31: "I Cheated On My Partner While Drinking": Advice for Healing
This episode focuses on questions about how to heal from cheating on your partner, specifically when alcohol was involved. Over the past few months I have received many questions from listeners who cheated on their partners when they had been drinking and now regret it.
This post contains affiliate links to some of my favorite tools and resources. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Full terms & conditions here.
Today I start with focusing on how and why it’s important to become curious about our relationship with alcohol in order to heal. I also answer a question about how to start this journey of healing from cheating in a relationship, and another question from someone who doesn’t know why they cheated and is looking for help forgiving themselves.
Journal Prompts:
Has your partner's infidelity changed the way you view yourself? Has this experience created new negative-self talk or criticisms about yourself?
What was your relationship like with sex before the infidelity? Has it changed since the infidelity? Does it make you want to have sex more or less? Explore how this experience has affected your relationship with sex both physically and emotionally.
Do you trust that your partner has changed and is willing to work on your relationship moving forward?
Download the full list of FREE journal prompts!
Free Resources 📑
New View Advice Infidelity Hub - One-Stop-Shop for all things related to infidelity
Episode References:
Recommended episodes about sobriety, coping strategies, & healing your inner child:
14: My Sober Journey: Why I Decided to Do 12 Months of Sobriety
*In the episode I said episodes 12 and 18 were the episodes about sobriety, but it is actually episodes 14 and 18.
10: Coping with Alcohol, Food, and Shopping: Moving from Unhealthy to Healthy Coping Strategies
Books:
How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self by Dr. Nicole LePera
The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts by Gary Chapman
The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
8:13 Teaching
23:57 Listener Question 1
35:51 Listener Question 2
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NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher 0:00
Welcome to New View Advice, a safe place for you to ask your most vulnerable questions about life, relationships, healing, and so much more. I'm your host, Amanda Durocher, and I believe our fears and traumas are often what holds us back from living life to the fullest. Join me here each week as I offer advice on how to move through whatever is holding you back from being your best self. Let's get started. Hey, there beautiful souls. Welcome back to another episode of Nuvi advice. If you're new here, my name is Amanda. And this is a healing centered advice podcast. So what I mean by that is that it is my intention to help guide you on the healing journey. So each week I answer questions from listeners and my intention is not to give you the answers of what to do. My intention is to help you heal and to help you to grow and connect back to your own heart. Today, we will be discussing healing from cheating on a partner. So we're talking about the perspective of somebody who was the person who cheated in the relationship. And specifically today we are talking about people who found themselves cheating on nights when they were drinking. I found over the past couple months that I've received a lot of questions from people who were upset with themselves truly upset with themselves and wanted to know how they could heal because they found themselves cheating on nights they were drinking. And some people didn't even know why they did it. So we're going to discuss that today. Before I jump in, I just wanted to give a little update about myself and my own healing journey. I've had a few people mentioned that they find it helpful when I talk about my journey. So I thought I'd give a little update as well. Because I am always healing to I am on my healing journey. I don't believe there's a destination for healing journeys, I believe it's something we'll most likely be doing our whole lives and that I am always healing, there's always something new that arises. There's always a limiting belief to look at, there's always a moment in my childhood that wants to be witnessed by me in my own heart. So I just wanted you to know that I'm right there with you. Today, I found myself crying on the floor for about an hour and then dancing around and clearing some energy. So for me, I've actually been connecting a lot with music. I've been using dance movement and music to help me to feel and move hard feelings. So I find it helpful if I'm feeling sad to just put on a sad song and to move to it. And I find that the emotion tends to move and oftentimes I end up listening to the same song on repeat over and over again, because there's something about the song itself or the lyrics that just hit when I'm moving through. So I don't judge myself, I just listen to the same song and move until I feel better or I feel like a new emotion arises. I've also been leaning a lot into poetry. It's a way that my inner child likes to heal. So for me, poetry feels creative. It feels fun. As I work through hard feelings. I like to write rhyming poetry. So it uses a different part of my brain as I'm healing. So I'm using I feel like both my left and right brains at the same time. And now that I'm saying it out loud, it feels a bit like EMDR like going back and forth between the sides of the brain, the creative and the logical to make the poem make sense and to rhyme. So for me, that's been really helpful. I guess I could read my most recent poem, because why not? There's a poem I wrote today, because I was healing from friendships. So for me, I had a lot of traumatic friendships. To be completely honest, I didn't realize how traumatic they were until I was in my 20s. But I found it really, really hard to trust and make female friendships. I can see why for so many reasons. This was tough for me. I think it's tough for a lot of women. I think it's tough for a lot of people in general to make friendships. But I find women can be very competitive. I find women can talk behind each other's backs, women can be catty, and women can turn against other women. And I experienced a lot of that in my childhood. So today, I wrote this poem, and it felt like it was written by my teenage self, and my inner child who wanted to express how she was filling. So I wasn't planning on reading this, but I'm feeling called to read it. So I will read this and then we'll jump into today's episode. It's not perfect, but nothing ever is. Okay. So