Is Hypersexuality a Trauma Response to Betrayal?
Is hypersexuality a trauma response to being cheated on? Why on earth would we want to sleep with the person who just gutted us with betrayal? Why you should NOT have sex with your ex.
***
Dear Chump Lady,
I’m having a really hard time.
I was in a 4 year relationship with a cheater and married him in September.
We met through an online game, and after a month, we met, and since then we were inseparable. We even built the house of our dreams and played together, despite having our respective careers and demanding jobs.
He had a female virtual best friend, who was ‘only a friend’ that was in his life before I met him. They only met twice, once in August 2024 and on our wedding day.
Two months after we got married, he asked me for a break.
Two weeks later he dumped me, and asked for ‘separation’ because he saw this ‘best friend’ and told me he is in love with her. Also he told me ‘I’m old”, ‘I have a confrontational personality’ and ‘I’m always tired’. But! and — hear me out — he loved me when we married and suddenly he stopped loving me!
When I asked him for the details, he confirmed that cheated physically on me the day before. Emotionally, I’m not sure… (he says she confessed her feelings after we returned from our honeymoon).
I dumped him from our house, told anyone that met us that I was separating because he cheated on me, and started the divorce. The trust was broken and he hurt me deeply.
I made an agreement when I claimed all the money I’m entitled to for the distress. We don’t have kids, so it will be fast.
But, I still love him, and I still want him badly.
My mind was quick to make an action plan, but my body and my heart, can’t resist the slightest sexy memory. I think about him and get aroused. Despite all the things he did, I’m afraid that I would do if he kissed me or touched me, because I know my body still react to his memory.
Hugs for you, and thanks for everything.
GamerChump
***
Dear GamerChump,
Oh the mortifying memory of hysterical bonding. Otherwise known as hypersexuality as trauma response. Or what I call the pick me dance performed naked.
Please do NOT have sex with your ex.
This is a terrible idea for several obvious reasons.
- You cannot be vulnerable with your abuser.
- Rewarding him with any attention will backfire.
- Intimacy will put you at risk emotionally and physically.
The person who harmed you cannot heal you.
If he was a person with integrity capable of compassion he would not be a cheater. It’s a very human impulse to want comfort when you’re in crisis, but he’s the FW who created the crisis. You miss the lie. The actual person you married is the fraud who CHEATED ON YOU THE DAY BEFORE YOUR WEDDING! Game OVER. This has been a sham from the start.
He does not deserve the best of you.
Do NOT reward this man. Do not perform the pick me dance naked. What feels like intense longing now will feel like deep mortification later. Ask a few gazillion of us how we know.
Sleeping with your ex can harm your health.
You do not know where that dick has been. Anyone capable of this much duplicity is not someone to trust with your sexual health. Besides the obvious risk of STDs, there’s your emotional health to consider as well. Every encounter with this creep is another chance he has to reject and hurt you. Maintain strict no contact. It’s the fastest way to heal.
Now that I’ve told you what not to do, let’s explore why sexual longing after betrayal is even a thing. If you google “hypersexuality as a trauma response” sadly, you get a lot of bullshit about sex addiction. How every narcissistic FW is a traumatized child acting out their sexual dysfunction on innocents. Maybe that’s a thing. I leave it to the mental health professionals, but I think it’s far more likely that FWs (or “sex addicts” or whatever you wish to call them) have personality disorders. Entitlement works for them because their empathy synapses don’t fire.
But hysterical bonding, or feeling horny after betrayal is an actual phenomena for chumps.
Why are you having sexual urges now? To feel in control.
Your whole world has blown up. This man built you up — had you invest deeply in a shared life — only to detonate the entire thing and blame you for it. That is a very powerless place to be.
But Girlfriend, you took the reins. You filed for divorce! You’re going after the money. Your emotions just need to catch up. The sexual longing you feel is an emotional hallucination that you could win him back. Or turn back time to when his attention was fully upon you.
The terrible thing is, that intimacy you miss and long for never existed. He was playing a game — literally and figuratively. And let that comfort you now. He doesn’t love his “BFF” either. She’s a toy on a board he can manipulate at will.
Get yourself a vibrator and stay no contact. It gets better. Save your lusty self for a partner who deserves you.
***
CN — Friday Challenge — did you have sex with your cheater after D-Day? Or struggle with longing for a FW?
GamerCHump,
If I may be so bold, I’m going to go a step further than CL.
Not only should you go no contact/refrain from having sex with your STBX, I would strongly recommend that you avoid embarking on any other relationship (sexual or emotional) with anyone else either for a little while, at least until things have settled down, you’ve finalised your divorce and you are well into whatever your “new normal” looks like. To do so before that risks you (or others) getting hurt.
CL will often use the phrase “Fix your picker” ….. in your shoes I’d look to do just that.
LFTT
Yes, I was going to add this. I went through a horrific re-abusing myself with other men. It hurt me, and it hurt my children. I am working on forgiving myself now. that- finally!- took forever!- I am able to see my marriage as a DV one. There’s a new book by Jen Percy called Girls Play Dead, which talks about all sorts of responses to sexual trauma.
I’ll check out that book!
In some places sleeping with your spouse after you discover cheating can have legal ramifications as well. Your argument in court for infidelity can be undone. If you are legally married, consult a good attorney before taking any other steps!
Thanks for mentioning this. I meant to add that point. She’s not in the US, but still.
Not quite following the timeline — whether he cheated the day after the wedding, or two months later. Anyway … makes no difference. It’s vile. He loved you and then “suddenly stopped” two months later? This is ridiculous on its face, truly.
He has crappy character. Game over.
Yes, I had sex with my f-wit after D-day, and can validate everything Chump Lady advises to Gamer Chump.
After I foolishly fell for his sad sausage narrative, I danced the naked, horizontal pick-me dance to the tune of his secret sexual basement perversions. For EIGHT MONTHS! Somehow I convinced myself that doing so was to my benefit. I wrote to my closest friend from graduate school to say I didn’t know how long I’d be willing to live with him, but “for now” I’m having great sex–as if my behavior was the result of a coldly rational decision and I could shuck him off at any time. I deluded myself into believing I was unaffected by the trauma of his disclosure and his behavior, and his casting me in a drama of his making and direction, in which I wasn’t even a bit player but a prop, an object, to be used to gratify him.
How I wish I’d encountered CL earlier and read her 2013 post on hysterical bonding. Maybe I could have taken to heart the wisdom there–that I was traumatized, that I was casting about for how to control the damage, and that my self-delusion was a trauma response. I might have been reminded of what I already knew: that my past in my FOO predisposed me to use my body and sexuality to pull him back to me. My father sexually abused me when I was a young girl, and my response to that trauma was to blame myself, as if my body must have somehow been irresistible to him and therefore his actions were my fault. (This is, by the way, a common reaction of child sex abuse victims, particularly incest victims, who occupy a no man’s land in which they must negotiate the violation and their need and love for a parent.) I might have recognized my behavior with my then-husband as part of this complex of trauma, that of my ex’s bomb drop and that of my past.
One thing that helped me see the light was that someone told me that they had had an “aha moment” when they realized that seeking comfort from the very person who had hurt them was was like trying to get blood from a stone. That, together with my ex’s increasing cruelty and the escalation of the very behavior I was desperately trying to get him to see was not who he was finally opened my eyes and admit to the damage I was doing to myself by having sex with him. (And yes, everything I thought was “not who he was” turned out to be exactly “who he was.”)
I posted a few weeks ago that this happened to me. It was at year 18 of what ended up being a 26 year marriage right when he told me that he didnt love me and was leaving because I was “a bad wife” but I later learned there was an OW (I thought this OW was the only OW but learned years later, after he died that there were many others).
Anyhoo…the experience was bazaar and I WAS definitely doing the very thing CL warned us not to do ( seek healing from the person who harmed me). I was a bit of a trad wife at the time and hoping God would bless us with a loving marriage. I think a few subconscious concepts were swirling around in my head at the same time and hyper sexual interest in my then-husband was the result.
Maybe this will be helpful for readers, so I will be specific…the ideas which likely contributed to this for me were:
1) trying to reclaim my turf…according to my theology, he was MY husband, so his sexuality belonged to me and I was intent on claiming it
2) if he really left me (he was in a weird limbo of claiming he was leaving then he didnt leave) then it would be years before I had a divorce & annulment and could have church-sanctioned sex (its now bazaar to me that was so important…I quit caring about that at some point).
3) Im sure I was trying to show/prove that I was the better partner (I should have been concerned if he was a crap partner).
4) I think I was desperate to DO SOMETHING in a moment when I felt I had so little power over my own life.
It was such an intense and strange time. If memory serves, it lasted about 3 months and then morphed into whatever hellish mess came after it. It was surely ill-advised but luckily did not result in any serious or permanent harm and in retrospect, Im secretly pleased that I messed up his narrative and grand plan in some sort of way. Im so very glad that I didnt choose to go outside the marriage for fulfillment in that moment, it would have muddied the waters terribly and hurt me (in many ways) in the long run.
Looking back (now years later) Im still shocked at the degree of intensity of the physical manifestation this experience created in me. I wish that I had had a forum like this to tell me what the Hell was going on in me…it would have made it easier for me to ride this temporary situation out. I am, however, gentle with myself in that I dont beat myself up for an internal feeling which I was not ready for…my poor addled mind was seeking solution and solace and that was a straw I momentarily grasped at.