How To Recover After Being Cheated On

One of the first and most powerful steps in understanding how to recover after being cheated on is naming what’s actually happening. Many women don’t have the words at first. Lies, secrecy, and deceit separate you from your own sense of reality, leaving you to wonder: Is it me? Am I overreacting? Is this normal? That confusion is part of betrayal trauma.

The truth is, betrayal trauma is real, and naming it doesn’t make the pain bigger, it validates it. If you’re wondering how to recover after being cheated on, Shelly’s story proves you’re not alone, and healing is possible. Support your healing with Betrayal Trauma Recovery’s Group Sessions.

This episode follows Shelly’s Story
Part 1: What If I Can Never Trust My Husband Again?
Part 2: How To Recover After Being Cheated On (THIS EPISODE)

7 Things Every Woman Should Know About How to Recover After Being Cheated On

Are you trying to recover after your husband cheated on you? If he cheats on you, his lies, secrecy and deceit separate you from your own sense of reality. Here are seven things women need to know about this.

1. Recovery begins with identification.

Betrayal trauma is what you’re experiencing. Naming it helps connect the dots between what happened and how it affected you.

2. Intimate lies are domestic abuse.

The harm doesn’t start once you find out about his cheating. It begins when he starts deceiving you. Recovery begins with accepting this truth.

3. Your body will tell you the truth.

Many women experiencing betrayal trauma have physical symptoms like insomnia, stomach issues, chronic pain. Your body always resists, even if your mind doesn’t quite understand what’s happening.

4. Recovery isn’t about him even though the need to recover is entirely about him.

Recovery takes knowing how to focus on our own emotional safety.  Take our free emotional abuse quiz to find out if you are a victim.

5. Self-compassion is a turning point.

Recovery means treating yourself like you would treat a friend.

6. Ignore bad advice.

People might tell you to just move on or don’t give away your power. That’s not helpful if you’re trying to heal from this type of trauma.

7. The right support makes recovery from this type of trauma possible.

It is important to find a support group where women understand what you’re going through because they’ve been through it too.

Transcript: How To Recover After Being Cheated On

Anne: I have Shelly, a member of our community, back on today’s episode. I interviewed her six months ago. I asked her to come back and check in. And let me know how she’s doing now. Welcome back, Shelly.

Shelly: So we’re at about a year and a half now since the initial D-Day and it’s still difficult, but we’re still together. We’re still working through things. I’ve had no more D-Days since the four or five months of D-Days I had. Nothing new has come to light. But it’s hard. That’s sort of where I am at the moment.

Anne: Will you talk about any epiphanies that you’ve had as you’ve been learning how to recover after being cheated on.

Shelly: There’s been a lot of deepening in my understanding of objectification, as a social issue, and the conditioning everywhere. Society subjects men and women to that conditioning. How human souls are made into objects and literally sold for the purpose of use in a sexual way. And it’s dark. Last time, I gave you a bit of a backstory. There’s a long line of betrayal trauma history in my life, being born into that. And for me, understanding my own power and choice has been freeing.

Eighteen Months Into Healing: What Recovery After Being Cheated On Looks Like

Anne: Like how did you see it before and how are you seeing it now?

Shelly: So listening to our original podcast the emotions I felt. When I was going back, to when I was young, and then when I was in an abusive relationship. It wasn’t a relationship. I was a victim of abuse in my teens with a much older man. The emotions I felt then were quite powerless. Just listening to that, it felt powerless. Whereas when I fast forward to now. I can feel there’s a difference. Like, I have choice. I didn’t realize that I had choice then. Like I didn’t understand it.

I wouldn’t say naive, because I wouldn’t understand because I was so young and being coerced in such a horrific way, that I didn’t see anything beyond that. Whereas now my adult self understands all this stuff. And actually, through everything I’ve listened to on your podcast and understanding that betrayal is abuse. I feel the foundation now that I didn’t have before, an understanding of what betrayal trauma is, where I’m standing in a place of power and knowing how to recover after being cheated on. I’m in a different space. I felt that, just listening through my own story in the podcast that we did before.

Anne: For our listeners, we recorded this the same day her previous episode aired. So she listened to it and now we’re talking. It’s a different type of experience than talking with a coach, therapist or group session. Because you’re listening to yourself from the outside in a way that you wouldn’t normally. Can you talk about your experience as you listened to yourself share your story on the podcast.

Listening to Yourself: A Surprising Step in How to Recover After Being Cheated On

Anne: Do you feel like it enabled you to feel for yourself in a way that you hadn’t before?

Shelly: I do actually, because I disconnected so much. I had a strong sense of dissociation before. And that has changed. I feel it is important, because that’s reconnecting to the self. Where the dissociation was before, it was like someone else’s life that I recounted or told a story about somebody else’s life or a different lifetime. It didn’t feel connected to me.

So having that connection back and feeling those emotions for my own story is important. In being whole, and rebuilding myself, it was helpful. I felt really emotional. I felt the heartbreak for myself. And I have empathy for myself, which is a strange concept. I feel for myself, my own story. I was able to release it.

Anne: I imagine it will take you a while to process hearing your own story. It’s not like you’re gonna have all the epiphanies all at once. It will happen over time. But I think it’s beneficial for women to hear themselves and recognize how human they are. If they heard someone else share the story, how much compassion they would feel for that person, and love and lack of judgment.

Shelly: Exactly.

Anne: It might be something they’ve never experienced for themselves before, partially due to all the abuse they experienced. The abuse in and of itself separates us from ourselves. That’s how abusers manipulate their victims. Abusers do not want us to process it in a way that we can feel or understand it.

Why Seeing Things As They Really Are helps and shows how to recover After Being Cheated On

Shelly: Yeah, they disempower you, so you haven’t got the power to step out of it, change it, or even see it. Having that compassion for yourself and hearing it as if you are listening to a friend is huge. I’ve always struggled with self-love. I completely understand why now, because it’s been throughout my entire life. Hearing that if I was sitting with a friend and told me my story, I would have nothing but love for her.

What I’m dealing with right now is that I’m heavily processing the current stuff with my current partner all the time, which has such a huge impact on me every day. Things still trigger me. There are still moments where it feels overwhelmingly hard.

Anne: In the past, you didn’t understand what was happening to you, so processing it in real time was not available to you in any way, shape or form. But processing your situation now that you have the information in real time, you can talk to other women. You went to BTR group sessions. You can process it, which makes a difference.

Shelly: Yeah, that’s definitely part of it. I’m also aware of positive coping mechanisms that I’m doing. There’s a general sense of awareness I wouldn’t have had before.

Anne: Once you’re aware, you can start looking at it more objectively in terms of not being manipulated like we were before.

Shelly: Yeah.

Anne: Which helps us make better decisions in the long run. It takes a minute to figure out how we feel and what we wanna do. We’re just a lot more capable of making decisions that are in our best interest when we have this type of information. It’s just impossible without it.

Embracing the Hard Truth that Sets You Free: His Cheating Isn’t About You

Shelly: Yeah, learning how to recover after being cheated on is like being in a dark room with a blindfold on and then suddenly walking out into the light and seeing everything for what it actually is.

Anne: How has that felt? Being able to see things for what they really are?

Shelly: It’s liberating. I’m glad that I see now, but it’s painful process. I wouldn’t change it.

Anne: I think some women, and I was one of them, want to unsee it a little bit, ’cause it is so painful. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And so there isn’t anywhere to go but forward.

Shelly: Yeah, I understand wishing to unsee it. I can totally get that, because it’s such a traumatic thing to go through. I’m glad I’m not living in the dark anymore. I’m glad I’m not living in an illusion of this perfect fairytale in my head. I would never want anyone to go through this. But I’m glad that I’m now living informed as to who I’m with and where I am.

Anne: The Living Free Workshop intends to help women see the truth.

Shelly: Yeah.

Anne: It doesn’t give any instructions in terms of like pack a bag and move out. Nothing like that. It’s more safety principles and how to get enough space to observe.

Shelly: Yes, I loved the group sessions. Feeling that connection with people, seeing the same faces, feeling familiar with the coach. Each coach had a different sort of energy and beauty about the way they held the space. I found that helpful. I remember in one of my shares talking about how this has affected me and my self perception, my physical self perception.

Getting Beauty treatments to feel better physically

Shelly: I basically started to starve myself. Because all the women he was looking at. He disclosed they were all thinner than me. Some of them were younger than me. Some of them were actually older than me. But I started to really look at myself. I had very low self-esteem anyway, but this completely smashed any esteem I had about myself. And getting beauty treatments, anything that I could just to feel better physically. And in this one particular group, I shared that.

Many of the women started to cry and could completely understand, completely resonated with what I was saying. I found that so devastatingly sad that this is one of the consequences of their behavior. Their choices impact the way we internalize, or think, we think it’s because of us. It all boils down to that belief, I’m not enough. Having that connection, not feeling alone, and not feeling like I’m the only one doing this. It was powerful, but equally heartbreaking. Actually across the world, this is something that is happening to women after experiencing something like that.

Anne: I think it brings it home that it’s not about us. To see that so many women have been exploited in that way, manipulated in that way, is so heartbreaking to realize how systemic it is.

Shelly: Yeah, my partner, I remember having a conversation with him. “I cannot understand how you could look into my eyes at the end of the day, knowing that you’d done that.” He said, “I just thought, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

Keeping secrets is the root of the pain in between. The damage that’s caused in a relationship, not having transparency.

Secrecy is Abuse: how to Recover after Being Cheated On

Shelly: That as soon as you’re doing something that you know will hurt your partner, you’re already hurting them.

Anne: Right.

Shelly: Whether they know it or not.

