There’s no magic formula to prevent cheating in your relationship, but you don’t need magic. Instead of going out of your way to find ways to ensure your partner remains faithful to you (which is impossible anyway), do these things instead.
- Trust yourself. You might not be able to trust anyone else 100%, but you don’t need to. You just need to trust yourself to get out when something bad happens. When you focus on trusting yourself and loving yourself, you put yourself in a much more empowering position.
- Draw some lines. Linked to trusting yourself is having boundaries in place. If your partner cheats on you, what will you do? What are relationship deal breakers for you? These are essential questions to ask yourself so that you don’t allow yourself to get hurt or be disrespected.
- Follow your intuition. If something just doesn’t feel right, like how your partner never takes calls in your presence or can only see you during the week instead of on weekends, you shouldn’t just push those fears away out of fear that they’re true. Listen to your intuition because it will try to get your attention! It’s trying to push you in the best direction, so heed its call.
- See what’s in front of you. It’s easy to try to see what you hope is there in your relationship, especially when you’re in love, but that’s so risky. It can cause you major blindspots, such as when it comes to your partner’s dodgy behavior. Remember, it’s better to face reality than allow a fairytale to deceive you. So focus on seeing your partner for who they are instead of what you hope they could become. Don’t stick with someone who’s dodgy in the hope that you’ll fix them. Spoiler: you won’t!
- Be your own best friend. What would you tell your best friend if she was being treated badly in her relationship? Yup, you’d tell her she can do so much better and she deserves someone who respects her. So, be your own BFF! Treat yourself with love and care, and know that you’ve got your own back. That’s really all you need.
- Know you’ll be fine whatever happens. Ultimately, you can’t control what happens in your relationship and what others choose to do to you. But you can control how you deal. You could fall apart or put your blinkers on and pretend everything’s okay or you could take your destiny in your hands and choose to move on. It really depends on you.
- Look out for early red flags. Just because you can’t prevent cheating, that doesn’t mean you can’t take action and look out for yourself. One of the most important things to do is pay attention to what the person you’re dating does in the early stages of your relationship. They could be giving you clues into their behavior and a preview of what you can expect when dating them!
- Ask yourself how you feel. How does the relationship make you feel? Are you happy most of the time, or hardly ever? You might be wondering what this has to do with dealing with cheating, but sometimes our feelings are signs that something’s wrong or signs that something could go wrong in the near future. If you find that you’re often miserable, irritable, or resentful, those are signs that you need to look out for yourself and not get duped.
- Don’t sabotage yourself. Sometimes we’re our own worst enemies. If you’re always making yourself sick that your partner will hurt you, you might be sabotaging a healthy relationship. The more you suspect and attack someone, the more you’re basically pushing them away or making them see that they don’t really want to be with you. That’s why listening to your intuition, instead of your paranoia, is so important. It’s a calmer, wiser voice.
- Look back at their past. While it’s not entirely true that if a person has cheated in their past they’ll cheat again, it’s always worth asking your partner about their previous relationships. You can learn a lot about them in this way. If you can see an alarming trend of them having mistreated their previous partners or just been dodgy in their relationships, you shouldn’t stick around to see history repeat itself. Walk away now to protect your heart.
