Why women need respite, recuperation and restorative space after betrayal, hidden addiction discovery and disclosure. Your time, space and healing are essential.
When a partner finally admits to a pornography problem, enters alcohol or addiction treatment, or a betrayal or affair comes to light, the immediate focus almost always shifts to the person needing or seeking help.
Suddenly there are GP’s, psychologists, therapists, treatment programmes, support groups, recovery meetings and rehabilitation services surrounding them. There might be a sudden push on a partner to attend couples therapy after years of you asking for couples therapy with no engagement or enthusiasm from your loved one. Family and friends may rally behind them, celebrating the courageous first step towards recovery.
Suddenly everything you asked your partner when they were emotionally unavailable or absent from the relationship is offered up on the table as a reaction to their crisis. That is called trauma bonding, love bombing, pleasing and offering up anything to get out of the relationship crisis – quickly.
In the case of the discovery of problem pornography use or possibly gambling or an addiction, couples tend to navigate the relationship crisis in silence without the support or reinforcement from others. Every situation is different.
But what about the woman left standing in the wreckage, in the wake of what feels like a tsunami?
As a psychotherapist, one of the first things I say to women in this situation is this: your healing deserves to be prioritised more than his does right now. Oh, and you don’t need permission from him either.
The discovery of betrayal, hidden addiction or deception is not simply upsetting. It can be profoundly traumatic. In a single moment, your understanding of your relationship, your past and your future can feel as though it has been turned upside down, ripped from right under your feet. Many women describe feeling numb one minute and overwhelmed the next. Sleep disappears, concentration becomes impossible, nausea and inability to eat, and everyday tasks suddenly require enormous effort. Many women have to take sick leave to come to terms with the shock, grief and sudden complex loss they are experiencing.
“Just because he has entered recovery doesn’t mean your healing can begin. In many ways, your trauma response has only just begun.”
While your partner may now have dedicated time to focus entirely on his recovery and healing, you may find yourself carrying the children, managing the household, continuing to work, answering difficult questions from family and trying to hold everything literally together. The emotional labour often falls almost entirely on your shoulders. You go into autopilot – because life goes on and children still need love and attention. It feels like suddenly your whole life, your whole reality feels different – but it’s the same. Like a cosmic shift has happened in your inner world.
You need time for respite and recuperation
This is why I encourage women not to rush into making major decisions while in shock and disbelief or in deep pain. Whether that decision is to stay, to leave or simply to decide what comes next, your nervous system first needs an opportunity to settle. Decisions made in survival mode are rarely decisions made from clarity. You need space to come to terms with your new reality – and that takes time. Consider it an early phase of processing trauma.
Instead, I encourage women to give themselves permission to enter a period or prolonged phase of recuperation.
Recuperation is different from trauma therapy and healing. Before we begin processing what has happened, your body and mind need the opportunity to rest. You need space to breathe after months, or perhaps years, of chronic stress, hypervigilance and emotional exhaustion. I know that your body, gut, and intuition picked up signals and feelings that all was not right in your relationship. I know that you grew to tolerate and overlook bad behaviour from a partner. I know that you felt they were not available in lots of ways to you, maybe distracted, moody, unpredictable, just something that made you feel – dis-ease from time to time. You just know.
For many women this means intentionally creating restorative space by:
- taking regular days away from everyday responsibilities
- spending time away from the family home if possible
- reconnecting with trusted friends and supportive people
- seeking your own individual therapist for a different perspective and to find your voice
- allowing yourself to stop being your partner’s primary support person
- organising practical matters, including finances and future planning
- prioritising sleep, nutrition, movement and gentle self-care
- giving yourself permission to simply do… less.
- take an extended break or holiday away alone, to give you time to connect with yourself
Many of the women I work with are completely burnt out and chronically burned out and didn’t even realise. They have neglected themselves for so long; it’s just become their norm. High functioning, overfunctioning, overcompensating or often partenting for two. In hindsight, there will be so many signs that your husband has disconnected not just from you but from parenting demands, household chores and even their own routine. Some women are experiencing symptoms that closely resemble post-traumatic stress. They have spent months or years questioning their intuition, living with secrecy, uncertainty and emotional confusion. Once the truth finally emerges, their nervous system often crashes from the shock, the feelings of loss, pain and grief.
That is not weakness. That is what happens when the body has been surviving for too long. It is also a natural response to trauma – relational and attachment trauma.
“You cannot heal while constantly carrying the weight of someone else’s early recovery. Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is put the weight down.”
One of the hardest realities is recognising that supporting the person who has hurt you can become another form of emotional self-neglect. By choosing their healing, you are neglecting yourself. It is incredibly difficult to comfort, encourage and reassure someone whose actions have caused you such profound pain. You can be compassionate with them but also request space and time. You can be loving towards them but also request your own space to come to terms with everything. You can be supportive of them but also request that they seek support from others instead of you during this time.
Your partner needs his recovery community if he so chooses to embrace recovery.
You need yours.
My advice to all women is rather than jumping to find a therapist for your partner (because that’s what every woman does), find one for yourself and start right away. Ideally, work with a therapist to understand betrayal trauma, relationships and addiction. Let your partner find their own therapist – they are an adult after all, and it might be their very first empowering step to recovery and taking accountability for their life.
His work is to understand his behaviour, take responsibility and commit to lasting change regardless of the relationship status right now. Your work is entirely different. Your work is to tend to yourself, rediscover yourself, reconnect with your own needs and gently rebuild your sense of safety, security and self-agency.
I describe this to my clients in Psychotherapy like this..
“You loved, trusted and put your total faith in this person to keep you safe; he was your anchor, so you attached yourself to him. Now that you realise he was not a safe anchor, in fact you realise that he was letting you drift away into unsafe waters and not even tell you – you need to detach and put down your own anchor – one you can fully trust.”
Rest, respite and recuperation are a basic need for all adults after sickness, illness and accident or period of grief and loss. If you are reading this article, I guess you may be needing the same thing right now. Before trauma recovery and healing can happen, you need rest and respite. Rest cannot be skipped.
If you have recently discovered an addiction, experienced infidelity or watched your partner leave for treatment, I want you to know that you deserve respite and recuperation. You deserve distance from the chaos to gather your thoughts. You deserve support that belongs entirely to you, that is kind, caring and compassionate. Most importantly, you deserve the time and space to decide your future from a place of strength rather than survival.
Book a long trip away, a yoga retreat, a cruise, a Camino trip, a week or two or more if you need it abroad or long breaks down the country. Let your partner hold the responsibility of the family, the children and your world for a while. It will be good for their recovery and give them time to connect with what matters.
Because while his early recovery may have just begun, yours matters more to you.
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