You found out. And now the life you thought you had looks completely different.

The person you trusted most turned out to be someone you don't recognize. The relationship you believed in might have been a story you were telling yourself. Everything you thought was solid, your judgment, your reality, your future, is suddenly in question.

This is disorienting in a way that's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been through it. You're not falling apart in any visible way. You're still functioning. But inside, the ground has shifted.

You Were Cheated On, Now What?

What You Might Be Experiencing

The same loop, over and over: the discovery, the lies, the timeline you're trying to reconstruct.

Questions that don't have satisfying answers: How long? Who else knew? Did you ever love me?

Rage that surprises you with its intensity.

A bizarre urge to understand their perspective, followed by disgust at yourself for wanting to.

Hypervigilance. Checking. Scanning for more lies.

Trouble sleeping. Trouble being in your own head.

Moments where you feel nothing at all.

The fear that you'll never trust anyone again. Or worse, that you'll never trust yourself.

This is a Trauma Response

Being cheated on by an intimate partner destabilizes your nervous system. The person who was supposed to be safe became the source of harm. Your brain is now trying to protect you from being blindsided again, which is why you can't stop replaying, scanning, analyzing.

Your nervous system is responding to a reality that just got rewritten. The ground shifted under you. Your mind and body are catching up.

Asking questions you're not sure you want answered.

Trying to decide if you should stay or leave, while feeling incapable of deciding anything.

Performing normalcy for kids, colleagues, friends, while falling apart in private.

Googling "signs of a cheating spouse" at 2am even though you already know.

Looking for something that will make it make sense. It doesn't make sense.

What You're Probably Already Doing

The goal isn't to rush you toward a decision. It's to stabilize you enough to think clearly.

EMDR helps process the traumatic material so it stops hijacking your nervous system. The intrusive thoughts quiet down. The emotional flooding becomes manageable. You stop reliving the discovery on a loop.

We also look at what this activated in you, because betrayal often lands harder when it hits something older. Previous abandonment. Early experiences of being lied to or unseen. Patterns of self-doubt that predate this relationship.

When you're stabilized, you can actually assess: What do you want? What would you need to stay? What would you need to leave? What's true about this relationship underneath the crisis?

What Therapy Does

If You Want to Try to Repair It

Staying isn't weakness. Some relationships survive this and become more honest on the other side.

But staying only works if certain things happen. Therapy helps you figure out what those things are, what you'd actually need to see from your partner, what repair would have to look like, whether what they're offering is enough.

You don't owe anyone an answer right now. Not your partner, not your family, not your own exhausted brain demanding resolution.

Therapy can be the place where you process without the pressure to decide. You don't have to know what you want yet.

If You're Not Ready to Decide

Leaving after being cheated on is its own complicated grief. You're mourning the relationship, the future you planned, and the person you thought they were. That's a lot of loss at once.

Therapy helps you move through it without getting stuck, and without carrying the damage into whatever comes next.

If You Know It's Over

A Note

We also work with people who've had affairs. This is because anyone who is struggling, is welcome here. People who have affairs often have their own challenges that benefit from therapy. Our approach is not to make anyone out to be the villain. Our focus is to help people understand why they do the things they do, and help them find an inner peace that ultimately makes them the best versions of themselves.