Did your girlfriend cheat on you? Are you wondering what to do next?
The first thing to do when your girlfriend cheats is to end the relationship. There is no world where staying with her will end happily for you. Next, you need to let go of the pain of this betrayal. Focus on recovering by creating a fulfilling life without your girlfriend.
Read on for my full guide on what to do after your girlfriend cheats on you.
Why You Have To Leave An Unfaithful Partner
Cheating is the ultimate act of betrayal and disrespect in a relationship.
A woman does not cheat on a partner she respects. She may come up with a million-and-one excuses, but this remains fundamentally true.
This is why you must leave a cheating girlfriend. Surely, you don’t want a girlfriend who has this little respect for you?
Some guys will have opened this article hoping for a solution that will fix the relationship, bring back the happier days and convince their girlfriend to never cheat again.
If you’re one of those guys, the answer is STILL to leave her.
If you allow your girlfriend to remain in the relationship after she’s cheated, she’ll lose even more respect for you. If she accepts your invitation to stay in the relationship, she’ll most likely cheat on you again, because her respect for you will be so low at this point.
A woman can’t feel attracted to a man she doesn’t respect. In fact, her lack of respect was probably a big part of what triggered her to cheat in the first place.
If you have such little self-respect that you want to keep her around after she cheated, the chances of her happily remaining faithful to you are slim to none.
As such, even if you do want to stay with this woman, your only option is to break up with her. This is the only move that will gather you an ounce of respect in her eyes.
Maybe then, she’ll eventually beg for a second chance. You can then decide whether you want to give her that.
Personally, I’d still recommend removing her from your life forever. But, there are some famous couples out there who have survived infidelity and come back stronger. So, it must be possible.
How to Dump a Cheating Girlfriend
Keep it short and sweet. Stay calm and keep your emotions in check.
Tell her you have boundaries in a relationship and that she has epically crossed them.
Then, walk away without another word. A girlfriend who disrespected you so monumentally doesn’t deserve any further explanation.
She might burst into tears. She might try and beg for forgiveness. Don’t listen to a word of it (at least for now).
Don’t comfort her or listen to her stupid excuses, unless you’re hoping to become friend-zoned and lose even more respect from her.
“But What If I Really Want Her to Stay???”
You’re missing the point.
If you want to stay in a happy relationship where your girlfriend respects you, it’s essential to put your foot down here.
Yes, it’s true that if you break up with her she might not beg for forgiveness or try to win you back.
If that’s the case, the truth is: you will never have had a happy relationship where this woman would have stayed faithful to you.
Even if she does beg for forgiveness, the chances of her cheating again are still high. The phrase ‘once a cheater, always a cheater’ is popular for a reason. Meanwhile, the chances of you being able to trust her fully will be very low.
But let’s talk about why you might want a cheating girlfriend to stay with you…
In most cases, this desire only occurs due to a lack of self-esteem.
Either you feel like you deserve to have an unfaithful girlfriend, or you believe you’ll never find anyone better. It might also be that you’re so scared of being alone that you’d rather be coupled-up with a woman who cheats on you.
These are all self-esteem problems that you desperately need to fix. You’ll struggle to ever find a woman who respects you while you have such little love for yourself.
This list of confidence-building exercises will help you start to see yourself in a better light. However, to really get to the bottom of your poor self-image, you might want to consider speaking with a therapist or a confidence coach.
Neediness is perhaps the least attractive trait a man can show, whether he’s single or even in a relationship. It’s highly recommended to improve your lifestyle and your self-esteem to the point where you enjoy your life, regardless of whether you have a girlfriend or not.
How to Recover From Being Cheated On
A great first step is to let out all your emotions. Take a day to be sad. Cry if you have to.
If you skip this process, repress your emotions and pretend you’re not sad, the chances are you’ll carry it in your body for the weeks and months to come. The end result is usually an emotional breakdown.
You don’t want that, so take a day to mourn the loss of your relationship.
But no more than one day!
The sooner you take steps to move on from a cheating girlfriend, the sooner you’ll be in a happier place in life.
Make the most of the extra time you have now you’re single. Now is a great time to do all those things you really wanted to do. Try that new hobby. Start that online side-hustle. Build your best ever body at the gym.
After an initial mourning period, the sadness from a break-up usually provides incredible motivation for one to level up in life. Make the most of it!
This will not only help you to keep busy, forget your ex-girlfriend and improve your self-esteem, but it’ll also improve your chances of attracting an even better partner in future.
Remember though, your aim is to create a life you love whether or not there’s a woman by your side. Your desperation for a girlfriend is probably what caused your ex to disrespect you so much.
How To Deal With Trust Issues
A great tragedy of infidelity is when it ruins the future relationships of the betrayed lover. This is sadly all too common. When we suffer from a traumatic experience, we often become overly defensive to protect ourselves from having to deal with that painful experience again.
In the case of a romantic betrayal, the trauma often causes scorned lovers to have no trust in their new partners. Perhaps they become overly paranoid that their partner is cheating or planning to cheat on them, even when this person has objectively done nothing to spark these suspicions.
In cases of extreme trauma which hasn’t been dealt with, the scorned lover might unconsciously sabotage their new relationships before they have the chance to develop strong feelings, because they associate these feelings with the potential to be hurt. You’ll often see victims of cheating go on to only seek dirtbags or partners with their own commitment issues, because they know there’s no danger of falling in love with these archetypes.
Don’t Take the Pain of Infidelity Into Your Next Relationship
My final tip is perhaps the hardest to follow.
When a romantic partner cheats on us, it can be so painful that it makes us terrified to fall in love again.
If we do find another relationship, we often bring an unnecessary fear of being cheated on again into it.
Perhaps we don’t find it as easy to open up or trust a new partner. Maybe we even accuse them of infidelity, despite no evidence suggesting that this is the case.
This is completely detrimental to your chances of staying in a good relationship in the future – and it’s unnecessary too.
Just because your ex cheated on you, this doesn’t mean your new partner will. They’re completely different people.
In fact, if you take the steps to love and respect yourself more in this new relationship, the chances of you being cheated on will drop dramatically.
Final Thoughts
It can feel like a dagger through your heart when a girlfriend cheats on you. Perhaps it’ll take a while for you to recover.
I’ve been there – and that’s why I’m confident enough to say the steps in this article will help you to get through this.
You just need to be bold enough to take them.
Im Joe, and I travel the world working as a dating expert, confidence coach, and writer. I have written articles for the web’s most popular dating advice blogs and published two well-received books on dating and relationships. The Thrill Of The Chase is one of the books i’ve written.