Getting over being cheated on and lied to is not an easy task. It demands emotional support, understanding, patience, time, and tons of effort and commitment to healing.
The stronger your emotional attachment and the greater your relationship aspirations at the time of cheating were, the more challenging and prolonged the process of accepting betrayal and moving on will be.
If this was a normal breakup and your ex left because things weren’t working, you wouldn’t feel so hurt and easy to replace. You’d understand your ex lost feelings and wanted to be alone, but you wouldn’t question your worth, compare yourself to another person, and wonder if you ever even knew your ex.
Betrayal heightens your anxiety, makes you think poorly of yourself, obsesses you with your ex for the wrong reasons, and forces you to look for explanations and solutions in places where there aren’t any.
It makes you think you’re the problem when in reality, the cheater/dumper is solely responsible for caving into temptations and hiding the truth.
If you got cheated on and lied to, you need to understand that many cheaters and dumpers are afraid of telling the truth. They know they messed up big time, but because they’re immoral cowards who prioritize themselves over their partner’s or ex-partner’s feelings and right to know the truth, they lie, make excuses, gaslight, and pretend everything’s fine.
They either hide they cheated or justify their cheating to their victim, themselves, or their new partner by saying their ex wasn’t a good partner, that they weren’t happy, and that they deserve to be happy with someone who understands them and loves them the way they want to be loved.
Cheaters cheat and lie not because their partners put a gun to their heads and force them to be selfish but because they lack morals, empathy, gratitude, and self-control.
They think the world revolves around them and that they should live in the moment. Such a conviction makes them say yes to new romantic or sexual opportunities even though they’re already in a committed relationship and know cheating is wrong.
Every cheater and liar is well aware of what he or she is doing. Cheating and lying may be habitual, but they still know what they’re about to do and that they could stop it in time if they wanted to. The problem is that cheaters don’t want to avoid cheating.
They’re validated by people who like them and feel tempted to feel even closer and more fulfilled by them. That’s why they ignore the need to do the right thing and say “What the heck?” They go YOLO and do what feels right in the moment.
Oftentimes, guilt and worries kick in only after they’ve done the deed. They feel no or very little remorse while they’re still getting to know another person, bonding, and emotionally cheating.
When they cheat physically and feel bad, they may:
- avoid their partner
- pretend they’re busy
- lie about their whereabouts
- pay attention to their partner all of a sudden
- bring up relationship goals and important topics
- appear unreceptive, different, and strange
- try to break up or get broken up with
Sadly, some cheaters determine that fixing a relationship after infidelity would take too much time and effort and that it’ll be easier to start a new relationship with someone new.
And they’re right; it’s indeed easier to throw a broken relationship away than it is to be honest and rebuild trust and respect.
Once trust and respect are lost, it can take months or years for the relationship to return to how it was before cheating. And even then, it may never fully recover. The relationship may lose its innocence and continue to be haunted by memories of betrayal.
Disloyalties often cause trust issues and psychological trauma. They hurt cheatees so badly that they need professional help and/or months to accept and fully process the cheating.
Cheaters seldom understand or care about the effects their immoral actions have on the cheatee. They aren’t the ones who got cheated on, so they have no idea what cheating feels like. All they know is that they messed up and that the relationship may never be the same again.
If you want to get over someone you were cheated on and had feelings for, you need to know that it will take some time. I can’t say how much time you’ll need to fully recover, but if you’re expecting to get over a cheating liar in a week or two, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
That’s because you’re setting unrealistic expectations for yourself that will likely hurt you immensely.
If you’ve been cheated on, lied to, manipulated, or dumped, it’s important not to impose timelines on your healing process. Timelines will likely lead to further disappointment and distress; especially if you have a hard time loving yourself.
Instead of telling yourself to be over the cheater/liar by a certain date, allow yourself to grieve the relationship and take as long as you need. Healing won’t be linear. It will have both progress and setbacks, depending on unpredictable factors.
Also, don’t compare yourself to others. Your friends may have gotten over cheating quickly, but you’re not them. Your situation is different and will take as long as it takes. You must give it time and remain patient through all the ups and downs.
In today’s article, I’ll talk about how to get over being cheated on and lied to. I’ll share tips that helped me and other cheatees and dumpees deal with betrayal and pain.
How to get over being cheated on and lied to?
If you’re done with your ex and want to get rid of the pain he or she has caused, the best way to do that is to cut your ex out of your life. Tell your ex you don’t want to stay in touch or get back together and wish him or her the best of luck.
You’ll heal much quicker if you push your ex out of sight. That’s because you won’t constantly know what your ex is up to, think about your ex’s betrayal, fight for your ex’s recognition, and wonder what getting back together would look and feel like.
You’ll instead work on breaking your obsession with your ex, detaching from your ex, and letting go of the future you’d envisioned as a couple.
Getting over a person who cheated on you once or multiple times will take lots of time, patience, and blind faith. It will test your breakup knowledge, self-love, self-control, and ability to self-prioritize and move on from an ex who did you dirty.
There’s no quick fix or one-step solution to dealing with cheating and lies. Anxiety, rejection pain, wrecked self-esteem, depression, and other post-cheating emotions all require time and multiple steps to heal.
They require you to know that there’s no magic cure for overcoming cheating and that you’ll have to go through the cheating stages during which you’ll learn to value yourself and develop self-defense mechanisms.
The stages you’ll go through on your journey to recovery will likely unfold in the following order:
- denial
- depression
- anger
- acceptance
- recovery
How the cheating and the breakup affect you will depend on what you do after you’ve stopped interacting with your ex. If you stay in bed all day/every day, you’ll have a lot of time on your hands to ruminate about your ex’s immoral behavior and your value to your ex.
