36. Betrayal Trauma Exposed: Rewriting the Narrative of Cheating

Hey there gorgeous listener,

This week, I'm super excited to kick off the new divorce book club with Tracy Schorn's "Leave a Cheater Gain a Life" book. It's a fantastic opportunity to dive into meaningful discussions about navigating all things divorce. If you're not part of the club yet, hop on over to patreon.com/thedivorcebookclub

Don't worry if you're just joining; there's still time to catch up!

Now, let's dive into the heart of this week's episode, inspired by the themes in the book. I want to talk about betrayal trauma and the devastating impact of infidelity. Let's be real—it's a complete mindfuck and can have a profound effect on those of us who've experienced it.

But here's what baffles me: why is cheating so often minimised and normalised in our society? It seems like everyone just shrugs it off with a "get over it" mentality. Dating sites like Ashley Madison and Illicit Encounters actively promote affairs, blurring the lines of fidelity.

Statistics reveal that a staggering 1 in 5 people admit to having an affair, with even more engaging in emotional infidelity. But let's be clear: cheating is a violation of trust and boundaries. It's abuse, plain and simple.

Take, for example, the recent scandal involving a prominent footballer. Despite betraying his wife repeatedly, public responses trivialised his actions, suggesting that fidelity is a non-issue and that she ‘deserves’ it. I can’t even tell you how PISSED I get with this shit 😡

Betrayal trauma stems from the violation of attachment and trust, leaving us in a state of shock and distress. Maslow's hierarchy of needs provides a framework for understanding the impact—when our sense of security is shattered, it's like the rug has been pulled out from under us.

Recovery from betrayal trauma is a journey, starting with meeting our basic physiological needs and restoring psychological safety. It's about finding support, rebuilding self-esteem, and reclaiming our sense of belonging.

Ultimately, infidelity is not our fault. We deserve better than to be treated with such disrespect. While healing from betrayal trauma takes time, it's essential to recognise our worth and pursue growth.

So, if you're struggling, know that you're not alone. Reach out for support, and let's reclaim our lives together. We deserve nothing less than our best selves 👑

Thanks for tuning in, and until next time, sending you all my love 🌸

Sarah x

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Divorce Book Club's first book
• 2:00 Society's fucked up view on infidelity
• 5:52 Appalling media and public portrayal
• 8:48 Betrayal Trauma
• 11:16 Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
• 15:27 Shitty people do shitty things
• 17:58 Post Traumatic Growth starting with physiological needs
• 20:26 Psychological Safety
• 22:40 Love and belonging to self esteem (or the other way round)
• 24:15 Being our best goddamn selves
• 28:00 Come on to the podcast!

Transcript

00:00

Hello, how are we? I hope all well. This week, we have started the divorce book club. And we've started with the book leave a cheater gain a life by Tracy Schorn. If you're not already in the book club, what are you doing with your life? Get on over there at www.thedivorcebookclub.com or over on the Patreon app, with the divorce book club, all the links are in the show notes as always. We only started on the first and so you're not too late to get in there and catch up. So please do come and join the place to be in creating an amazing divorce chapter and turning the divorce plot twist into a happily ever after. 

00:59

But now on to the actual episode. So I was talking about that book leave a cheater gain a life because that book has, in part prompted this week's episode where I want to touch on betrayal trauma and the whole impact of infidelity. Because let's be honest, it's a complete mindfuck and has such a huge bloody impact on those of us who've been through it. And for many of us, it really is a significant trauma and pain. But it might just be me here who thinks this right but fucking hell is cheating widely minimised and normalised even in society, is it just me? Like there are even a number of dating sites like Ashley Madison, illicit encounters and the like, which actively encourage affairs, they're fucking dating sites for married people or people in relationships. What the hell? And I looked up estimated numbers, right? There was a survey and apparently in this survey, one in five people admit to having an affair. So they went on to analyse in this survey thing, what they say an affair is, and the 22% of these people taking the survey admitted kissing someone else. But and I quote, only, only air quotes 17% have actually had sex with someone else. Only 17% I mean, it's probably a whole nother episode in itself as to why emotional affairs or kissing is still fucking cheating. But anyway. I just feel like people think cheating is normal, and seem to have this mindset of Oh, everyone cheats don't they? Get over it kind of mentality. Is it just me? I just find it wild in itself. Because repetitive cheating in a relationship where the boundaries have otherwise been set at monogamous is abuse. It's an abuse of the boundaries. It's an abuse of the trust we placed in the person we believed loved us and only us it's an abuse of us sexually when we have without our fucking consent been exposed to someone else's sexual health. Even a traditional marriage vows set out, forsaking all others, for God's sake, why is it so difficult? And talking of God, you know, the Bible and 10 commandments to live by Thou shalt not commit adultery and all that. It is a violation of our trust, and our boundaries, and is abuse of the relationship of us that results in the trauma. So please pray to hell. Why is this normalised as everyone does it, its' cheating and get over it? Why is that normalised? And I think too, when it plays out in the media, whether social media or wider media. It's actually quite fascinating to see people's views and comments on this shit. 