I'm calling this poem saying goodbye to a childhood friend. To the childhood friend who wants bright into my heart. You taught me what joy was through laughter and art. This may sound like a love poem, and to me it is your friendship meant so much to me. I loved you like assists. When I was with you, I'd lose all sense of time. I thought we had one of those friendships that would last a lifetime. But unfortunately, we began to grow apart, no longer strung together by laughter and art. You broke my heart over and over again by repeatedly coming into my life and leaving again. I know I was young and a little naive for believing each time you'd stay and no longer leave. And each time you left I cried for days wishing someone was there to take the pain away. I'm older now and can clearly see that your friendship was never healthy for me. I wasn't perfect and still am not now. But I didn't deserve your attitude of holier than now, how you repeatedly made me feel crazy for being so sad when you leave me so quickly when you found someone more rad. I know I had issues. I've been healing them for years. But I never deserved to be left alone in tears. As I continue to grieve the friendship we had, I'm continually struck by how something once good left me feeling so bad. Our friendship has left scars on my body and made it hard for me to trust anybody. It's made it hard to find someone new to laugh within play. I never realized how much you hurt me. Until today, I finally released all the blame inside that it was my fault you left and didn't stick by my side, you are responsible for all of your own choices. I did nothing wrong. And now I voice that I love myself too much to hold on to you anymore. Goodbye from my heart and body. You can live here no more. I bring myself today of the pains of the past and allow myself to move forward with new friends who will make me laugh. I forgive you for hurting me. And I forgive myself for allowing you to treat me like a toy on a shelf, like a toy in your room waiting for you to play and would only come out when you chose the day. I forgive myself now and set myself free no longer in chains and allowed to be me. You broke my heart. But you also gave me a gift that life is really very quite Swift. And that letting people treat me like trash was never good for me and is over like a flash. Through this friendship. I've learned to trust myself and to set boundaries with people who put me on a shelf. Thank you for teaching me what I don't want. So I can move forward with new confidants. I'll always remember you as an old friend. But I'm happy to say that for you and me, this is the end. Thank you for letting me share that poem. I hope someone found it helpful, if not, through the words of the poem, seeing what my healing process is like through poetry. So for me, that poem really just flowed. I allowed it to come verse by verse, and I really didn't make many edits to it afterwards, reading it back, there's probably a few things I changed. But that's really how it flowed out of me. And I've learned poetry is an intuitive process for me. So it's a way that my inner being is able to heal. And when I started that poem, I was really sad. And when I finished that poem, I felt really confident through the hour, I spent maybe half an hour I don't really remember, honestly, I lose all sense of time when I write with through the time I sat there writing, that poem came through and allowed me to heal something that was on my heart. So I hope that was helpful for someone. I know that was a little off topic for today, because we're talking about cheating. But I just wanted to talk a little bit about my process. And what I'm going through, because I've had people mentioned, that's helpful. So I will wrap up the about me section with that. And let's jump on in to talking about alcohol and cheating in relationships.
Amanda Durocher (Teaching) 8:17
I wanted to begin today's episode with talking a little bit about alcohol. Because as I mentioned, I have received so many questions from people who drank and then cheated in their relationships and then regretted the cheating. So I wanted to talk a little bit about alcohol because I found that through some of these questions, people mentioned that they're just going to abstain from drinking, and they think that'll fix all their problems. And for you, it may fix all your problems. I found in my own life, though, that just abstaining from alcohol didn't fix any of my problems, if x so my problems when I went sober. But before I went sober, I tried to go sober a few other times, or I would do 30 Day sobriety periods. But what I found in my own life was that I had to heal my relationship with alcohol, in order to not feel that shame and self hatred around some of the bad decisions I made while drinking or some of the bad things that happened while I drank. Or just to forgive myself in general, I had to heal my relationship with alcohol. So I think going sober is a great first step. And some people might not be there yet, and some people might be there. Some people might give up alcohol for a certain amount of time. I'm not here to tell you what's best for you. That's a decision I truly believe everyone has to make for themselves. I have found sobriety to be great in my life. For those who don't know, I did 12 months of sobriety, and then I've chosen to stay sober. But originally when I went sober, I was committed to 12 months and I wasn't sure what I would do after the 12 months, after doing 12 months. It was a long enough time that I could see so many benefits, and I could also see how alcohol had harmed me in the past. Before I gave up alcohol. I was unable Pull to really see all the pain alcohol caused me I more was able to see that I was hating myself, which is what motivated me to go sober. But it wasn't until I was sober that I was able to really look at all the pain alcohol had caused me and how the pain was far greater than the benefits I had been getting from alcohol. So if you're interested in learning more about my sober journey, I have two episodes where I discuss it, Episode 12, and episode 18. So you can check those out to learn more about my own personal relationship with alcohol. But today, I just wanted to talk about a few tips for becoming aware of your relationship with alcohol. Because if you're finding that you cheat on your partner when you drink, then I think you need to look at your relationship with alcohol, and what is driving your relationship with alcohol. For example, in my own life, I drink for many reasons. And it wasn't until I started to look at my relationship with alcohol that I was able to really start to suss out why I was