An amphibian leads a double life. That’s literally what the word means: amphi (Greek for “both”) and bios (Greek for “life”). A double life is ideal for frogs, salamanders, toads, and caecilians but is wildly inappropriate for a spouse. How can you shield yourself from the consequences of discovering your spouse leads a double life? And how does your spouse’s double life affect your Virginia divorce?

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Why a Spouse’s Double Life Impacts Virginia Divorce Cases

Hedy Lamarr is just about the only example of a good person leading a double life. The 1940s Hollywood glamor star was not only a movie legend, she also invented technology to help win World War II for the Allies.

Anyone else leading a double life is almost always up to no good. Leading a double life involves hiding something from a spouse:

  • An addiction to sex, pornography, drugs, alcohol, or gambling
  • An affair or series of affairs
  • Children by another person
  • Narcissism
  • Spying for a government or industry
  • A second family
  • Debts, marital waste, bankruptcy, or some other financial disaster
  • Crimes like stealing, fraud, embezzling, or even murder
  • A different sexual identity from the one presented to a spouse

Among spouses leading a double life, you may find the occasional selfish person who also periodically helps out at a soup kitchen, but most double-life-living people are not pursuing anonymous episodes of charity.

Double-dealers surround themselves with unpleasant coping mechanisms:

  • Lies — To spouses, employers, friends, and coworkers in both realms
  • Compartmentalization — Mentally separating aspects of their lives
  • Fear/Anger — The double-lifer is always fearful of being caught and often reacts with anger when questioned
  • Mental illness — Pervasive living in two worlds can cause a once-healthy person to develop dissociative personality disorder (DPD); narcissists, too, often live double lives
  • Futility — Some double-lifers may be pursuing futile dreams, thinking the second life will fulfill holes in their first life
  • Deception and Omission — A double-lifer may create distractions, deliberate mistakes, forged documents, or altered photographs to support a fiction and avoid revealing the double life

Whatever the result of a double life, the spouse leading it is not doing so for the benefit of the innocent spouse. Double-dealing is never a good thing.

The Emotional Toll of a Double Life in Marriage

A spouse may be excellent at masking her duplicitous nature. That leads to the victim — the honest spouse — feeling foolish when the truth at last comes out. That sense of embarrassment can hamper the victim’s reactions.

If you have been duped by a double-lifer, you may resist pushing back, getting help, finding answers, or facing reality. You may even try to ingratiate yourself to your duplicitous spouse. Remember the four reactions to trauma: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

Your double-life-living spouse will not act to get help, either for herself or for you. While some double-dealing spouses feel shame for their behavior, they will not break the cycle on their own. And they count on you, the victim, to do nothing, or even to accept their weird behavior.

Marriage is an institution of trust, one of the most intimate relationships humans can have. The narcissist, the criminal, and the double-lifer all take advantage of that trust. They exploit it and hide behind it, counting on your faith and naïveté to give them cover.

In many cases, those three roles — narcissist, criminal, and double-lifer — are the same person. That compounds the sense of betrayal you may feel on learning you married a lying, cheating, double-dealing person.

We are not exaggerating here. Some famous — or infamous — double-lifers:

The spouse/victim of a double-lifer may feel foolish or ashamed when the truth comes out. If you are fooled by your spouse, though, you are in the fine company of many other intelligent, compassionate, rational people who also thought their spouses were trustworthy.

Steps to Protect Yourself in a Virginia Divorce

How you react to the discovery will shape your future. Doing nothing only empowers the double-lifer. Consider these steps:

1. Contacting a Virginia Divorce Attorney
Your first action should be to consult a divorce attorney in Virginia Beach. A lawyer can help you protect your rights, uncover legal risks, and advise on whether adultery grounds for immediate divorce in Virginia apply.

2. Uncovering Hidden Assets with a Forensic Accountant
If you suspect financial misconduct, a forensic accountant can trace funds, reveal secret debts, and expose marital waste. This is critical in Virginia divorce cases involving hidden assets.

3. Building a Support Team: Lawyer, Accountant, Therapist
Your best defense includes an attorney, forensic accountant, and therapist. Together, they provide legal protection, financial clarity, and emotional strength.

Confiding in Professionals After Betrayal

Talking with a close friend may help, but a therapist or counselor trained in betrayal trauma offers better support. Seek help for:

  • Infidelity counseling
  • Processing betrayal trauma
  • Affair recovery
  • Family impact support

This professional guidance prepares you for the difficult road ahead — from separation to divorce.

Confronting a Double-Life Spouse Safely

Do not confront your double-dealing, manipulative, narcissistic double-life-living spouse until you have a strong lineup of professionals behind you. That means getting the family law attorney, a forensic accountant, and a therapist or other mental health professional on your team. Only then can you confront your spouse, and only if your skilled professionals recommend it.

Your family law attorney may take the lead on confronting your spouse about her double life, relying on the accountant for support if the issues are mostly financial and relying on the therapist if the issues focus on mental health.

You will feel much stronger after the confrontation, no matter who guides it. You will be on the way to recovering your self esteem and stable financial future.

Defending Your Finances and Children in a Virginia Divorce

You have to defend yourself legally from all the potential damage a double-life-dealing spouse can cause. The forensic accountant can help uncover secret financial instruments, arrangements, and illicit funds. The therapist can offer tools to keep you safe and sane during the inevitable conflict, separation and divorce.

A spouse leading a double life is committed to lying to you. You need a lot of resolve to chip away at the defenses such a person will fling up in your face. Your attorney can insulate you from a lot of the blowback by defending you in several areas:

  • Financial problems
  • Separation
  • Preserving your relationship with your children
  • Divorce
  • Restoring your reputation

The secrets your spouse has kept from you could harm your credit history and your ability to change residences during separation. You must gird yourself for uncovering many more nightmarish problems as you peel away the layers of your spouse’s double life.

Prenups, Postnups, and Hidden Assets in Virginia

Some couples enter into marital contracts — prenuptial agreements — before marriage, while others create them during the marriage.

If you and your spouse signed a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement, you may already have some strong defenses against paying for your double-dealing spouse’s addictions or crimes. If you have no prenup, work with your attorney to sign a rock-solid, no-holds-barred property settlement agreement as you navigate separation and divorce.

Investigating Financial Misconduct in Divorce Cases

The forensic accountant and a private investigator may be necessary to bolster your defenses  against all the ugly issues hiding under proverbial rocks:

  • Was your spouse paying for the living expenses of another family?
  • Was she siphoning off money from your family business to finance a gambling habit?
  • Could she have been buying male (or female!) escorts when you thought she was at the beach with girlfriends?
  • Could her frequent business trips be for illegal business, like smuggling, fraud, or violent crimes?

Virginia law shields you from some of the grueling months of legalities if your spouse committed adultery. It is one of the few faults that provide grounds for immediate divorce. Under Virginia Code § 20-91, you do not have to endure a waiting period before divorce. Adultery is not only a fault ground, it is a crime.

Your attorney will encourage you to cooperate with all levels of law enforcement if your spouse with the double life has committed crimes from misdemeanors to felonies.

Adultery and Grounds for Immediate Divorce in Virginia

If adultery is proven, you may bypass the standard waiting period. This can significantly shorten the divorce process and protect you from further harm. Your attorney may also recommend cooperating with law enforcement if crimes are uncovered.

Protecting Your Safety and Future During Divorce

Not to be overly grim, but sometimes the innocent spouse is lucky to be alive. A double-life spouse may involve you in criminal activity, spying, or even violence. Quick legal action is essential to protect yourself and your children.

Discovering a spouse’s betrayal is devastating, but you are not powerless. At The Firm For Men, our Virginia Beach divorce attorneys have the experience to protect you from hidden assets, adultery-related divorce, and the dangers of a double life.

📞 Call us today at (757) 383-9184 or contact us online.