04:50

Recently, there was a massive story about a well known footballer who plays for England. You know, role model to millions and all that and I'm not going to name names because frankly, I think his wife been through enough shit. But anyway, if you haven't heard this story, this is a footballer who plays in the Premier League and for England. He's married to his childhood sweetheart who has just given birth to their fourth son together. And whilst said wife was pregnant with this fourth child, it emerged that she wasn't the only woman he was impregnating. He'd knocked up another woman after reportedly a one night stand in a hotel the night before a groin op, as you do. However, the twist is that this guy had previously had another extra marital baby with the same other woman after a previous affair with her in 2019 had had another child. These poor children being born into this shit show. Doting wife over there, childhood sweetheart and mother to his children seemingly forgave him that original affair and first affair child. So what does he go and do? Sleep with the same woman again, get pregnant again. And it all came out in the media in the most farcical manner. There were like heated debates between the wife's sister and the other woman over who knew him best by how he likes his fucking coffee. I mean, seriously, it's all so bizarre. But what I found even crazier was the public response. I saw one comment that said I think we should show the cold shoulder to footballers and people generally for violent crimes but fidelity in a relationship not a concern to me. Another one said the wife has absolutely no self respect he'll do it again as she deserves it.  All of them kind of go that wags which is the term for footballers, wives and girlfriends WAGs must apparently accept that they'll get cheated on. So it's okay then if he's a famous footballer, but not so okay for Dave the plumber shagging Kelly, the barmaid from the local pub, Jesus. The impact is the same the goddamn trauma is the same. It's full on betrayal trauma. 

07:48

So what is betrayal trauma, right? It's basically the impact of the abuse of the attachment, the violation of the relationship, that relationship and the trust, whereby we've depended on that attachment and that relationship for our psychological safety and our well being. I've talked at length about attachment in a previous episode. But essentially, attachments are the emotional bonds that we form with others. And the attachments that we form as a baby with our caregivers generally create our attachment style. And these kind of follow us into adult and wider relationships. Unless of course, we do the work to change said attachment styles, but so much like a baby, emotionally and physically depends on the caregiver for security and basic needs. At the minimum. We end up in relationships in adulthood to where we depend on another for security and our psychological needs being met. So when that relationship or attachment is often very suddenly and aggressively, ripped away from us. It can leave us in a state of shock and trauma. Just as it would if a baby was snatched from its caregiver, the only difference being that we can feed ourselves. Though generally we don't even eat do we divorce diet and all that but you know, you get the point. We've depended on this partner for security, for love for our emotional needs. And consequently, we've got an emotional bond or attachment to them and the impact then, of having that relationship, that attachment abused by infidelity is massive. It's a trauma. So betrayal trauma, then is the trauma that refers to that internal suffering the pain in emotional distress that happens when our beloved a partner with whom we've shared so much completely violates our trust and our security.

10:15

And betrayal is essentially defined as the violation of that trust. violation. How on earth is that so normalised? How on earth can someone say that another person deserves that trauma from betrayal? What is the impact then when we're betrayed in this way, and our psychological safety is so threatened? I'm just trying to think of a way to help illuminate this. And so I think this model that we're going to talk about could be relevant in this discussion. And that's called the Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And Maslow was a psychologist who developed this model of basically psychological health, right, so he developed this as a triangle to demonstrate this model. So if you can imagine a triangle with five layers in it, so going from the widest at the bottom, to the thinnest at the top, right. So at the bottom, the bottom level of this triangle, our physiological needs, so basic needs like sleep like air, food, right? The next up we have safety needs, which cover our security, our health. Then next up, there's love and belonging, and then self esteem. And then at the thinnest part at the top is self actualization, which Maslow describes basically as being the best you can goddamn possibly be in all areas of life. I don't think he said it quite like that. But you know, you get the gist. So Maslow just suggested that this is like a ladder. Okay, so you need the bottom ones, in order to get to the top and can't really miss a step, or else you're gonna fall off. So, picture a ladder, you kinda can't just jump to the fifth rung from the floor, you have to go through rungs one to four first yeah. And whilst maybe three and four at this particular model might swap about a bit. Generally, they go from bottom to top. Yeah, so you, you go from the bottom rung, you go up a step up, step up, step up, step to the top. So this is a model to show all the levels that we need to be our whole psychological self. So then, when we've experienced complete betrayal, everything in that are completely and cruelly taken away in an instant in the instant of discovering the betrayal of finding out about the infidelity. It's everything we've depended on, to meet our needs gone. Usually, very suddenly, our entire bank of psychological needs had been taken stamped on and thrown out with  the poxy trash. It's terrifying. Its shock, it turns our world upside down. And hence why I described this time as like an earthquake because that's how it felt. For me. It's a massive threat to our safety, a huge trauma. When we think about trauma, well, the Mental Health Organisation mind describes trauma as when we experience very stressful, frightening, distressing events that are difficult to cope with that are out of our control. It's definitely out of our fucking control, right. So we pretty much tick the trauma box anyway, with just a straightforward divorce, but infidelity at the level of complete betrayal that leads to this specific betrayal trauma, everything we trusted in for our security, our safety, our emotional and psychological needs has been royally fucking abused. 

