What Happens After Cheating

Kevin Anthony 0:05
Welcome to the Love Lab podcast, a safe and fun place to get real and learn about sex. Whether you’re a man or woman, single or couple, this is the show for you. I am your host, Kevin Anthony, and I am here to guide you to go from good to amazing in the bedroom, and your relationships.

All right, welcome back to the Love Lab podcast. This is episode 283. And it is titled What happens after cheating. So, a while back towards the end of last year, I had a personal friend reach out in regards to a situation that he was dealing with where his partner had cheated. Knowing what I do for a living, he was looking for some advice and actually asked me if I would do a show on that topic. At the time, I was already booked out through the end of the year with different shows and the content was already going actually even into the beginning of this year. So all I could do was make a short YouTube video. So I made a short YouTube video that talked about a few things that you could do in response to having been cheated on. But I’ve always wanted to come back to it and really do an entire episode and go deeper into that topic. So that is what I am going to do today.

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Okay, so let’s dive into the material. And the very first thing I have written here in my notes is so you have been cheated on what does that mean? I thought that would be a good place to start because I think a lot of people misunderstand what cheating actually means. And what do I mean by that? Well, you know, a lot of people think that oh, cheating just simply means they don’t care. Or it simply means that somebody else was hotter or better in bed or whatever. But there are actually a lot of reasons why somebody might end up cheating and we’re gonna go over a few of the bigger ones. And I think you’ll start to realize that there could be other reasons.

So number one, you haven’t been giving the relationship the attention it requires. So one of the reasons why people often cheat is because they feel unfulfilled in their relationship. I’m going to talk about some of the different ways in which they feel unfulfilled in just a moment. But the idea is, you may not be giving your relationship, the attention that it really requires in order to be healthy. And I know that’s hard to hear. But you would be surprised at how many people I see or work with, who kind of are on autopilot in their relationship especially Once they’ve been married, you know, maybe when they’re dating in the beginning, they take a lot more time to, you know, put energy and attention into the relationship. But then later on, as you know, they get married, they have kids, whatever, they just kind of go on autopilot. And they’re just going through the day-to-day motions, they’re not putting the same time, energy, and attention into the relationship that they once were. For many people, time, energy, and attention is an essential part of feeling fulfilled in a relationship. And when they are not fulfilled for a long enough period of time, that is, when they might start to seek the things they are not getting in the relationship elsewhere. So it’s really important that you put time and attention.

I’m sure I’ve probably been cheated on more than this one time. This is the only time I’m really aware of. But many, many years ago, when I was in my 20s, I was dating a woman, and we were actually living together. And I felt like we were we were quite close and had a good relationship. So I was really surprised to find out that she had cheated on me. But in retrospect, I realized why I was working full time, I was going to school, I was training with a professional downhill mountain bike team on the weekends, I was never there. That’s the point. And even though when I was there, I did everything I could to nurture that relationship. And I felt we had a good relationship, but ultimately came out of that was she was lonely. And she was just there, there wasn’t enough of me in her life. Now, I will say that all of the things I’m going to talk about on this show you have been cheated on what does that mean segment of the show are not excuses? They do not justify the behavior of someone cheating. So I want to make that clear right now.

But they are reasons. And it’s important for you to understand why somebody may have cheated. So make sure that you give the relationship, the attention that it requires. Next is your partner is not sexually satisfied. This is really a big one. I mean, this is really a big one. And not just because this show in the work I do is about sex, love, and relationships. No, no, this is a big one, because it is often cited as one of the big reasons why people cheat. They are not sexually satisfied in the relationship. You’ve heard me talk about it. You’ve heard multiple experts that I’ve had on the show psychiatrists, you know, psychologists, counselors, Coach, I mean, everybody will tell you that for the majority of people, the average person out there, having a healthy fulfilling sex life is essential to their happiness, their well being and the health of their relationship. So it is not surprising that when somebody is not feeling sexually fulfilled in their relationship, they may seek that sexual fulfillment outside of the relationship.

Again, I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do. I’m just saying that you have to understand why people might do these things. If they’re not sexually satisfied, you, of course, need to find out why. You know, is it because you’re not having enough sex? Is it because they’re not having the kind of sex they want? Is it because you know, you ejaculate in three minutes, and they don’t get anywhere near orgasm? You’ve got to figure out what it is they’re missing. Next, your partner is not emotionally satisfied. This is a really big one too. To really feel connected in a relationship, there has to be an emotional bond there. And, you know, a lot of times people again, they’re, they’re on this sort of autopilot mode, and they’re just going through the motions of life. And they’re not really connecting on an emotional level. Yeah, sure. They talk about, you know, what did you do today? And how was your day at work? And how are the kids doing or whatever, but they’re not connecting on a deep emotional level. You know, you can have that kind of surface-level stuff with, you know, friends, co-workers, whatever, but in your, your relationship, your love relationship, your partnership, there needs to be more than that. So there needs to be a deeply satisfying emotional connection. And you’ll see this as a reason why a lot of women end up cheating.

