A young woman called me one night, crying. Her husband had promised that he would stop looking at pornography on the internet. She had recently given birth to their first child, and when she looked at their home computer she discovered that, in just the previous few days, he had visited dozens of porn sites.

What should she do?

For years, I heard versions of that question from the wives and partners of the men my husband, George Collins, worked with. George has made it his life’s work to help men caught in sexually compulsive behavior. I often worked with their wives and partners.

By the time a woman came to me, she was usually at the end of her rope. She might be shocked, numb, hurt, ashamed, afraid, furious, confused—or all of those at once.

Today there is a name often used for what she is experiencing: betrayal trauma.

I think the term can be useful if it helps you understand what is happening. I don’t think it is useful if it becomes another label to get trapped in.

If you are in immediate danger, or are thinking about ending your life, please reach out for help now. In the United States, call or text 988 for the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. If you are in danger at home, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.

What is betrayal trauma?

Psychologist Jennifer Freyd introduced the term betrayal trauma in 1991. Her original work concerned betrayal by a person or institution on whom someone depends.

The term has since been used more broadly, including for the discovery of infidelity or a partner’s hidden sexual life, which is sometimes called partner betrayal trauma.

That makes sense to me. When you discover that the person with whom you’ve built your life has been keeping a secret sexual life from you, the injury is not simply what he did. It is also the realization that the reality you thought you were living in was not the whole reality.

I have always been cautious about labels. We said the same thing in A Couple’s Guide to Sexual Addiction about the term sex addiction: don’t get stuck on the words. If a term helps you see something that you couldn’t see before, use it. If it stops being useful, put it down.

Is betrayal trauma real? Is it PTSD?

These are two different questions.

Betrayal trauma is a concept that has been studied by psychologists. It is not itself a psychiatric diagnosis.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a diagnosis with specific criteria. Under the current diagnostic definition, discovering a partner’s secret sexual behavior, by itself, does not meet the required kind of traumatic exposure for a PTSD diagnosis.

If there have also been threats, sexual coercion or violence in your relationship, that is a different situation, and a doctor or counselor should help you assess it.

That does not mean the experience cannot be devastating.

In a small 2006 study of 63 wives of self-identified sex addicts, most of them already in counseling, about 70 percent of the women with complete answers reported symptoms on a questionnaire that met every other PTSD requirement of the time. The researchers argued that the effects on many of the women were profound and should be taken seriously.

I think accuracy matters here. We do not have to call every deeply painful experience PTSD in order to recognize that it has turned someone’s life upside down.

Symptoms and psychological effects of betrayal trauma

There is no single correct response to discovering sexual betrayal. Some women become furious. Some feel almost nothing at first. Some cannot stop thinking about what happened. Some start checking phones, computers, credit cards and whereabouts because they no longer know what they can believe.

You may experience:

• anxiety, sadness or depression
• anger or rage
• obsessive thoughts about what happened
• difficulty sleeping or concentrating
• a need to check what your partner is doing
• feeling constantly on guard
• withdrawing from other people
• swinging between intense emotion and numbness

What matters is not whether your reaction looks like someone else’s. Something you believed about your life has broken apart. It can take time for your mind and body to absorb the new information.

Physical symptoms of betrayal trauma

Shock is physical too.

Women in a 2006 study described being unable to sleep or eat, crying constantly, feeling jumpy or unable to concentrate, and sometimes being unable to work.

If you are going for days without adequate sleep or food, or you are having physical symptoms that concern you, talk with your doctor. You do not have to decide whether the symptom is “psychological” before getting help with it.

Signs of betrayal trauma: questions to ask yourself

If you are wondering whether you have betrayal trauma, instead of trying to diagnose yourself, notice what is actually happening.

• Does the discovery keep replaying in your mind?
• Are you checking his phone or accounts repeatedly because you no longer trust what you are being told?
• Are you having trouble sleeping, eating or working?
• Do you feel as though another discovery is always just around the corner?
• Have you pulled away from people because you are ashamed or simply do not know how to talk about what has happened?
• Have you had thoughts of ending your life? If so, please call or text 988 now.

And perhaps the most painful question: How could I not have known?

That question deserves some attention.

Betrayal trauma in a relationship: why a partner’s betrayal cuts so deep

In our work with couples, George and I often heard from partners that the hardest thing to forgive was the lying.

