Deceptive Sexuality. Infidelity. Betrayal. These words have a gravity that rips the soul and obliterates trust itself. In the aftermath of discovering deceptive sexuality, it is imperative to consider first the impacts on the betrayed partner; and then widen the lens and see the entirety of it. The rippling of this type of trauma extends well beyond the original rupture, creating aftershocks that cause devastation to all those intertwined with it.
Let us look into the seldom seen and seldom acknowledged way that deceptive sexuality impacts everyone involved.
The Betrayed: Navigating a World While Walking on Broken Glass
For the betrayed partner, the initial pain can feel like an explosion from deep within and extending outward into their life. The ground falls out from underneath their feet, and they are flailing — trapped in a vortex of disbelief, rage, and wrenching grief. Trust — the foundation of their relationship — is bursting into a million pieces.
Unrelenting anguish consistently haunts the betrayed partner. The memories of the betrayal and feelings of piercing insecurity force them to doubt their choices, values and worth. For this partner, the entire world feels frightening and their future relationships feel even more threatening and intimidating. Bouncing back and forth between states of high-alert and then collapse, are part of what keeps them from building a bridge of trustworthiness to the self and to others.
Breathless and restless, they often seek external safety, because the invitation to look within is too dangerous, and can be felt as a distraction to not catching something before it hits them again. Returning back to their internal home, regulated and safe-enough, with an experience of embodied wholeness, is an exhaustive journey as it demands self-compassion, courage, and most of the time, professional help.
At times, they cannot land in their body, because it can feel like every step they take is like a shard of glass cutting through them. And, at the soles of their feet, sharp reminders of the soul of their body being ripped from them in a tragic moment, is painfully loud and resounding throughout their body and mind.
It is imperative to help this individual find clear ground, one that has their soles of their feet touching the earth. Promoting a sense of feeling safe-enough, and that they can take steps that are solid and steady, awakening their full capacity to breathe.
The Betrayer: Confined in a Maze of Shame
For the betrayer, carrying the weight of having harmed someone and taking away their right to choose, is a crushing reality to face. As well, understanding that they may have been using psychological and emotional abusive behaviors and tactics, that may have eroded another’s gut instinct and knowing, swallows them up into shame spirals and decompensation.
Without professional help, these paths of pain can follow the betrayer throughout their life, whispering negations and creating a pathological fear of abandonment and rejection. They may carry the idiom of “having blood on their hands”, whirling in their mind and heart, causing them to be hijacked where they can no longer face themselves in the mirror.
Slowly, their self-worth can crumble, and their only option to find a way forward is to turn towards the reality of what happened, process it, and develop the capacity to change behaviors, awaken conscious choosing, and come out of toxic shame and hiding.
The temptation can be to rush to solutions, to contain the damage, to scapegoat. These defenses along with integrity abuse behaviors and tactics such as gaslight, deflection, minimization, etc., is a flight from pain, an evasion of the darkness within. But real healing begins when the betrayer confronts their own dark truths, and accepts accountability for the hurt their actions created and/or continue to create.
In order to help this individual to slow down and stabilize, it is important to have a highly skilled professional who has a breadth of knowledge in deception, betrayal, duplicitous living, and can focus on the goal to reduce harm. As well, to use tools such as behavioral containment, cognitive therapy, and developmental, relational, and shock trauma therapy. These therapy modalities can guide the person into understanding how they are shaped, as noted in Dr. Omar Minwalla’s Iceberg Diagram of the Ego Throughline that may have developed the Secret Sexual Basement.
Minwalla’s writing The Blueprint for Deceptive Sexuality: Ten Steps to Building a Secret Sexual Basement, A Guide (for Men) to Understanding Infidelity as Abuse is a great guide to begin to understand what may have happened for the betrayer. In addition, group work is a powerful adjunct for the betrayer because it provides accountability, promotes less hiding, and encourages a sense of healthy intimacy and belonging.
The Injured Relationship: A Landscape of Fragmentation
The shaping of an injured relationship may be described as a relationship in trauma since there has been a breach of trust on one or both sides. This act can be characterized as deceptive sexuality, infidelity, or other forms of betrayal. It is a severe split that is stamped as acute-relational rupture and attachment injury. Oftentimes it can crack open a historical developmental timeline of relational trauma, whether the wounds and impacts have been already processed or not.
In the complexity of injured relationships, there is usually a dynamic of dominance and control. This does not have to be overt and can have notes of quiet power dynamics that erode relational integrity. Whether overtly embattled or quietly dismantling and harboring resentments, a high-distress interactional cycle can shape, putting both individuals in states of enemy positioning and “you are not trustworthy” finger-pointing.
Due to the rupturing relationship, the psychological and emotional pain can be unbearable, even to the point of physical and somatic symptoms that are tied into a relational bond tearing apart. This can cause extreme agony, where an opposite positioning can surface, when one or both individuals are urgently rushing toward each other clinging in deep grief.
The reality of relational-ego fragmentation is a constant pushing away and clinging to patterns that can repeat over and over again. It is imperative that the injured relationship gets the help of a professional to help slow it all down and to create the space for stabilization. This can move them into deeper processing and transformation. If they are choosing to explore the possibility of reconstructing a new foundation for their hurting relationship, they have to move together towards what happened to the “us”.
In the concepts of Dr. Omar Minwalla, prior to the discovery of a secret sexual basement, aka a deceptive compartmentalized sexual relational reality, what was the pre-existing reality ego (PRE)? Who were these two individuals as an “us” before the deceptive sexuality and trauma shaped into the injured relationship?
