Transcript:
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If you just found out your spouse cheated on you, you may be wondering what do I do? If, so, if you're asking a question like that, I'm really sorry that you're in that place. That is a terrible place to be. I've had clients in the past, tell me they would rather go back to Iraq again, get shot at I've had clients tell me that they would rather find out they have cancer again and find out their spouse had cheated on them.
And so you, so I'm really sorry you're in that spot. It's a very devastating place to be in. It is a nightmare scenario. So I'm really sorry if you're in the spot where your spouse is cheating on you, and you're wondering, what should I do? And I want to give you three pieces of advice to share with you in a second. But if you're in that place, you may be feeling things like hyper-vigilance, you may not be able to think of anything else you may have.
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If you do fall asleep, you may have difficulty falling asleep. And if you do fall asleep, you may have nightmares. You, you may be really obsessed about this. We have a lot of questions.
Why did this happen? You may have lost faith in other people. You may have just totally felt not only betrayed by your spouse, but lost faith in other people, you may feel helpless to do anything for your situation.
Usually when something like this happens a traumatic situation, like this happens, somebody who's been betrayed can have, and I'm not diagnosing you through this video, but people can have symptoms of PTSD where they start to feel like the world is dangerous and are not, and they are not enough to handle it.
They don't know what to do to help themselves. And they feel crazy for still loving their spouse.
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But we know that trust is lost in an instant, but we don't quit loving our spouse that instant. And so so if you're in, you're in this place, and you're wondering that you're asking that kind of question, what should I do? My spouse has cheated on me. You probably are feeling things like that.
You probably discovered the affair through a text message getting on their phone and just looking up something that they ask you to look for. And you find a text message or a notification from their affair partner.
Maybe you've been contacted by the affair partner or the affair partner, spouse, maybe a complete stranger contacted you anonymously. And you thought it was a really cruel joke, but it turns out it was true. Maybe you witnessed certain things that nobody should ever witnessed or see between them.
There's different ways that people find out about the affair and those are common ways. And those create heartbreak. They destroy us. They're traumatizing. So if your spouse has cheated on you they may be in a place where they want to repair it. They may be in a place where they want to repair, but they're resentful and not remorseful.
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And they may be in a place where they don't want to repair it and they're maybe resentful and they want to go be with the affair partner, or maybe they want to go be with the affair partner. And they're not resentful. I'm not angry with you, but they're just done and they want to move on. That's a heartbreaking place to be in, but I want to give you a few pieces of advice.
First of all, there's always hope in these situations, situations like this are a nightmare and there is a lot of help out there that you can get help with. And so the first piece of advice I would give you is going to be the obvious piece of advice. Go to marriage counseling, go get professional, help.
Do workshops, learn about this, learn as much as you can, because this is not hopeless. You can do this.
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The next piece of advice I would give you may not be as obvious, but I would not make any major life decisions right now. I would wait at least a few months, at least 12 weeks before deciding if you're in or out on your marriage right now, you may feel totally in right now.
You may feel totally out and that's okay, no matter how you feel, that's fine, but we don't want to make major life decisions right now in the, in the emotional state that we're in, we have been handed more, probably some of the worst news of our whole lives about what's happened.
What we don't want to make any big decisions right now, because we're going to end up living with those decisions. Later, we may switch jobs. You may move, we may file for divorce. We may tell the kids those all may be things that we're tempted to do, but I would not make any major decisions right now.
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And so do couples therapy go to workshops, work on yourself but don't make any major decisions right now. I also would not tell the kids right now. I know that may be easy to do for your young, maybe really hard to do. If you're older and you kind of lean on them for emotional support, as you get older, I would not tell your kids.
Part of that is, is they're going to end up feeling some of the same things that you're feeling you're going to also feel betrayed. They're also going to feel hurt. But so personally, I would try to show my shoulder from that. Another piece of advice is I would be careful. What kind of questions you ask? Everybody always wonders.
Why, why did this happen? Why did you do this? That's a legitimate question. You know, how did you do it? Why did you do it? When did you do it? Where did you do it at? Who did you do it with? Those are all legitimate questions.
Questions I would stay away from though are really questions that tend to be more sexual in nature. It's okay to ask, did you guys have sex? But I would really try to stay away from sexual details. You wanna get away from comparisons. You don't want to go open that can of worms. If you do, and you've already asked sexual
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For sexual details, that's okay. And there's things that we can do. There's trauma therapy. That's helpful that we can do to help work through that. But if you haven't gotten there yet, I personally would advise against that.
So the piece of advice I would give you is there's always hope the situation like this, work on yourself, work on your marriage, and really try to avoid making any major life decisions right now. Some of these life decisions may be thrown into your lap.
Maybe you're finding out the moment they're telling you, they're divorcing you is also the moment you're finding out about the affair. So that's kind of obviously thrown into your lap, but you want to really avoid making long-term decisions and you want to be careful. What kind of questions you ask?
It's also okay. To ask for them to get tested for STDs, as horrible as that is to be in that position. It's okay to ask for that. So those are, those are some, just a few things I would think about when you first find out about an affair.
Hopefully this is helpful. If you like this video, please like down below, leave us a comment and subscribe for more videos.
