{"id":1170,"date":"2012-02-21T13:58:55","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T17:58:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/discoveriesofawanderer\/?p=1170"},"modified":"2012-02-22T12:42:17","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T16:42:17","slug":"how-do-you-get-over-being-cheated-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/discoveriesofawanderer\/2012\/02\/how-do-you-get-over-being-cheated-on.html","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Get Over Being Cheated On?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several months back I interviewed Jason Vallotton<\/a>, a man who became familiar with pain and devastation after his wife, Heather, announced she was leaving him for another man<\/a>. In his book The Supernatural Power of Forgiveness<\/em>,<\/a> Jason uses his own story as a poignant, touching illustration of God’s grace and healing, and invites readers to redefine their understanding of redemption.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tell me about your story that led you to write the book.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Jason Vallotton: The long story short is I grew up in a really good home, got married when I was 18 years old, right out of high school to my high school sweetheart, which is awesome. And I had kids really young, I started having kids [at 19 years old], so life was going really good.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>About nine years into our marriage I realized I don\u2019t feel really connected, I don\u2019t feel really close to her right now, which isn\u2019t terribly uncommon if you\u2019ve been married any amount of time. It\u2019s not uncommon to feel some kind of disconnection. The more I pursued her, the further away she got. And I started to realize, \u201cman, there\u2019s something wrong here\u201d. Over a course of about four months she got further and further away, indicating that with what she was saying too \u201cI don\u2019t want to be with you\u201d and \u201cI don\u2019t feel like we have passion.” Things like that, which is really hard. I mean, just crazy. By this time we have three kids and I\u2019m in Ministry, and so eventually after about four months I found out that she had somebody else that she was seeing and from then on, here comes the book as far as the pain. And \u201cwhat am I going to do?\u201d is the initial feeling. \u201cMy wife just left, I have three kids. How are they going to handle this? And how am I going to handle this?” I didn\u2019t even know what to do.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What were your immediate feelings with her and the man she was unfaithful with, as well as your long-term feelings for them?<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

Jason: Immediate feelings would be: I\u2019m human, I\u2019m angry. I want justice. I wish it was the Wild West. I wish I could go out there and settle it with a bullet. Those are my initial feelings. Crying, really frustrated, [and] really confused. I\u2019m mad for my kids; I\u2019m mad that she would leave them. All that stuff would be an initial feeling that I had to work through.<\/p>\n

My long term feelings are \u201cI want the best for her.\u201d What God gave to me I want Him to give to her, as far as wholeness and forgiveness and reconciliation. God reconciled all of us to Him. He gave all of us, in our sin, a way out. He gave us freedom. So that ultimately became my goal with her. Although I\u2019m in pain, even in my pain I still want her to be free. And I want her to be whole. And I want her and him to have a good life. I don\u2019t win if they ruin my life, so those were my short term and my long term thoughts.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Your father is a pastor, so he must have struggled with trying to protect you\u00a0while helping\u00a0promote forgiveness. What were the struggles that he went through in this whole process?<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

Jason: Yeah, my dad is my best friend, so I think he probably carried the brunt of my emotions and feelings and decision making. I talked to my dad everyday for probably close to nine months while I was walking through this and we cried together and that whole deal. I would say that my dad was every bit as emotional as I was. I know that my dad shared the same emotions that I did as a grandfather to my kids and a father to me and to her. In some ways he was a spiritual dad to her and loved her.<\/p>\n

When somebody walks out on you it hurts, it hurts on every level, it hurts everybody that\u2019s in a relationship. My dad was included in that, so [my dad] writing the book with me was really the finalization of our journey together. It wasn\u2019t just \u201cHey dad, I need help\u201d. It was \u201cHey dad, let\u2019s finish this road together. We\u2019ve walked this far and we\u2019ve really come to a place of wholeness and of healing and our family has come to a place of healing and wholeness. Let\u2019s finish this road by giving away what we\u2019ve learned and where we\u2019ve been to other people.\u201d But even that process was hard, especially for him because he\u2019s having to relive how he felt. I tell my story a lot so I get a lot more used to going, \u201cthat was my life and that\u2019s how I felt,\u201d but for him I think it was a little bit harder to go, \u201cthis was my kid\u2019s reality and my grandkid\u2019s reality. These are the things that we walked through.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Check back tomorrow for the rest of the interview!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several months back I interviewed Jason Vallotton, a man who became familiar with pain and devastation after his wife, Heather, announced she was leaving him for another man. In his book The Supernatural Power of Forgiveness, Jason uses his own story as a poignant, touching illustration of God’s grace and healing, and invites readers to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":235,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,107,12,11,13,106,58],"tags":[225,224,221,223,222],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-family","category-god","category-jesus","category-love","category-marriage","category-parenting","tag-anger","tag-forgiveness","tag-infidelity","tag-moving-on","tag-pain"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Do You Get Over Being Cheated On? - Discoveries of a Wanderer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/discoveriesofawanderer\/2012\/02\/how-do-you-get-over-being-cheated-on.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Do You Get Over Being Cheated On? - Discoveries of a Wanderer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Several months back I interviewed Jason Vallotton, a man who became familiar with pain and devastation after his wife, Heather, announced she was leaving him for another man. 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