by Anna Hofman

Created on: January 20, 2011

When you find out that your other half has been unfaithful to you, it has an incredibly detrimental effect on your self esteem, confidence and perception of yourself.

The main thing to remember (and this is the one thing that will help you most of all to keep your head above the water), is that a man or woman can have an other half who is everything anyone could ever dream of - funny, kind, caring, intelligent and gorgeous, and STILL cheat on them. The individual chooses to be unfaithful for different reasons - some people cannot settle down with just one person, but instead of breaking each relationship off before starting a new one (whether it is an official relationship or purely a sexual one), they choose to keep one girlfriend or boyfriend and "test the water" without him or her knowing. In a way this is for security reasons - lots of individuals find it hard or impossible to be alone - they have to be in a relationship because they aren't happy with themselves.

The most common response people give when they find out about their partners infidelity is, sadly, self-loathing. Even though they haven't done anything wrong they feel immediately like they have done something to drive their other half away from them, which is NEVER the case. If your partner is not happy with you for ANY reason - he or she would break up with you. NOT cheat on you. If this response sounds familiar to you then you may also recognise these thoughts: "am I not attractive enough?", ""maybe I should lose weight?", "is this other man or woman better than me in some way? - what do they have that I don't?" These thought processes are extremely destructive and you need to show them the door before they get the better of you.

The old expression "a blessing disguised as a curse", really applies with infidelity: it is incredibly painful to endure any form of infidelity, but ultimately, if your partner cheats on you then you are better off without them - cliche but true. You may not think they will ever do it again, and everyone's circumstances are different, but so they DESERVE another chance? Is it worth the risk of it happening AGAIN? A very important step to take if you find your other half on your door-step with flowers in their hand, begging for you to take them back is to talk things over, let them know how hurt you feel and how disgusted you are, and then demand that they cut all contact with you for a week at least while you think things through without them muddying

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