Healing from Heartbreak: Strategies for Dealing with a Cheating Boyfriend
Yesterday, my friend Lily called me at 8 p.m. I asked her what was wrong and why she sounded upset.
She immediately started crying and said, “When I first got together with my boyfriend, he promised to love me forever. But after just 2 years, he’s been fooling around with other women behind my back. And when I caught him, he actually said it was because I forced him to. Do you think he’s a total jerk? I tried to break up with him a few days ago, and he begged me, but I didn’t agree. I still really like him, he’s really good to me, but I don’t know how our relationship turned into this. What should I do?”
After understanding their emotional situation more deeply, I found that Lily is very dominant and expects her boyfriend to always obey her. If not, she feels insecure and unloved.
Her boyfriend has mentioned many times that he hopes Lily could be gentler and more willing to discuss things, instead of yelling and causing scenes in public.
Lily didn’t take her boyfriend’s words to heart. Instead, she felt like she was less important than anyone else in his life.
Even so, her boyfriend still chose to appease Lily and said he wouldn’t do it again next time.
Lily said that as long as she sees her boyfriend give in, she stops causing trouble, and her mood improves a lot.
I found that in their relationship, Lily always holds the upper hand, while her boyfriend is in a lower position, making him feel like he can’t express his emotions and that Lily doesn’t understand him, always disregarding his feelings.
Lily said that the person her boyfriend cheated with is a girl from their junior high school, gentle, cute, and always adoring her boyfriend, making him feel warm.
Based on the information I gathered, I replied to her:
We all know that “the other woman” is a very unwelcome term, and both moral society and the people in the relationship try to avoid it.
But stealing a glance at someone else, or chatting with an opposite-sex friend, doesn’t usually harm a relationship.
Due to different levels of acceptance, when facing a partner’s infidelity, various rejecting behaviors may occur. You may confront the third party, make a scene, choose to end the relationship, pretend not to know and continue with the hurt, or try to control your partner’s return using threats. When facing the appearance of the third party, you may have tried various methods to cope.
But you may not have realized that infidelity is just a phenomenon, not the real issue. When problems arise between you and are not resolved in time, infidelity will continue to occur.
Even if you defeat this one, the next one will appear. Even if you suppress each one, relationship problems will still manifest in other forms.
In short, as long as the real issues are not resolved, your relationship faces various threats.
Infidelity also has some positive meanings and is not without its benefits.
We dislike infidelity, but we cannot deny its significance. When nature created everything, it endowed each existence with its significance. Just like physical pain, when pain comes, we don’t welcome it, we try various ways to stop it, but at the same time, we understand the significance of pain, telling us that something is wrong with our body, reminding us to pay attention.
When our hands are scratched, the pain reminds us to bandage it, otherwise, we wouldn’t realize the seriousness of the bleeding. Infidelity is similar, when infidelity occurs, it causes emotional pain, this pain also reminds us that there are problems in the relationship that need our attention.
In a healthy relationship, infidelity is not possible.
When you are both satisfied in the relationship and feel comfortable, you won’t think of seeking others. Infidelity, to some extent, fills in the gaps in the relationship. If you fail to satisfy a part of him, he will seek satisfaction elsewhere.
Some people in a relationship are very domineering, often criticizing the other, which is also not good. The other person will feel suffocated in the relationship, lacking a sense of value and respect.
When another person is willing to praise and depend on him, he will gain a sense of value and respect, and would prefer to be with that person.
In some relationships, a person is a leader at work and continues to act as a leader at home, making the partner feel like they are not with a lover but with a leader.
Infidelity is sometimes a fear; when you don’t believe in the relationship, you will worry about others taking advantage and become suspicious, putting immense pressure on the relationship.
Everyone has a different definition of infidelity. Sometimes, it’s just going out with an opposite-sex friend to relax, or staying out late to celebrate a friend’s birthday, which you define as infidelity.
You often say that your eyes can’t tolerate any flaws, but how can there be fish in such clear water? Isn’t this also a pressure that pushes him away?
Some people work hard at home, doing all the housework, working hard outside, yet their partner still finds someone else. Morally, the person involved in the infidelity should be condemned.
But from a human perspective, we can understand them. If a person has no purpose at home, doesn’t need to earn money to support the family, doesn’t need to do housework, they will seek someone who needs them and gain a sense of achievement.
The desire is universal and always present.
The desire for value, respect, freedom, recognition, love, and achievement, all follow the principle of prioritizing relationships. If he is satisfied in the relationship, he won’t look for someone else. If he is not satisfied in the relationship, a third party will easily step in.
This has nothing to do with who actively seeks whom. As long as there is a deficit, there will be compensation.
Maybe the third party happened to appear and found him, or maybe he actively sought someone else, but the intention is to satisfy the desire.
From this perspective, infidelity makes a person healthier because they are being satisfied. If you can’t satisfy his desires and also prevent him from being satisfied by others, then his problems will persist.
When his desires are chronically unmet, his mind will become distorted, or he will be depressed at home for a long time, always in a bad mood, or lacking the desire to socialize and choosing to give up on himself.
When there is a tendency for infidelity or it has occurred, don’t rush to blame the third party or your partner, but examine which part of your relationship has problems.
You can calmly communicate with him, understand why he acted that way, what discomfort he felt in your relationship, and what the other person satisfied in him. After understanding him, you can adjust yourself to satisfy him, and naturally, he will return to you and draw from you.
On the contrary, blaming, complaining, and giving up are all ineffective. These methods only serve to push him away and lead the relationship to rupture.
Of course, when infidelity occurs, the possibility of curiosity cannot be ruled out, but choosing infidelity purely out of curiosity is unlikely. Curiosity arises from the unchanging patterns in the relationship causing boredom.
This is not just in relationships, but in life as well. When we repeatedly do the same thing in one place to a certain limit, we feel bored and want to break free. This is actually a lack of novelty. Dealing with the lack of novelty is quite difficult but not impossible.
You can try different ways to satisfy him, change your lifestyle and habits, or spend some time apart to create some mystery.
Infidelity often arises from these two forces.
One is the pressure and unmet needs within the relationship that push him outside. For example, if a person never feels respected at home, and he is someone with a strong self-esteem, if he can’t find it at home, he may seek someone who admires him.
The other is the strong temptation outside that pulls him away. For example, the other person is simply his goddess.
The truth is, most people cheat because of the first reason, and the second reason is rare.
Basic needs are inherent instincts that people are born with, and the lifelong purpose of people is to satisfy these basic needs. The initial purpose of establishing an intimate relationship is to satisfy each other, but when the relationship fails to satisfy, it becomes an empty shell or even a restraint.
Infidelity is like a mirror, reflecting the cracks in your relationship, requiring you to find out what the real problem is and see your own behavior clearly.