How To Punish A Cheating Boyfriend Emotionally

A client asked me yesterday, “How to punish a cheating boyfriend emotionally?” And I thought this is a great topic to explain how people who cheat feel. How much guilt, remorse do they feel, and who doesn’t feel anything (there are very few of them, you’ll see).

*This text applies to all cheaters, not just men.

After cheating, people experience varying degrees of guilt and remorse. These feelings can be very intense or mild and may last all day or just part of the day. This fluctuation depends on one’s ability to use ego-defense mechanisms, which we will explain.

📌 Don’t forget: when you understand the human psyche, you also understand how to manage it.

So, How to Punish a Cheating Boyfriend Emotionally?

I believe that you want to take some specific action to punish to punish a cheating boyfriend, but what I am talking about is the real thing and it is much harder for them emotionally, so you will be satisfied at the end of this text.

Taking some concrete action to punish the boyfriend who cheated on you emotionally is a few obstacles.

Most likely, you will never know how he really feels
Whatever you do, you can turn out to be bad (angry, conflicted, crazy…)
You can humiliate yourself.
You can give him a good reason why he cheated on you and get him to stick with it.
Some of the things you would do are illegal, etc.

But what you will read is really happening, and if you have been cheated, you will feel better after reading this text.

Couple after cheating - Woman is thinking how to punish a cheating boyfriend

Summary of Cheaters Emotional Cycles

You think that your cheater feels perfectly fine because he doesn’t call you, he didn’t cry when you broke up, you heard he was at a game, etc.

However, what you think is usually not true.

📌 If they feel good and content, trust me, you were dealing with a narcissist or a psychopath/sociopath. And please, don’t suffer over them or wonder why narcissists don’t feel remorse. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that they’re out of your life.

In fact, this is the emotional cycle of a cheater:

Initially, they feel inadequate, then tolerable, and then bad again. These cycles can alternate throughout the day or split into two stages (day and evening/night).

This is what a typical day looks like for someone who has cheated (more details will be explained in the post).

Can Someone Who Loves You Cheat on You?

Understanding the Cheater’s Emotions

To understand how a cheater feels, you must first understand the mechanisms that led to cheating.

📍I’ll briefly cover some psychological terminology, but once you grasp these concepts, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of people and their behaviors.

Whether we cheat or not depends on which entity—superego or id—dominates when the conditions for cheating arise.

Superego: This entity deals with our morals, ethics, and values. It contains the voices of our ancestors, parents, and highest ideals. The superego represents what we should do and expect from ourselves as ideal behavior.
Id: On the other hand, the id deals with our basic instincts. It behaves like an animal, driven only by the need to satisfy its desires and occasionally aggression (when satisfaction isn’t available). When the id is unleashed, it acts without restraint, following its urges without thinking.

The ego manages these two entities. Sometimes it restrains the id, and sometimes it doesn’t. Some people strive to follow the superego, with the id occasionally breaking through, while others follow the id.

Example

Should I study for my exam now or watch Netflix? Watching Netflix would be the Id.
Should I cheat on my partner with this attractive person or go home? Resisting and choosing to go home would be the superego because I am a moral person.

Why Do People Cheat?

How People Feel After Cheating

Three people are thinking; can you ever trust cheater again

When someone cheats, driven by the Id, it might look like this:

A person generally follows the superego’s principles, controlling themselves most of the time.

However, conditions for cheating arise (How Cheating Starts and What Happens Before Cheating) and coincide with a moment when the id takes over, leading them to cheat on their partner.

As soon as the person returns to a superego state, they start feeling guilt and remorse for their actions.

Here, the ego struggles, asking: “How did I allow this to happen?! How did I let the id take over and taint me completely?!”

The ego’s role is to protect our self-image and dignity, so it prefers the superego’s path. The Id is always there, wanting to dominate (e.g., “Go, watch Netflix!”), but the ego typically chooses the superego’s route (e.g., “No, we are smart. We will study. We want to be proud of ourselves at the end of the day.”).

So, if cheating occurs, the ego becomes aware that we aren’t as great as it thought. It blames itself for yielding to the Id and ponders how to fix things.

Since realizing we aren’t as admirable (because we cheated) is a horrifying feeling for the ego, it uses various mechanisms to help itself cope.

Do Cheaters Feel Guilty or Remorseful?

Trying to Avoid Guilt and Remorse

When someone feels guilt and remorse, they start using mechanisms such as:

Rationalization: “I did it because my partner always neglects me.”
Denial: “It’s not a big deal. I didn’t do anything terrible.”
Minimization: “It was just sex. That’s not cheating. Cheating is if I’m emotionally involved.”
Projection: “I did it because my partner wants me to. Maybe they’re even cheating on me.”
Repression: “That wasn’t cheating. Cheating looks different.”

As long as they use these mechanisms, they feel fine. They can remain calm because, as you can see from the examples above, they alleviate their pain when looking at themselves. They feel pain because they have a poor opinion of themselves.

