32: Healing Cheating Regrets: Advice for Forgiving Yourself After Cheating in a Relationship

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Aug 24

Many people who cheat on their partners find it hard to move on and forgive themselves. They can often live with regrets for years.

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In today’s episode, I answer two questions from people carrying around the burdens of the past and who are having trouble moving forward. I answer one question from someone wondering if they should send a letter to their ex about their cheating, and another question from someone who finds that the waves of regret about how they handled their break up still arise in their life years later.

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Episode References:

Check out Brene Brown’s Books

Other Episodes on Cheating:

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro
3:30 Listener Question 1
19:08 Listener Question 2

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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher 0:00
Welcome to New View Advice, a safe place for you to ask your most vulnerable questions about life, relationships, healing, and so much more. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I believe our fears and traumas are often what holds us back from living life to the fullest. Join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever is holding you back from being your best self. Let's get started. Hey there beautiful soul. My name is Amanda. And this is New View Advice. If you're new here, this is a healing centered advice podcast. And what I mean by that is that I offer advice to assist you on the healing journey. It is never my intention to give you the answers. It is my intention to guide you back to your own heart. Because I believe you have all the answers to the questions you seek. You just may need a little guidance along the way on how to connect back to yourself and connect back to your own inner wisdom. Today's topic is healing from cheating regrets. And what I mean by that is that today we are talking about people who have cheated in a relationship and how many people at least people who have reached out to me have regrets from cheating, and find that these regrets are holding them back so they're unable to move forward because they keep playing these regrets of cheating on their partner these regrets of how they ended the relationship these regrets of not being truthful. But they are replaying the regrets the moments that they wish they could take back the moments they wish they could change. And today we're going to answer two questions from people who are currently healing from this who cheated in a relationship and find themselves regretting the way they handled it and are looking for guidance on how to move forward. So today's questions are pretty long and jam packed. So I'm just going to jump into the questions. But before I do that, I just wanted to mention that if you're listening to this episode, around the time I release it, which is the end of August 2022, I will be hosting healing circles for people who are healing from cheating in a relationship, I'm going to be hosting them for people who have been cheated on as well. And I just wanted to mention this because if you've found these episodes helpful, or if you've just found this episode, and you think that you could use a little extra support, I will be offering healing circles this September. And we will be walking through healing from cheating in relationship in community and we will have weekly calls and there will be a program portal through teachable and you'll be able to access meditations journal prompts activities for each week, and I always find healing and community to be so helpful. If this is something you're interested in learning more about, I invite you to join my waitlist at NewViewAdvice.com/waitlist or you can email me at NewViewAdvice@gmail.com. And I will be sending out more information about that the first week of September. But if you want to join the waitlist, I plan to offer the people who join the waitlist a discount on the program. And if you have any questions, I would love to answer it. And if you have any ideas of what you'd like to see in the program, I'm still creating it. So I just wanted to let you know that before we jumped in. And if you are listening to this in the future, so it is no longer August or September 2022. Please still reach out if you are interested in offering like this, and I will let you know if it's something I'm offering again in the future. So that's it for updates here from me at New Viewer Advice. So let's jump on into today's episode and discussing regrets from cheating in a relationship.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 3:35
It's been over two years since I was with the person that I was in love with for the first and only time in my life. We had an amazing and unique experience and I knew he was the person of my life. Two years ago, we decided to move to a new city together but he decided to move there first with a friend and I was supposed to come after two months with my friend. Unfortunately at the time, I wasn't yet aware of my personal wounds, childhood wounds and inner issues and I took his decision to move there first with a friend like he is abandoning me. I was angry and frustrated and couldn't see him for the person that he was in my life anymore at a New Year's party. 