Survive An Affair – 4 Steps to Stop Comparing Yourself to Her and Survive an Affair

Haunted by your spouse’s affair, you, like many victims of cheating husbands, can discover you’re continually comparing yourself with the other woman. Your inner dialogue may sound very similar to this:

“She’s must be prettier than me.”

“I’ll bet her body is more firm, more fit and healthy than mine – I’ve really let myself go.”

“She’s certainly interesting, stylish, and witty – no surprise he couldn’t resist her.”

“I’m not exciting enough to hold anyone’s interest.”

As if discovering about the affair along with the sleazy particulars weren’t enough, you’re now plagued with a barrage of negative thoughts and emotions – aimed at you, from you. In this particular write-up, I’m going to provide you with some techniques for putting an end to this irrationality and encourage you to be your own most reliable friend.

Cheating’s Damaging Impact on Your Self-Respect

An onslaught of destructive inner talk boosts the turmoil and anxiety you are presently experiencing about yourself, your spouse as well as the circumstances of your relationship.

It is very normal for you to feel some level of self-doubt when you first uncover of your husband’s extramarital relationship. But when a conversation similar to the one previously mentioned grows into a repetitive, hellish tune playing inside your head, you put yourself in the critical predicament of being a daily judge, jury and executioner – to your own self respect.

Just after an affair, you are faced with coping with the loss of trust within the marriage relationship. Finding out that your spouse went outside of the marriage – for whatever ill-gotten rationale – is a serious setback to your self-esteem. So in addition to your trust issues with your husband, you start to lose faith in your own self-image, possibly wondering: “Am I who I thought I was?”

Working through the aftermath of an affair, you discover you are questioning the things you took as a given in your life. This can consist of your own self-image during the time you reevaluate all that you previously relied on as “simple truth.”

This is an incredibly frustrating period in your personal life, without any question. Your world seems like it’s in fragments. Yet, every single day you continue to try to fit these fragments together again and move ahead in your personal life.

Here are some techniques to assist you on your path, focusing on where the journey needs to begin: within you.

Step One: Keep Track of Your Internal Dialogue

Following the revelation of the extramarital affair, without doubt your imagination and emotions are flowing continually. You already know you feel lousy, and you also understand your thoughts correspond with how you feel.

It’s vital to get a handle on exactly what that internal dialogue may sound like. Maintain a record of what you happen to be saying to yourself within these conversations.

Step Two: Knock the Other Woman Off Her Perch

In order to survive infidelity, you must fight back when you find you are comparing yourself to her. It is you who defines your views and emotions – and absolutely no one can take that from you.

If the other woman, who in your own mind, you have created to be some sort of earth-bound goddess, had actually been so wonderful, she wouldn’t have become involved with a married guy. Tell yourself of this regularly.

Step Three: Re-create Your Mental Image of the Other Woman

Now that you have shoved the other woman off of the pedestal, incorporate some fun with this figure. Keep in mind, your ideas are yours, and it really is you who gives meaning to them. This doesn’t need to be unfavorable so much as being an effort to deflate your existing mental images of her. But these are your own thoughts, and you are allowed to use whatever tools you can to survive an affair in your marriage.

Are you itching to know if she is more beautiful? Place a witch’s hat with that visual image, cause the woman’s nose to get bigger and add a giant wart. Give her an ugly ratty hairdo and a green complexion.

You wonder if this woman is wittier than you? Furnish her with a repulsive, squawking laugh, so that each and every time you begin to imagine her with your husband telling a really good joke, you are able to hear her hee-haw or guffaw.

Step Four: Put Yourself Right back On the Pedestal

When you are trying to survive an affair, it’s time to become your own best ally. Take an inventory of all of your own wonderful features. You are generous, you’re nurturing, and you have fantastic legs. Once you have accumulated your list of good features, read all of them to yourself, often.

Every time images of the other woman pops up and you begin to compare yourself to her, get hold of your list and skim it out loud.