The True Cost of Secrecy: Truths about Betrayal Trauma–Justin & Trisha Davis

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The True Cost of Secrecy: Truths about Betrayal Trauma

Guests:Justin and Trisha Davis

From the series:One Choice Away from Change (Day 2 of 3)

Air date:July 16, 2026

Trisha (00:04):

I packed up Justin’s things, and I tell people it was worse than death because if he was death, it would make sense. This was packing up my husband and kicking him out knowing he’s alive and well, he just doesn’t want to be with me. But for me, that was rock bottom. That was when my theology blew up from what I thought a good person does to understanding what a broken person does. And that’s a very different experience.

Ann (00:46):

Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Ann Wilson.

Dave (00:53):

And I’m Dave Wilson and you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Well, this is like a miniseries—

Ann (01:10):

That’s what I was going to say.

Dave (01:11):

—on Netflix. This story with Justin and Trisha Davis, who are back with us today, just keeps going. There’s layer after layer. And if you missed yesterday, you got to get part one. Just search FamilyLife Today, wherever you get your podcasts and listen to day one with Justin and Trisha Davis.

Ann (01:35):

So Trisha, take us back to you’re at home. Justin comes home and lays this on you out of the blue. There’s something you noticed this morning, but now he says that. What’s going on? How do you respond? What happens in your heart?

Trisha (01:51):

Yeah. I mean, the next 24 to 48 hours was one of the biggest emotional roller coasters of heartbreak and faith. So we have this confession and I freak out and leave the house, and I left the house in a very violent way.

Ann:

Were you yelling?

Trisha:

There was so much protection.

Ann (02:15):

Where were your kids?

Trisha (02:16):

They were outside playing and I got in the car, and it makes me emotional, but I could have really hurt one of them. I wasn’t looking when I was leaving.

Ann:

When you’re backing up.

Dave (02:25):

Just pull out, yeah.

Trisha (02:26):

Yeah. Just the protection of for someone who’s listening knows what it’s like to be in that frame of mind where it’s like the world stop and it’s going fast all at the same time. And so Justin wasn’t broken. And so in the first 24 hours, it’s like I left, I came back home and my faith was like, “We can do this through God.”

Ann (02:48):

Wait, wait. You got in the car. Where’d you go?

Trisha (02:50):

I went to one of our staff member’s houses and there was—

Dave:

Did you tell them?

Trisha:

Yeah. I don’t know if Justin had already told them.

Justin (02:59):

No, I think she called the chairman of our elders, told him what was going on. He called me, was screaming at me on the phone. “This has to be some kind of joke. Please tell me this is a joke.” When you’re in a dark place, you have to block yourself off emotionally to the carnage you’re causing to the people that love you the most and that you love. And so I was just so closed off like you’re dead.

Ann (03:21):

I’m thinking, you guys have studied this too, of how we create neurological pathways. You’re going down this, you’ve created this whole scenario like, “Oh, it’s Trisha’s fault. I’m going to do this.” And so you created this whole lie in your head probably.

Justin (03:34):

And the person we talk to the most is ourself. And so the stories we tell ourself are the most powerful. And I had rehearsed this scenario that this was the way that this needed to go.

Dave (03:48):

I mean, you were on a cruise just weeks before.

Ann (03:51):

Right.

Trisha:

It was disorienting for everybody. And I ended up going to one of our other staff member’s houses and I remember her and another staff member’s wife, us on their master bedroom and one of them was very pregnant and we just sobbed and sobbed. But then there was this moment that was like, why am I gone? He needs to leave. So I ended up going back home and then within like 12 hours my theology was meeting up with my emotions and my theology in that moment informed me I need to forgive. I need to move on. I need to kind of all of this really inept way of understanding this broken—

Dave (04:32):

Not yet. You don’t forgive now.

Ann (04:34):

You already were there.

Trisha:

But I was an evil person if I didn’t forgive my husband because through Christ, all things are possible. And so my—

Dave (04:42):

Was that what you were saying to yourself?

Trisha (04:44):

Yes.

Dave (04:44):

Or were people telling you that?

Trisha (04:45):

No.

Dave:

That was you.

