After sitting with betrayers and betrayed partners in the same room for almost 20 years and listening to their stories, their pain and their trauma, Dr. Minwalla came up with 22 different types of trauma the betrayed partner is exposed to throughout the time of the betrayal, discovery, disclosure and recovery. After I have talked about the secret sexual basement and why the betrayal produces trauma within the betrayed partner, let´s walk through those 22 rooms in this blog.
Overview of the house with 22 trauma rooms
After learning about the metaphor of the 22 rooms from Dr. Minwalla, I created an image of a house with 22 rooms and a basement. The basement obviously is the home of the secret sexual basement. The rooms on top of the basement are divided into four different floors to separate them from each other. The 22 rooms are divided into three moments within the story of the betrayal.
The first moment and with that the first floor is for the trauma that happens during the Covert Phase, the time when the betrayed partner has no idea that she is sitting on top of a secret sexual basement. The actions of the betrayer are covert up with integrity abuse behaviors. The fact of the betrayal in itself and the integrity abuse behavior during this period produce a certain type of trauma.
The second and third floor is for the trauma rooms that happen during the Exposure Phase, the moment when the secret sexual basement is discovered and the disclosure takes place. That is when the trauma symptoms of cPTSD (complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) are vivid and painfully experienced. Even if the betrayer stops acting out and no longer goes and visits the secret sexual basement, he has no idea of his integrity abuse behavior and less how to change it. Therefore, he continues traumatizing his partner. The different trauma types that are produced through those behaviors are on the second floor. The third floor is reserved for the symptoms of cPTSD.
The fourths floor is the home of the Symptom Progression Phase, the time after the tsunami hit the family and the home and they are starting the journey of recovery. A lot of the times the integrity abuse behavior still goes on because the betrayer has not yet learned to do anything different. So he continues to traumatize his partner. In the worst cases (which happens quite often) the betrayer even continues to acts out and goes into the secret sexual basement. He has not yet learned any tools to stop his addictive behavior. Especially in those cases where the acting out continues, the integrity abuse behaviors continues too and with that the continuation of trauma for the betrayed partner.
Here is the house with the 23 rooms (including the secret sexual basement!).
As we have now a first idea of the house and the floors and what is happening on each floor, we can start to look into the different floors and the rooms that are on each floor. I will not look into the basement as I already talked about it in my earlier blog “Let´s talk about the secret sexual basement!”. I will talk about the iceberg which you can see in the basement in a later blog – the iceberg represents the psyche and the internal construction of the betrayer. Understanding his own iceberg, the betrayer has a better chance to understand why he did what he did. But that is a whole blog in itself. So let´s go and visit the house.
Covert Phase
During the covert phase the betrayer is the only one in the house that knows a secret sexual basement exists and he is the only one that has access to it. The rest of the family is sitting on top of it living their “normal family life”. During the time of the covert phase there are 5 rooms that produce trauma: (1) Covert integrity abuse shaping, (2) Erosion of the enteric system or second brain injuries, (3) Erosion of relational integrity, (21) Family, communal and society injuries and (22) Treatment induced trauma. Let´s take a closer look to all of these rooms and the type of trauma they produce.
(1) Covert integrity abuse shaping
As I mentioned earlier during the covert phase the betrayed partner has no idea that a secret sexual basement exists and the betrayer is not only acting out, he is also using various strategies to maintain the basement a secret. Those strategies can be summarized under the umbrella of integrity abuse behavior. Those behaviors are: gaslighting, lying by omission, telling partial truth, using threats and anger to intimidate, maintaining control and power, shaming, finding fault, externalizing the blame, manipulating, withdrawing from the relationship, withholding information and so on. I guess you get a very good picture of what is going on during this period.
This kind of behavior creates a toxic energy at home and your nervous system is constantly in a threat mode and tries to protect yourself and your children so you withdraw from your partner and often the betrayed partner is trying to identify what she did wrong that her partner is acting so violent and distant. She is going to an internal place where she blames herself for the situation. Also she does not know what she has done wrong, she takes the responsibility for the situation.
As it is an ongoing relational pattern, it starts to shape over time a complex trauma. Each situation individually looked at, might not be so difficult, but as it is the repetition over time of the same kind of behavior it shapes trauma. It is the same mechanism that I had described in the blog about the secret sexual basement to explain what happens to the abuser during his childhood. It is like constant drops of water on a rock, the water changes the shape of the rock. So does constant negative and integrity abuse behavior on our nervous system. It creates complex trauma because the betrayed partner has no possibility to escape from it or change it. As she has no idea what is going, she cannot do anything about the situation except accepting it. That is for the nervous system traumatizing, because there is no solution to the situation.
(2) Erosion of the enteric system or second brain injuries
To understand this room, we have to know something interesting about our body and the nervous system. In our abdomen there is a huge net of neurons as similar as our brain but more scattered. We have a lot of synapsis in and around our digestive system. You probably know the saying: “I have a gut feeling”, and it refers to that reality. What happens when our partner connects with integrity abuse behavior? We are actually in front of a dilemma.
Imagen you have found some kind of clue about a possible betrayal, but you are not really sure. You ask your partner about it and he denies it and turns it down, nothing is happening, I do not know what you are talking about. In that moment you have two possibilities: the first is to trust your gut feeling and insist that what you sensed is correct. The second is to trust your partner, which makes sense as he says he loves you and therefore you can trust him. It does not matter which one of the two options you choose you will lose because you do not have access to the truth.
If you trust your partner you have to dismiss your gut feeling and disconnect from yourself. If you trust your gut feeling, you have to let go of your partner and separate – maybe not right now when you discover something the first time, but a little down the road when you discover more details.
