Negotiating a divorce can be painful and difficult for someone who has been cheated on.
Perhaps one of the most challenging events in life to recover from include matters of the dissolution of a marriage because of infidelity. Infidelity has the potential to be extremely heartbreaking and can lead to a lack of trust toward future romantic partners because of wounds from your past. Learning live with, but not in, the past may require several years of making a concerted effort to nurture oneself, with the help of friends, family, counselors and other professionals, back into health and wholeness.
Instructions
1. Vocalize and advocate your needs from your ex-spouse in terms of resolving the emotional pain that the divorce and infidelity has caused. Providing that your ex-spouse is remorseful and sorry for his actions, seek out a forum with your former spouse, perhaps with other friends present, where they can offer support for your own self-esteem and thoughts of unattractiveness, low self-worth, shame, fear and naivet . Encourage the unfaithful partner to take full ownership and responsibility for his actions and listen to him if he is willing to give explanations and apologies. As much as possible, seek closure from the marriage by talking with your former partner.
2. Hire a professional marriage counselor or therapist to help with the healing process. If emotional or physical abuse was inherent in the marriage relationship, you may need to seek a therapist who specializes in those specific traumas. Despite the enormity of baggage, hurt and feelings of betrayal, you may also need to try out a few different therapists to find one that you truly trust and in which you can confide. It may help to ask friends and family for a referral regarding a therapist or counselor whom they also trust.
3. Forgive your ex-spouse, remembering that forgiveness is a process that may take several years to complete. It may be of benefit to use different techniques for walking through the process of forgiveness, including writing a letter to your ex-spouse, which you may choose not to deliver or send. Other techniques for walking through the process of forgiveness may include asking a trusted friend to act as a stand-in for your ex-spouse and ask for your forgiveness.
4. Write in a journal to track your progress and process your emotions. Writing down emotions and thoughts help to transfer and externalize the internal happenings within your brain and inner person, allowing for you to analyze and gain perspective on your conscious and subconscious thoughts. You may also want to journal your hopes, needs, wants and dreams while ranking the importance of each of those four categories as your travel through the process of recovering from a divorce.
5. Brainstorm and plan ways for you to experience empowerment in your own life. Examples may include scheduling different components of the divorce proceedings and legalities such as setting a time for changing your name after the divorce (if applicable). Other empowering experiences to consider may include shopping for a new wardrobe if your former spouse asked you to dress a certain way. Another alternative may include looking for new and novel experiences which you have put on hold as a compromise for maintaining your marriage relationship.
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