4 reasons why you’re emotionally cheating on someone you love
By Orit Krug | July 22nd, 2021
Cheating on someone you love is often a sign of unresolved trauma.
I know this personally because I used to have uncontrollable urges to emotionally cheat on the people I love and it all went away once I finally released the trauma from my body.
So let’s jump in:
1. Your nervous system is adapted to equate love with drama & trauma.
Have you told your therapist or friends that you’re struggling with emotionally cheating on someone you love, and they said something like, “Oh, you’re just bored!”
I imagine that was pretty infuriating. It’s MUCH more complex than that.
First of all, the feedback that “You’re bored” is highly invalidating and irresponsible coming from a therapist because there is something much deeper happening at the level of your nervous system, due to old trauma.
When you experience trauma, you become wired to feel “safe” and comfortable in traumatic and dramatic relationships.
This makes safe and healthy relationships feel boring because the drama isn’t there. It actually feels empty, like something is missing.
You cannot simply resolve this by doing something more exciting with your partner. Your entire system that keeps you alive currently CRAVES chaos, because that’s the only way it knows how to survive.
Creating drama and risky situations through emotional cheating, despite being with your partner who you love, gives you that instant rush that also makes you feel calm and settled again.
2. You’re addicted to other people’s approval and reassurance.
In the early stages of your relationship with your partner, their reassurance and approval of you was very satisfying. But it no longer gives you a rush because you’ve been together for so long. It’s like a drug that used to feel so good but now your body adapted to it, so it feels boring and uneventful.
Now, you feel the need to find a different drug or a stronger hit that will actually cause that rush of sensation and excitement in your body. This is also why you look outside of your relationship for something riskier and more taboo. The higher the risk, the higher “reward” (or dopamine hit to your body).
After experiencing trauma, even from 20+ years ago, our bodies often become disconnected and numb. If you don’t feel alive on the inside, you’re sure as heck not going to be able to feel that within your relationship.
So you’re constantly seeking that hit of fire or spark, when in reality you must be able to feel that in yourself first. That way, you can feel ALIVE enough to feel a sense of aliveness in your relationship.
That was actually one of my favorite pieces of feedback from a former client of my Let Love In program. She had actually started working with us to resolve her own issues with sexual intimacy, and she said, “I got so much more than that.”
She added, “When the shift began to happen in my body (which I am still experiencing), it was like something was being born/made new from deep inside of me. My moment came amidst the tears & rawness of it all and I realized that I was ALIVE for the first time in my life. My husband has even said that he’s noticed a change. He says I’m more connected – I’m there with him & that is huge!”
After years of trauma, you have to access this aliveness within yourself to feel it anywhere else in your life. You will not find sustainable excitement or passion if it’s not within you. Even if cheating gives you a temporary rush of excitement, betraying the person you love will only create more hurt and trauma.
3. You need a backup plan.
Trauma has made you believe that all love ends in hurt, rejection, and abandonment.
Even though you know in your mind that your partner is dedicated to you and won’t leave you, you still worry you’ll be left alone.
You’re cheating on someone you love because you need a backup just in case something goes wrong in your current relationship. This is a self-protective mechanism. Because with trauma, you now have the belief stored in your body that all love ends in hurt, rejection, abandonment.
The person you’re emotionally cheating with is your backup plan or safety net. This is similar to anyone who’s hoarding or saving up finances on the side just in case they need to leave. This plan would make sense for someone planning to leave an abusive relationship, but when your relationship is healthy and you’re still doing that – you know that old trauma is still controlling you.
Protecting yourself from being ALL IN in your relationship prevents you from experiencing the highest potential of love, connection, and intimacy with your partner.
No wonder you’re not satisfied. You’re not letting it in.
All of this sets you up for a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. When you look for a backup for when things go wrong, but you’re the one who’s creating the things that are going wrong. Then it’s like, “I guess I needed that backup after all!” Because you created the problem.
A former client of Let Love In began to work with us because she emotionally cheated on her husband.
She was always a “good girl.” She grew up with parents who never allowed her to express any “negative” emotions so she learned to hide her true feelings.
Now, even though she’s with a loving, supportive husband today, she always felt like she had to put on her good girl mask with him.
Thus, she was never truly seen in her relationship. She operated under the belief that she had to look for a safer relationship elsewhere to finally be herself, even though she had it right in front of her.
Once she rewired her nervous system and allowed her body to believe it’s safe to be her true self– that her husband is not her father or mother, and that she’s not a “helpless child” anymore– she finally repaired those childhood experiences and started expressing herself unapologetically.
She began to take up more space while being more confident in her body. Her true self emerged in herself and in her relationship. This eliminated her false belief that she is only safe to express her needs and be seen in a relationship outside of her marriage.
4. You know why you do it, but you don’t know HOW to stop doing it.
You know exactly why your past trauma is making you stray, but cheating is like an addiction that takes over you, and you find yourself repeating the same pattern again.
It doesn’t matter how much intellectual understanding or cognitive awareness you have about your patterns of cheating. In order to truly change your behaviors, your body and nervous system must be on board so you can actually physically follow through with your mind’s intention to not cheat.
This takes much more work than telling yourself not to cheat because this old trauma repeatedly controls and hijacks your behaviors before you can even think about doing something different. You have to rewire your nervous system to feel safe and excited in a stable, non-dramatic relationship.
Until you feel that safety with your partner, you’ll continue to impulsively sabotage your relationship.
Stop the cycle of self-sabotage and rewire yourself to enjoy the healthy love you have now.
In my FREE Rewired For Love training, you’ll learn the 3 secrets to healing your trauma and ending your unhealthy relationship patterns that stem from the past.
This free training will give you the clarity you need to create the most connected and fulfilling relationship with your partner without sabotaging your amazing connection or repeating the same stories from the past.
