How to cope with a cheating spouse

Dealing with a cheating spouse may be one of the hardest things you ever have to do.

There’s no right answer when it comes to deciding whether or not you want to make things work.

All you can do is communicate with your spouse, listen to yourself, and decide whether or not your relationship is worth saving.

If you do decide you want to make things work, then you have to take things one day at a time while remembering to take care of yourself.

Don’t Blame Yourself: Your spouse’s reasons for cheating may not always be obvious, and you may feel that the natural thing to do is to blame yourself. Maybe you think you’ve grown distant, or that you haven’t been very forthcoming in the bedroom. Maybe you’ve let work overwhelm you and haven’t made enough time for the relationship. However, these may be reasons that your relationship needs some more work, but you need to know that nothing you do can ever cause your spouse to cheat, and you shouldn’t ever blame yourself for your spouse’s mistakes.

Don’t Obsess Over The Third Party: If you want to drive yourself crazy as quickly as possible, then you can ask a million questions about the other man or woman, spend hours stalking that person’s Facebook profile, or even try to catch a glimpse of this person in person. You may think that knowing everything about this person can help you figure out what was wrong with your relationship, but in reality, this won’t give you any more answers, though it will cause you plenty of pain.

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Don’t Try To Rationalize It: Though you may think that you’ll be able to move forward if you can just find a logical explanation for why the cheating happened, such as the fact that your husband has been feeling powerless ever since he lost his job, or that the third party came on to your wife so much that she couldn’t possibly resist, there’s no use in trying to make sense out of nonsense. Accept that you’re hurt and that you need to find a way to move on, but don’t think that making excuses for your spouse is the way to get there.

Don’t Tell The Whole World: You may feel incredibly hurt and incredibly angry, and may have the urge to tell all of your family members, your closest friends, or even to post about it on social media to really get your feelings out. However, if there is a chance you want to reconcile and make things work, then you’ll have to deal with people looking at your spouse and your relationship differently for the rest of your lives. Instead of telling everyone you know, tell only the people close to you who you think can really help you think this through.

Don’t Take Major Steps Before Reflecting: Though you may think that you want to pack up your things or kick your spouse out of the house the second you find out about the cheating, you need to take more time to think this through. You can certainly spend some time away from your spouse, but avoid saying you want a divorce or taking any drastic measures right away. Give yourself time to reflect about what happened and what’s best for you and your relationship instead of doing something you may regret later.

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