Understanding biological betrayal experiences is essential to processing them. Unfortunately, many psychologists, counselors, social workers, and coaches construe men’s biological betrayal experiences as hurt feelings and ego wounds. Specifically, many helping professionals fail to read empirical psychological science regarding infidelity, which presents crucial facts about sex-differentiated sexual psychologies, reproductive costs, mate value, and biological disgust experiences. This failure amplifies betrayed men’s psychological and physiological damages. 

Many bonded, committed, conscientious men are inclined to bypass their betrayal experiences. Many speak of the damage being so great that bypass seemed to be the only way forward. Many men are capable of bypassing parts, or all, of a first discovery, regardless of the number of affairs. Bypassing a first discovery, however, makes men vulnerable to a second. A first discovery might be described as a mind and heart breaker. A second discovery might be described as a soul taker. 

Many helping professionals encourage men to spiritually bypass their betrayal experiences. Many equate spiritual bypass to ‘recovery’ and ‘healing’. Many encourage men to lean into their faith or turn to God to find ‘recovery’ or ‘healing’. Faith may help men hold their course while working to understand and process their biological betrayal experiences. Faith, however, cannot override biology. Representing spiritual bypass as ‘recovery’ and ‘healing’ has catastrophic consequences. This is particularly true when helping professionals or organizations declare that a young man of faith, who attended their program, is a model of ‘recovery’ and ‘healing’. 

Many helping professionals encourage men to bypass their biological experiences, by defining them as hurt feelings and ego wounds. This practice begins with assertions, such as, ‘Just do not think about your feelings,’ or, ‘Acknowledge your feelings, then let them go,’ or, ‘You are just feeling insecure and inadequate because of your wife’s infidelity’. These types of assertions are followed by an invitation to bypass, such as, ‘Your insecurity and inadequacy are just feelings that you should place in a boat, and then watch it float away’. The practice of treating men’s biological betrayal experiences as hurt feelings and ego wounds reveals striking duplicity, as helping professionals do not encourage betrayed women to do so. 

Many helping professionals encourage men to internalize guilt for their wife’s infidelity. This practice takes three particularly harmful forms. In one form, men are told, ‘Women’s infidelity is associated with their husband’s emotional neglect’. They are then asked, ‘What did you do or not do that made your wife feel emotionally neglected’? The other two forms center on guilting men for their biological experiences. In one form, men are told, ‘You are morally judging your wife, and you should not,’ or, ‘You should not feel these ways about your wife’s infidelity’. They are then asked, ‘What is wrong with you that your wife’s infidelity affects you in these ways’? In the other form, men are told, ‘You must have childhood trauma, and if you were to heal it, you would not feel the way you do about your wife’s infidelity’. 

Many helping professionals encourage betrayed men to guilt themselves for external reasons. They are told, for example, ‘Women who have difficult family of origin experiences or childhood trauma engage in infidelity’. They are then told, ‘You must find the inner strength to support your wife through her ‘recovery’ or ‘healing’, which must begin with her family of origin issues or childhood trauma’. Followed by, ‘You cannot be present for your wife if you hold onto the feelings that you have described, so you must let them go’. 

Many helping professionals tell men that forgiveness is the key to overcoming their biological betrayal experiences. Men are encouraged, for example, to use cognitive processes to overcome their biological disgust emotions and reassign mate value to their wife. Cognition, however, does not override biological (unconscious) experiences. Forgiveness is, fundamentally, a cognitive process. 

The examples presented in this letter demonstrate many helping professionals’ ignorance of basic psychological principles. Such ignorance is puzzling given the abundance of empirical psychological science regarding infidelity. Furthermore, given the ever-evolving nature of psychological data, psychological professionals have an inherent obligation to study empirical research. Betrayed men should proceed cautiously when seeking psychological intervention.