10 days before I was meant to see him. I decided to get drunk and cheat on him. I planned to do that. I was aware of what I wanted, but not aware of what this dumb decision would bring to my life. I came to the New City 10 days after cheating on him and as soon as I saw him, I decided to tell him a lie. And he believed it. So we broke up. It's been two years and I'm still crying still unable to move on. still believing that he was the guy for me and I did something that he doesn't even know hiding this trying to not be selfish and hurt him is hurting me even more. I want him back but he is with someone else since we broke up and this girl is now giving him her partnership to stay in the New City. So he 100% won't think to break up with her because of me. I wrote a letter the other day finally could write down what happened and want to give it to him but I'm not sure this is the right decision. Could you help me understand if giving him the law Whether it would be a bad idea or not, thank you so much for this question, I am so sorry that you have been dealing with this difficult situation for over two years, and that it has been weighing so heavy on your heart, I can see how this has been really difficult for you. And I want you to know that I really am sorry that this all happened and that you've been struggling for so long matters of the heart can truly be painful. And I honor all the feelings you've been experiencing. And I want you to know that even though you were the one who cheated in this relationship, it doesn't make what you're moving through any easier. What I've found through the past couple months speaking with many people who have cheated in relationships is that, as you mentioned, this decision came from childhood wounds and abandonment wound and these inner places that hadn't been acknowledged yet at the time of the action, right. So when you cheated, this inner child wound wasn't acknowledged. And it's a hard way for it to come to the surface. But I just want you to know I'm sending you so much compassion as you navigate this because I know that it's not an easy situation that you find yourself in. So for this question you are asking about this letter you wrote, should you send or should you not send this letter you wrote to your ex who you cheated on? Should you let him know the truth of what happened? So my first piece of advice would be that I think you have to get really clear on your why. So what is your intention for sending this letter? Are you trying to win this person back? Are you trying to clear your conscience? Do you think that this letter will change something? What is the why behind it the why is important because you want to see if the Y is coming from fear or love. And fear would be that you're scared that if you never tell him, you will feel bad about it forever. Love would be that you think by sending the letter you're being loving to yourself or to this person, I think the clearer you get on the Y, the clearer you'll get on your decision, because my guess is that you're bopping back and forth in your head of what you should do. And my therapist once said, to me that should is one of the most dangerous words in the English language. And I agree, because we get so stuck on shoulds, I should do this, I should do that I shouldn't do this, I shouldn't do that. And what you want to become clear on is what your heart wants? What is going to be the action that you can take to move through this. What action can you take to free yourself of the past? What does your heart need? What does your inner child need? What does present day you need to do in order to move towards forgiveness and freeing yourself in this situation. So the more clear you become on the why you are sending this the more intentional, the easier it will be for you to make a decision because intention is everything. So if your intention is from a heart filled plays a loving place, then no matter how this person reacts, if they get the letter, you know that your intention was good, you know that your intention was clear hearted. And if you decide not to send the letter, you know that your intention was still good, your intention was clear hearted for not sending the letter, and then you'll be able to move forward. The second thing I want to mention is that if you decide to send the letter or not, I think one of the most important things for you is going to be to work on forgiving yourself. Because from what you sent me What stood out most to me throughout your question is that it sounds like you're living with shame and regret. And so unfortunately, we can't go back in time, you can't change what happened. So I truly believe that you working towards forgiving yourself is the best thing that you can do. Because you deserve to move past this, though you made a mistake. You deserve to free yourself of this pain of the past and through forgiveness, you will learn from this experience, you will learn more about yourself. You'll learn how you want to show up in relationships. Going forward, you'll learn how you want to speak your truth, you'll learn so much about yourself through forgiveness. I talk about forgiveness a lot, especially through these episodes about cheating. And forgiveness isn't an overnight process. It's not like you just choose Oh, I forgive myself. The journey of forgiveness is a journey of connecting back with your own heart. It's witnessing yourself and the truth of the situation from many different perspectives. And for you, it may involve sending this letter and asking your axe for forgiveness or just letting them know what happened because that might be important for you on your journey. Or it may not involve that and you may burn this letter and we will talk a bit about how I think you can ceremonially honor this letter. But I think it's really important for us all to learn how to forgive ourselves. shame and regret. Regret is today's topic can really hold us back. As you have seen, you're still holding on to this two years later. And though two years is a short amount of time. It's also a long amount of time to be torturing yourself. That's how it sounds to me that you're torturing and you're punishing yourself for a mistake you made. And as I said you can't go back in time. So the way to move forward is to work on