Hi Maria,

I have been in a relationship with my boyfriend for almost four years.  This past March he was at my house and left his e-mail open, so I looked.  I know that it was wrong of me to read his e-mail but I could not help myself.  Now, prior to reading his e-mail I never had any real suspicion of him cheating on me.  Well, I saw numerous e-mail between him and his co-worker referencing sex and a no strings attached relationship.  He told her never to call him after work “because his girlfriend already does not trust him”.  At the same he was also e-mailing girls on the erotic services on craigslist for escort services.  When I confronted him about what I found he got angry with me for snooping in his e-mail and refused to talk about the issues because “NOTHING HAPPENED”!  He was very angry and did not talk to me for three days, he did not even go to work.  When he did come over to talk to me about it he apologized and said that the girl at work was just harmless flirting that got out of hand and the craigslist issue was just a joke for the guys at work.

It has been 9 months since I found out about the cheating and I am still not happy.  I do not trust him at all.  I am never allowed to bring up his cheating or he gets very angry and leaves.  I have not found any evidence of him cheating and he spends all of his free time with me.  I just am so insecure now that I do not feel good about myself and wish that I was sexy like the girl he cheated with.  I have very low self-esteem now and I just want to feel good about myself.  If I call him at work and cant get a hold of him for a long period I assume that he is with a prostitute.  I never bring it up to him I just keep it all bottled up inside.  

Can you help???

Thanks.

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The goal of this website is to give support to people who are facing problems in their relationship related to cheating, abuse and narcissism. I am living in Europe and English is not my native language, I wish you will excuse me if I make some grammatical errors. I have a background in neuroscience and behavioral sciences and I am currently doing brain research related to these topics in university in my home country. I decided to write in English because I wish to reach as many people as I can around the world. 

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Dear Friend, 

Thank you for your email. I am sorry to hear you have been feeling miserable due to these events. I can fully understand how you feel. Just today I read an article about the neurobiology of love. The article confirmed the previous research results according to which the brain is truly responding in a similar fashion as the brain of a drug addict when we fall in love. When we fall in love, the structure of the neuronal networks in the brain gets altered as described in this article: How cheating affects the brain.

If we find out our beloved one has been cheating on us, we experience severe withdrawal symptoms. Negative feeling persists for a long time, as you have experienced: After 9 months you are still not able to forget cheating. It is actually good for your mental well-being that you are not able to forget. Evolution has shaped our brain in such a way that we are pretty good at spotting dishonest individuals subconsciously. This ability has had a clear positive impact on the survival odds of an individual.

Your boyfriend has cheated on you by behaving inappropriately with not only one but several women. He also refused to give you a chance to process your pain and understand why he cheated. It is crucial to be able to process the painful emotions related to cheating and betrayal by talking about what has happened with your boyfriend. If this cannot be done, the negative memories will stay in your mind for long time, slowly turning the relationship sour. There are ways to teach the brain to heal faster and to let go of the negative emotions. To read more about this topic, please visit page Recovery after Cheating and Narcissism.

The fact that your boyfriend got angry and defensive after you found out about his betrayal tells much about your boyfriend's personality. He knows he has done wrong but instead of taking the responsibility of his actions, your boyfriend ignores his own mistakes and concentrates on those of yours. Of course it is wrong to read other person's email, but it is not as if you killed somebody or severely betrayed somebody's trust. Your boyfriend's anger is understandable, we all get angry if we hear someone has been reading our private emails, even if we do not have anything to hide. However, not talking to you for 3 days when he knows that you must be suffering after finding out about cheating seems very cold behavior. It makes one think your boyfriend felt so uncomfortable after being caught that he simply did not know what to say to you and how to react. Simplest way to deal with the situation was to put the blame on you instead of admitting his own mistakes.

After thinking about what happened, your boyfriend contacted you after 3 days and apologized. This is something he should have done right away. During those 3 days when he left you alone to think about the matters related to his betrayal, the memory traces of the unpleasant incidents had the time to strengthen themselves, since nothing positive was competing with them. It is extremely important considering the recovery process that mental support is available immediately after the crisis has occurred. The crisis can be anything: Getting raped, getting robbed, getting abused, facing some natural catastrophe etc. In all of these cases one of the first things to do is to get professional mental support to the victims.

Your situation is no different. To find out about cheating is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. You said you trusted your boyfriend completely before you found out about his cheating. Your world turned upside down in a blink of an eye. The foundations of your life were shaken, and your boyfriend left you alone to deal with the situation. Unfortunately it seems your boyfriend was too self-centered to care for your feelings, he simply tried to deal with his own shame after being caught, and the easiest way to deal with his own emotional crisis was to direct his anger toward you. Silent treatment served as "punishment" after you "hurt" his feelings. 

You say you are still not able to trust your boyfriend completely. Remember what I wrote about our ability to subconsciously spot the dishonest individuals? The gut feeling is a valuable indicator and should not be ignored. Search your feelings and then ask yourself am I right when I say the following: The bottom reason why you cannot trust your boyfriend is because you know he is capable of cheating on you again. You have not gotten a feeling that your boyfriend is genuinely sorry for what he has done. That feeling is crucial in terms of your healing process. Without that feeling the trust can never return to the relationship. How could you trust your boyfriend if you know he is not sorry about what he did? Even though your boyfriend has apologized to you, his behavior shows he is not genuinely sorry. It takes a long time for a person to get over something like this. Your boyfriend's role is to be very patient and let you process the matter by talking about it. Unfortunately he does not seem to be able to do this.

Let us continue our analysis a bit longer. What do you expect to gain when you bring the topic of cheating up with your boyfriend? You expect your boyfriend to say something, anything, that can help you to restore your trust in him. If your boyfriend would say to you how sorry he is, how much he loves you and that he will never cheat on you again, that would help you to heal and slowly trust him again. But your boyfriend is not doing these things. He is not helping you to recover, instead he is turning his back on you and is walking away when you most need him. How can you trust your boyfriend will not cheat on you again if he does not make you feel he is genuinely sorry for what happened? These thoughts are going around in your mind and are making you feel unhappy and depressed.

If you stay with your boyfriend, there are basically two options. Either you are able to deal with your negative emotions on your own (unless your boyfriend will change his ways and is able to support and help you) and eventually you are able to trust him a bit more, or then these thoughts keep becoming stronger in your mind and you will slowly get more unhappy. It is very difficult for you to recover after cheating if your boyfriend is not supporting you. Have you tried to give him some material that could help him to understand what you are going through? Sometimes it can be that the person who cheated simply does not know how he or she can best help the other person to recover. The person who cheated must be patient and let the spouse to talk about the matter and ask all the questions he or she needs to ask.

Many people seem to think that it should be enough to talk one time about the matters related to cheating and if the cheated spouse is bringing the topic up again after that, it is interpreted as "nagging". However, one can not forget cheating easily, it requires several discussions, the cheated spouse needs to ask the same questions over and over again. This is natural and part of the healing process. If spouse is impatient and gets angry when the cheated spouse is asking about the matters related to cheating, that shows ignorance and inability to put oneself into the position of another person, ie. inability to feel empathy. This is very bad news for the relationship.

Dear Friend, I am not trying to make you feel more unhappy and depressed by writing about these things so openly. I believe you know these things already in your heart, that is why I have dared to say them so clearly, by doing that I wish to assure you that your intuition is correct. You should not try to force yourself to trust a person who has cheated on you and who is not supporting you in your attempt to get over what happened. If you wish to stay with your boyfriend, you must make him understand that he mus help you to heal. You cannot recover without his help. If he is reluctant to help you, you should reconsider if you want to share your life with a person who is not able to give you emotional support when you need it. I recommend you to read more about the biological basis of the negative emotions and how to learn to deal with them from this page: Recovery after Cheating and Narcissism.

Dear Friend, please feel free to write to me anytime you feel like it. Whatever you decide to do, I am here to support you. You are not alone!

Warm hug,

- Maria 

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