If you were under the blow of infidelity, you felt as if someone had stabbed you in the back. No fraud incident is easy to get around. You feel a lump in your throat that’s constantly choking you. For many people, infidelity is too painful to be easily overcome. In many cases, couples try to stay together and reconcile after infidelity.
In both cases, the impact of the scam is deeply felt and not easy to ignore. If you decide to end the toxic relationship or long distance relationship, you may be dealing with loneliness after being cheated on. However, it’s better that way, isn’t it? If you decide to stay together, the deception will always be there, and you won’t trust that person anymore. You’ll doubt everything more than before. The long-term effects of deception are often more complex and difficult to process than initial shock, pain, anger, and red flags that come on later on. That’s why it becomes even more important to understand how deception changes you. Let’s try to understand the feelings after we were cheated.
Can Being Cheated On Change You?
Infidelity in a relationship is considered to be the greatest form of betrayal in a committed relationship. It’s considered as one act that can nullify all promises related to both partners. Overnight, everything can disappear.
For a long hard time, a fictional image of your partner in bed with someone else has been imprinted in your head. It’s just that the image doesn’t go out of your head, it’s always in your subconscious. We even believe it was more picturesque than in reality.
Over a lot of time, this picture may begin to fade, but the long-term effects of the scam may still remain. You may be wondering, “Can being deceived change you?”
We imagine a situation where at one point you have everything you could have wished for, and then at one point there is the SHOCK. You’re deceived. The person you love made it so easy.
Of course it hurts and of course it can change you in any sense, be it positive or negative. Keep reading and learn how to try to deal with it.
11 Ways Being Cheated On Changes You
When your partner cheats on you by having another love life, the goal should be to focus on the reason why it happened. No matter what, it’s just the way to go. Whether you want to move on after the scam or stay together and make the relationship work, this is the only way to truly cure yourself of the scam.
What are these long-term effects? And how does being cheated on change you?
1. You develop trust issues
All the trust you had in your partner has disappeared so easily. As a result, you can develop deep-rooted trust issues that go far beyond the relationship.
This is a completely normal condition that happens after a scam. You can no longer trust other people. It’s very difficult. You’ll be distrustful, you’ll check the other person’s cell phone, and you won’t be calm for a long time.
Fear has become rooted in you, but you must know that it will pass. We need to become a better person one day.
2. You compare yourself to that other person
Another common downfall due to cheating is the tendency to compare yourself to another person. Men who have been deceived experience it just as much as women. The feeling of deception raises a low threshold of self-esteem in you, and you simply think and are convinced that everyone is better than you. You probably “stalk” other people and compare yourself to them over and over again,
As long as you live with this impaired sense of self-worth and self-awareness, you can’t solidify your existing relationship or create a healthy relationship in the future with anyone.
3. Desire for revenge
Your whole world seems to go through a moment. Another significant way for cheating to change you is to instill in you a desire to take revenge on your partner. You want to show your partner that your life is better without them and that you’re no longer suffering. Of course indirectly, on social networks or similar.
A breach of trust can lead you down a path of promiscuity, even if it only shows the other person.
This is a strong reaction to how cheating changes you forever.
4. Fight poisonous emotions
A mixture of resentment, anger, betrayal, and more, creates a mix of unhealthy feelings. While jealousy and insecurity are emotions that can be linked after cheating, many partners also struggle with guilt, shame, and embarrassment.
This is more often seen in how deception affects a woman, but the possibility that men go through similar emotions can’t be ruled out. Women are considered more emotional beings, so for a reason they find it harder to fight their feelings.
5. Being cheated on upsets you
A lot of people who are deceived can also experience a change in personality. These changes affect everyone around you. It’s not just you, and you notice that you’re changing both you and your loved ones around you.
Understandably, because being cheated on is a very ugly feeling, the realization that you loved someone and that someone cheats on you ends up upsetting you so very easily. The feeling of bitterness is justified.
Unless you find a way to process and channel those negative emotions, personality changes caused by the act of cheating can become permanent.
6. Cheating makes you rethink your whole relationship
This situation forces you to start realizing your relationship from start to finish. You think nothing made sense, and it was all a lie.
That feeling is kind of okay, because it’s unrealistic if you thought your relationship was great and you loved each other. If you believed this, then how could it all fall apart? There must have been some trigger, right?
7. Being cheated makes you more guarded
It takes a broken heart to lower your guard and bring your vulnerabilities to light. The more deception changes you, the more cautious it makes you.
Not just in your current or next relationship but also as a person. If you’re wondering if cheating changes you forever, this is a classic case. As someone who has survived infidelity, you may never again be able to share your deepest insecurities, fears, hopes, and dreams, even with those you thought you could. You’ll simply be more careful in the future to try to avoid the same situation.
8. It can distract you from a relationship
There’s a possibility that this situation will distract you from future relationships. What does that mean? You’ll simply turn to one-night stands for something incidental. You’ll ignore every connection, and if you like someone in the long run, you’ll run away from them.
This is because you don’t want this worst thing happening anymore. Of all these situations, this one is somehow the most common. People are running away from what has disappointed them in the past.
