We have to be honest with ourselves; infidelity happens. It’s hurtful and harmful, but humans make mistakes, and sometimes, this is one of them. Physical infidelity is hurtful, but in the digital age, online infidelity is a new hurdle. Online infidelity can happen through text, social media, email, or any other way you communicate with other people through the internet.
Although they might not have had sexual relations, there might have been pictures. Maybe it was an emotional affair and not a sexual one. Regardless, the hurt is real, but you can recover from this. First, it helps to understand why online affairs still hurt your relationship.
5 Ways Online Infidelity Hurt Your Relationship
It’s no secret that affairs undermine many of the foundational parts of a relationship. The devastation, grief, betrayal, and loneliness affect both partners. Here are just 5 ways infidelity hurts relationships:
1. Lowered Self-Esteem
After an affair, it’s common for the uninvolved partner to feel discarded. They might second guess whether they’re attractive to their partner. It can even cause significant body image issues. Your partner cheating on you can have a devastating effect on your inner sense of stability, causing you to forget or disregard your strengths.
2. Loss of Trust
This is probably the most obvious effect. Infidelity completely obliterates trust. It will take a long time for the uninvolved partner to rebuild this trust, and it will take a lot of understanding and concessions from the partner who had the affair. It’s common for someone to second guess their partner after infidelity happens.
3. Feelings of Guilt
This can happen to the partner who had the affair and the uninvolved partner. The partner who had the affair usually feels guilty about the affair. The uninvolved partner may feel they pushed their partner into an affair by lacking something.
4. Sexual Health
They can significantly impact your sexual health. It’s important to get tested after an affair and treat any lingering effects. Beyond infections, sexual performance can suffer. It’s difficult to reestablish a sexual connection after an affair.
5. Poor Work Performance
The stress of infidelity rarely stays within the home. The world doesn’t stop because your partner cheated on you. You may see impacts on your performance at work. Some couples report that their friends and family notice differences after an affair.
What You Can Do To Repair Your Relationship
How you recover your relationship is going to look different depending on several factors. The most important one is whether you both want to reestablish your relationship. Just like with physical infidelity, you can work through this. It looks different for those who were hurt and those who were unfaithful.
The Unfaithful Person
- Acknowledge your mistake: Even if you feel that it’s minor, it’s important to understand that, to your partner, this still feels like an affair.
- Sacrifice some privacy: Recovering your relationships is going to require allowing your partner more visibility into your digital life.
- Give space: Your partner is hurt, and they might feel the need to get some distance from you first.
The Hurt Person
- Choose honesty: Talk to your partner about how this made you feel, but do your best to avoid accusations and focus on your own feelings.
- Open yourself to forgiveness: If you’re going to hold this over their head, that is not forgiveness. You need to let this go if you want to restore your relationship.
- Listen to them: Listen to your partner’s side of things. Try to understand what led them to feel they needed to have an affair and talk about how you can both have your needs met.
The Therapist
A professional therapist can help you work through these tough conversations. Therapy can help to recover your relationship. There’s no shame in choosing to love one another, and there’s no shame in asking for help to do that. Connect with me so I can help you get this conversation started.
