relationships, break ups, and cheating

As a person who has been cheated on you may want to consider this option. Just considering it in a firm and decisive manner will make your infidelity-fried brain feel better. It will make your brain feel better because it will know, to its great relief, that the question is not 'what if I get cheated on again?!! what does this mean about me? Am I doomed? Am I fucking things up? Am I so grotesque that I drive all potential lovers into the arms of others? Does the universe hate me?' and so on. No, the question is - how fast is it technically possible for me to dump anyone that messes me in this way and what sort of delicious revenge will I enact in retaliation.

If your heart has really been broken by unfaithful lovers, merely considering this option will make your heart feel all weary and depressed and sad. But I want you to consider it very closely anyway - because contemplating revenge is a vital part of the healing process. And we want very much for you to be healed.

The way this works is that in order for your brain to solve the Infidelity Problem, it needs to know not only that you could deal if you had to - but how exactly you would deal if it came to that. And your brain needs to solve the Infidelity Problem or it will hang around forever wistfully eyeing the cheaters and the faithless until it finally snags one and can enact the whole nightmare scenario again in hopes of figuring out how exactly it fucked up before.

This is not really your problem, it's your brain's problem and it's not your fault that your brain has it. It isn't necessarily that you personally fucked up in some way that caused you to get cheated on (although your brain will scream at you that you did when it gets embarrassed and defensive); it's that it's your brain's job to protect you from harm. You got harmed, therefore, in its logical world, your brain fell down on the job, feels bad about it, wants to correct it, and is therefore obsessed with determining where exactly it made the fatal error. Your brain's conscientiousness in this regard will drive you absolutely nuts and ruin your life unless you cut the cycle short by going ahead and solving the problem for it.

So we are going to patiently explain to your brain that the fatal error was that you were caught unawares, did not have a sufficiently robust Infidelity Plan and therefore were subject to hurt, pain, and bewilderment and that all these things can be prevented by having a cogent plan for litigation, revenge, or whatever suits your fancy. This may or may not have been your brain's actual fatal error but it's an extremely plausible and convincing explanation and adopting it will save you a world of grief.

So tell yourself right now - I certainly have the option of dumping any motherfucker that cheats on me and exacting revenge as well!! I certainly do! Say this to yourself very firmly so that it seems believable, because it is.

The revenge component is important because it is not enough just to know that you can cut short future episodes of misery and agony by removing the offender from your life. It is also important to your brain's sense of justice that you receive some sort of compensation for pain and suffering. Something was taken from you in a cheating situation, therefore something must be restored.

That thing is your sense of power and efficacy in the world. Interestingly, while you may care desperately for the loved one who betrays you, your brain cares much more about your sense of power and efficacy. People come and people go but if you personally don't have the power to control your life, you are so screwed. You happen to be more important to your brain that your damn cheating lover and this is how it should be.

Now the thing is, during an actual cheating episode you may disagree with your brain on this issue. You may feel that it is like having something ripped from you to lose a wife or husband or long-term BF or GF. You may feel desperately sad and hurt at the thought of loss. This would be fairly natural since you consist of more than your brain, your heart and other organs get involved in a relationship as well and some of those other organs may be quite alarmed at the thought of going without certain pleasurable reproductive-type activities. This is why we decide in advance that we will ruthlessly cut off the offender as soon as we gain knowledge that an offense has occurred. You don't want to make a decision like this is in the confusing heat of the moment, you want to make it in advance, before you have even met the lying, cheating, bastard/bitch that you are going to decisively dump if they ever pull something. It is always much easier to decisively dump someone before you have actually met them, so we are going to take advantage of this principle and very firmly draw a line in the sand right now and fantasy dump some no-good low-down skanky horndog whatevers.

Again, this is going to reassure your brain that you are a strong powerful person with a plan, with justice and right on your side. Now about the revenge...see the thing is, once you get cheated on, very often something goes screwy in the life-preserving anger mechanism that theoretically should govern these types of transactions. You may have been tremendously furious during the actual cheating situation, but the chances are good the anger mechanism got damaged anyway. Because there is this insidious virus that creeps into these situations and it's the 'why?' virus.

The why virus wants to understand why this terrible thing happened and it infects you with self-doubt, guilt, sorrow, bewilderment, insecurity, and self-blame. So instead of being straightforwardly angry, you are actually angry, hurt, scared, and a whole shitload of other virus-borne emotions that you don't want to deal with but that run around your body giving you flu-like symptoms anyway. It's miserable. Even more miserable than the common cold because it lasts much longer. And so you end up having to fight yourself, just like you do in an infection. And you develop the antibodies of suspicion to future partners which makes your immune system want to attack them and all kinds of crap that are just inconvenient and detrimental to your future relationships.

So, by fantasizing about revenge we are informing your brain (and your body) that if anything untoward happens - you can just get pissed about it. It's not that you will necessarily enact the revenge if an Infidelity Situation does occur, it's that your brain understands right now very firmly that you have a right to want it.

If a comforting revenge fantasy involves going after blood money and bankrupting someone, remind yourself that you could do this if you had to. Or public humiliation. Or what have you.

If you tend more towards the desire to kill both cheating parties, then I am going to respectfully suggest that you slide your fantasy towards you will really want to kill someone, rather than actually killing someone. Actually killing someone frequently requires planning, time, equipment, nerve, effort, and hair-raising complications. Some of them occurring after the actual homicide. If you don't believe me, just ask O.J. Simpson! Even if you get away with it, it turns out to be just a boatload of trouble.

On the other hand, wanting to kill someone can be implemented almost instantaneously with no cash outlay and very little effort! All that's required is a physiological investment in murderous rage and many of you can pull that off no problem. Let your brain know right now, that if anything bad happens to you, you can get sooooo mad you would just want to kill someone!!!

