Experiencing betrayal can be excruciating when coping with infidelity. When you find out that your partner cheated on you, you might find yourself unable to stop replaying different scenarios and memories in your relationship. Maybe you’re unsure whether to work through the issue with your partner or to end the relationship after cheating. It’s possible that you’re navigating through the five stages of grief as you’re coping with infidelity. Maybe you can’t stop overthinking after being cheated on. Regardless of your situation, reaching the stage of acceptance is crucial for healing from infidelity.
In this blog, we’ll explore the five stages of grief, help you identify where you are on your healing journey and how to find peace after being cheated on. Discover how to heal from the pain of infidelity and rebuild your trust in experiencing love again. We will also provide some guidance on how to navigate next steps to explore whether to end the relationship after cheating and how to prevent from falling into a similar situation again.
First let’s explore the five stages of denial when coping with infidelity and notice which ones you have experienced or may be experiencing right now:
Denial
Initially, there might be a refusal to accept or acknowledge the infidelity. You might find yourself struggling to believe or comprehend the betrayal. In your mind it might sound like, “He surely wouldn’t have done this” or “Maybe there has been a mistake.”
Being in denial will delay your healing and prolong the pain, but more importantly it suppresses your emotions and denies your experience. Suppressing emotions related to the infidelity can lead to repressed anger, sadness, or anxiety. These emotions might manifest in unexpected and unhealthy ways later or impact your mental health.
It’s important to notice and become aware when you are in denial. But also showing yourself compassion that it is your mind’s way of coping with the trauma so that you don’t have to feel the sadness that comes with betrayal. Be gentle with yourself, awareness is the first stage towards healing.
Anger
As the reality of the betrayal sinks in, there could be intense feelings of anger directed towards your partner for the betrayal or towards yourself for not noticing signs earlier.
This is another way your mind tries to “survive” when coping with infidelity. This is often because anger is a more accessible emotion to express compared to the vulnerability of sadness or despair. In some cases, feeling anger provides a false sense of empowerment. It might make you feel less vulnerable and more in control of the situation compared to feelings of sadness or helplessness.
You might also subconsciously choose to react with anger because it is an emotion that motivates immediate action which prompts you to set boundaries or to self protect.
While anger can serve as an initial coping mechanism, it’s crucial to move through this stage in a healthy way. Harbouring the anger can have negative health affects, cause you to make unhealthy decisions, create an environment of hostility and conflict and can perpetuate emotional pain. Anger keeps the focus on the betrayal, causing you to ruminate on hurtful thoughts and memories, making it challenging to find closure or peace of mind.
Bargaining
In this stage, there might be attempts to negotiate with the situation, seeking explanations or trying to find ways to reconcile what had happened. This is the ruminating stage of grief where you can’t stop overthinking after being cheated on. You might search for reasons or justifications for the infidelity, trying to find a way to understand or reconcile the breach of trust and exploring if there was a way to compromise your own values so that you won’t have to end the relationship after cheating
You might also find yourself dwelling on the past, bargaining that if certain past events had unfolded differently or if you had acted in a particular way, the cheating could have been prevented.
Bargaining on the surface might seem like a good strategy to reflect on how to reconcile a situation but is in fact another way of coping with infidelity in an unhealthy way. It often creates false hope or unrealistic expectations about restoring the relationship to its previous state.
This is not to say that restoration is not possible, but there is a difference between healthy reflection for reconciliation and bargaining. In bargaining, there is often a desperate attempt to negotiate, make deals, or propose conditions to salvage the relationship without fully addressing underlying issues and often at the expense of compromising your own values.
Healthy reflection on the other hand involves thoughtful and introspective examination of the relationship which often includes open communication where both partners take responsibility for their actions, and a genuine commitment to addressing underlying issues, such as lack of communication, unmet needs, or relationship difficulties.
Depression
Following the shock and anger, a sense of sadness, despair, or profound disappointment might set in. This stage often involves feelings of deep loss and questioning your own self-worth.
If you are in this stage of grief after discovering your partner’s infidelity, you might find it challenging to engage in daily activities or experience a loss of interest in things they previously enjoyed. There might be a tendency to withdraw from social interactions or isolate yourself
This can also manifest into physical symptoms such as fatigue, low energy levels, or disruptions in sleep patterns, causing either excessive sleeping or insomnia. It could also lead to changes in appetite, resulting in either a loss of appetite or seeking comfort through overeating.
Depressed feelings doesn’t necessarily mean a clinical diagnosis of depression. This stage of grief offers a sense of emotional “pause” and your mind is subconsciously trying to explore how to find peace after being cheated on. It slows down the pace of emotions, giving you time to process and come to terms with the betrayal you are experiencing from your partner’s infidelity. It’s important to allow yourself to move through this stage in a healthy way and transition into acceptance to heal.
Acceptance
So now that you’ve move through all the different stages of grief, here’s how to find peace after being cheated on. You need a healthy way of coping with infidelity. This means you need to move into the stage of acceptance. Often people can be trapped in the other four stages of grief and continuously loop there. However, when you become aware that you are looping in those stages, you can consciously bring yourself into the stage of acceptance. This doesn’t mean condoning the betrayal, but rather coming to terms with the reality of what happened and starting to heal and move forward.
Acceptance means that you accept that the infidelity occurred and cannot be changed. It involves letting go of the desire for the situation to be different and to stop dwelling on what could have been. Acceptance involves redirecting focus toward self-healing and personal growth. It means embracing the reality of the situation and choosing to move forward in a healthier direction.
For some, acceptance might mean working on rebuilding trust within the relationship if both partners are committed to reconciliation. For others, it might involve accepting that the relationship cannot be salvaged and end the relationship after cheating.
When you reach acceptance, you shift from the intense emotional turmoil towards a more stable emotional state and finally stop overthinking after being cheated on.
How to Avoid Infidelity
In order to move forward and avoid the same patterns, we have to first address the root cause of the infidelity and acknowledge any patterns that are playing out in the relationship that may have caused your partner to cheat in the relationship. It’s important to acknowledge that we can only do our own inner work, but we can’t change our partner’s behaviours. However, when we acknowledge that every partnership is an experience that is co-created, we can take responsibility of what we have control over which can sometimes inspire change in them. If your partner is not willing to acknowledge his own responsibilities, it will be hard to repair the relationship and may mean that it is time to end the relationship after cheating.
Here are a few questions to reflect on areas that you have control over:
Are there certain needs that are not met and not communicated in the relationship?
Is infidelity a pattern that keeps showing up in my relationships?
Has there been a lost of attraction in the relationship?
Are there certain traits in men that I often attract into my life?
What are some trauma wounding I have experienced that hasn’t been resolved?
Attracting unhealthy relationships may stem from unresolved personal wounds, leading to an inclination toward individuals with their own unresolved trauma. This dynamic can foster an artificial attraction based on shared trauma bonding.
We have created a free training to help you work through relationship wounds and reclaim the love you desire so that you can create deeper intimacy in your relationships.