14:27

So for those of you who have people in your life, telling you that it's normal, that you need to get over it or some shit, tell them to do one right, infidelity is abuse, it is a trauma. And you know what, I think too, that all of this is compounded by the extra person in this, the other woman, the affair partner, skank, whatever we want to call them. They've become without our consent. Part of this abuse they're complicit in this betrayal and that shit because sure as hell inflict more goddamn trauma in this shitshow especially if you're arguing over fucking coffee How he likes his coffee. If they behave in such a morally corrupt way so as to deliberately intentionally add to the trauma by openly blaming you mocking you, taunting you, whatever any other shitty thing they do. But on that, please do always remember this. And someone put it on Instagram the other day and I loved the way it was phrased it said shitty people do shitty things to you, because they feel shitty about themselves. Not because you deserve to have shitty things done to you. I'll say that a bit louder for those at the back. shitty people do shitty things to you, because they feel shitty about themselves. Not because you deserve to have shitty things done to you. We don't deserve to be betrayed. No matter who you are, or who you're married to. I don't give a shit. If you didn't shag him enough or you'd put on weight or let yourself go or didn't have a date night or whatever other bullshit excuse they might have given you as to why they couldn't control their dick. This is entirely their choice to stampede over your trust, they felt entitled to screw you psychologically in order that they could screw someone else. So I come back to the question, How the fuck can we deserve that trauma. If you haven't guessed it, it really pisses me off. 

16:57

But because we are all about turning our divorce chapter into our happily ever after. Because we're all about healing from trauma and about post traumatic growth. It's really important that we can start to work through rebuilding our psychological needs, again after such a betrayal. So I was thinking back, I wanted to kind of demonstrate that level of betrayal trauma so that it's really, really clear because people do make you think like, it's just get over it. And I think Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a really good way to explain it. So thinking back to that, then at the bottom, we had physiological basic needs. So this is things like food, shelter, air sleep, and Maslow's concept was that we can't even start to think about anything else until this need is met. So for rebuilding our whole self after infidelity and betrayal, it it's possible that our sleep is fucked, it's possible we may have lost our home, we're likely in the early hit of discovery not able to eat. All of those basic needs are the first area to address and without addressing those, it's really hard to think about the next step. For shelter have you managed to sort out your home. Have you had to move house getting settled, is your focus. Sleep. God that's such a massive thing, isn't it when we when we lose our sleep? I did a whole episode on this. So do go back and check it out. It was episode 22, I think 21 or 22? Are you eating properly? Thinking about air, it sounds a bit mad as a basic need, perhaps. But I've talked before about using our breathing using our breath to regulate our nervous system, which when we're in that state of fight flight freeze response, which we are in that trauma, it's a trauma response. And it's really hard to do in the midst of it I know but just being able to control our breathing and be aware of our breath is is a good start and hence that first key priority is getting our basic physiological needs met. 

19:25

Then once we've accomplished that we can start to think about the next level which is safety. And I do think after betrayal trauma, the biggest area we probably need to think about here is our psychological safety and well being because it's pretty likely that the infidelity has left you feeling in fear for your future and anything that's safe at an emotional level. So again, it's about starting to regulate your nervous system and starting to manage the thoughts and again I've done a few episodes, but for me, I think one of the biggest areas I found really hard thinking about my psychological safety after divorce was managing my contact with him. Because Oh God, when it's so scary, and he's the one that's been your safety net, it's somehow safer to stick with what you know, even when he's the one that's caused your trauma. And this is where it's vital to get your support squad around to support you get them to do the beer mats. The beer mats If you've heard that previous episode about my mate, who might made me write on the beer mats, get therapy, journal it out, do the breath, work, do whatever you need to do in order to start to feel safe in yourself again, and just have those people around you. That isn't him. 

