Mental health professionals encounter clients navigating profound challenges, yet few are as complex and multifaceted as those faced by betrayed partners. Betrayed partners represent a specialized treatment population requiring specific treatment models, methodologies, and interventions that honor the unique dilemmas created by sexual betrayal from a primary attachment figure.
Partner betrayal trauma describes the negative relational, emotional, psychological, and sexual impacts experienced by individuals who discover secret sexual behavior that violates their relationship agreements. This behavior can range from emotional or physical affairs to a pattern of compulsive sexual behavior. The impacts create a devastating loss of safety, leading to significant attachment-based symptoms and emotional dysregulation.
The need for a fresh perspective regarding sexual betrayal cannot be overstated. Individuals and couples impacted by sexual betrayal, and the professionals who treat them, struggle to understand and address the complex emotional dynamics and behavior patterns that arise.
The Relational Recovery Partner Betrayal Model
The Relational Recovery™ Partner Betrayal Model (RRPB Model) is rooted in research examining the nature and role of betrayal in traumatic experiences. It draws heavily on betrayal trauma theory and attachment theory to dissect, understand, and treat the unique and specific relational dilemmas that are created when an individual experiences betrayal at the hands of a primary attachment figure.
Sexual betrayal introduces an attachment-based bind into relationships, as partners become unsafe to connect to, while connection is the key to healing.
Social Betrayal: The Heart of Relational Trauma
The RRPB model builds on the research of Dr. Jennifer Freyd, who founded Betrayal Trauma Theory (BTT) in the 1980s[1]. BTT fundamentally reshaped our understanding of trauma, placing social betrayal at its core. Unlike traditional trauma models that center on pathological fear as the defining element of traumatic stress, BTT emphasizes that the closer the relationship to the betrayer, the greater the traumatic impact.
Freyd explains, “…BTT is a theory of psychological response to trauma that proposes that an individual’s cognitive encoding of and response to trauma depends not only on the terror or fear of a specific event, but also on the event’s social betrayal.”[2]
This insight reframes the focus of meaning-making from purely cognitive processes to relational tasks. Social betrayal disrupts connection to the self, to others, and to larger systems of meaning, including spiritual frameworks. As a result, meaning-making becomes a relational task centered on learning to reestablish safe connections.
The Role of Attachment Theory in Understanding Betrayal
The RRPB model also builds on attachment theory to create a new way of conceptualizing and understanding the experience of partner betrayal. The way partners react to experiencing sexual betrayal is impacted by their attachment system and the style of coping they developed to manage experiences of disconnection or relational threat from childhood onward.
For many partners, the betrayal echoes earlier relational traumas, activating pre-existing attachment-based coping strategies. The resulting dysregulation amplifies beliefs about self and others and complicates the path to healing.
As a result, all symptoms and coping strategies displayed by individuals and couples in the aftermath of betrayal are driven by unmet attachment-based needs and anxieties stemming from the bodily-based experience of relational disconnection.
Without recognizing these attachment-based dilemmas, we miss a core element in understanding why partners do the things they do and how to effectively treat them.
Effective treatment addresses attachment injuries, fostering safe relational connections—sometimes for the first time—as a cornerstone of healing. If betrayal happens in a relationship, then healing and restoration must also happen in a relationship.
Distinctive Elements of the RRPB Model
The RRPB model equips professionals to assess, diagnose, and treat the symptoms and relational coping strategies created by the violation of sexual agreements in adult partnered relationships. It does so through the following distinctive elements:
- It centers on betrayed partners as a distinct population requiring specialized and targeted treatment approaches.
- It establishes that relational trauma is ongoing and evolving rather than a singular, completed event, highlighting the unique treatment challenges of this multi-dimensional and dynamic experience.
- It focuses on the loss of secure connection to a primary attachment figure as the central bind of infidelity, building on attachment theory research examining primary attachment ruptures in both childhood and adulthood.
- It explores the unique relational, emotional, and sexual binds that betrayal at the hands of one’s primary attachment figure creates.
- It frames chronic, systematic deception as emotional and psychological abuse and a core component of the injuries caused by infidelity.
- It identifies attachment-based motivations and unmet needs as key drivers of individual and couple coping strategies in the aftermath of betrayal.
- It defines sexual injury as a primary area of traumatic impact for individuals and relationships, expanding the language and concepts to better identify patterns of harm.
Partner betrayal trauma demands a specialized approach that honors the unique dilemmas and binds created by sexual betrayal within attachment relationships. By integrating insights from betrayal trauma theory and attachment theory, the RRPB model offers a robust framework for helping betrayed partners navigate their healing journey. With expert support, betrayed partners can transform the devastating relational wounds of betrayal into opportunities for growth, connection, resilience, and reclamation of themselves.