My ex girlfriend cheated and moved on instantly — man, that’s a cruel breakup experience. Getting over an ex-girlfriend when she moved on to another man practically overnight is the worst kind of breakup you could possibly imagine as a man.

It has happened to me once, and this actually was the worst breakup of my life. It’s the whole reason why I became a relationship coach. I can roughly imagine what you are going through, and how life-shattering this experience must be for you. I’ll never forget the intense anxiety to go from being deeply in love with a woman, to seeing her with another man a day after our breakup. I hope your situation is not AS bad as mine was back then, but yea, it’s not easy to go through the experience of a cheating girlfriend, ESPECIALLY if she moves on right away because you were just a leftover to her that she hadn’t thrown away yet.

As a man, you obviously can’t have another woman easily after a breakup, but even more so, I think most guys don’t even WANT that kind of experience. I think for a lot of guys, the thought of it is literally disgusting or at least a big turn-off. So this is the angle I want to talk about today. When your ex-girlfriend cheated on you and moved on right away, you should see this as a sign to try and move on fast yourself — even if it hurts a lot to think about what your ex-girlfriend is currently doing. So, let’s talk about it.

Hey guys, welcome back to the Breakup Corner, I’m Andi Galster, and here I talk about moving on from breakups for guys. Man, you must be going through a lot right now if you found out that your girlfriend has cheated on you. Especially when an ex-girlfriend moves on with some other man right away, it really makes you question everything you knew about your relationship with your ex-girlfriend. Did she ever truly love you? How could she do that to you? How long has it really been going on? There are too many fucked up questions to ask.

But not just that… It probably makes you question a lot of things you thought you knew about love, relationships, and women in general. Your bubble has been burst, and you’re finally confronted with how ugly the human experience can sometimes be. People aren’t perfect. Even the people who are closest to us can hurt us in ways we never thought possible.

You are probably almost going through an existential crisis right now.

The first thing that you’re probably struggling with is that you just can’t get over your ex-girlfriend if she just moved on to another man without a moment of hesitation. Even when an ex cheats on us, we still love her, and we are still on the addiction high of wanting that love, even if we know deep down that this woman is terrible for us. I think no matter how much you love an ex-girlfriend and wish you could have the relationship back to some degree, of course, deep down you know everything about what she did was wrong and she wasn’t a good woman. 

But reconciling your rational thoughts with your emotional love for a woman isn’t always easy. I think it’s really, really important to try to listen to your rational brain and to the rational advice of people on the internet, friends, family, a therapist and advice online, because with an ex who’s betrayed your trust so much, you really need to listen to those who have your best interest in mind.

There are a lot of great women out there who respect and love their man and they’d never betray the one they love in such an extreme way. Obviously, the right way to handle a relationship that you’re not happy with, is to try and fix it, or leave if it can’t be fixed. Cheating is never acceptable. And there are plenty of women who understand this and would never cheat on you, so in theory, you should be able to move on from your cheating ex easily with such a rational thought process.

But the hard part is that often, we just can’t see it that way because no matter what happened, we deeply loved that woman and we cannot let go of our feelings of love — at least not in the beginning of the breakup. This is why it is so essential to remind yourself that you can be with a better woman. This is especially tough to believe when you are inexperienced or this is one of the first truly meaningful relationships to you.

When you really love a woman, then even if she has mistreated you a lot, the reference that you have for love has never been greater than with her, and so your irrational brain tries to hold on to her despite the bad things she’s done. So this is why you should never forget that she was a terrible cheater.

To be fair to women, men actually tend to cheat more often than women, but that’s not to say that most men in general have the same cheating mindset. I think for a man who would never consider cheating on a woman, his entire world-view can get flipped upside down once he sees how easy it is for a woman to just completely forget the relationship that she had with her boyfriend.

While for men, averages of cheating are higher, I think most men think very binary about cheating. Most men could never do this. I’m sure you agree that cheating is unacceptable behavior. And this really can mess with your head. And it explains why there are quite a few men online who become bitter after painful breakups like this. I don’t even blame those men who get lost in their pain and feelings of betrayal. 