20:51

And also, just, you know what, by the way, as I'm going through these steps, I guess, this isn't a race. It's not about rushing through to get to the top of the bloody triangle, this shit takes time. And it's all step by step. And sometimes you might feel that you go back a bit in order to propel forward again, and that's okay to feel like that. My whole thought about going through Maslow's model today is to demonstrate the long game in terms of healing, from betrayal trauma, and getting that post traumatic growth, getting on that road to growth. But this is no magic wand. Bloody wish it was. So we'd all be on it. 

21:38

So, thinking back again, to Maslow's right, we've got our basic needs met, we're starting to feel safe again. The next level is love and belonging. But you know what, actually, the fourth level of self esteem might need to come first. Before that, I'm gonna you know that because I just think in that vulnerable state of learning to trust again, you know, love and belonging might come second to self esteem. But I don't know. love and belonging as itself isn't only about intimate love. It really isn't, you know, belonging and all that tribal instincts I've talked about before. It is an instinctive need, right. But it can take lots of forms after divorce, it might be meet up groups, it might be some quality time with the kids or your bestie. It might be a Facebook group of like minded people and finding your people to support you going through this is a big thing. And it takes an extra level of push for this one, sometimes after infidelity and betrayal because trust is shattered. But it's worth it with family or friends that you know, have your back. And self esteem. You know, it comes from independence and strength and even freedom to which are all amazing values, we can really rock after divorce. But again, it does take time to get there it does. 

23:14

And finally, that self actualization being our best self. I mean, to be honest, that was my intention behind starting this whole podcast in the first place and my intention to behind starting the divorce book club, supporting each other, to work through every step whether that's Maslow's model of hierarchy of needs, whether it's through my blossom method, whether it's through sharing books, sharing, learning, healing, growing together, whatever it looks like. It's about you know, getting to that next chapter and making it goddamn amazing. You know because ultimately, as I said, divorce in itself is often a trauma. But Chuck in the betrayal trauma for infidelity, it adds a whole heap of shit. And I guess the crux of it is for me that we should not be minimalizing cheating, we should not be normalising it. And we should most definitely not be saying anyone fucking deserves it no matter who they are, or who they're married to. The psychological trauma. I'm sure I don't need to repeat this. I'm sure I don't need to tell you. But the psychological trauma of betrayal resulting from infidelity is huge. And for those of us who have experienced it, I just can't stand the thought of thinking that we somehow deserve it or that it was something that we've done or some other bullshit or that we just need to get over it, because everyone does it. That's crap. Ultimately this was all about them and their sense of entitlement that they can do what the fuck they want with zero thought for the person they'd committed to. This is never to do with you even if you didn't bloody shave your legs enough or whatever bullshit I didn't know what narrative is you've created or he has created around infidelity. The point is, it was them that created this shitshow and that was not our fault. And we were not responsible. But I'm gonna proviso that where we are responsible, is how we choose to move forward from it now. And that's the piece that we're all about over here right. Yes, it was utter shit. Yes, he's violated your trust and sense of self violated fucking everything. But we do get a choice now whether to let that continue to destroy us. Or we fight back to rebuild and to grow and to heal. I know it's hard fucking hell I know it's hard. And it's not a road we ever wanted to join when you know when I say that divorce is a club we never wanted to be in. But now that we're here, let's do what we can to move ourselves forward a work our way through to the best goddamn selves again. I'm not sure that's helped at all this week. But please, please, please know that none of this is your fault. And that those people who trivialise the impact of this kinds of betrayal. Well, they can fuck off quite frankly. 

26:57

You know, rant over this sorry, I will get off my soapbox. Now. I just feel so strongly that we all every single one of us deserves to live our best goddamn lives we really do. So I will stop. Please do reach out though. If you need support with any of this. All the links are in the show notes as always. And if you do want to join us with the book, leave a cheater gain alife and get even more support on healing from infidelity and betrayal trauma. Well, you know where we are it. I feel like I'm selling it. But it really is a great book for helping us to see the cheaters in the right light as I do think society generally is fucked up when it comes to cheating and infidelity. Well, it's fucked up in a lot of ways. But anyway, I just don't want any of us who've experienced this shitshow to feel like the idiots are right. And obviously, I'm going to stop there because otherwise we will be here all day. And we're nearly at half hour already so thank you. As always for listening, I do really hope that there's been added a bit of insight this week maybe if nothing else, sometimes I think it's helpful to have some learning and understanding as well as what the hell we can do about it, you know, but do too let me know if there's something you'd particularly like me to cover on the pod as well because I'm always up for that. And I am trying to start inviting guests on now, too. And I would like to start with also getting people on the podcast that are divorced like from real life people and talk about how you've got through it and what's helped you because I think if it helps you, it can help other people so if you be up for that, do please drop me a line and let me know. I will be slightly less ranty next week I hope when I will be back in your beautiful earbuds again. And in the meantime, I am sending you so much love from me.