One of the first and most powerful steps in understanding how to recover after being cheated on, is naming what’s actually happening. Many women don’t have the words at first. Lies, secrecy, and deceit separate you from your own sense of reality, leaving you to wonder: Is it me? Am I overreacting? Is this normal? That confusion is part of betrayal trauma.

The truth is, betrayal trauma is real, and naming it doesn’t make the pain bigger, it validates it. If you’re wondering how to recover after being cheated on, Shelly’s story proves you’re not alone, and healing is possible.

7 Things Every Woman Should Know About How to Recover After Being Cheated On

Are you trying to recover after your husband cheated on you? If he is cheated on you, his lies, secrecy and deceit have separated you from your own sense of reality. Here are seven things women need to know about this.

1. Recovery begins with identification.

What you’re experiencing is called betrayal trauma. Naming it helps connect the dots between what happened and how it affected you.

2. Intimate lies are domestic abuse.

The harm doesn’t start once you find out about his cheating. It begins when he starts deceiving you. Recovery begins with accepting this truth.

3. Your body will tell you the truth.

Most women experiencing betrayal trauma have physical symptoms like insomnia, stomach issues, chronic pain. Your body always resists even if your mind doesn’t quite understand what’s happening.

4. Recovery isn’t about him even though the need to recover is entirely about him.

Recovery takes knowing how to focus on our own emotional safety.

5. Self-compassion is a turning point.

Recovery means treating yourself like you would treat a friend.

6. Ignore bad advice.

People might tell you to just move on or don’t give away your power. That’s not helpful if you’re trying to heal from this type of trauma.

7. The right support makes recovery from this type of trauma possible.

It is important to find a support group where women understand what you’re going through because they’ve been through it too.

Transcript: How To Recover After Being Cheated On

Anne: I have Shelly, a member of our community back on today’s episode. I interviewed her six months ago and I asked her to come back and check in and let me know how she’s doing now. Welcome back, Shelly.

helly: So we’re in about a year and a half now since the initial [00:02:00] D-Day and it’s still really difficult, but we’re still together. We’re still working through things. I’ve had no more D-Days since the four or five months of D-Days I had. So there’s nothing new that’s come to light. But it’s hard. That’s sort of where I am at the moment.

Anne: Talk about any epiphanies that you’ve had as you’ve been working through this.

Shelly: There’s been a lot of, deepening understanding about objectification, as a social issue and the conditioning that is everywhere in society. That both men and women are subjected to now. There’s been a lot of deeper understanding about that. How human souls are made into objects and literally sold for the purpose of use in a sexual way. And it’s dark. Last time I gave you a bit of a backstory. There’s a long line of betrayal trauma history in my life, being born into that. And [00:03:00] for me, understanding my own power and my own choice has been freeing .

Eighteen Months Into Healing: What Recovery After Being Cheated On Looks Like Listening to Yourself: A Surprising Step in How to Recover After Being Cheated On

Anne: Like how did you see it before and how are you seeing it now?

Shelly: So listening to our original podcast the emotions I felt when I was going back, to when I was young and then when I was in an abusive relationship. It wasn’t a relationship. I was a victim of abuse in my teens with a much older man. The emotions I felt then were quite powerless. Just listening to that, it felt powerless. Whereas when I fast forward to now. I can feel there’s a difference. Like, I have choice. I didn’t realize that I had choice then. Like I didn’t understand it. I wouldn’t say naive because I wouldn’t understand because I was so young and I was being coerced in such a horrific way. That I didn’t see anything beyond that. Whereas now my adult self understands [00:04:00] all of this stuff. And actually through everything that I’ve listened to on your podcast and understanding what betrayal trauma actually is, I feel foundation now that I didn’t have before, an understanding where, I’m standing in a place of power. And it’s different. I’m in a different space. I felt that just listening through my own story in the podcast that we did before.

Anne: For our listeners, we are recording this the same day that her previous episode aired, and so she listened to it and now we’re talking. It’s a different type of experience than talking with a coach or a therapist or being in a group session. Because you’re listening to yourself from the outside in a way that you wouldn’t normally.

Can you talk about your experience as you listened to yourself share your story on the podcast. Do you feel like it enabled you to feel for yourself in a way that you hadn’t before?

Shelly: Yeah I do actually, because [00:05:00] I disconnected so much. I had quite a strong sense of dissociation before. And that has changed. I feel is really important because that’s reconnecting to the self. Where the dissociation was before, it was like it was someone else’s life that I was recounting or telling a story about somebody else’s life or a different lifetime. It didn’t feel like it was connected to me.

So having that connection back and feeling those emotions for my own story is really important. In being whole, rebuilding myself. It was really helpful. I felt really emotional. I felt the heartbreak for myself. I have empathy for myself, which is a strange concept. I feel for myself, my own story. I was able to release it.