Everybody can cling to bitterness after a failed relationship. I recently saw a woman who had a divorce, being extremely angry and critical towards a statement from the John Gottman Institute, which studies happy and unhappy marriages… They measured that almost all couples CAN fix their marriage if they use the right communication strategies.

But the woman who had a divorce was extremely bitter and called John Gottman all kinds of names, she called him a pseudo scientist, and that he had no idea what he was talking about, etc…. As if the guy didn’t know what he was talking about… Obviously, that woman is hurting from her broken heart and she wants to soak up the feelings of hurt and negativity towards relationships. I’m sure you’re going through those same feelings of betrayal and hurt and it’s hard to let go of them.

So if you won’t be careful, then you will get stuck in reliving those memories of your ex-girlfriend who cheated on you. And you’ll then start to see every woman as unfaithful, disgusting, unfaithful, and with no loyalties. The best thing after a breakup with an incredibly unfaithful, disrespectful woman who moved on with another man is to let go as soon as possible and find a better woman. Not right away, of course. You need to heal. But just because you were with one bad woman, doesn’t mean every woman on the planet is horrible. 

Let’s be real, an ex who just has another man right after a breakup makes you look incredibly bad. This is the type of woman who doesn’t care about your feelings at all, so that’s why you also shouldn’t care about her at all. If you don’t try to find a better woman, you might become depressed and disillusioned with women in the long-run.

If your ex-girlfriend cheated on you and just moved on with another man as if your last relationship never happened, then you need to realize this: Your ex-girlfriend is just an individual like everybody else. She was one-of-a-kind, as in, one kind of bad woman. She made her own, really terrible choices. But many other women will never make these awful choices. I think the most important thing to realize after dating a terrible woman is always to see it as an isolated case of dating an awful woman and the best thing you can do after such a life experience is to not let it hold you back or make you become afraid of dating, bitter to date other women, or blame all women for the fact that you ended up with one bad apple.

There’s this song from Usher called “His Mistakes”, which is basically a song of him complaining about the fact that he has to live for the sins of another man — the story of the song is roughly that the woman he’s in love with got cheated on, abused, or whatever else may have happened to her, and now she made her new boyfriend live with the consequences of that — when in reality, of course, he may have been the perfect boyfriend for her, never treating her wrong, always being attentive and so on.

That’s how you should see your breakup with your ex-girlfriend. She was just one bad woman. It’s definitely human nature to extrapolate your experience with a bad girlfriend and try and see the same pattern in another woman, or be afraid that the same pattern could exist, because you want to protect yourself from something like this happening again. But you could literally run into an incredibly kind, warm woman tomorrow who would never do something like this.

Let’s be real: Anyone who would cheat on their partner, and then after the breakup instantly date someone else, is a terrible person — whether that’s a man or a woman. This is an EXTREME type of a terrible person. It hardly gets any worse than that. It’s unfortunate that this is the woman that you ended up with, but now you know what type of woman to stay away from, and with a dash of luck, you can find a much better woman much faster than you could ever imagine. Without a doubt, you can spot the red flags early on from now on, but that’s not to say that you should try to actively spot them either, otherwise you might fall prey to confirmation bias, where you see what you want to see.

So be careful now that you’re single again. Stay positive now that you’re dating again. There’s a much better woman out there for yourself. Find yourself a good woman, and of course, be realistic and walk away from the red flags, but also don’t be pessimistic either.

I wouldn’t suggest to you that you start dating right away, but the key idea is that you will find a much greater woman very soon as long as you remain open to the possibility that a much better girlfriend is out there. And most importantly, if you recognize what an extraordinarily evil woman your ex-girlfriend was, you’ll be able to recognize that not all women will be like her.

So don’t become bitter towards other women because of her actions. A great woman who will never make you feel this way will be out there for you, so slowly start to open yourself up towards dating other women, and close yourself off from your ex-girlfriend because there is nothing good you will gain even from thinking about her. I can imagine you are still struggling a lot with letting go, or at least, overcoming the heartbreak of all the things she’s done to you, but you will get there. Orient yourself towards a better future, and hopefully, very soon, you will meet a great woman.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you this time.