Haunted by your spouse’s affair, you, like many victims of cheating husbands, may find that you are continually comparing yourself to the other woman. Your internal dialogue may sound very similar to this:

“She must be prettier than me.”

“I bet her body is firmer, fitter and healthier than mine, I’ve really gotten carried away.”

“She’s certainly interesting, elegant and witty, no wonder he couldn’t resist her.”

“I’m not exciting enough to hold anyone’s interest.”

As if uncovering the affair along with the sordid details weren’t enough, you are now plagued by a barrage of negative thoughts and emotions, directed at you, about you. In this particular article, I will provide you with some techniques to put an end to this irrationality and encourage you to be your most trusted friend.

The damaging impact of cheating on your self-esteem

A flood of destructive self-talk adds to the confusion and anxiety you currently experience about yourself, your spouse, and the circumstances of your relationship.

It is quite normal for you to feel some level of doubt when you first find out about your husband’s extramarital affair. But when a conversation similar to the one mentioned above turns into a repetitive hellish tune playing inside your head, you put yourself in the critical position of being a judge, jury, and executioner every day, out of your own respect.

Right after an affair, you are faced with the loss of trust in the marital relationship. Finding out that her spouse walked out of the marriage, for whatever ill-gotten reason, is a serious blow to her self-esteem. Then, in addition to her trust issues with her husband, she begins to lose faith in her self-image, possibly wondering, “Am I who she thought she was?”

Working through the aftermath of an affair, you find yourself questioning the things you took for granted in your life. This may consist of your own self-image during the time that you re-evaluate everything you previously relied on as “simple truth.”

This is an incredibly frustrating period in your personal life, without a doubt. Your world seems as if it is in fragments. Yet every day you keep trying to fit these fragments back together and move on in your personal life.

Here are some techniques to help you on your way, focusing on where the journey needs to start: within you.

Step One: Track Your Internal Dialogue

After the revelation of the extramarital relationship, without a doubt your imagination and emotions are flowing continuously. You already know that you feel bad and you also understand that your thoughts correspond to how you feel.

It’s vital to understand exactly what that internal dialogue might sound like. Keep track of what you are saying to yourself in these conversations.

Step two: get the other woman out of her position

To survive cheating, you need to stand up for yourself when you find out you’re comparing yourself to her. It is you who define your views and emotions, and absolutely no one can take that away from you.

If the other woman, who in your own mind you’ve created to be some kind of earthbound goddess, had actually been so wonderful, she wouldn’t have gotten involved with a married man. Talk to yourself about this regularly.

Step three: recreate your mental image of the other woman

Now that you’ve pushed the other woman off the pedestal, add some fun to this figurine. Keep in mind that your ideas are yours and it is really you who makes sense of them. This doesn’t have to be inauspicious so much as an effort to deflate your existing mental images of her. But these are her own thoughts, and she is allowed to use whatever tools she can to survive an affair in her marriage.

Do you want to know if she is more beautiful? Put on a witch hat with that visual, make the woman’s nose bigger, and add a giant wart. Give her an ugly ragged hairstyle and a green complexion.

Do you wonder if this woman is more resourceful than you? Give her a creepy, croaking laugh, so that whenever you start picturing her with her husband telling a good joke, she can hear her ji-haw or her guffaw.

Step Four – Put yourself back on the pedestal

When you’re trying to survive an adventure, it’s time to become your best ally. Take an inventory of all your wonderful features. You are generous, loving, and have a fantastic legacy. Once you’ve accumulated your list of good features, read them all often.

Every time pictures of the other woman come up and you start comparing yourself to her, grab your list and go through it out loud.