What To Expect After Infidelity & 7 Ways You Can Cope

Heed these helpful hints to understand sexual betrayal, pornography and addiction.

By Teresa Maples-Zuvela — Written on May 31, 2012

What To Expect After Infidelity & 7 Ways You Can Cope [EXPERT]

You just found out your partner has a secret life, and has been sex chatting with men and women on several web "personals" sites. You feel devastated and alone, and wonder "how in the world am I going to deal with this?"

You thought your partnership was amazing; you were proud of the family you had created together. Now, you find out that you've been betrayed, and your partner has a secret double-life. Are You In A Healthy Relationship?

This information penetrates your heart to a much deeper place than you've ever felt before. As you search for more evidence, you indeed find more, and wonder, how could I of missed all of this? All of a sudden, you realize that certain things from the past that didn't make sense at the time are beginning to make sense now.

There was that time you were on vacation; your partner disappeared for an hour, and when he returned, he didn't have a satisfactory answer about where he was. You didn't question him further so you could avoid his anger. But now, you realize that all the little situations that didn't make sense at the time could have been clues of his infidelity. You trusted your partner and now, you can't comprehend a betrayal of this magnitude. You are in shock. How To Know If Your Relationship Can Go Back To Normal After Cheating

What should you expect?

The beginning of this journey can be torturous. It is filled with ups and downs, and it feels like being on an emotional rollercoaster. It is akin to losing a loved one. In a way, this is a death: the death of the relationship as you perceived it, and you will go through a grieving process. This process happens in several stages. Let's look at the Kubler-Ross Model of grief stages: