Infidelity

Tips To Help Thrive, Not Just Survive Infidelity As A Cheater

April 26, 2017

So, you’re a cheater or you’ve got a cheater on your hands? Ouch! Either way, you’re looking for a way to survive infidelity as a cheater and deal with the blow-back. Even though I know it might not seem this way at the moment, essentially, the cheater and the hurt partner are both looking to regain self-worth, dignity, and self-respect. Because for all of us, unfortunately, that reflection in the mirror is difficult to ignore!

You see, there’s a big difference between surviving and thriving. And with infidelity, it’s no different. You can easily survive the pain, the loss of self-esteem, and regret. As well, you can easily walk away from a marriage, throw in the towel, and punish yourself giving into every demand out of guilt. However, on the flip side, you could also easily spend your days enacting revenge if you wish. But by creating and owning a life – your future – you have a real chance to survive infidelity as a cheater.

How to thrive and not simply survive infidelity as a cheater!

Own it. All of it… the innocent or not so innocent flirting, the affair of the mind and your inability to communicate with your partner. 100% ownership is the only way out of any lack of self-respect or even self-righteousness. Your partner did not and does not deserve to be lied to. No matter what you’re telling yourself.
Decide: Are you going to punish yourself for going against your word? Are you going to push it aside and ignore the facts and simply deal with it or power through the rest of your life? That attitude and mindset may be a short-term solution for a lot of stuff, but when it comes to your lifetime, that’s a long time to ignore something.

You never forget the person who reminds you that you’re entitled to love, romance and affection!

To survive infidelity as a cheater you have to decide to thrive for the rest of your life. Why did you let yourself not feel loved in your relationship? (This goes for both partners…) What kept you from setting up boundaries to protect yourself? Too often people don’t realize how painful it is to lie to someone they love.

Hearts cause us pain, not our minds, and our thoughts – sure, it all might start there but it’s your heart that hurts.

Take back your self-respect. Despite wishing it so, no amount of thinking your way out of what you did is going to heal your heart. Your heart is where you feel. And feelings are the things that hurt. Not logic. No matter what, the logic is simply your mind looking for a way out of the mess. But, there is no way out through thinking. You must earn taking back your self-respect by being your word.

Learn to trust yourself as you know in your heart of hearts that you blew it. Those big declarations of love and faith may be hard to stomach right now. So avoid those huge declarations and resolutions as you start to survive infidelity as a cheater. Start super small.

To survive infidelity as a cheater remember if you aren’t your word, it’s you who suffers.

Give it time. We’re all doing the best we can. Up until this moment, you’ve been doing the best you can given what you know and how you’ve acted over the years. But though, giving it time looks like being patient, it also means, it’s time to up your game!

Each and every one of us deserves love. We deserve to thrive in our lifetimes, to be treated with kindness, to be seen and heard. When people cheat, everyone gets hurt. And as adults, we must deal with the blow-back.

Dealing with the blow-back looks like owning, deciding, figuring it out, and being your word. When you do what you say you’re going to do, you have a chance to take back your self-respect. You learn to trust yourself again. So you’re no longer known as the cheater you once were.

When The Marriage Ends-How To Get Over A Breakup When You Cheated

April 11, 2017

I liken divorce to a modern-day rite of passage which means, no matter what reasons for the divorce, there’s a bigger lesson within the turmoil and pain. For those who are hurt, when the marriage ends, there is a hidden opportunity. People do have a chance to create a new life. They also get to make sure not to recreate the kind of life that wasn’t working the way they needed it to prior to having the affair.

The pain of infidelity definitely cuts deep!

At the same time, the opportunity to grow, inherent in blowing up a marriage by having an affair, is also immense. Having worked with a lot of people who had the love affair, they realize the experience was about stepping into what they’re doing here on this planet. To experience rapture and bliss will do that to a person.

Can any of us ask another to resist connection and pleasure with another human being?

Every client wrestles with the consequences of their decisions when they look back upon what occurred from today’s vantage point. They have a difficult time reconciling who they think themselves to be with the person they were who was having the affair. When the marriage ends, all of us suffer.

I actually feel most sorry for the men and women who’ve initiated an affair, blew up a marriage (this is conscious or unconscious – and it doesn’t really matter) only to feel obliged to marry the lover. Usually, they find themselves in another divorce a few months or years down the road.

The lover’s role is to help you get out when the marriage ends.

When you understand this, it allows you to take back control and figure out what the purpose of destroying your marriage was all about. That’s the work in front of you. When you simply blame your partner for what you did, you lose. Superficial justifications only highlight the inner growth and emotional awareness that’s on your horizon.

The intent to turn shame and guilt into something productive and life-enhancing are inspiring.

In order to get over a breakup when you were the cheater requires that you decide to grow up. The experience hurts those you said you loved. Moreover, the shame you feel as a result can be intense. So you step out of your emotional immaturity and decide what you’re doing here on this planet for the remainder of your life. You opt-in for personal awareness.

When the soul wants to grow, the soul is going to push and push and push until you pay attention.

An affair gets people’s attention. You don’t get to go back to your ex-spouse and try to reconcile when the marriage ends. Certainly not before you forgive yourself. Definitely not before you’ve done some personal growth! You don’t get to walk around bruised and wounded like you’re unaware of who you are anymore either.

You take responsibility for yourself, your actions and learn to work it out.

There’s a lesson in breaking your vows and it’s unique for each one of us. Whether you realize it or not, you’ve given yourself a chance to step out from behind hiding and to step into being who you truly are. The affair is a wake-up call to experience love and connection. If you didn’t get that in your marriage, then you’d better figure out why.

