YOUR story - YOUR truth - YOUR secret

There are many sides to infidelity. It is a complicated fuck up of a situation. One that is not looked upon lightly. One that carries intense shame and shaming.

And the most common image that comes to mind, is a man cheating on his wife.

I tested this theory last year, by posing a simple question in a very large group.

I purposefully did not give any context for my question, and I did not give any bias. The only information that anyone really had, was that a WOMAN was asking the question.

From the hundreds of comments I received, it was plain to see that the misconception is that PREDOMINANTLY men cheat, and women bleat. And this was based on answers from both men and women. I will share that research I did in a later post. Quite interesting, to say the least.

So when a woman cheats on her partner, or becomes someone’s mistress, it’s treated VERY differently. She is SHAMED! Mistreated, and shunned. And I also have my theories as to why this is the case, but that’s not for this discussion today.

And when one is in a place of shame and fear, there is no space for healing.

It is often only with hindsight that we are able to see just where and when things started to unravel. And we start the process of questioning and reasoning.

Why were we tempted to wander outside of our relationship?

Or why did we accept being someone’s mistress.

We do not PLAN to have an affair.

We don’t commit to someone and then say “Oh by the way, I reserve the right to venture elsewhere, should the need arise.” We don’t PLAN this!

OR, we don’t plan to meet someone, fall in love, only to discover they are already married, and then remain their secret lover for years on end. We don’t PLAN this!

Often we don’t realise we are in the infidelity realm until it is too late.

So how DO we end up in these situations?

There are many reasons, and sadly we will never really get to the core of our fuck up, if we don’t have an opportunity to DISCUSS what happened, or to FEEL our OWN emotions, or to even get inside our OWN heads.

And the reason we don’t do any of these things, is because once the affair comes to light, we are immediately on the back foot, embarrassed, hiding, running away, ashamed, afraid.

Our brain basically goes into survival mode. Our brain works overtime trying to cover our tracks. Trying to think up a story. Trying to make up some logical reason for the illogical behaviour.

And depending on how the affair ended (or didn’t end), our healing mind can take weeks, months and even years, before it kicks in and says:

“Enough now! Let’s figure out what happened here!”

And during this time, we need to remember we are not alone.

There are others who have done this as well.

Others who are feeling afraid and ashamed.

There are people who still care about us, even if we feel we don’t deserve that care.

Everyone makes mistakes. It’s how we deal with them that matters.

And a good place to start is to tell YOUR version of YOUR story.

YOUR secret.

YOUR truth.

Even if it’s something you only share with ONE person.

You need to do this…

For your own sanity, and to realise you are not as alone as you think you are.