After the Affair – Does He Love You?
You know, possibly the biggest reason many relationships don’t survive an affair is the inability of the innocent party to regain the faith that they are still loved. After all, surely if they loved you, they wouldn’t have cheated in the first place?
Many people can move on and forgive their lovers for being unfaithful, but the damage done to your self esteem is often irreparable. Where once you might have been certain of your partner’s love, now you’re just as certain that not only do they not love you, but nobody else could possibly love you either.
The consequences of cheating go far beyond simply losing trust and faith in your partner. You also lose trust and faith in yourself.
Regaining the confidence of knowing that your partner loves you is a great help in repairing the damage done to your self esteem. Sure, you can boost it by going with someone else and proving that you’re still attractive to the opposite sex, but strangely this doesn’t always work as well as you might think.
Instead, you come up with excuses that ‘well, they weren’t really very good looking so that’s why they went out with me, cos nobody else would have them’… you can just feel free to place in any of your own dumb reason here.
For me, the greatest way to regain my confidence after my husband cheated, was in complementing myself that, even though he had the chance to run off into the sunset with a much younger, funnier, sexier… he didn’t. Trust me, there’s a great deal of satisfaction to be had from gloating over the fact that the ‘other’ woman can’t be all that if she can’t get the guy to run off with her.
It may not be the most ladylike way to deal with your feelings of insecurity, but whenever you feel unloved, unattractive, or ‘un’ anything, just remember, you’re obviously more of a catch than the other woman or your partner wouldn’t have stayed.
It’s very rare for someone to stay in a relationship that they don’t want to be in. Don’t beat yourself up thinking they’re only hanging round for the sake of the kids, or because of the mortgage, or even the dog. If they’ve stayed, (assuming of course, they’ve given up the other lover), it’s because they want to be with you more than anyone else.
Don’t let your insecurities break a relationship that an affair couldn’t. There are numerous reasons why people cheat, and most folks who cheat never intend doing so. And while that’s no excuse for doing it anyway, it goes to show that while cheating is a sign of a relationship in trouble, it’s not always a sign of someone not being in love.
