Breaking the Relapse Cycle: What Being a Betrayer and Betrayed Taught Me

I’ll never forget the look on my wife’s face the day she discovered my infidelity. The betrayal, the disbelief, the agony...as everything she thought was true in the world and everything she thought was good in her life was jerked out from under her. The look in her eyes haunts me, and always will.

In six years at Affair Recovery and after leading nearly two dozen Hope for Healing groups, I have found the above statement (or words to that effect) to be virtually universal among the unfaithful men I have accompanied on the first steps of their journey to recovery. It is true for me as well—but on more levels than for many in my situation.

My wife and I had been married for eight years and had a six-year-old child when I started an online affair (it was the early days of the internet), which became a physical one with a younger woman. I had left my computer open when I went to work, and my wife saw all my conversations—explicit conversations that would later become known as “sexting”—with my affair partner. When I pulled into the driveway that day, she was sitting on the front stoop, crying. I had no idea what could be wrong. I rushed forward to comfort her. When she looked up at me and I saw the pain in her eyes, I immediately knew what had happened.

But I was caught up in the limerence. I was convinced I was madly in love with this young woman I barely knew and could not give her up. I announced I was going off to start a new life with her and left our home to meet with her, thinking I would never come back. Within a couple of days, I realized what a mistake I had made, and I called my wife and begged her to let me come home. She did, and I never saw the affair partner again. The day I came home into my wife’s arms was one of the happiest moments of my life, and I was so incredibly grateful to be there. I swore I would never do anything like that again, and I meant it. I felt like we had a new start.

But as we all know, it’s not that easy.

We attended couples counseling. As betrayers tend to do, I spent most of the sessions deflecting, justifying, and shifting blame. If only she had met my needs better. If only this, if only that. She grew ever more distant. Within a year or so, I suspected—accurately, as it turned out—that she was having an affair herself. I caught her the way she had caught me. I had never known such pain. I cried bitterly; I screamed and keened like a wounded animal. When my throat was too raw to scream anymore, I kept screaming on the inside for what felt like forever. We reconciled—or tried to—but we began a long, spiraling dance, cheating on each other over and over for the next six years. Finally, she found someone she wanted to start over with and left for good. Despite all the ways we had hurt each other, I was devastated. I knew it was me who had started the chain reaction and that I deserved what I was feeling far more than she did. I swore I would never cause such pain to someone I loved ever again.

And I meant it.

Three years later, I remarried, and we were incredibly happy together. Seven years into our marriage, I reconnected with an old girlfriend online. We spent a lot of time reminiscing about the year we had dated (after my first marriage) and the abrupt way things had broken off (with her cheating). We met for coffee, and the spark was still there. Soon we were texting back and forth all day long, every day, sharing every thought and each day’s mundane events. She was also with someone now—but before long, we were talking about how much we loved each other and always would. And then we were talking in detail about the things we used to do sexually and the things we’d still like to do. Neither of us, though, wanted to leave our partner—we had grown codependent and had become one another’s fantasy escape release valve. We occasionally met in person, usually in public places. I deluded myself into thinking that because it was only words and not physical actions, I wasn’t cheating.

About a year after my emotional affair began, I started to suspect my wife was being unfaithful. By this time, I knew all the signs inside and out, from both sides. I managed to get access to her iPad and learned that she had been meeting other men on an “adultery” website. Once again, I was devastated—far more so, in fact, than in my first marriage. I would never have believed my current wife capable of betrayal. She was the one woman I had trusted completely (just as I was the one man she had trusted). I recognized the irony of that, considering my own ongoing secret relationship. She was racked with guilt when discovered, and I realized how much I loved her and wanted to be with her forever.

But I didn’t end my emotional affair. If anything, I doubled down on it, using my wife’s infidelity as justification for trying to have my cake and eat it, too. Until two years later, that is—when I was discovered. Shortly after that, my wife and I found Affair Recovery and EMS Online, and later Harboring Hope and Hope for Healing (when I relapsed a year after D-Day).

I have been married twice, and in both marriages, I was both the betrayer and the betrayed. It is a depth of experience no one would wish for, but knowing so intimately what it feels like to be betrayed has helped me in my efforts to bring empathy for both roles into my discussions with the groups I lead.

It also provides an object lesson. At the end of my first marriage, I was crushed by the pain I had caused and sincere in my commitment never to do it again—but I did not address the core issues that had led me down the path of betrayal in the first place, thus virtually guaranteeing that I would do it again. “It’s your best efforts that got you here.”

What I have learned in the years since—through Affair Recovery and my own therapy—is that many of us carry a black hole inside us. It sucks everything in. We’ve usually carried it since childhood, and we spend our lives trying to fill it—through other people, through addictions, or through both. But no one person can make you happy. No one human being can fill that emptiness. We have to face the black hole, figure out how it started, and learn to fill it ourselves. Only then can we find balance or peace.

But you know what? No one can do it for you, but those of us who have been there can help you learn to do it for yourself and walk you through the first steps of the journey until you can stand on your own.

And that can make all the difference.