Discovery vs. Disclosure
There are few shocks greater than finding out you've been betrayed and lied to. One's whole world comes crashing down and there are physical, emotional and spiritual levels of shock that are experienced. The pain is whole, complete and consuming. How you find out usually falls into either of two categories, and we will use a couple of examples to further describe them.
Katie: Katie and Joe have been married for six years and have two small children. Their life seems very "normal." They both work, go on a couple vacations per year, have friends and go to church regularly. Joe seems to want sex a lot more frequently than she does and Katie would like more conversational connection with Joe as they seem to only talk about work and kids, but overall she feels they're doing okay.
Sally: Sally and Tom have been dating for two years and are planning to get married soon. They're organizing the wedding and having fun with their friends, but Tom often seems to be distracted. He tends to drink more than Sally would like, and he spends a lot of time at work. He excuses it by saying that he is saving for the wedding so they can have everything they want for the start of their new life.
Either example could fit the lives of lots of people we know. Normal, everyday circumstances, but both Katie and Sally are unknowingly being betrayed. You can't see infidelity from these example and that's the point. Many times, that's exactly the case...the fact that there was simply no way to see what was happening. Now let's take our examples a step further...
Katie's Discovery: Katie is at work, but decides to come home early and surprise Joe before the kids come home. She walks into the house and finds Joe watching porn and sees a suitcase full of videos and adult magazines. She looks through them and finds various offensive titles and disturbing images and nervously asks Joe what's going on. He is immediately defensive and starts to blame Katie for his need to watch porn because she does not please him in the way he wants. Katie is shocked and starts to wonder what else he might have been hiding as her mind starts to take her to even darker places.
Sally and Disclosure: Sally and Tom are having dinner together one night and Tom is looking ill. She is concerned and asks if he's okay and Tom blurts out that he has been seeing multiple women, having sex with all of them off and on and the guilt is eating him up. He says he wants to stop because he really loves Sally, but every time he tries, he goes right back and even added a new one to the mix a couple days ago. Sally is shocked and can't even believe this is real.
Both women are immediately thrown into a shocking and immensely stressful situation based solely on their partner's needs without consideration for the women. Does this imply that betrayal should not be disclosed as in Sally's case? Not at all, but there are ways to minimize the nuclear explosion-type delivery of information so that the party being traumatized can be supported rather than left in a heap on the floor.
The immediate need for both women is a qualified person to speak to that can help her process what she is hearing and help her to feel safe. The traumatic effects of both discovery and disclosure have HUGE impacts on all facets of our humanity and the sense of immediate loss of control can be overwhelming. Not only might the betrayed partner want all the answers "right now", but also reasons for WHY this happened. Those reasons may not even be able to be answered for some time until the spouse gets help of his own, so it is imperative that the betrayed partner has a system of professional support to guide her through the process of information gathering, dissemination and action plans.