How to Get Unstuck and Rebuild Trust After Betrayal Trauma
- Jonathan Daugherty
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
When betrayal has shattered your world, the path forward rarely feels clear, straight, or fast. Yet in the chaos, God is not confused, and your heart is not beyond His care.
In this post, based on my wonderful podcast episode with Tammy Gustafson, I want to talk to you about two big questions many betrayed wives wrestle with: “Why do I feel so stuck?” and “When is it ever safe to trust again?” My hope is to give language to your experience, remove some false pressure, and point you toward a slower, truer path of healing.
Where wives often get “stuck” after betrayal trauma
When a sexual betrayal comes to light—whether through discovery or disclosure—your whole internal world can feel like it explodes. You may not know which way is up, which way is forward, or if you’re even “doing healing” right.
From the outside, it can look like you’re spinning your wheels, but from the inside it just feels like pure survival. Over years of caring for betrayed wives, we have seen a couple of very common “potholes” where movement often stalls.
Two of the biggest are:
Focusing on rebuilding trust too early.
Focusing on forgiveness too early.
Both sound spiritual, noble, and even “biblical.” But if you make either one the primary goal in the early phases, your healing will typically freeze, and often your husband's and the marriage’s healing stall too.
In those early weeks and months—especially when you’re still piecing together the truth, unsure if he’s really doing the work, and your emotions are intense—trying to force trust or force forgiveness usually becomes a way of trying to short‑circuit the pain. It promises relief but won’t actually heal you or your relationship.
Why trust and forgiveness come later
This doesn’t mean trust and forgiveness don’t matter; they absolutely do. It means they belong later in the process, not at the starting line.
Trust after betrayal is not something you “decide” and give; it is something he must earn over time by becoming trustworthy.
That means consistent sobriety, honesty, empathy, humility, and a demonstrable change of heart—far more than attendance at a group or checking boxes.
In other words, early on, rebuilding trust is not your job. Your job is to tell the truth about your reality, honor your limits, and get safe.
Forgiveness works similarly. It is important, and the Holy Spirit will eventually invite you into it, but biblical forgiveness is never “forgive in the dark before you even know what you’re forgiving.”
Healthy forgiveness:
Comes after truth, not before it.
Comes after anger has had a chance to be acknowledged and expressed.
Is not something others get to put on a timeline for you.
If you are feeling pressured—from church, family, your husband, or your own internal voice—to “hurry up and forgive” while you’re still in shock, still grieving, still asking basic questions, that pressure is usually a sign: it is not time.
In those early phases, your wiser focus is:
These are the things that truly move the needle on your healing early on.
The role of anger, sadness, and “big emotions”
Many wives ask, “How do I know if I’m stuck, or if this is just what grief looks like?” Grief after betrayal is not neat, and it is not quick.
Think of the classic grief movements—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—not as a tidy ladder you climb but as waves you move through. It is common to fear getting “stuck” in anger or sadness.
Here’s a key insight: for grief to do its healing work, you actually need both anger and sadness. When one is cut off, you tend to spin in the other.
If you have been taught “thou shalt not be angry,” you may disconnect from anger and cycle endlessly in sadness, despair, and self‑blame.
If sadness feels too vulnerable, you might live in a constant state of anger without ever letting your heart fully lament what has been lost.
Anger itself is not sin; it is God‑given. It tells you that something is wrong and gives energy to take appropriate action. The danger comes when anger morphs into rage—a violent, out‑of‑control drive to punish or harm.
The church has often told women, implicitly or explicitly, that “good Christian women” don’t get angry. As a result, many wives disconnect from the very emotion that bears witness to the injustice done to them. To refuse any connection with your anger is, in a real sense, to disconnect from the truth that “this was wrong.”
If that’s you, hear this:
It makes sense that you are angry.
It is appropriate to be angry that your vows were broken and your life was blown up.
You need safe people and spaces where your emotions are not shushed, minimized, or rushed.
Ironically, what many people interpret as “she’s stuck” is often simply “she’s still legitimately grieving something that takes a long time to grieve.”
