How Would You Respond to Betrayal?

The space between expectations and lived reality.

New York Times columnist Jessica Grose released an intriguing piece this week about the Netflix documentary series “Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal. In it, she broaches some common questions about betrayals that many people have, like whether a couple can stay together after a betrayal has happened, after an affair has been exposed? And whether they should.

You’re in good company if you’ve got a strong gut reaction on the right answer to these questions. Grose offers a nuanced view of the discovery of sex, lies, and egregious betrayal, articulating the various pathways that couples take. Yet people reading this are likely to hypothesize what they, themselves, would do.

But does how we anticipate we’ll react match up with how we actually react to a significant betrayal?

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Beliefs About Betrayal

A friend recently asked me what kinds of relationship problems I treat as a couples therapist. “All the typical stuff,” I said. “You know, communication problems, intimacy issues, co-parenting conflict, premarital counseling, and affairs.” 

Nothing startled her except the final item. “I can’t believe anyone could ever get over their partner cheating on them,” she said. “I wouldn’t be able to.”

She, like so many others, has certain expectations of how she’d react to a betrayal. But an abundance of research reveals that we all make predictable errors when anticipating how we’ll react to difficult life experiences.

The general finding of something researchers call affective forecasting is that we consistently overestimate both the intensity and duration of how badly we’ll feel if something goes horribly wrong in important areas of our lives. That is, we think we’ll feel more terrible than we actually do. And we expect we’ll feel that way much longer than we actually do.

Image by tswedensky from Pixabay

This bias in predicting our feelings accurately crops up in specifically in relationship betrayals, as a 2012 study showed. In this study, one hundred and four couples were followed over a 10-week period and asked to predict how they (and their partner) would feel if any of twenty listed relationship transgressions occurred (the list included betrayals like infidelity, physical aggression, and lying). People predicted deeper and more long-lasting sadness for themselves and their partners than they actually experienced.

This is not to say that feeling happy-go-lucky is any kind of typical response when one discovers a relationship betrayal. Discovering that someone you trusted was engaging in acts that violated all of your basic assumptions about them, your relationship, and even yourself is likely to capsize your world and emotional reactions often include depression and acute anxiety similar to what people experience after other kinds of traumatic events. 

Yet, it’s often the case that people can find ways to move forward after traumas, including the trauma of betrayal.

That the immediate acute devastation is not as long-lasting as we predict may be related, in part, to the fact that the intense emotion activates us. Our world is upside down and we are forced to confront a new reality. In this place, we must consider how we got to this place. And we are pressed to reflect on what we should do from this point forward. We must take stock and decide whether it is worth rebuilding what has been shattered.

This pressure to take stock often activates a series of cognitive reappraisals and new behaviors. For some people, it means initiating divorce. For others, it means rebuilding the relationship, perhaps with the aid of couples’ therapy. But in either path, emotions tend to abate over time.

But rarely do we get to this phase in our hypothetical “what would I do if my partner betrayed me?” thought experiment.

It Isn’t Crazy to Decide to Stay… And It Isn’t Crazy to Decide to Leave.

One of the many pain points for couples who decide to stay together after an affair comes to light is the sense that they are judged for doing so. This is particularly true for the betrayed partner. People’s assumptions that they “couldn’t be with a partner who cheated” feel like an implied judgement of weakness of character or a willingness to play the victim. For this reason, many betrayed partners keep the betrayal a secret, even from people they are very close to. This prevents them from accessing support which they sorely need.

And people who decide to leave may read an implied judgment in articles about couples who stay together after an affair. The implication is that loving people forgive, strong people work to rebuild what was broken. Yet many partners who cheat do not deserve a second chance at a relationship. And in these cases, the strong, wise, and self-loving thing to do is exit the relationship as quickly as possible.

Much as we imagine the choice to stay or go would be simple, it often isn’t. The paths are diverse, and choices can be right whichever way you decide to go. Studies, for instance, show that some couples overcome affairs and build back stronger while others choose to part ways and find greater health and happiness. There really isn’t a right or wrong choice.

But more than that, it’s hard to even anticipate what you, yourself, would or should do. We are terrible at forecasting our own hypothetical choices. We know we’ll feel strongly if we are betrayed, but we miscalculate exactly how strongly we’ll feel it, for how long, and what we might do once intense feelings begin to subside.

Recognizing how bad we are at predicting our reactions to terrible things can help us do something helpful for people around us: we can work to temper our predictions. People going through difficult relational experiences might (perhaps silently) thank us for it.