How to heal the emotional wound left by infidelity?

If you have suffered an infidelity, you will feel a deep pain like you have rarely felt. It is a mixture of anger, feelings of injustice, disbelief and madness.

You will experience flashbacks (images of your partner committing infidelity) as in any traumatic experience and a feeling of loss of your partner as in a duel. That is to say: a mixture of trauma and grief.

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The psychological repercussions of infidelity

One of the main effects of infidelity is hypervigilance, because this experience damages your attachment. Infidelity damages the connection we have with our partner and, although in these circumstances we would like to end the relationship so as not to suffer, many times we cannot do it.

The reason is that human beings create steel cables that link us to others, and when we feel attacked and betrayed, we feel two opposing forces working together. On the one hand, we feel the need to move away, and on the other hand, we cannot break that steel cord. The solution: hypervigilance.

And it is that if you have suffered infidelity you will be hypervigilant with your partner. You will want to know where he is, what he does, what he feels, what he thinks and with whom he is communicating with the mobile at all times. Your partner, usually, feeling overwhelmed and stressed by surveillance, will hide information to escape the pressure. The result: more mistrust. And you will think that you will not regain confidence in your partner.

So betrayal makes us mistrust, and mistrust protects the person from being hurt so deeply again.

Another feeling you will feel is anger. And it is that any serious psychological trauma produced by a family member or partner produces anger, hypervigilance and mistrust. Anger has to do with the feeling of injustice.

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To do?

In order for you to heal this wound, you need heal the emotional wound caused by your partner. The healing of this wound depends on the deactivation of injustice, mistrust and hypervigilance.

1. Deactivation of hypervigilance

The most important thing is that your partner tells you and informs you of what happened. However, if he tells you little, it will increase your desire to know more and your mistrust. If he tells you a lot, the flashbacks (with the images of information overload) and the anger will increase.

Therefore, you must negotiate with yourself and your partner what is strictly necessary to know to move forward. Also, your partner should tell you if the person you cheated with tries to contact you. Once you have the information, past and present, the hypervigilance will gradually fade because it will no longer do any good.

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2. Deactivation of rage

To deactivate rage, you have to get something in return that compensates us for the injustice received. For example, if your partner is not usually communicative, open up to you and let you know what they think and express themselves. This way you will feel that your partner is different and not the same. And being another your partner, you will take less risks than if it is the same (this reasoning is an emotional reasoning and is not only rational).

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3. deactivation of distrust

This is the emotion that covers the core emotion of infidelity trauma: sadness. As this is a defense that protects your most vulnerable "I", it is the one that will take the longest to deactivate.

At first, trust will be restored on a rational level, but it will take time to reach the emotional level.. For this, time is needed and that in that time you have had the necessary information so that hypervigilance continues deactivated and, above all, that you feel that your partner has changed by giving you something with which you win so painfully situation.

If these conditions are maintained, your wound and your pain will heal and you will be able to say that you learned and got something out of one of the most painful experiences you have ever felt.