The Hurt: Emotional Impacts of Cheating

Most literature will tell us that nearly half of all husbands and wives will have engaged in an extramarital affair but no survey can conclusively determine the many emotional impacts that cheating can bring. The physical impacts, such as pregnancy of the cheating wife or the “other woman” will also bring their own emotional impacts that can take their toll not only on the cheated spouses, but their children and immediate family as well.

In Hollywood, movies where cheating spouses appear will often show a cheated spouse who is very angry, extremely embarrassed to show his or her face in public, and self-critical, often asking if he or she was the cause of the affair. Sometimes, cheated spouses will make their own retaliatory efforts and end up cheating themselves. In the end, a family is wrecked beyond repair, and the divorce courts are in a flurry as to whether to settle the case out of court, or let it drag through a long legal process.

In real life, the emotional impacts are so much more complex and deeper. A cheated spouse will usually lie awake for many nights, sleepless and unproductive. The depression that follows cheating can take as many as four years to unravel and finally end. The depression can make the cheated spouse dependent on medication and alienated from his or her peers and children.

All this happens because trust has been broken; and, once broken by a cheating spouse, trust can never be restored, or can take years and years to be brought back. The cheated spouse will therefore feel pangs of jealousy, as well as shame. The cheated spouse will have much lower self-esteem as a result, and will perhaps feel that he or she has been completely wronged against and has no role in contributing to the possibility of an affair.

Because the loss of trust is difficult to delineate or define, the cheated spouse will feel an emotional disconnection to other people, and will often show sign s of lack of self-respect. In extreme cases, the cheated spouse will engage in self-mutilation or self-harm because he or she has lost a sense of purpose.

Other cheated spouses will feel lethargic and perpetually anxious, unable to concentrate, and sometimes even abusive toward their children because of their inability to contain their anger.

Infidelity can mess up the emotions, and so much more. Why people still engage in it, if only for some momentary excitement, is therefore a mystery.