Get this: when the marriage ends it’s not because you’ve outgrown another person.

I don’t like the cliched reasoning around “outgrowing one another.” It reeks of blame and only helps to avoid your part in the escapade. When the marriage ends because of an affair, you stopped feeling a part of the partnership. As a result, you’re the one who stopped expecting your needs to be met. You stopped feeling you were worthy or capable of being loved in your marriage. None of that is because of what your partner did or didn’t do. It’s because of how you allowed yourself to feel about the quality of your relationship.

This is a feeling life. We need love, affection, intimacy, the whispers of sweet nothings.

To be unappreciated, unwanted or disrespected is a horrible feeling. Those are the reasons marriages end. If you allowed it to be like that, then you’re the one who needs to work on respecting and appreciating yourself again. Not by having an affair. Because if you want intimacy with your future partners, you owe it to yourself to be seen and heard, respected and appreciated in your marriage.

An affair gives you a chance to re-rack. To stop, take stock of who you’ve allowed yourself to be in a relationship. You earn back your self-respect through doing your work not by blaming or disrespecting those you hurt. It is the growth your soul demands of you and that is inspiring.

How To Survive Infidelity And Restore Your Relationship

March 28, 2017

The bond of matrimony is supposed to prevent the moment when your entire world falls apart and you find yourself on your knees trying to breathe. It’s a shock to see how everything you’ve based your life on can easily fall to pieces with an affair. In order to survive infidelity and restore your relationship, you will need the coping skills you’ve developed throughout your life. Doing so will test what you’re made of. It’ll make you question the strength of your values. And it will require tremendous courage, loads of resilience, and take enormous faith.

Losing faith in Santa Claus may be a lot easier in retrospect, than losing faith in your spouse. But life prepares us over time for the big losses we’ll eventually be forced to face.

I don’t think any of us are protected from life’s lessons. Fortunately, infidelity may not happen in your marriage. However, over time, all of us learn the truth about who and what we believe in. When that happens, you may be left feeling unbalanced. Lost. Your body, mind, and spirit desperately trying to hold on to any thread of truth to right yourself again.

Marriage and fidelity are first and always, a choice. Every day, every moment even, being faithful and true is a decision each person in the pair makes.

Every couple has their own agreement and their own rules they follow for the sake of the union. We are uniquely required in this lifetime to grow and to change. Whether in a marriage or not. Without flexibility and communication, a couple can’t possibly stay happy together. Even when they feel they must stay together, without communication and change, they are rarely happy. Or still in love unless they have strong communication skills and a willingness to be open to change.

Most relationships break down along the lines of disrespect and feeling like a victim.

Disrespect – the “I’m taking you for granted” poison that seeps in and makes people forget that it’s always their decision. When that happens, we forget how incredibly fortunate we are to be able to choose whom we love. We are lucky to be able to make love to, support, and stay with the person we want to share our life with. Or not. This is a choice we all have.

Too often, people turn themselves into the victim of their lives and forget they’re always in charge. Every excuse used keeps you stuck in unhappiness. Whether it’s a financial reason, parenting or even a religious reason. If those are your reasons for staying, you’d better make darn sure you show up in your marriage. Be sure to make some noise and learn how to communicate so that you don’t stay married by default. Otherwise, your life is a long time for you to possibly be miserable or risk an affair.

To survive infidelity and restore your relationship go back to basics.

The tough part is to make the relationship more important than your ego. You may want to beat up the scoundrel or you may want to harm your spouse and you can’t. No matter how justified, unfortunately, your temper can’t get the better of you. Instead, you use the pain and the feeling of betrayal as a lesson for your own growth. Find your own support system. When you begin to grow from the pain, the reasons the infidelity occurred within your marriage will make more sense.

Additionally, no matter how tough, you’ll have to start courting one another again. Too often, married couples stay together but don’t even like one another. If you still have anything in common and if you like having sex with one another, it’s important to become interested and interesting again. When you remember they are separate from you and your needs, you won’t take them for granted.

In order to restore a relationship after cheating, you have to remember who you are.

This does not mean that you become self-involved or selfish, pulling away from the relationship. On the contrary, it means putting your needs at the forefront of your mind and making sure you show up for yourself, in your marriage. You ask for what you want and remain open to what your partner needs in order to grow.

Typically, I have found that the reason there’s an affair is because, usually, one partner or the other forgot their own self-worth. Honesty, integrity, and truth are core values many of us share. We don’t like to believe we would hurt another human being. But living in denial or forgetting who we are is a big reason why infidelity occurs. Life becomes boring and routine without change and growth.

To restore your relationship after infidelity, will take more courage than you’ve ever experienced in your life.

In order to restore a relationship after cheating, you have to remember who you are. You are important, valuable, loving! You’re also worthy of growing, changing, and communicating. Those default marriages – the ones where you go along to get along – usually don’t work, especially after infidelity.

Tolerant marriages happen because individuals in relationship forget their own needs. Too often, we are the ones who go against ourselves. We tolerate the disrespect or put up with the lack of interest. Mean-spirited conversations and belittling, boring dinners are not fun. As a result, we forget to make love to one another or be tender and kind. If you forget to participate in our marriage wholeheartedly, you can’t restore a marriage after infidelity.

In order to restore a marriage after infidelity, you have to pull on the coping skills you’ve gleaned over the years.

It’s your choice to rediscover why you fell in love with your spouse in the first place. Fortunately for most of us, it’s always a choice to remain in a marriage. If you choose to restore your relationship after infidelity, it will take more courage than you’ve ever experienced in your life. More resilience. It’ll call on every life lesson you’ve ever faced. If you decide to fight, to pick yourself up off your knees, you will discover a whole new future.