I Healed From Betrayal Trauma After My Partner Cheated

It was an ordinary Tuesday morning when I borrowed my husband’s laptop. Mine wasn’t working and, needing to print something, I opened his. At that very moment, a notification pinged in the corner of the screen, revealing that my beloved marriage wasn’t what I believed it to be. Clicking on that notification led me to countless more — all indisputable evidence of chronic infidelity.

I fell to the floor in disbelief and then lay there next to a pool of my own vomit, as my brain scrambled to find a logical explanation. I hoped any of my mind’s meager offerings were true: that I’d uncovered a stolen identity or perhaps had discovered a secret-agent-style operation that required my husband to create a fictitious persona. I didn’t want to think that an undiagnosed brain tumor might be the cause, but decided it was the most likely culprit. Nothing made sense, but I trusted that the missing piece would certainly be offered, thereby assuaging my shock and setting the world — and my 20-year relationship — back on its axis.

But that didn’t happen. It was all real.

I filed for divorce soon after.

Except for my therapist and one trusted friend, I told no one and kept the details of my secret to myself for three months. Integrating the truth was hard enough — I couldn’t comprehend how I would even begin to explain it to others. I also felt a strong sense of loyalty to my marriage (ironic, I know) and wanted to protect it from becoming the source of hot gossip.

Ultimately, I didn’t want to talk about it because I didn’t want to be talked about, so I invented a litany of illnesses and contrived calendar commitments to avoid others. This was unusual for me, but so was feeling perpetually paranoid, so it felt like the only option I had.

In the aftermath of my discovery, I existed in a fog, carrying a persistent sense of unease accompanied by a complete loss of trust — in everyone, but most tragically, in myself. Even though I’d been comfortable in my own skin and confident in my abilities for as long as I could remember, that “me” was now nowhere to be found. Apparently, discovering that you actually don’t know the person you believe you know best in the world will do that to you.

Three months in, an ever-present headache had taken root, a byproduct of my brain’s futile attempt to reconcile not only my confusing new reality, but something far more maddening. Even now, all these years later, that headache returns every time I attempt…