How to move on after being cheated on: 11 effective ways

If someone ever tells you it’s easy to get over being cheated on, they’re plain wrong. Why?

Because everyone who has experienced infidelity knows that being cheated on by your partner can be an emotionally devastating experience.

But you know what?

I’m sure it’s not something you can’t handle.

If you’re looking for ways to move on after being cheated on, I’ll try to help you with 11 effective ways. Let’s get started!

1) Accept it as a fact

Do you know what the most common mistake people make after being cheated on is?

They don’t accept it as a fact.

Instead, they try to deny reality. They try to convince themselves that the person who cheated on them is still in love with them and will come back. They try to blame themselves for their partner’s affair.

But you know what?

Actually, it’s just a non-adaptive ego defense mechanism called “denial.” That’s one of the most interesting things I’ve learned during my psychoanalysis classes, and most importantly, it made me realize it was something I was doing.

Now I know it’s an inefficient strategy that damages your emotional well-being in the long term.

And this is a big mistake! Why? Because the more you try to deny it, the more pain you’ll experience.

Sounds familiar?

If so, here’s what you should know:

Accepting that your partner has cheated on you is the first step toward moving on after being cheated on.

The most important way to move on after being cheated on is to accept everything as a fact.

It doesn’t matter if your mind refuses to believe the reality or not, because it will only make the situation worse for you in the long run.

So accept that what has happened cannot be changed and move on with your life by taking steps towards healing yourself emotionally and mentally.

If anything, remember this saying: “What has happened has happened; what will happen will happen; so live your life today!”

2) Take time off to heal and process

Even if you’ve already realized that it happened —your partner has cheated on you, chances are that you won’t be able to heal immediately.

The reason is that you’ll probably need time to process what has happened.

Being cheated on is one experience that can leave you feeling raw and vulnerable.

You may feel angry, sad, or even broken. You may feel like you will never be able to trust anyone else again. Or you may feel like your partner is still in love with you and will come back.

You might even feel that you don’t deserve to heal from this experience. But you do.

But here’s the truth: it’s normal to go through a painful period of time after being cheated on. It’s only a matter of time before you start feeling better and accepting the reality that your partner has cheated on you.

This is why it’s very important for you to give yourself time to heal and process what you’ve been going through.

So don’t rush things! Instead, give yourself time off to heal and process everything that has happened between you and your partner.

The truth is that it’s common for people who go through breakups to feel sad, anxious, and even depressed.

But trust me, there are ways to overcome these negative feelings.

And one of them is to take some time off from work and spend some quality time with yourself in a relaxing environment where there are no distractions from the outside world.

And don’t forget to give yourself some time to grieve and process your feelings.

3) Listen to your feelings and express them

Now you might wonder how it’s possible to heal, what steps to follow, and how you do it.

Based on my personal experience, the best way to heal after a breakup is to listen to your feelings and express them.

This may sound strange, but I can assure you that listening to your feelings and expressing them is crucial for moving on after being cheated on.

Why?

Because when someone cheats on us, our feelings are mixed up with anger, sadness, fear, shock, and many other emotions at the same time.

And if we don’t express these mixed-up emotions in a healthy way, they will just stay with us forever and will eventually control our lives (and not in a good way).

So if you want to move on after being cheated on in a healthy way, learn how to deal with these emotions properly by listening to your feelings and expressing them (in a healthy way).

I know this might sound like a very simple step, but it’s actually the most important one out of all the ones I’ll mention.

You see, if you don’t express your feelings after being cheated on, you’ll only end up hurting yourself even more.

And in time all these negative emotions will start piling up inside of you until it’s almost impossible for you to deal with them.

This is why you need to learn how to express your feelings in a healthy way so that they won’t cause any damage or stress to your body or mind.

So, remember: it’s important you express your emotions and let go of the hurt, anger, and betrayal you feel. That way, you’ll accept what happened and move on without any negative emotions.

4) Write down your feelings

Okay, you already know you need to express your emotions.

But what if you don’t need to talk about your relationship with someone else?

Well, here’s what I always tend to do whenever I feel the urge to release my emotions but I don’t want to share them with anyone else.

I simply write down all the negative thoughts and feelings I have on a piece of paper.

I write them down until I feel completely fine and happy about it.

In other words, I write down everything I’m thinking about and feeling until my level of positivity is higher than my level of negativity.

This is very important if you want to move on after being cheated on because when we keep all these negative thoughts inside, they’ll just pile up inside of us creating an unbearable amount of stress and tension.

So, if you’re not sure how to deal with your emotions after a breakup, writing them down is definitely one of the best ways to do it.