drinking. So it wasn't until I was actually in therapy once. And I was berating myself for drinking, for drinking as much as I was. This was during a time when I was in therapy, healing layers of being raped in my childhood. And I was drinking a lot at night. So during this time, I was suffering from nightmares. Anybody who's been raped will know that a side effect of rape is nightmares. I don't know anybody who hasn't had the nightmares if you haven't, God bless you. But for a lot of us a side effect of rape is nightmares. So I used to drink at night, because it would help me fall asleep. Because if I didn't drink at night, I would lie in bed for hours terrified that I would get nightmares because when I started to really dive deep into healing this wound I had, I was having nightmares nightly. And it was always on my mind. So I also always thought about it. And I always wanted to talk about it. And nobody wants to talk about child rape. So I would drink because by the end of the day, by like seven o'clock 7pm I would drink to shut my brain off. And one time I was in therapy berating myself for this, I was like, I can't believe I drink so much. I have a drinking problem this and that. And my therapist just looked at me and was like, Do you think you drink because you're having really hard feelings? Could you offer yourself some compassion, because you're working through some really tough experiences. And at night, you pick up a drink. And this was a totally new way of looking at drinking for me, I just braided myself for my entire life, that I would drink with friends. And if I had a good night, then it was good. And if I had a bad night, I would sit and self hatred the next day, it was so 50/50 for me. And this was the first time I was offered compassion for my drinking. So I tell this story, because I want us to start weaving self compassion into our healing journeys. So a lot of people who reached out who have cheated on their partners are living with a lot of shame, a lot of guilt, a lot of self blame a lot of self hatred, a lot of really hard feelings. And I think it's important to offer yourself compassion, it's important to start to view your decisions through a healing lens. And what do I mean by this? So for somebody who cheats on their partner on a night when they were out drinking and doesn't know why they chose to drink, it's a great place to start. I've had people reach out, and there's gonna be one of the questions talks about this, who really don't know why they did it. And I invite you to become curious about your relationship with alcohol. And how you begin to do this is to start noticing why you pick up a drink? Was there a triggering event? Did something trigger you picking up that drink? So some examples would be? Did you have a hard day and pick up a drink? Another example could be did you go out with a certain group of friends, I found in my life that certain people would trigger me drinking and certain people would trigger me drinking a certain amount of alcohol, that doesn't make my drinking their fault, it's just our relationship dynamic would often lead to me drinking more, so I had to become conscious of that. Another reason could be is that you are numbing out. Another reason could be that it's easier for you in social situations to drink, or that you're trying to impress someone. There are a million reasons why and that's going to be different for each individual person. But I invite you to become curious about why you pick up a drink, just in general, even if you're still drinking. Just become curious about your relationship with alcohol. I think it's important for us to become curious about everything in our lives. And to become curious about why we do the things we do. It's a way to get to know ourselves. Curiosity is non judgmental. Curiosity is just coming at it with the intention of learning more about yourself. So that's when you can add in this self compassion piece. It's not about berating yourself. It's not about judging yourself for why it's about just getting to know yourself better. So, I would invite you to find out why you pick up a drink. And I would invite you to ask yourself how it makes you feel when you start drinking? Do you start to feel more confident? Do you start to relax? Do you start to feel like you're funnier? I know, that's how I felt, I felt like the jokes came easier when I would have a few glasses of wine. And just become curious with yourself again. And then I also invite you to come curious about how you feel the day after you drink. Just bring this energy of curiosity to your drinking. I know a lot of people have reached out to me who said they cheated on their partners when they were drunk. And now they're abstaining from alcohol for a certain period of time to these people, I invite you to become curious about your previous times drinking. So you can either become curious in the moment. So if you go to pick up a glass of wine, just start becoming intentional, like why am I picking this up? Oh, I had a bad day. Yeah, I'm gonna have this glass of wine. You don't have to stop drinking. It's about becoming curious about why you do the things you do. Because the more we can know about ourselves, the deeper we get to know ourselves, and then the more we can uncover about why we do the things we do. So that's one tip for healing your relationship with alcohol, I also invite you to dive into when you first started drinking. So oftentimes, when we first started drinking, beliefs around alcohol get imprinted, or even your first memory of alcohol. So for some of us, we might have witnessed our parents drinking or adults around us drinking and might have started to have beliefs about alcohol from a young age, or it could be from when we first started drinking, and the beliefs we created when we first started drinking. So were you suddenly cool when you started to drink. I know, that's how I felt I felt like all of a sudden, I had a higher social status when I started drinking. So I felt like it helped me socially. And but for you, you could have witnessed your parents drinking at parties and thought that drinking was a social thing. This again, is going to be different for everybody. But I'm just inviting you to become curious about why you drink. And for people with this topic, why your drinking may have led to you cheating, because it's all about getting to know yourself. These are sounding like a lot of journal prompts. So I will put it into a journal post that will be in the show notes for this episode at WWW dot newView advice.com/ 31. And you'll be able to find all these questions I'm mentioning here, because the third thing I would recommend you do is to be