Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: There’s no emotional pain like the pain of being cheated on. You placed your trust and love in someone and they betrayed you in the worst way. They took your heart and they stomped on it. And it is a pain unlike any you’ve experienced.

Of course you never want to feel that again. Of course you never want another painful experience like this one. So you want to know what you can do to avoid a repeat. You want to know how you can develop a cheating radar and protect yourself.

A wife might say, “Ever since my husband cheated on me, I don’t trust a soul. I think that everyone is deceitful and, I’m horrified to say that I went from thinking that people are inherently good to feeling that I know that people are inherently bad. I know this is not a healthy way to look at the world. But I can’t help it. I feel like I need to be hypervigilant to protect myself from awful harm. I feel like there is emotional turmoil around every corner. And I honestly hate feeling this way, but I don’t see any way around it. How can I protect myself without driving myself even crazier than I already feel?”

Acknowledge That this is Fresh and New:  Franky, you are likely very raw right now and that is not in any way your fault. Of course, you want to protect yourself from future harm. That’s a natural human response. And you have every right to expect that your relationship won’t hurt you or do you emotional harm. 

Know That You Need Something Other Than a Guarantee: I have to tell you the truth. I know of no way to guarantee that you’ll never experience infidelity again. You can certainly control your own behaviors, but you can’t control anyone else. However, what you CAN do is to create an environment of reasonable safeguards so that you give yourself some relief, and then you can focus on your own healing so you have confidence in YOURSELF which means you won’t need to worry as much.

Reasonable Safeguards: I think that most people would agree that it would be silly not to keep an eye out for any issues in any relationship. No one wants to be caught blindsided and if a bit of vigilance can prevent that, so be it. After the affair, I required that my husband leave his phone on the counter when not in use and not to use the computer late into the evening. He also doesn’t travel alone anymore. If he’s going to be late, there needs to be a good reason and he needs to let me know.

I don’t think any of these things are unreasonable and if he does, he doesn’t vocalize it. He does these things without much complaint. It’s just the price of his mistake and it gives me peace of mind, so we both consider it worth it.

The Fine Line:  With the above said, I think you have to be careful. You don’t want the sole focus of your relationship to be the affair. You don’t want to spend so much time looking for another infidelity that you damage your current relationship or become obsessive about seeing deceit in others. That’s very easy to do. You don’t want to self-sabotage a healing relationship.

After my husband began making good on his promises for quite some time and I felt sufficiently healed, I felt more comfortable not having to cling so tightly to hypervigilance because, quite frankly, it always felt like I was expecting him to cheat again, and that’s only not healthy, it’s just absolutely exhausting. 

You have to be careful that you’re not watching so much that you’re not also seeing the good things and the healing that is in front of you. Going through life expecting the worst affects your happiness and confidence. You have to be careful that you’re not overdoing it.

Healing Will Solve Part of This:  I don’t want you to take what I am about to say in the wrong way. Because I’m adamant that none of this is your fault. At all. However, if you can do the work and take the time that you need to heal, you can restore some of your confidence. And with confidence, comes a bit of calm. You know that you can handle yourself if need be so you don’t have to freak yourself out every day waiting for the shoe to fall.

You know that you can live your life as healthy and as happy as possible and you will deal with anything undesirable if and when it happens. And frankly, it may not happen at all. So there’s no true need to worry endlessly about something that may never even happen.

I’m certainly not telling you to look the other way or to not keep an eye out for concerning behavior. I’d never advocate that. But I am saying that it makes sense not to allow yourself to always expect the worst and to never enjoy what you have because you dread what might happen. 

To 100% protect yourself, you’d have to swear off relationships altogether. And no one wants or needs to do that. You can try to choose the right person. You can try to keep your relationship strong. You can keep a reasonable eye out with defined safeguards, and you can try to keep yourself strong. 

Beyond that, you just have to know that you can handle whatever comes if and when, but you’re not going to assume the worst because you deserve better. No one wants to live their life in expectation of something that may never happen.

I don’t live in dread anymore.  Life is just too short for that, but I do keep an eye out because I am human.  You can read about how I healed at https://surviving-the-affair.com

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