honoring yourself forgiving yourself letting yourself off the hook two years ago you were Much younger version of yourself sounds like you've done a lot of inner work since then you mentioned that you've become aware of childhood wounds, abandonment wounds, inner child wounds, and that all tells me that you're a different person today than you were them. Can you look at that version of yourself and offer them compassion? Can you look at yourself two years ago and say, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't know then all the pain I had been holding on to. I'm so sorry, self, thank you for bringing this to my awareness. I honor everything you've been through. I love yourself, I forgive you. And as I mentioned, that's a process. But I truly believe that through forgiveness, we can free ourselves of the shame and the regrets we're holding on to. And I also want to say to this younger version of yourself that you don't know what you don't know. So a lot of us can uncover why we do things right, like a childhood wound, as you mentioned, abandonment. So you can discover that you have an abandonment wound. This could stem from a parent from your first relationship. There's different reasons. But say, you discover, oh, my gosh, I have an abandonment wound. I fear abandonment, I think everyone's going to abandon me. And then you look at your past self, and you're like, oh my god, I can't believe she played out that abandonment wound. But two years ago, you didn't know that that version of yourself didn't know what they didn't know. So I just invite you to be kind to yourself through this to offer yourself compassion. And to me, it sounds like you were seeking love outside of yourself. And the love that you're seeking the most is the love within yourself, the love of your own heart and knowing that you will always have your own back and that you'll never leave you. Because the truth is we play out abandonment wounds with ourselves by abandoning our own hearts by abandoning what our heart tells us by abandoning those inner whispers by ignoring them. We replay out abandonment issues within our own bodies. So it's important to develop a practice where you can connect to yourself regularly, so that you feel connected so that you don't feel abandoned and that you know, you always have yourself, no matter what happens in the outside world. The more you connect with yourself, the less you'll ever be able to feel abandoned, because you'll know you'll never abandon yourself and your own heart. And so a few practices I recommend for connecting to yourself and forgiving yourself would be journaling. Journaling is such a therapeutic practice. Getting out all the thoughts in your head onto paper is really helpful. I've found it to be one of the most helpful practices in my own life. And the more I talk to other people, it seems to be very universal. But I just need to reiterate how helpful journaling is for anybody who is hesitant to start journaling. I know that when I first started journaling, I was like I'm gonna keep a diary. You know, I was pretty judgmental of it. But it has been life changing for me to connect with my own heart that way and to let out my anger, my sadness, my shame, my regret onto a piece of paper is very therapeutic. I also invite you to start meditating, the more you can sit with yourself, your own heart, your own thoughts, the more you can become that compassionate witness for yourself, the more that you can really sit with ourselves. I think so many people are afraid of meditation because they're afraid to sit with their own hearts. They're afraid of the things that their heart has to tell them. Because your heart is going to tell you the truth about what you need to do with this letter about how it's time for you to forgive yourself. Your heart is going to ask you to do tough things. And I think we live in a world where people are afraid of doing tough things, and I hate to break it to you. But the best things in life require hard work. That's what I found anything handed to me is maybe a momentary happiness. But the things I work hard for are fulfilling the things I work hard for offer me freedom, liberation, and so I invite you to start meditating. So my last piece of advice, if you decide not to send the letter would be to do something ceremonial with this letter. Because this letter is similar to journaling, where you were able to get all those thoughts in your head, all those feelings you were having out on paper. And I think it's important for you to honor this to honor this experience. So even if you don't send the letter to your axe, I invite you to do something ceremonial with it to free yourself of the past to free yourself of the shame of the regrets you've been holding on to I do this practice a lot in my own life. I will write letters to my abusers. I will write letters to my inner child, I will write letters to those who have hurt me, and then I will ceremonially either burn it, bury it or throw it in a river, a body of water. I invite you to find a way to connect with nature. Nature is very healing. I think too many people in present day are disconnected from nature. I think that a lot of us spend a lot of time inside in front of computers. And I think it's so important to connect back to nature, because the Earth is able to assist us in healing. The earth is magical. The earth is supportive, right? The Earth itself is what we walk on what allows us to live on the earth. And so the earth is always supporting us and through ceremony the earth also is able to support us So I invite you to either burn the letter or rip it up and throw it in the trash. And if you throw it in the trash, like, get it out of your house allow that energy to leave your house. But I invite you to do something with this letter in no matter what you do, I invite you to do a ceremony or ritual around releasing this, this