Healthy successful relationships have strong foundations built off trust, commitment, and emotional intimacy.
It’s no surprise then that deterioration in one or more of these areas is often what brings couples to therapy. While deterioration in any of these areas is difficult and painful, degradation of trust is undoubtedly the most serious and difficult to overcome.
More often than not, trust is deteriorated by an act of betrayal that breaches the boundaries of the relationship. When I say the word “betrayal”, many people’s minds jump straight to marital affairs and sexual intimacy, but in reality, betrayal can take many different forms. To tease this out, let’s explore further the different diverse faces that betrayal can bear.
Lying
The simplest form of betrayal in a relationship is the act of lying. I begin with this form because ultimately all other forms in one way or another are rooted in the act of lying. That being said, lying in and of itself can be and often is a harmful form of betrayal, with or without any additional layers of betrayal present. Just like betrayal, lying itself can take many different forms, from overt fabrications to lies of omission. While the former entails the perpetrator explicitly saying something untrue to their partner, perhaps to conceal yet another betrayal, the latter is often more insidious and may be unintentional in nature. Regardless, lies of omission (put simply, not saying a lie but also not saying the truth) can most certainly be perceived as betrayals, particularly when they concern topics of importance to the relationship.
Physical/Sexual Affairs
By far one of the deepest cutting forms of betrayal is the physical or sexual affair. This entails a partner overtly allowing an alternate partner into the intimate space of a marriage or relationship without the other partner’s consent. As stated earlier, this is often the most immediate example of betrayal that comes to mind, likely because it is so viscerally painful and harmful in a marriage or relationship. Sometimes, physical affairs are short-lived and surface level while other times they can be lasting relationships based on physical and emotional intimacy. In this way, physical affairs can and often do overlap with other forms of betrayal.
Financial Infidelity 
A less talked about but just as impactful form of betrayal is financial infidelity, which entails a partner deceitfully using shared money. This can look like anything from having a secret bank account that your partner does not know about or have access to, to funneling shared money to a person or expense that the other partner did not agree to fund. This lesser talked about form of betrayal happens most often in relationships where finances are shared, but can certainly happen in other financial situations in relationships as well. Financial disagreement is undoubtedly one of the biggest issues that brings couples into therapy, so it’s not surprising that financial infidelity happens more often than one might think.
Addiction and Substance Abuse Betrayal
While we could create a dedicated blog post or even a whole blog in and of itself about the impact of addiction and substance abuse on marriages and relationships, it’s important to recognize that one of the key emotions that comes up when one partner struggles with addiction and/or substance abuse is betrayal. Lying and hiding are some of the most common negative behaviors that unfortunately come along with addiction, so much so that when addiction is present in a relationship, the non-addicted partner sometimes comes to view the behavior or substance of choice as “the other man/woman/person” in the relationship in the same way that one would think about an affair. Because of this, it’s critically important to acknowledge the feelings of betrayal that occur when a marriage or relationship is recovering from the harmful effects of addiction.
Cyber Affairs
A cyber affair is an inappropriate relationship that takes place exclusively through social media or other internet platforms. In some situations this can look like a consistent dialogue via messaging platforms that breaches the other partner’s trust and in other situations it can look like engaging in sexual exchanges such as exchanging inappropriate pictures or paying for video chats of a sexual nature without the other partner’s knowledge, or anywhere in between these two scenarios.
In today’s day and age, cyber affairs have become more and more prevalent in struggling marriages and relationships, and they’ve created a heated debate about the tricky gray area these types of affairs pose. All too often, the perpetrating partner harps on and clings to the fact that “it was just online” and “I never even met them” but at the end of the day, whether a relationship occurred in person or over the internet, a breach of trust took place and damaged the relationship and therefore must be acknowledged and repaired.
Emotional Affairs
Last but not least, we come to the emotional affair, yet another “gray area” affair that harms countless relationships and marriages year after year. These affairs are more focused on the presence of an alternate person in the space of emotional intimacy that would typically be occupied by a partner or husband/wife. These affairs may not have any sexual component whatsoever, although they can eventually evolve to include that. Rather than take its genesis from a sexual attraction, these affairs often entail one partner finding that they are more comfortable sharing their feelings with a coworker, friend, or acquaintance than with their partner.
Furthermore, the sharing of intimate details regarding the relationship or marriage is often what opens the floodgates for an emotional affair, as allowing an outsider into your marital conflicts is a direct breach of the intimacy you forged with one another when you entered into your relationship. For some, the emotional affair is even more harmful than the physical as it requires a certain level of intimacy and opening up that is meant to be reserved exclusively for one’s partner. It is, of course, common that other sorts of betrayals including physical and cyber affairs often develop into emotional affairs and vice versa.
No matter the type of betrayal that takes place, healing, and repair is always necessary. It is not enough to apologize and “move on.” It is imperative to process the pain and explore the context that led up to the betrayal before being able to truly move forward as a couple.
Begin Infidelity Counseling in Wellington, FL
Too often, one partner attempts to move on from a betrayal without acknowledging the impacts of it, which leads to further alienation and disconnection in the relationship. If you and your partner have experienced a betrayal, reach out to a caring therapist for help today to start rebuilding your foundation of trust so that you can move forward on stable ground. You can start your therapy journey with the Marriage Couch by following these simple steps:
- Schedule a free 15-minute consultation
- Begin working with a skilled therapist
- Start addressing infidelity in all its forms!
Other Services Offered at the Marriage Couch
Infidelity counseling isn’t the only service offered by the Marriage Couch. Other services include Marriage Counseling and Couples Therapy in Wellington, Palm Beach Gardens, Loxahatchee, West Lake, and online throughout the state of Florida. We also offer a 5-day Date Your Spouse Challenge as a way to test the waters of our therapy style. This 5-day challenge is appropriate for couples of any level, whether you are simply checking in or truly struggling. Check out our Blog to learn more!