But let me share another way to express your thoughts without sharing them with people you already know.

Of course, you need someone you can trust to do this.

When I was in the same situation, I decided to contact a professional therapist or a coach and I accidentally found a website called Relationship Hero.

I don’t usually recommend websites like this but a relationship coach I spoke to gave me unique insights and helped me figure out ways to move on after a breakup.

Maybe they can also help you to look at your experience as the beginning of something new.

If you think you can also benefit from this, I’ll just leave a link here for you.

Click here to check them out.

5) Don’t contact your partner

Even though the strategies that I’ve discussed above are likely to work in all circumstances, there is one more thing you should know if you want to actually move on after a breakup.

You should know that contacting your ex is not a good idea.

I’m not here to say that you won’t be tempted to contact your ex and try to make things better or talk about what happened.

Instead, I’m almost sure that you will be tempted to do this.

But if you want to move on after a breakup, you should make an extra effort not to contact your ex.

Here’s why:

When you contact your ex or try to talk about what happened, you’re looking for confirmation of what they did and why they did it.

You’re trying to find out if there’s any way that you can change their mind and convince them to get back together with you.

But the only thing contacting your ex will do is open up old wounds and make them feel uneasy about what happened between the two of you.

If they enjoyed hurting you, then this is exactly what they want: They want to know that their decision hurt you just as much as it hurt them.

But unless you have a very good reason for doing so, it’s best if you don’t do it because it will only make things worse.

Why?

Well, the main reason is that when we contact our exes again after a breakup, they’ll start thinking about us and may even consider getting back together with us again.

And don’t forget: no matter how badly you want to know the reason behind your partner’s cheating, the truth is that you probably won’t get the answers you’re looking for.

And it’s not going to make a difference if you’re the one who ends up getting hurt.

You need to let go of the need to know and let go of the urge to contact your partner.

Remember that at the end of the day, you deserve to be with someone who loves you with their whole heart and with whom you have mutual respect and trust.

6) Don’t blame yourself

Let me discuss one more thing you shouldn’t do after being cheated on other than keeping in touch with your partner.

And that’s the blame game.

You shouldn’t blame yourself for being cheated on.

When you decide to end a relationship, it’s not because there’s something wrong with you.

It’s because the relationship was already broken beyond repair. There is nothing that you could have done to save it.

You can’t change the past, so don’t waste your time and energy on what went wrong and why you were cheated on.

Instead, focus on moving forward and finding someone who deserves to be with you.

I know that of the things that many people who’ve been cheated on say they regret is blaming themselves.

You might find yourself asking, “Was I not good enough for him/her?” or “Did I do something wrong?”

But you didn’t do anything wrong. There’s nothing you can do to change the past.

All you can do is learn from it and use it as a way to become a better person.

And one of the best ways to do this is to stop blaming yourself. You didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t deserve to be cheated on.

Let go of the guilt and regret so that you can move past this experience as a better and stronger person.

7) Don’t ruminate over the past

Speaking of the past, you should know that you shouldn’t keep ruminating on it after being cheated on.

What do I mean by rumination?

Well, it’s when you go over and over the past again and again in your mind.

It’s when you keep thinking about what happened, how it happened, why it happened, what could have been different, and so on.

It’s when you keep questioning yourself and your actions over and over.

The truth is that when you’re trying to move past being cheated on, it’s common to overthink the past and wish you could change it.

This can be especially true if you were in an open relationship and your partner cheated on you.

There’s a chance you might be wondering if there was something you did that made your partner want to cheat on you.

You might also be wondering why you stayed with your partner as long as you did.

But you need to stop ruminating over the past. It won’t do any good. What’s done is done.

You may not be able to change what happened, but you can make sure that you don’t repeat the same mistakes.

That’s why you should never spend days and nights thinking about what happened in the past and why you were cheated on.

This will only make you feel depressed, sad, and angry. And it will have a negative impact on your mental health.

At least that’s what the latest studies prove — rumination leads to the symptoms of depression and decreases our overall well-being.

It’s important to let go of the past so that you can move forward in your life with a clean slate and without any regrets.

And this naturally brings us to another point: don’t let the past dictate your future and learn from your mistakes.

8) Learn from past mistakes

Let me ask you a question.

Have you ever looked at your cheating experience as something you can learn from?

Here’s the thing: you can actually look at the fact that you were cheated on as an experience you can learn from.

I know this might not be easy to do, but you need to see it that way.

When you look at your experience as something you can learn from, it will help you break the cycle of pain that comes after being cheated on.

