How To Heal After You Cheated

Welcome. I'm Connor Beaton and this is the mantalks show, Training for men and Answers for women. Now, a lot of you have been asking lately about how to deal with infidelity. And one of the specific things that has come up recently, I've been getting a lot of questions online about how to heal after infidelity, specifically as the person who was responsible for the infidelity, or more specifically, the person who did the act of infidelity, the person who cheated. So on this episode we're going to talk about how to heal after you have cheated. I'm going to do a separate episode of how to heal after you've been cheated on. Because those are often two very different things. And I think it's just important to note before I dive into this, what I'm going to talk about are personal experiences. I have been on both sides of the spectrum. I have been someone who has had infidelity happen to me and I have been on the other side where I have been the one who caused infidelity and neither feel great. I think there's a very big misconception in our world. We hear a lot of slogans and sayings around cheating and infidelity. Cheaters always, once a cheater, always a cheater. Now you can never recover after infidelity, all that other kind of stuff. But having worked in this field now for quite a few years, I know a lot of couples who have recovered from infidelity who have allowed infidelity to strengthen the bond of their relationship. And so just before I dive into how to heal after you have cheated, I just want to take a moment to talk a little bit about why infidelity happens. And obviously this is a very sensitive subject. And so I just want to note I'm not going to hit everything right. I'm not going to be able to touch on every single aspect of infidelity. And nor do I hope to do that. This is a, it's a mini episode. I, you know, I'm going to condense this down into 10 to 15 minutes of very focused information. But what I do want to talk about is that infidelity happens for a reason. And it often happens because we have unhealed patterns from our past that, that show up in present day relationships. They often happen because we have wounds that we have in some way eroticized from our childhood. And just to sort of pause on that one because that one might sound a little bit obscure. One of the things that has become so present in the work that I have done with men, with women, with couples over the last few years, the work that I do individually with them and the work that my wife, Vienna and I do with couples. One of the things that has become so transparent is that we carry pain from our past, from our childhood. Pain of feeling neglected by our father, pain of feeling like we grew up with an overbearing mother who was controlling. Pain of feeling like we were abandoned in some way or abused emotionally, verbally, mentally, physically, sexually. And when those things aren't healed through properly, when those things aren't addressed in a way where we are able to contextualize why they happen to us, to release the pain or the anger or the grief or the sadness that we've carried around and to really integrate, and this is the really important word, to integrate those experiences from our past into our current day version of ourself, current day identity, they will inevitably show back up and cause havoc in our relationship. So oftentimes why infidelity happens between us and our partner is because some of those old wounds from our past, from our family system, from past relationships, from, you know, high school bullying, or a girlfriend or a boyfriend in college who was just, you know, a complete disaster and maybe took out their pain on us and we took part in that. Those things catch up to us. And one of the major reasons why infidelity happens is because there are desires that one or both people have that do not get spoken fully into the relationship. So, for example, I have worked with numerous couples where their sexual connection and the type of sex that they had in their relationship relationship was rewarding, but for one person was missing what they truly wanted to experience and explore within the context of the sexual intimacy in the relationship. Maybe that person who wanted to explore those things brought them forward at some point and they were rejected or they were shut down, or the other person laughed and they felt embarrassed. And because of that, they shut off or shut down that part of their sexual desires and drive and didn't think about it. And maybe some resentment built, maybe some anger built towards it. Maybe there was a part of their mind or psyche that started to ruminate around this idea of, well, if I'm not going to get it here, where might I be able to get it from? And part of the issue is that a lot of people find themselves in long term loving relationships that, that they are committed to, that they are wanting to be monogamous in, but they aren't willing to feel the discomfort of having uncomfortable conversations to get their needs met or to realize that maybe this Isn't the relational dynamic that they are ever going to get their needs met in? And that's a really important distinction, right? How we know when whether or not we are going to get our needs met in a relationship is by bringing them forward. Not in a way that's overbearing, not in a way that is going to continue to harp on our partner or shame them or cause them to continually shut down or run away, but rather to bring them forward in a way where our partner can hear us and to decide whether or not that's something that we both want to explore in the relationship. So there's a number of reasons for why infidelity happens, but. But one of the main ones is that two people have not brought their authentic desires, wants and needs forward in the relationship on the level of communication or boundaries, emotional connection or sexual exploration. And so wherever you are, whatever your relationship dynamic you're in, what I want you to really think about is, are you bringing your authentic wants and needs and desires forward in the relationship? Or what are you hiding? What parts of yourself, what parts of your sexuality, of your sexual desires specifically, are you hiding from your partner? What parts of you do you feel ashamed at the idea of bringing forward? All of this, all of these pieces, all the answers to these questions will give you insight, deep insight into the parts of yourself that you generally withhold from your partner or have withheld from past relationships. So just dig into that. Let that merit in the background. You might want to write that down so you can revisit it or maybe think about it after. It could be a good journaling prompt for you to dive into tomorrow or the next day. But let's just talk about how to heal after you cheated so really quickly. Infidelity was something that I struggled with for quite a while, and there's many reasons for it. And I'm not gonna unpack the totality of why it happened. But what I will say is that for me, I was sort of like your average guy in high school. I wasn't very good at academics. I was okay at sports. I played hockey, but I wasn't necessarily super gifted. And there was this turning point in high school and after where. Where I realized that I got a lot of attention from women. And it was in that moment, in those moments that I got a lot of attention from women that I started to feel like I had some form of.

