But experience tells us that soon the story will cool and the media and public alike will all but forget about Governor Spitzer, Silda Wall Spitzer, and Ashley Alexandra Dupre. But will Mrs. Spitzer forget it all so easily?
Psychologist Yael Margolin-Rice is quoted as saying, “I’m sure in all the external ways she’ll be fine. In the internal ways nobody knows.”
But mental health professionals specializing in sexual betrayal trauma have a different opinion.
“Out of the thousands of women who’ve contacted me after discovering their husband’s sexual betrayal and sexual addiction not one has escaped without experiencing trauma, and many suffer from post traumatic stress (PTS), often for years following the experience. Sexual betrayal rocks a woman to her core and without help from a professional who understands the impact on her life a woman can suffer from long-term depression, anxiety, panic attacks, flashbacks, and a host of other mental health issues. And many develop health-related issues,” says counselor and author Marsha Means, MA, who experienced sexual betrayal in her previous marriage.
Dr. Barb Steffens, a mental health counselor whose clinical research validates the sexual betrayal/trauma experience says, “ All too often, after the offender has come clean and feels relief from keeping the secret, the spouse is left picking up the pieces of a shattered life and devastated dreams. These are terrible wounds in the best of circumstances. Add to it the often-public shame and embarrassment that discovered sexual scandal brings, and these wives have a compounded experience of shell shock, emotional devastation, and trauma. It is a traumatic death of the life and marriage she thought she had. This kind of traumatic betrayal can take a great deal of time and care to heal.”
Steffens and Means have paired their years of training and experience to write the forthcoming book, Through a Trauma Lens: Viewing Sexual Betrayal as Trauma. “We know from experience that Mrs. Spitzer needs a time out; she needs support; and she needs a process that will move her through the grief and loss this brought into her life by her husband’s sexual secret,” Means says. We hope she doesn’t attempt to escape the aftermath of her husband’s indiscretions through work as one career counselor said she could. Though that approach is tempting, it does not lead to the long-term healing one desperately needs following the trauma of sexual betrayal.”
For more information about coping with a husband’s sexual betrayal, visit http://www.awomanshealingjourney.com.
