She Lied & Cheated, But I Still Want Her Back Sometimes

Why we get hung up on exes who treated us poorly & how to get over it.

In this video coaching newsletter I discuss an email from a viewer who broke up with his girlfriend due to her lying and cheating on him. She also aborted their baby after finding out she was pregnant. Despite her betrayal, he often finds himself wanting her back and even tried to rekindle things, but she ghosted him. He asks my opinion. My comments are in bold italics like this below in the body of his email.

Hi, I’m Coach Corey Wayne and this is my Video Coaching Newsletter. And the topic of today’s Newsletter is going to be, “She Lied & Cheated, But I Still Want Her Back Sometimes”.

So this particular email, this guy’s only 24. And he shares a story of basically how his lack of discipline cost him what would have been his baby and his relationship. However, as you guys will see as we go through it, she was a woman of low character. So despite the fact after they broke up, she decided to abort their baby, it looks like he dodged a bullet. However, despite that fact, he tried to rekindle things with her.

And of course she totally ghosted him. So this just brings up the topic that rejection tends to breed obsession, because on top of that, she lied and she cheated on him. Plus, she had a history of cheating with her previous boyfriend, so her previous boyfriend cheats on her and to get revenge, she cheated on him back. But despite that, he’s still thinking, “I miss her.”

And so this just brings up something that we all have to learn to get over breakups. Because typically what happens, we project our fantasy of what we want onto the other person, and then we ignore all the red flags, like in this case, the lying, the cheating, the history of lying and cheating. Plus, she got violent with him, apparently. Because in her previous relationship the boyfriend put his hands on her and she put her hands back on him.

So hands start flying, insults start flying, lying and cheating happens. And what happens is when you only focus on your feelings and how much you like her and you project your fantasy. And remember, we’re human beings and we make our decisions based upon our emotions. And then we use logic and reason to justify those decisions, even though you and I and people that know him would be like, “Man, you dodged a bullet. Thank God you’re not with that girl anymore.”

He’s in love with the idea of who he wanted her to be. And he’s not seeing reality. Because when you’re with somebody for a period of time, especially if it goes on a couple of years, then you get used to being with them, your whole identity, who you are, your makeup of who you are is associated with being in a relationship, especially if you’re living together. Because you’re doing family things together, you’re hanging out socially.

If you’re a couple, you typically hang out with other couples. If you’ve got kids, you’re typically hanging out with other couples that have kids, and the longer you’re with them, your single friends tend to fade away and you spend less time with them. And you may even lose some friendships over that, where people just kind of fade away and they get tired of asking you to hang out, and they just stop calling.

And then all of a sudden you break up and you’re used to going to bed at night with this person, waking up in the morning showering together, traveling together. You’re used to hanging out with each other’s families during the holidays, and then all of a sudden you’re not together. And then when you’re not together, everything you did revolved around this person. You don’t recognize yourself. You don’t recognize your life. And that’s why it’s so hard.

Because you’re in a position where your comfort zone has been totally rocked. You’re in a really uncomfortable place. However, one of the things that Tony Robbins said is that, “Your comfort zone is where you’re most uncomfortable, because when you’re uncomfortable, it gives you an opportunity to grow and become something more.” But then you’ve got to rely on the future, and you don’t know when you’re going to meet somebody else.

You don’t know if it’s going to be two weeks, two months, two years or five years. And so that waiting and wondering and just wanting to get back to that place where you were, where you had somebody that was your companion, your lover, your teammate, and you were always together. And then all of a sudden, now you’re single again, and then you start calling all your friends that you blew off and they’re still pissed off at you.

Some of them probably don’t even return your calls at that point. You’ve given up your hobbies, your interests, because she complained that those got in the way. And so this is something that if you’ve ever studied the Tao or Buddhism, it’s just learning to not be attached to things. In other words, learning to accept whatever shows up and be grateful for that. Because when we want reality to be other than it is, we’re going to suffer.

When you’re single and you really didn’t want to be single, you think about being with that other person again and your fantasy doesn’t match what you want, so reality doesn’t match your vision of it. And so therefore you’re not accepting the present moment. You’re not living in the present moment. You’re not accepting your life circumstances as they are. You’re either stuck in the past, or potentially if you’re hoping to meet somebody, you’re focusing on the future and living in the future and completely neglecting the present.

It really is an art, and it’s something that really is a lifelong pursuit. Because anything you want in life, it’s always long in coming. If you’re climbing the corporate ladder, it always seems like it’s going to take way longer than usual. You get passed over or you get somebody that’s got tenure and they’re less qualified, but because they know somebody higher up the food chain, they get the promotion and you don’t. You want a raise, you don’t get it.