experience has clearly been affecting you for two years. And you deserve to be free of this pain and suffering. So light a candle journal, meditate, cry, but set the intention to release this, release this pain from your past. And I think that could truly be helpful for you, ceremony has magically transformed my own life. And I truly believe there's so much power behind intention and allowing ourselves to really see all our feelings. So as I mentioned, in the first part of this question, you want to become intentional about why you want to send the letter. And then if you decide to send the letter, you want to set an intention, again, you want to remind yourself of that intention before you send it so that no matter how your ex reacts, you know, your intention was good. And then if you decide to release this through a ceremony, so through burning it, or burying it, or throwing it out, I invite you to have an intention for that as well. I clear this pain from my past, I clear the shame I have felt for many years around this experience, I clear the regrets I have been carrying for far too long, I invite you to become very intentional about whatever decision you decide to make. And the next step, because I believe that you haven't fully allowed yourself to grieve this relationship and to let it go. So there are five stages of grief for anyone who's unfamiliar, their denial, bargaining, anger, sadness, and acceptance. And to me, it sounds like you've been stuck in the bargaining phase. So you've been convincing yourself that things could be different that things could change, for example, how you said that this person he's seeing is a reason he wouldn't get back together with you. So it sounds like to me you're playing with different scenarios still, in your mind, you're thinking that things could be different than they are. So you're bargaining with yourself. So in order to move on, I think you need to decide if you want to send the letter or have an honest phone call and try to get this guy back. Or if you're just ready to let it go. But you have to allow yourself to fully move into the grieving stage. And that's going to require you either pursuing this or fully letting it go. But no longer bouncing back and forth between the past and the present what could be what should be and allowing yourself to be with what is. But you may want to see if this person is interested in getting back together so that you can put it all on the line. And then you can know moving forward that you tried everything. Or you may just be ready to let it go and be like yeah, this relationship taught me a lot. But I'm ready to move forward, and to continue learning how to love myself. So I also just want to mention that there is someone amazing kind caring out there for you. If this relationship doesn't work out. And I promise you there is someone else, I believe that nothing that is meant for us will ever miss us. And what is destined and designed for us by the universe will always find a way into our lives. I know it may not feel like that all the time. But I promise it's safe to move on because I know you will find someone else who loves you. And I know that you are on your own healing journey. And as you continue to learn to love yourself more and more, you'll be able to attract a partner who is able to love You more and more. Now, this doesn't mean you won't have a lot of feelings as you grieve this past relationship that you've been holding on to for two years. But I promise you that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And I also promise you that it is safe to free yourself of this. And again, I know you made a mistake. And I know that cheating on your partner wasn't your best moment. But you're human. We all have moments like that. I don't know anybody who's never had a regret in their life. But that doesn't mean we need to allow these regrets to hang over our heads. And to keep us in the past moments. We regret our times for lessons their times to learn their times to take a good hard look at how we're showing up in the world and allow ourselves to heal and move forward. And so I hope something in this answer was helpful. And I am just sending you so much love as you continue to heal from this. Thank you so much for this question.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 19:13
Two years ago, I was supposed to get married. I was in a five and a half year relationship that I broke off. I lost myself in this relationship and found myself fighting for my partner's attention because they were more interested in their friendships with others. I always felt like I was in competition. There were other problems. It wasn't just them from both sides. there was miscommunication, misunderstandings, possessiveness, from both ends and infidelity, emotionally from their end and physically from my end. With all that we were still very much in love and looking to make it work. Three years into our relationship is when we got engaged. I stopped the infidelity. I really wanted this to work. I wanted this to be my one and only marriage. I wanted them to be the one but five years into our relationship. I met someone unexpectedly. I'll call them Renee. I never went looking for him. A Renee was also in a relationship, it was not looking for anyone else either. However, there was a connection we could not ignore or let go. It was so easy with them. Everything was so easy. We became close friends knowing we couldn't continue the way we wanted to. But we found ourselves thinking of each other one with our partners. 