Trisha:

I wanted him—I am a rule follower. So it was like, okay, I don’t trust Justin, but God’s Word tells me that He is faithful, He is just, He’s merciful. He will give me the peace and patience and kindness. God will give me all of these things, but Justin wasn’t broken and didn’t want to come home.

Ann (05:02):

Well, let me ask you, what were your prayers sounding like to God?

Trisha (05:06):

I don’t know if we can share those online.

Justin (05:09):

Do you guys have a beep button?

Dave:

We can do it.

Trisha (05:10):

I was like, “Lord, just get him into an accident. Maim him up just a little bit, but he is my baby daddy, so I need you to—but there was like a moment—and I’ll let Justin share—where he began to realize the gravity of his choices and wanted to come back. And I remember my mom handing me the phone and it was a counselor from Focus on the Family and that poor man is not counseling anymore after talking to me, but I’m like, “I just want him to come home. I want him to come home.” And he said, “If you really love him, you’ll let him go.” Now, I wish I could say—I said kind things, but I did not handle that conversation well. I’m like, “You are the dumbest.” Like all these kinds of things came. And I said, “If I let him go,”—I’m screaming in the phone at this poor man.

(06:02):

“If I let him go,” and I’m just sobbing, I’m like, “He’s going to choose her.” And then he said, “He already has. And until you let him go, you will always be the reason for all of his issues.” And from that moment on, I went upstairs and I think it’s probably the hardest point in our whole entire process is I packed up Justin’s things and I tell people it was worse than death because if he was death, it would make sense. This was packing up my husband and kicking him out knowing he’s alive and well, he just doesn’t want to be with me. But for me, that was rock bottom. That was when my theology blew up from what I thought a good person does to understanding what a broken person does. And that’s a very different experience.

Ann (06:57):

Wait, what do you mean by that?

Trisha (07:00):

I think for me, my whole life when I came to know Christ was, I believed everything God said and so that meant if I followed the rules, I would live in up into the right life, but we don’t live in an up and right life world. We live—

Dave (07:16):

You do this, you get this. Yeah.

Justin:

Yeah.

Trisha (07:18):

That we live in a broken sinful world and that’s an up until the right life isn’t what brought Jesus to the cross. And so I was missing out on the depth of what it meant to truly be forgiven, to truly know what it means to hit rock bottom and that Justin shared earlier that rock bottom is still solid surface to stand, but I stood as a new person. It was like I was stripped of all of the titles, wife, mom, pastor’s wife, ministry leader, it was all gone and God’s like, “I still love you so much.” And that type of experience changes your capacity to love others, that I was no longer in a hurry to fix us. I was okay just being obedient to what God wanted for me in that moment and that in that moment, brokenness meant surrender to go whatever it takes and whatever it takes in this moment meant to kick Justin out of the house.

Ann (08:22):

What about your kids?

Justin (08:24):

Yeah.

Ann (08:24):

Like what was going on with them and—

Justin (08:27):

Yeah. I don’t know that they necessarily knew everything that was going on, but Trisha packed up all of my things. And so I went and stayed in a hotel. When I get to the hotel, a lady from our church called and she said, “If you have any hope at all of restoring your marriage, you’re going to go to this counseling session that we made for you.” And I had never been to counseling, 10 years, never been to counseling. I told Dennis Rainey this several years ago, but we had a year before the affair, we had a couple in our church that wanted us to go to Weekend to Remember®. I blew that off too, didn’t think I needed that. And so I go to this counseling session really defiantly and just kind of tell the counselor about as much as I’ve shared here and she said, “Why are you here?

(09:06):

Why are you at this counseling session?” I said, “Well, if I’m really being honest with you, I want you to help me figure out how God’s going to bless my life no matter who I choose. That’s what I want.”

Dave (09:14):

You said that?

Justin (09:15):

Yeah.

Dave (09:15):

Wow. That’s honest.

Justin (09:16):

Well, she said, “I can help broken people. I can’t help hardhearted people.”

Ann (09:23):

Justin, like when she said that what did you think?

Justin (09:26):

I just thought this lady doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Trisha (09:29):

Yeah, she doesn’t know me.

Justin (09:32):

Yeah.

Dave (09:33):

And you could not see that you were hardhearted at that point?