Perhaps you sensed for months that something was wrong. You asked. He told you everything was fine. You questioned yourself. Maybe you even felt guilty for being suspicious.

Then you discovered that your perception had been correct.

Now two kinds of trust have been damaged. You have trouble trusting him, but you may also have trouble trusting yourself.

That is enormously destabilizing. In the Couple’s Guide, I described this period as something of a crash course in learning to trust yourself again.

Jennifer Freyd uses the term betrayal blindness for ways in which people may remain unaware of betrayal when seeing it clearly would threaten a relationship on which they depend. That can be another useful way of thinking about the bewildering question, Why didn’t I see it? Freyd’s explanation of betrayal trauma and betrayal blindness is useful background.

But whatever theory you use, do not turn this into another reason to blame yourself.

Is it addiction, or is he just selfish?

Sometimes people want a label because they hope the label will answer the moral question: Is he an addict, or is he simply a selfish man who betrayed me?

Life is generally more complicated than that.

In our work we encouraged people not to become overly attached to the word addiction. Call it addiction, compulsivity, dependency, a bad habit—whatever you call it, if the behavior is creating suffering and interfering with his life and his capacity for intimacy, there is a problem.

Understanding the behavior as compulsive does not excuse it.

The man still has responsibility for what he does.

At the same time, understanding what is driving a destructive pattern can make change possible. Shame, remorse and promises are not enough. What matters is whether he recognizes that there is a problem and is willing to do something about it.

And this is important: his sexually compulsive behavior was not caused by how often you had sex with him.

For the sexually compulsive man, sex has often become something other than an expression of intimacy. It may be used as a balm, an escape or a distraction. As George has said for years, you can’t get enough of what won’t satisfy you.

If it helps, you may also want to read Acknowledging His Suffering Isn’t the Same As Letting Him Off the Hook and Do You Compare Yourself to the “Perfect” Women Your Partner Was Acting Out With?

What to do in the first days

If you or your children are unsafe, safety comes first. In the United States, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788.

If you are safe, you do not necessarily have to decide the future of your marriage today.

You are allowed to take some time.

You also do not have to be sexual with him because you are afraid that withholding sex will make things worse. You did not cause his behavior, and you cannot cure it by becoming more sexually available.

If his acting out has involved sexual contact with other people, talk with a healthcare provider about what STI testing is appropriate for you.

You may also feel an enormous urge to monitor him. In the short run, access to his phone, computer or accounts may make you feel safer. I understand that.

But monitoring cannot become the basis of a new relationship. You do not want to spend the rest of your life as the porn police. If he wants to get around a monitoring system, he probably can.

Ultimately, trust has to be rebuilt through behavior, time and honesty.

When you are ready, you can read more about betrayal trauma recovery.

When he is ready to get help

His recovery is an inside job. You cannot do it for him.

If the two of you hope to rebuild the relationship, I would look for two things first: he recognizes that he has a problem, and he is genuinely willing to stop the destructive behavior.

Willingness cannot mean another promise that he will try harder. There needs to be action and some kind of structure supporting the change.

Only after the destructive behavior begins to stop is there room to look more deeply at the relationship itself.

That is when something else becomes possible—not simply putting the old marriage back together, but beginning to create a different kind of relationship, one built on honesty, vulnerability and real intimacy.

If he wants a place to begin, you can give him the free chapter of George’s book, Breaking the Cycle, or send him to Get Help Now. What he does with it is his to choose.

Paldrom Catharine Collins is the co-author, with George Collins, of A Couple’s Guide to Sexual Addiction: A Step-by-Step Plan to Rebuild Trust and Restore Intimacy (Adams Media). A former Tibetan Buddhist nun, she writes about spiritual longing, devotion, and finding refuge in ordinary life. In retreat she was meant to sleep sitting cross-legged in a three-foot-square meditation box. Her memoir is Girl in a Box (Monkfish, 2026). More at paldrom.com.

This page is not a diagnosis and it is not medical advice.

Sources

• Freyd, J. J. What is a Betrayal Trauma? What is Betrayal Trauma Theory? University of Oregon.
• Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. Harvard University Press.
• Steffens, B. A., & Rennie, R. L. (2006). The traumatic nature of disclosure for wives of sexual addicts. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 13, 247–267.
• U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Center for PTSD. PTSD and DSM-5.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Getting Tested for STIs.