Although, you know, they’ll say Oh, well, of course, you know, the men are just cheating because they want sex. But, you know, the women generally are the ones feeling not sexually fulfilled, unless, of course, the woman is withholding sex, then of course, there are a lot of situations where the man feels sexually unfulfilled. But a lot of times women aren’t getting the kind of sex that they want. And so, therefore, they’re not motivated to have sex. So that’s a whole other thing. But my point here is that not feeling emotionally satisfied is a big one for women, they don’t get the emotional depth and connection that they’re looking for. Alright, next, your partner is no longer attracted to you, oh, this, you know, I didn’t set up the sound effects today, darn, I need that truth bomb. Sound Effect. Yeah, this is this is often a hard one for people to take.

But it is possible that your partner is no longer sexually attracted to you. And therefore they are seeking that sexual attraction and sex outside of your relationship. Now, we all age, bodies change, things change. You know, there’s only so much that we can do about it. I’m not suggesting that, you know, just because you’re getting older and things are changing that is a reason why somebody is not attracted to you. That shouldn’t be the case, especially if you’re both aging together. But it is possible that you know, you’ve gotten into a relationship, and you’ve just decided, well, you’re now at a minimum relationship, or now that I’m married, like, who cares, and you skip the workouts and you eat the food you shouldn’t eat, and you don’t do the grooming that you should do, and you are no longer physically attractive. You know, again, that’s, that’s separate from just you know, the normal processes of changes that happen as we age and go through life. But that is something that does come up. In fact, in a previous show, I had a psychologist on and that was one of the things that she was talking about. And she was really straight up about it. Like, you know what, you probably don’t want to hear this, but your partner might not be attracted to you anymore.

So that is definitely something that comes up. And the last one, there is something missing from the relationship that is so important that the person is willing to cheat. In most cases, you have to understand that the decision to cheat comes with risk. And you have to overcome some resistance about whether or not you want to take this step. So if you have then likely, there was something big enough and important enough that was missing from your relationship that you were trying to find elsewhere. And I say something is it is kind of vague and generic, but there could be a lot of things. And now you may hear some of those things and go Well, that isn’t really a big thing. Well, maybe it’s not a big thing to you, but it might have been a big thing to them. So when you need to find out what that thing is, and to you need to understand why that thing was so important to that person. So that’s kind of the first section here is like, you’ve been cheated on what does it mean? And those are some reasons. And I hope that gets you to think a little bit differently about why people cheat. It’s not just they wanted to have sex with somebody else, or somebody else had a better body or bigger penis or better boobs or whatever it is, there can be real problems with the relationship that lead people to take that step. And so hopefully, I think that gives you a little bit broader perspective as to why people might cheat.

Okay, so now you’re probably saying, Well, I don’t really care why they did it. But they did it right. Now we have to fix it. Well, how you fix it will largely depend on what it was that led the person to cheat to begin with. So having that understanding is rather important. All right. So let’s get into it because you know, the title of this is, you know what happens after cheating. So let’s get into the things that you can do after cheating has actually occurred. And I’m not going to go into what to do before like to prevent it for a couple of reasons. One, you’ll get the idea of what you need to do just by hearing what to do afterward because they are things that you should also be doing beforehand. But also, literally, everything I talk about on this show is what to do to prevent cheating. All the things about how to be a great lover, all the things about how to have a great relationship, all the things about communication and trust. Safety and all that stuff, just listen to this show every day, those are the things that you should do to prevent cheating. So that’s why I’m not going to cover that specifically.

Okay, so there are four main areas here when it comes to what to do after you’ve been cheated on. The first one is calm down. Really important to calm down, you need to control your reaction here, the typical reaction is a very emotional one, a very explosive one, and usually a very angry one. The problem is, is that all of those negative emotions are only going to make the situation worse. So you want to control your reaction. You know, take some deep breaths, if you need to remove yourself from the room or the situation for a little while until you can calm down. Do whatever you can to calm the emotional response. So what works for you? Is it meditation is it going out and doing some exercise, maybe you need to go run five miles and come back. And then we’ll talk kind of thing, figure out what you can do to calm yourself down to lower the emotional reaction. So that you don’t make the situation worse by potentially saying things or doing things that you will regret later.