Area that I could be more than good in. And so when I started having sexual experiences and I started to have relationships with women where sex was Involved, I committed myself to really diving in and sort of being quote, unquote, good at sex, understanding what women wanted, how they felt desired, how to please them, and really spent a lot of time in that area because I started to get a lot of validation from it. And it was a really slippery slope. Because what I found that over time started to happen was that I invested more time into sex than almost anything else. And it became one of the main places that I would get validation and one of the main places that I felt like I was powerful. One of the main areas that I felt like I was good at, and not just good, but I felt like I had found an area that really lit me up. And over the years, what I've noticed for a lot of men, especially a lot of men who have made been unfaithful, is that usually it's one end of the spectrum. Now, this isn't always the case, it's a generalization for sure. But for a lot of the men that I've worked with that have gone through infidelity, it's either that they have not ever really had the chance to sexually explore, and they feel sort of trapped or confined or restricted in their relationship that they're in. And so they seek that sexual attention outside of the relationship through escorts or prostitutes or online dating or some form porn or cam models or whatever that it is. Or it's the other end of the spectrum where a man has felt like he's lacked a sense of purpose and direction, that he's lacked a sense of really being sort of incredible at something in his life, that he hasn't necessarily been very proficient at something. And along comes sex, something that he really enjoys, something that he really loves. And he starts to invest a lot of time and effort and energy and into becoming what he believes is great at sex. And a lot of his self worth, a lot of his validation gets attached to his ability to perform sexually, his ability to pick up women, and more specifically his ability to have women desire him. That's really the game, right? The game for a lot of those guys. The game for me especially just to talk from my personal experience, was that I really just wanted to women to desire me. Because when I knew and I felt that a woman desired me, I knew that I had won the game. And for me, that was incredibly rewarding. It fueled my ego, it fueled this part of me that felt like I had this narrative for a long time that I wasn't good at anything, that I was sort of average at most things. But here was this thing that I felt like I was really good at. And so that led to me being unfaithful in, in numerous, numerous relationships. And it took me a long time to unpack and sort of peel back the layers of why I had been unfaithful. But it really did come from this place of feeling lonely, feeling like I wasn't very good at many things, feeling like most of my self worth and validation was attached to my ability to perform sexually and my ability to get women to desire me either emotionally or physically in some way, shape or form. So after I was unfaithful and had been obviously that caught and found out from my infidelities, there was a lot of work that I did to repair after infidelity. And so here are some of the lessons that I learned from after being unfaithful and repairing and healing through that process. So here we go. Number one is before you try and fix or heal the relationship, seriously consider if this is what you want. Really take some time to sit with. Is this the relationship that I want to invest in? Because the reality is that even if you do want to repair the relationship, two things. One, the other person might not want to, and two, even if they do, it is a long path, right? It's not an easy quick fix where you're just going to atone for.

