right here with you if you're going to be abusing me.

Hmm.

We do need some boundaries in this space as well.

And what you're describing there is extremely hurtful and painful for the person who was betrayed. Like, what are you guys even talking about here? But really what it is, is it's not speaking to what your pain is. I can yell, scream, demean, criticize, hurt with my words, but really what are you saying? They're saying, I want you to feel my pain. That's really what's being said there. I need you to feel my pain. And I'm acting in the rage because you hurt me, you deceived me, you did all those things. That's absolutely true. There's a difference between speaking to the pain that you feel and telling your spouse that they're a horrible, awful, rotten human being and they should have never been born. And yet it makes sense. Learning how to do it and what you're really trying to say Is a skill that you also learn, and that is what I'm trying to get across, or we're trying to get across. This is so complex. This is why it needs therapy. What we're talking about right now is an incredibly difficult thing, and and it takes effort. It takes time. It takes a whole bunch of processing. It is a lot of work. So with that being said, I would say most of the things we're talking about today are complex and need therapist therapist to guide.

And I think I'd just add onto that. As you said, these are complex topics and our intent is to bring light to these and to validate that this is what we see so much in our offices.

Hmm.

I know that some of our conversation today may have hit some triggers for some of our clients or some of the people who might be listening to this saying like, wait a second, what do you mean by that? I don't agree with that. That doesn't feel quite right. And I recognize that because we hear things that sometimes like, wait, wait a second, what does that mean for me? And so I just want to share that I know that our intent is to talk about principles and to validate. what we see and validate the pain that both partners, both individuals experience in this really messy, really difficult space of damaged relationships, ruptures in the relationship, and the difficulty in trying to reattach and repair and manage all of the emotions that come out with that. And also what we're trying to say is we want you to have healthy relationships built on principles of respect and kindness and love and communication. And these are the principles, and it gets really messy as we're trying to work through the emotions of trying to get there.

And while we speak about the ideal, we don't expect that most couples are going to do this and do it well, especially in the early phases. As we progress in a healing and recovery process, you begin to see the shift that we're talking about. No longer am I criticizing, I'm speaking to my hurt. No longer am I being deceptive, I'm owning and taking responsibility of the ways that I hurt and gaslit and deceived. And so we begin to see the shift of ownership. We speak to the hurt, we acknowledge the pain. That's the end goal of what healthy can look like. Getting there And when you aren't able to get there, professional support and help is really what we're trying to support you in. Just identifying this is real. But the patterns that sometimes we see in couples, the destructiveness of how we interact doesn't soothe, doesn't help, doesn't engage in a process that's gonna help us get to where we wanna be. So our invitation is to ponder on the things that we've said. And if something has been hurtful or triggering, that's never our intent. Our intent is to help you understand what can work and what doesn't work. And so we appreciate you for being a part of the podcast and listening. Marianne, your final thoughts?

We're talking about relationships or in relationships. There are at least 2 people and there need to be 2 voices. There need to be 2 people both showing up. And so if there's only one voice in the space, that's probably not the relationship that we want. Relationally, we need connection. That's what we're all looking for is how do we connect? How do we feel felt? How do we see the other person and how do we be seen with each other? We're looking for that love. We want that. So thank you so much for your time today and for this conversation, Dr. Skinner.

All right, everybody have a great week. You've been listening to the Human Intimacy Podcast with Dr. Kevin Skinner, Marianne Michalis. If you have comments or questions, please send them to info@humanintimacy.com. In the meantime, may you be blessed.