So yeah, number one is really, it’s, it’s super important to calm down the emotional response, you don’t want to react out of response, like, you know, something happens is a stimulus. And then there’s a response. And you just react without thinking, in a situation like this, you want to really slow down, and you want to take the time to think about it and make the right moves and not make the situation any worse than it already is. All right. So after that, number two is to request an emotionally mature conversation. And notice, I call that an emotionally mature conversation. Because not just any conversation will do in this scenario, you need to be able to have a very emotionally mature conversation. So what does that mean?

Well, you want to make sure that the person knows you’re not just going to yell at them. So this is not a punishment. This is not a place where you’re just going to sit down and vent and yell and scream, and then okay, I feel better now. So we want to reassure them of that. The purpose is really to find out the why. And then, of course, how to move forward. So why did this happen? How, you know, what, what can we do to change this? How do we move forward and repair as a result of what happened? You want to make sure that you’re not blaming or criticizing, which is important when you’re sitting down to have this conversation. It’s not, you did this, and you did this, and it’s all your fault, and blah, blah, blah, and the martyr, no, remember some of the reasons why people cheat. Now, again, I’m not making excuses. I’m not saying because you didn’t pay attention in your relationship, that it’s your fault that they cheated, they still shouldn’t cheat. However, what I want you to understand is that there are two contributing factors here, there’s the fact that you didn’t put the energy into the relationship.

And then there’s the fact that they decided rather than talking to you about it, and trying to fix it first, to go out and cheat. So there is some responsibility on both ends much of the time, not always, but much of the time. Because of that, you don’t want to sit there and blame or present yourself as the martyr, you want to really sit down. And that brings me to the next one, which is to seek to genuinely understand what happened. You want to stick to the issues at hand. So what happens, unfortunately, in a lot of these situations is a situation occurs. Somebody cheated. Let’s talk about that. And what led to that, but instead, what comes up is remember that other thing that you did in that other thing that you did in that thing from 10 years ago? Absolutely not. This is not the time or place to go there. There really is never is a time and place to go there. But this is definitely not the time or place. So you want to stick to the issue at hand. Let’s talk about this situation. Why did you feel the need to cheat? What What led you to that? How can we work to repair this relationship?

All right, number six, don’t expect to solve everything in one conversation. So you know, I’m talking about four things to do. After you’ve been cheated on, the first one was to calm down. The second one is to request an emotionally mature conversation. Now there were a bunch of sub points on that, which number six is don’t expect to solve everything in one conversation. So it probably wasn’t one thing that happened one time that led to this, and it’s probably not going to be one conversation that fixes this or shifts this. So you know, like all important things, and all difficult and complex things, you take it one step at a time and expect to have many of these emotionally mature conversations over time, until you get back to where you want to be.

Alright, number three, during this conversation and get the person to agree, it won’t happen again, until you figure out a solution. This is really important. The person may have cheated once they may have been having an affair for five years. But when this comes out, and you’re at this moment of deciding what do we do about this, how do we solve this, both people have to agree to stop all outside activity, you know, relationship and sex activity outside the relationship, until you can figure out how to handle this. The reason for that is, that you’re most likely just going to continue to do more damage rather than repair. And if you’re only you know, partially in the relationship, and partially in another relationship outside, how willing are you going to really be to try and solve the problem here. So you really have to agree to stop everything, immediately. And focus on where we go from here. Now notice, I keep saying like, where do we go from here? What to do about it? How to move forward? Notice, I haven’t said, how do we get back together? Or how do we, you know, stay together and the cheating? And that’s because that’s only one possible way to deal with the situation. We’ll talk about that a little bit more in just a moment. But yeah, that’s why I keep using those terms, because you may sit down and have an emotionally mature conversation. And you may determine that it’s not fixable, or you don’t want to fix it, maybe it’s possible, but you don’t want to or your partner doesn’t want to so you may end up in a conversation about how do we immaturely you know, de-escalate the relationship and transition.

So that kind of leads me to number four, which is working to create a plan to either repair the relationship or transition it. So you’re gonna have the difficult task of making the decision whether or not to continue this relationship. And you, you may want to you may not want to, I’ll tell you in the in the case that I mentioned earlier with myself when I was younger, you know, when we sat down and talked and I, you know, I had an emotional reaction. I was not happy about this. But what I did do is, you know, I said, let’s sit down and talk about it. And honestly, sometimes I look back at situations like this that happened in my life. This was long before I worked as a coach doing this stuff, long before I was married long before I even had any real significant long-term relationships. And I go, Wow, man, I was so lucky that I was able to handle it the way I did because I had no teaching like this. I did not have a podcast like the Love Lab podcast listened to. I certainly did not learn this stuff from my parents. So, you know, I’m grateful that somehow I figured out how to do this.

