Self-Care for Betrayed Partners
Self-Care for Betrayed Partners
When you find out that your spouse has been unfaithful and deceptive, it feels like the floor has fallen out from underneath you. The first part of picking up the pieces is just finding the floor again - or in therapist speak, stabilization. A key part of this initial phase of recovery is self-care. I know, roll your eyes. How many times have you heard “just do self-care”? It makes me cringe too. My goal is to make it feel a little more helpful.
The Basics
Self-care after betrayal first looks like going back to the basics. Are you eating, drinking water, and sleeping? If you are struggling with any of these, priority one may look like getting help with the logistics of what it looks like to create a nighttime routine or a schedule for drinking water. Once these are covered, creating a more in depth self-care plan that can be referenced throughout the entirety of your recovery process is a helpful tool.
A Definition of Self-Care
I tend to look at self-care as things that are good for our overall wellness, not necessarily things that we like to do. I like to do tons of things that are bad for me. A helpful tool that I have used to expand self-care plans is to look at Satir’s parts of self and identifying what each of these parts yearn for. Let’s go through an example of what this could look like.
Satir’s Parts of Self & Self-Care
Starting with the physical part of self, which refers to the physical body, an example of self-care can be something like getting 10 thousand steps a day for the purpose of honoring your body.
Our contextual part of self refers to the part that honors the environment we are in. Self-care for this part could look like sitting in the sun for 10 minutes a day or even switching our desk from being right next to a life draining co-worker.
Our spiritual part of self can be honored in many different ways. I was just reading a book that described the emotion of “awe” as a spiritual encounter and that awe is found when we encounter things that are so vast that we cannot fully comprehend them. A beautiful example of this is spending time in nature without the distraction of your phone.
The interactional self is about relational self-care. I think of this as relationships outside of the primary relationship for betrayed partners. This is such an important one. Who is your support system? How much do you want to tell certain people about what is going on? What things may you need to take a step back from at the moment?
Another part of self that we need to care for is the emotional part of self. For betrayed partners, I find that a lot of times caring for oneself in this aspect looks like learning to identify what you are feeling in the moment. A feeling wheel can be helpful for this. Also working with your somatic experiences and how your body feels different in the midst of different emotions can be powerful. A lot of betrayed partners have ignored their own feelings for so long as a protective mechanism, that they need to practice feeling and knowing what they feel. Can you relate to this?
Sensual self-care refers to self-care that honors the part of our five senses. For myself, this may be something like wearing fuzzy socks on my feet and not wearing anything that is itchy on my arms, because that really bugs me.
The nutritional part refers to the basics of eating and hydration, but once you have the bare minimum down, then how can you go further and use food not just as fuel to survive, but fuel to flourish?
Our intellectual part is what excites us intellectually. For me, this looks like knowing that as much as I love to sit down with a good romance novel, it doesn’t actually excite my intellectual part. My current favorite way to honor that part is to be a language nerd and study the nuances of ancient biblical Greek in the New Testament of the Bible.
What Now?
As you can see, creating an in-depth self-care plan requires being able to acknowledge all parts of ourselves and be honest about what they (the parts) need. Once you have that down, you have good ideas of how to honor your whole self and work towards rising from the betrayal, even better than before. As an additional note, some of these areas may also require you to outsource to different types of professionals, such as a mental health therapist, a nutritionist, or a chiropractor, depending on the type of care you are looking for.
About The Author
Jorden Groenink, MS, LMFT, APCC a lisenced marriage and family therapist (AMFT136162) and an Associate Professional Clinical Counselor (APCC12906), supervised by Jeremy Mast, MS, MDiv, LMFT, CSAT, CPTT (CA90961). She has been trained in Experiential Therapy and loves working with couples and individuals who want to experience a more fulfilling life. Jorden wholeheartedly believes that every person is worthy of love and relationship. When not working with clients or listening to audiobooks, Jorden enjoys spending time with her family (husband, dog, & cat) and doing DIY projects around her house.
