When Husband Betrays Your Trust: The Hidden Fallout

If you’ve just discovered your husband’s dark secrets, most women don’t know where to turn for help. If you’re wondering what to do when husband betrays your trust, here are 3 things to consider.

1. Check To See If His Betrayal Included Emotional Abuse

Most men who betray their wives use emotional abuse tactics long before their lies are discovered. The first thing to do after your husband betrays your trust is to become educated about emotional and psychological abuse. To find out if your husband used any of the 19 different types of emotional abuse before or after you discovered his lies, take our free emotional abuse test.

2. Learn Strategies To Protect Yourself

After you’ve discovered your husband’s betrayal, it’s imperative that you learn strategies to protect yourself. The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Workshop teaches women thought, boundary, and communication strategies to protect yourself emotionally and psychologically after you discover your husband’s lies.

3. Find The Right Support

If your husband broke your trust, getting the right help is very important. Sadly, some people blame women who have been hurt. Therapists or clergy might say it’s her fault because she didn’t meet his needs or wasn’t easy to talk to. People often blame the victim, but this isn’t right. Victims of betrayal need support and kindness, not blame.

Some women find out their husband lies about how he spends his time. He might spend hours watching pornography. Others find out he lies about money. Some even discover he lied about having an affair with a co-worker.This type of betrayal is hard because lying is emotional abuse. You’re not alone. If you need a safe place to talk about what happened, join our support group for betrayal trauma.

Transcript: What To Do When Husband Betrays Your Trust

Anne: I have a guest on today’s episode. She’s going to share her story. She actually wrote a book called Deceptive Liaisons, and we’re gonna call her Samantha, because that’s her pen name. As you’ll hear from her story, her husband betrayed her trust.

Anne: Okay, so Samantha, welcome. Thank you for sharing your story with us today.

Samantha: Thank you for having me.

Anne: When did you first suspect that something wasn’t quite right in your relationship?

Samantha’s Story Begins

Samantha: When I first caught him with exploitative material, he said, all guys do it. And I’m like, it doesn’t make me feel good. Yeah, he had hidden apps like the app would fake like a calculator, but you put in certain numbers and it opens up to private pictures. And he’s like, Oh, it’s not about you. It’s just, something that all guys do. But when it affected our intimacy, that’s when I questioned, what’s going on here?

He told me he had a big addiction. He did say this was something he should have told me before we were married. And he repeatedly promised he didn’t want to lose me over it. And he was going to get help. We were intimate, but it was very few and far between. And he would say, Oh, I have low testosterone or just make excuses.

He’d always have his phone with him and take it in the bathroom with him in the middle of the night. And, again, I thought it was exploitative material.

Anne: That makes sense. Did you realize that there was emotional and psychological abuse happening?

Samantha: I mean, there was gaslighting and manipulation, my husband betrayed my trust. So part of you looks inward. Why am I not good enough? What have I done? You question, what could I have done differently or what am I doing that I shouldn’t be doing?

Confrontation & Realization

Samantha: So, about one in the morning of my birthday, I couldn’t sleep. So I went downstairs to watch TV. I started thinking, I’m just going to check his email. I thought I’d find something. Everything looked pretty normal in the email. Communication between us, friends, work. But when I clicked on archive, the first email was a reservation for a hotel on a business trip the week prior. But the next archived email was a reservation for two for the following night.

And I was confused, because he had asked to go out for drinks with someone after work. He did this regularly. And that’s another reason why I didn’t suspect, because he always came home for the night. But I didn’t realize you can check in at 3 and be home by 11. Anyway, I was shocked. I was thinking, well, maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe it’s a surprise for me.

So I got ready for work, brought him coffee, and he’s like, what’s wrong? And I asked him point blank, are you having an affair? And he looked me right in the eyes, and he goes, no, babe, I would never do that. I love you way too much. So I went to work, an