But yeah, you’re gonna have to sit down and make that difficult decision. And in that case, we sat down, we talked about it. And when I realized that, she actually did still love me and care about me quite a bit, but that she was lonely and bored. There are some other complicating factors like we moved to a new city and didn’t have a lot of friends, you know, and she just didn’t know what to do with herself and was not feeling emotionally connected. And that was that so once we realized that, and I realized, wow, okay, I realized how my actions really contributed to this. We made a plan to move forward and do things differently. And it actually worked really well. We have obviously, ended up transitioning the relationship several years later for completely different reasons. But yeah, that’s, that’s sometimes the place that you’re in, you’re just gonna have to make those decisions. Alright, number two, to as in number two, subcategory under four I don’t want to confuse you with all the numbers, I suggest seeking professional help. So situations like these can be extremely emotional and extremely difficult to navigate.

And you may or may not have the emotional maturity or the tools to really handle this effectively on your own. And look, if you look at this situation, and you’re like, I really want to figure this out, I really want to make this work, or I really want to transition in a way that doesn’t create tons of damage in the process. If you are aware that you don’t have the skills, find somebody who can help you do so. You know, I, in most of the shows, when I’m talking about different topics, I often at some point recommend you seek help. And every once in a while, I’ll get a comment on YouTube about, oh, you’re just pitching shilling your own work, I don’t even do this kind of coaching work, I don’t work on people who have you know, been cheated on or on the brink of divorce or anything like that, I can certainly do that. It’s just generally not the area that I specialize in. I usually specialize in helping people, you know, create the most amazing relationships, fix their sex life, if it’s kind of gone downhill, or make it even better if it’s, you know, if you’re looking for ways to make it better, you know, people who’ve been in a relationship a long time, and they’ve kind of lost the fire, like, how do we get that fire back? You know, how do we create, you know, this, this attraction and desire for each other in relation, those are usually the areas that I work in.

So, you know, I’m not just pitching you to work with me, I mean, but I, I can’t help you with this, if this is the sort of thing that you’re looking for. But it’s not my general area. So if you want to go find somebody who does specialize in working in these types of situations, and in fact, I have coming up on the show in a few weeks, somebody who does specialize in this very thing, and she is quite good at it. And I think that’s going to be a really fascinating conversation that you should tune into. I’ll let you know when that one is coming out. Next, regularly check on the progress of your plan. So you’ve made a plan, regardless of what the plan is, then you got to kind of follow up on it. You can’t just say, Okay, here’s what we decided on and then never really do anything again. You have to take action, whatever the actions are that you’ve decided. And then you’ve got to check in on a regular basis and say, How is it going? How are we doing it this? Are we going in the direction that we’ve agreed that we want to go? Again, don’t just go okay, well, we had that conversation, this is what we decided. And now we just go on with life as usual, without actually really doing anything making any changes, or ever checking in, that’s what you don’t want to do. And then make adjustments as necessary.

So you may have made a plan immediately on how you were going to address this problem and move forward. And you might find out later on that that original plan needs adjustments. Well, we didn’t realize we were quite as far you know, down this path as we thought or, you know, whatever it is, you might just need to make some adjustments. So those are four things that you can do after you have been cheated on. Now, I talked about those four things in my YouTube video, although not quite as deep on each one of them as it just went. But I want to also go a step further in just a moment after the break here. And I want to talk about after cheating has occurred. What are the main things that need to be repaired in the relationship and how do you repair them? So that’s what we’re going to talk about in just a moment after the break.

All right, are you a couple are your relationship and sex life where you want them to be? Are there changes you would like to make but just don’t know how? Maybe think there’s nothing that can be done. If you’re not 100% happy with where your relationship or sex life is? Then get help today and change your life. Go to KevinandCéline.com/sex-coaching-couples/ and schedule a strategy call with me today so we can map out a strategy to get you where you want to be so you can have it all your way. Again, that is KevinandCéline.com/sex-coaching-couples/. Book your strategy call today the link is in the description. So you don’t have to remember what it is. If you’ve listened to the Love Lab podcast for any amount of time you know that sex love and relationship is what I do. And I love helping people whether they be men and women or couples have the Best Sex and the best relationship of their lives. So if you are not having the best sex and relationship of your life and you are motivated and willing to do what it takes to have the best sex and relationship of your life, then check out KevinandCéline.com/sex-coaching-couples/.

All right, what things need to be repaired after cheating? And how do you repair them? Well, the first one is probably pretty obvious, but it’s extremely important that we need to talk about it. And that is trust. Trust is so important to a relationship, whether you’ve been cheated on or not, that I did an entire episode on the show a while back episode 227. Titled The most important thing you need to establish in any relationship, the entire hour-long episode is on trust. And it is really, it’s, you know, it’s on my sort of best of Love Lab podcast list, because I think it’s just that important that everybody should really listen to it. But I’m just going to pull two little pieces of that and talk about them here today. Which is how do you establish trust? And how can you repair trust? So how do you establish trust?

Well, number one, you want to set strong boundaries. So having boundaries in the relationship that both partners agree on, helps you establish trust, because if you know what the sort of rules of the relationship are, then you can feel safe knowing that you have both agreed to stay within those boundaries. What happens sometimes in relationships is people don’t talk about these things. They don’t set boundaries. And so there’s this constant fear about, well, what if what if I flirt with another woman? What is she going to do? And it’s like, well, you should have already decided what those boundaries are. So can you agree that it’s okay if I talk to her flirt with another woman? That doesn’t mean anything? Or is it like? Absolutely not. It’s too triggering for me, I can’t have you do that like, but you have to know what those things are. So you have to set strong boundaries, and of course, keep the boundaries.

Also, you gotta keep your word at all costs. I talk about this a lot, especially in the men’s coaching that I do. I talk a lot about how important it is for men to say what they mean to me what they say. And to keep their word at all costs. You have to have to have to keep your word. And it’s the, the repetitive keeping of your word or you know, maybe repetitive isn’t the best word. But it’s, it’s the consistency. That’s the word I’m looking for. Consistently. Keeping your word over a long period of time over and over again is what really helps your partner trust you. And that’s true in both directions, men and women, it’s really important that you keep your word, when you say you’re going to do something, you actually do it. And if you don’t think that you’re going to be able to do it, just be honest. And say I you know, I don’t have the bandwidth for that right now. I don’t think I can make that happen. I’ll let you know when I do. But here’s what I can agree to right? So don’t just don’t just agree to things because you know that that’s what your partner wants from you.

Alright, take responsibility for your actions. This is really important. Everybody makes mistakes, we all screw up from time to time. And when we do, what’s important is that we simply take responsibility for it. We say, You know what, I fucked up. My bad, I will do better next time. You know, if any damage was done, here’s what I plan to do to. To fix whatever damage was done, it’s really important to take responsibility for your actions. Always act with integrity, super important and super fucking lacking in the world today. Man, I look out at the world and I see so many people who really just don’t act in integrity on a regular basis. When you act in integrity over and over again consistently and your partner sees that you’re demonstrating that it creates trust. give without expecting to receive. Well, that’s a good one too. You know, if every time you give, you’re always expecting to get that or something else in return, your partner starts to associate the fact that you’re only doing this because you want something, and that does not create trust. But if you can give on a regular basis to your partner and you should want to this is somebody that you love somebody that you’re in a relationship with, why wouldn’t you want to do give things to them without expecting anything in return?

Next, act with benevolence, you know, basically for the good of the relationship whenever possible. That’s pretty self-explanatory, I think. Number seven, communicate openly and frequently. This is really important. A lot of times people don’t trust you because they just simply don’t know what’s going on with you or in your mind. So it’s important that you talk about those things. It’s amazing, like, you know, when when we don’t get the information that we need to make decisions, it’s amazing how our crazy monkey minds will fill in those blanks with bullshit, crazy ass bullshit, it’s just drew. So the more that you can communicate, the more that you can avoid that sort of thing. from happening, you can prevent it from happening and avoid it happening. Number eight, be honest, open, and transparent. That is also really important. You have to be open, honest, and transparent. If you do that, consistently, your partner will learn to trust you. So those are ways in which you can establish trust. What if the trust has been broken, and you need to repair it? Obviously, keep doing these things. Well, you probably weren’t doing all of these things, which is how the trust got broken. But go back to doing those things. And there are some other things that we can add in as well.

So you’ve broken trust, number one, you got to apologize, you absolutely have to apologize. It’s very similar to the Take responsibility for your actions. But you know, apologies are kind of different. So you can say, Yeah, you’re right. It’s my fault. Or you can say, you’re right, it’s my fault. And I sincerely apologize for the harm or the hurt, that it may have caused you. You see, there’s a difference there. So, yes, you want to take responsibility, but you also want to apologize. It’s amazing to me, like, you know, I had a partner once who, whenever she was wrong, first of all, she would always deny that she was wrong. And then when you know, you had sort of the evidence, so to speak, and you could be like, No, look, here it is, you know, and she would see it, and she would realize that she was wrong. And she would never apologize. Ever, no matter how wrong she was never even a simple Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. I’m sorry. Never once. It drove me crazy. I didn’t trust her. Because I didn’t feel that she would take responsibility or ever apologize for anything that she did.

