Let me guess, everyone is telling you to get over it. It wasn’t meant to be they say. You’ll find someone better they tell you. Get yourself together they say. And in all this, you’re semi-blaming yourself and trying to figure out what went wrong. Amidst the pain, of a broken heart, you’re left with thoughts that seem to embody every waking moment of your day. The harder you try to avoid the reality of the situation, you find it’s harder to move forward and the reminder of being cheated on is further pressed.

Believe it or not, there is a silver lining friend. You must find comfort in the future and find strength within yourself. It’s okay to have bad thoughts. It’s okay to feel angry. Instead of harboring your feelings and emotions, experience your pain and sadness, and then proclaim to yourself that you will move forward and make a new beginning. You can shut people out but you cannot dismiss the feelings that lie within yourself consciousness.

You may be wondering what is the first step to controlling your thoughts after being cheated on – well friend, express your emotions. If you feel like crying – cry. If you feel like screaming – scream. Take a mental health day and cut yourself a break. Allow yourself to cry with a broken heart. Allow yourself to scream with madness. Allow yourself to release all of your emotions that you’re bottling up inside. And once the day is over, start over. It’s not going to be easy but you’ll feel refreshed because you will have let out all of the motions that were keeping you down. Find peace and solitude in your day of emotional freedom and then move forward with a renewed purpose.

Now dismiss the words blame and guilt from your vocabulary. Blaming yourself or blaming the cheater is the easy way out. Life happens and you’re never guaranteed today, tomorrow, or the day after that. If you lived out the relationship with honest intentions and motives, then you have nothing to lay heavy on your conscious. When it’s after the fact, it’s relatively easy to think of ways you could have been a better partner but there’s no way to change the past. Vow to move forward with your life and leave the what-ifs, wishes and could-haves behind. Clearing your mind frame from these negative connotations will provide you with the frame work to a stable new beginning. Instead of driving yourself nuts with scenarios of what could have been or what should have been, you’ll be able to make yourself a priority and move past the experience.

And last but certainly not least, remove yourself possible run-ins. Stop going to the café that you know your former partner will be at. Find a new grocery store that guarantees no possible accidental meetings. You don’t have to change your entire lifestyle but it will be emotionally helpful to remove their physical being from your everyday – at least until you’re comfortable with being apart and have fully accepted the process of moving forward.

Being cheated on is a tough ordeal because it causes you to reevaluate everything. By controlling your thoughts you’ll discover a newfound sense of being that you never thought was possible. It’s not going to be easy but if you stay strong and move on, you’ll be empowered within yourself and future relationships.