2020 is when I broke up with my fiancee. I loved them, but I wasn't in love with them. A few months after I ended my engagement, Renee and I reconnected and I found the two are single, we are now together and engaged. I feel conflicted because I ended my relationship with my ex fiance, letting them believe that I fell out of love with them completely when it was actually because I fell in love with someone else, and could not force myself to walk down the aisle thinking of Rene, my question is, I'm sure they have recovered from the heartache. I see online that they have found someone new, they don't know. I know. And I don't want them back. But how do I continue on life not allowing the truth to bother me, I've cut them off completely. So reconnecting is and will not be an option. I loved my axe, they were my best friend. But Renee is the one I know that to be true. We're building a future together. And I can't see myself doing this with anyone else. But the waves come and go about how I handled my situation. Do you have any advice? Thank you for this question. Wow, what a vulnerable, beautiful question. And it sounds like you have been through a rollercoaster of emotions. So I just want to honor your experience to get where you are today. And I just want to send you compassion. This isn't an easy situation you find yourself in and I want to help you move to that next step. Because it sounds like similar to the previous question, you're living with some regrets, you're living with some playback of the past and the present. So some going back and forth in your mind. And the waves are natural. By the way, I just want anybody to know that when we move through grieving, and we move through healing waves are natural, where sometimes you think oh my gosh, I'm over this, and then the next layer will come. So I think you're exactly where you're supposed to be. But it can be really hard to be where you are. So today, my advice for you is going to be focused around self forgiveness and self compassion. Because as you mentioned, you're not looking to have a conversation with your ex, you're really looking to free your own heart, right from what it sounds like you're playing out some guilt, some shame, some regrets, and they're holding you back. So today, we want to help you move towards that self forgiveness, that self acceptance, that self compassion, because I want to help you connect with yourself in order to allow you to move through this in order to allow you to free yourself of this because as you mentioned, you've cut off communication with your ex, so you're not looking for him to forgive you, you're looking for you to forgive you. So I believe with your situation, as I found with most situations of cheating is that it's not black and white, it sounds like you may be telling yourself that you made the wrong choice with how it ended. And I don't think we can view your situations. So literally, aka black and white, you know how you felt in 2020. And part of moving through this experience is to make peace with your decision and how you handled it, I invite you to offer yourself some compassion. Because you know what you were going through in 2020. You know how hard it was to end an engagement. You know how hard it was to let go of a partner who you created a life with for five and a half years, you know how hard that was for you honor that I invite you to really honor who you were in 2020, when you made this big decision for yourself, when to me it sounds like you chose yourself, when you chose your own heart when you knew that you wouldn't be going into this marriage with the best intentions when you knew that this person wasn't the person for you. And even though you weren't with Rene, at the time, you knew that there was somebody else out there and maybe that there could be more than one other person out there and that the person you weren't meant to be with was this person, your ex, and I just invite you to be kind to yourself, because that's not an easy thing to do. You made that decision before a lot of people make that decision. I know in America, I'm not sure about the rest of world but divorce rates are very high. It's about 50%. So you decided to make that decision before you got married. I think that's courageous. I think it's courageous that you are able to end an engagement. I know people who go through engagements because they think it's easier and we'll be able to fix it in marriage instead of ending it when you did. So I invite you to give yourself some compassion. I know that it's easy to look back and say oh, shoot, I didn't handle that. Well, I probably should have said this or should have. I've been honest. Damn should I told him about Renee. Damn, was I untruthful? Am I a liar? It's easy to judge ourselves. I invite you to look at this from an outsider perspective. Because as I can see it is that in 2020, you did the best you could. You did what you needed to do at that time to get out of that relationship. Was it easy? No. Was it clean? No. Was it a bit messy? You betcha. That's life. You're human. Welcome. Welcome to Earth. And I'm just kidding. I hope that doesn't come off too sarcastic. I just mean, I think we think all our interactions should be clean and easy. See, and I can tell you from my own life, I'm still learning how to set boundaries. It's still messy and difficult. I've been doing it for years, I talk about it, I teach about it. And it's still not always clean and clear, I still can set a boundary and go damn should if I said that a different way. It's through action, though, that we learn. So I invite you to be kind with yourself. I know it sounds so simple. But really, it's a transformative practice for us all to learn to quiet that voice in our head that bullies us that voice in your head that's having trouble letting you move forward. So I believe your job is to learn from the past, and to forgive the past so you can move forward, it's not your responsibility to berate yourself for the past, because that doesn't help anybody. It doesn't help you. It doesn't help your current partner, and it doesn't help your ex, you living with this regret, self blame, and possibly self hatred about how you handled this truly doesn't help anyone. You living with self blame doesn't make your ex any happier. It doesn't make a wrong or right it just is life just is we're always punishing ourselves and hope that if we can make ourselves smaller or less than or unworthy, that will make somebody else more worthy, or we can make up for our mistakes. Life happens. We all make mistakes. I've made countless mistakes. And how I have healed from those mistakes is sitting with my own heart. compassionately witnessing, why I made the decisions I made. making amends when I needed to, in order to make amends doesn't mean you have to go talk to that person who things might have gotten messy with
