How To stop Overthinking After Being Cheated On?

There is no quick way to stop overthinking after being cheated on. If you care about your partner and have plans with him or her at the time of cheating, cheating will shock you and cause you unimaginable pain and suffering. It will hurt you so much, you won’t be able to focus, socialize, and perhaps even eat and sleep.

The effects of betrayal will be so painful, you’ll probably blame yourself for the incident and think that you’re not good enough for love and commitment. The truth is that you are good enough.

Maybe you weren’t always the best partner, but you certainly didn’t deserve to get cheated on.

Your partner was the one who didn’t and still doesn’t deserve you. The cheater was the one who ignored morality, developed a rapport with the person he or she cheated on, and made a conscious decision to be selfish and not care about your commitment, loyalty, and relationship goals.

He or she had plenty of time to realize what was happening and back off. But because sleeping with the other person was too enticing, your partner didn’t do anything to stop it. He or she just focused on enjoying the moment and let things progress to the point where they did the deed.

That was probably when guilt finally kicked in and forced your partner to confess, act weird, or leave you.

You need to understand that the cheatee (the one who gets cheated on) is never to blame for cheating. He can be the worst person on the planet and the least compatible romantic partner, but that still doesn’t justify the affair. The cheatee’s characteristics are incomparable to the cheater’s immoral actions.

They have nothing to do with it because the cheater has a mind of his own and does what he wants. No one pushes him to cheat, although that is often the cheater’s excuse. The only person responsible for cheating is the person who stopped maintaining the relationship and looked for emotional and sexual fulfillment outside of the relationship.

That person is solely responsible for cheating and hurting his partner.

So if you got betrayed and want to know how to stop overthinking after being cheated on, know that the most important thing is making sure that the way you perceive cheating is healthy. You must think of cheating as something that happened to you, not because of you.

Do that by reminding yourself you didn’t ask to get cheated on and that your partner orchestrated the whole thing behind your back. He or she didn’t value you as much as you valued him/her and, therefore, betrayed you due to a lack of gratitude, emotional strength, morality, and ability to resist temptations.

If you take the blame for your partner’s poor relationship skills and moral values and think you somehow deserved to get cheated on, you won’t just let the cheater get away with it. You’ll also put your emotional and physical health at risk. This is because your self-esteem will hit rock bottom and perhaps even make you depressed and suicidal.

No matter how anxious and hurt you feel, you can’t think of a cheater as a victim. Deep inside, you already know that cheaters prioritize their feelings and that they do their best to justify cheating. They say things like, “I wasn’t happy, you made me do it, you weren’t giving me enough attention/sex, I was confused, lonely…”

Some cheaters also apologize and promise to do better and by doing so, admit they didn’t control their desire to cheat because they put a higher priority on the satisfaction they craved rather than what their relationship needed to blossom.

They considered their relationship a tool at their disposal that gave them certain benefits and feelings instead of reminding themselves that relationships have ups and downs and that they also require them to put the work in.

Those who only take from relationships and put very little into them gradually drain the life out of their relationships and realize they can no longer benefit from them. Such relationships become imbalanced in terms of power and interest as they turn into relationships with one investor and one consumer.

They become unfulfilling, boring, and emotionally draining because people only value that which they have to work for. They value relationships that require them to work hard for love and attention.

If a man or woman cheated on you, it’s evident that he or she stopped putting time, money, and energy into the relationship. Instead of looking for ways to bond, your partner looked for quicker, easier, and more satisfying ways to be content with life. When your partner found that way, he or she learned that by starting a new bond with another person, he or she could feel desired and attractive again and right away.

New people always have that effect on cheaters. They boost their egos and make them feel infatuated. They feel how they wanted to feel with their partner.

Anyway, by connecting with another person, your partner ignored relationship problems even more than before and focused on things that felt good. That’s how your partner became certain the new person could give him or her more than you could (at least initially).

Sadly, cheaters only care about how they feel in the moment. They don’t worry about the consequences of their actions until much later after they got validated.

This shows their emotions always come first and that they have a lot of maturing to do.

In this post, we talk about how to stop overthinking after being cheated on. We explain why your partner cheated and what you can do to slow down racing thoughts.

Why did my partner cheat?

Before we talk about how to stop overthinking after being cheated on, we first need to talk about your cheating partner. We need to discuss your partner’s reasons for meeting the new person/getting comfortably close to him or her, and betraying you in the end.

Without further ado, the biggest reason your partner cheated is that your partner lacked healthy relationships and personal boundaries. Your partner (or ex-partner) didn’t have any loyalty rules in place that would have prevented him or her from acting on instinct and hurting you. 

He or she just listened to emotions and refused to see anything wrong with getting so close to the new person.

That’s why your partner continued to bond with the new person and neglected the bond with you. Over time, your partner developed cravings and/or feelings and created a situation where he or she was able to physically cheat on you.

Cheating isn’t a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Cheaters put themselves in situations where they can cheat. And they do this slowly by creating a bond, developing urges and expectations, and making it very easy for them to cheat.

Alcohol isn’t the reason people cheat either. It’s their unregulated thoughts and emotions and continuous exposure to people they find attractive or have a crush on that allow them to cheat.

Don’t be led to believe that some external factors such as stress, depression, drugs, or relationship problems caused the cheater to cheat. Cheaters may want you to believe that to get you off their backs, but the real reasons they cheat are poor commitment, relationship mentality, and a lack of emotional strength that ensues from a lack of values.

These matters often stem from childhood as that’s when children observe their parents’ relationships/behaviors and become somewhat like them. It sucks that they carry their unhealthy childhood lessons, traumas, and poor values into their adult lives and ruin their relationships because of them, but that’s how things are.

Parents, of course, aren’t solely to blame for their cheating. As adults, couples are old enough to differentiate between right and wrong. They know that cheating is wrong, so it’s not necessarily their lack of moral understanding that makes them act on temptations.

From my understanding, they cheat because they lack self-control and don’t take the time to understand their emotions. Instead of understanding them and controlling them, they listen to them and do what feels right rather than what is right.

And often, what feels right is anything new and shiny. Old relationships don’t give them the kind of satisfaction they’re looking for. New people make them feel much stronger emotions. This is because they don’t know them yet and feel excited to talk about themselves and look for things they have in common.

Cheaters seem to forget that all new connections are exciting. But because they allow themselves to get to know the new person, they bond with him or her, develop a crush, and get hungrier for validation. If they don’t quickly realize they’ve crossed the friendship line, they tend to go all the way with the new person.

So if your partner cheated on you and you’re trying to understand why, know that your partner wanted to feel as good as he or she could. Your partner stopped caring about your feelings and the relationship and directed his or her thoughts toward the new person.

By doing so, your partner allowed the new bond to grow and let it get to a point where cheating felt extremely tempting and validating. Due to poor self-control, morals, and commitment to the relationship, your partner then took the opportunity when it presented itself and betrayed you in the worst way imaginable.

To summarize, your partner cheated on you due to:

• poor relationship mentality, morality, commitment, gratitude, and respect
• over-prioritization of emotions and inability to control temptations
• immaturity and in-the-moment/opportunistic mentality
• lack of personal/relationship boundaries
• poor communication (good partners tell each other who they’ve met and what has happened)
• thoughts that gave the green light to cheating, “The relationship isn’t working, I deserve to be happy…”
• failure to discover that he or she developed feelings and/or expectations (before it was too late)
• staying passive and waiting things out till the end

In essence, cheaters cheat because they want to cheat, not because they need to cheat or are forced to. As human beings, they have the tools to resist temptations and be loyal partners. But they choose not to be because they like others’ attention, compliments, and understanding.

They like feeling important even though they don’t know the person who makes them feel special. All they know is that he or she makes them feel better than their partner and that they must seek happiness elsewhere rather than work on it with their partner.

Let’s now talk about how to stop overthinking after being cheated on. We’ll divide the article into two segments; when the relationship ends and when you stay together and try to make the relationship work.

How to stop overthinking after being cheated on and the relationship is over?

1)Go no contact

Whether you got closure or not, the best way to stop overthinking after being cheated on is to cut off all communication. It won’t be easy to cut your ex out of your life immediately and completely, but you need to be brave and do that even if you want your ex to apologize for cheating and come back.

No contact is essential. It not only helps you get some space and clarity but also lets you take the cheating less personally. The longer you stay away from your cheating ex, the less you’ll blame yourself and the more you’ll see your ex’s true personality.

If you don’t go no contact with your ex, things won’t end well for you because you’ll either get friend-zoned or continue to rely on your ex for healing. Either way, you’ll pressure your ex to the point of your ex losing all respect for you. When respect is gone, your ex will ignore you, block you, or if you’re super unfortunate, get a restraining order against you.

You probably don’t want that to happen. You want to let go of your ex (or get back with your ex) by respecting your ex’s space and privacy. Putting an end to overthinking and resisting desires for validation will be extremely difficult whether you go no contact or stay in contact. 

But I guarantee that you’ll gain control over your racing thoughts and heal many times faster if you decide to push your ex out of your life and persevere for a while. This is because you’ll get used to a life without your ex, feel less hopeful about being with your ex, detach from your ex, and find new hobbies and people to focus on.

As you stay in no contact, you’ll notice that many things and people make you happy and that you don’t need your ex as much as you’d initially thought. You’ll slowly stop thinking that the world revolves around your ex and that no one can make you as happy as your ex. That’s when you’ll realize how great it feels to be detached and emotionally independent.

If you don’t want your ex back, things aren’t much different as you still have to do no contact. You have to stay away from the person who is making you analyze his or her reasons for cheating on you. Overthinking will probably last a while, but it won’t take as long as it would take for someone who wants his or her ex to come back.

The reason for that is that dumpees who want their ex back after being cheated on got their self-esteem crushed and secretly want to feel more valuable in their own eyes. They want to feel important and are willing to do anything to reattract their ex romantically. 

In other words, they have hope and feelings for their ex and need many months to process the separation and be happy.

Conversely, those who don’t want their ex back “only” need to process the cheating. Once they do that, they’re able to let go of their ex and be happy.

Whether you want your ex back or move on, you must go no contact and stay in it. Show your ex you know your worth and that you’re not going to chase a cheater. If anyone should be chasing and begging for another chance, it’s the cheater. He or she should apologize for taking you for granted and betraying you in the worst way possible.

You don’t have to inform your ex that you’re about to start no contact. Just go no contact and your ex will see that you’ve accepted the situation and decided not to stay in touch as friends or acquaintances. This won’t reduce the chances of your ex wanting to be with you.

It will increase them because your ex will see you have what it takes to move on and be happy.

If your ex comes back and you don’t want to be with your ex, the solution is simple. Tell your ex you’ve had some time to think and that you don’t want to be in a relationship with him or her. You want to focus on yourself and communicate infrequently, when it’s urgent, or never.

2)Understand what cheating is and why you feel so obsessed with your ex

To stop overthinking after being cheated on, you need to understand why your ex cheated on you. You need to remember that your ex cheated because your ex neglected the relationship and prioritized the new person and the way it felt to be/sleep with that person.

Your ex forgot all his or her promises and reasons he or she fell in love with you because your ex let the new person get too close to him or her. By letting that person in, your ex betrayed you emotionally and later physically as well. It made your ex feel extremely desired and happier than he or she felt since you got together.

When you rationally understand that your ex betrayed you for instant emotional and sexual gratifications, you’ll understand that your ex had poor self-control and wasn’t capable of doing the right thing. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t stop your ex and didn’t have to interfere even if you suspected they were spending a lot of time together and getting very close.

Your ex was responsible for maintaining the relationship and resisting temptations. You had no control over it.

Knowing that should make you feel a little bit better. It should stop you from thinking you weren’t mindful of your ex’s life and feelings and that you could have prevented your ex from destroying the relationship if you just noticed his or her detachment quicker. Always remember that relationships require two mature and equally invested partners. 1 person alone can’t keep the relationship afloat.

Sooner than later, the one-sided relationship becomes imbalanced and falls apart due to neglect.

Currently, you rationally understand that your ex betrayed you badly. But you don’t feel that you have much power and control over the situation. Emotionally, you aren’t able to disconnect and distance yourself from the situation. You still want your ex to validate your broken heart and help you accept betrayal.

This is because you haven’t processed betrayal yet. You may understand what happened and why it happened, but your heart doesn’t care. You’re still attached to your ex and/or want your ex to give you closure.

The best and quickest way to get through this is to understand you’re overthinking because you’re hurt and that you need to think about what happened for a while. Thinking about it is self-soothing as it helps you understand what happened and what it means for you going forward. 

It’s almost impossible not to think about someone who cheated on you. You’d have to be detached and not care about your ex-partner. 

So consider your ex-obsession perfectly normal and expected. If you accept it as a part of your healing process, you should be more tolerant of the way you think and feel. You should allow yourself to grieve the cheating and betrayal and not feel weak or think you’re stupid for thinking and caring about someone who doesn’t care about you.

3)Use pain, discomfort, and inconvenience to your advantage

We’ve talked about why cheaters cheat and what cheating says about a person. But we haven’t yet discussed how you can use the pain from being cheated on to your advantage. Pain is the biggest incentive for growth and improvement. If interpreted properly and acted upon enthusiastically, it not only makes cheatees and dumpees stronger but also makes them more mature and better prepared for future relationships.

Those who take rejections seriously reflect and work on themselves. They improve their shortcoming and become the best versions of themselves. Such people improve the quality of their life and attract individuals who are like-minded and much less likely to cheat on them.

If they do cheat on them, they don’t completely annihilate their self-esteem. They still hurt them, but they get over it much faster. Such cheatees are by definition self-sufficient and capable of quickly and successfully dealing with rejections and things that are out of their control. 

So although it’s normal to sulk over the breakup and betrayal, don’t just sit tight and wait for the pain to end. This is the time for you to improve many areas of your life. This includes your social life, physical health, work, hobbies, goals, self-esteem, attitude, communication, and anything that could use improvement. 

If you grow and then notice growth, you’ll disassociate your old self from the person you were and have a much easier time moving on and not overthinking about your ex cheating on you. Staying busy with friends, family, and work will help you significantly, but growing as a person will also benefit you in the future. 

I suggest that you distract yourself but also push yourself to reach new heights. When you realize your ex’s cheating has transformed you into a person of high value, you might even be thankful to your ex for making you hit rock bottom and forcing you to rebuild yourself from the ground up.

With that said, here are some things you should do when you can’t stop overthinking after being cheated on:

• discover your shortcomings but avoid blaming yourself 
• learn more about relationships and breakups
• get a mentor and become the best version of yourself
• surround yourself with people and stay out of the house as much as possible
• get plenty of exercise
• meditate/pray
• sign up for therapy
• stay away from hopeful blogs and videos
• accept pain and make the most out of it

4)Help those who were also cheated on/got broken up with

Helping others going through similar things is hands down one of the best ways if not the best way to stop overthinking after being cheated on. This is because talking to others about their issues helps you relate to your problems. It helps you see that you’re not alone and that you can both benefit from conversing about your problems.

The best friendships are formed in times of need when people need attention and compassion. So make sure to find someone who has recently been betrayed and could use someone to talk to. If you don’t know anyone who recently got cheated on, I encourage you to join breakup forums.

Magnet of Success has a Discord channel of its own dedicated to people experiencing relationship and breakup problems. There you should find plenty of people looking for support and even those who are happy to help you cope with the breakup/cheating.

You can also reach out to us via coaching or by leaving a comment on the articles that best describe your situation. We respond to everyone.

For quicker responses, though, talk to people who have the same problems as you. You’ll feel much better if you open up to people who feel as obsessed about an ex as you.

You must have heard the saying that the happiest people are those who help others. That’s because they receive gratitude for helping and distract themselves from their problems. If you can’t find anyone who needs help with a relationship or breakup, you can always volunteer for a cause and keep yourself busy.

How to stop overthinking and work things out after being cheated on?

1)Communicate better than ever before

If you want to make the relationship work after cheating, you need to make sure that communication is top-notch. You need to express yourselves clearly, value each other, and understand what’s at stake. That’s the only way you’ll feel that your relationship has value and that it’s worth fighting for.

Fixing things won’t be easy. But with the right mindset and dedication, your relationship can and will overcome infidelity. Many couples have become stronger as a result of cheating. They just needed to make some personal changes. Communication was one of them.

Conversely, your relationship won’t last if your partner doesn’t learn from the breakup and behaves the same way as before. You won’t stop overthinking either because if your partner continues talking to other people like nothing happened, you’ll stay anxious and have a hard time trusting your partner.

You’ll keep looking over your shoulder and feel scared.

Remember that the basis of every relationship is healthy communication. Without it, you can be highly emotionally compatible but still won’t be able to make the relationship work. Someone will detach (probably the least committed one) and get tired of being in a relationship.

Since your relationship experienced cheating, you must take the relationship much more seriously than you did before the cheating. You must look for ways to communicate better and stay on top of problems before they get out of hand.

You can both communicate better this time by:

• reading relationship books
• expressing how you think and feel
• giving each other time to speak
• learning to listen
• checking your body language
• practicing self-awareness
• thinking before speaking
• calming down when upset
• making plans on how to communicate better
• signing up for couples counseling

2)Rebuild trust

Obviously, if you want to stop overthinking after being cheated on, you need to feel secure in the relationship. To feel secure, however, you must rebuild trust and be certain that the relationship is going to last and overcome difficulties.

You can never be 100% certain that your partner won’t cheat on you again, but if you forgive each other and let go of past hurts, you can slowly learn to trust again. The longer you stay together and the better you handle difficulties, the more you can trust the cheater and regain faith in him or her.

To rebuild trust, you should both:

• practice forgiveness
• express gratitude
• remind each other why the relationship is important
• resolve old issues
• create plans on how to handle similar predicaments differently
• be willing to share your accounts and show conversations when or if requested 

Trust is seldom rebuilt in an instant. It normally takes half a year or longer to be able to trust again and not worry about getting cheated on again. If you’re anxious and afraid of getting betrayed again, you should communicate it to your partner. Your partner needs to know that you’re struggling and that you’re looking for sympathy.

If your partner gets angry and says to hurry up and trust him or her already, your partner is taking things personally and isn’t capable of helping you. That shows he or she is not willing to do anything to make you feel safe.

You should probably leave a person like that as he or she is incapable of putting himself or herself in your shoes and doing whatever it takes to help you stop overthinking and worrying. 

3)Take back power

If you got cheated on and/or dumped, your ex betrayed you and left you with no power and control. Your ex forced you to deal with separation pain and made you wait for him or her to realize your worth and come back.

Now that your ex is back, you need to show your ex you’re not going to tolerate another betrayal/abandonment. One betrayal hurt you enough, so you need to gain back control and present yourself as a strong individual.

Do that by telling your ex this is his or her one and only chance to make things right and that if you notice old behavioral patterns you’ll give up and leave for good.

As someone who was betrayed, you can scare your ex a little bit. You can say you never expected him or her to cheat on you and that you’ll observe his or her behavior and take him or her back if you think that the relationship has potential. You evolved when you got cheated on, so it’s only fair that your ex evolves and becomes the person he or she should have been all along.

Don’t be afraid to take back power! The cheater will respect you more if he or she sees that you’re not playing around and that failure to impress you will result in a breakup.

To take back power, you must:

• accept the cheater back on a trial period
• tell the cheater you’ll be watching him or her for a few weeks
• reprimand the cheater if he or she is slipping back into old habits
• threaten to leave if things aren’t getting any better

4)Give it time

The last tip on how to stop overthinking after being cheated on is to give the relationship time to recover. Cheating is one of the most painful, self-esteem-breaking misdeeds that could have happened to you. Don’t expect to get over it in just a couple of weeks. Those who can forgive their partner that quickly tend to be very forgiving, naive, and extremely eager to be with their partner.

They don’t value themselves and take the time to let their partner back in slowly. As a result, they often get taken for granted again.

Most people need months to process cheating and move the cheating behind them. Be prepared to give it some time before you expect to think clearly and feel calm and secure with your partner.

While you’re healing, make sure to invest in things outside of the relationship as well so that you don’t get hurt if your partner betrays you again.

Did you learn how to stop overthinking after being cheated? Do you have any tips to share? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll get back to you soon.

And if you wish to talk to us about your cheating experience, sign up for coaching on this page.

Zan

My name is Zan and I’m the founder of Magnet of Success. I enjoy writing realistic relationship and breakup articles and helping readers heal and grow. With more than 5 years of experience in the self-improvement, relationship, and breakup sphere, my goal is to provide advice that fosters positivity and success and avoids preventable mistakes and pain. Buy me a coffee, learn more about me, or get in touch today.