Why Seeing Things As They Really Are Helps Your Recovery After Being Cheated On

Anne: I imagine that it will take you a while to process hearing your own story. It’s not like you’re gonna have all of the epiphanies all at once. It [00:06:00] will happen over time. But I do think it’s really beneficial for women to hear themselves and recognize how human they are. If they were hearing someone else share the story, how much compassion they would feel for that person and love and lack of judgment.

Shelly: Exactly.

Anne: It might be something they’ve never, ever really experienced for themselves before, partially due to all the abuse that they experienced. The abuse in and of itself separates us from ourselves. That’s part of the intent is that an abuser does not want us to process it in a way that we can really feel or understand it.

Shelly: Yeah, disempower you, so you haven’t got the power to step out of it or change it or even see it. So having that compassion for yourself and hearing it as if you are listening to a friend is huge. I’ve always struggled with self-love. I completely understand why now [00:07:00] because it’s been throughout my entire life. Hearing that, if I was sitting with a friend and she was telling me my story, I would have nothing but love for her.

What I’m dealing with right now, I’m really heavily processing the current stuff with my current partner all the time that has such a huge impact on me every day. I’m still triggered by things. There are still moments where it feels overwhelmingly hard.

Anne: In the past you didn’t understand what was happening to you and so processing it in real time was not available to you in any way, shape or form. But processing your situation now that you have the information in real time,

you’re able to talk to other women. You went to BTR group sessions . You’re able to process it, makes a difference.

Shelly: Yeah, that’s definitely part of it. I’m also aware of positive coping mechanisms that I’m doing . There’s a general sense of [00:08:00] awareness I wouldn’t have had before.

Anne: Once you’re aware, you can start looking at it more objectively in terms of not being manipulated like we were before.

Shelly: Yeah.

Anne: Which helps us make better decisions in the long run. It takes a minute to figure out how we feel and what we wanna do.

We’re just a lot more capable of making decisions that are in our best interest when we have this type of information. It’s just impossible without it.

Shelly: Yeah, it’s like being in a dark room with a blindfold on and then suddenly walking out into the light and seeing everything for what it actually is.

Anne: How has that felt? Being able to see things for what they really are?

Shelly: It’s liberating. I’m glad that I see now, but it’s painful process. I wouldn’t change it.

Embracing the Hard Truth that Sets You Free: His Cheating Isn’t About You

Anne: I think some women, and I was one of them, want to unsee it a little bit, ’cause it is so painful. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And so there isn’t [00:09:00] anywhere to go but forward.

Shelly: Yeah, I don’t have I understand wishing to unsee it. I can totally get that because it’s such a traumatic thing to go through. I’m glad that I’m not living in the dark anymore. I’m glad that I’m not living in an illusion that I thought was this perfect fairytale in my head. I would never want anyone to go through this. But I’m glad that I’m now living informed as who I’m with and where I am.

Anne: The Living Free Workshop is intended to help women see the truth.

Shelly: Yeah.

Anne: It doesn’t give any instructions in terms of like pack a bag and move out. Nothing like that. It’s more safety principles and how to get enough space to observe.

Shelly: Yes. I loved the group sessions. Feeling that connection with people, seeing the same faces, feeling a familiarity with the coach. Each coach had a different sort of energy and beauty about the way that [00:10:00] they were able to hold the space. I found that really helpful. I remember in one of my shares talking about, how this has affected me and my self perception, my physical self perception. I basically started to starve myself because all of the women that he was looking at, that he disclosed, they were all thinner than me. Some of them were younger than me. Some of them were actually older than me. But I started to really look at myself. I had very low self-esteem anyway, but this just completely smashed any esteem that I had about myself. And getting beauty treatments, anything that I could just to feel better physically. And in this one particular group, I shared that. Many of the women started to cry and could completely understand, completely resonated with what I was saying.

I found that so devastatingly sad that this is one of the consequences from their behavior their choices the way [00:11:00] that we internalize Or think that it’s because of us. It all boils down to that belief, I’m not enough. Having that connection, not feeling alone, and not feeling like, , I’m the only one that’s doing this. That was powerful, but equally heartbreaking. Actually across world. This is something that is happening to women after experiencing something like that.

Anne: I think it really brings it home that it’s not about us.

To see that so many women have been exploited in that way, manipulated in that way, is so heartbreaking to realize how systemic it is.

Secrecy is Abuse When Recovering from Being Cheated On

Shelly: Yeah, my partner, I remember having a conversation with him. “I cannot understand how you could look into my eyes at the end of the day, knowing that you’d done that.” He said, “I just thought, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.” That is the root of the pain in between, the damage that’s caused in a relationship. Keeping [00:12:00] anything, not having transparency. That as soon as you’re doing something that you know is gonna hurt your partner, you are hurting them already,

Anne: Right.

Shelly: Whether they know it or not.

Anne: And just the absolute lack of understanding that not giving your partner a choice.

Using deceit, is abuse. It’s control, it’s harmful, and you’re already hurting her if you are not giving her a choice in her own life.

