I Just Found Out my Spouse Is Cheating; What Is the First Thing I Should Do?

You just discovered your spouse is cheating on you.

You’re hurt. You’re angry. You’re devastated. You’re at a loss.

So, what’s the first thing you should do?

Look, the one thing I’m not going to do here is give you divorce advice. You don’t need that right now. You need a practical step so you can take care of yourself.

With that in mind, the first thing I think everyone should do is this:

Get tested for STDs.

Here’s the logic in this suggestion. You need to take care of yourself at this point, and ensuring your health is a basic way to do that. If you let an STD go untreated, you’ll be paying for that decision for the rest of your life.

In addition, once you get the all-clear, that’ll be one less thing to worry about.

Once you’ve ensured your own health, you can turn to thinking about other things, like: (1) documenting the cheating, (2) thinking about divorce, (3) finding a good marriage counselor — if you want to try to save the marriage.

So, again, step one is: get tested. Everything else is secondary.