Healing After Betrayal: Understanding the Impact on Relationships

Betrayals in relationships can be devastating, and the fallout can be all-encompassing and long-lasting.

Betrayals can not only have a destructive impact on the relationship but also lead to separation or divorce. They can negatively affect our overall emotional well-being, self-esteem, and mental health.

Infidelity and Emotional Affairs

When we think of betrayals, infidelity often comes to mind. This is when one person breaks a vow or promise to remain faithful to their partner.

In both monogamous and non-monogamous relationships, partners usually establish agreed-upon limits and expectations regarding sexual and emotional exclusivity. When one partner engages in secret emotional or sexual behavior outside the relationship, it can break trust and jeopardize those commitments.

As relationship therapist Clare Rosoman (2025) explains, a breach of sexual and emotional trust can feel like a broken bone and elicit hurt, anger, and blame from the offended partner (p. 43).

Having a physically or emotionally intimate relationship with someone outside the primary relationship often leads to secrecy, lying, and changes in communication.

The betrayed partner may feel devastated, shocked, hurt, and angry, as if something precious has been lost forever. Meanwhile, the betraying partner may experience similar feelings, often accompanied by guilt, shame, and confusion.

Broken Trust in Relationships

Betrayals and broken trust can occur in various ways. In addition to sexual and emotional betrayals, people can experience betrayal through violations of boundaries, partner absence during critical times, and threats to emotional safety.

All of these experiences can lead to feelings of betrayal, broken trust, and injured attachment.

When breaches of trust occur that are not limited to sexual and emotional betrayal, such as violations of relationship boundaries, trust can be broken similarly to infidelity.

These betrayals can be more covert and less obvious, often leaving individuals confused and without support.

Sometimes, a betrayal involves lying by omission or keeping parts of one’s life secret from their partner for an extended period. These types of betrayals can include deception, hidden habits, and withholding information.

Attachment Injuries and Emotional Neglect

Another painful attachment injury that can create feelings of betrayal is the inability to rely on your partner during times of emotional need.

According to attachment science, we never need our attachment figures more than when we are stressed, feeling vulnerable, or scared (Rosoman, p. 46).

For example, one partner might say, “You weren’t there for me when my Mom died,” or “Where were you when I needed you last year?”

Research shows that the presence of a connected, loving partner can reduce stress and threat-related brain activity. Therefore, when your significant other is unresponsive during a time of need, it can significantly impact the security of the attachment bond in the relationship.

When Safety is Threatened

Threats to emotional or physical safety between partners can have a devastating impact on the relational bond.

A person experiencing threats to their physical or emotional safety from their partner may feel an overwhelming sense of abandonment and betrayal. This could manifest as one partner gambling away the couple’s savings or engaging in risky behavior that puts the other partner at risk of violence.

Verbal, emotional, and physical abuse can severely damage the safety and security of the relationship, making recovery challenging.

As Rosoman (2025) states, these types of injuries not only break trust between partners but also redefine the hurtful partner as unsafe in the other’s eyes.

Healing After Betrayal

Couples Therapy can be critically important for anyone experiencing relationship betrayal and attachment injuries.

Partners can expect that couples therapy following a betrayal or attachment injury will be a challenging, vulnerable, and slow process. It often involves a deep dive into unprocessed emotions, past trauma, and our protective defense mechanisms that keep us disconnected and in conflict.

Just like a broken bone, the injury takes time to heal. However, with the right support, patience, and emotional vulnerability, the relationship can heal to a place that is even stronger than it was before the injury.

Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples

A therapist trained in an evidence-based model like Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) can guide partners through the process of transforming the hurtful impact of a betrayal or attachment injury. This approach can help restore trust in the relationship and security in the attachment bond.

My name is Samantha Kerr, and I am extensively trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. I have supported many couples in returning to a loving and securely attached relationship. Please reach out for a free consultation to see if we could be a good fit to work together.

Samantha Kerr is a Relationship Therapist and a Registered Clinical Social Worker with a Master in Clinical Social Work from the University of Calgary. She has 15 years of experience in the mental health field and has advanced training in Emotionally Focused Therapy. Sam is passionate about supporting individuals and couples to create healthy relationships.

Source  

Rosoman, C. (2025) Repairing Attachment Injuries in Close Relationships: An Emotionally Focused Guide to Moving Beyond Betrayal. Clare Rosoman, New York, NY.