How others can truly help
Many husbands, friends, and even church leaders see a wife’s ongoing anger or sadness and assume she’s stuck. They feel uncomfortable with the intensity and try to calm her down, shrink her emotions, or push her toward quick forgiveness. That actually increases her sense of stuckness.
What she most needs from those around her is:
Validation: “Of course you feel this way; what happened to you is devastating.”
Space: Room to express anger and sadness, possibly many times, without someone slapping a time limit on her healing.
Support: Friends, mentors, counselors, and groups who understand betrayal trauma and won’t shame her for still hurting.
One of the best gifts a husband can give, if he is repenting and doing his own work, is to “hold” her pain without defending himself, arguing, or shutting down. That means letting her anger, questions, and tears exist in the room without trying to fix them.
Her choice about how much of that pain she shares with him is still hers, because sharing is itself a form of vulnerability. But any of that pain she entrusts to him is a sacred gift.
What safety and growing trust look like
Let’s talk about trust more directly. Trust at its core means this:
“I will allow myself to be vulnerable with you again, believing you will treat that vulnerability with care.”
In marriage, this includes emotional vulnerability and also the profound vulnerability of sexual intimacy—the most exposed place we can be with another person. When sexual betrayal has occurred, sexual trust is especially shattered, and it is right and good for a wife to take that very seriously.
A few important truths:
You have permission to say, “I am not ready to be sexually intimate.”
Sexual trust should not be rushed or demanded; it rests on a deeper foundation of overall safety.
You get to take the time you need to discern what is truly safe for you.
So what does “safe enough” look like, in general terms?
Physical and sexual safety: No coercion, no threats, no physical harm.
Sobriety: He is walking in clear, verifiable sobriety. Sobriety is not the finish line; it’s the starting line.
Heart work: He is not just white‑knuckling external behavior but digging into why he betrayed in the first place (often tied to long‑standing patterns and earlier wounds, not to your failures).
Empathy and ownership: He doesn’t just “admit” facts; he owns the impact of his choices on your heart and stays present with your pain.
Humility instead of defensiveness: He becomes more gentle, kind, and willing to listen rather than arguing, minimizing, or flipping the script.
Over time, as this kind of heart change continues, something beautiful can begin to emerge: a deeper authenticity and sense of being fully known for both of you. The “rules” in the relationship start to shift from secrecy and managing impressions to honesty and mutual engagement.
That doesn’t mean a clean, linear journey. Even when there is a lot of good evidence that he is changing, leaning back in will often feel like “two steps forward, one step back.” You might open your heart a bit, get scared, and pull back for a while. That back‑and‑forth can last a long time and still be part of a healthy trajectory.
Walking slowly, with hope
If your heart resonates with “stuck,” hear this from me as your brother in Christ: be very gentle with yourself. This will absolutely take longer than you want it to. No one wants the pain to be over more than you do, and yet the only way out is through.
A few practical invitations:
Release the timelines—both the external ones (“You should be over this by now”) and the internal ones (“I should be stronger than this”).
Keep naming and feeling your emotions. Research shows that honestly naming what you feel and writing about it helps your brain process and heal.
Seek safe, knowledgeable community—women and guides who understand betrayal trauma and can say, “Keep going; you’re not crazy, and you’re not alone.”
Give yourself permission to focus on your own healing, not on managing his.
And for the husbands who may be reading: one of the greatest acts of love you can offer is to do the long, humbling work of becoming a truly safe man, whether or not your wife ever feels able to fully trust you again. If both of you are willing to walk this hard road, I have seen God bring about marriages that are deeper, truer, and more connected than before the betrayal.
That doesn’t make the betrayal “worth it,” and it doesn’t erase the pain, but it does mean this: devastation does not have to be the final word. It is possible for you to heal as a woman, and it is possible—when there is genuine repentance and change—for a marriage to be restored and deepened beyond what you imagined.
Wherever you are today—numb, furious, exhausted, cautiously hopeful—Jesus sees you. He is not impatient with your pace, and He is not shocked by your emotions. As you keep taking the next honest step, surrounded by people who honor your story, you really can move from “broken” toward “brave,” even if it feels very slow.
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