This week, Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Laegreid delivered one of the most bizarre Olympic moments ever when, while accepting a bronze award, he confessed on-air to having cheated on his girlfriend. Like many others, I was relieved to learn that he’d already told her about this, and that she wasn’t learning about it at the same time as millions of strangers all over the world. But I screamed with horror when he went on to clarify that the relationship had ended a week before, making this a desperate bid to win her back. Strula, brøther, what the devil are you playing at…

His girlfriend responded this morning in Norwegian paper VG, admitting that it was “hard to forgive, even after such a public declaration of love” and that she didn’t “ask to be put in this position”. While this is all quite bizarre, it is really only a more visible, high-profile version of how lots of men (and it is mostly men) behave after being unfaithful. Here at Dazed, we take a strong stance against cheating, and it’s in a spirit of solidarity with its victims that we write the guide below. If you’ve been caught with your pants down, here’s what to do, and what not to do.

GO BACK IN TIME AND DON’T CHEAT IN THE FIRST PLACE

Cheating is wrong. End of story.

IF IT’S OVER, ACCEPT IT

“Everyone deserves a second chance” is a nice idea, but the reality is that actions have consequences, some mistakes are irreversible, and being cheated on is one of the most legit reasons to end a relationship. You can reach out to someone once, maybe twice, but if they’ve made it clear they don’t want to talk, then you just need to live with the regret. Toss your hair in a manbun, drink some bourbon, put on some Jelly Roll – and handle it. 

AVOID GRAND ROMANTIC GESTURES

Romantic comedies have taught us that the most surefire way of fixing a broken relationship is to make a splashy public display of your feelings, and this is an effective trope in cinema – the scene in Rye Lane when Vivian Oparah cruises down the Thames with a megaphone to declare her love for David Jonsson, for example, will always leave me misty-eyed. But in real life, this strategy is likely to be embarrassing and even kind of coercive – remember the guy who committed to playing the piano in a square in Bristol every day until his ex took him back? I’m not sure we ever heard her side of the story, but apparently the effort was “spectacularly unsuccessful”.

If you really must make a romantic gesture, it would be better to send them some flowers or an expensive fragrance they like. That way, even if they don’t want to take you back, they at least get something nice out of the experience, and can soothe their broken heart with a refreshing mango or a blast of Le Labo Another 13.

DON’T PLAY THE VICTIM

No one is going to feel sorry for you, no matter how many reels you repost portraying yourself as a misunderstood sigma or a member of the Peaky Blinders. In her essay On Self-Respect, Joan Didion writes that people with self-respect “have the courage of their mistakes [...] If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named corespondent.” That’s the energy you should be moving with. Yes, it sucks that you blew your life up through your own fecklessness and poor impulse control, but the only way to salvage any dignity from the situation now is to keep it zipped.

FIGURE OUT WHY YOU CHEATED

There’s no point in apologising and promising to change if you haven’t got to the root of the problem. This isn’t about evading responsibility or blaming your behaviour on factors beyond your control (“it’s actually very common for people with ADHD to cheat”) but about trying to be a better person so that you don’t hurt anyone else in the future. Maybe you need to go to therapy or a SLAA meeting; maybe vanquishing your lustful feelings by accepting Jesus Christ into your heart is the way to go.

DON’T FIND HAPPINESS

Probably the worst thing you can do to your partner is leave them for the person you cheated on them with, and then enjoy a long, happy and sexually fulfilling relationship. I really don’t think you deserve that, do you? If this scenario does arise, you should have the decency to be discreet: no photo-dumps of city breaks to Marseilles, no Valentine’s Day IG stories about how you never thought you’d find someone who gets you like this, and definitely no implying that you and your new squeeze are the Bonnie and Clyde of Brockley (“it’s me and you against the world, babe…”) If you were actually sorry, you would embark on a highly visible crashout and glow-down, for the first six months at least.