Betrayal Trauma: Living in "The Gap" Between Yesterday & Tomorrow

LIVING IN THE GAP: BETWEEN YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW

Whenever I'm asked to describe what trauma – especially betrayal trauma – is like, I say: Imagine going to bed one night, safe and secure in your own bedroom, in your favorite pajamas, snuggled under a warm blanket, inside the home you've known and loved for years. But when you wake, still in your pajamas, you find yourself curled up on hard, cold concrete behind a trash dumpster in the back alley of a place you've never before been or seen. It's still night and dark. You can hear voices, people talking. But when you listen closely, you realize they are speaking a language you can't understand. You check to see if this is a dream, or a nightmare. But no, it is reality. Somehow you went to bed in your own home and you woke up here. Three questions immediately come to you: 1) Where am I? 2) How did I get here? And, most importantly, 3) How do I get back home?

The answer to that third question is the most painful and yet simplest: you can't get back home. No amount of wishing, praying, trying, or clicking your heels together and repeating "there's no place like home" will work — you can never return to the place you were, hours before, when you went to bed. If you have experienced betrayal trauma, you likely know what happens next. Once the sun comes up, some good-hearted, well-meaning people will see you crouching behind the dumpster looking frightened and confused. And they will offer advice: You should go home. You must try to work things out. Or forget going home, you need to go someplace else and find yourself a new life. Or you've got to bloom where you're planted — meaning, of course, stay here in this strange land but get yourself out from behind that dumpster, get out of those pajamas, find an apartment, and get a job. Or just let go of the past and move on.

So what should you do? Stay? Leave? Give things a few weeks, months, or years before making a decision? Or should you let go and move on? What does it mean to live in "the gap": in that time between disclosure day (D-day), or the day you discovered you’ve been betrayed by your partner, and the day when you can confidently make a decision about your future?

THE IMPORTANCE OF "GAPS"

As a Certified Spiritual Director, and having taught religion classes that focused on personal transformation at a private university for over eleven years, I know the importance of "gaps." Gaps are those unique times of transition which occur when what you had expected to happen doesn't happen. Instead of what you had expected, something completely unpredictable and altogether unexpected happens. This opens up a gap.

For example, you're on your way home from work and you stop by a convenience store to buy milk. While you’re waiting to pay, two masked, gunmen burst through the door. One grabs you and puts a gun to your head. You couldn't have expected this, and so it opens a gap. Or when you think you have a simple infection and go to the emergency room expecting the usual round of antibiotics but instead discover you have stage 4 cancer—a gap opens. Or while taking a walk with your husband, the man you have loved and admired for years, on a warm, sunny summer afternoon, you suddenly discover he has been, for your entire marriage, hiding his secret life from you, and you had no clue—this opens a gap, and a new journey begins.

Gaps reveal who you truly are. They expose every part of you, parts healthy and unhealthy, your beliefs or lack of beliefs, your ingrained habits, and your strengths and weaknesses. How you respond to gaps will determine your future. "Gap Times" as I call them, those distinct times of transition, are some of the most significant and influential times in our lives because there is an unbelievable amount of insight and wisdom to be gained for those who will embrace the deep, rich experiences, and pain, that gaps uniquely offer. Gaps are where deep healing and true transformation can begin.

LIVING IN AND EMBRACING THE GAP

In my own life, I have been living in the gap for several years now, and I have learned:

1) Discernment takes time.

When your life has been turned upside down, and you are struggling to get your footing, it is okay to make temporary-only decisions. In fact, it is perfectly normal to decide one thing one day, then later change your mind, then change your mind again. And it’s also okay to make no immediate decisions at all. Please don't let anyone push you to make a decision that you aren't ready to make or to do anything with which you aren't completely comfortable. Discernment is a process that takes time and support. Being overwhelmed by trauma certainly slows the discernment process. So it's okay not to know what you want to do long term. In fact, it is very important to take time to carefully weigh all of your options and figure out where God’s truly calling you. And time itself is a gift because it offers you the opportunity to heal your wounds, build your support network, prepare for the future, and assess your partner's investment (or lack of investment) in recovery as well as the overall health of your relationship. Should you decide you want to try to save your relationship, you'll need time to find the right resources to help you repair and rebuild it. Should you decide you don’t, you will need time to find the right resources and support for leaving the relationship too.

