Caught: When Infidelity Hits Home, Now What?
By Dr. Megan Fleming. Posted on .
2. Remind yourself that you are stronger than you think:
You can take care of yourself. You can show up for yourself. You can get through this; the commitment you have to make is to yourself to heal. It is your inalienable right since your birth to take care of yourself and to live in an environment where you can thrive. Let you gut be your guide and cultivate the skills to listen to what’s happening inside so you’re more in-tune you’re your needs and can better navigate your circumstances.
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3. Spend time getting to know yourself:
All relationships are a two-way street and rarely do things like infidelity happen with only one person involved. That certainly doesn’t mean you’re to blame for another’s actions. Take the time to clean up your side of the street. Understand what roles you play and what baggage you carry. By getting to know yourself, you can embark down a path of self-discovery and healing that will help to prevent anything like this from ever happening to you again.
4. Give yourself a break, you’re only human:
We all are, which means we can get hotwired and hijacked by our emotions. You can count on it every time. We are wired for survival. When threat is perceived (note the word perceived vs. actual) an instinctive response for fight, flight or freeze is hard wired to automatically show up. As human being’s we are hard wired to make monogamy hard. It’s not monogamy that’s hard; it’s our reactive/protective behaviors in relationships and how we treat each other that make relationships hard.
5. Rejection is pain:
The emotional pain registers in your brain like physical pain and can feel intolerable. I’m here to tell you every emotion will crest, it’s a wave and you will absolutely get on the other side of it. The key is to allow yourself to know, name and feel the emotions so you can hear what they’re telling you.
Today, commit to never act or make decisions from intense emotions. They are not the truth, no matter how true they feel. They are amplified and absolutely are distorting the reality.
6. Work on learning to trust yourself:
The painful truth here is that if you don’t trust yourself, then you should be very afraid. You need to trust yourself before you can trust anyone else. You need to trust that you are committed to doing what you know looks and feels right even when that’s the hardest thing for you to do. No part of you wants to feel filleted open and dropped again.
7. Change your focus from the affair to learning to love yourself and life you truly desire:
Love yourself enough to explore what you REALLY want for your life. Take time to cultivate your desires and work towards having space in your life for the vision of yourself you want to see manifest. The more you work on you, loving you, nurturing you, the more your heart will open to giving to others. Remember that when a person feels whole, connected and supported, they don’t NEED much; they are more free to give to others because their energy isn’t spent trying to get someone else to meet their needs, they are full and others are able to be the icing to their cake.
8. Know that in front of you will be the decision to commit or leave:
At some point as the crisis passes, you will have to ask yourself if your partner has more to teach you and if you can commit fully to staying in your partnership. It’s important that you work toward decision to either stay or go. Don’t stay on the fence; the longer you linger in uncertainty, the harder it will be on everyone involved. There’s no need to make an impulsive decision and there is a huge opportunity if you choose to decide to stay. Especially if you believe that you have more to learn from your partner, this experience and want to reach a fuller version of yourself. But, if you stay, remember that you and your spouse must commit to 100% of your 50%. Anything less is will not work.
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Healing from infidelity is a process that takes time to get through. There's no quick fix, but many couples do make it work even after the worst of all circumstances. If you're struggling with the pain of infidelity, I can help. Take a look at my website for details and info.