Okay, next, listen, empathetically, be present with your partner, and ask questions to better understand them and their relationship. Yeah, you know, this kind of goes back to when we’re talking about having that conversation, right? So you’ve apologized, you’ve taken responsibility. Now you’re having that emotionally mature conversation, and you want to really listen and try to understand what it is that drove them to do what they’re doing. Continuing to deepen your own self-awareness. We kind of talked about that already, also, but it’s important for you to have self-awareness around how you may have contributed to the situation. You’re gonna be open and willing to work on the relationship. Unfortunately, what I see a lot of times is people just give up when the cheating happens, they go, that’s it, you cheated on me. It’s done, it’s over. Now, there may be good calls for that. And there may not be. My suggestion is that you’d be open and willing to work on it because it may be something relatively simple that could be repaired, and life can go on happily again, without having to go through a nasty divorce or breakup your kids home or whatever it is.

You want to work on creating new positive experiences together. So you know, again, that the more you can continue to build trust through new experiences, the more the stronger that trust will get. Obviously, talk to one another we talked about that. Find ways to connect. You know, we kind of talked about not putting the attention in and there’s like a lack of connection and emotional sadness. action or connection in a relationship. So, find ways to continue to connect and to work on that. And the closer, the more connected you are, the closer you are, the more you’ll learn to trust each other. I already talked about, say what you mean, what you say, is very important. Keep in follow through with the commitments you make. Be consistent. We talked about that many, many times. And there can’t be any more infractions.

So we’re talking about cheating here and rebuilding the trust, you can’t do it again. You could spend months or even years working on rebuilding the trust. And if you cheat again, you could destroy everything that you’ve worked for. And not only that, you could make it nearly impossible to ever rebuild that trust again. You know, there are some people that might be fooled once, maybe even twice, but they’re not really going to put up with much more than that. And, you know, if you continue to, you know, cheat or do whatever the thing that broke the trust is, at a certain point, they are not going to believe you no matter what happens. Okay, so trust, that was the first thing that will really need to be repaired. And those are some ways in which you can work on repairing it. Next is communication. There must have been some communication issues that led to this, especially if it was a surprise to you. If this came out of left field, you’re like, I don’t get it. How could they have done this to me? Well, let’s go back to those reasons why. Those reasons probably existed for a while before this actually happened.

But apparently, nobody ever communicated that these issues existed. Or if they did, they didn’t communicate it in a way in which it was heard. Or they didn’t communicate it with enough urgency, whatever the case may be. There’s likely a lack of communication in a situation like this. So what can we do to improve communication? Well, number one, communicate more frequently than you think you should. And I say this, especially to guys, women, you know, the stereotype, of course, is that they want to talk all the time talk talking to guys like I don’t want it to, there’s a little bit of truth to that, in a sense that, by default, women will tend to communicate more about the relationship, and men will tend to communicate less about the relationship. I know those are generalizations, but they are generally true. That doesn’t mean, however, that, you know, the woman is always communicating as much as she needs to. But I will say for the men, however much you think is enough communication, you should probably do a little bit more. A lot of times, like you’ll hear things like this from guys all the time like, well, she knows that I love her. I told her that, that when did you tell her? I’m sure I told her last month, or at least within the last couple of months. Last month? Are you kidding me? She wants to hear it almost every day, maybe a couple of times a day.

All right. So the idea is that the level of communication that you as a man think is appropriate, most likely is not going to be enough for your partner, if your partner is a woman. And you know, there are absolutely situations where women don’t communicate enough, either. I mean, just taking the example that I gave of my own issue, I wasn’t aware that I was not giving enough attention to the relationship. Boy, wouldn’t it have been great if she simply spoke up and said, hey, you know, I’m in a new city, all by myself most of the time, because you’re not here and you’re not giving enough attention to the relationship? And this is a problem for me. And I would like to fix that. Wow, we could have avoided the whole situation, to begin with the good news we have. Now, you know, obviously, we were very young in that situation. And I wouldn’t necessarily expect that level of awareness or communication at that age.

But it’s a good example because I see plenty of people still operating that way who are twice or three times as old as we were back then. So yeah, communicate more frequently than you think you should. Make sure when you are communicating that you’re listening to understand not to respond and kind of talked about this a few times already. But the idea is, you’re not just listening to pick out the little facts so that you can take those facts and hammer them over the head with it. You’re actually listening for the facts so that you can understand where the person is at, why they did what they did, and what they were wanting or needing. And that is important because you can’t really know how to move forward until you understand those things. If you need to break the communication into smaller chunks, this is something you’ll have to learn about your partner. Some people can take in tremendous amounts of information and process them very quickly and easily. And some people can’t, some people need to take it in smaller little bite-sized pieces digested a little bit, you know, understand it before they can move on to the next one. So if your communication style is kind of like a just constant flow of words, you might need to slow down and break it up into chunks. It’s always helpful to ask the person to repeat what you have said, just so that you can make sure that they heard what you intended to communicate.