Justin (09:35):

No. No. And I had never really experienced brokenness before. I’d been a Christian since I was 10. I’d been a pastor for 10 years. I leave that counseling session. I go back to the house I’m staying at, which is four miles from our house with a family that helped us start the church. I’m in a seven-year old’s pink bedroom. They had moved her in with her sister and everything that I own is in boxes against the wall. And as I’m walking in, the guy that let me stay with him, he said, “It’s going to feel like it’s over, but it’s not over.” And I had no idea what he was talking about and then I saw everything that I owned and just broke me. And at that time, Trish wasn’t interested in my games. And so the counselor that I had went and saw, I called and said, “Please give me a second chance.”

(10:29):

They reached out and said, “Do not make any contact with Trish. If she wants to talk to you, she’ll talk to you.” There was a mediator that helped us get our kids back and forth between the houses and I started going to counseling by myself.

Ann (10:42):

What did you say to the kids?

Justin (10:44):

Trish really explained more of the relational aspect of what was going on, that I wasn’t living there, that I wanted to be married to someone else.

Ann (10:52):

You said that, Trish? You said, “Your dad wants to be married to someone else.”

Dave (10:55):

How old are the kids at this point?

Trisha (10:57):

They are nine, seven, and two.

Dave (10:59):

What did they say?

Trisha (11:01):

Again, totally not trauma informed. And so Micah was old enough to go, “Who does daddy want to be married or who does daddy want to be?” He was so confused and I was like, “I will go to my grave. I will never tell him who this is because it’s my best friend of seven years. It’s like his second mom. That family’s kids are close to our kids.” And so there was so much that it was like Justin had a very poignant conversation with Micah that it was like God was doing something in our family. And my counselor at the time said, and this is true even to today, that kids deserve to know the truth in right sized age-appropriate way because especially for kids, they start to take on as if it’s something they’ve done wrong. And the truth truly, Jesus is so brilliant that it does set you free.

(11:54):

And so I remember the man that Justin—the family he was staying with was over and Tony is this very large man. He’s like—

Justin (12:02):

6’11”.

Trisha (12:02):

So he’s sitting on the stairs, my nine-year-old and just encompassing him and it was like, okay, I’m going to tell him. And as soon as I told him who it was, his demeanor completely changed because now he had the truth to begin to grieve even as a nine-year-old. But that was really the beginning for him to have identity stripped for him as well because when he met with Justin—

Justin (12:25):

Yeah, I mean, he basically asked me, “Hey, are you and mom going to get divorced?” And I said, “I don’t know.” I said, “But I can tell you one thing.” And I said, “I’m not going to be the pastor of Genesis church anymore.” And he just flipped out. He’s like, “You got to be the pastor? You have to be the pastor. I’m the pastor’s son. You have to be the pastor.” And now this is probably a week into our separation, and it was just such an apparent moment of we had built our identity as a family, not around Christ, but around my role at the church.

Trisha (12:58):

And he was invested. I mean, he had invited so many of his friends and family that were coming to the church.

Justin (13:03):

But it was a recognition even early on in that process, this is not about the affair, the relationship. It’s about the dysfunction that has infiltrated our family, some that we knew about, some that we didn’t even know about, patterns of behavior that we had allowed to become normalized, that we thought some were spiritual, that were actually pretty destructive. And so Trish and I were separated for two and a half months. We didn’t talk for the first 10 days and then 10 days into our separation, she called me on my cell phone. I tell people if the prodigal son’s dad would’ve had a cell phone, this would’ve been a call he would’ve made. And she just said, “I hear you’ve been going to counseling.” And I said, “Yeah.” She said, “Well, I’m willing to go with you.”

Ann (13:48):

Your kids are fighting again. Somebody spilled something sticky. The coffee’s cold and suddenly you’re angry before 9:00 AM. If you’ve ever wondered, “Why do I keep reacting this way?” you’re not alone.

Dave (14:03):

And you forgot there’s poop everywhere. So here’s the deal. We’ve got author and mom of four, Janelle Breitenstein. She did a five session video series designed just for you moms to help you get to the root of your anger. And let me tell you, Janelle has brutal honesty, humor, biblical truth, and practical help, and she explores triggers, fears, and whether anger could ever be godly and why our kids bring out so much in us.

Ann (14:31):

We all need this. So sign up free at FamilyLife.com/MomAnger.

