Betrayal Blindness in Sex Therapy
Betrayal does not always arrive in dramatic ruptures. More often, it accumulates quietly through omission and subtle withdrawal until a person realizes they have been living beside a truth they were not quite willing to name. This phenomenon has a term: betrayal blindness. The psychologist Jennifer Freyd developed the concept to describe the unconscious unawareness that arises when recognizing betrayal would threaten a relationship we depend on emotionally or materially. From the standpoint of existential sex therapy, betrayal blindness is not a perceptual failure. It is an adaptive strategy.
To see clearly is to confront freedom and responsibility. Sartre argued that awareness brings us face to face with our capacity to choose. Many people do not fear the loss of a partner as much as they fear the responsibility that awareness would demand. Freedom offers possibility, yet it also brings uncertainty. In that tension, betrayal blindness protects the status quo. It allows a person to preserve attachment, avoid upheaval, and defer decision. The motive is not naiveté. It is survival.
Sex often reveals what the mind refuses to articulate. Individuals who come to existential sex therapy frequently describe a loss of desire or a sense that sex feels mechanical or numbing. They assume something is wrong with their libido, yet on closer examination, the sexual change reflects an emotional truth. Janoff-Bulman wrote about the collapse of assumptive worlds after trauma. Something similar can happen in intimate relationships. When trust erodes slowly, the erotic self often retreats before the conscious mind understands why.
The cost of betrayal blindness appears in two directions: outward and inward. Outwardly, the relationship maintains its surface. Routines remain, conversations continue, and conflict stays muted. Inwardly, the person loses access to vitality. When someone numbs themselves to what hurts, they often numb themselves to what heals. They begin to doubt their perceptions, override their instincts, and treat the body as if it were unreliable. In Yalom’s language, anxiety without awareness becomes symptom. In sexual life this can take the form of avoidance or overaccommodation. Neither is purely sexual. Both are existential.
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Waking from betrayal blindness is not a single moment. It tends to unfold incrementally. A sentence lands harder than expected. A sexual encounter feels painfully vacant. An ordinary evening reveals a loneliness that can no longer be explained away. These small recognitions form the threshold between protection and awareness. The task at this stage is not to make immediate decisions. It is to tolerate knowing. Many individuals begin by asking themselves two questions: What have I been unwilling to see, and what would change if I allowed myself to see it.
The existential work is not about assigning blame. It is about returning agency to the self. To recognize betrayal requires making contact with grief, anger, and fear. Yet it also reintroduces choice. For some, that leads to new boundaries. For others, to leaving. For many, it begins with rebuilding trust in their own perception. Freyd’s work underlines that betrayal blindness is rooted in dependency. When the external conditions of dependency shift through support or clarity, awareness becomes less threatening.
An existential sex therapist helps a person navigate this transition without collapse or self-reproach. The aim is not to push toward confrontation. It is to help someone remain present to the truth of their experience and reestablish connection to desire and agency. When the need for blindness dissolves, vision returns. What once protected the psyche becomes unnecessary. In that moment, a person does not just discover what happened. They discover who they are in relation to it.
Betrayal blindness is never evidence of weakness. It is evidence of how fiercely human beings protect what they love and what they believe they need in order to survive. When awareness arrives, even gradually, something else becomes possible: authorship. That is the point at which healing begins.