This may seem like small comfort, but interestingly, many people who get cheated on fail to invest in this simple strategy. They are reluctant - due to the why? virus and the effects of lingering attachment to the person who cheated on them (who, as you may remember, is actually a very normal person unfortunately). So we need to get clear with our brains on this - we are not saying you will kill someone - because you won't actually. What we are saying is that you have permission to feel like killing someone - because you have permission to not blame yourself. It does not matter why the other person cheated on you - it's a shitty thing, a sucky situation, and you don't like it.

This is such a crucial point, it's ridiculous. Really it is. Because it's amazing how the glitch-prone human brain can go along thinking it's working fairly well while being completely unclear on what you do and do not like. The human brain has this feature where it naively believes that if something overwhelming happens to you that you have to accept that you have to like it too. It thinks you have to like it because hey it's reality and if you don't like it, it will be oh so painful every time you have to deal with said reality. So it tries to cut you a break on the pain by coming to the conclusion that since you have to accept this atrocious reality that on some level you must like it! So we are going to make cheating less overwhelming to your brain by firmly (yet gently) instructing it that you do not like infidelity. It will not kill you and you do not like it.

When something will not kill you and you do not like it, you very often have an amazing ability to avoid it. Let's say you do not like pistachio ice cream and have never been certain what sort of crazed person would even invent such a thing and call it dessert. It strains credulity that pistachio ice cream would even exist and yet you recognize that it does. You are aware that it will not kill you - and yet you would greatly prefer not to eat it. Frequently, you are able to accomplish this very same goal with ease! The amount of time you spend not eating pistachio ice cream is huge! You're a winner in the game of life! And so on. Because your brain understands quite clearly what your preference is in this situation and that gives you a great deal of control. We need that same clarity on the infidelity issue. We need your brain to know that no matter what happens you retain the right to a) not die of it; and b) not like it at all. This is the ideal situation and we hope we have convinced your brain that this is exactly the situation you are in.

We have just given your brain one of the most crucial pieces of information it needs in making decisions about partners while it runs around being attracted to people without your permission - and this is that you do not need to adjust to the reality of infidelity. This is huge. This is a turning point in your life. And notice how cleverly we got to this point. We wandered around, being very logical yet entirely opaque about where we were going so that we were able to sneak up on your brain and convince it of something that you absolutely did not believe when you sent in your question. There was a method to all that long-winded madness.

We'll say it again. You do not need to adjust to the reality of infidelity. Forever and ever, for as long as you live, you will always, always have power over it, because you do not have to accept it, you can always get mad, desire revenge, dislike it and refuse to accept that it's okay. You can delete the why? virus from your system. Because we have the anti-viral that kills it. Anger. Straightforward, uncomplicated, I do not like this anger. It doesn't matter why - you do not like it.

Okey-doke. You may be perfectly calm at this point, but your brain is reeling and it will take it awhile for it to integrate the implications of this into its operating system. So let's just chat for awhile, while your brain mulls things over. Let's just chat about the final Infidelity alternative to knowing that no matter what happens, you can always just get pissed about it.

Final Realistic Infidelity Alternative! Just go into your relationships blindly and then if anything unfaithful happens - flail around even more blindly....

This is by far the most popular approach for handling the whole issue of cheating. This is more than likely the plan you've been using. Most people try to avoid thinking about the whole subject and then when it does come up, they just wing it using whatever instinctive resources happen to be available, such as the ability to descend into complete emotional chaos. This is the I'll Get Stuck on that Bridge When Everything Collapses Around Me Plan and it has a number of advantages.

The primary advantage is that you don't have to think about or confront a potentially painful possibility until that painful possibility becomes a painful actuality. Why rush into trouble if it hasn't actually happened yet? Huh, why? And so on. Or it seems more romantic to pretend it will never happen. Or it seems like bad luck to think about it before you have to deal with it. Or it seems like it will open up a whole nest of wormy thoughts and apprehensions and who really likes wormy nests of anything? Avoidance has its merits and therefore it will also remain an extremely popular method of dealing with stuff that nobody wants to deal with really.

You, due to previous experiences, obviously haven't been given a completely effective hall pass that will allow you to skip out of Infidelity Classroom 101 but....there is absolutely no reason why you should have to learn from previous experience. None. You simply don't have to. This option is available to you. You can just ignore the whole thing and trust blindly in...blindness and see how that goes. You absolutely do not have to deal. If you choose, just go ahead and drop consideration of the whole subject right now and just figure...'oh hell, whatever. I'll just hope that....something.'

Warning! This option, should you choose to accept it, is our last contact with the reality of infidelity. From this point on we will be dealing instead with a step-by-step plan for securing an unrealistic life for you, beating the odds, hooking you up in mutual affection with someone suitably weird enough not to cheat. Bail out now if you don't want to have anything to do with a magical plan. Take a deep breath to find out if you're potentially willing to live an unrealistic life of faithfulness. You might not be. It might cut off your own options for cheating. You might have to actually implement steps. It might not be worth it. You might have some hidden reasons why you actually prefer being cheated on because at least it gives you a good excuse for...whatever it is you might need a good excuse for.

Or..oh hell, you might just be curious to see what would be involved in an actual magical plan for finding someone faithful and so you just might have to click on the link below because you can't stand not knowing. Ah well...

So what the hell is this damn magical plan anyway?....

prettyfedup.com

the pretty fucked up website

The Not 100% Complete FAQs for the Pretty Fucked Up Person in a Pretty Fucked Up World

Unfortunately, reality continues....but not for long