How Long Does It Take a Couple to Recover from Sexual Betrayal?

The disclosure of your spouse’s sexual betrayal is like a paradox of epic proportions. God flipped on the lights revealing your spouse’s adultery or addiction to pornography. As the betrayed spouse, however, you feel like you’ve been abandoned in a cave. You’re stumbling around in the dark, terrified your next step will send you tumbling into a deeper chasm of shock and pain. It’s paralyzing. The reason you probably feel this way is because, well, you’re lost. You’re quite literally traveling without a map. After I found out about my husband’s serial adultery, I felt like I was groping in the dark, trying to find a piece of solid ground on which I could take my next step. How long did I have to stumble through this thing called recovery? When would I begin to feel “normal” or whole again?  

Mirrored Recovery

The answers came in the form of two texts—the Bible and Don’t Call It Love, Dr. Patrick Carnes exhaustive study on sexual addiction recovery. Based on 20+ years of research, Carnes’ book has way more information about sex addiction than I ever wanted to know (I had to skip whole sections). Carnes book helped me identify clues in my relationship with my husband to determine where he was in the recovery process. I quickly realized my recovery from betrayal trauma or codependency closely mirrored my husband’s recovery from sexual addiction. They were both a form of idolatry (see Using God’s Word for Codependency). I used God’s Word, Carnes’ book, and my research from the lives of others on the recovery journey to create a parallel recovery map for married couples. I also ran it by several psychologists who supported my blueprint.  

Fibonacci’s Spiral & Repentance

Before we get into the various stages of recovery, it’s important to note the process is neither linear nor wholly physical. We don’t go from point A to point B. It is both physical and spiritual, and, more often than not, it resembles the printout of a frenetic EKG machine. God uses the shape of the spiral throughout nature as a perfect example of growth. In her powerful work, Grace Calls, author and speaker Robin Weidner introduces the spiral (instead of the line) as a more authentic metaphor for recovery. In the linear view of recovery, Weidner says, “repentance is an all-or-nothing event” (either you’ve repented or you haven’t). Using the spiral view, disclosure is the starting point where the curve begins its slow, almost imperceptible upward climb. As Weidner states, it’s a “continual progressive turning of focus and of renewing of hope as God reveals, corrects, and shows his unconditional love.” For both sexual addicts and betrayed spouses, the spiral parallels the struggles we visit and revisit along our journey. But with each step, we see them in a new light. We can look back on what has tripped us up in the past and learn from it so we can strengthen our emotional and spirit ual muscles and continue the climb upward. When we choose to view recovery as a spiral, we choose to see ourselves and our spouses as God does—with grace and mercy. Let’s look at the stages of a couple’s recovery from sexual betrayal.