I think we have an idea that in order to forgive the person who we went against having trouble finding a better word needs to forgive us or we need to confront them. That's not true. We can forgive ourselves for the past. We don't need to bring other people into it. Sometimes that will be necessary. But you will know that because your own heart will tell you that. Don't let anybody else tell you what you need, you know what's best for you. And I truly believe from your question that you leaving this relationship was the best thing for you. And I think you know that too, from what it sounds like, it sounds like you're in a much happier place now. And it's okay to let yourself off the hook. Even though the end of the relationship was messy. I can't remember what Brene Brown book it is. But in one of her books, she talks about how everyone is truly doing the best they can in every given moment. And if we can just adjust our perceptions of others to truly believe they're doing the best they can. It allows us to let go of judgment and drop into compassion. And a quote I found of hers is all I know is my life is better when I assume that people are doing their best. It keeps me out of judgment. And lets me focus on what is and not what should or could be. And I offer that because I invite you to lend this compassion to yourself that when you chose to end your engagement, as we discussed that the way you did it, you were doing the best you could in that moment. So the regret that keeps arising, the shame, the waves, the waves of the returning to the past and how you handled it. I want you to allow yourself to be compassionate with yourself when these waves arise, to talk to yourself, like a kind friend or a loving sibling or parent, and just offer yourself some grace. You did what you did. And it's okay. It sounds like your ex partner has moved on, you've moved on, it's okay to let this go. And know that it's safe to talk to yourself about how it's safe to heal. It's safe to move forward. And I know it's safe for you to move forward. And I know that it's okay for you to let yourself off the hook. Some piece of advice for offering yourself Self Compassion, and the self forgiveness that will come when you start offering yourself Self Compassion. When you start accepting yourself, you start accepting the truth of your past, you start accepting that the relationship ended the way it did. And you accept that you were doing the best you could some tools that I would offer, as I mentioned in the previous question would be journaling and meditating. These are great ways to connect back to yourself. As I mentioned, we all resist it. Because I think we're afraid of what our own hearts have to say to us. But our hearts want to free us of the things we hold over our heads of our regret and our shames of the past. And I think that the waves come and my guess is you shut them down. So one person described shame. And I think shame can be similar with regrets. Regrets can create shame as shame shutters. So oftentimes when shame arises, we just shut down. So we shut the shutters and it causes us to shut down. And so I just see it as like shutter slamming over a window slamming over our inner world. And we're like, nope, not going there today. New Thank you. But what you'll find through journaling and meditating is that you can open the shutters, you can open the windows, you can let light in to this experience. You can let light into your inner world and it happens one day at a time. I talk so much about journaling and meditating on this podcast because I think we have to get it through our heads that a lot of this inner work takes time. We live in an instant gratification culture Sure, and so a lot of us don't understand what it's like to put in hard work in time to change our lives. These practices aren't overnight practices, I do these things every day. Still, my healing journey is still evolving. I often feel like I'm going backwards. But I know for a fact we cannot go backwards. When a healing happens, it stays when a new insight comes in, it stays, we can't move backwards. But it doesn't mean the waves don't arise. It doesn't mean some days aren't harder than others. But the more you sit with yourself, the more you love yourself, the more free you will become from this, I also invite you if you have a hard time with this to go to therapy. So I find therapy is a great way for us to once a week sit with these hard truths. And having somebody there to witness us in our truth and to offer us compassion can be really healing. And depending on when you listen to this episode, I think my healing circle could do a similar thing for you. I think that I could really help you to move through these layers and to be witnessed by community who understands what you're going through. You're not alone. A lot of people who cheat don't always handle it the way they wish they could know and many people cheat for different reasons. And it's all about coming back to compassion for yourself. And the last thing I wanted to mention is that I'm wondering if this may be true for you, but I'm not sure so work with it. If it resonates, ignore it if it doesn't, but when I read your question, what originally came to