Is It Worth Staying With a Cheater?

Why This Doesn’t Really Work

However, for this to work, it requires a lot of energy. Ego defense mechanisms consume vast amounts of energy. Remember, we are born with a certain amount of energy; we wake up in the morning with a certain amount of energy and use it up by the end of the day.

If these mechanisms consume large amounts of energy, there’s less left for daily activities. So, a person who uses a lot of energy on these mechanisms must either stagnate in life or, since there’s no stagnation if everything around us moves forward, that person actually declines.

📌 Note 1: Some people have a lot of natural energy, so despite using many mechanisms, they still manage to accomplish a lot.

📌 Note 2: This does not change the feelings that come afterwards

📌 Side note: The truth does not consume energy.

In any case, after expending all their energy towards the evening, the period before sleep becomes the hardest. It is also challenging at night when no energy is left to restrain the Id.

In the evening, when energy is low, a person can no longer deceive themselves and see things clearly.

They realize they’ve done something dishonorable, hurt a good person, are not as good as they thought, and they acted foolishly.

They realize that they have destroyed something that might have had potential and that they are forever in someone’s eyes immoral (and to us as social beings it is extremely important how other people see us).

📌 I know this might disappoint you, but people mostly regret it because of how they feel about themselves rather than their partner. However, it shouldn’t matter why someone regrets their sins as long as they regret them. This also includes the realization that they hurt their partner and that their partner is now suffering.

The Best Way To Make Someone Regret Leaving You

The Night and Id’s Torment

When a person goes to bed, they replay what they did to their partner in their head and feel shame, remorse, anger at themselves, disgust with themselves, etc. Even if they manage to deceive themselves until they close their eyes and sleep, remember, this is the only time the Id is entirely free.

The Id, when it has nothing else available, readily uses aggression.

📌 That’s why people who cheat often have bad dreams and nightmares, wake up at night, and suffer from insomnia.

The Id, among other things, uses fear and anxiety to torment its host. It works hard to explain how much they’ve lost and how their life is now a disaster. That everyone knows how bad they are and that everything will go downhill from now on. Nights are tough for cheaters.

So, for typical people, the process is: After cheating, they use mechanisms, and when they run out of energy, they feel guilt and remorse.

Do cheaters know what they have lost?

Factors Affecting Guilt Intensity

Several factors can affect how much guilt a person feels:

Bad partner: If the partner was nasty to them, they might feel less guilt. They can hold onto this rationale longer, even when they lack the energy for defense mechanisms, turning to the truth: the partner was bad to them. However, they still feel some guilt for how they behaved as people.

Desire for freedom: Some people turn to their truth when guilt starts. If they wanted to separate from their partner, they might feel a sense of liberation: “So what if I cheated? I wanted to break up anyway.” However, they still feel remorse if their partner is good to them or because they did it dishonestly.

Shallow emotions: Some people naturally have shallow emotions because they didn’t develop them or due to lower IQ. A higher IQ allows for greater cognitive complexity, which means that people with a higher IQ can better understand and process their own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. The shallower the feelings, the less sensitive they are and the less guilt they feel.

Obsessed With Someone

Two Groups That Don’t Feel Guilt and Remorse

Cheating woman woman feels a sense of relief when she get caught.

The only way someone can avoid feeling guilt and remorse is if they have a narcissistic or psychopathic/sociopathic personality disorder. So, if your partner is not a narcissist, they feel remorse for cheating. But a little about these other two groups.

Sociopaths: People with antisocial personality disorder don’t have a moral compass. Their actions align with their personality and decisions, leaving no room for self-questioning. They won’t feel remorse for cheating. So, if you are with someone for whom immoral actions are not unusual, it’s likely a sociopath who won’t feel guilt.
- Here, we’re talking about a personality disorder, not someone doing immoral things for their own reasons.
Narcissists: Narcissistic individuals don’t feel guilt or remorse. They are always right, no matter what they do. Others always hurt them somehow (e.g., not respecting them enough), so they deserve to be cheated on. And they truly believe this.

You shouldn’t feel sorry for sociopaths and narcissists, because being in a relationship with them is truly dangerous. Staying with them will drastically change your personality, so it’s good news if they choose someone else over you. You’ve handed your problem to someone else.

How Do You Know When It’s Over?

Couple after cheating - How Do Cheaters Feel About Themselves

Post-Cheating Emotions

People also feel the following after cheating:

Fear and anxiety: What will their life look like now?
Liberation and satisfaction: Because they now have a lot of time for themselves and reinvent their lives.
Emotional confusion: They may be unsure about the cheating, their feelings toward their partner, and the person they cheated with.
Desire for change: Either because they are forced to or because they wanted it for a while.

Of course they won’t show you that. Ego does not allow us to present ourselves to others as bad.

And of course, whatever they show you will not be enough for you. Because you cannot fully experience someone else’s emotional-psychological world. The only one who can help you in such a situation is yourself.

Conclusion on Topic: