Being cheated on is not an easy thing to handle. Learning how to deal with a cheater can help you regain control of your life and help you decide how you want to proceed.
While keying the cheater’s car may seem like a cathartic reaction, this is not going to help you move, nor will it make you feel any better in the long run.
The adverse emotional and mental side effects of being cheated on can stay with you for a lifetime.
Being cheated on stirs up insecurities, low self-esteem, distrust, inability to open up, give you feelings of worthlessness, and makes you question your qualities and physical appearance.
Dealing with a cheater is emotionally devastating and can change your personality for years to come.
Are you questioning how to move on after infidelity in your relationship? Here’s how to deal with a cheater.
1. Take time for yourself
Even if you have decided to stay with your cheating partner and work on your relationship, it is still essential to take time for yourself. It will allow you to decompress. It will also allow you to collect your thoughts and grieve the situation.
If you have chosen to stay together and deal with the cheater, taking time alone may help you to reconsider whether you are staying in the relationship because you can become better, stronger partners with one another or if you are simply staying out of sadness
2. Gather your evidence
Is your partner cheating in the relationship, but you haven’t confronted them yet? It’s time you look for ways on how to confront a cheater. Now is your time to collect any evidence you may need during your confrontation.
This means taking screen captures of text messages, photos, conversations, and social media interactions you may have stumbled across between the guilty parties. This will allow you to immediately deal with a cheater by putting a stop to your partner’s lies.
3. Get tested
If your partner has lied to you about being with one partner, who’s to say they haven’t been with dozens without your knowledge?
Getting tested for sexually transmitted infections is essential after you’ve been cheated on. Go to your doctor and ask to be tested. Free clinics and sexual health centers offer tests for STDs, HIV, and Hepatitis. You must protect yourself, even if your partner claims they were ‘safe’ during their infidelity. Their definition of safe sex may differ highly from yours.
4. Confront your partner
Confront your partner about their infidelity. This will allow them the opportunity to plead their case with you and for you to be perfectly clear about your feelings. Your feelings of betrayal, anger, humiliation, and hurt should be clear.
This is also an opportunity to let them know if you plan on ending the relationship. It goes without saying that if you decide to work on your relationship together, your cheating girlfriend or boyfriend must end the affair.
5. Don’t blame yourself
The reason cheaters decide to take the unfaithful way and indulge in affairs may have very little, if nothing, to do with you. Cheating in relationships is a selfish act in which a person is thinking solely of themselves. However, many still find understanding the ‘why’ as an essential part of the grieving process.
Try your best not to blame yourself for the act. Often cheating is in response to something going wrong in the relationship. It is encouraged that the partners sit down and have an honest conversation about what needs are missing.
6. Don’t put a time limit on pain
Pain is pain. A time limit will not diminish the hurt or betrayal you felt after being cheated on. Grieving is an individual process that takes time. New relationships and other distractions will not make it go by any faster.