kind to yourself as you are uncovering these truths about yourself. So I had some people reach out and say they have no idea why and they don't think there's a reason behind why they cheated on their partner when they drink. They just think it was the alcohol. And I understand this point of view. But I truly believe because I found this to be true in my own life, that there's always a reason for what we do. But sometimes that reason is so subconscious that we have a hard time accessing why. So when you start becoming curious about your relationship with alcohol, curious about why you drink, you will start to uncover why you may have cheated when you were drunk. I'm gonna go deeper into this and one of the questions and give an example about how alcohol can be used to self sabotage and one of the questions. But I just want to mention that here, that a lot of us can use alcohol to self sabotage, and your consciousness could be using when you're drunk to cause self sabotaging behaviors in your life. And that may not make a lot of sense for some people right now. But I'm going to dive deeper into that in question too, because I think that question may be an example of that type of behavior. And I'll give an example from my own life. So I just want to remind anybody who's healing their relationship with alcohol and healing from cheating on a partner, that we want to be kind to ourselves throughout this process. We want to offer ourselves compassion. We want to be our own best friend throughout this process. Because yes, you made a mistake if you cheated on your partner, but in order to heal, and to move forward, you have to be kind to yourself and loving to yourself because oftentimes, that kind of behavior is self sabotaging behavior or that is a coping strategy or that is from a childhood wound. The reason we cheat in relationships or the reason that we make mistakes and relationships like this is often because of childhood wounds. So I want to invite you to be kind to yourself as you uncover more about yourself throughout this process. Because you deserve to heal and forgive yourself. You made a mistake, but you are not that mistake. You do not need to live with the guilt and the shame and the self hatred of cheating on your partner is it your responsibility to heal, and to grow, and to rebuild trust in your relationship. If you're planning on staying in that relationship, yes. But it is not necessary for you to keep hating yourself for a mistake you made. It does not benefit anyone for you to continue hating yourself. It is not fair to you. Because oftentimes, as I mentioned, the reasons behind the things we do our subconscious wounds, I want to make it clear that you are not this mistake, you are worthy of forgiving yourself, you are worthy of loving yourself, and you are worthy of moving forward as a better version of yourself, I invite you to take this opportunity to grow, and to learn more about yourself and to get to know yourself better, so that you don't find yourself in this situation again. And the reason I don't think you want to find yourself in this situation, again, is because of the questions I've received, and the amount of self hatred, I feel through these questions. I don't want you to hate yourself, as somebody who hated themselves. For most of my life, I can now see that all the mistakes I made were stemming from the trauma I experienced as a child, does that mean I didn't have to apologize to people. No, of course, I had to apologize to people along the way. And I had to grow and change, I had to take responsibility for my mistakes. But I also can see that there was a traumatized little girl in me, who did not know how to live in this world, who did not know how to not hate herself, who didn't know how to love herself, and how to show up in a healthy and adult way. And so through my healing journey, I have learned to offer myself compassion, for my mistakes, to get to the root of why I do things, and to really look at the full picture of my life and the full picture of every circumstance and offer myself compassion for not being perfect. Because you're not perfect, no human is perfect. And it is unfair of you to put yourself on a hook have unrealistic expectations. That's one and two, I want to mention that you don't deserve to hate yourself, because you can't go back in time and change what you did, you can play it over in your head over and over again. But that will not change what happened. You made a mistake. And now in order to move forward, you have to release yourself of the shame and guilt that you have taken on and forgive yourself and move forward. So I think this is a good stopping point, because we're going to continue all these conversations in the questions. But I just wanted to give an intro about alcohol healing from alcohol and offering yourself Self Compassion as you move through this really hard experience. Because this is really hard. It's really hard when we do things we regret. It's really hard when we hurt other people and other people's feelings are involved. It's really, really hard. But as one of my favorite Glennon Doyle quotes is, we can do hard things. And I've found in my own life, that looking at the hardest experiences I've had, and healing from the hardest things that have happened to me, or happened in my life, I have become the best version of myself, I have become a stronger version of myself, I've become more compassionate to myself and to others, I am now able to look at the pain of the world and understand it better and not be so quick to judge and hate others. Because I've sat with my own heart. And I can see how much pain we all live with and how much of that pain is subconscious. So I hope something in here was helpful. Let's jump on into the questions.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 24:02
I listened to your cheating in relationships episode of both sides, and really related to them. I have caught myself in this situation and don't know how or what to do. I was unfaithful to my partner twice on nights out drinking where I don't remember how and where do I go from here? So first, I want to say I'm so sorry for the situation you found yourself in and I'm so sorry that you found yourself in a place where you don't know how or what to do. I know how overwhelming that can feel scary and how when we're having difficult feelings, it's easy to pack more difficult feelings on when we don't know what to do. I also want to say that cheating is so complex and has so many layers including guilt and shame. And I know how tough it can be to live with those kinds of feelings and not know what to do. So since I don't know much about your relationship, I'm going to start this question with the decision of if you're going to tell this partner and if you're going to stay with this partner So I'm going to make the assumption from this question that you just cheated on your partner again, and you're deciding what to do, because you don't know where to go from here. First, I want you to become very clear on your relationship. So I want you to become intentional about the relationship you're currently in. So to do this, I recommend journaling, meditating, or really just sitting with your own heart and asking yourself what you see for your current relationship. So is this a relationship that you see down the road? Is this a relationship that you see yourself possibly getting married to this person? Is it somebody you've been with for a while? Or is it somebody you've been with for a month, and it was just a fun relationship, and you're unsure where it's going? Are you with this person out of fear, sometimes we're with people out of fear of being single fear of being alone, fear of abandonment, fear of change. So I want you to become clear on your relationship, and what you want moving forward. So you may decide that you need to be single for a bit to get to know yourself a bit better, because you find you're not ready to be in a relationship. I find if we're cheating in a relationship, it may be a sign that we're not quite ready to be in a relationship, I think our society rushes us to be in relationships at a young age. And I think that there is a beauty in being single, there's a beauty and taking time to get to know ourselves, getting to know our own wants and needs, getting to become familiar with who we are and learning to love ourselves. Because we can do this in partnerships. I learned to do this in a partnership. But I do think it can be easier to do on our own. So if you decide you want to stay in the relationship and make it work, you have to decide if you want to tell your partner or not about the cheating. I think that through truth, and through sharing about shameful experiences, that shame can be released. So I think that being honest with your partner could help you to release some of the shame you may be feeling about this experience. Now, if you choose to disclose what you did, you have to remember that you cannot control your partner's reactions. So we cannot control the people we're in a relationship with, they have their own thoughts, feelings, and emotions. And your partner will decide if they want to stay with you. The more clear you get before this conversation, the easier this conversation will be for you. Because you'll be able to articulate your thoughts better. When emotions are high, it can be really hard to communicate how we're feeling, even though we have so many feelings, it can be hard to talk about them. So I find if I'm going to have a difficult conversation, it helps me to take notes beforehand, it helps me to journal to get clear on how I feel. So I can articulate how I'm feeling to that person. And so if you decide to have this tough conversation, it won't be easy. And as I mentioned, this person is going to have all their own feelings about it. And I invite you to create a safe space for you both of this conversation. So maybe create a time where you could disclose this information. And you both have space to really process what's going on. And I also invite you to be respectful of what your partner communicates to you in this time, because they may say they need some space, they may say some things they don't mean, it's a hard conversation. So I just invite you to be intentional ahead of time. But I think through tough conversations, relationships can grow. By learning to communicate tough things by learning to communicate our feelings, and articulate what's going on inside of us, we can become better partners. So for this, again, I invite you to listen to your inner voice, I invite you to become intentional, because only you are going to know what's best for you moving forward, your inner voice, your soul knows what the next step is. And knows if you want to tell your partner, it knows if you want to be single for a while it knows if you want to keep this a secret for a little bit longer. It is up to you. But listen to that voice. Take some time become clear with yourself. I think that there's no rush, you don't have to tell somebody the second after you cheated on them. Take a day, take a couple of days, take some space to breathe, and to be compassionate with yourself as you move through this because the mistake you made is going to or has already affected your partner. And you have to make sure you're taking care of yourself throughout this process because your partner is not going to be able to take care of you because they're going to be devastated as well. So I just invite you to be kind to yourself as you're moving through this to practice that self compassion that we mentioned earlier in the episode. So now that we've talked about that, I want to talk about the drinking aspect of this question and talk about how you say you don't remember what happened you don't remember these nights So I would invite you to begin your process of healing by looking at if there were a similarity and a pattern on these nights that you cheated. So more than just the drinking. What happened before the drinking? Were you with the same group of people? Were you in a fight with your partner? Were you feeling insecure? Did you find yourself seeing a group of people who made you feel insecure? Did somebody initiate the flirting with you, I invite you to become curious about the steps that led to the cheating because though a lot of it can be unconscious, there are a lot of steps before we cheat. There's also a lot of steps before we drink, which is why I think that becoming curious about why we make the decisions we do can be really healing for us. Because if you become curious about what led to the drinking, and then how the drinking led to the cheating, I think you'll start to become aware of a pattern within yourself. Because the fact that you did this multiple times, to me that would say that there's most likely a pattern you're playing out, there's most likely a root cause to why this happens. And there's most likely something that needs to be healed. So this could be a trigger from your childhood. This could be a trigger around men, women or people who you're sexually attracted to. But I invite you to start becoming curious about yourself and the nights that these shootings occurred before you don't remember, so become curious about the events leading up to the not remembering. So as I mentioned in the intro, I used drinking as a coping