2) Taking an inventory of losses and blessings is a necessary part of the healing process.

When suffering from trauma, it is normal to focus on your losses, especially when the losses are overwhelming. One of my first clients, who came to me for Spiritual Direction while I was still in supervision and training, was a woman in her forties who had just been diagnosed with late stage ovarian cancer. Just six months prior, her husband had abandoned her. Needing a job, she had to move over three hours away from the place she had called home for over fifteen years. She had already lost home and community, and now with the cancer diagnosis, she feared losing her future. Gap Time is a time of recognizing and grieving losses. Grieving is necessary for healing. But if we focus only on the losses, we risk overlooking the gifts and blessings. So along with my client’s list of losses, I asked her to make a list of all of the things the cancer could not take away, a list of what she had left: gifts and blessings she possessed that could help her live a meaningful life today and embrace whatever the future would hold.

One of her joys was Bible studies. She loved participating in Bible studies. She was also a terrific cook. And even though she had no children of her own, she had always wanted to be a elementary school teacher because she enjoyed children and had been told she was good with them. So with her "blessings list" in hand, she found a Bible study at a nearby church for women with cancer. She signed up as a volunteer cook for that church's soup kitchen, then through the soup kitchen ministry, she discovered a local women's shelter that needed someone a few hours a week to play with and read to the children while their mothers attended job training workshops. By focusing on and embracing her gifts and blessings — what she had not lost — during her Gap Time, my client found meaning and purpose, a new community, and a network of supportive friends. As she continued to focus on her gifts and blessings, she even discovered some gifts and strengths she never knew she had!

3) Gap Time is a good time to get educated so you can make informed decisions about your future.

When you wake up to discover you're in your pajamas, behind a trash dumpster in a strange land, the saying that "knowledge is power" is true. Wherever your life's journey has taken you, learning as much as you can about where you are now and how to navigate your new environment, can keep you safe, help you make informed decisions about the future, and help prepare you so that you can get yourself to where you eventually need and want to be. This is especially true when it comes to your partner's porn and sex addiction and your betrayal trauma. The more you know about both, the safer you can be and the better you can take care of yourself. With a good understanding of your situation, you can make informed decisions about what specific kind of treatment, help, and resources are the best fit for you. Remember, when you've been in a relationship with a sex addict, you've been living with a very unhealthy person. So much more needs to be addressed than just the addict's compulsive sexually acting out. Sex addicts have many unhealthy habits, attitudes, coping skills, and behaviors that affect their partner's self-esteem, overall self-evaluation, health, and well-being. When you have been in a unhealthy relationship with an unhealthy person, it can negatively affect every part of you: the way you see and understand yourself, others, the world around you, and even your relationship with God. So taking the time to learn all the ways in which you, your life, and your family have been harmed by your partner's addiction is essential to being able to embrace the future as a healed, healthy, and whole person. Partners who come to understand all the ways the addiction and trauma have affected them can make healthier decisions about their present relationships, any new relationships, and their overall future.