Shelly: Exactly, I did not know who I was with. I had the image of who I thought he was. Who he was saying he was. I did not know the person that I was with, and I didn’t have free choice in that.

Anne: Exactly, and for any man to think that sounds okay, is horrifying. I don’t know of anyone here at BTR. I guess there could be women out there who feel this way, but I don’t know of any woman at BTR who would feel comfortable, thinking [00:13:00] that her husband didn’t know. Unless it was for her own safety. Saved some money. Classic domestic abuse, escape strategies. Women in general who are victims of abuse, before they understand that they are, they would feel bad, thinking that their husband didn’t know something that he needed to know.

I think that’s why it’s just so incomprehensible to us that somebody would’ve made these choices for us and completely disrespected us in this way.

Shelly: It’s dishonoring someone’s soul that you’re professing to love. That is not love. It’s dishonoring me. Betrayed me. There was lies about other things as well. There was lies about money. It’s not honoring the person that you love. And I can’t consolidate those two things in my head, or in my heart. Because if I love someone, then I’m gonna honor them and I’m gonna honor them by not doing things that are gonna hurt them. If I know that I’m gonna hurt that person, I won’t do that.

Anne: I’m so sorry about [00:14:00] everything you’re going through. The time you’re in right now is so difficult, trying to sort out what to do next.

Shelly: Yeah, I’m still on, high alert a lot of the time, which is exhausting. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and I’d rid myself of the constant pain and fatigue and was living my life in a happy space. So since all of this came out, all of the symptoms.

Fibromyalgia flared back up again. If anything else came to light, that would be it. I wouldn’t be able to physically do it. I wouldn’t be able to physically or emotionally stay within the relationship. Because I have nothing more that I can possibly give beyond what I’ve already given beyond what I’m giving now.

I’m not relaxed. I can’t just relax.

Anne: That’s absolutely understandable.

Shelly: It’s logical, isn’t it? If someone can spend so many years lying to you. There’s always a chance that they’re gonna do that again.

I still am not in a place that I can say I fully trust him. My [00:15:00] mind is still trying to protect me. My mind is still questioning, my mind is still on high alert and I dunno however long that takes or what that’s gonna look like.

Anne: I’m interested to see what you think of Living Free, because the intent was to help women feel like they don’t have to work so hard. ‘ cause I’m hearing that in your voice. This exhaustion, of the process of seeing if he’s gonna make the right decisions. So the Living Free Workshop was intended to reduce that burden and help women observe so that the weight of the burden is all on him and not on us.

Shelly: I definitely feel it. I’m definitely carrying it .

Anne: So the strategy of Living Free is learning to give ourselves enough space so that we can live our lives, be peaceful, happy and observe. And not carry the weight of it. If you’re willing to come back and share your feedback.

Shelly: I very much would like to do that.

Anne: Let me tell you a little bit about it so you’re not overwhelmed.

The workbook comes with it. You can print [00:16:00] it I do recommend that women buy it on Amazon.

I wanted to be able to see the two page spread layout. Which you don’t really get to see if you print it on your own printer. But anyway, the Living Free Workshop is, 55 lessons, they’re very short videos. Most of them are three minutes, and the shortest one is 30 seconds. So it’s tiny three minute increments to be able to process it. The longest video is six minutes long. There’s only one that’s that long. There’s a question underneath, and if you don’t wanna answer it, you can just push an X and push enter and go to the next thing.

If you don’t wanna fill out the workbook, you don’t have to fill out the workbook, but it is good to have it in front of you, sitting there, so at least you can see what I’m talking about.

So even if you’re not gonna fill it out, just having it in front of you helps. I have a master’s degree in education, so the reason I set it up like that, was to give women time to process in between each one.

Especially with the self-esteem [00:17:00] issues, to remove the manipulation and the negative things that we’ve absorbed through their abuse and replace it with truth. Like, you’re beautiful, you’re capable.

Right now might be a great time for the Meditations to regulate your nervous system to help you feel more peaceful and centered.

That’s what the Meditations to help women who, like a lot of women can’t sleep. They can’t stop thinking about it, that sort of thing. So to help get all that out. I wrote them for myself. Because talking about stuff at some point just wasn’t that helpful for me.

I talked about it so much. So I wrote those meditations to help me so that I could get all the stuff out without having to talk about it. ’cause I talk about this all day long, every single day, and I have for 10 years. So there had to have been something different for me.

I’d say if you do the Meditations and then schedule the next interview, that way it can give you some time to [00:18:00] think about, did it help?

Shelly: Yeah, definitely. You need to get this stuff out. That’s really important. But also I think there comes a point where you have to go inward as well. going in is, an important part of the healing process too. So yeah, very much appreciate the access to those.

It’s been crazy, it feels divine.

Anne: Totally. Thank you so much and I look forward to talking to you again soon.

Shelly: Yeah, thank you so much.