So when you came home, the boxes are against the wall, not home, but into this pink bed. The pink bedroom. Yeah. That’s when you hit rock bottom and you were like, “Okay, I need to get some water.”

Justin (14:51):

But everything at that point felt like manipulation to her, you know what I mean?

Dave (14:56):

Didn’t trust you.

Justin (14:57):

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Is he just trying to smooth this over?

Dave (15:00):

I mean, is it when you’re sitting there in that pink bedroom and there’s a box your whole life, is the love you thought you had for this other woman, she’s the one I want, does it dissipate or is it a struggle?

Justin (15:12):

It was almost like there were scales on my eyes that just fell off of like, “What have I done?” And so that started really a journey for us of counseling and of two years of healing. 30 days into our counseling, we’d gone to counseling four days a week and the only reason we didn’t go on Friday is because they were closed. I mean, I was unemployed, so I had nothing else to do.

Ann (15:34):

Well, Trisha, how did you end up going to counseling? Because you called and said, “Hey, I heard you’re going to counseling, but you’re a little skeptical.”

Trisha (15:43):

Yeah, I quantify it as if it was like I couldn’t see anything and what counseling was doing is it was teaching me to see it as a prism of pain and the beauty that is found in redemptive pain that God does use all things for good. And so it was discovering to name it for what it is and then understand it and how that behavior or how that choice is affecting my life personally and then making the choice, what do I want to do with it? And it’s not this linear, “Oh, I got on this train, and it just took me. ” It was like very difficult.

Ann:

A roller coaster.

Justin (16:27):

And we were separated for two and a half months, and we know if we were in the same house, it was so all over the place for both of us. We would have done more damage to each other trying to find our own path to healing that I don’t know if we would have been able to make it. But 30 days into counseling, our counselor’s like, “Justin, you’re at a really pivotal point because Trisha’s starting to trust you again.” And he said, “If you’ve left anything out, now’s the time to share it because unconfessed sin always leads to repeated behavior. And so if you don’t want to be back here in three years or 13 years, you better come clean now.” And I knew I was withholding things, not because I wanted to hurt her, but because I thought if she knew that it would be over.

(17:11):

And so I came over to the house and—

Dave (17:15):

The same day?

Justin (17:16):

No, this was on a Thursday. I came over to the house on the next Monday.

Dave (17:21):

So you wrestled with it through the weekend?

Justin (17:24):

Yeah.

Trisha (17:24):

Well, he had shared some things in that counseling about the affair, and I lost my mind and left him. We had driven together. I left him there and I was filing for divorce on Monday. I was done at this point. Our marriage was over.

Justin (17:41):

I’d gone over to my pastor friend’s house Friday night. I was working at P.F. Chang’s at that time as a waiter and I said, “I need to tell you something. Trisha’s leaving me. She’s filing for divorce.” I said, “But I’ve got more things I need to share, and I don’t know if I should or not.” And he’s like, “You need to share it with her.” And so I went over to the house that Monday morning, I said, “Hey,” I said, “As far as the affair goes, I’ve told you everything.” I said, “But I have to share more with you.” She’s like, “Okay.” And I said, “I was sexually abused when I was a kid and I’ve never told anyone about it. I’ve never gotten help for it.” I said, “I’m not trying to justify my choices. I’m just telling you there’s a broken part of me that I can’t fix.” I said, “I’ve struggled with pornography for the last 10 years and I’ve deflected it and I’ve denied it.

(18:27):

I’ve preached against it. I’ve counseled people through it. I’ve lied to you about it. I’ve gaslit you about it. And if you want to leave me, if you want a divorce, you can have everything. This is not about us. This is about me finally living with integrity and the right relationship with God.”

(18:43):

And I’m getting emotional. She said, “Now we can start over. Now we can begin again because I finally know the real you.” And I wish that was the finish line. I wish we high fived and lived happily ever after. That was really the starting line of what became a two-year journey of finding healing from sexual abuse and freedom from sexual addiction. But I tell people all the time, it’s like there’s a beauty in having someone know the worst parts of you and still loving you. And that’s what makes grace so amazing.

Dave:

It’s the gospel.

Ann (19:16):

It’s the gospel.

