How To Deal With Unfaithful Partners

Accepting that your partner has cheated on you is a powerful symbol of mercy, restraint and goodwill.
By moving forward, a person grows larger, moving on positively, highlights Kanchan Rai, mental and emotional wellbeing coach and founder of Let Us Talk.

Infidelity can be really painful as it is a deeply personal experience that hits you like a ton of bricks.

Finding out that your partner has been unfaithful is a state of crisis that may destroy your marriage.

While it is natural to want to know why your partner cheated, there is rarely an answer that is simple.

From symptoms of other problems in your marriage to something in your partner's past, an affair could be totally unrelated to you or to your marriage.

Investing emotional energy outside marriage along with receiving emotional support and companionship from other relations is emotional cheating.

Emotional affairs usually begin as innocently as friendship. But when a person invests significant emotional energy and time in a close friendship outside of their marriage, it could spell trouble.

The forming of an emotional bond has been seen to threaten and hurt the person's intimacy with their spouse or partner.

Emotional affairs often turn into a gateway for affairs, eventually leading to both emotional and sexual infidelity.

For most, a partner's emotional cheating means an action of being deceived, betrayed, and lied to.

These tips could help cope with how one can move on and deal with infidelity better.

1. Acceptance

It takes time to get beyond the pain of having an unfaithful companion.

The signs of grieving are usually being in shock, followed by agitation, a sense of fear, feeling pain, being confused, and a sense of dejection and depression.

These feelings are a natural mechanism of how one would deal with such a situation. To be in acceptance of what has happened, one needs to first clearly understand what forgiveness exactly means or what it does not mean in such a situation.

Accepting that your partner has wronged you and cheated on you behind your back is a powerful symbol of mercy, restraint, and goodwill.

Acceptance would make forgiveness easier. But it is not most certainly not a condonation of the behavior of your partner or pretending like it never happened.

The emotions and feelings of mistrust won't go away even if you are trying to forgive your partner and repair your marriage.

Acceptance will help acknowledge that the marriage has changed and also help make peace with oneself a bit easier.

2. Forgiveness

Being furious over the situation is a given. The instinct to hurt the partner in a state of anger is common. It could range from trash-talking about your partner outside to other actions where the intention is to punish for the act of infidelity. Approaching it with anger will result in rash decision-making.

Acknowledge the hurt that you feel, as well as the anger and hatred you may have for your partner. Think about instances in the past where you may have acted wrongly letting others down. Doing this is an important step as no one is without fault.

Recognising that we are all fallible, can help us be forgiving.

One must make a conscious effort to tell yourself that you forgive your partner.

While it might just be words at first, saying it helps plant the seeds of forgiveness in our hearts and minds.

Forgiving a partner for infidelity is not instant action. It needs time as processing the emotions which arose from cheating is a slow process that can take a long time.

By moving forward, a person grows larger, moving on positively.

3. Taking self-care

Physical reactions due to the stress involved are normal.

People react differently. From nausea, stomach upsets, headaches, too little or too much sleep, shakiness, difficulty in concentrating, eating too little, or too much there could be several outcomes.

But once the initial phase is over, one must eat healthily, stick to a routine, sleep regularly, drink enough water, and exercise. This will ease anxiety and depression.

For peace of mind and better health one must ensure that diet and exercise are given priority.

Choosing to go for a walk or swim when hard days or bad can be a good option.

People are likely to have strong opinions about what you should do, leave or stay. Nobody else really understands what goes on in another person's life.

While one wonders how to proceed, it's usually best to keep the details private and seek counselling if the going is challenging.

4. Take time

Time is a wonderful healer. You don't have to make a decision on an immediate basis. And once you've thought about what you want to do, make a plan and it will be easier to execute it.

As you take time to think things over, you encounter various phases of being in denial that is caused by the shock, a sense of anger where you would feel like being defiant and you could be remorseful too.

It is important to understand that emotional infidelity was an act by your partner and not an action by your choice.

Working through emotions takes time and effort. But it is important that you give yourself enough space to collect all your thoughts and feelings.

One can try and rehearse what you will say so that you present yourself as assertive rather than aggressive.

Emotional regulation practices such as being mindful, self-regulation, and seven-second breathing are things that will help a lot.

5. Seek Help

Being cheated on by your partner would make you feel isolated and lonely. So, don't be afraid to lean on those around you for support.

Spend enough time with people who mean well to you. Meeting with a trained professional can help give you personalised strategies to deal with your situation.

One need not face this alone and having more people to back you will only make it easier for you to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

An expert will help you work through troubling emotions linked to past traumas, so you can work on saving your present or moving on.

The early days after learning of an affair are often excruciating. But following these tips and considering professional guidance, knowing your legal rights can surely help in easing the pain though it might not be able to erase it completely.