The Betrayer’s Pain

You have a unique focus on targeting that person who had the affair.

The majority of people listening to this podcast are people who have been betrayed.

And so there's just a lot of focus on the helps we give to the betrayed partner.

I mean, I do that as well, the one who's been injured in all of this.

And so we have a lot of empathy for the wounds that they carry.

But you talk about the trauma and the wounds of the involved partner as well as being something that needs to be given attention to.

And I don't know that everybody has a lot of sympathy for that perspective all the time.

It's like, well, they they deserve what they get.

But talk a little bit where that comes from

from

you and why

you're

motivated

to help.

Well, when most of our lives have been touched by this experience, either we had a parent or a person that we dated, it comes up all the time.

So inviting the conversation, I would say is the one thing that I tend to do.

I'm by nature nonjudgmental and it comes up regularly.

What I do find is when people come in and it's a couple, there is somewhat a heavy-handed expectation that the person who was involved will be fixed and that them being fixed will fix everything.

And there are actual observable wounds on the one hand.

On the other hand, the person who was involved, the person who violated the understanding of the relationship, likewise has work to do.

Now, the easiest example I can give, because I feel like it's just sort of publicly or socially understood and more accepted, is when someone has taken the time to get on a long road of recovery from alcoholism.

we somewhat have a socially accepted understanding of the long road that it is and that the person will have beyond abstinence will have engaged in recovery and if they are working their steps if they are engaged in actual recovery not abstinence for recovery they present to their future relationships a different, healthier version of themselves.

And that is equally likely when the person has been involved and violated the terms of their relationship, there is also a path to recovery from that.

part of it is that i'm i'm heavy-handed on science i enjoy using what we know now 2026 what do we know now and there's a couple things we know for sure now that the person who cheated is in pain that is not hypothetical it is true we also know the person who is violated is also in pain that is true we can look at pictures of the brains Helen Fisher has all these brain scans we can look and see like people who want show and tell you can look and see that this is there and people do recover and go on to have healthy relationships in the future that's just true that's just true so right

Yeah, I mean, it's easy for most of us to identify the pain, the trauma, the difficulty that the injured partner is going through.