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What Counts as Betrayal to Us?

Couples often assume they share a definition of betrayal — until they don't. One person's harmless friendship is another's emotional affair; one person's private browsing is another's breach. Rather than discovering the mismatch the hard way, this maps where each of you draws the line, so you can build a shared, explicit agreement instead of relying on assumptions.

Where each of us stands

Fill this in separately first, then compare. Mark each as okay, a gray area, or not okay for you.

Our lines

Physical intimacy with someone else

  • Me: ____________________
  • My partner: ____________________

Emotional closeness / confiding in someone else

  • Me: ____________________
  • My partner: ____________________

Secret texting or DMs

  • Me: ____________________
  • My partner: ____________________

Dating apps / following exes

  • Me: ____________________
  • My partner: ____________________

Pornography

  • Me: ____________________
  • My partner: ____________________

Hiding money or spending

  • Me: ____________________
  • My partner: ____________________

Keeping secrets in general

  • Me: ____________________
  • My partner: ____________________

Where we differ

The gray areas where our lines don't match — worth talking through

______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________

Our agreement

What we're agreeing counts as a breach going forward, in our own words

______________________________________________
______________________________________________
______________________________________________

This isn't a trap: The point isn't to catch anyone out — it's to trade assumptions for a clear, shared understanding. If this surfaces something that's already happened, that's a conversation for a therapist to help hold.

Go deeper

Ready for more? These lessons pick up where this worksheet leaves off.

  • Where You Misread Each Other, from The Neurodiverse Couples Repair Program. The session where a neurodiverse couple finds where they guess each other's feelings wrong, in both directions, and writes down what was true.
  • Trust and the Resentment Backlog, from The Neurodiverse Couple. How trust erodes in a neurodiverse couple, why lying is often shame not malice, and how to mend.
  • Building Your Couple Operating Manual, from The Neurodiverse Couple. The capstone: turn everything you've learned into one shared couple operating manual — map your two systems and write agreements that actually stick.
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