You want to buy a bigger house, you don’t get it. You want to sell your house. It doesn’t sell when you expect it to. You want your stocks to take off. You start a new business. You expect you’re going to become a millionaire in a few months, and then you’re at it for five years and you still haven’t made any money, or you’ve made very little money, and then you’ve got people around you going, “well, that’s a stupid idea. I told you, you shouldn’t have done that.”

And so that really is life, it’s learning to deal and accept your life circumstances. Because again, when we don’t accept reality as it is, we’re going to suffer. So it really is an art because as the saying goes, “There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.” In other words, you have to choose what the meanings are or that you give to the circumstances of your life. And so in this case, it’s easy for us because we’re not in it.

We’re not emotionally invested like he is to look at this and go, “Oh man, dude. You are so lucky not to be having a co-parent with this woman for the next 20 years, because that’s going to affect and influence all of your other relationships.” I’m sure there are people watching this that can attest to that, who ended up having kids with somebody that, quite frankly, they weren’t ideal. It was suboptimal, if you will. And they can tell you their horror stories about it.

So I mean, this guy, he’s 24, he’s got his whole life ahead of him, but he’s just basically stuck in the past. And one of the things that does help with that is the Consciousness Exercises that are on the home page of my YouTube Channel. If you scroll down to the bottom it’s Stages 1 through 12 or Doctor D’Anna.

Where he demonstrates them for you, I suggest two three times a week, especially if you’re really suffering to do the Consciousness Exercises Stage 1 through 12 take you about an hour, hour and a half in front of your TV and just do them all and you’ll feel better the more you do it.

Because what you do often, you do best. And it can help you move through these difficult periods in life. Whether you’re getting over a breakup or the loss of a loved one, or you lost your job, or that stock that you thought was going to take off ended up going completely the other way, or your shitcoin that you were hoping to become a multi-millionaire with, it became worthless.

So it’s really just learning to deal with the circumstances of your life and giving them empowering meanings, such as in learning to think “What’s good about this? What can I use this for? How can I learn from this? How can this make me better? What can I do differently next time around so I don’t make the same mistakes?” So again, if you look for empowering meanings and you give empowering meanings, you’ll do well.

It’s just like growing your willpower. Well, how do you grow your willpower? You continually do things that, quite frankly, you don’t want to do and don’t feel like doing, but they’re necessary. Like working out or eating healthy when your buddies want to go out and have a few drinks or whatever.

Or just going to the gym when you know you should but you don’t feel like it. The more you do the things, even though you don’t feel like it, a guy that’s really good at that is Jocko Willink. What does he do? Every morning at 4:30 a.m., takes a snapshot of his watch and posts it, and he’s just always getting after it. Not because he wants to work out, but because, as he says, “Discipline equals freedom.”

Viewer Email:

Hey Coach,

I’m a 24-year-old student of yours from Pennsylvania and I have a story of how my lack of discipline costed me both what would have been my baby as well as my relationship. Me and my ex broke things off back in July of 2025 I had read your book backwards and forwards multiple times by that point but failed to implement the material. Instead I opted for losing my emotional center.

So he became emotionally hijacked.

And saying whatever was on my mind, usually bringing her down or just being an asshole.

Well, that’s why the old saying goes, “The worst advice is just be yourself.” Well, sometimes you want to be an asshole, and that’s not really the best thing. So you’ve got to choose your battles, be strategic about it.

Me and her were together for a year and half but the red flags in her were there from the beginning. Her ex had allegedly cheated on her so cheated back as well as he had put his hands on her, so she had done the same back.

Yeah. When you hear things like that, they were cheating on each other. They were physically abusing one another. It’s easy for her just to go, “Oh, it’s all his fault.” But if she’s used to doing that in a relationship, maybe she saw that in her family growing up. There’s a good chance that she’s going to probably put her hands on you at some point when she gets upset. What does Gerald Celente from the Trends Research Institute say? “Current events form future trends.”

Well a year into the relationship she had put her hands on me at multiple times throughout our relationship and with time it just got worse and I held hope that it would change but it never did.

So right there, he’s admitting that he’s in love with the fantasy and projecting his fantasy onto her, while he ignores the reality that she gets mad and throws her hands at him. That’s not a good place to be. And then you make excuses for that and you rationalize that behavior. And whenever you tolerate, you invite more of. The only thing that corrects a woman’s behavior like that, as soon as she puts her hands on a guy that’s got his shit together, he’s just not going to be with her anymore. That’s the end of the relationship.

I held hope that it would change but it never did and I emotionally checked out of the relationship after she had argued with me at club so I left and later she decided to leave with my so called friends.

