How To Come Back Stronger After Being Cheated On: Lessons Learned From Brittany Snow’s Messy Divorce

Celebrities, they’re just like us. No, really. Brittany Snow, the beloved star of the Pitch Perfect franchise and the early 2000s classic John Tucker Must Die, can attest to that. After having kept her relationship with ex-husband Tyler Stanaland relatively private, the two recently went through a very public divorce, with Snow hinting that everything came crashing down when she discovered she’d been cheated on.

Snow began dating Stanaland, a real estate agent who has appeared in Netflix’s reality TV show Selling the OC, back in 2018 after he slid into her DMs. “We had a bunch of friends in common, and he actually reached out to me on Instagram with a really lame pickup line,” Snow said. From there, their romance blossomed quickly. The two tied the knot in 2020 in an intimate Malibu ceremony.

Fast forward two years to September 2022, less than a month after Stanaland’s Selling the OC premiered on Netflix, when the news broke that the couple had gone their separate ways in a joint Instagram statement: “We have realized we need to take some time and make sure we are each living our most fulfilling and authentic lives. We started this journey as best friends and our relationship will continue to be a priority not only for us but for our dog Charlie. We sincerely appreciate your support and ask for privacy as we navigate this new chapter.” Their divorce was finalized in July 2023.

Immediately, rumors began to swirl about why the seemingly in-love couple had fizzled out, with many speculating that Stanaland’s flirtatious relationships with his co-stars could be to blame. However, Snow remained relatively silent on the subject – until recently, during an appearance on the Call Her Daddy podcast, when the actress opened up about the various challenges that the past couple of years have held for her, outlining the painful lessons that she learned along the way, and explaining how she was able to come back stronger after such a hardship.

While the details of her marriage and divorce are unique to Snow’s life, she still shared many nuggets of wisdom that those who’ve been cheated on can learn from – to not only pick themselves back up, but to guard themselves from experiencing the same heartbreak again. Here are some of the best lessons that Snow shared.

Don’t Ignore Red Flags Because You’re in Love

Snow opened up about what she considered to be the “saddest” part of her divorce, which was that she considered herself to have “a good sense of character.” The actress expressed feeling “blindsided” and admitted, “I had instincts, and I think because I was in love, I didn’t trust them.” So, upon discovering her husband’s alleged infidelity, she was shocked: “I did not know what was going on. I think as someone who is so hands-on with my career, I think I was just completely shocked that I didn’t have a handle on reality in that way.”

How many of us have been there? It’s an unfortunate reality that when we’re in love (or even simply think we’re in love), we’re all too willing to overlook warning signs, go against what our gut is telling us, and excuse bad behavior. We look for ways to justify our man's actions rather than observe them for what they are because we need the other person to conform to the image we have of them in our minds. And when something they do doesn’t match that image, we disregard it.

When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.

Maya Angelou, beloved poet, writer, and activist, once said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” It’s true that discovering that someone isn’t who we thought they were is deeply painful, but it saves us from the far greater pain of being confronted with that information much later on. If you’re consistently having second thoughts, pay attention to why you’re having them.

Be Careful of Black and White Thinking

Despite ending her marriage, Snow made sure to remind listeners that there were positive things about the relationship she shared with her ex: “There was a marriage there, there was so much love. … And I think that gray is hard to understand, because it’s much more salacious and interesting that it's just ‘He did this and she did this,’ and I think that’s what I would want to, I guess, put out there, is that I think a lot of people go into relationships where someone hurts them, but I don’t regret it. I don’t regret anything that happened because I loved that time that we had when we had it.”

Being cheated on is the ultimate betrayal. Once that person breaks our trust, it’s incredibly difficult to ever see them as anything but someone who hurt us, to see everything about them as immoral and unsavory and awful. But the likelihood is that, even if they were unfaithful, there were things about them and the relationship that we once loved.

It’s understandable to fall into a black and white line of thought to begin with, but it’s essential to your healing process that you’re able to see the gray – to know that not everything about them was terrible, but that they decided to do a terrible thing. Choosing to have a more nuanced approach to your feelings toward them will help you be in charge of what you feel, rather than the other way around.

Lean on Your Friends

Snow spoke about one of the few things that helped her weather the storm of divorce: friendship. “There was this one time that I texted a girl from Pitch Perfect, one of the Bellas, and I said, ‘What do you do in this situation? How did you handle this emotion? Because it’s so much pain that I don’t know if I can do it.’ … And she just said, ‘You just sit there. You just sit there, and you just take it, and you just exist. Just exist.’ And I just remember sitting there being like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna exist.’ And it passes, and then you just realize, oh, this stuff is so ephemeral in a way. Like, it does hurt, but it comes and goes.”

Going through a divorce, especially due to infidelity, can be incredibly lonely. It’s tempting to retreat and to muddle through our pain alone, but this will only keep us in the cycle longer. Reach out to trusted friends for company or advice, to vent or to glean wisdom. Having someone who cares about you by your side, who will check on you and help you process your emotions, is one of the most crucial ingredients to coming out the other side even stronger.

Take a step back from the situation and work through your anger.

Explore Every Side of the Situation

Snow didn’t shy away from talking about how much her ex-husband’s actions hurt her. But she also didn’t spend the entire podcast bashing him and laying blame. Instead, she shared about how she was able to take a step back from the situation and work through her anger, despite being taken by surprise. She said, “I was not aware of a lot of things. And I’ll say that. So I will say: What people think happened, happened. And I think that there’s also, in my experience with this and how I’ve processed it, there’s a lot of grace that I give myself, and also I can own – there’s a part of this that I don’t have a part in. They messed up. But I tried very hard to see it all from every side and release that anger, because it doesn't serve me.”

When we’ve been wronged the way that Snow was, it’s difficult to see anything but that wrong. We’re too overwhelmed and emotionally flooded by the betrayal. But it’s crucial to separate ourselves from these feelings and explore the situation from every vantage point to understand how we ended up where we did – not to excuse the choices that the other person made, but to have a fuller understanding of our circumstances.

Let Yourself Be Alone for a While

So, has Snow gotten back out there? Not really. And it’s not due to lack of opportunity, either. She said, “I’ve been – let’s use air quotes here – ‘single,’ weirdly. … I’m not saying weirdly like it’s so weird for me to be single; I’m saying weirdly because it's very easy for me to get in a relationship. … I’ve been actively trying to be alone and be with myself and just feel the feelings and not have to Band-Aid it with sparkly, shiny, you know, emotional thing.”

We get it – the temptation to jump back on every dating app and chase down literally anyone who wants to go out with you is strong. It’s certainly an effective means of distraction…for a night, maybe. But the truth about rebound relationships? They rarely (and we mean rarely) ever work out. More often than not, they cause more confusion and emotional distress than they’re worth for both you and the other person involved.

It’s a challenge in the months after a breakup, but your future self will thank you if you choose to stay single and be on your own for a while. Not only does this protect you from making a rash decision and jumping into another relationship before you’re ready, but it also offers you the opportunity to take advantage of what naturally comes with singleness – more time for friendships, hobbies, and professional ventures.

Closing Thoughts

Brittany Snow is just one of many women who’ve found themselves in the agonizing situation of being cheated on, going through a breakup, and picking the pieces of their lives back up – except she went through it with the entire world watching. But a couple of years later, Snow has come back stronger than ever. In a world filled with rumors, gossip mills, and mistruths, it’s helpful to hear such thoughtful words and sound advice coming from someone who’s been through it.

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