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5 mature ways to deal with infidelity in your relationship

Brooding over a partner who has hurt you with emotional cheating? A life coach suggests how to deal with infidelity.
Coping with emotional infidelity can be tough. Image courtesy: Shutterstock
Team Health Shots Published: 2 Sep 2022, 18:15 pm IST
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In times of modern love, infidelity has also found its types! There’s physical infidelity and emotional infidelity. The latter can always put a person in doubt about whether an emotional affair means that they are cheating their partner… After all, there is no physical intimacy involved. However, what may seem as being faithful to you, may seem to your partner like a definite sign of cheating!

According to life coach Rashi Gaur, a partner may establish can external or extra-marital emotional affair which may feel like a healthy and harmless connect. The truth, she says, is that “emotional infidelity is far more dangerous than a sexual one”.

Emotional infidelity and why does it hurt

Here is someone who makes you feel validated, understood, cared for, and perhaps even special. It helps you create a fantasy world, a happy bubble. Here are two people who are accepting each other for who they are and not for the roles they play in their respective lives. This is a perfect ingredient for turning it into a deep intense romantic liaison. The ease of staying in touch 24/7 and the privacy of messaging only make the process of an emotional affair a lot easier today. It’s so simple to connect or re-connect with an ex-lover, an old friend, or even a work colleague beyond work hours. It’s only just a click away. But what if you are the partner who is at the receiving end of emotional infidelity?

Emotional cheating can be worse! Image courtesy: Shutterstock

Let’s assume you have already found out that your spouse or partner has been indulging in an emotional affair with someone who was only supposed to be a friend. It’s a hurtful, heart-breaking, helpless feeling of being let down by someone who was supposed to be yours. All along it was you. And then suddenly an outsider takes that place. What hurts the most is that your special one opened that space for someone else. So how do you deal with infidelity or emotional cheating?

7 tips to deal with infidelity

Rashi Gaur shares the following ways to handle emotional infidelity by a partner in a mature way.

1. To forgive or not to forgive?

For whatever it is worth, if the love you have both felt for each other still continues, you may want to forgive your partner. Like they say, it takes a strong person to say they are sorry and an even stronger person to forgive. Every relationship deserves a chance and where there is love, there is scope for healing. Healing begins when the heart is willing to forgive. The process is not an easy one. This requires time but as long as the desire to fix the relationship even after infidelity is there, forgiveness is important.

Know the benefits of forgiveness in this Health Shots video!

2. Communication is key

There can never be a way forward if everything is dusted under the rug. Just wishing it away is like a slow poison that will eventually become the death of this relationship. You need to address it, talk through it, question it, speak about it, express the hurt that you have felt, and most importantly, allow them to express themselves too. No matter how painful, talking it out is half the job done when it comes to dealing with infidelity.

Communicate what you feel. Image courtesy: Shutterstock

3. No blame games, please

It’s not going to help blaming either one. Rather, question them and yourself, what went amiss in your relationship. This will be your biggest insight while coping with infidelity. Was it boredom, a communication gap, one of you got too busy or did you stop doing fun things together because life happened? These are easy to fix. When realization happens, pick up the missing pieces and start working on your relationship. Every relationship needs effort. It will take time but it isn’t impossible.
Work on yourself. The pain of betrayal is overwhelming.

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4. Indulge in self-love to overcome infidelity

Focus on a form of exercise or join a group class such as yoga or aerobics. When you bring in good practices in your daily routine, it clears the foggy mind and helps in anger release – two key ingredients for problem-solving. Surround yourself with good friends. Even if you don’t discuss the issue with them because it’s too personal to you, having a hearty laugh with the friends who are your support system, will help you deal better.

Don’t forget to love yourself! Image courtesy: Shutterstock

5. Take help if you need it

If you don’t have the strength to do this by yourself, turn to someone. You don’t have to do this alone. Involve someone who looks at this without biases and provides a perspective. It can be a professional counselor, parents, elder siblings, or even friends who are like family.

In a world where white and black is slowly moving towards grey, you have the potential to fill it with the colour of your choice!

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