Change: a look from two sides. If you have been changed

Many people get into an emotional whirlpool after they find out about a cheating partner. The person who has been cheated is overcome by an all-consuming sense of loss, and the person who has changed is overcome by conflicting emotions and decisions. You can’t prepare for this in advance, but through naming and accepting your feelings, you can come to the understanding that everything is fixable.

A clinical psychologist with 43 years of experience and a recognized expert on trust, intimacy and forgiveness, Janice Spring is sure that it is possible to survive betrayal and find the strength in yourself to restore relationships. The first natural reaction is shock. But once you can figure out what to do about it, chances are you won’t feel empty anymore.

Reaction of the injured partner

Treason destroys our fundamental sense of order and justice in this world. Along with this, the feeling of control, self-respect and understanding of who you are disappear. But your feelings are a natural reaction to an extremely traumatic situation that has destroyed the integrity of the relationship and your belief that your connection with your partner is forever. And it would be strange not to feel lost after receiving such news.

To make it easier for you to deal with your feelings, you need to learn to understand them and anticipate your reactions. The healing process begins when you can look at emotions from the outside and understand what exactly is hurting you. The main thing in all this is not to lose hope and not to think that everything is lost forever.

Physiological Consequences of Cheating

The betrayal of a partner, which you learned about, causes changes at the physiological level. First of all, your nervous system and cognitive perception suffer. Adrenaline and other stress hormones act on the sympathetic nervous system and lead to increased arousal and anxiety. Signs of betrayal appear even where there are none. You lose sleep and feel tired from the endless stream of obsessive thoughts and constantly popping up memories and images.

But there may be a backlash. To protect you from pain and emotional overload, the body secretes endogenous opioid peptides that act on us like morphine. We seem to fall into hibernation, withdraw into ourselves and lose interest in relationships and activities that used to give pleasure and energize.

It is impossible to gather strength, because you practically do not have them. Thoughts are scattered. In this state, you cannot concentrate, perform useless actions or sit, staring at one point.

Psychological consequences of betrayal

There are several types of losses that a partner goes through when faced with betrayal. But all of them are somehow connected with the loss of oneself. Let’s take a look at these types in more detail.

• Loss of identity. Change makes you look at yourself differently. The familiar outlines of your own “I” are blurred, and you feel that something inside has broken.
• Loss of a sense of exclusivity. You lose confidence in your own worth and face a reality in which your union is not so strong, and someone else can make your partner happy.
• Loss of self respect. If you suspected cheating, but brushed aside suspicions, with the idea that something like this could not happen to you, or went through humiliation and abandoned your basic values ​​in an attempt to win back your partner, your self-esteem can crack.
• Loss of control over thoughts and actions. With a high degree of probability, you will be overcome by obsessive thoughts: you can endlessly scroll through your partner’s lies in your head, imagine betrayal in all its details and try to analyze the events that led to it. Any attempts to distract and calm disturbing thoughts will not bring the desired relief. This condition can lead to compulsive conduct disorder. You may start to spy on your partner, deliberately harm yourself (eating unhealthy food and alcohol, smoking, etc.), trying to shift the focus to repairs, fitness or shopping. But all these are only temporary measures that will not fill the void inside, but only slightly alleviate the condition.
• Loss of a fundamental sense of order and justice in the world. It seemed to you that you know how this world works, and you can control your life. But after you find out about the betrayal, the world ceases to be safe and orderly. We have to reconsider the basic concepts of honor and justice in all spheres of life, including love and marriage.
• Loss of connection with others. On the one hand, you may want to tell the whole world about your experiences, and on the other, you want to keep your shameful story a secret.
• Loss of purpose and desire to live. When you no longer have faith in love and your worth, and it seems that existence brings more pain than non-existence, suicidal thoughts may arise.
• The loss of the desire to live after the betrayal of a partner is the saddest consequence. The paramount task of a person who has been cheated on is to do the almost impossible and come to terms with despair, even if you don’t see a way out of the situation yet.

Gender Differences and Reactions to Cheating

Men and women react differently to a cheating partner. The differences, which we will analyze further, describe the typical reactions that are characteristic of the majority. But that doesn’t mean these patterns apply to you. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Understanding these biological and cultural programs will explain your reaction to infidelity and allow you not to feel alone, and your partner will better understand your feelings.

Difference #1: Women try to keep relationships; men turn around and leave

If a woman has been hurt by infidelity, she is more likely to try to keep the relationship, in part because her culture has taught her to please others and ignore her own needs. Men do not relate to the loss and try to find a good replacement who will definitely love and give due attention.

Difference #2: Women Get Depressed, Men Get Angry

A common female reaction to infidelity is self-abasement. When a relationship cracks or falls apart, a woman is more likely to experience low self-esteem and depression because she not only loses her partner, she loses herself. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to direct their rage at their wife or her lover than at themselves. Because they are more likely to show anger and attack those who hurt them, at least in fantasy.

Difference #3: Women Feel Inadequate as Life Partners, Men Feel Inadequate as Lovers

A woman is likely to explain the betrayal of her husband by her shortcomings as a person, and not by her behavior in bed. You will probably decide that the partner cheated because he was looking for love, and not just sex, and that it was not only his appearance that attracted him. As a result, you may take your partner’s betrayal more seriously than he does.

A man is likely to think that his wife cheated in search of better sex, a belief that will make him feel sexually inadequate and lead to envy and, as a result, violence against his wife or her lover. Men tend to overlook or downplay other non-sexual relationship issues, such as communication and intimacy, that mean more to their wives.

Difference #4: Women get obsessed; men are distracted

Since women’s self-esteem is closely linked to success in their closest relationships, a woman is more likely to dwell on infidelity than a man and delve into lies, to the point of denying everything else. In the process, she becomes even more hardened by her partner’s deceit and refuses to trust anyone for a long time. Constantly replaying the details of infidelity in her head, she feeds her pain and self-doubt.

Men, on the other hand, are less preoccupied with thoughts of betrayal and spend more time in physical activities that give them a sense of strength and confidence. They seem to be better able to cope with their pain and move on – often to a different partner.

How to help yourself?

If you are an injured partner, the first thing you need to do is to accept that your first emotional reaction (even if it was excessive, self-deprecating and frenetic) was completely normal and understandable, or at least the best of all that you were capable of at that moment, given your condition and the severity of the incident.

You need to forgive yourself for losing yourself and start rebuilding from within. To rebuild a relationship, you also need to understand your partner’s reaction to cheating, no matter how radically different from yours. In this article, the partner was supposed to look at the betrayal through your eyes.

In the second part, we will show the situation from his perspective. Believe it or not, the person who betrayed you might just as well be struggling to figure out what happened.

Source: book “Treason. How to cope with pain, restore trust and start living again” (MiF, 2021).