9. You become firmer
Betrayal, deception, and heartbreak leads you to such a feeling that you become firmer, and that nothing can shake you anymore. You become more careful and have more self-esteem. This is the feeling you create after the long suffering you go through.
10. Cheating can give you the courage to move on
Sometimes a defense mechanism awakens in you, which makes it easier for you to go through some things and forcibly forget the cheater who has disrupted your current course of life. True heartbreak is a very ugly feeling, but you need to move on. Life didn’t stop. Therapists agree that cheating is more of a symptom than a cause of relationship problems. The fact that a third person could come into your relationship indicates existing cracks and gaps.
Often couples push their problems under the rug until they explode in their face. This attitude can be fertile ground for unbelief. Likewise, couples often stay together, trying to pull off a relationship that has a long-lasting course, just because it’s familiar and comforting.
In such cases, loneliness after cheating may be the last incentive you need to move on and get your life back.
11. It can bring a new you and new relationship
Yes, being deceived changes you, but it doesn’t always have to be negative. Once you go through anger and pain, you can start healing. Knowing that you’re much more than someone’s partner can help you regain your value, lost self-confidence, and lost self-esteem.
How To Survive Being Cheated On
Reading about how you change forever because of cheating might understandably make you a little worried about what’s in store for you. Although, with a little awareness, you may be able to reverse the psychological damage from being cheated on. The way you will become a better person.
Here are a few things you can do to make sure your feelings after being cheated don’t define who you’re going to become.
1. Take some free time
No matter how stoic you are, feelings after being cheated at one time or another will bring you down. You’ll be understandably depressed for a while because the whirlwind of emotions going through your mind won’t be easy to deal with.
The first time being away from a relationship can be hard to cope with. However, taking a break from work and responsibilities can be helpful in such a situation. Take some time to figure out how to proceed. If possible of course. However, be careful that this break doesn’t last longer than it should. Treat your vacation as a short getaway, not as a lifestyle. Once you get back on your feet after a breakup, you may be able to reverse how cheating affects future relationships.
2. Eradicate “was this my fault?”
One of the most harmful things you can do after being cheated on is to blame yourself for your partner’s infidelity. Get it out of your head! It wasn’t your fault! Such an action can’t be justified. It’s not a way for someone to do that to you.
Your partner cheated on you, knowing the consequences and being aware of it. If you think that your breakup was your fault, you would feel miserable. If you think there was a problem that led them to them cheating on you, well, cheating is not the way to deal with problems. Your partner should have talked to you. They could have nicely said that they were no longer happy in the relationship.
Blaming yourself is most often what being cheated on does to anyone . By eradicating thoughts like, “Was this my fault?” and “Did I do something wrong?”, you can help yourself recover faster. You should try to remove any doubt in yourself. Feelings after cheating will be much easier to deal with when you do.
3. Understand that you’ll find love again
When your mind is in emotional turmoil after being cheated on, it’s easy to start believing in things like, “I’ll never find love again”, “I’ll die single” or “I can never trust anyone again”. It may seem like a cliché at the moment, but you’ll soon realize that time really does heal all wounds. When the right person comes, everything else falls into place.
Caring for the future is what cheating does to people. Instead of believing that the deception will force you to live in darkness forever, choose the path of healing and start believing that time will help you overcome all your problems. You’ll find love again.
4. Seek professional help – relationship coach
For your well-being, consulting a therapist is one of the most productive ways to help you get over feelings after being cheated on. You’ll be able to understand why you feel the way you do and how you need to deal with those emotions. Maybe talk to close people in your life like with family members. You’ll certainly feel relief, and you’ll know that you’re not going through this state on your own.
The way you will be deceived changes depending on your outlook on life, your state of mind, the mental health of your relationship, and your past experiences or shared experiences. Life tests you for trust, honesty, and faith. After the scam, we have two choices. We can remain resentful and distrustful, or view it as happiness in an accident and turn everything to your side, in a positive sense of course.
FAQs
1. How does cheating change your relationship?
Cheating nullifies two foundations of relationships, which are trust and respect. Without these essential elements, you can’t hope to have a strong and healthy relationship. Be sure of that.
2. How long does it take to get over a scam?
There is no specific time frame to get over the scam. With professional help and therapy, you can leave that behind in the foreseeable future. However, in quite a significant number of cases, the effect of deception can stay with you forever. We’re all different, it always depends on the person, everyone fights in their own way.
3. How does cheating affect future relationships?
If you’ve been cheated on and failed to process and get over this episode, you may end up bringing problems of trust, insecurity, jealousy, and paranoia into your future relationships.
4. Is it okay to cheat on someone who cheated on you?
No, cheating is never okay. You’re a human being. If you don’t want to be cheated on, don’t do the same. It’s simple. Not even when you end up going back to a partner who cheated on you. If you have been deceived, there are only two options available to you. These options are to end the relationship and move on, or stay and try to give it a second chance. Don’t be like your partner, stay consistent with yourself. Last year was awful for you, the next one must be better, so think about it.