This situation is most often solved in the way that the betrayed partner chooses to trust her partner. Because the possible consequence of leaving him is not really worth it. Plus, it is in general very scary. The result of the summary of those situations is, that you lose a connection with your gut feelings, your internal guide. The internal voice and alarm system is slowly silenced. And that is traumatizing for the betrayed partner. Especially when she realizes in one moment that her gut feeling actually was right!
(3) Erosion of relational integrity
If you imagen your relationship on an energetically level, you can think of vibes between you and your partner. When your relationship is in a good place and you trust your partner and you are both transparent with each other, those vibes are really clear and on the same wavelength. It is the representation that you get along very well.
What does the secret sexual basement do with those vibes? It destroys them. Your partner is not transparent and not honest with you, so the vibes he is sending are not on the same wavelength as yours. It leads to disruption and tension between the two of you. You start to feel disconnected. Over time you step away from being intimate with your partner. You do not feel really safe with your partner. You start to feel isolated or alone within the relationship. You are emotionally not available for each other. You get out of each other’s way because it feels safer and better not to be around the other so much. Those and other behaviors and feelings will show up. You might tell yourself that you are growing apart and that it is normal after all those years that we are together.
The reality is, that you are sitting on a secret sexual basement and you do not know it. That is what leads to the erosion of your relationship. It has nothing to do with growing apart and not loving or liking each other anymore. There is betrayal going on and your nervous system is responding in a very sensitive way to it. Actually your nervous system senses the reality very well and protects you from more harm.
The day you find out about the secret sexual basement, you will understand why you have been stepping away and not letting your partner in. Why you have distant yourself from him. And again, it is happening over time, over and over again. The sum of situations within your intimate relationship have created a cPTSD. Having a misunderstanding once in a while or a discussion within a relationship is normal, but if you are exposed to the same kind of energy, vibes and situations over and over again, it is traumatizing.
(21) Family, communal and society injuries
The next two rooms are located in the symptom progression phase by Dr. Minwalla that is why they have the higher numbers. I have placed them on this floor because for me they are already happening during the covert phase.
This room (family, communal and society injuries) is about the impact the betrayal has not only on the partner. It is about the impact on the rest of the family, the children that sit on the dining table on top of the secret sexual basement. If you continue reading the rest of the rooms, you can identify for yourself which of those rooms might also be a fit for the children. During the covert phase you have already the rooms (1) Covert abuse shaping, (2) Erosion of enteric system or second brain injuries and (3) Erosion of relational integrity, that you can see to some degree will have a negative or traumatic impact on the children.
As we will see on the third floor, when we talk about the trauma symptoms, betrayed partners often don´t feel comfortable with their partners around. They start to avoid social events or social situations to avoid any kind of questions or irritating situations in terms of society seeing them together. So they will start to reduce and minimize their social activities within their community. Betrayed partners that loved to go to bingo nights or other kind of social events in their community will stop doing it. This behavior most often is much more dramatic once the betrayal is discovered. Betrayed partners often isolate because of the shame that is there. So they isolate from their community and the isolation is having a really heavy toll on them.
If you start to look with detective’s eyes on the behavior before the discovery you will find that the impact of the betrayal is already starting much earlier than d-day (discovery-day). Because the relationship between the partners has already ruptures and there is an avoidance of connecting and showing that to the community.
(22) Treatment induced trauma
I have talked about this room in my first blog “Why should you work with a Minwalla model trained professional?”. Therefore, I will not dive very deep into this room here. But l will create two points of view to look at this room. The first one is connected directly to the betrayer. The second one is more connected to situations that you might experience in a treatment setting and that is more the responsibility of the professional.
So let´s look for a moment at the betrayer. He has the secret sexual basement and it helps him cope with his own trauma and pain. He has the integrity abuse behavior to protect this basement. His partner pushes him to couples counseling because they have grown apart and something is not working in the relationship. So he goes to the counseling because he does not want to lose his partner. But he will not talk openly about the secret sexual basement. He is holding back life altering information to the counselor and to the partner. The treatment process has to go sideways. The interventions of the counselor are based on a “normal” relationship problem and not on the reality of the betrayal.
But that does not liberate the professional from the responsibility. Because if you have a professional that knows about trauma and that has on his agenda the possibility of betrayal as a possible diagnosis or factor, then the professional has to explore those possibilities. If he does not know about trauma, then he has not done his homework (and I will include myself in that some years back!)
What are common things you might find because of treatment induced trauma? A mislabeling of the partner as co-sex-addict or codependent and not as the victim of abuse that they really are. A professional that is not seeing the abuse and the trauma and is doing a normal, general therapy. The assumption in couples work that the relationship is the problem as it “takes two to tango”. Different types of victim blaming that goes hand in hand with the two-to-tango-idea, where the betrayed partner is not willing to give her partner enough intimacy and sex. With that completely not seeing the trauma and the abuse in the relationship. Professionals that ally with the betrayer and leave the betrayed partner completely without protection. This also includes the entitlement and man-box position of the professional and his not knowing about it, so he has no filter and awareness around it. When the professional encourages the partners to premature sexual interventions, meaning pushing the betrayed partner to intimacy in a moment when it is absolutely not safe for her.
If you have experienced or are experiencing those kind of situations and interventions, please be aware of the traumatic impact that this will have on the betrayed partner. Often the betrayer has no idea what the continuation of protecting his secret sexual basement in the treatment context has on their partner. If you are a betrayer reading this, please be honest in the treatment. Ask for an individual session to let the professional know what is really going on and how he or she can help you address this in the next session. You are not only hurting; you are traumatizing your partner by withholding important information.
With that I will end this blog here and will continue with the exposure phase in the next blog. Not to torment you, just because of the length of the blog. Plus, there is a lot of information in it which needs to be digested and I want that you can do exactly that. So, hang in there for the next part of the 22 room, it is coming. See you there, Gundolf