GAP TIME IS DIFFERENT FOR EVERYONE

Some people chose to stay with their partners because they are able to renegotiate the rules and boundaries of their relationship, especially if their partner is committed to recovery and is in a treatment program, regularly attends meetings, meets with a sponsor, and is actively trying to understand his issues and heal them. But a woman I met years ago, at one of my weekend retreats, made a different choice. (I will call her "Jane.") After having just discovered that her husband had been having a 10 year long affair, and that he had had a child with this other woman, Jane came to the retreat in order to try to decide what she should do. Jane was an artist who had, just prior to D-day, received a commission to create some statues for a community garden. During our weekend retreat, and through a process of prayer and discernment in community with the other women on the retreat, Jane felt led to ask her husband to move out. She decided to have no contact with him but to put off making any further decisions at that time, choosing instead to spend the first three months of her "Gap Time" focusing on and completing her art project. Each person's "Gap Time" will look different. No one rule applies to everyone, except this rule: it is important not to ignore the gap, or try to push or wish it away, or to try to rush it (no matter how painful it is or how much you would like for it to be over). It is okay, and actually good, to be patient, kind, and compassionate with yourself as you live minute by minute, and take things step by step, when living in a gap. And even though it's true that you can't go back home and to the life you once knew, Gap Time, spent well, will make it is possible for you to get to some place better: some place more safe, more healthy, and more wonderful than you could ever have before imagined.

About the author: Lynda Ward, M.T.S., C.S.D. has been a Certified Spiritual Director for over 20 years. She is also an educator and an award winning writer and photographer. For more about Lynda Ward, please visit: www.HealingTraumaTogether.com

To Snoop or Not To Snoop

Last week I was in a training with some colleagues and the topic of betrayed wives "snooping" in the aftermath of disclosure/discovery came up. Personally, I'm not fond of the word "snooping." I prefer to look at this behavior as "information gathering" and I think it's something most wives do at some point.

Back in the bad old days (of the sex addiction field), information gathering was labeled "maladaptive" and "pathological"—a sign that the wife lacked boundaries and was a co-addict, or at least co-dependent. And while I think the field has made much forward progress in understanding the wife's experience (i.e., it's trauma we're dealing with), I still regularly hear of women being condemned for this practice.

How "Snooping" Helps

In the video, https://youtu.be/IKEbkTN-KjE, you will hear sex addiction and partner specialist, Jake Porter explain how the trauma that comes with the discovery of betrayal (especially a series of them) disrupts both our understanding of our identity and of our story. Because we need to understand "our past" in order to calculate how to protect ourselves in the future, traumatised brains become obsessed with trying to piece together our story. And because the person with the addiction has a history of lying and hiding important parts of our "marital relationship" story from us, it's not surprising we don't trust him to help us put the pieces together.

Moreover, because the betrayal hurt so badly (endangered us, as far as our brains are concerned), we are on the alert to make sure his hidden activities are not still going on. Due to the fact we often feel alone in this, (and are the only ones who are strongly motivated to make sure the betrayal isn't continuing) we will often resort to measures that we wouldn't normally take: i.e., invading another's privacy.

Now in an ideal world, our husband has read Jason Martinkus' Worthy of Her Trust and has responded to his call to go beyond honesty to transparency. According to Martinkus, this means not only laying open his private life and actions to us, but actually inviting us to come in and take a look around on a regular basis.” As he explains:

“Try to anticipate what your wife might want to know. You don't need to be a mind reader. But you can be accommodating, proactive and empathetic enough to help her avoid taking on a private investigator role. Remember, most wives don't want to be in that role and are incredibly disappointed in themselves when they adopt it.”

This is why, in my PDF for family and friends of sex addicts/betrayed women, I suggest that if they find out she's been "snooping" they have a word with him, not her. Wives whose husbands are living as Martinkus suggests will find they do not have to be looking over his shoulder (or at his credit card bills, bank records, text messages) unbeknownst to him... at least not for long.

For some wives—who have not been given the gift of transparency—the snooping was actually a lifesaver. I've known multiple women who found out that their "online only" husband had given them an incredibly dangerous STI only because they caught him out through their information gathering work. His acting out and lies could have cost them (and in one case their baby) their lives. As it was, the information they uncovered allowed them to get the truth and get help.