Anne: And just the absolute lack of understanding that not giving your partner a choice. Using deceit is abuse. It’s control, it’s harmful, and you’re already hurting her if you are not giving her a choice in her own life.

Shelly: Exactly, I did not know who I was with. I had the image of who I thought he was. Who he was saying he was. I did not know the person I was with, and I didn’t have free choice in that.

Anne: Exactly, and for any man to think that sounds okay is horrifying. I guess there could be women who feel this way, but I don’t know of any woman at BTR who would feel comfortable, thinking her husband didn’t know. Unless it was for her own safety, saving some money, as in classic domestic abuse escape strategies. Women in general who are victims of abuse, before they understand they are, would feel bad, thinking their husband didn’t know something he needed to know.

I think that’s why it’s just so incomprehensible to us that somebody would’ve made these choices for us and completely disrespected us in this way.

Shelly: It’s dishonoring someone’s soul that you’re professing to love. That is not love. It’s dishonoring me. Betraying me. There were lies about other things. There were lies about money. It’s not honoring the person you love. And I can’t consolidate those two things in my head, or in my heart and that was a part of learning how to recover after being cheated on.

My mind is still on high alert

Shelly: Because if I love someone, then I’m gonna honor them by not doing things that hurt them. I won’t do that.

Anne: I’m so sorry about everything you’re going through. The time you’re in right now is so difficult, trying to sort out what to do next. And learn how to recover after being cheated on.

Shelly: Yeah, I’m still on high alert a lot of the time, which is exhausting. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. And I’d rid myself of constant pain and fatigue, and lived my life in a happy space. So since all this came out, all the symptoms of Fibromyalgia flared back up again. If anything else came to light, that would be it. I couldn’t physically do it or emotionally stay within the relationship. Because I have nothing more that I can possibly give beyond what I’ve already given, beyond what I’m giving now. I can’t just relax.

Anne: That’s absolutely understandable.

Shelly: It’s logical, isn’t it? If someone can spend so many years lying to you. There’s always a chance they’re going to do that again. I still am not in a place where I can say I fully trust him. My mind is still trying to protect me, questioning, why won’t my husband fight for our marriage? I’m still on high alert, and I don’t know however long it takes or what that’s gonna look like to heal.

Anne: I’m interested in seeing what you think of Living Free, because the intent was to help women feel they don’t have to work so hard. ‘Cause I’m hearing that in your voice. This exhaustion, of the process of seeing if he’s gonna make the right decisions.

The Living Free Workshop is intended to reduce women’s burden

Anne: So the Living Free Workshop is intended to reduce that burden. And help women observe, so that the burden is all on him and not on us.

Shelly: I definitely feel it. I’m definitely carrying it.

Anne: So the strategy of Living Free is learning to give ourselves enough space. So that we can live our lives, be peaceful, happy and observe. It teaches how to recover after being cheated on. And not carry the weight of it. If you want to come back and share your feedback.

Shelly: I very much would like to do that.

Anne: I will tell you a little bit about it. So it doesn’t overwhelm you.

The workbook comes with it. You can print it, I recommend women buy it on Amazon.

I wanted to see the two page spread layout. Which you don’t get to see if you print it on your own printer. But anyway, the Living Free Workshop is 55 lessons. They’re very short videos. Most of them are three minutes, and the shortest one is 30 seconds. So it’s tiny three minute increments to process it. The longest video is six minutes long. There’s only one that’s that long. There’s a question underneath, and if you don’t wanna answer it, you can just push an X and push enter and go to the next thing.

If you don’t wanna fill out the workbook, you don’t have to fill out the workbook, but it is good to have it in front of you, sitting there, so at least you can see what I’m talking about. So even if you’re not gonna fill it out, just having it in front of you helps.

Meditations help regulate your nervous system and show how to recover after being cheated on

Anne: I have a master’s degree in education. I set it up like that. So women have time to process how to recover after being cheated on in between each one. Especially with the self-esteem issues, to remove the manipulation and negative things that we’ve absorbed through their abuse and replace it with truth. Like, you’re beautiful, you’re capable.

Right now might be a great time for the Meditations to regulate your nervous system to help you feel more peaceful and centered. That’s what the Meditations do to help women who, like a lot of women, can’t sleep. They can’t stop thinking about it, that sort of thing. So to help get all that out. I wrote them for myself. Because talking about stuff at some point wasn’t that helpful for me. I talked about it so much.

So I wrote those meditations to help me, so that I could get all the stuff out without having to talk about it. ‘Cause I talk about this all day long, every single day, and I have for 10 years. So there had to have been something different for me. I’d say if you do the Meditations and then schedule the next interview, that way it can give you some time to think about, did it help?

Shelly: Yeah, definitely. You need to get this stuff out. That’s important. But I also think there is a point in your post traumatic growth where you have to go inward. Going in is also an important part of the healing process too. So yeah, I appreciate the access to those. It’s been crazy, it feels divine.

Anne: Totally. Thank you so much and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Shelly: Yeah, thank you so much.