What happened to the bond that these partners constructed with each other? Some type of attachment was there, and it existed beyond the physical connection. And now, it is vulnerable exposure due to the emotional and psychological spine- shattering that comes with the complexity of deception, where love is not trusted and can feel that it was misleading and duplicitous in nature.
When love and deep respect for another is not practiced, the relational space loses its vitality and partners who vowed to be each other’s witness in life, are turning away, ignoring or neglecting the emotional pain and suffering. The shame carried within the ruptured and injured relationship is unyielding, where Brene Brown might name shame to be an experience of excruciating vulnerability.
Unfortunately, when shame and power dynamics collide, and it lands with the betraying or abusive partner, an increase in harmful behaviors and tactics may increase. This is due the desperate need to hide the truth, which is a defensive pattern of self-preservation. Usually this is in direct link to the betrayer’s deep fear of losing the relationship and family, which can also sync up to their identity and belonging.
The ability for both to lean into the loss of relational identity and relational belonging, is also part of the focus for processing the enormity of the loss. If the injured relationship can move through this grief together, a new spaciousness can open. From there, is where the relationship is finally clearing out the tragedy of the “us” and perhaps beginning to form a new beginning, whatever road they choose.That said, in order for the injured relationship to move forward, the depth of the betrayer’s heart and soul to show willingness to change with sincerity and growth. This is perhaps the only determining factor for what the future holds, and how trust, when in pieces, can be woven into another form of wholeness. This will be detailed out in my future blog and development The Bridge of Trustworthiness.
Children: The Innocent Victims of Broken Trust
Do not forget the fact that every betrayal has a cost, especially for children in a family system impacted by deceptive sexuality, infidelity, and betrayal. So much suffering can hit everyone, no matter what age they are when the discovery happens.
It can be said that when a child is being shaped in their developing years, they should be encouraged to tell the truth, be told things appropriate for the child’s age, and should feel loved and secure. This way, a child can adapt to the relationship and the surrounding area in a better way.
Unfortunately, when they are in an environment where there is lying, duplicity, and toxic interactions in the family system, specifically between parents, they are already picking up the harmful vibrations or frequencies, and can be in a state of gaslight, which for them creates disequilibrium, panic, and fear.
It can disrupt their sense of security and stability, evoking a need to protect or reject the parents and themselves. This can surface feelings of guilt and being loyalty conflicted. Also, it can show up where they are in a state of going back-and-forth between those 2 maladaptive survival needs, which shifts them into being other-directed focused rather than healthy self-directed attunement. Oftentimes, this can leave them feeling disoriented, confused, in high distress, and extremely vulnerable.
Depending on how long the deception, infidelity, and/or betrayal has persisted, when discovery happens shock and relational trauma happens for them as well. It is imperative that the betrayer and the betrayed get the help they need in order to help stabilize the family via tending to the young children as well as the adult children. It is encouraged to do some work with a specialized professional, who understands and can name the complexities and how to move through an age-appropriate metabolization process with them if needed.
Communal and Societal: The Larger Spheres of Impact
For the family system and its parts to be impacted this way, all may experience much loss in their connections to others in the way they once knew it. All may be in confusion, still grappling with the reality that one moment my life was moving one way, and the next moment it completely derailed and went another direction.
Trust ruptures derail the way people move in their lives. They can lose faith in their sense of freedom and safety, substituting bonds of ever-present trust with shackles of suspicion. Hence, when they are trapped in the fear that life and others are not to be trusted, they stop their aliveness and expansiveness, creating a pattern of dread and decreased belonging.
Depending on the severity of betrayal a person has experienced and how it is tended to, it can create social uncertainties, where their sense of belonging is no longer reachable. The connection to themselves can become lost, pushing them into states of isolation, collapse, and fear of others.
Trust may be eroded and relational safety shattered, which can intensify the losses they experience in life. This can leave them feeling misaligned and disoriented, with an inability to get out of this type of imprisonment rather than ignite, rise up, and reconnect.
This can create disorientation for all entities: betrayed, betrayer, injured relationship, and children.
The Path to Healing: Embracing the Journey
The topic of sexuality, whether it is deceptive or healthy, brings out the most unique and complex stories for each person. It can carry shame and fear, often driving a person away from leaning into it. Yet, please know that the beauty of inviting this type of new story exploration awaits.
The key is to find a safe-enough therapeutic container so you do not have to walk this road alone. If you are ready for such an experience, then perhaps it is time to start a metamorphic journey that fosters your healing process.
My guidance is compassionate, warm, encouraging, strong, and disarming so that your authentic self and truth reveals to you. Then perhaps it gains momentum, to stretch the edges in deepening an honest intimate relational space, that is in the vein of integrity and sexual health.
My practice is nuanced and shaped to hold therapeutic processes for individuals, couples, and group therapy. I also provide intensives and workshops focused on healing and growth purposes. In addition, I offer personalized intensives for individuals and injured relationships moving though the trauma metabolization process and toward rebound, regeneration, and new meaning.
We will be working with sexual health and sexuality that also encompasses unwinding relational, developmental, and shock traumas. Along with processing what it is to be a human in life and healthy sexual aliveness, the area of practice that I also treat includes special programs for individuals and injured relationships affected by trauma and deceptive sexuality (DST).
Take the first step.
Reach out today and begin the journey toward reclaiming your life and relationships.