How Snooping Hurts

Still, there are drawbacks to information gathering that women encounter. One is discovering things they would rather not have known (at least not at that level of detail). Another is feeling they are not living up to their own values. Winding up with more questions than they got answered, is another potential pitfall.

In any of these cases, the wife will have made some gains in putting her story together, but when asked if she had more peace before or after she went "gathering" the answer is frequently "before." Unfortunately we can't "unknow" some details. We can't get honest answers to newly raised questions from a husband who's left us. It will take some work with loving and validating people before we feel that maybe we haven't let ourselves, and God, down through these behaviors.

Finally, a pattern of snooping can be expensive, in terms of money, time and emotional energy. If that's the place you find yourself, consider asking your husband if he is willing to allow you to monitor his communications and online activities. Back up your case with this post or a book like Worthy of Her Trust. If your husband resists, claiming he has a "right to his privacy," etc., etc... you've just gathered another very critical piece of information.

While it may be difficult to trust God right now (that's trauma again), the reality is that He alone can keep us safe in this world: that is in a place of peace despite traumatizing circumstances. A husband who is determined to act out will do so. But God, who knows the pain of betrayal first hand, promises such a man will not be able to keep this information hidden forever (Luke 12:2-3). God is the God of justice as well as grace, and as we (re)learn to make him our "refuge," He will lead us toward rest... possibly while suggesting we check out that phone SIM that fell out of his wallet.

This post first appeared on Lisa Taylor’s blog: https://beyondbetrayal.community/to-snoop-or-not-to-snoop/

She's not the enemy!

“If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”— Mark 3:25

My wife, Ella, and I have been facilitating couples' intensives since 2011. For addicts who are taking recovery seriously and partners who have somehow found it in their hearts to give him another chance, this can be a profound experience. A couple's intensive involves three days of intense counseling, coaching, and experiential exercises to help a couple whose marriage has been jolted by sex addiction find healing.

On the second day I ask both the husband and wife to allow themselves to be really vulnerable. I direct them to close their eyes and envision a time in the future five or ten years from now. I tell them they can make that day look like anything they want. I ask them to think about where they are, what it looks like, who they are with, and what they are doing. With their defenses down the tears begin to flow.

I ask them to consider sharing that vision of the future with us. Over the years, I’ve heard many wonderful ideas and visions unique to each person, marriage and family. People share things they hadn’t felt safe to think of in years. It’s wonderful. Until they open their eyes and reality slaps them in the face.

Not the Enemy

I don’t do this exercise to fill couples with false hope. I do it to illustrate that each partner is on the same page. That they want the same thing. One of the first things I want guys that I’m working with to understand is, "your wife is not your enemy!" It hurts my heart to see how many of them really believe the woman they married and vowed to cherish in good times and in bad is against them. This is the same individual who desperately wants to rebuild trust but is unwilling to extend any to his partner.

I say to the guys, “I understand that she’s thrown you out, cursed you out, and maybe even punched you out. And sure she has said and done many things that could easily be construed as hypervigilant, controlling, vindictive, or downright mean. Guys, get this through your head. Your wife doesn’t want to be this way anymore that you want her to. It’s not a choice, it’s a reaction.”

This realization should help the recovering sex or porn addict to see how deceived he has been. That’s right, he has been deceived, lied to, and the scales that cover his eyes are firmly in place for some time. I hate to give Satan credit for anything but he’s done... well, a hell of a job mixing up fact, feeling, and fiction. And if we (those of us who are recovering addicts) don’t understand what is going on, it only compounds the problem.

Truths that Set Free

Growing up I wasn’t well versed in scripture. Most of my adult life I made a conscious decision to avoid what I was sure to be mountains of shaming bible passages. It wasn’t until I entered recovery, when I slammed into my rock bottom at terminal velocity that I decided to give it a try. I was shocked to discover that sexual addiction/ sexual immorality is really nothing new. The enemy has been using his lust-filled bag of tricks to ensnare men for eons. Don’t believe me? Pick up your bible and read about King David, Solomon, or Samson. A man after God’s own heart, the wisest man in the world, and the strongest man ever, all fell into sexual immorality. It’s the oldest trick in the book and we are falling for it hook, line, and sinker.

