Healing from the betrayal caused by your husband’s pornography addiction can be a long and winding journey. In my mind, healing actually begins after a period of recovery from the acute traumatic experiences that you have had. When you begin to heal, you’ve gotten past the shock and have learned a little bit about pornography addiction. You understand how it has impacted you and your relationship.
As you move through the healing phase, you are focused on long-term repair of the damage caused by the betrayal. Your health and wellbeing are extremely important factors during this phase. Healing the betrayal is the strongest foundation that you can have for living your best life in the future.
During the healing phase you:
- Restore your physical and mental health that was negatively impacted by trauma
- Align with your true self and take action that is in integrity with your beliefs and desires
- Understand that you benefit from forgiveness and that forgiveness is important for inner peace
- Make decisions about your relationship and future from a place of truth
- Experience balanced emotions and remain open to actually feeling emotions rather than avoiding them
- Connect with others for mutual support and social benefits
- Let go of suffering and acknowledge how you have grown through a difficult time
Healing the trauma
His porn addiction created fear, loss, and a sense of helplessness. Your emotional response to the that trauma is intense. Feeling numb or anxious, having difficulty trusting anyone including yourself, and cycling through the phases of grief are just some of the things you may be dealing with at any given time. If you don’t heal, mental and physical health risks, like depression, fatigue, indigestion, and physical pain, can plague you.
In order to heal from the trauma, you need to get out of the fight, flight, or freeze stress response. Here are some steps that you can take to break free:
- Move your body – Physically unfreeze by taking a walk or working out
- Be mindful – pay attention to the present without the weight of the past on your shoulders
- Find support – partner groups, spending time with friends, or coaching are good options
- Practice self-compassion – acknowledge that you have been through a difficult time, let the feelings around that experience come to you and feel them, and look for what they are trying to tell you
- Express gratitude – you can do this formally by writing things down in a journal or informally by just noticing things that you are grateful for throughout the day
- Take care of yourself with the basics – sleep, nutrition, and exercise
- Seek professional help if needed – when in doubt, reach out. CSATs have special training to help with pornography addiction
- Be patient – healing takes time and no two partners will have the exact same journey
Resilience is extremely important. You have lived through other hard times in your life and you learned from those experiences. You can do it again. You’ve lost the sense of security that you had about your relationship and your future. Part of the healing process is to regain that sense of security regardless of what happens to the relationship.
Healing the betrayal will help you get through the day without your emotions throwing you off balance. There will come a time when you can focus and take action to build the life that you dream of and that you deserve. When that time comes, the trauma and betrayal won’t define you anymore and you will show up strong and confident in your life.
Healing the Betrayal
Betrayal really boils down to not being able to trust your husband – the one person that you expected to have your best interest in mind. The person you would expect to protect you and not hurt you did those very things. Going outside your relationship for sexual gratification and lying about it shows a lack of respect for you and for the expectations of your marriage. Your trust has been violated.
Partners often look inward when they discover their husband’s obsessive porn use. We begin to question and blame ourselves. So much time and energy can be spent on trying to “fix” things about ourselves – our weight, our appearance, our sexual interest. The problem is that none of these things are the real issue. His addiction has nothing to do with you and the failed attempts to fix it only add to the betrayal.
His porn addiction has created tremendous loss for you in so many areas of your life and all of those areas need to be addressed during healing. The guilt that you feel for not knowing and for not trusting your intuition will eat away at you until you heal and forgive yourself.
At the end of the day, he had a choice and he chose to repeatedly view pornography and masturbate in secrecy. We also have a choice. When the thoughts about his acting out or specific conversations that you had with him pop into your mind, choose not to dwell on them. Don’t let them steal time that you could be thinking about something else. It’s not your job to find the reasons for his addiction or to understand why he didn’t tell you that he had a problem. Your job is to heal.
Healing the betrayal won’t happen on its own. You need to have a plan. Here are some of the key pieces of a partner’s healing journey:
- Practice self-care
- Process the anger and other emotions
- Set boundaries that are focused on your needs
- Find support
- Re-engage with social relationships
- Practice forgiveness
- Stop blaming yourself
- Begin to define the future that you want and take the steps to build it
- Build resilience
- Pursue your goals and dreams
Emotional healing
When you have healed the emotional wounds from betrayal, the pain will stop getting in the way of you living your best life. I am not saying that the pain will go away completely, but its impact on your peace and joy will diminish. You will reach a point where you can feel the emotions and be okay with them rather than avoid them. Make a conscious decision to move beyond the negative emotion so it doesn’t hold you back.
Emotional healing will allow you to get back to your true self through the use of boundaries, respecting your feelings and what they are trying to show you, intentional thought work, and connection with others who love and support you. Healing is stringing together several small steps that may take you forward, sideways, and even backwards sometimes but with overall progress toward finding peace and joy.
Finding success in healing the betrayal may look a little different for each of us but here are some of the things you will likely experience. You see that there is an end to this devastating season of your life. You are able to look back on what you went through and see more than pain and heartache. There was some good in there too…you experienced personal growth. You have more energy and self-confidence. Life starts to feel fun and exciting again.
What is the purpose of healing
Healing brings a peaceful calmness to your life. Discovering the addiction, facing the lies, and living in a state of chaos pulls partners away from who they really are at their core. Through the healing process, you will be able to get back to the real you. You are able to let go of negative emotions and live a life full of positive emotions like peace, love, mindfulness, and joy. Defining who and what belongs in your life as a healed partner gives you the ability to establish boundaries that serve you and the life you want to live.
Through self-exploration, you regain an understanding of your true needs and desires. You stop living your life based on other people’s expectations. Decisions are made from a place of inner trust and knowing. You show up for your life as your best self – emotionally, mentally, and physically.
The healing arts
The healing process can involve a variety of modalities. Partners frequently seek help from others through support groups, coaching, and formal therapy. Healing arts offer additional tools to add to your toolbox and can complement other healing activities that you are engaged in. Creative processes promote healing through a connection to your self and self-expression.
Using them can decrease stress, help you see things in a new and different way, minimize negative emotions, and create a sense of balance and wellbeing. Some examples of healing arts include:
- Meditation
- Writing
- Pet therapy
- Dance
- Music
The focus is on mind-body healing. Experiment with any of the healing arts that appeal to you.
*The information contained on this site is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. In addition, blog posts may contain affiliate links which means that I may be compensated if you click and make a purchase.