subject: Recovering From Adultery - The 5 Steps Of The Grieving Process [print this page] Recovering From Adultery - The 5 Steps Of The Grieving Process
How can you contemplate recovering from adultery when you have spent the best part of your adult life with the man or woman you thought was your soul mate. Everything you did, you did as a couple. Every decision you made, you made with them in mind. So what happens when you wake up one morning and everything has changed?
How do you find the strength to get on with your life when the person you thought you were supposed to grow old with is no longer a part of your life. What comes next when you are recovering from Adultery?
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance have long been known as the 5 stages of grief.
Anyone grieving the loss of a loved one will move through these stages in their own time and will eventually come out the other end feeling better and more ready to face life. Recovering from adultery can be much like this too.
Although you are not grieving the death of your partner, you have lost a key figure in your life and the relationship you had with them. So in the early days after such a loss, be kind to yourself. Know that your feelings are a normal and acceptable step in recovering from adultery and that it is ok to allow yourself to feel them.
You may find yourself trying to dissect every second of the relationship in a desperate attempt to pinpoint where things went wrong. It is human nature to want the answers to all your questions and unfortunately sometimes, your ex won't hang around to give them to you. The problem with trying to find the answers yourself is that no matter what part you played in the relationship, it was your partner who made the decision to cheat and that is the reason the relationship has ended.
You need to keep telling yourself this, and you need to believe it.
You will probably want to lock yourself away from the world and wallow in your sorrow but this can make the experience last longer and be more painful.
Your family and friends will want to help you. Listen to their words of reassurance and know that these are the people who matter in your life. They are only trying to distract you from thinking about things because they care about you and they don't like seeing you hurting.
You may find yourself getting cranky with them over little things, but this is also common and they will understand that you don't mean the things you may say.
When you discover your partner has been cheating on you and you decide that the relationship is over, it is perfectly normal to experience grief as intense as you would, had that person passed away. So naturally, you will experience the normal stages of grief.
These stages can had a debilitating effect on you and can make it very difficult for you to get on with things that need to be done.