Understanding that you and your wife are on the same team makes recovery easier. This is true for the addict, the partner, and for the marriage. Forget what you’ve heard about the imaginary street that exists where each of you have taken up residence on opposite sides and are waiting for one another to clean up their respective junk. This ridiculous idea suggests that somehow when both of you get “healthy” you will reunite and live happily ever after. A couple of problems exist with this metaphor. First, if you are on one side and your spouse is on the other you are on opposite sides paralleling each other… not connecting. Second, your marriage will not stop for either of you to get healthy. More deception.

Here’s a healthy dose of truth. Anger is not the opposite of love. The opposite of love is apathy. This isn’t an original thought, Dr. Doug Weiss speaks at length about it is in his video “Helping her Heal.” It’s a tremendous resource that I would recommend for any married man in recovery. Highlighting the truth is an important aspect of recovery. If your wife hasn’t divorced you, or worse, after discovering your sexual betrayal consider yourself blessed. In truth it’s what we all deserve. That’s harsh but true. In fact when I ask men to write about how they would react if the tables were turned I often hear things like, “I would leave,” or “I wouldn’t be able to handle it.” Think about it, what would you do?

If your wife has made the unpopular (in many circles) choice to stay, she is a rock star! Rejoice! Most importantly match her effort. Don’t waste time trying to theorize why she would go out on a limb with no guarantees in the face to overwhelming evidence that she might get hurt again. Don’t go back in time to gather evidence as to why you don’t deserve another chance. Don’t catastrophize the future and formulate a list of reasons it will never work. Most importantly don’t allow some of the things she might say out of hurt to override the truth about this one incredible action. Remember hurt people, hurt people. Your actions hurt her and she desperately needs you to understand that.

More Truth

In the book Your Sexually Addicted Spouse, Barbra Stephens and Marsha Means provided the sex addiction community with a new model for understanding betrayal. Dr. Stephens proposed that the symptoms experienced by the partners of sex addicts are identical to PTSD. It’s very easy to look at the partner of a sex addict and instantly dismiss her as angry, controlling, cold, withholding, unforgiving, critical, woman pent on making everyone miserable. Let me tell you what I see. I see women who have had their entire universe turned upside down by the actions of a man she trusted with her heart. The women I see have been blindsided and have been abandoned not only by their husbands but by family, friends, the church, and by therapists. Her reality has been twisted to such an extent by lies and deceptions every addict uses to hide the addiction that she literally feels crazy.

About PTSD

I use a lot of analogies to try to explain to guys the effects of trauma on the spouse so they can understand and stop interpreting her reaction to a trigger as a personal attack. Since I spent a good majority of my life in the U.S. Army, twenty-one years to be exact, I was able to develop an understanding of PTSD. I was around it regularly, through soldiers returning from combat, so I came to understand the characteristics. Since then I’ve done my best to educate myself further on the subject and have found correlations between what I witnessed in soldiers and the research that has been done on partners of sex addicts.

An analogy that I often use is that of a soldier who has returned from combat and is walking down the street with their spouse (both of them on the same side) when a vehicle backfires. In an instant the soldier takes cover. It’s not a choice, it’s not a cognitive thought, it’s a reaction to what is perceived as an eminent threat to his or her safety. No one in our society would question why if they knew the circumstances behind it. Friends and family refrain from judgment because they understand that’s what this person needs to do in the moment to feel safe. They don’t lecture about the do’s and don’ts of how to react to a trigger, they don’t list a bunch of facts as to why the person shouldn’t be on the ground, and only an ass would walk up to them and say, “Can you get up and stop playing the victim.” And yet that’s what we do to partners who react to triggers out of a sense of danger. I ask guys to think about how many times they might have done this to their spouse.