strategy for a very long time, I actually have an Episode Episode 10, where I talk about coping strategies. So I'd recommend you listen to that episode, if you haven't already. But many of us have coping strategies for safety reasons. I know that was true for me. And I used alcohol to cope with a lot of tough experiences, I was very uncomfortable in my own skin and around other people for a very long time. And alcohol helped with this. And as I healed and learn to love myself, I was able to give up alcohol because I didn't like the person I became when I drink. But for me, this took time and learning to love myself. I'm not saying you have to give up alcohol. But memory loss is a sign that there's probably something to look at when it comes to your drinking. And I invite you to start becoming curious about that drinking. And if you've chosen to give up alcohol, I still invite you to become curious and to start healing your relationship with alcohol. So no matter what you decide to do, I also invite you to work on forgiving yourself. As I mentioned, cheating is complex, and it can be filled with shame and guilt and you made a mistake, but you deserve to forgive yourself. And this is easier said than done. It's so easy to berate ourselves,
it's so easy to be our own biggest critic, especially when we hurt others. Because so many of us are good intentioned. We don't mean to hurt people, our subconscious mind can wreak havoc in our lives or ego can wreak havoc, and then our hearts can break because we didn't mean to hurt anyone. Even though somebody might be like you knew this would hurt me, it can be so unconscious, like you said you didn't remember and then you cheated, right? So your intention wasn't to hurt your partner, there was a subconscious thing that happened there. That's what I'm seeing through this question. And you have to forgive yourself for that. But what's going to help you forgive yourself is becoming aware of what that subconscious pattern is. Because once you see that, I think it's probably a route to your childhood or something like that. And you're going to have a lot more compassion for yourself, because you're going to see that your wounded self was acting out. And the more we connect with our inner children, who I talked about in many episodes, but you can listen to episode five, where I talked about self love, forgiveness and inner children, if you want to learn more about that if you're unfamiliar with the term inner child, but your inner child acts out because it's looking to be witnessed by you. And the more we learn to parent ourselves, the more compassion we can bring to ourselves. I hope that makes sense. And my last piece of advice would be that you may want to think about finding a therapist if you don't already have one. I think having a space to start uncovering these truths when they are so deep and subconscious. And we don't know why we do the things we do. therapists can be really helpful, it can be really helpful to have that outer perspective of somebody who can reflect back truths to us. therapists can often hear things that we're not quite hearing and say back to us things that we're saying in a different way so we can understand our own inner world a little better. As I always say, I know that therapy is not an option for everyone. But if you have insurance, you can call your insurance company and see if it covers therapy. You can also ask therapists as you're searching if they have sliding scale rates, if you find that therapy is a hard financial option right now. I just want to send you so much love. You are worthy of forgiving yours Oh, you're worthy of love. And though you made a mistake, you are not this mistake. You are a beautiful soul who is looking to heal, you wouldn't write into a healing centered advice podcast if you weren't looking to heal. And that's courageous. So many people don't heal. So many people don't look at why they do the things they do. So many people bottle it up. But you writing into this podcast shows me that you want to change and you want to dive deeper into why you did this, and you deserve to forgive yourself and to let yourself off the hook. Though that might not happen overnight. I just want you to know that you don't have to punish yourself to the end of time because you made a mistake. And I send you so much love as you navigate this chapter that you're moving through. And thank you so much for this question.
Amanda Durocher (Listener Question) 35:56
I'm 23 years old, and I've been with my boyfriend for nine months, it's been the best nine months of my life, I messed up. And the guilt I feel is so incredibly heavy, it hurts so bad. I kissed a random guy at a bar that I never even met and my boyfriend hates me. I cheated on the love of my life. I listened to your podcast on cheating. And it was helpful. The thing is that there isn't a why I was drunk and not in control. He needs a why and I can't give him a why. And that also hurts me. My boyfriend didn't do anything wrong. He was nothing but perfect. And when we fought we dealt with it so well. It was so good. And we were both the happiest we'd ever been. And I took all that away. It's all my fault. I told him that I would do whatever it took. I already agreed to not drink for over a year and a half. Because I honestly know that it was only the alcohol. If I was sober. This would have never happened, ever. I already owned up for my mistake. But I know this isn't me. I have a history of not being able to handle my alcohol. What else can I do to show him that I really want to change? How can I be better for us? I want to spend the rest of my life with him. And I'm so scared to lose him. I don't know how to forgive myself, and I don't know how to gain his trust back. Thank you for this question. I am so sorry to hear what you're going through. I can feel how heartbroken you are through this question. And I can feel the self blame through the question. And I just want to help you work towards forgiving yourself, because I can feel how devastated you are. And I'm guessing you have some unkind thoughts flying through your head. And I know how tough that is, I have lived with self hatred and self blame for so long. And though you made a mistake, you do not deserve to continually punish yourself for that mistake. But I do believe we want to learn from our mistakes. So I want to start this question with talking about how you can't control your boyfriend's feelings. And I think that's a reason why this has been so hard for you and why this can be so hard for people who have cheated. Because I think many of us believe that if our partners forgive us for cheating, then we will automatically forgive