I had another relationship one time where I was really having a lot of difficulty communicating. And somebody actually gave me this suggestion, you know, many years ago, and they said, Look, why don’t you just ask her to repeat what you actually said, and see if what you get back is the same thing as what you said. And I was like, Oh, come on. That’s ridiculous. I’m like, it’s so simple. Well, I tried it. And I mean, it was it was insane. When I put this into practice, because, you know, I would say something like, you know, the this shirt is white. And they say, Don’t tell me that shirt is white. Don’t tell me that that shirt is black, I can clearly see it’s white. And I’m like I said it was what I don’t understand what’s going on here. Right? What I was getting back was pretty much the opposite of what I was actually saying. And you know, there’s, there’s the words and how I choose to communicate it, there’s the medium that the communication goes over. And then there’s how it’s received and processed on the other end. So anywhere along that line, things can get changed and mixed up. And they’ll often tell you as she did in that case, she would tell you to, I’ll say something really simple, like few words, small words. And I say Do you understand? Yeah, absolutely. I understand. Okay, repeat it back to me, they repeat it back. It’s not at all what I said.

So that can happen and having them repeat it back can be a great strategy for seeing if what you intended to communicate is what actually got communicated. And just because they may have heard it wrong doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re wrong, it just means that something along that communication chain needs to change so that when it’s received and processed on the other side, what comes out is what you intended. Next, talk about it when not charged up. Yeah, this is super important. So we’ve talked about having that emotionally mature conversation and talked about that earlier, like, go do whatever you got to do to calm down and get to a place where you can have an emotionally mature conversation. Next, learn a method such as nonviolent communication. So what we’re talking about here really is improving the communication in the relationship. So that things like your needs don’t go on communicated to the point that they end up in cheating.

So yeah, I mean, figure out, I’m just throwing nonviolent communication out there. You’ve heard me talk about it many times in the show. It’s just one way of learning how to effectively communicate, there’s plenty of others out there, just take some time to really learn how to do a lot of people assume that they know how to communicate because we’ve been talking almost our entire lives, right? We learn to talk at a very young age, we do it every single day we communicate with people and we think we’re good at it. The reality is, most people suck at it, they just do they suck at it unless they’ve taken the time to really learn how to communicate clearly and effectively. So I highly suggest that you do that. I’ve done numerous shows here on the Love Lab podcast, about communication in different ways. We have had experts come on who specialize in communication, teaching people how to speak, that sort of thing. So yeah, I mean, you can go of course, go look those up on the podcast.

And although it’s been a while since I’ve done a whole episode on that, if anybody wants like a deep dive in, you know, communication strategies, let me know and maybe I will do another show on that. All right, so that’s communication. And the last one is actually the second to last one is relationship nurturing. So that is something that’s probably going to need to be repaired. So healthy and fulfilling relationships rarely have a problem with cheating. It’s likely that the relationship was suffering long before the incident occurred. So if somebody has felt the need to cheat, it’s like we talked about the very beginning of the show those different reasons, there’s something they’re missing something that’s lacking something that’s going unfulfilled. And so you’re probably going to need to figure out what that is. And really focusing time, attention, and energy on the relationship, you’re going to have to nurture the relationship back to health again. And here are some ways that you can do that, number one, spend time together.

Going back to my example, again, you know, the biggest issue is, I was just not putting enough time and energy into the relationship. So that’s a great way to nurture your relationship, and spend time together. And if you don’t want to spend that much time with your partner, you’re probably not in the right relationship. Number two, practice the appreciation you have heard Céline. And I talk about this many times on this show Céline, I don’t know if she created it, I say she created it, because I didn’t know about it until you know, she taught it to me. But, you know, she had the appreciation game, which I’ve talked about on the show many times, where every day, we would tell each other three things that we love and appreciate about each other. And they could be really simple things. You know, a lot of times I teach guys this and they get all overwhelmed or oh my god, I gotta come up with three different things every day, this is crazy. It’s like, No, you don’t have to come up with three huge things every day little things. I love the fact that you made us a great meal today. Or, you know, I love that, you know, you took care of the kids.

So when I came home from work, I did not like just little things that you appreciate every day it could be, I really love the outfit you’re wearing today or the way you did your hair, whatever it is. Number three, practice gratitude. This is another great practice that you will see taught in a lot of different areas. But gratitude, in this case, specifically for your partner and the relationship. So really take time to be you know, share with each other the things that you’re grateful for. do regular check-ins, this is really important. Again, I talked about this earlier, you don’t just go okay, well, here’s what we’ve decided, and then boom, we don’t we don’t follow up on it again. So do regular check-ins and you know, see how things are going. As I mentioned earlier, make adjustments if necessary. Next, have sex regularly talked about this before to about how important it is to a healthy functioning relationship to have a healthy functioning sexual component of the relationship. And as we also talked about being unfulfilled in the area of sex is one of the main things that drives people to cheat. So you know, if you have more sex, and you’re both having the kind of sex that you want, and you’re feeling fulfilled in your sex life, that will remove one of the big motivating factors for people too cheap.

Next, know each other’s love languages. We’ve talked about this on the show many times as well. So you’re going to be nurturing your relationship here. And one of the really great ways to do that is to nurture the relationship in the way that your partner likes. If you’re not familiar with the love languages go look it up. It’s The Five Love Languages. We’ve talked about it on the show many, many times before. You know, they’re things like physical touch or words of appreciation. There’s a bunch of gifts is one of them. So go check it out and figure out which ones are your partner’s primary ways that they like to receive love from you, and then give them the things that they want. The problem that we see, and I talk about this every time I talk about love languages, is that most people tend to give to their partner in the way that they like to receive. So if my love language is physical touch and time, right time spent together, then a lot of times what people do would do is give a lot of physical touch to their partner, and want to spend a lot of time with them. Well, that might not really work for their partner because what their partner really wants is words of affirmation or gifts, right? Like, whatever.

The idea is, it will be far more effective if you nurture the relationship in the way that your partner likes to be nurtured. Next, make an effort on a regular basis. Don’t be on autopilot. So this is something when it comes to nurturing that is ongoing. It never stops. Ever. If you’re in a relationship, you are nurturing that relationship. Like everything in this reality that we live in. It’s either growing or it’s dying. It’s never just static in the middle. So you’re either continuing to nurture and grow your relationship and deepen your connection or It’s going backwards in the other way. Even if you don’t realize it, you might think the status quo is stable and all is fine. But most likely, it’s very slowly, little by little degrading. So those are some things that you can do. The last one on this list is what I just turned other issues. In other words, there are other issues that can arise as a result of this. So cheating has happened. And obviously, you know, trust communication and nurturing the relationship are obvious things that need to be worked on. But this cheating incident may bring up other things in the relationship that need to be worked on as well.

Things that may have been lingering underneath the surface for a long time that you have never addressed before. And you might find that, okay, we want to continue this, we want to form a plan on how to repair this relationship. But to do that, we’ve got to tackle this issue over here, either first, or at least at the same time, or at least somehow in conjunction with the other things that we’re doing. So that’s going to be specific to your unique situation and relationship. And there could be lots of things that could be it could come up that there was an underlying trauma that you had from childhood, where you have a deep lack of trust as a result, right? It’s like, how are we going to repair the trust in this relationship and get back to, you know, where we were where we thought we were, or even get a better level so that we don’t end up back here again? How can we do that without addressing that trauma to begin with? So there could be a lot of things that come up in these situations and don’t feel overwhelmed by it. It may at times seem like a lot of work.

But the reality is, you just got to tackle them one at a time. If you’re really invested in saving this relationship, then that is what you’re going to have to do. And honestly, if you’re looking at all the things that come up, when you really sit down and have that emotionally mature conversation, and you decide that this is way more work than you are really willing to do. Well, then you have an answer right there as to what direction to go in. So there you go, that is a much deeper dive in what happens after cheating. I hope that you found that useful and helpful. And like I said, at the beginning of the show, I didn’t really go into how do you avoid cheating before it even happens. But notice and understand that the things that you can do to avoid it are very similar to the things that you can do to repair. So work all the time on deepening your trust, you know, work on improving the quality of your communication, nurture your relationship on a regular basis. And then literally everything that we talked about in the show about how to have great relationships and a great sex life, just do those on a regular basis. If you do that and really nurture your relationship, then the chances that you will be in a situation where you have to repair or potentially move on as a result of cheating are significantly reduced. Alright, everybody, that’s all I have for you this week, and I will see you next week.

I hope you liked this episode of the Love Lab podcast. If you enjoyed this show, subscribe. Leave us a review and share it with your friends. And for more free exclusive content. Join me in the passion bowl at Kevin and Céline dot com forward slash full. That’s Kevin and Céline dot com forward slash fault. Thanks for listening. And remember, as Céline used to say you’re amazing!