Please understand that this post is no way a rigid guidline for you to follow. I’m stating some major points that helped me get through this and I thought that it may help others or help me get a better hold on the matter by getting your feedback.
I thought I was back in a denial phase when I found out that I don’t feel the same amount of depression anymore, but I’m convinced it is not the case. I still get invaded by a strong anger from time to time, I still cry myself to sleep in some nights, and I still regret waking up some mornings. But I also realized that the periods of feeling liberated are getting superior to the down moments.
I don’t cry because I’m unable to understand why anymore, I cry because somehow my chest feels lighter afterwards.
I don’t regret that I wake up alive anymore, but I just regret that I have to wake up in a dimension where I was betrayed.
Anyway, here are important points that I’m aware of, I’ll add others as I think more about it:
1- Don’t think that you deserve better than being a cuckold.
This is the hardest possible thing that I could grasp. You can’t define someone’s future actions by your own. You can’t think for other people.
Understanding that I had no absolute insurance to not being cheated on lifted the weight of trying the hardest, often at my expense, to convince people that I don’t deserve being hurt. It’s their job to not hurt you, if they fail to do so, it only means that they suck and not that you didn’t make enough efforts.
2- Affairs define the cheaters not the betrayed.
There’s no possible way an affair can be put on the betrayed’s shoulders.
It happened because the wayward didn’t have the guts to express his/her feelings and confront the the aspects that poisoned her marital well being. You can’t blame somebody to be “stabbable”, you were the one who decided to pick the knife, instead of shielding your spouse.
3- It is unhealthy to not forsake the pain.
Most betrayed spouses compare being cheated on to being stabbed, and I find this comparison accurate. But would it be sane to keep the knife in the wound? Pulling out the knife from your heart can hurt more than the stab, but it sure beats running around like a decapitated chicken until you bleed to death.
It’s also very wrong to wear the betrayal as a proof of martyrdom. It can be a sign that you’re feeling guilty about something but don’t remember/don’t admit what it is.
4- Focusing on the irrelevant aspects of the betrayal can delay the healing process and even make it impossible.
This only concerns me, but the thing that made me accelerate on the healing path is that I focused only on what I deem important, not what seemed important to me, but what I really deemed important. I know that she cheated, I know that it was physical and that’s all the details I needed for me to move on without any regret.
I don’t care if it was once or twice because you can’t quantify a stab to the heart.
I don’t care if he was better than me, because I don’t rely on her ability to judge anymore.
I don’t care if he was the first one or the last because, and again this only concerns my situation, she failed to produce the proper remorse.
5- Refusing to be bitter and fighting the urge to go on a quest to make other cheaters pay for what your wayward did.
This can be blended into refusing to let the cheating define who you were/are/will be. Nothing can be more unappealing to people than a sad person moping around what has been done to him, and nothing can take away the merit of being hurt without hurting than someone that can’t understand that he didn’t marry every cheater out there. Let’s say that a cheater is 20 years old minimum, those twenty years were not the same for every cheater or even person in the world. This means that what made your wayward cheat on you doesn’t apply to other cheaters, can you risk to hurt someone just because you’ve been hurt by a different person? If you accept this than you really deserve pity.
There it is. I sure hope it is clear and helpful to other members as it was to me. I also want to add a couple of things. Finding sadder/more hurtful cases than mine really helped me to man up. Making a genuine effort to help people that are in the same situation than me forced me to practice what I preach.
I really do hope that a year from now we'll be high-fiving each other for escaping a lifetime of misery and I do hope that people who chose to stick with their spouses, without regretting it later, understand that this post only means that we didn't get the chance to be with someone as humane as their redeeming spouses are.
I thought I was back in a denial phase when I found out that I don’t feel the same amount of depression anymore, but I’m convinced it is not the case. I still get invaded by a strong anger from time to time, I still cry myself to sleep in some nights, and I still regret waking up some mornings. But I also realized that the periods of feeling liberated are getting superior to the down moments.
I don’t cry because I’m unable to understand why anymore, I cry because somehow my chest feels lighter afterwards.
I don’t regret that I wake up alive anymore, but I just regret that I have to wake up in a dimension where I was betrayed.
Anyway, here are important points that I’m aware of, I’ll add others as I think more about it:
1- Don’t think that you deserve better than being a cuckold.
This is the hardest possible thing that I could grasp. You can’t define someone’s future actions by your own. You can’t think for other people.
Understanding that I had no absolute insurance to not being cheated on lifted the weight of trying the hardest, often at my expense, to convince people that I don’t deserve being hurt. It’s their job to not hurt you, if they fail to do so, it only means that they suck and not that you didn’t make enough efforts.
2- Affairs define the cheaters not the betrayed.
There’s no possible way an affair can be put on the betrayed’s shoulders.
It happened because the wayward didn’t have the guts to express his/her feelings and confront the the aspects that poisoned her marital well being. You can’t blame somebody to be “stabbable”, you were the one who decided to pick the knife, instead of shielding your spouse.
3- It is unhealthy to not forsake the pain.
Most betrayed spouses compare being cheated on to being stabbed, and I find this comparison accurate. But would it be sane to keep the knife in the wound? Pulling out the knife from your heart can hurt more than the stab, but it sure beats running around like a decapitated chicken until you bleed to death.
It’s also very wrong to wear the betrayal as a proof of martyrdom. It can be a sign that you’re feeling guilty about something but don’t remember/don’t admit what it is.
4- Focusing on the irrelevant aspects of the betrayal can delay the healing process and even make it impossible.
This only concerns me, but the thing that made me accelerate on the healing path is that I focused only on what I deem important, not what seemed important to me, but what I really deemed important. I know that she cheated, I know that it was physical and that’s all the details I needed for me to move on without any regret.
I don’t care if it was once or twice because you can’t quantify a stab to the heart.
I don’t care if he was better than me, because I don’t rely on her ability to judge anymore.
I don’t care if he was the first one or the last because, and again this only concerns my situation, she failed to produce the proper remorse.
5- Refusing to be bitter and fighting the urge to go on a quest to make other cheaters pay for what your wayward did.
This can be blended into refusing to let the cheating define who you were/are/will be. Nothing can be more unappealing to people than a sad person moping around what has been done to him, and nothing can take away the merit of being hurt without hurting than someone that can’t understand that he didn’t marry every cheater out there. Let’s say that a cheater is 20 years old minimum, those twenty years were not the same for every cheater or even person in the world. This means that what made your wayward cheat on you doesn’t apply to other cheaters, can you risk to hurt someone just because you’ve been hurt by a different person? If you accept this than you really deserve pity.
There it is. I sure hope it is clear and helpful to other members as it was to me. I also want to add a couple of things. Finding sadder/more hurtful cases than mine really helped me to man up. Making a genuine effort to help people that are in the same situation than me forced me to practice what I preach.
I really do hope that a year from now we'll be high-fiving each other for escaping a lifetime of misery and I do hope that people who chose to stick with their spouses, without regretting it later, understand that this post only means that we didn't get the chance to be with someone as humane as their redeeming spouses are.