ourselves. But unfortunately, I don't think that's the case. And sometimes our partners won't forgive us for things we've done, or for the way we've heard them. But that does not mean that you can't forgive yourself. So I want to give an example from my own life of when I forgive myself, but somebody didn't forgive me, and just show how it is possible and why it's possible to forgive ourselves, even if somebody in our life can't forgive us. So this is a small example from my own life, I had this friend who I tried to set a boundary with and tried to tell her that I needed a little space from their friendship, and she was so offended that we've never spoken again. And this was when I was first setting boundaries. And I can see now that I could have articulated how I was feeling better. But I could continue punishing myself for saying something wrong and for the fact that this woman may never forgive me, and that I upset her and I could just punish myself, or I could forgive myself and learn from it. And I chose the latter. This was a tough experience. But I learned how to be a better friend how to set clear boundaries, and how to communicate that and articulate that Kinder moving forward. I offered this example, though it's very different from what you're moving through. Because, as I said, I think sometimes we think we need the person outside of us to forgive us, for us to forgive ourselves. But that's just not the case. Sometimes the people outside of us won't forgive us. And we need to forgive ourselves or sometimes the reverse that the person outside of us might not even know they hurt us and we may need to forgive them, even though they may not deserve that forgiveness, because forgiveness isn't condoning the actions. It's not condoning what you did, it's letting yourself off the hook. So I think it's important for you to forgive yourself because you asked What else can you do to show you've changed and how can you be better in your relationship? I believe if you forgive you yourself. And if you heal and forgiveness happens through healing, it happens over time. It does not happen overnight. But it often happens through healing through looking at why we do the things we do through taking responsibility for our lives, we learn to forgive ourselves. And through this, you will become a better partner. The more you learn to love yourself, The kinder you are to yourself, The kinder you can be in your relationship, the better partner you can be. And so I think you learning to forgive yourself is so important. So I invite you to work on forgiving yourself. So you may be asking, How can I forgive myself? How can I move to forgiveness, here are some practices I invite you to do. So one, allow yourself to feel your feelings, allow yourself to fully feel them. I think when people cheat, they feel like they can't have all their feelings, and they can only let the other person have their feelings, since the other person was the quote unquote, victim. But you need to have your feelings to Now does that mean you should use your partner as that safe space? No, I invite you to create a safe space for yourself. Or to find a therapist, as I mentioned in the previous question, where you can start to feel your feelings, your partner will likely not be able to hold space for your feelings, because they're hurt by your actions. And that's okay. It's okay that they can't be that space for you right now. Maybe over time, they'll be able to, but right now, you're probably going to have to move through this on your own and find a safe place. So a friend, a family member, or a therapist or learn to feel your feelings on your own. I want to talk again about that shame. Because when you said you feel so much guilt, I have a feeling you're feeling shame, and Brene Brown talks about the difference between shame and guilt. And shame is I am bad. Guilt is I did something bad. So the difference is that one is using an I am statement. So the shame is identifying as bad. And the other the guilt is saying that I did a bad thing. But you are not that bad thing. So you are not this mistake, you are not this incident of cheating. This is not who you are. You made a mistake. But it is not who you are. It's something that you did. And it's something that you're going to move forward from. Another suggestion I highly recommend for you. Because I feel like this could be helpful for you is to read the big leap by Gay Hendricks, I highly recommend this book for you. And I highly recommend this book for honestly, everyone. I found this book to be so helpful. And I recommend this book for you because you say you don't know why you did this. And in this book, it explains simply why we often self sabotage and it explains simply why we specifically self sabotage when we're happy. So Gay Hendricks causes the upper limit problem. So when we often hit our upper limit, so for you with having this great relationship, and you were found yourself the happiest you've ever been, we subconsciously hit a point of enough joy of too much joy. We can't handle it anymore. We are afraid as humans to be happy. So we self sabotage. And this stems from one of the core beliefs that Gay Hendricks talks about in the book. So I invite you to read that book, I'm not going to give a full synopsis of the book. But in the book, he goes into different beliefs, where they come from, and why that might be triggered by your upper limit. So by you being happy. So he talks about how oftentimes, if life's going really well, in one area of our life, we self sabotage and a different one because we have such a hard time as human beings, allowing ourselves to be happy. I know that's true for me, I have been talking about all yours since January, my fear of being happy. I am constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. When I'm happy. I am so afraid of being happy. Because it's more vulnerable to allow ourselves to be happy. It's scary for some of us who have been through so much pain, that it's easier. Like I find it easier to live in the in the sadness of life, because I've experienced so much of it that I've grown to be comfortable there. I know what to expect when I'm sad. I know how to move through sadness, I can see the sad things in the world. But allowing myself to be happy is terrifying. What if something bad happens while I'm happy? What if that vulnerability leads to a bad experience? I have been learning to allow myself to be happy. And it's an ongoing practice. I allow myself to be happy for longer and longer extended periods of time. But I'm not perfect. I'm not happy every day I'm still healing and a lot of times those long periods of joy lead to a new layer of trauma coming up for me to look at and that's okay, I'm learning how to be happy. But this book The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks could be really helpful for you. I found it really helpful for me. So now when I see myself going from really happy to something hard happening, I can see that I'm often hitting an upper limit. I also So think this can be helpful for you because it could help you get in touch with that subconscious patterning, you may be playing out. And even before this year were I became aware of this because I read Gay Hendricks book in January. But before this, when I used to drink, I used to use alcohol to self sabotage myself. So I would have a really good day I would finish a screenplay or I would have a really great day at work or something really good would be happening in my life, I'd be really happy. And then that night, I would be like, I'm gonna have a drink to celebrate, and then a blackout or I would fall asleep early, and like wouldn't even make it to the bar, I would self sabotage with alcohol, I would often use alcohol as a way to bring myself back down because I felt safer when I wasn't happy. And for you, that may be the case. And by looking at your childhood wounds, looking at where your beliefs around Happiness may have come from, or how you may not feel safe when you're happy. I know, that's true for me that allowing myself to feel more and more happy trigger is a safety thing within me, I feel safer. When I have like armor up, I'm seeing it as like a armor to the world when I have walls up around me. But in order to be happy in order to be vulnerable, in order to be joyful, I have to let those walls down, I have to just show up fully as me. And that joyful version of me is, is all of me, Amanda in her joy is one of the best versions of myself. And that's terrifying. So I invite you to dive into if any of this sounds like that could be something going on for you. So I will link this book, www.newviewadvice.com/31. I think that that could be a great resource for you to get in touch with your inner dialogue. I also think how to do the work by Dr. Nicola para could be a great recommendation for you. But you have to start looking at why you do the things you do. Because as I said, it's easy to blame alcohol for all our problems. But I believe we use alcohol to cope with our subconscious to cope with negative self talk to cope with hard feelings. So there was probably a triggering event that led to the actions that were taken that night. So it was probably something before that, that led to that. And again, it could just be that you were so happy that you self sabotaged. And if that's the case, think about if that's happened, another time in your life when things were going really well. And then all of a sudden something went wrong. So I invite you to become curious, you also mentioned that you have a pattern of not being able to handle your alcohol. So I would invite you to look at that pattern. And how can you show you've changed. It's by changing. And I believe that by healing, and by diving into why you did this, and why this happened in what was triggered, then I believe you will change. I believe that the more we become aware of our actions and why we do the things we do, we automatically change because our perspective changes our view of ourselves changes. We're able to be more empathetic for ourselves because we're like shit, I didn't know I was playing that out because my father was never around or Oh shit, I didn't know I played that out as a repercussion of being raped. Or I didn't know I played that out because my mother was critical. Or I didn't know I played that out because my sister used to beat me up, whatever it may be. But the more you can connect back to the roots, the more you can get to know yourself that you can become really conscious of your actions. really conscious of the decisions you make really intentional about your decisions moving forward, the more you will heal, the more you will change. So I hope something in this answer was helpful. But for you that self forgiveness is so important. You are not this mistake. You're not this moment in time. I'm so sorry. You're being so hard on yourself. I'm so sorry. You don't deserve it. How we change is by forgiving ourselves is by becoming conscious human beings. And the more we heal, the more conscious and more loving we become towards ourselves, the more loving will be towards our partners and the people in our lives. Relationships are not easy. I think the movies in the world makes us believe that relationships are supposed to be easy, but you hit a hiccup in yours. And that will happen over time. In The Five Love Languages. Dr. Gary Chapman talks about how the first two years of relationship is the honeymoon phase. So sometimes it takes two full years for things to start feeling a little different for wounds and childhood patterns to start appearing. That doesn't mean we leave the people it just means we start healing together. I just want you to know I'm sending you so much love and that I know that you are not this mistake. I know that you are a beautiful person that I can feel that you are a loving person through how much you care about your partner. How much you want to change remind yourself of your beautiful qualities. Be kind to yourself as you move through this. You deserve it. I'm sending you so much love. Thank you for this question.
Amanda Durocher 50:15
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. As always, I'm so grateful for this space to have these conversations. I think that topics like cheating aren't talked about enough, especially from the perspective of somebody who has cheated. I think that cheating has so much shame around it. I'm just grateful we're able to have these conversations here together. If you haven't already, I invite you to follow me on Instagram, tick tock or Twitter, whichever is your favorite platform. And my handle is @NewViewAdvice. I am much more active on all these platforms than I was before. I now have somebody who helps me with social media and and she's amazing, and we have been posting more content. And I want to continue these conversations about cheating on social media because I only have so much time on these episodes. I don't like to go over an hour. So I want to continue these conversations there. So if you're interested or have more questions, follow me at New View Advice on Instagram, Tik Tok or Twitter. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of New View Advice. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you may be going through. sending you all my love. See you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
