Non-Judgmental Advice for People Engaging in Infidelity — Part 1
Hello readers! I’m a relationship coach and I specialize in helping people who are engaging in infidelity deal with complicated feelings, clarify what they want, and make decisions they feel good about. Often, I work with people who are pretty conflicted about cheating. This five-part series contains advice, questions, and exercises designed to help you cut through confusion and start to find some clarity.
Important side note: I am not trying to imply that if you’re cheating, you should feel conflicted about it. Plenty of people cheat and feel fine about it — or better than fine. (For fascinating insights into how some folks make cheating work for them, without too much internal conflict, check out this and this episode of my podcast.)
But many people who are cheating don’t feel fine about it — or not entirely, anyway. Engaging in infidelity can generate a lot of really intense emotions! Some of them may feel great — like excitement and desire and lust and love and connection and fun and all of that good stuff. And… sometimes cheating is stressful and overwhelming and confusing and riddled with feelings like guilt and shame and fear.
When we’re overwhelmed by a lot of intense (and potentially conflicting) emotions, it can be pretty hard to think straight. So the guidance and exercises within this series is designed to help you deal with the emotions, approach your situation from a new perspective, and start to decide what changes you might want to make. Let’s look at your infidelity situation as a puzzle that can be solved, rather than as a big bad problem that has to be fixed.
STEP ONE: NOTICE THAT IN THIS MOMENT, YOU ARE SAFE
The very first thing I want you to do is take a nice deep breath. Really, do it! Take a nice full inhale, then a long slow exhale. And then notice yourself sitting in your chair, if you are in fact sitting. Notice the connection between your seat and your seat. Maybe sit up a little taller, or stand taller if you’re standing. Notice the force of gravity having its way with you. Take another conscious, full breath. And notice that in this moment, you are safe. At least you probably are, if you’re reading this article and not running from a pack of hyenas. Notice that even if you have a lot of challenging stuff going on in your life right now, for this moment at least, you’re okay.
STEP TWO: TELL YOUR INFIDELITY STORY
The next thing I want you to do is tell the story of your affair, or your infidelity situation. And I’d like you to write this down if at all possible. You can use pen and paper, or type it out, and you can always delete or shred the document later if you need to, but there is great value in getting your thoughts out of your head and onto some external medium, so if you CAN do this exercise in writing, please do.
Write down the story of your affair, or your infidelities. How did it begin? Who is involved? How long has it been going on? What are the important details of the situation? Imagine that you were describing the whole thing to someone who knows nothing about the affair, but is completely interested in learning all about it, and won’t judge you for any of it. If you like, you can imagine you’re writing me a letter or sending me an email.
Get clear on the facts
Once you’ve finished writing down the whole story, I want you to see if you can identify the FACTS of your situation. What would any neutral observer of your situation agree is true?
Here’s why it’s important to do this: humans are meaning-making creatures, and we experience the world through the lens of our own perception. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but quite often we believe that our perceptions equal reality, and that is not always the case. If we don’t slow down enough to differentiate between our perceptions of a situation and what is undeniably happening in that situation, we may take actions that don’t really serve our best interests or anyone else’s.
So for example, let’s say you are married, and you have been romantically and sexually involved with another person for the past three months. You really, really like this other person, and you’re pretty sure you’d like to end your marriage and continue your relationship with your affair partner, but you’re terrified that if you ask your spouse for a divorce they will make your life a living hell in more ways than you care to count.
If that’s the story, there are some facts in there. You are married, and you are also having a relationship with another person. But the idea that your spouse will divorce you and make your life a living hell if they find out what you’re up to is not a fact. It might be a possibility, but it’s not a fact.
Allow yourself to state your concerns
It’s totally legitimate to have concerns about what might happen in the future, but it’s important to distinguish between them and the facts of your current situation. Your concerns about the future might bear out — but they also might not. And even if they do, you have the capacity to handle whatever comes your way.
So take a step back from your story, and distinguish between the facts of your situation and your concerns about your situation. And if you have a lot of concerns about your situation, go ahead and list them all. Just getting them out of your head and onto some external medium is really valuable.
Take action only if you must…
After you’ve written all of this down, ask yourself if there is anything you absolutely must do TODAY to address your infidelity situation. And when I say must, I really mean “must.”
For example, let’s say you just accidentally forwarded an email from your affair partner to your spouse. Yikes, right? You know your spouse is going to see the email soon, you know the message you accidentally sent is totally going to incriminate you, and you know you’re going to have to have a serious conversation later today. If that’s your situation, you’ve got business to attend to in the immediate future.
…or practice making peace with the way things are
But if there isn’t anything that you absolutely must do in regards to your infidelity situation today, I encourage you to use the rest of this day to practice making peace with the way things are. As strange as it might sound, doing this is actually conducive to ensuring that things happen the way you want them to happen in due course.
Let me be clear: you are not letting yourself off the hook by doing this. You are not engaging in a pattern of avoidance by giving yourself a day to not do anything. On the contrary, you are taking a very practical and essential step towards dealing with your situation.
By allowing yourself to be where you are, even if only for a day, you’re allowing the dust to settle. And if you’re in the midst of an affair, letting the dust settle is essential for you to figure out what’s truly right for you. It’s hard to make clear decisions from a place of anxiety or panic or overwhelm. But when we can make peace with our current reality, or at least, stop resisting our current conditions, figuring out what to do becomes easier, and doing it becomes easier too.
So again, take a moment to notice that in this moment you are okay. You’re still here, you’re still breathing, gravity probably isn’t going to fail us today, and finding a little bit of peace in this moment is the most powerful thing you can do. So take one more big breath. And then another, and another.
In the next installment, we’ll talk about all of the good things about your affair/cheating/infidelity situation. Stay tuned!
