Self-care after being cheated on is usually the last thing on our minds after discovering infidelity. Here we will address the importance of self-care throughout your healing journey and examine the changes self-care can bring to your trauma-stressed life after intimate betrayal.
Being cheated on is one of the most painful things to experience in life. As a result, we need to be aware of the importance of caring for ourselves to heal. Seriously, why would we think about doing Self-Care when our world is falling apart? In truth, we are scrambling to save and protect our marriage, family, and sanity. We are often too busy trying to keep our partners from the destructive behavior they are exhibiting to think about our self-care after being cheated on. Yet, self-care is how we learn to focus on the right thing.
Does the impact of his cheating feel like the plug got pulled on your life? Has everything important to you gone down the drain in front of your eyes? Self-care is how to take our life back, better than before!
Discovering that infidelity has infiltrated our life devastates us to our core, leaving us feeling we lost our past, present, and future. Honestly, it's a painful and destabilizing time. Turning to self-care is how we cope with and heal from being cheated on. Caring for our needs helps us regroup and rebuild.
How can we love our life again after our husband cheats?
Infidelity creates a time of mourning. We lost the life we thought we had and the future we thought we would have. Coming to terms with this new reality is a shock. It's challenging to come to grips with the depth of the pain and all the destruction cheating brings. When we prioritize self-care in our lives, it supports us in accepting our new reality faster.
Self-care helps us heal
If ever there was a time, the shock of being cheated on is the time to take control of our life. We do this through self-care. Yet how can we when we are in so much pain? Discovering our husband cheated is an agony beyond words. Will we ever be able to survive this horrific event of betrayal? The pain is suffocating the breath out of us, and we are desperate to escape it.
How do we find the strength or the energy to care for ourselves? The pain we feel from our partner's cheating can leave us unable to function, let alone think about our self-care.
Sometimes, in our anger, unlovely feelings flood our minds. Thoughts of hatred, revenge, and payback fill us - do we let them consume us? They feel like an escape from the pain of our husbands cheating while we think about them. But deep inside, we know that hate prevents us from healing; it makes us suffer more. Hate, anger, and revenge change us into bitter people who we ultimately don't want to be.
Since we know that this choice to remain angry hurts us far more than it hurts our husbands, what do we do?
Self-care helps us heal by teaching us how to be self-advocates. We learn to step back from the pain and become conscious observers of our emotions and what we need to support ourselves. Self-care is a habit of embracing our needs to make the best decisions possible rather than functioning out of reaction. We heal as we nurture ourselves through the pain of being cheated on, and we become stronger and more resilient in the process.
Being cheated on is unfair!
Knowing that our husband cannot endure the betrayal pain on our behalf feels so unfair. He caused this agony in us because of his inadequacies, and now we are the ones left suffering. It is so unjust because we never cheated! Remaining angry at him about that unfairness doesn't change anything. It may, in fact, worsen our pain of getting cheated on. Fixating on the fact that we are suffering and he isn't, puts us further into that downward spiral. It causes us to suffer even more after the betrayal and to become even angrier at our situation. Self-Care can help us out of this angry state.
There is a way of ending infidelity pain. It starts when we can acknowledge that our husband can't take back that he cheated or take away the pain that we are in. If we are honest with ourselves, we know deep inside that we can't change what happened and that we must deal with the pain caused by our husbands' cheating. Healing from this pain sits on our shoulders alone to endure even though we don't want it. It is unfair, but what are our options? To continue living in pain and become bitter women, or to move forward and start living a life we love through self-care.
Self-care offers us choices
Ultimately it is up to us whether we accept that processing and grieving the pain of being cheated on is something we do for ourselves. Otherwise, we could remain chained to that pain with anger or bargaining. We must all eventually decide when or if we will move on from that prison of betrayal agony and use all the tools self-care offers us for healing.
By turning our focus toward moving forward and using self-care, we open ourselves to grieving the betrayal instead of dwelling in anger and pain over it. We can choose to stop focusing on our husband's unfaithful actions and the consequences we feel from them. Instead, we can select self-care to support us as we grieve the cheating. Self-care helps us acknowledge the loss of the life and the marriage we thought we would have before our husbands' cheated on us.
As we use self-care tools to grieve, we can also choose to build a new life in the future—a life that we love, even while we process our pain from being cheated on. Grief is not a life sentence; it's a journey we choose to take. As we take that journey, we can use self-care to equip us to control our lives, even as we grieve and still feel pain. Life is not dependent on what our husbands' do or don't do; it depends on what we do, our self-care!
Self-care is a way to live well after being cheated on.
Ever feeling good again may seem impossible after your husband cheats. Yet many who have suffered like you have achieved it through embracing self-care. It's not easy; none of this is easy. Betrayal trauma leaves us feeling that holes got blown through our hearts and parts of ourselves are missing. Self-care supports us to see and find those missing parts again.
The blow of betrayal has wounded many good wives. It consumed their lives for a season before they turned it around with self-care. We can use self-care to take control of our healing and destinies. We aren't broken, we are wounded, and we can heal.
Betrayed wives find relief in strengthening themselves by creating and prioritizing self-care habits. Self-care has them taking full responsibility for their lives, loving themselves, and meeting their own needs. You also could be taking a journey that could change your life, one step at a time. It's through doing deliberate, planned actions for yourself to rebuild your life after being cheated on.
Self Care is not Selfish Care!
Self-care is not a descent into selfishness; there is nothing selfish about it. It is a responsible way of living—a life where you acknowledge your needs and wants and do what's necessary to meet them.
Rather than deferring yourself, your self-care takes priority through deliberately made plans. That may be a massive change from your previous life, which you are now grieving since being cheated on. Self-care prioritizes you and your needs at every turn. It leads the way!
Embrace self-care after being cheated on
Nothing is wrong with making yourself a priority and embracing what you need, especially after being cheated on. No one else but you is responsible for meeting those needs, so why not intentionally meet them while building yourself up with self-care? Being honest and investing time in learning what you need is essential.
Is the result of not meeting your needs harming you?
Does it leave you more empty, stressed, and unhappy with your life?
Being cheated on can be the catalyst that shows you the importance of prioritizing self-care. Now that your husband's cheating has blown your old life out of the water, will you choose self-care? It takes one decision at a time, one step at a time, and one new habit at a time. Make meeting your needs a planned priority. When we prioritize our self-care needs, we show up differently in life.
How to use self-care to heal from being cheated on
I would love you to make meeting your needs a planned priority. Why? Because self-care helps us heal the pain of being cheated on. It also keeps us safer from being cheated on again in the future. We change when we learn the art of proper self-care. It puts us in control of our lives, not our pain. The more we use self-care, the more robust, healthier, and resilient we become.
Join me in the infidelity-specific self-care course designed by betrayed wives for betrayed wives to support yourself on your healing journey with simple and achievable steps. Let's prioritize self-care together to heal the pain and grieve the losses of being cheated on!
Please accept my gift of a free coaching call to support you as you travel through this painful journey toward healing and building a new life. You can live a life you love even after being cheated on when you embrace self-care!
Much love,
PS Here is another article that might be helpful - Infidelity Stress.
