I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, episode number 243, Decentering Your Partner Without Closing Your Heart.

Infidelity changes everything. Who you thought you were, what you thought your life was. From here, you can keep circling the pain or rebuild something real.

This is a space for men and women navigating infidelity. Whether you’ve been betrayed or your the one who broke trust. I’m Andrea Giles, master certified relationship coach. I know what’s possible on the other side. When you’re willing to tell the truth all the way out, you’re in the right place. Let’s begin.

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Heal from Infidelity. I hope this message finds you doing well. I am currently recording this episode from the most insane view that you’ve ever seen. I’m sitting in Hawaii looking at a mountain with waterfalls coming down it, and I just happened to look out and there is a big rainbow right now as I record. This must be a sign. This must be a good episode.

So listen up. It must be an important one. I wish I could only share the view with you of what I’m looking at right now. It is incredible. But this is an important episode. It’s one that.

That personally has taken me time to really understand, to really, really understand for myself what de centering is, what it means not just logically, not just conceptually, but actually embodied living. What it means to de center your partner and to de center anyone else. And it’s a. It’s a hard concept, particularly for women.

And we’re going to get into all of that today and why that is. Okay. One of the most transformative shifts and most important shifts after infidelity is learning to stop organizing your life around your partner’s moods, their choices, their growth, and to begin organizing your life around what is true for you.

This is not about becoming selfish and just saying, looking out for number one. It’s not about ignoring the other person and letting them fend for themselves. It’s about becoming rooted back to you. It’s about returning to yourself and returning as the center of your own life.

And one of the biggest shifts after infidelity is doing this work. Because most of us are used to orbiting around somebody else and trying to not make them the center of your universe can be very, very challenging, can feel very uncomfortable, can feel scary.

This does not mean that you stop loving them. It does not mean that you stop caring. It doesn’t mean you become cold or detached. It means that your peace is no longer dependent on what they’re doing, feeling, or deciding. And, uh, that changes everything. And for most of you, this is going to be new. It will be new. It’s gonna be something that you’ve never done before.

What it looks like to have your partner at the center is what we are mostly used to. And I want you to listen to this and check in with yourself and notice where you listen and go, yep, that’s me. Yep, I understand that.

Here’s a few. If you have your partner at the center of your emotional world, their mood is gonna determine your mood. Their level of effort determines your hope. Their honesty determines your peace. Their choices determine your sense of safety.

Their approval determines how you feel about yourself. Now, you may find yourself analyzing every word, every tone, every facial expression, checking whether they seem all in.

And if they seem all in today and not tomorrow, you might feel really panicked and wonder what they’re up to. You’re likely monitoring their progress. You’re waiting for them to reassure you. You’re putting your own goals and desires on hold. And here’s the biggest problem with this. When your partner is at, uh, the center, you disappear.

Now, I want to be clear that all of these things that I’m talking about, this is all codependent behavior. And I don’t love the connotations that come with those words. It’s just what somebody decided to name it. Codependence. And it really is about this. It’s about having other people be more centered to your life than you are not feeling free

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to move around your own life because you might be afraid of, uh, if I move too much, if I stretch too much, who am I going to bump into and how much is it going to cost me? And so you are keeping yourself within certain guidelines, certain boundaries, certain spaces, and not going beyond that. And that’s what has to shift, especially after infidelity. Now, how did we get here?

This pattern, of course, did not just start with infidelity. Many women were taught from childhood to organize their lives around others, to be helpful, to be easy, to be accommodating, to be selfless, to be emotionally responsible for everyone around them. We are praised for anticipating needs and putting ourselves last.

And over time, we learned to orbit others. We learned that the comfort of others is what got us praised, that taking care of others, helping others, being selfless, being kind, is what got us praise. I have a distinct memory that I want to share with you.

When I was 15, I helped care for a girl who was Extremely, extremely autistic to the point where she was not functioning. She couldn’t talk, she couldn’t uh, do much of anything by herself.

And I took care of her for, I want to say it was like 10 days while her parents went out of the state. It was very, very challenging and she had every kind of need, hated showering, so I had to help her bathe and she got freaked out and scared and would claw at me.

And this girl actually was older than me, but was physically smaller than me at the time. Anyway, several things happened during that time that were really challenging for me and especially as a 15 year old girl, I remember my parents telling me in how I cared for her, what a good job I did and how impressed they were with how much I cared for her and was so mindful of her feelings and how generous and they, they made comments about how I was special and that I was more patient with her than most people would be. Things like that. Of course that felt good.

