This Is How You Love Someone Who’s Been Cheated On

To love someone who has been cheated on means to love someone who is afraid. It means to love someone who has been broken in some way, someone who wasn’t left the same after experiencing this painful kind of betrayal and heartache. Loving someone who has been cheated on is loving someone whose faith in love has been dented. This person is carrying a heart around in their chest they once unquestionably placed in the hands of someone who chose to let it go. Someone who did so, letting it drop and shatter on the floor to use those same hands to roam through someone else’s skin.

To love someone who has been cheated on is loving someone who has become acquainted with the uglier sides of love, someone who isn’t just afraid, but someone who is brave, someone who is taking a leap of faith feeling like they’re doing so holding a scalpel to their neck.

If you’re going to love someone who has been cheated on, do it wholeheartedly, do so with purity. The most crucial thing to remember choosing to stand by their side and hold their hand is that communication is foundation. This is both on your part and theirs. Communicate with honesty, the more you do so, the more they feel the ability to trust you. Trust isn’t a right, trust is something you earn with someone who has been cheated on, and trust is also something you nurture. You do so always with honesty, always with transparency, and always with communication.

Unpack your baggage in front of them. Let them in. Doing so makes this person feel not only like you trust them, but like they can feel comfortable trusting you and doing the same. Pulling back each rib to let them see the things no one has seen is the surest way to get them to pull down their walls, to make them less afraid of letting you in. But you also have to be patient and give them as much time as they need. Loving someone who has been cheated on means understanding that they might want to move more slowly, that it may take more time to not only let you in, but more time for them to become attached to you. But know that when they do it can only mean you’re a rare soul, someone they’ve deemed worthy of their time and trust.

Remind them every day how exceptional they are, remind them how they make you feel, and always make an effort to make them see themselves through your eyes. Affirmation is something they won’t want to ask you for, but something they not only crave but need. This is a person who has had blows to their self-esteem, to their confidence, to their love of self. Someone who once questioned themselves, someone who once compared themselves to someone else. Someone who had to work to get their confidence back.

Try to keep in mind that even the smallest of lies can send them down a downward spiral of questioning your feelings and your motives. Don’t lie. Period. Point blank. Just don’t. About anything. Remember, trust is something you nurture, and trust is something else you can completely eradicate, and it’s something that can be done so, so easily.

If you’re going to love someone who has been cheated on be understanding. This person isn’t comparing you to anyone else, they’re not accusing you of anything, they just are hoping that the heartache they went through in the past isn’t something that won’t come again, from you. They’ve come to learn that people are capable of really terrible things, and they’re not necessarily expecting this from you, or actually believe that you are, it’s just a fear. A fear that can dissipate with simple honesty, communication, and reassurance.

When they ask a ton of questions, when they expect a call or a text, try not to be annoyed, not to accuse them of being paranoid or crazy, they’re not, be understanding. They ask questions and they want these things from you to keep them from overthinking. With time you’ll notice these questions become less and less, and as well as do these expectations. If you love them the right way, with time they know that betrayal is something to not expect from you.

Loving someone who has been cheated on also means loving someone who is strong, someone who doesn’t take any shit, someone who knows that love always isn’t forever, that love isn’t always enough. This is someone who knows how to pick themselves back up after being heartbroken. They’ve gotten on a first name basis with their worth and their strength. It’s hard, and sometimes they revert back to those insecure thinking patterns, but at the end of the day, they know how much they deserve and they know how much they’re worth. This isn’t a person who will think twice about walking out of your world if you choose to not only be unfaithful, but if you choose to hurt or disrespect them or their trust in any kind of way.