You’ll force yourself to engage in unproductive and completely unnecessary thinking. It’s much better that you speak to some other person about your thoughts and feelings. Rather than keeping your problems to yourself, open up to someone who listens and cares.
He or she will allow you to vent and help you understand that you’re not responsible for getting cheated on. You may not have been the most considerate partner, but you certainly didn’t push your ex to cheat and lie.
If your ex wasn’t happy with you, he or she should have communicated it to you and looked for solutions together or alone. If solutions couldn’t be found, your ex should have then left, focused on himself or herself for a while, and then gotten involved with someone else.
It was beyond disrespectful to cheat and ruin your self-esteem and plans for the relationship.
So remember, your ex had plenty of chances to express his or her concerns and deal with temptations. But because your ex stayed on autopilot and refused to take any actions, your ex eventually crossed the boundaries with the new person and cheated on you with him or her.
It doesn’t matter whether it was a fling that meant nothing. If your ex cheated, he or she disregarded your commitment, effort, and feelings. He or she took you for granted when a better (albeit temporary) romantic or sexual option presented itself.
Simply put, your ex lacked the will to reject temptations and work harder on restoring or improving the bond with you.
You need to remember this when you feel hurt. Focus on your ex’s betrayal rather than the nice things he or she did for you as your partner. The past no longer matters and can’t help you get over betrayal and lies.
It can only make you doubt yourself and the decisions you took as a result of the betrayal.
So move past the experience of being cheated on and lied to by accepting your ex for who he or she truly is. Write down your ex’s mistakes and acknowledge his or her imperfections. This will help you see that your cheating and lying ex is not as special as you think and that you can do better.
Right now, it’s too soon to date (you’ll likely rebound and miss your ex), but eventually, you’ll recover mentally and feel disgusted by people who cheated in the past and can’t be fully trusted.
With that said, here’s how to get over being cheated on and lied to.
How to stay together and get over being cheated on and lied to?
If you want to be with your partner and put the cheating behind you, practice acceptance and forgiveness. Work on trusting each other by improving communication, gratitude, and triggers and stopping contact with people you don’t feel comfortable with.
Make sure you’re completely transparent and willing to do what you need to feel secure and capable of trusting again.
Trust can be rebuilt after it’s been lost. But to rebuild it, both parties must put effort into the damaged relationship and give each other no reasons to become doubtful, bitter, and vengeful.
As a cheatee who’s willing to give the relationship another shot, you must face your insecurities head-on and learn to relax around your partner. By all means, talk about your feelings when you feel hurt, anxious, and scared.
It’s important to share your feelings with the person you love.
But don’t hold on to the past, call your partner names, and expect him or her to tolerate abuse and low self-esteem behavior. If you portray yourself as a weak, insecure, controlling, and angry individual, your partner will likely struggle to connect with you and feel tempted to leave or cheat again.
This is because he or she will feel that you’re extremely difficult to work with and that your happiness depends on his or her affection and validation.
If you feel super hurt and anxious, do your best not to overwhelm your partner with your insecurities. Confide in someone else who can help you accept the past and deal with difficult emotions. Someone like a therapist or an empathetic friend or family member might be able to help you with that.
Your top priorities are rebuilding trust and love, improving relationship standards, and doing your best not to develop long-term trust issues. As for your partner, he or she must improve moral values, self-awareness, gratitude, and self-control.
Your partner must want to do better the next time he or she encounters an opportunity to connect outside of the relationship and cheat.
A relationship (regardless of the problems a couple faces) requires constant work. If one loses track of its significance and fails to re-invest in it, problems, doubts, temptations, and fears could damage the bond and cause a painful separation.
You must both strive to be better partners and understand what’s at stake. Failure to grow from cheating could result in more pain and suffering in the future.
How I handled and should have handled betrayal
When my ex cheated on me, I didn’t know what to say or do. Rationally, I knew she didn’t deserve another chance. But because I was hurt, attached, and deprived of validation and love, I chose to be with her anyway.
I gave her another chance and expected her to prove her commitment and willingness to grow.
Sadly, she didn’t show any improvement. Instead of sympathizing with me and supporting me when I expressed pain, she said things like “Get over it already” and made me feel even worse.
I get that she felt guilty and didn’t want to be reminded of her cheating, but that wasn’t the right way to handle it. If she truly regretted cheating and cared about my feelings, she would have empathized and done whatever it took to make me trust her again.
But instead, she lied and blamed her unhappiness for what she did.
In retrospect, the only reason I stayed with her was because I didn’t love myself. I was young and foolish at the time and should have realized she had no intention of growing and sympathizingwith me.
Had I possessed the knowledge and experience I have now, I would have taken her seriously when she revealed her true personality.
I would have respected myself and left her on the spot. By doing so, I would have saved myself both time and effort.
My ex probably wouldn’t have shed a tear over it, but that’s okay. It was no longer about her. It was about me and what I needed to love myself.
All in all, getting over betrayal and lies was incredibly difficult. I didn’t feel supported by my ex, nor seek support from people around me. For the most part, I suffered alone and needed a few months to stop obsessing over it and being able to trust again.
It could take you longer or shorter. No matter how long it takes, I encourage you to figure out if your partner is truly remorseful and wants to help you get through betrayal.
If he or she does, and you’re willing to trust and love as if you didn’t get betrayed, focus on self-improvement and bonding. But if you can’t or don’t want to be with your partner or ex-partner anymore, start no contact.
It will help you detach and get your happy self back.
Are you still wondering how to get over being cheated on and lied to? What measures are you prepared to take to overcome this challenge? Post your thoughts in the comments section below.
And if you’re looking for personal guidance on how to deal with betrayal, check out our coaching services and get in touch.
