How to Deal With Anxiety After Infidelity

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The wedding day is always like a fairy tale. The bride looks fantastic, and the groom cleans up nicely. They exchange their vows, showing the people around them how much love they share.

They dance, they eat, they drink, they celebrate! It’s an incredible day for most couples, the one to remember for the rest of their lives together.

The wedding day is enchanting, but its life lived in a harmonious bubble. Brad Paisley says, “It’s easy to take forever for granted with tin cans tied to your car.” The trials and tribulations await outside the bubble of the wedding activities.

All couples experience highs and lows as they walk through life together once they transition from bride and groom to husband and wife. It’s inevitable.

The list of things that could happen to a happy couple is long and unpredictable, but some missteps and mistakes are more common. One particular event that shakes the foundation of most any marriage is infidelity. And, then come into the picture, anxiety after infidelity!

It happens to a good amount of lifelong partnerships, but each couple reacts to it differently. Some stay together, and some part ways.

The rest of this article will be focused on those who choose to stick it out and the steps to be undertaken to reduce anxiety after infidelity. A marriage is built on the cornerstones of trust and honesty, and infidelity takes a bulldozer to both of these.

With trust and honesty getting knocked out, anxiety after infidelity gladly fills the void. Life after the affair seems to have lost all the charm, and you feel that the pain of infidelity never goes away.

So, how to get over an affair? And, how to get over infidelity pain?

If you have been mulling over how to get over cheating and stay together, here’s some essential piece of advice to curb the anxiety after infidelity. The tips given in this article can help bring back the trust and honesty that is necessary for a long and healthy marriage.

Forgiveness first

Forgiveness is to set a prisoner free and to discover that the prisoner was you.

When I first heard the quote above, I found it to be a little condescending to the person who had been wronged. Like, “Oh really? It will make me feel better when I forgive this jerk for what they did?”

As it turns out, yes, yes it does. Forgiving the person who has done you wrong removes a burden, that you weren’t aware, you were carrying.

The whole time that you were cursing your wife or your husband, you were holding onto tension, anger, and frustration. By forgiving someone from the bottom of your heart, you are releasing that negative energy from yourself.

If you want to continue your relationship with the person you love and avoid the anxiety that is inevitable after an affair, forgiveness is essential. The storm of anger, distrust, and frustration exacerbates your anxiety and will turn you into an unfamiliar version of yourself.

Lift the burden and forgive your partner if you want to live a less anxious life moving forward.

Keep your phones unlocked

Our cell phones have become an extra appendage at this point, but they can be a tiny little storage space of secrets; at least they can be perceived as such.

If you or your partner has stepped out on the relationship, but want to fix the situation, there can’t be passwords or locks on each other’s phones. You should keep them out in the open and use them freely in front of each other to avoid any shady implications.

Let me make one thing clear here: I’m not saying that this becomes open season for going through each other’s texts, Tweets, and Facebook messages when they’re not looking. That’s not healthy at all.

The suggestion for you both to do away with password protection, and stepping away for your phone calls is all in good faith.

Although this tip might sound unreasonable to the spouse who has heated, it can help the victim in getting over an affair. After all, it isn’t easy to repair the broken trust and heal after infidelity.

Learn to meditate

When trying to repair a relationship after a bout of infidelity, not only do you need to work on the relationship itself, you need to work on yourself first.

If you were the person who was stepped out on, you need to find an outlet to relieve your anxiety after infidelity. And, for this, you don’t have to depend on the person you’re with.

Meditation is an excellent treatment for anxiety in all forms. It can help you in recovering from an affair by training you to sit still, focus on your breath, and work on healing yourself.

It’s not a quick fix strategy to getting past the affair or recovering from infidelity pain. But, it as an amazing long term solution for combatting with depression after being cheated on, and moving on after an affair.

If you make it a daily practice, for just about 10 minutes a day, you’ll find that you will be more mindful and aware of your emotions as you move through your day.

The gift of mindfulness that you give yourself is a worthy combatant to the stress and anxiety that is likely paired with the work that you’re putting into your marriage.

Download a Timer app on your smartphone and you’ll have access to thousands of guided meditations that can help you get started with the process in order to get over anxiety after infidelity.

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Seek counseling

This advice seems taboo to some, but it is essential to your long term relationship success, and in getting past the depression after the affair.

The objective advice and thoughts that a mental health professional can bring into your lives can alter how both of you see your relationship moving forward.

Having the extra set of eyes on your situation can also give you a perspective that relieves some of your anxiety about everything. They can tell you what they’re seeing given the information and provide feedback about how you’re feeling and why you might be feeling that way.

Anxiety is nothing more than the fear of something that could happen. A counselor can teach how to see your relationship for what it currently is and how to reframe your mind to not get caught up in worry and anxious thoughts.

 Affairs and infidelity can vandalize the foundation of a strong relationship. The concepts of trust and honesty get strangulated. From the ashes of infidelity, anxiety is bound to arise.

If you truly want to make your marriage last in the most healthy way possible, use the tactics listed here to ease your anxiety after infidelity, and repair the most treasured relationship of your life.