Again, being 24, you know, when I was that age, what I thought was that I had all these friends, that I thought they were friends. We went to elementary school together. We went to middle school together. We went to high school together. Some of them I went to college with. And you get into your early 20s, you’re like, man, I’ve known these dudes since we were little kids. Of course they’re my friends.

And then you find them doing things or saying things about you behind your back, and it hurts. You think, man, I know this dude since third grade and he’s talking shit about me. It’s like, I thought he was my friend. Or I’ve known that guy since, you know, middle school, and yet he’s hitting on a girl I’m trying to date. It’s like. Or hitting on my girlfriend. And you know, I got a huge dose of reality in my 20s like all of us. And that’s what’s starting to happen here, is that he’s getting burned by people that he thought were his friends.

And what he’s realizing is he has a lot of acquaintances, because a true friend is not going to treat you that way. And so, especially as you get into your 30s and your 40s, when these kinds of things happen, you may think you have dozens and dozens of friends. In reality, you’ve got 3 or 4 that are really ride or die with you. But you’ve got to go through shit like this to learn who’s really on your team and who is just a poser.

They all lied to me about what had happened after I left that night and I’ve never seen red before, but I knew better than to throw away my freedom over a woman who’s a cheater.

And also friends who aren’t really your friends. It’s just that situation revealed who was on your team and who wasn’t. So throwing hands, getting mad, doing something that gets you arrested is even though you may think about it or contemplate it, it’s not worth it. It’s not worth trading your life for some other loser, because eventually karma is going to come along and they’re going to reap what they sow. You just don’t want to be the one that’s helping them reap what they have sown. Because the universe will take care of that.

After that incident we tired but I just couldn’t get over that incident, so I stopped putting the effort forth in the relationship and honestly it felt like my most unhappy point in my life.

Well, love cannot exist where there is no trust. And the reason why you’re suffering and why you are so unhappy, is you wanted reality to be different. You wanted things to be good, and you wanted to focus on the good times. But at the end of the day, she lied. She cheated. She cheated on the previous boyfriend. She’s cheated on you with your supposed friends it looks like here. And you want things to be better but she betrayed you. Because ideally, you think about being single again.

And what is it going to take? A year, two years, three years until you meet somebody else? Five years maybe, that you really click with, and you think, “I’ve got to spend all this time, I’ve got to go on all these dates that never go anywhere. I’ve got to talk to all these women, do all these approaches that go nowhere.” And that’s why a lot of people just stay with who they’re with. Because the potential pain, remember, we do more to avoid pain than we do to gain pleasure.

The potential pain of getting rejected or potentially not finding somebody or not finding anybody as good or better than the person you’ve got, it causes you to settle. That was what led me to stay with the woman who became my ex-wife. It didn’t feel right, but I was so afraid and I didn’t have enough life experience. And I realized it took me until I was 24 just to get a long term, steady girlfriend. Whereas, you know, a lot of my close friends had had several girlfriends.

You know, by the time we graduated high school, they had 5 or 6 different girlfriends, even though they may have only dated for half the year during some of those years. So they had a lot more experience than I did. I was thinking, man, it was hard enough getting just one. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing back then, obviously, but the potential pain and thinking, “wow, it took me until 25, 24 to meet somebody and have a serious relationship.”

It’s like, “What if the next one takes a decade to get there?” So it’s hard to let go of what was because it wasn’t good enough for what really is like a fantasy or an illusion, if you will, of what you hope things could be. That’s kind of the way life is, you know, you just trust and hope that with enough time, repetition and action that things are going to work out in your favor. And I found that eventually, as long as you keep moving forward, even when it looks like it’s hopeless, eventually things do turn around.

She was ready to leave, and I agreed but wait there’s more. Turns out she’s pregnant.

Oh. That’s a little extra wrinkle.

I wanted it she felt like I only wanted the baby and not her which was true and she ended up aborting it I wasn’t there for her through the process as I should’ve been.

Well, I had a girlfriend that got knocked up and we split up because she went off her meds, which I didn’t know she was on. She’d been on antidepressants for two years, and the last time she came to visit me, we were laying in bed and she’s like, “oh, by the way, I stopped taking my antidepressants three days ago because things were so great between us.” I was like, what? And I thought, oh shit, because I’ve seen that movie. I know what happens when somebody goes off those meds.

Sure enough, she went through a complete metamorphosis over the next 2 to 3 weeks. I didn’t even recognize who she was anymore. And the relationship quickly spiraled. Couldn’t talk to her. Couldn’t solve anything. We split up and she decided to abort our baby. I didn’t really have any choice and I was like, I’ll take care of it. I’ve got plenty of women in my life that would love to help me raise that baby.