mind for me is that I'm wondering if you're punishing yourself, because you don't feel like you deserve to be happy with this new partner, because you know that you fell in love with someone else. And you didn't expect this to your ex and now you're playing this loop out of guilt and fear to be happy. I find we often punish ourselves when we feel unworthy of happiness, success, love, you name it. And when that belief of unworthiness arises, it can arise as a self Punisher or a self saboteur. So I just invite you to contemplate if you're holding on to this regret and this past choice out of fear of fully letting it go. Do you feel unworthy of letting this go? Do you feel like you don't deserve to be happy? Are you afraid of being happy? Are you holding on to this? Because you know, if you let it go, then you are fully in this new relationship that makes you happy? Does that terrify you? Or do you feel like you don't deserve it? Because you cheated on your ex? Are you afraid if you don't hold on to the knowledge that you cheated on your ex? And how you handled it that you may repeat the pattern in this relationship? Are you playing out beliefs out of fear? Is that a reason why you're having trouble letting this go? Do you feel as though you're punishing yourself for doing something quote unquote, bad and that you're not allowed to be happy? And I invite you to reflect on is this pattern of unworthiness from your last relationship? Is it from before your last relationship? Can you see a pattern or belief that may go all the way back to your childhood? Because I find the core wound of unworthiness oftentimes originated in our childhoods. Again, this may not be true for you. So don't take it on if it's not true. But hopefully this helps you or someone else listening to this question, because I want you to reflect on if there's areas in your life you feel unworthy around. I know for me, in my own life, I felt unworthy for a very, very long time, because of the abuse I experienced because of certain ways my parents treated me because of the way girls my age treated me because I felt like a worthless victim for a very long time, especially because I experienced the abuse in my childhood. And then again, in my teens, it just reaffirmed for my inner child for that wound itself that I was unworthy. So it took a very long time to unravel that. I also continued to punish myself for a very long time, because I was afraid of my own happiness. I was afraid if I was happy, someone could take it away. And I never wanted to feel that way again. And I felt like my vulnerability put me there, and that it wasn't safe to be vulnerable or happy or to trust other people. And I played this out for years for over a decade. So I offer that example from my own life, because I invite you to explore that to explore if there's some unworthiness beliefs within you. And a way you can explore this is as I mentioned, in therapy, journaling, meditating on the question, see what images arise. Get into a comfortable position, away from any distractions, put your phone in a different room, or put it on airplane mode, play some meditation music, breathe for like three minutes, and then ask yourself, Do I feel unworthy? Or why do I feel unworthy? Allow yourself to show you images or words arise, allow yourself to speak to yourself. It's in the quiet it's in the silence that our heart will speak. The loud voices in our head is often our ego or our wounded self. The voice of our heart is quiet. It's calm, it's reassuring, strong, it's assured it knows the truth. And I just want to assure you that you're worthy of forgiveness. You're worthy of this self forgiveness. You're worthy of fully letting this go and allowing it to be a part of your path. and no longer a part of your present. You're worthy of love and a loving relationship. I'm grateful that you have now entered a new chapter of your life, and you deserve to enjoy it. And you're worthy of happiness and joy and living in the present moment and no longer having this dark cloud over your head, because that's what it looks like. To me. The image I'm getting is that when you're with Rene, it's like the sun shining, and your hearts happy. But there's this dark cloud that lingers around you. And though I'm sure you know, relationships are still difficult. I'm sure you and Renee still come across your own obstacles and things like that. It does make a difference when we allow ourselves to be with people who love us for who we are, and we're allowed to be our vulnerable, loving selves. So I hope something in this answer was helpful. I am sending you so much love as you navigate this chapter of self forgiveness and self compassion. Thank you so much for this question. I really enjoyed having this conversation with you sending you all my love.
Amanda Durocher (Outro) 35:58
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode about healing from cheating regrets. I am so grateful to have these conversations each week. And to continue hearing from all of you. I'm so grateful for all the questions I receive, we get to have such great conversations here. And I'm just so grateful for all of you. And I just wanted to remind you that if you are interested in joining my healing circle this September, if you're listening to this, like I said around the time I released this episode, I will be launching that this September and we'll be sending out more information to people who are on the wait list the first week of September. So if you're interested in joining a healing circle for healing from cheating in a relationship or being cheated on, you can join my waitlist at NewViewAdvice.com/waitlist. Or you can email me at newviewadvice@gmail.com. And I'm also happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you again for joining me for another episode of New View Advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai