How to tell your partner that you cheated. So about a month ago we did a video on some
of the questions that you have to ask yourself, but today I'm going to show you how to manage
that incredibly difficult conversation. Don't forget to download the first chapter of my
book, which is now available from the description below and I'll see you on the other side of
this.
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Okay, welcome to the video. And if you are here, you either just really like me and my
channel, or you're going through something incredibly difficult right now. And if that's
you, I really want to help you. If you've cheated on your partner, then what's done
is done. There's no point beating yourself up for it. There's no point hating on yourself.
The question is now, how do you move forward and how do you learn from it? Now, first and
foremost, if you haven't already watched the video on Questions To Ask Yourself After Cheating,
you must go and watch that one first. That video is going to ask you the questions that
you can process yourself, so you can understand what happened, why it happened, and what your
motives were so that you can explain it to your partner and prevent it ever happening
in this relationship or another relationship again.
So let's get into what to do. First and foremost, know your aim. Having answered the questions
from the previous video, know what you want out of this conversation. Are you looking
to start a new relationship with the same person, with your former partner? Are you
looking to recover from this cheating incident and get things back on track? Or are you just
looking to end things respectfully? Are you looking to leave it open and see what happens?
Have an idea what your aim is before you start the conversation.
Number two, understand it may not go the way you want. There's no guarantees when you have
this conversation and even knowing your aim, realize before you go in, it might not go
that way. He has to decide what he wants to do based on what you tell him. And there's
no guarantees. But it doesn't mean you shouldn't have the conversation.
Which brings me to number three, tell him. So I found this piece from Cosmo Magazine.
It basically reads, don't tell him your mother may have told you that honesty is the best
policy, but in this case, many experts advise keeping your mouth shut. If it really was
just one indiscretion, don't tell him, said psychologists Marcella Bakur Weiner, although
it might make you feel better, it will only help him, hurt him, sorry, and the trust between
you. If you want to let fear dictate your decisions, if you want to build a relationship
that rather than based on trust, is based on having to hide things and hide insecurities,
if you want to just keep communication back, and if you want to pay that price to just
stay in your relationship and just have a relationship, then sure, great advice. But
if you want to make the hard decisions, have the tough conversations, and build a relationship
that's based on open trust, open communication, mutual respect, then you have to be brave
and tell him. You were selfish once when you went and cheated, and it's selfish twice not
to tell him. He deserves to know.
All right, so a few guidelines to have this conversation. Number one, make sure you won't
be interrupted. Obviously you don't want to do it at a time where one of you has to be
somewhere. So make sure you pick a nice comfortable spot at a nice comfortable time.
Number two, take full responsibility. So no saying, "you made me cheat because of this
or I cheated because you made me feel like this." Putting it on him is not going to help
and it's just going to make him go defensive. The reality is you are responsible. So take
responsibility.
Number three, take the bullets. So when you first tell him, obviously it's going to be
one hell of a shock for him. He might swear, he might slam doors, he might walk around.
He might say things that he'll later regret. That could be disrespectful. It's important
that you don't act up and start going back at him. These are bullets that in this conversation
you have to take cry if you need to show how ashamed you are of your actions, assuming
that you are, but take the bullets as they come. This is part of the conversation. This
is the repercussions of what's happened and it's something you need to take responsibility
for and understand the heat's going to come to you and that's okay.
Number four, no implicit details of the guy or the sex. So as your partner finds out more,
he's going to ask more questions. Oh, who was it exactly? When did it happen? What?
What sort of positions did he put you in? What did you guys do? You don't want to torture
your partner with intimate details of every position the other man put you in it. It's
not helpful and it doesn't change the management of the situation. Of course if the sex was
really bad, it probably wouldn't hurt to drop that one in there.
The other thing you don't want to do is give the exact identity of the person. If you can
avoid it, it will send your man on a vendetta against that person. And that's not the goal
of the exercise. The goal of the exercises for you to take responsibility and to talk
about what this means for your relationship.
Number five, make it clear how sorry you are. Now it goes without saying that you're going
to be apologetic, but you can back up your words with actions by showing the man that
you've looked into those questions from the previous video. So for example, you might
say, "I've realized that I have this deep fear of _____." You could say, "I've learned
that I'm terrified of _____."You could say, "this is certainly no excuse, none whatsoever.
I know now that I need to communicate in my relationships because I have this, this terror
of confrontation and I so, so wish I could take back time and change that. But I know
this is now a mistake that I'll never make in a relationship again."
When you demonstrate to your man that you've clearly thought about the causes that you've
spent time thinking about why you were so scared and why you didn't come forward and
what led to the cheating incident, it shows you've taken action and you're not just saying
sorry with your words.
And number six, give him space to process. So depending on his reaction, he might need
days, he might need hours, he might need weeks to process what's happened and he's going
to ask you more questions. Remember, you don't want to get into too many implicit details,
but he's going to ask you questions and this is going to give you more time to process
the fears that led to this incident. Why couldn't you have been honest and said, "Hey, I'm finding
myself attracted to other men. We need, we need to do something here." Or "Hey, I'm not
feeling 100% content in this relationship. We need to do something here." What were the
fears that stopped you saying that?
And you'll have more time to process that. And as he asks you questions, you'll be able
to give better and better answers. So watch that video on What To Do When A Guy Says He
Needs Space. I'll put the link to that up here and in the description below as well
and use similar concepts from that video. He's going to need some space and you're going
to have to give him plenty of time to process that. And that again is a bullet that you'll
have to take. So give him that time to process and hopefully if you're both on the same page,
you can start a new relationship again. And I sort of want to close with this.
Think of it that way. The reality is your old relationship is gone, but that's a good
thing because clearly something was broken, clearly something wasn't working or you never
would've cheated in the first place. So knowing that the broken relationship has gone, ask
yourself this and figure this out with your man. Do we want to start a new one? It's going
to take a lot of time to build back that trust. It's going to take gestures on your part.
And it's going to take two people who are a fuck yes to making it work and building
that relationship again. But if you can build a new one, you can learn from the mistakes
of the past and never again go down that road that you were going down before. It's an opportunity
to make sure the past doesn't repeat itself, and even though your old relationship is over,
it might just be exactly what you needed to get a new one off on the right foot.
So thank you for watching. Let me know your thoughts, comments, questions. I hope it goes
well for you if you're applying the advice, I'd love to hear what you think. Put it all
in the comment section below. Give the video a thumbs up. Hit the big red subscribe button
and the little bell as you always do. Again, let me know your thoughts and I'll see you
in the next video very soon.
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