The Open Window

Crisis

You Are Not Going Crazy

Discovering an affair is a trauma, and it behaves like one. What is happening to you has a name.

4 min read

Priya remembers which cartoon was playing.

Her daughter had the family tablet propped against the fruit bowl. A message slid down from the top of the screen and covered a dancing rabbit for three seconds. “Last night was everything. Delete this.” It was meant for her husband, who was in the shower.

She remembers her hands going cold. She remembers finishing the lunchboxes anyway, cutting a sandwich into careful triangles, as if neatness could hold the morning together. She does not remember driving to school.

In the weeks that followed she stopped recognising herself. She could not eat. She woke at three with her heart pounding. She checked his phone, hated herself, and checked it again. She cried in a supermarket because of a song.

“I think I am losing my mind,” she told a friend. She was not. Something specific was happening to her, and it has a name.

This is trauma, and it behaves like trauma

Shirley Glass, the psychologist behind Not “Just Friends”, said plainly that discovering an affair is a traumatic event.1 She used the same recovery approach that helps survivors of accidents and disasters.

Other researchers agree. Donald Baucom, Kristina Gordon and Douglas Snyder write that many reactions of betrayed partners mirror the signs of post-traumatic stress. The affair shatters beliefs a person needs to feel safe.2

That changes the question. It is no longer “what is wrong with me?” It becomes “what happens to a person when the safest place in her life becomes the source of danger?”

All of us live on a few quiet certainties. We are committed to each other. You are honest with me. I am safe here. We never examine them. We just stand on them. Discovery takes the floor away in seconds.

In Glass’s clinical sample, 42 percent of betrayed partners were severely or extremely anxious. 30 percent were clinically depressed. If you feel wrecked, you are in large and entirely sane company.

Two bars out of 100: 42 in 100 betrayed partners in Glass’s clinical sample were severely or extremely anxious, and 30 in 100 were clinically depressed.Severely or extremely anxious 42 in 100 Clinically depressed 30 in 100
From Glass’s clinical sample. These were people in therapy, so the numbers describe that group, not everyone.1

Your mind is doing its job

Glass sorts the reactions into three groups. Most people move between all of them, sometimes in the same hour.

Three groups of reactions after discovering an affair: it keeps coming back, going numb, and being on high alert, each with everyday examples. It keeps coming back Glass calls this intrusion. Replaying dates and conversations. A street name or a ringtone throws you back to the moment you found out. Going numb Glass calls this constriction. You feel nothing. From outside it can look like calm. It usually is not. On high alert Glass calls this hyperarousal. You startle, cannot sleep, and check everything. Not knowing feels dangerous.
Glass’s three clusters, in plain words. Most people move between all three, sometimes in the same hour.1

Glass warns that numbness is not calm. First you go numb, she says, and then you bleed.

None of this is weakness. It is what a mind does after safety has been lost.

Count the gaps, not the waves

Glass noticed that the symptoms fade in a set order. First they come less often. Then they stop lasting as long. The strength of each wave is the last thing to ease.

So three months in, you may have four good days and then a terrible one that hits as hard as the first week. It will feel like proof that nothing has changed. It is the opposite. Measure the space between the waves.

An illustration of distress over time: at first the waves are frequent and long; later they come less often and pass more quickly; their height eases last.How bad it feels First weeks Months later 1. The waves come less often. 2. Each one passes more quickly. 3. How hard they hit eases last.
An illustration, not data. Glass noticed that symptoms ease in this order. So count the gaps between the waves, not the height of the worst one.1

What gives you back some ground

  • Put it on paper. When a question starts circling, write it down and close the notebook. It is saved. Your mind can stop guarding it.
  • Give worry an appointment. Fifteen to thirty minutes, once or twice a day. Outside those times, tell yourself, “Not now. At six.”
  • Change the channel. Keep one image ready: your child laughing, a place you love. Switch to it when an unwanted picture arrives.
  • Ride the wave. A flashback cannot be argued with. Say, “This is a flashback. It will pass,” and breathe slowly until it does.
  • Protect your sleep. No difficult talks late at night. Exhaustion makes every feeling darker.
  • Choose your confidants. One or two people who can listen without attacking your partner or pushing you to decide.

Recovery has stages

Baucom, Gordon and Snyder built a treatment for couples after an affair. It moves through three stages, and the first is simply getting through the crisis.2 In early small studies, betrayed partners who went through it felt much less distressed by the end.2

Three stages of recovery used by affair researchers: dealing with the impact, understanding the meaning, and moving on. 1. The impact Calm the crisis. End contact with the affair partner. Look after sleep, food and safety. Learn to handle flashbacks. 2. The meaning Understand how it happened: the marriage, each person’s history, the stresses. The one who strayed stays responsible. 3. Moving on Make sense of the whole story, talk about forgiveness, and decide whether to stay together.
The three stages in Baucom, Gordon and Snyder’s approach to affair recovery. Each stage depends on the one before it.2

To the one who caused this

You have ended it. You have apologised. You do not understand why she is still crying in week nine.

Glass names the hardest truth of recovery. The person who caused the injury has to become the healer. No one else can, because the wound is about you.

She says, “I saw a hotel advert today and fell apart.” You can answer in two ways.

The same moment, two replies. She says she saw a hotel advert and fell apart. One reply asks when she will let it go, which adds an injury. The other says sorry, come here, I am not going anywhere, which helps trust return. She says “I saw a hotel advert today and fell apart.” Reply A “I have said sorry a hundred times. When will you let this go?” Reply B “I am so sorry that is still happening to you. Come here. I am not going anywhere.” Adds a new injury Trust starts to return
Glass: the person who caused the injury has to become the healer.1

One reply adds an injury. The other is how trust starts to return. Glass calls trust a dimmer, not a light switch.

A light switch, which is either on or off, crossed out, beside a dimmer, which rises slowly through many settings. A light switch on or off A dimmer many small steps up
Glass: trust is a dimmer, not a light switch. It comes up slowly.1

When this is not enough. See a doctor or a clinical psychologist if you cannot eat or sleep for days, or cannot manage work or home. If you have thoughts of harming yourself or anyone else, reach out today. Need to talk to someone now? Tele MANAS is free, day and night, on 14416.

Inat Therapy · Anahita Tanwar, Clinical Psychologist · online sessions across India

These pages are for reflection and self-help. They are not therapy and do not replace a doctor, counsellor or lawyer. If you are struggling, Tele MANAS offers free support day and night on 14416. In an emergency, call 112.

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