When your husband’s infidelity comes to light, the truth doesn’t just hurt, it can completely shatter your sense of reality. For many women, discovering your husband has had a secret life brings shock, confusion, and a desperate search for answers. Learning how to recover after infidelity isn’t about fixing the relationship; it’s about finding emotional safety, clarity, and courage to stop chasing explanations and start protecting your peace.

How to Recover After Infidelity: Four Questions Every Betrayed Woman Asks

Women who go through this generally ask four questions:

1. If he really loved me, why did he do this?
2. If he lied to me for so long, how do I know he’s being honest right now?
3. How can I ever trust him again?
4. Did I ever really know him?

So if you’re trying to figure out how to recover after infidelity, Bethany’s story will help you understand what emotional safety and clarity look like when the truth feels impossible. Discover if you are a victim, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

Transcript: How To Recover After Infidelity

Anne: I have a member of our community on today’s episode. We’re gonna call her Bethany. Like many women who contact BTR, she didn’t just deal with his lies, she dealt with the shock of realizing that her entire reality may have been built on lies.

Bethany: The first time I found them, I was getting ready for work and it popped up on his phone. And then I went down a rabbit hole, I guess, looking through his phone. I found out that he was messaging both men and women.

Anne: Today’s episode is about that moment of discovery, the one that changes everything. She found messages she wasn’t meant to see, and those messages exposed an entire secret life. This is her story about how to recover after infidelity.

Welcome, Bethany.

Bethany: Thank you.

Anne: I’m so grateful that you would share your story today. So, Bethany, let’s start at the beginning.

Bethany: I’m very grateful to have found Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group. I was searching for some sort of support and community after everything that had happened. So when we were dating, things progressed quickly within our relationship.

He was successful in his work. I was successful in my work. He was charismatic, he made me laugh, he was into fitness, and that was important to him. Looking back, I may have ignored some pretty large red flags to focus on all the things I liked about him, like his personality and his physical appearance. Within the first month of dating, I could see there were a lot of highs and lows. And I focused more on the good rather than the lows.

Early Discoveries and Dismissals That Pointed to Infidelity

Bethany: But, about two months into dating, I started seeing text messages. He was reaching out and soliciting oral sex and other inappropriate messages.

Anne: How did you find these texts ?

Bethany: The first time I found them, I was getting ready for work, and it popped up on his phone. And then I went down a rabbit hole, I guess, looking through his phone. I found out that he was messaging both men and women. I was not religious. He denied it was anything, and I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I did end up believing him.

Very quickly, we got engaged, and then we found out we were pregnant. There was more verbal abuse while I was pregnant. And ended up getting married a month later. So it was very quick. This is the person you’re giving your life to, and the one person you should trust the most. I found out that he watched pornography. He denied it. It’s extremely confusing. I didn’t know how to recover after infidelity.

Then, I found out he was on same sex dating apps and reaching out pursuing men and I’m wondering, is my husband gay? He’s always been very homophobic, almost, and critical of gay people. He would get very defensive if you confronted him about it, and I don’t know what any other explanation there is.

Anne: What explanation would he give?

How to Recover After Infidelity When the Truth Keeps Shifting

Bethany: He said there was no excuse for his actions, except that he started watching pornography early, and it became more graphic which led to being curious about other things. He denied he is gay. He said he’s disgusted by what he has done.

Anne: I think the most confusing thing was that I couldn’t ever get a straight answer because the answers didn’t make sense. Because so many things seemed so, elusive. I’d try to hold onto it and I couldn’t quite. It would just disintegrate in my hands. I’ve come to believe he chose to do that. How to recover from infidelity when everything keeps shifting?

Bethany: Yeah, it’s a hard realization, and you wanna try to figure out the reasons why he’s lying or the causes of sexual addiction. But he made that choice. It doesn’t make sense to me. I’m like, if something disgusts me, why would you do it?

Anne: Well, it could have been that you didn’t wanna try it, but peer pressure or coercion. Women do things they don’t wanna do all the time due to coercion. So many women have sex when they don’t wanna have sex, due to coercion. I’ve never wanted to smoke cigarettes, so it’s never been difficult for me to not smoke cigarettes. Because no one was coercing him to look at gay pornography. People generally, from my experience, don’t look at gay pornography unless they want to.

Bethany: Exactly, at the end of the day, it was something you desired and wanted to do and chose. I think lying definitely was one of the hardest things, because when there are secrets, it’s hard to go from there. How do you trust someone after that?

