The Psychological Impact of Discovering You’re the Other Woman and How to Rebuild Yourself After
Elizabeth Tsekouras is a successful education and career coach with a background in Sociology and Psychology. Her specialism is in neurodiverse coaching, where she provides tailored guidance to clients to improve their academic/career performance, confidence, and wellbeing.
People often assume coaches have it all figured out. The truth is that I had to learn some of my hardest lessons the painful way. My work is rooted in understanding people. But this experience forced me to understand myself, my nervous system, my boundaries, and my worth in ways I never expected.
Betrayal is not just emotional pain. It is a psychological event that destabilises your nervous system, fractures your identity, and rewrites your relationship with trust. When I discovered I was the side woman and that he had married her while still keeping me emotionally tethered for years, the impact was far deeper than heartbreak. It was trauma, and psychology has a name for it: betrayal trauma.
What research shows
Recent psychological research confirms what survivors feel intuitively: betrayal trauma has measurable effects on mental health, identity, and emotional functioning.
A 2026 study published in PLoS One found that betrayal trauma in adulthood is strongly associated with depressive symptoms, dissociation, and impaired mentalising, that is, the ability to understand your own and others’ mental states. These effects were even stronger for adult betrayal than childhood betrayal, showing how destabilising relational deception can be later in life.
Another peer reviewed review in The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine highlights that serial infidelity and sustained deception often co occur with coercive control and gaslighting, producing trauma responses similar to those seen in intimate partner violence. Yet these experiences are frequently misdiagnosed or minimised because betrayal trauma is still under recognised in clinical settings.
The neurobiology of betrayal
Psychologists often say, “The body keeps the score.” Mine definitely did. Research shows that betrayal trauma activates the threat system in the brain, triggering fight or flight responses even when the danger is emotional rather than physical.
This leads to:
Sleep disruption
Appetite changes
Immune system suppression
Chronic anxiety
Hypervigilance
These symptoms are consistent with the trauma responses described in betrayal trauma literature, where emotional deception produces physiological arousal and dysregulation.
Identity rupture
One of the most striking findings in betrayal trauma research is the concept of identity rupture. This refers to the fracturing of your self concept after discovering profound deception.
The 2026 PLoS One study found that betrayal trauma disrupts mentalising, making it harder to understand your own emotions, motivations, and internal states. This disruption contributes to:
Self doubt
Confusion
Difficulty trusting your own judgement
Personality shifts toward anxiety and hypervigilance
In other words, betrayal doesn’t just make you question others. It makes you question yourself. That was my experience. I became guarded, suspicious, and emotionally withdrawn. I didn’t recognise myself.
The emotional fallout: Psychological impact of discovering you’re the other woman
The depression wasn’t just sadness. It was emotional shutdown. The anxiety wasn’t just worry. It was hyperarousal, and the shame was corrosive.
Research shows that betrayal trauma is linked to emotion dysregulation and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, especially when the betrayal is perceived as severe or ongoing.
Shame is common because the brain tries to make sense of the violation by turning inward:
“If I was enough, he would have chosen me.”
“If I mattered, he wouldn’t have done this to me.”
These thoughts are not truths. They are trauma responses.
Gaslighting and cognitive dissonance
The review on serial infidelity emphasises that repeated deception often involves gaslighting, where the perpetrator manipulates you into doubting your own perceptions.
Gaslighting creates cognitive dissonance, the clash between what you believe and what you’re told. This dissonance keeps you emotionally hooked, even when something feels wrong.
That’s exactly how my ex kept me tethered, through mixed messages, partial truths, and emotional crumbs that maintained the illusion of connection.
Recovery: Rebuilding your mind, body, and identity
For me, healing has required a combination of therapy, coaching, and self care, all of which align with evidence based approaches to betrayal trauma recovery.
Therapy: Therapy has helped me understand the psychological mechanisms at play, including dissociation, impaired mentalising, attachment disruption, and trauma responses. It has helped me separate his behaviour from my worth.
Coaching: Coaching has helped me rebuild my identity, not the old one, but a new one shaped by boundaries, clarity, and self respect. It has helped me reconnect with my values and future goals.
Self care: Self care became a form of nervous system regulation: walking to reduce cortisol, journaling to process cognitive dissonance, and resting without guilt.
These practices align with trauma informed recovery strategies recommended in the literature.
Reclaiming my narrative
Writing this article is part of my healing. Trauma thrives in silence. Recovery thrives in truth.
Betrayal trauma is a clinically recognised form of trauma with measurable psychological effects.
Serial infidelity and deception can produce trauma responses similar to intimate partner violence.
Emotional betrayal activates the body’s threat system, causing physical symptoms.
Identity rupture and impaired mentalising are common after betrayal.
Recovery requires both psychological insight and nervous system regulation.
You can rebuild yourself, but not into who you were. You can rebuild yourself into someone wiser, stronger, and more self aligned.
I am no longer ashamed of what happened to me. I understand it through the lens of psychology, not self blame. I’m learning to be kinder to myself and to see myself through the eyes of those who genuinely care, not through the behaviour of people who mistreated me.
If sharing this helps someone else recognise betrayal trauma, understand their symptoms, or feel less alone, then my healing becomes bigger than me. It becomes a reminder that recovery is possible, identity can be rebuilt, and no one has to walk through betrayal in silence.
Read more from Elizabeth Tsekouras
Elizabeth Tsekouras, Education and Career Coach
Elizabeth Tsekouras is a dedicated coach and specialist neurodiverse educator who draws on over a decade of experience to help individuals build confidence, strengthen their learning skills, and navigate challenges with clarity and purpose. She provides personalised coaching that empowers clients to harness their abilities, develop effective strategies, and achieve meaningful academic, professional, and personal growth.