For my ADD brethren I skip to the point and tell them:

“Your wife is not your enemy. Your perception has been skewed. Your inability to see this results in you feeling attacked. Here is the truth once again. She is not personally attacking you because she wants to get even. She does not want to stay with you just to torture you every waking moment going forward. She’s incredibly hurt beyond your comprehension and she’s in a place of trauma. Your attempts to shut your wife down when she is triggered will not work. The more you lie, minimize, gaslight, the more trauma you inflict.”

Now usually at this point they’re thinking, “Jeff, I’m not equipped to deal with this.” To this I say, “You’re right. Your wife isn’t equipped to deal with it either. She needs your help. You, the person who took a vow to stand by her, need to put on some waders and go out into the emotional cesspit she’s downing in.”

Knight in Shining Armor

I’m upfront with the guys that this is not going to be a pleasurable experience. But, I say that if she has made the decision to stay or is on the fence, even if she’s filed for divorce, I believe he owes it to her to get in there and help.

Personally, my whole life I dreamed of being the hero, the white knight who rides in to rescue the princess. My recovery was my chance. Likewise, it’s every sex addict’s chance to be the hero… it just doesn’t look quite the way any of us envisioned. First off, fairytales have a villain to blame for the woes of the princess. In our reality we only have our actions (addictive behaviors) to blame. Guys who are not in a place to see this are going to ride in to “rescue” her, only to fight themselves.

Secondly, the “rescue” part is going to be less about any one heroic action or trying to “fix her” and more about listening and validating how she feels. I’ll say that again, the addict in recovery needs to validate how his wife is feeling. He needs to stop focusing on whether she has all the facts straight or if what she’s saying makes sense to him. His greatest weapons on this quest will be patience, empathy, and humility. In our couples work we do a lot of roleplay and I try to model what showing these qualities should look like.

However, almost every guy believes his wife is different and that this technique will never work to help her regain a sense of safety when triggered. I hear all kinds of tales about how vindictive, mean, controlling, blah, blah, blah… his wife is. It’s pretty much everything the real enemy wants them to think. Usually they will end that sentence or even preference it with, “I understand it’s because of my actions, but..”

Tell them to stop there. If they understand the reason, then they need to stop making this more difficult than it already is. What they need to hear is, “Love your wife the way you want to be loved. Cover her. Accept ownership of your behaviors by saying something like ‘You’re right, I did that. I’m so sorry. What can I do that might help right now?’ If she asks a question answer it honestly. Remember that the measure you give is the measure you will receive and half measures avail us nothing.”

In meetings I hear the phrase, “progress, not perfection” being thrown around quite a bit. That’s all good as long as it’s being applied to the addict. However, I see very little grace extended to the spouse, even in the therapeutic community. Sometimes I wonder if what we are really saying with is, “The addict can make progress, but you, the partner, needs to be perfect.”

We need to help guys understand that more than anything, their wife wants to be loved and feel safe again. What they do right now matters. My final advice to the addict is:

“Choose to love your wife unconditionally and relentlessly. Choose to surrender your need to feel right. Declare war on the enemy and don’t allow him to deceive you. Don’t allow him to destroy your marriage. Above all, choose to believe in God’s truth. He has a plan for you and that plan is good!

Note: Jeff’s “She’s not the enemy” was first published on the https://beyondbetrayal.community/ blog.

Jeff Hutchinson is a professional Life Coach and Certified Pastoral Sexual Addiction Specialist. Jeff has been married since 1999 to an amazing woman full of beauty, strength, and grace. He is a father to two wonderful children, an adult son and teenaged daughter. Jeff is retired from the U.S. Army after over twenty years of service. Jeff's story is a testament to the power of Christ to release a person from the bondage of addiction. He coaches men who struggle with pornography and other sexually compulsive behavior to find sexual purity in their lives, their marriages, and in their minds.