“I’m so scared. I feel like I just got thrown off a cliff. I’m in free-fall and I do not know if I will land at all or be crushed to death when I do. This is crazy. Topsy-turvy. OMG.“
Okay. I get it. Your world has turned upside down. Breathe. Can you listen to me for a minute? Can you get the crazy thoughts spinning in your head shoved aside for just a bit?
Every single reason for cheating comes down to one thing: fear. Well, two things: Fear and hopelessness. Let me explain.
People do not get married to cheat. Remember back to those first days….you got married for love. Your partner did too.
At least you thought you were marrying for love.
No one marries to be miserable or to cheat. No one. Ever.
Every single person starts marriage with the most important emotion of all: Hope.
Then what happens?
Someone wasn’t listening.
They had a need or a want and you did not hear it.
Either they weren’t clear what they wanted and you were left to guess what it was – and guessed wrong.
Or maybe you didn’t know you should even be guessing.
Or your partner told you clearly, but you had no tools whatsoever to figure out how to implement it.
Or, worse, you had your own needs and wants and were hoping those would be met by your significant other. But meanwhile you weren’t meeting their needs and wants. A mess.
You get this? It sounds complicated, doesn’t it?
You and your S.O. didn’t know what you felt, didn’t know what you wanted or needed, and didn’t know how to express what you wanted or needed. So you were both – whether you were aware of it or not – needing something from the other at the same time and no one was giving anything to anyone.
Make sense?
Now this creates confusion and hopelessness. Confusion because you didn’t even know what you wanted and surely didn’t know that there was something your S.O. wanted!
Not only that, more to the point, it creates real pain.
It’s a miserable place to be when you have unmet needs that you don’t know about, but you want your partner to meet. And it’s not happening.
There’s an emptiness. There’s a sense that life has no purpose. There’s a misery there.
There’s that horrible hopelessness creeping in: No one is taking care of me! I’m lost! I’m really alone in this marriage! OMG, what do I do?
And a terrible fear sets in. A fear that nothing will change. A fear that I’m not good enough for someone to really and truly love me. A fear that I’m not good enough to give love to the person I married. A fear that nothing will ever work out.
A fear of facing myself and learning what I want and need because I’ll discover that my very soul must be rotten. I must be selfish, bad, horrible.
That is fertile soil for cheating.
In comes Mr. X or Miss Y. They smile at me! OMG, I’m not rotten? I’m okay? Someone out there thinks I’m okay! Wow. That’s amazing. That’s too amazing to believe. That’s fantastic! That’s my lifebuoy coming to save me from #$%^.
Suddenly, the worries are gone. And believe me, I know you don’t want to think those horrible thoughts about yourself. Does a person like this want counseling? Are you kidding? They do not want to be reminded of the way they were feeling about themselves.
They don’t want to remember that they thought they were rotten. No! no! no! Maybe they’ll think their spouse is just missing something. Yes! that’s it! It’s their spouse’s fault! That’s the solution – the whole problem was their fault.
“My spouse didn’t meet my needs. My needs were normal and reasonable and they weren’t there for me.”
That’s the answer they’ll tell themselves. And enjoy, bask, in the love and kindness and excitement of this new relationship. Suddenly, they’ll feel alive, wonderful. They will admit they never thought they could feel this way. Oh, boy, this is fantastic!
That’s what cheating looks like to the cheater.
The cheater is not trying to hurt you and although they clearly are rejecting you, that’s not what this is about. What this is about is that they no longer want to be rejecting themselves.
Remember, at the bottom of the whole mess is their inability to express their needs and wants.
And their fear that there must be something wrong with them – not you – if you’re not meeting those needs and wants.
That’s the real story.
That’s the story they want to forget.
They do not want to go there. Who would? No one. No one wants to think of themselves as defective and unlovable deep underneath,.
It’s so much easier to blame you.
But there’s a catch: You may never, ever be able to meet those needs and wants.
Do you know why?
It may be that the most basic need that your S.O. has is to love himself/herself because they don’t.
You cannot fill that need. The only person who can is them.
They must learn to love themselves. And if they do not, they will chase skirts or torsos forever looking for what’s not there.
There is no way out of this mess other than for them to learn to love themselves.
And for you to regain your self-respect, your dignity, and your love of yourself, too.
Neither of you is a bad, evil person. You were each lacking some vital things, that’s all. And now you can learn how to acquire them.
You can gain the missing self-love, the ability to express your needs and wants, and to hear the other person. Most importantly, you can know what to do to heal from this.
How?
With my 12-week intensive group and personal coaching and 1:1 therapy program.
After personal transformation (getting back your Self-respect), the program caps off with Compassionate Honesty – the ability to clearly speak your truth in a way that uplifts the marriage and deepens the relationship. I will be there for support, too, the whole way. I will help you heal and grow. It will be my joy.
And whether we work together or not, the call itself will reveal things about yourself that you didn’t see but will recognize immediately as true when you hear them. https://drdeb.com/book
To get deeper into this information, please join my private group on Facebook and get a free gift;
https://www.facebook.com/groups/LoveYourselfLoveYourMarriage