From being cheated on, you learn things about yourself you would have never known before. For me, I learned how not to be co-dependent, how to cope by myself, and most importantly, how to love myself again. Dating is tricky…especially when you’re dating in the transition between high school and college. Love is a beautiful thing, but you need to love yourself before you can love anyone else. Losing sight of your true self can cause an urge to lash out, which is when mistakes are most likely to happen. In this article, I discuss the 9 grieving stages I experienced after being cheated on.
1. Neglect – hearing that person I was in love with tell you, “I had sex with her” was the most heartbreaking news I had gotten in 2018. I felt alone. shattered. neglected. I felt like my world was coming to an end. I was cold. I didn’t know what to do. How could he? Was I not good enough? Did he love someone else? These were the questions that kept me up at night, that I thought about all day long.
2. Sadness – the first couple of weeks after everything happened, I couldn’t stop crying. I cried in the morning, afternoon, and of course at night right before bed. I couldn’t help but think of the good times we shared and how I thought I knew him inside and out. He was my person…or so I thought. Keeping a smile on my face in public was hard. I envied every happy couple around campus and forever wished that was me. I just wanted to go back to the happy times where everything felt normal.
3. Psycho – after the sad stage, you enter what we call the psychotic stage. This, my friends is a very dangerous stage. During this phase, you go crazy. I mean it. You may try to hack into his snap chat, Facebook account, Instagram, etc. Don’t worry, that’s completely NORMAL. After all, he betrayed you. During this phase, you will try to convey any information you gained from stalking his personal accounts and use that evidence against him. You will want to know if he’s still seeing that girl or if he’s moved on to yet ANOTHER girl. The stalking won’t end until you’ve collected enough information to help you feel like you’ve found out everything.
4. Anger – once you have exerted all your crazy energy, you enter the angry stage. During this stage, you get angry about this whole situation and feel hatred towards him. You’ll act like you don’t care about him and hope karma comes his way. You’ll tell everyone you know what happened and hope they choose you over him.
5. Indifferent – once the anger passes, you’ll feel a sense relief. All of a sudden, it’s like you don’t care anymore. You hope he’s doing well and feel indifferent towards him. You stop worrying what they might be doing on a Saturday night. You might even start talking about how his next significant other will definitely be a downgrade as opposed to thinking you’re going to get back together. You feel “sort of over” your ex.
6. Rebound – raise your hand if you’ve had a rebound! There is no shame in having a rebound, in fact, having replacement parts can help you try and move on from your ex. But always remember, they are a r-e-b-o-u-n-d, they won’t help you get over your feelings 100%. They are temporary. My advice is to learn to be single and figure out your passion.
7. Realization – there comes a time when you realize you weren’t perfect in your old relationship either. For me, it took months for me to finally apologize to him. Although I wasn’t the one who cheated, I did some things that I wasn’t proud of. In order for me to feel like a genuine person, I needed to see him in order to say I’m sorry.
8. Apology – after I realized how my actions affected our relationship in a negative way, I felt the urge to apologize. I had to tell him how I felt and apologize for my actions. I was hoping he would accept my apology and move on from what happened; maybe even become friends as this point.
9. Rekindle – after 6 months of not talking, we finally met up for the first time. It was weird. It felt like nothing ever went wrong, it felt normal. It felt like two best friends having the time of their lives. I knew him, but at the same time I didn’t. He was different. He was more mature, genuine, and trustworthy. He showed a sign of him that I never saw before. He knew what he did was immoral and couldn’t take back his actions. He was apologetic and wanted to rekindle our friendship. I was willing to take that chance and gave him a second chance…hopefully this time would be different.