You've Been Cheated On: Now What?

I can picture you. You’re tearful all the time. You have a million questions, but none of them get you any closer to where you want to be. You want it all to just go away. It’s like a nightmare you can’t quite wake up from.

You’re mad. You’re confused. You’re in excruciating pain.

Whether you’re reading this and this is you right now (you’ve just found out about your partner’s infidelity) or this was you years ago, unprocessed pain stays in the body and a trigger can bring it back up in a nanosecond.

If you’ve been cheated on and this infidelity is keeping you up at night - you need to know one thing: Betrayal Trauma is unlike any other kind of relational pain. Some relationships have a chronic disconnection that comes from a long-standing negative interactional pattern - a pain that is very real. Betrayal Trauma is more than that - it’s a specific injury in a relationship, like a break or a snap.

The experience of finding out is often quick, disorienting and impossible to process at once. It’s overwhelming. That’s the very definition of trauma. Put that trauma in the most important relationship of your life, and now it’s relational trauma. Betrayal Trauma.

Cheating, infidelity, affairs - they’re all so horrific for the person who has been blindsided. I look through a bonding science lens. I know that there's a good reason for what you’re experiencing. Your nervous system is set up to co-regulate with another safe human. You’re meant to rely on others for emotional safety. When that beautiful dance happens and your nervous system is humming with another nervous system, it gives you what you need to thrive as individuals. This is true for babies and for 60 year-olds.

When you feel the opposite of emotionally safe - to the point of not even knowing what’s real - your body is going to react in BIG ways.

That’s a trauma response. 

Sometimes it’s helpful just to have a name for it.

What happened to me is trauma. My body is responding exactly as it should, and my need for emotional safety is hardwired into me.

As I write this, I’m holding you in my heart. I’m a couples therapist and I see this all the time. I also see people get through it. You won’t feel this way forever. Reach out for help if you haven’t already so you’re not alone in it.

If you want to feel better sooner rather than later, consider purchasing my video series: 37 short videos and journal prompts to validate and help make sense of your experience.

To locate a good couples or individual therapist in your area, go to iceeft.com.