For those who have been betrayed, discovering an affair is catastrophic.
Even if you suspect someone else is there and are looking for evidence, finding the evidence you feared is just as painful as finding it unexpectedly.
But the most terrifying feeling of all is meeting the affair partner or stumbling across secret texts and discovering that the one you loved and trusted has completely messed you up with someone else, even as you were that person in the relationship have given everything.
Is there a worse betrayal than this?
And you begin to wonder: how does your cheater really feel about you? Most of the time, this comes out after the main relationship has broken down and reassures you that the breakup was definitely the right thing to do.
Here are 3 infidelity stories that illustrate how cheating spouses actually felt about their partners.
1. When you were the other woman you were cheated on.
Shannon Ashley discovered she was pregnant and her boyfriend, who was divorcing his wife for her, put a ring on her finger. He left the very next week.
A heartbroken Shannon later found out everything he told her about their relationship was wrong.
He took any disagreement far worse than he ever said to Shannon. He was very unhappy and just never said a word about it. Oh, and he was dating a third woman the entire time!
On the surface, there is no benefit in some of these scenarios. Shannon was homeless and struggling with a crisis pregnancy.
A religious couple took her into their home but treated her like a second class citizen and eventually revealed her true intention: to try to adopt their baby.
Years of struggle followed, with Shannon navigating both bipolar disorder and an autism diagnosis while working a miserable job and raising a young child.
The blessing in all of this was her daughter, an amazing little girl who keeps Shannon grounded as she has built a full-time writing career and battled a horribly disfiguring condition called lipedema.
Together they created a happy family life that Shannon would never have had otherwise.
2. Being confronted by the other woman.
Eshal Rose was similarly hit in the gut when she discovered her boyfriend was cheating on her. Like many women, she saw herself as the problem.
They broke up, but Eshal’s self-esteem took a hit that appeared to be permanent.
She writes, “I didn’t feel good enough, unlovable and unattractive.” So many women, when a man finds someone else, think it’s them – their looks and their personality.
Then the other woman showed up with all the lies her boyfriend had told her about Eshal. Absolutely ridiculous lies!
But the other woman was so sweet and so protective of Eshal. She thought they would meet again and had contacted her to warn her about this loser. Turns out the guy had treated the other girl the same way.
Eshal’s friends had spent three months comforting her, telling her how beautiful she was and how much she deserved someone better.
But when the same message came from the other woman, that’s what it took Eshal to finally let it happen. She has moved on these days and has a much higher self esteem.
It’s a lot harder to salvage a relationship when this kind of double betrayal is ongoing.
The person who finds out feels such a loss of trust that the relationship often fails to recover.
3. Being hated by someone you thought loved you.
Holly Bradshaw, a popular writer on Medium, was dealing with this when she stumbled upon messages her husband had sent to another woman, messages filled with such wickedness that she felt beyond stunned and beyond hurt.
Her husband had even written to this other woman that he hated Holly.
The experience opened a whole new window on Holly’s marriage – anger flowing like lava under their house, bitterness over things her husband had never discussed with Holly. And then… the problems even spilled over online.
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What can you do in such a situation?
It’s so easy to walk away in despair and disgust, believing that you and the relationship will never recover. For most people, such behavior is unforgivable and something they cannot get past.
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These emotions are certainly understandable, and yet it is important to explore the issues in counseling before you leave, especially if you are married.
For one thing, if you relax about how such terrible misunderstandings came about, you will be a lot wiser in any relationship you enter in the future. There may be red flags that you have overlooked.
If you contributed to the situation in any way, it’s important to see and understand that.
But sometimes even this terrible situation in a marriage can be salvaged in surprising and unconventional ways.
Holly and her husband eventually opened up their marriage and experimented with polyamory… and they’re still together.
If you’ve just experienced the free fall of finding out that your partner not only cheated on you, but also screwed you on someone else, take a deep breath, find support, and work through it.
There could be a silver lining that will enrich your life in ways you can never imagine.
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PD Reader is an astrologer. Struggling in or having an affair? is now a book! PD Reader also provides insight into astrology, relationships, and infidelity on her website, The Thinking Other Woman.
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