Your sins or atone for your wrongdoing, and both parties are going to forgive and move on, right? Some people after infidelity will try to repair a relationship out of guilt, and some people because they feel an immense amount of shame after they have cheated. Again, we're talking about the person who has cheated here, healing as the person who has cheated. Some people will be in that space and they will want to repair the relationship out of the shame or out of the guilt, rather than owning that they cheated as a way out of the relationship. Repairing a relationship or a marriage after infidelity can absolutely make it stronger. And there's an immense amount of research to back that up. But only if you are committed to that decision, only if you're committed to that path. And both people have to be committed. So as the person that has cheated, that has been unfaithful, really take some time while you are healing, while this has been going on to decide whether or not you really want to be in that relationship to repair it, and whether you want to invest the time and the energy into repairing it, it can make it incredibly strong after that. Sex life can improve communication, can improve, emotional connection, can improve all of those Things are possible, but it has to be something that you really, really want. It has to be something that is unwavering in many ways. Number two is find your why. Understand why you were unfaithful. Don't let the answer simply be, I was unfaithful because I was unhappy in the relationship. That's a cop out. That is almost always a cop out. And I can almost guarantee you that if that is the answer of I was unhappy in the relationship, or it's because he wasn't good to me, or it was because she didn't have sex with me when I wanted, or she didn't have the same sexual drive with me that I have, those are surface level reasons and excuses for why the infidelity happened. Dig into the deeper reasons of why you pursued infidelity and what caused you to go down that direction. Infidelity. And I know this is going to sound maybe hard to hear for certain people that are listening to this, but infidelity can be the most revolutionary and revealing processes that we go through. Now, that's not an invitation to go out and be unfaithful. It's not an invitation to go cheat. But it is just a recognition that almost always we are unfaithful because of something really deep in our psyche that has been going on, that has been present for maybe a long time that we don't know about ourselves. And it can be the opportunity for us to really understand ourselves at a deep level. Number three, Weather the storms. So as the person that has been unfaithful, as the person who has cheated, there are going to be moments where you feel like shit. There's going to be moments where you feel like giving up. There's going to be moments where it feels hopeless. There's going to be moments where your partner's sadness or anger or pain and hurt is so hard to witness. It's so hard to see, that it's hard that it's very challenging to sit in that space. So know that regardless of what you choose, whether you choose to stay in the relationship and work on it and heal through it, or whether you choose to let go of it, you are going to face a storm and it's going to come in waves. And some days you're going to feel like you have overcome it, and other days you're going to feel like it has overcome you and has completely just washed over you. So know that that's okay. Know that that's normal, and know that you're not alone in that experience. Number four, is integrate the lessons. Was there something missing from the relationship? Were you acting out childhood patterns? Were you trying to understand someone? Were you rebelling against someone? Were you rebelling against your own familiar upbringing? Were you rebelling against the religious narratives that you grew up around? Were you rebelling against your own sexual shame? Understand the lessons of what led you to the infidelity in the first place. And number five, what does your partner need?

Some will want absolute, brutal, transparent honesty. They'll want all the details. They'll want you to go into the depth of explaining why it happened and when it happened and with who it happened and when the text messages came through and where you were sitting when you got the tickets. Text message. And they'll want the whole thing, while others will only want you to know your why. And your job is to work through it with them. Your job is to, as best as you can, hold onto the understanding that you have to do the work of sitting with your own pain, sitting with your own hurt while sitting with your partners or your former partners, and being able to hear and provide as best as you can what it is that they're asking for. And lastly, I would just say find a moderator. Find someone to mediate these conversations. It is so hard to go through infidelity, to go through unfaithfulness in a reparative and a restorative way if you don't have someone to navigate those conversations with you. And there are great, amazing people that are out there. There's people like Vienna, my wife at mindfulmft, that you can follow along with. There's people like myself that have been through this and guided countless people through it in a very healing and integrative way. There are people like Mark Groves that create the love, that do this type of work and that have people that work with him, that do this type of work. There are an immense amount of people. There's local therapists, local psychologists and couples counselors and therapists. But what I would just want to really hammer home is this repairing process is going to require you to do probably the opposite of what you want, which is to turtle, which is to hide from people. I know after my complete breakdown, and I've talked about this before, I lived out of my car for two or three weeks because I had so much shame and my ego was so big that I didn't want people to know. I didn't want to own my own pitfalls, my shortcomings and the fact that I had lied and I had been unfaithful and so the tendency in this space as the one who has cheated is to shut down even more, is to isolate even more. And my challenge and my invitation for you as the person that maybe has been unfaithful in the past or the person that has been unfaithful recently, is to connect as much as you can with the people that you love, with the people that you know love you, with the people who are going to support you and hold you accountable, and for the people that will be understanding but won't let you continue to get away with your own bullshit. Because those people that you are surrounding yourself with want the best for you. And hopefully they are challenging you and pushing you in a loving way to remind you to stay connected, to stay in the feelings, right? Because you got to feel it, to heal it. You can't move through infidelity without feeling the discomfort internally, without feeling some of those emotions. So that's what I have for you today. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. If you know someone that has struggled with infidelity or who you feel maybe is going down that path, a friend or a family member, definitely send them this episode. It can be incredibly revealing and supportive for a person to hear this information. It might just liberate them to be able to have a conversation about it. It might open up a dialogue with a partner about the type of sexual intimacy that you would like to have. It might open up a dialogue with your partner about how they healed through their past infidelities or how they haven't healed through those past infidelities. And that's okay too. So definitely listen to this with your partner. Maybe listen to it with a friend. Don't forget to man it forward and share it with one person. And please leave us a rating review. I just want to say again, thank you to everyone. We are well over a million downloads and we capped 70,000 downloads in the last 30 days, which is just absolutely incredible. So I appreciate the fact the community is growing. I appreciate all of you sharing these episodes on Instagram and through Facebook and through your social media platforms. And if you love this, if you love this episode, please do share it and feel free to reach out to me at man Talks and let me know what other topics you want me to dive into. Until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.