Justin (19:17):

And I think we try to sanitize it, and we try to make it less filthy than it really is, and we miss out on the fullness of God’s grace and the fullness of God’s love that He knows us fully and He loves us anyway. And that’s the beauty of marriage, that intimacy, that being fully known and knowing that you’re fully loved is such a secure place to be.

Ann (19:36):

Trish, when he told you what was going through your mind, what made you respond?

Trisha (19:41):

It’s like kind of like being out to sea in a boat and you’re so tired and you’re seasick and you just don’t even know what’s up or down. This moment was like a crashing to the shore that the life that we had known had obliterated into pieces and now it was like, okay, this is overwhelming at how much carnage there is, but at the same time we don’t have to pick up that piece anymore. We can actually start again. And so there was such an innocence. When you lose everything and everybody knows you’re a failure, there’s freedom in it of like, and guess what? God still loves me. So there’s a courage that comes from that. And then what we’ve been living in the past 20 years since then is this incredible experience of what I believe God created us for and that’s to be fully known and fully loved.

(20:39):

And so now we were like actually living. I think to your point you asked, how does someone choose to step out of their marriage or their—it’s so complex of why we choose those things, but at the end of the day, we want to be known and we want to be loved and we were figuring out that we could know and love each other outside of kind of the up and right perfection, but really the power of saying, “I just saw you do that and I’ve seen you repent from it and there is something powerful and beautiful and spiritual about it that creates something in our marriage relationship of a depth that, it’s undescribable, but it’s why we are who we are today and why people say, why do you share this story? Isn’t it hard?” And I’m like, “It is, but it also is the greatest gift of experiencing God in the way that we experienced then and continue to.”

(21:35):

And now we’re getting older and the love is different in a sense of like, I don’t know, I can’t, it’s fun. Marriage is fun. It’s a deep knowing that I believe is just such this gift that it becomes worth fighting for rather than always fighting against. And I think we spent the first 10 years trying to have this just fighting against each other to get to it.

Ann (22:06):

Justin, what did it feel like for you? You had received God’s grace, but now when you shared everything, like all of it was out right before Trish, what did that feel like to receive her grace in it?

Justin (22:21):

It was unbelievable and it was the first time that I ever had anyone know me completely.

Trisha (22:30):

Ever.

Justin (22:30):

Yeah. And I think one of the—so after this, this kind of little funny moment after all this, so we get through that we’re crying, we’re hugging and I said, “I got to tell you something else.” And I said, “I was never recruited to play basketball at the University of Evansville.” And she’s like, “What?” And I said, “That’s a lie I’ve been telling myself since my junior year of high school.”

Dave (22:52):

Really?

Justin (22:52):

And so it was this freedom to tell myself the truth.

Trisha (22:55):

It’s a cleanse.

Justin (22:56):

Yeah. I don’t want any, that prayer that David prays, search me on God and know me, see if there’d be any anxious way in me. I think sometimes we struggle with anxiety because we know we’re keeping things from God, we’re keeping things even from ourself, and embracing that pain was hard, but it was a redemptive pain. It wasn’t a destructive pain. The pain of hiding things is a destructive pain that eventually catches up to us, and it had caught up to me. And so I knew that it was going to be painful, but I could tell there was going to be a beauty and a redemption to it, and it was going to be worth it. Jesus says the truth will set you free. What it conveniently leaves out is it will make you miserable first.

Ann (23:37):

That’s true.

I mean, this story is crazy, isn’t it? Like the things they’ve walked through and the betrayal.

Dave (23:49):

Yeah, but it’s also beautiful because God met them and is meeting them and I hope is meeting you as well. Again, their book is called One Choice Away From Change and we have it at FamilyLifeToday.com. Just click on the link in the show notes and guess what? We’re going to have one more day with them and there’s more to come in this cliffhanger.

Ann (24:06):

Yeah. And pick up their book. You’re really going to want to read this and talk about it and send this too to other friends so you can talk more about it.

Dave (24:14):

Before we’re done today, let me just say this. We meet a ton of couples who say FamilyLife helped them when they needed it the most and that’s what being a FamilyLife Partner is all about, helping others find that same encouragement and tools that you found right here.

Ann (24:30):

And we’d love for you to join us. So click the donate button at FamilyLifeToday.com and become a partner today.

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