One of the first steps you may want to consider is about confronting the issues that have pushed you towards needing outside validation.
You aren’t emotionally frozen because it feels like you are aware on the dissonance between your intuition and the narrative the ego builds to allow yourself down the dopamine validation chasing from other men while maintaining "plausible deniability ".
You knew it deep down otherwise you wouldn’t try to remove yourself from the interaction. The same time you chased it every time your ego could hook into an excuse "I am doing this but I am not really doing this".
Yes I believe you didn’t care for the affair partner. This is pretty common in infidelity, the affair partner isn’t really a partner you would consider if you were single, a casual gap filler at best to soothe loneliness when you are down, but they often are kind of unremarkable (because they show exactly the flaws and red flags that make them identifiable as affair partners for a cheater).
What you feel is usually your own projection of fantasies, unfulfilled needs and desires to feel better than the void of self love that’s often there, concentrated in a person who is available and willing to play the part, because they will project their own flawed desires onto you (you could also be anyone who is available and willing). It’s transactional, but the ego doesn’t care, it will give it meaning through narrative, and the fact that you can freely fantasize and feel stronger with this person (because they don’t really matter, you don’t have fear of loss) does after time create an addiction to the dopamine good feel, which in turns make you dependent- not from the person’s meanfulness , but from the dopamine the fantasy feeds you when you indulge - so you become for them as much as a tool as you initially thought they were.
That’s why they get messy and you keep recurring, you may even not like the person, is not important, what you like is how the transaction makes you feel. And the guilt that follows each interaction makes you sink lower so your brain tries to find a way to balance the unhappy chemicals and look - the AP makes you feel good. Let’s go back to them.
Vicious circle.
You know all this stuff inside yourself, I simply named it for you, because cognitive dissonance is a bitch for both WS and BS.
What you want to do is regain your peace, and you can be at peace only when you fill up the void that allows you to crave for this validation high.
A first step you already took it: you are looking at the issue, naming it, letting it out through words rather than emotional chaos.
Now the hard part is to learn to own it. Which implies facing your ghost, and your ego, who will fight you teeth and nails to prevent you from healing the core issues. Because the ego is the mask that kept you functioning until now, protecting you from having to face these inner issues and fears. Ego is not you, not your inner self, is the projection of you that you built and present to the outside world.
And though isn’t truly alive it does have an auto pilot: it says "you aren’t good enough to connect with the world as you are, you need me, the ideal representation of a better you, to be accepted and admired".
Which is bullshit, is the ego reasoning created by insecurities and immaturity, truth is you are perfectly fine the way you truly are - simply put you can only be you, that’s the perfection, you will never be able to be better at pretending to be a different person than you are (that’s what the ego simulates to the outside world), in any real connection, the mask will fail at some point and cope with that failure, dysfunctionally sometimes.
Ego has a role, the role of pretend acting as an external boundary that looks like an open door. You show the mask as an avatar of you to be liked, accepted, without actually letting anyone who could harm you truly inside.
That works well in superficial relationships. It’s toxic and destructive in genuine connections. When you become afraid of being not good enough to be yourself with someone you bar yourself from being lovable. Not because they don’t truly love you, but because you don’t have enough self love to take up space and show yourself naked, emotionally and honest. Light and shadow are part of you, we all have, and they are okay if you can show them to your closest ones, they will not consume you. If you repress and fake them, keeping them hidden, they will grow and devour you at some point.
Presenting the perfect girl, will create a monster from the repressed shadow in time, the self love you deny will fester and turn a craving into something dysfunctional, chasing validation from "emotionally inhert sources" (initially at least) like random guys who feed you attention, because you’re too afraid that if you fully commune with the real you (who even yourself can’t love enough) with the person that you chose, they will at some point see you for what "unworthy " you are and leave you, hurt you, and their rejection will make you bleed.
Embracing the ego with a random affair cannot really hurt you, because A) the mask is the "perfect" version of you B) even if the mask gets rejected who the fuck cares, is not the real you, it will only sting a little, not hurt deeply, you always knew this validation ride always has an expiration date, you just farm it transactionally to extract feel good when you need it. You (the ego, not really you) are in control, for once. You got this.
That’s a lot to think about for now, both the slippery slope and the unresolved issues of insecurity and ego trap are layed off as I understand them, and it is my intuition about how a person which is "good" (meaning not a sociopath where serial cheating is just one of many destructive issues) can allow themselves to become a cheater and indulge in infidelity.
Because infidelity is first of all, the ultimate humiliation of you. It does hit and humiliate your partner, the one you betrayed. But before them you need to betray yourself to embrace infidelity.
You both will bleed and suffer from it, it’s devastating because it destroys everything good two people have before it. And swallows in the mud every close connection that just touches it.
The good side of this, is you can own it, and kill it. The monster feels horrible and malicious, but it’s a petty one, once you finally find the courage confront it, the ghost is such a pussy that you exorcise it easily.
The hardest part is to accept and own what you allowed yourself to become. To kill the ego that allowed you to cheat. To really look at the mirror and see the girl who done that, understand she is lovable and the horrible things she allowed herself to do and become, are a result of the fear to love her for who she really is. Not the mask, the inner self.
Then when the shame fades, that girl will have the shock to look at the devastation she caused, and that will be another hit, where the guilt and remorse will come.
The walk from the swamp of infidelity into the world of love and self acceptance will make you bleed. But is saving you from sinking deeper into the swamp, which is the other option available to a cheater. But that’s hell, and you probably don’t want it.
It’s a walk that will teach you awareness, boundaries and inner peace.
You will see that there’s no possible interaction between you and a man without sexual energy unless you both have boundaries and self respect. You will learn honesty rather than plausible deniability.
When you learn to own and respect your boundaries respecting your loved ones boundaries will become normal, because you will be finally centered and aware, not in chaos, but in peace.
And that’s the moment when your cheating ego will be in the grave and the real you, with a functional ego or without even one if you manage it, will be "reborn" as the person you always deserved to be.
Because it will be you, not a mask of inner fears.
