Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky: Learning to Trust Again After Betrayal

Therapists draw a line between two things that look alike from outside a relationship. One is an argument that escalates when neither person wanted it to. The other is one person who believes they have the right to punish the other. Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky says the second is what most people mean by domestic violence, and treating it like the first gets the response wrong.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky is the owner and founder of Communicate and Connect Counseling, with offices in Virginia Beach and Fairfax, Virginia. Her practice specializes in military and veteran couples, a population with a high rate of intimate partner violence, and she also hosts the Communicate and Connect Podcast. Clinically she works in emotionally focused couple therapy, currently the best-researched approach to couples work, and in cognitive processing therapy for PTSD.

In this episode she and Lisa cover the range of betrayals a relationship can contain, from infidelity to financial deception to violence, and how differently each one lands depending on the person and the relationship. Elizabeth explains the pursue and withdraw pattern that sits under most couple conflict, how it escalates, and why the partner who pushed someone away to protect themselves is so often the one who gets named as the aggressor. Lisa brings the term the audience already uses for that, reactive abuse. They also work through the client who has spent fifteen years blaming herself for a partner's affair, and how to hold two things at once: nobody caused another adult's choice, and the relationship may still have had problems worth understanding.

The second half is for people who are already out. Elizabeth explains why PTSD responds well to treatment and which therapies have evidence behind them, including cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure, and EMDR. She describes the trust star, a way of rating trust in separate categories rather than as one verdict on a person, and how it clarifies what you actually need from a partner versus what you can live with. And she explains titrating risk: giving a new person small opportunities to earn trust before larger ones, and treating a failure at any level as information rather than a verdict on yourself.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• The trust star: rating trust category by category instead of all at once
• Titrating risk, so a new person earns trust in steps you choose
• Pursue and withdraw, and how an ordinary conflict pattern escalates
• Situational couple violence versus coercive, punishing abuse
• Why the person defending themselves often ends up labeled the abuser
• Why nobody makes another adult cheat, and where context still belongs
• Why PTSD responds well to treatment, and which therapies have evidence behind them
• Prolonged exposure, and taking gradual steps back toward dating

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 How common betrayal is, and the range it covers
4:00 Elizabeth's practice, and emotionally focused couple therapy
6:00 Situational couple violence versus coercive, punishing abuse
8:00 Pursue and withdraw, and how a conflict pattern escalates
10:00 Reactive abuse, and who ends up carrying the label
13:00 Blaming yourself for a partner's affair
17:00 When there is no healing as a couple, only individually
19:00 PTSD is treatable, and the therapies with evidence behind them
22:00 The trust star, and rating trust category by category
27:00 Titrating risk, and gradual steps back toward dating

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Communicate and Connect Counseling: https://www.communicateandconnect.com

🎧 More with Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky on this podcast
Ep 322: The Seven Types of Affairs

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.