10 Things That Will Happen When You Get Cheated On

There’s a pretty standard cycle one will go through after being cheated on--take it from one who has been cheated on more than once--but hopefully together we can beat the anguish.

By Kat George

Updated 11 years ago, May 14, 2014

Getting cheated on is the worst, but I don’t feel like that’s much of a revelation. I mean, I’ve never heard anyone say “I got cheated on, and it was the best!” Although I would like to meet that person, if such a person exists. There’s a pretty standard cycle one will go through after being cheated on–take it from one who has been cheated on more than once–but hopefully together we can beat the anguish, and somehow see the humor in crying to “Torn” for days on end while plotting how to slash someone’s tires without getting caught.

1. Devastation

The first thing that will happen when you’re cheated on, is you will be devastated, duh (unless you’re that ultra peppy person I already mentioned above). Everything will seem useless and awful, and you’ll act like someone died, and probably have many conversations like they do in Bold and the Beautiful, facing a fireplace, your back to the person you’re talking to.

2. Crying in the shower

Cue dramatic crying in the shower, either balling a fist and hitting the wall with your forehead leaning against it, or curled up in a ball on the ground of the bath. Either way you will be doing the ugliest ugly cry that was ever cried.

3. Self loathing/The “Torn” phase

When you finally dry off you’ll sprawl about in your towel, listening to songs like “Torn” and blaming the whole thing on yourself because you are too ugly/fat/stupid/horrible to be loved.

4. Revenge planning/The “Run The World” phase

Eventually, whether by shuffle chance or by your own volition, some kind of empowerment anthem will come onto your Spotify and you’ll start getting really, really mad. Maybe you will go for a run and listen to P!nk’s “There You Go” to make yourself even madder while you think about ways to get revenge, perhaps Blu Cantrell style.

5. Drunkenness

This is the part where you call your friends and go to the bars to drink all the drinks they have. It will end in either tears or a fist fight with a stranger.

6. Sluttiness

This goes hand in hand with drunkeness, where after you drink all the drinks they have, you have sex with all the most attractive people they have.

7. More revenge planning

Drunk and over-sexed, you’ll start thinking of ways in which you can make your cheating scumbag ex find out you just dated a celebrity or had sex with a George Clooney lookalike, because they broke you and you must break them back. School yard rules apply.

8. Pseudo-forgiveness

Once all the drinking and fucking is done and the dust settles, you’ll “forgive” your cheating ex, not for them, but so that you “don’t have to carry the hate around” or some other bullshit you convinced yourself of in a particularly vulnerable yoga moment.

9. Re-hatred

You’ll finally realize you don’t want to be friends with you ex, you never want to see them again, and you kind of wouldn’t be sad if they died, or being less dramatic, got ringworm. So you un-forgive them, and delete them from your life forevermore.

10. The inability to ever trust anyone again

Even though you’ve come to the rational conclusion that your cheating ex is a bad person, you’ll somehow still believe that every future partner has or is cheating on you. Congratulations, it’s now dark and shit in your brain, and you’re going to spend every waking moment with someone new trying to convince yourself they’re not banging everyone in sight behind your back.