Partner Betrayal Trauma Therapy

What is Partner Betrayal Trauma?

Partner Betrayal Trauma is a deeply painful experience that occurs when someone you trust in a romantic relationship violates that trust in a significant way. It creates a severe, PTSD-like condition occurring when a trusted partner engages in infidelity, sexual addiction, or deep emotional deception (intimacy anorexia). It causes profound, multi-layered trauma impacting a person's emotional, physical, social, and financial well-being. Symptoms include intrusive thoughts, depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and shattered self-esteem.

Betrayal isn't just physical infidelity...

It can include:

Emotional affairs or secret relationships
Lying, gaslighting, or hiding important truths
Porn/sex addiction behaviors that violate agreed boundaries
Financial deception
Breaking core promises or values in the relationship

What makes it betrayal is the violation of trust and emotional safety, not just the betrayal itself.

Areas of Betrayal

Emotional: Your relationship is deeply rooted in emotion, sharing memories, goals, hopes and dreams with your partner. Everything you share are important to you and things that you care about. This component comes from the way your partner took all of your shared emotions and ideas and disregarded them.
Social: The relationship with your partner is a social unit, going out in public or on vacations together. This part of the betrayal comes from the fact that you start to question how people see both of you because of the betrayal. It broke apart your social unit, and your partner opened you up to question everything in your social environment.
Physical: What happens emotionally and relationally in your relationship directly affect our physical bodies. When you experience a betrayal, your body goes through the trauma with you.
Sexual: Lines are crossed, boundaries are broken, and trauma is created. This can happen with pornography, infidelity, or other sexual behaviors. The end result is the betrayal damages your self-image.
Financial: There is usually a cost associated with the betrayal. This aspect of betrayal might also include losing a job, career, retirement or licensure. This may come in the form of money, time, or resources. Your partner might have spent money on acting out. They might also have spent hours betraying you when you thought they were working.

Why Go To Therapy?

Betrayal is a process usually surrounded by lies, emotional abuse, and manipulation. It results in broken trust, lack of confidence, and a reality where you question everything you know just to feel safe.

Infidelity is a component of betrayal and can happen on many different levels, including emotional and relational levels. The pain is deepened when your partner lies and tries to hide their actions.

Emotional infidelity can lead to broken trust and is based on creating emotional connections to other people outside of a monogamous relationship or marriage.

Relational infidelity betrays the importance of our relationship and is the act of creating relationships that are more important than a partner or spouse’s relationship.

Betrayal does not have to end your relationship. By remaining committed to each other and working hard, you can reclaim your relationship and rebuild the trust. I work with you to make sure the underlying issues, concerns, and emotions are addressed, so you can move on from this.

Therapy Prices

Initial Intake: $250
45 minutes: $150
60 minutes: $200

Ready to Schedule?

Insurances Accepted: