The relationship starts off amazing and is going so well for so long. At a certain point the relationship takes a turn for the worse. It feels like your relationship took a 180 and this sweet and loving girl becomes something different. Confused and not knowing what is going on you cross your fingers hoping it will turn around. But it doesn't.

When the signs start to appear that she isn't being as nice to your heart as she could be you typically go through a couple of stages. *note most of the stages aren't in order, you might play jump rope with them:

1. Denial

2. Rationalizing

3. Realization

4. Anger

5. Confusion

6. Self Deprecation and bargaining

7. Response-ability

8. Releasing, forgiving and letting go

Denial

Generally when she begins to act a little different and you know something is off you deny it. You deny it because being cheated on and two timed is such a huge blow to your ego.

As a result a big mental block is put in place to keep you from being honest about the situation and her.

People lie to themselves for two reasons: fear of losing something or fear of not gaining. When you are being cheated on the ego loses out on a false sense of self esteem, let me explain.

Before you learned any dating/relationship knowledge you were not as happy as you wanted to be. When a beautiful woman comes along she tends to take that unhappiness away. You start to feel better about yourself and your life.

You start to believe that she is the cause for your happiness and cure for your loneliness- you are happy because of her. This is a lie because no external thing whether it be money, women or success can bring you happiness. Happiness is only found inside of yourself.

If you go deeper and take a look at the source of your misery it comes from a feeling of not being loved enough. When a girl comes along and shower's you with love and affection it makes you feel like you are finally loved. On a simple level we think her love and affection (external) means we are loved and worthy of love. We need proof of being loved and she is the proof.

If the love and affection begins to drift away we tend to cling onto the girl and that external love. We do this because we don't want to go back to feeling lonely, miserable and unloved again. When things start to fall apart in the relationship we tend to deny it because of this strong attachment to external love.

Which brings us to number two:

Rationalizing

The attachment to the girl and what she used to make us feel is so strong that it has become like a drug and we become addicts. Addicts will lie, cheat and steal to get a fix..and so will a guy who is being cheated on. At first they don't even see that there is a problem. It goes completely past their radar and they don't even think about the possibility of her lying and cheating. We buy any excuse that is given to us. We completely believe her when she tells you that she fell asleep instead of meeting up with you.

When the excuses and uncomfortable feelings that can be found dead center in your stomach start to become more frequent, that's when the rationalizing increases. You will see a war going on inside of your mind. On one side is the voice that tells you that she is lying to you. On the other side another voice that speaks loudly will tell you that you are just PARANOID.

It's a constant war that rages all through the night and into the day making even the simplest of tasks difficult. Determining what is going on becomes very distracting and consumes your life.

For a long time, depending on your experience with getting cheated on, the paranoid side has a stronger army and wins every battle. It wins because it has your ego backing you and has a greater prize to win: holing onto the feelings of being loved. You don't want to believe that this could happen to you.

At this stage almost NO ONE can tell you that you are being cheated on. It seems as though someone has hypnotized you into believing that your girlfriend would never do that to you. Your friends can shout at you all day but no one is breaking that wall you have put up. You listen to what they say but never hear a word of it because you don't want to. Your friends try in vain to get you to wake up but they can't because it's something you need to learn for yourself. They know the truth but you refuse to see it.

*if you have a friend that is being cheated on and you know this, just tell him once and let it go. Otherwise you will be fighting a battle that few if any have ever won.

Realization

The ego is strong and may be able to hold off on the truth of being cheated on from getting through for a while. But eventually it let's it guard down for a moment and truth gains a victory. Eventually it will hit you like a ton of bricks and it will knock you on your ass. Suddenly it will become very obvious as to what has been going on. You will sit there and go "ohhhhh" and there will be no question to what she has been doing all those nights she bailed on you.

At this point the stages mix and match and don't follow any order. You might feel angry at first or you might feel sadness or you might feel them all at the same time:

Anger

Anger means "I'm confused and don't know what's going on and it scares me." You don't understand why it happened and what exactly did happen. The unanswered questions send you into a spiral of rage.

The sting you feel is from your ego. It didn't want this to happen because she gave you such a sense of happiness. You felt loved before and now it's gone.

Everyone fears dying alone and miserable. When she cheated on you this fear was brought back up to the surface. This anger of not knowing what happened is backed up by this fear creating more anger and rage.

How could she do this to you? You were so loving and caring and she just turned her back to you.

You become enraged at her but really you are mad at yourself for not picking up on this earlier. You feel like an idiot because everyone around you could see what was going on but you couldn't. All the signs were there so you have no one to blame but yourself. Indirectly she told you time and again what she was doing but you wouldn't listen.

Some people try to still communicate with the girl yo get some answers. They ask them the why questions but to no avail. She won't be able to tell you why she did it because very few people are that conscious and aware of their actions.

Confusion

The girl was no help in finding the answers so now you head over to the confusion stage. You are left with so many un-answered questions. Why did she do it? Who did she do it with? What all went on? Did she still love me? Did she ever love me at all?

And the final question is "what did I do wrong?"

Self Deprecation and bargaining

The anger and the confusion of not knowing what happened leads you to look in the mirror for answers. This is usually when self loathing starts. "how could *I* let this happen?"

You begin to search for answers and the only ones you can come up with are ones that tear down your self esteem. Every flaw, every short coming of yours begins to become the answer to the question of why it happened. You weren't romantic enough or you weren't strong enough. You weren't good looking enough. Whatever it is you feel like your flaws are the reason this happened.

The pain at this point is very strong. This is when bargaining comes into play. You beg and plead for something to take this pain away. You wish and pray that you could go back and change all the mistakes you did and finally make it right.

This is a good stage to be at because it allows you the most growth. The anger has started to subside and you are beginning to take response-ability for what went wrong in the relationship.

Response-ability

After a short period of self loathing and bargaining takes place you are left with a choice. The two choices you have are response-ability and repression. Most people follow the latter and repress the pain. They begin to feel less and less terrible and start to believe that they are over the girl. This is false. The pain is still with you whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

I'm going to suggest that you choose the former and take 100% full responsibility for what happened. This path allows for you release the pain from being cheated on. Without it you will be left with a wound that will open up every time you get into a new relationship. You will be paranoid with your new girlfriend and very mistrustful of her.

You must accept that you contributed to her cheating and you being cheated on. It doesn't take two to cheat (her and him) it takes three: you, her and him. Girls don't typically cheat randomly and out of the blue. There are many signs that lead up to the unthinkable act.

Did you allow her to go out on too many girls nights out? If she was happy in the relationship why would she feel the need to go out and party without you. When she went out on these girls nights out she was searching for external validation from other men.

Did you allow her to have too many male friends and not say anything about it?

Did you let her walk all over you and treat you with disrespect too many times? Being a human doormate will cause a woman to lose respect and attraction for you. If she is your typical girl she will know that you are weak and be forced to search out for a stronger mate.

Did you ignore the uncomfortable feelings in your solar plexus (spot just below your rib cage) too many times without asking her about it? Chances are that those uneasy feelings were present long before she started cheating on you. Odds are that those nasty stomach pains were her leaking sexual energy outside of the relationship. Did you say anything about it to her? Or did you not want to be thought of as paranoid and mess up the relationship?

Did she not follow through on your plans that you both made too many times? Too many missed calls from you?

These are all the questions that you need to ask yourself. If you answered yes to some or all of the above then you did help create this situation.

After you take response-ability for creating this situation you need to sit down and think about what you can learn from this. What can you do differently in the future so you don't find yourself in another relationship with a cheating girlfriend?

Some of the typically "mistakes" that allow for cheating to happen are:

-ignoring the uncomfortable feelings you get in your solar plexus area. When she is lying to you or she is leaking sexual energy outside of the relationship you will tend to feel it in this area.

-Not taking the lead in the relationship

-Allow her to flirt with her male friends

-Accepting her excuses as to why she didn't call you or hang out with you when she said she would

-Not paying close enough attention to the signs and blindly trusting her

Without taking response-ability for what happened you are unable to learn the lessons from this failed relationship. Learning the lessons is what will help you heal some of these past wounds.

If you still feel pain and anger any time you think about her or the cheating, then you haven't learned all the lessons involved. Those negative emotions are there as a reminder that we still have to learn a couple more lessons. Once you learn ALL that you can then the pain will instantly go away.

Releasing, forgiving and letting go

You have finally learned all that you can from being cheated on, now it's time to let it all go and forgive. You must be able to forgive her as well as yourself. You don't need to contact her and directly forgive her, it can be done without her knowledge. The forgiveness is for you, not for her.

Don't regret going through this experience. Think about it, if you had done all the right things you wouldn't of had a chance to grow from it. Simply know that you went through this experience for a reason: to learn and grow.

Growth comes through the bad times, not the good. The bad times are there to remind us of a lesson we weren't paying close enough attention to.

I was cheated on pretty badly. My first real girlfriend was sleeping two ex-boyfriends and actually got engaged on me while I was dating her. It was extremely painful at the time but it has allowed me massive growth and I am very thankful for the experience.

Cheers!

-Alex Strandberg