The question was posed, “How do I mentally get over a cheating woman?” You may have wondered about this yourself. Mentally distancing yourself from what happened poses some challenges.
Since the nature of trauma is to freeze a moment in time, it works counter to ‘moving on’. Moving on involves putting the past behind and living in the present.
Trauma puts a hole on putting such events behind you. The freezing of time with trauma is one of the first obstacles to overcome.
With this ‘freezing’ effect, the cheating seems to have happened ‘just yesterday’. In the world of emotions, time is meaningless.
Even the Bible mentions the difficulty putting these things behind you. In Proverbs 6:34-35 the description of a man’s reaction to his wife’s adultery:
34 For jealousy is the rage of a man: therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance. 35 He will not regard any ransom; neither will he rest content, though thou givest many gifts.
In the world of emotions, you’ll feel as if the emotions are just as raw as when it first happened. Like a scratch in a record that forces the album to repeat something over and over to the point of irritation, the trauma keeps playing repeatedly in your head and heart.
The more details you have, the more vivid your recollection of events are and the more intense the feelings you experience.
The rules of emotional reality
Emotional reality operates on a different set of rules than cognitive or objective reality. In cognitive or objective reality you can look at a calendar and see how long it’s been since the cheating.
Your intellect can begin calculating distance from you and the affair, yet your heart refuses allowing any distance to happen. This puts you in a bind between your head and heart.
Unfreezing a trauma often involves resolving whatever emotional issues the trauma brought up for you. In the case of a cheating wife, your issues may include issues of betrayal, being lied to, being defrauded, the loss of your manhood, embarrassment, or any number of others.
Each of these issues will need some resolution before you can move on.
Much like the construction of music which involves tension and resolution, you will have to go through a similar resolution of whatever built up the tension.
Moving on requires other steps, yet understanding and taking action on this first one is a good place to start.
If you continue struggling with letting go, it could be that you’re struggling with “Affair Trauma”. In the video “Overcoming Affair Trauma”, you can start taking the important tasks of recovery from the affair.
Best Regards,
Jeff