I’ve got ex-girlfriends, I’ve got a stepmom, I’ve got aunts, I’ve got lots of women in my life that would absolutely love to help me raise my baby until I find a good woman to be a stepmom. But she didn’t care. She aborted. I had no choice. And you know, it sucks. But what can you do? It’s not your body. You can’t force her to have your kid.

I felt bad two weeks later broke no contact and asked if she’d like to work things out.

Come on, man, this woman put her hands on you multiple times. And she lied to you and cheated on you with your so called friends.

Or give it another shot. She left me on read and unfollowed me 2 weeks after I sent the message.

Well, you never try to keep somebody who doesn’t want to keep you.

It’s February now I’d love to hear your thoughts Coach.

Well, you’re in love with the fantasy of who you want her to be. And I’m sure lots of dudes in the comments are gonna be like, bro, come on, have some self-respect. Time to move on. You’re not going to fix this woman. Because if you take her back. Just the fact that you were willing to get back together with her and told her that, in her mind, that validates that she can get away with lying and cheating. Because you were willing to look past it. Despite the betrayal you were willing to give it another go. If she cheats on you once, she’ll cheat on you twice. If she cheats on the guy before you, she’ll probably cheat on you when she’s not happy, which obviously happened.

Should I feel guilty for not being there for her after the procedure although I didn’t want her to do it in the first place?

It’s like I wouldn’t feel guilty. I told my girlfriend because she wanted me to send her the money to do it and take her to get it aborted. I was like, I’m not going to participate in the murder of my child. I’m just not doing it. It’s like, so if you want to abort our baby, that’s all on you. And she was pissed. Which I can understand why she was pissed, but I was like, I’m not doing it. All my ex-girlfriends, all my female friends are like, you did the right thing, dude.

And so I will tell you the same thing. You did the right thing. You didn’t want to participate in the death of your child. And so that way she has to take 100% ownership for it. And at the end of the day, she’s going to carry that guilt for the rest of her life. It’s not just some easy thing to get over. So you’ve got to do what’s right for you in that case. And you don’t believe in aborting the child, she did. Your values are not aligned, and she did it anyways. That tells you everything you need to know.

Am I wrong for still caring about someone I know deep down is a liar and cheater?

Well, you’re just stuck in the past and you’re stuck on the fantasy of who you wished and wanted her to be, and you’re just ignoring reality. Because again, like I was talking about earlier, you’re thinking about everything that you have to go through with dating and going out on dates that go nowhere and you don’t know when it’s going to happen. You don’t know if it’s going to be five years, five months, ten years from now. You just have no idea. It’s completely unknown.

It’s like you just have to trust. It’s like when you think about the guys that decided to go west and see if there were continents and landmasses beyond Europe. What if they went too far and they ran out of provisions? What if there was no land? I mean, think about the balls that it takes as explorers to just go into the ocean and hope and trust that maybe eventually you’re going to run into some land and discover another continent. It’s like, that takes some balls.

That’s the unknown, though. And the leaders of those expeditions painted the picture of how rich and successful they would be once they found land. Maybe they conquered it, brought it back for, whether it was Spain or whatever country it happened to be, they would become famous. They would be heroes of the nation. And so it was the emotionally compelling vision that they had, which is why they were willing to leave everything they knew and go out into the ocean knowing that there’s a really good chance they’ll never come back and they’ll never be seen again.

And it happened many times. Lots of people didn’t return. But obviously we know Christopher Columbus did. We used to have a holiday for him. But, you know, now apparently Christopher Columbus is racist and a horrible person. So, you know, we can’t have that anymore because the communists want to erase that from our history.

If she comes back should I follow what’s in 7 principles to get and ex back and just date without exclusivity?

I wouldn’t recommend it, because whatever you tolerate, you invite more of. So if you’re willing to put up with a lying and cheating, well, guess what the universe is going to do? It’s going to send you another liar and a cheater because you haven’t overcome it. That’s how things work. Until you get the message you keep getting the same set of circumstances showing up over and over. The hardest thing to do is to deny her when she comes back. Because I’m sure the sex was probably really good and you miss her.

And we know your emotions are overriding your logic and reason but you’re 24 dude. So as long as you continue to read the book and master what’s in there, and when you come across people like this, especially the so-called friends, you just don’t have them in your life anymore. You don’t have anything to do with them, because they betrayed you and she betrayed you. So they all get the gift of missing you permanently. Because whatever you tolerate, you invite more of.

If you tolerate liars and cheaters, guess what? You’ll get more liars and cheaters. Like attracts like. People that like the same things tend to like each other. And so if you say yes to liars and cheaters and low character people, well, the universe is going to go, “okay, well, he wants more liars and cheaters and low character people. So here ya go.” So you’ve got to think about that. There are consequences for all of your actions, good and bad. So choose wisely.

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