It will also help you avoid making the same mistakes in the future and find a happy and fulfilling relationship with a loyal partner who won’t ever cheat on you again.

This is especially true if you’ve been in a few serious relationships and find yourself wondering why you’ve been cheated on in all of them.

You can look back to see if there are any commonalities between past relationships and your current ones.

There may be certain things that you may have done in past relationships that you’re now doing in your current relationship.

You may have been prone to getting involved with people who had issues with commitment.

Or there may have been certain red flags that didn’t seem important to you at the time that you now see applied to your current situation.

9) Find support from family and friends

Want to know what I consider the best way to move on after being cheated on?

It’s to find support from family and friends.

To be honest, one thing that always helps me to recover after tough times is to talk about my problems with family and friends.

Talking about your problems to someone who cares about you is a great way to work through your emotions.

It also helps you not to feel so isolated from the world after being cheated on.

After all, you can’t be strong when you’re going through the pain of being cheated on if you don’t have anyone to support you.

You need someone to talk to and lean on in order to get through this difficult time.

And that person can be your family or your friends. Sometimes, it will take both of them in order for you to get through this experience with your mental health intact.

So, here’s what you should do:

If you’ve been cheated on, there’s a chance that you may feel ashamed or embarrassed about how your partner treated you.

You may feel like you don’t want to tell anyone about what happened or that you don’t want to burden your family and friends with your problems.

But you need to talk to someone about what you’ve been going through. You need to find someone who can be there for you and support you as you try to heal from this experience.

Talking to someone can be beneficial in several ways. It can help you process what happened and work through your emotions. It can also help you sort out any misconceptions you might have about what happened.

This is why it’s important to have a strong support system around you when you go through this difficult time.

10) Meet new people and find happiness again

As far as I know, it’s common for people who’ve experienced infidelity to feel like they can’t trust anyone again.

You may feel like you’re never going to be in a relationship again because you can’t trust anyone after being hurt so badly.

But guess what?

You need to realize that you can’t let the actions of one person keep you from ever being in a relationship again.

You can date again and you can meet someone new. You just need to take the necessary steps to do so.

You need to put yourself out there and start meeting people again. You can do this through online dating, meeting people in your community, or joining a club or group where you can meet new people.

But even if you understand that meeting new people is a great way to move on after being cheated on, you might wonder how it’s possible to find happiness again.

Well, in that case, I would suggest something that helped me realize that new opportunities are always available to me.

After experiencing a breakup, I was desperate and decided that I needed to find love again. For this purpose, I started reading an eBook about manifesting love.

But it turned out that Manifesting Love by Tiffany McGee was so much more to me than just another self-help book about manifestation.

In fact, the author made me realize how important it is to let go of my emotional baggage after a breakup because it didn’t allow me to make space for new opportunities in life.

And the same applies to you! Don’t limit yourself from finding someone you truly deserve and don’t let the past keep you from being happy.

And if you also want to get inspired by this fascinating eBook, here’s the link to find out more about it.

11) Celebrate yourself and your own worthiness

And finally, the greatest way of all to move on after being cheated on is to celebrate yourself and your own worthiness.

You see, one of the most powerful ways to heal after a breakup is to realize that you are worthy of love and that you deserve much better than what you have experienced.

Believe it or not, a relationship ending is an opportunity for you to look back and reflect on your own personal journey.

It’s an opportunity for you to celebrate what you’ve been through and what you’ve learned.

And what’s more, it will help you celebrate your own worthiness.

Trust me when I say that you are worthy of love and someone who treats you right. You are worthy of respect and care.

You have so much to offer to the right person. It’s just a matter of finding that person. And you can only do that by putting yourself out there.

So, if you’re struggling with this right now, ask yourself: “am I worthy of love?” And then try to answer this question by writing down why you do or don’t feel like you are worthy of love.

By doing so, you will create a list of reasons why your ex-partner was not right for you in the first place and why they didn’t deserve your love.

But most importantly, this exercise will allow you to realize how awesome and wonderful you truly are! It will let the light shine upon all the good things about yourself that make up who you really are as a person.

And in return, this will help lift your self-esteem back up again!

Final thoughts

All in all, getting over being cheated on can be an emotionally challenging experience.

However, it’s important to remember that you can get through it.

Whether you prefer to take time off to heal, write down your feelings, or find support from family and friends, hopefully, you’ll find those ways that I’ve discussed helpful.

But if you still think that a more personalized strategy would be a great help, once again, I would suggest keeping in touch with professional coaches at Relationship Hero. I’m sure they will help you heal and find ways to become happy again.

Click here to get started.