When Faith Communities Don’t Understand: How to Recover After Infideltiy

Bethany: I first turned to the church, to my pastor, and she had me put together a list of boundaries. So I put it together all in writing. Because I believed God can work if you take that step and let the Holy Spirit lead you.

I did one COSA meeting, I felt like it was blaming me. Then like I started to feel like I was codependent and that’s why all of this happened. We did a marriage intensive.

Anne: For sex addiction?

Bethany: Yes, emotional intimacy and sex addiction. Because I feel like that is the first place you look when you’re trying to work with someone. I told my story within counseling and the church support groups. It brought on a whole different level of confusion and hurt. It was just, like distorted reality. Almost like I go out and have fun, and then pretend like it didn’t happen. I wasn’t facing the issue. I didn’t want to believe it. So I believed what he said, and then it just escalated to the point where I had no other choice. I had to get to the truth and learn how to recover after infidelity.

I was at work. He lost his job. It was over the weekend, and my husband is on phone all the time. And we have a baby. We were all spending time with the baby, having a family day, and went to bed that night. I find out he was, on his phone again, messaging on different dating apps. It was really traumatizing to see how many people that there were. And then there were explicit videos and messages.

He had someone in our house with our children there

Bethany: And how I came to find that I was on my five-year-old’s iPad and a location share came up. I recognized the name from early on in our relationship. It was a man and I asked him about it and he got very aggressive and upset. So I find out that he had this individual over while I was at work. I think I didn’t really know how to feel in that moment. I went through all of the stages of trauma and grief in terms of numbing and isolating.

It was just gut wrenching to think about the fact that he was messaging these things and asking someone to come over to our home with our children there. It added a whole other layer to my confusion. The person I loved and committed my life to has a secret life that you don’t know about. So I don’t know who this person is, and I’ve been sharing my life with a complete stranger. And there’s a lot of fear with that.

I was searching for more specific support from someone who had already been through it, other people that you can relate to. I came across BTR. And I was like wow, this is really, really helpful. I started listening to the podcast, and the resources made available through BTR helped me navigate that next step in learning how to recover after infidelity. The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group sessions gave me live support.

The BTR resources I’ve used a lot considering where do I go from here? I’ve been looking at how to tell if your emotionally abusive husband will change. And I’m still using that, because the signs of changing, you have to see consistently over time. It’s not something you can tell him to do.

Safety is the most important thing

Bethany: You said in there, don’t do it. So I didn’t, ’cause I wanted to know for myself if he was going to change. I utilize It as a guideline to determine if I’m going to stay in this relationship or what’s my exit strategy. I’m still evaluating. We separated, I first turned to my best friend, and she stayed with me. And then my mom flew in and stayed with me.

Anne: That’s exactly what to do because observing and just watching, you’ll always know the truth and that’s the safest place to be.

Bethany: Following the BTR podcast, hearing other people’s stories brought me additional comfort. And learning from those too. Cause I feel like it acknowledges the pain it caused, and being honest about the effects and consequences of the other’s actions. I think forgiving just means you’re doing it for yourself, and that the person owing the debt still owes that debt.

Anne: Yeah, they do. I think they sometimes don’t realize that part. Just because you forgive the debt doesn’t mean they still don’t owe it.

Bethany: Right, knowing other people have been through this same thing. And they’ve been able to leave, or move on, or whatever stage they’re in their process.

Anne: Whatever is the right thing for them to do. Because at BTR, safety is the most important thing, and everyone defines that in different ways. When you are figuring out how to heal after infidelity, I do feel like wives, for the most part, feel like keeping their marriage intact is the safest option, especially when you have kids.

Telling your story will help others

Anne: So because you’re navigating a safety issue, what’s going to bring me the most safety is the better question. Has that been part of your process? Because that was for me. Divorce felt unsafe to me. And so that’s why I didn’t end up filing for divorce. Divorce seemed like the least safe thing of all my options.

Bethany: Yeah, especially with children, I think, and even if you don’t have children. Because you don’t want that to be the reason, you have to evaluate what is truly the safest, you know? I think just going back to each person’s situation will be different. But, I wanted other people to know if they have similar situations, that there are other people. you giving me this opportunity to share my story. It’s helped me so much to do this. And to talk with you and have this BTR platform. I hope it helps.

Anne: Yes, your story will. It will for sure help somebody.