It felt good, right? And I remember thinking that I wanted to be more like that because it got me praise, right? It got me praise. Fast forward a few years later and I was in between semesters at school, I think I was, I was home for a little bit and I was probably your typical teenager of uh, into my own world at the time, into boys, into all the things.

And I remember being told a different message of how selfish I was being and how, how selfish I was and that other people had noticed. And I remember it hurt tremendously to be told those things because I had identified with being a person that really cared about other people, that cared more than others about others.

And it really struck me straight to the heart. I remember crying and feeling devastated that I was just this selfish, selfish person. Why do I share this story? I actually wasn’t planning on sharing this story when I pressed record.

This goes to show how much we identify with these roles, right? That I took on these roles of selfish in the latter example, of so nurturing, so caring in the first example.

And the feedback from that first felt so much better than the second that I was super afraid of being labeled selfish ever. I did not want to be told that I did not want to feel that way.

And I can see how I went above and beyond to not be named that, to not be seen as selfish. And as I have done a lot of my own healing, I have learned that I never learned that I was allowed to be my own center, that I was allowed to speak up for what I needed and I wanted and I share this story because you likely have stories like this of your own where you maybe experienced a negative or, uh, perceived label of something that felt negative and have done everything you can to not feel that way again. Because it doesn’t feel good. Right?

But here’s the problem with that. What we learn is to anticipate the needs of others and put ourselves last. We learn to orbit other people. Our spouse becomes the sun often, our children become the sun, sometimes our work becomes the sun, and we orbit the sun. We become a planet revolving around them. Always adjusting, always monitoring, always trying to keep the system stable, keep the whole universe

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stable. Right?

The problem is that when everyone else becomes the center, you lose touch with your own center. You forget what you want, you forget what you need, what you feel and what is true for you.

And infidelity often exposes this pattern in a way that can no longer be ignored. I’m telling you. I’m, um, telling you. I speak of this from my own experience. I did not know the areas in which I was codependent.

I did not know how much I would emotionally adjust to the needs of other people and suppress my own emotions. Adjust, uh, and suppress. Adjust and avoid, right?

And sometimes adjust and suppress. Until what came out was all the suppression released at once, which isn’t pretty, right? All these emotions that just came out in one big blow, right? How many of you can relate to that? And what I can say about that is that it. It’s not helpful either. Right?

This doesn’t help the situation. It doesn’t learn to help you consistently help yourself, to orbit around you, to keep. To keep that center. It doesn’t teach you how to do this in a regulated state, stable, consistent way. Right?

Now, again, after betrayal, this is extra normal to do this. Why? Because your nervous system is on high alert. Some of my clients will hear me say your nervous system is jacked up. It really is.

It feels safer to watch them than to turn inward. Why? Because the risk here is very high. Right? You’re looking at a lot of risk.

You may believe if I can just figure them out, then I’ll feel okay. That peace that, uh, depends on another person will always feel fragile. And focusing on them can help you avoid harder questions such as, what do I truly want? What have I tolerated? What do I know to be true? What might I need to do? Those things are much harder to look at. Why? Because that’s where the risk really kicks in. It’s like if.

If I turn inward, deeply, deeply inward, and start to listen deeply to Me of, uh, what do I actually need to thrive? Is this thriving? Is this situation I’m in thriving? If it’s not even close, what do I need to do? What is this situation asking of me?

Okay, these are much deeper, much harder questions to look at. But we keep these questions so far away from us when we are centering around somebody else. We are keeping them at bay and sometimes keeping our own emotional truth at bay because we are focused so hard on, on our partners and what they’re doing.

Okay, so what does decentering actually mean in this context? Decentering means their healing is their responsibility. It is not yours. It is not your responsibility. It is not your responsibility.

And I’m going to talk more about that in a minute. Their emotions are uh, their responsibility. Their choices are, uh, their responsibility.

And your piece is your responsibility. Now this does not mean becoming cold, punishing them, pretending not to care, giving up on the relationship. It does not mean those things. It does mean returning your attention to yourself. Your most loving, attentive, generous care to you.

It does mean rebuilding self trust. You know what that looks like? It sounds like tuning in. I’ve been thinking lately about an old school radio dial. Do you remember listening to the radio and turning it just right? Just like one little. One little tiny movement to get the frequency that’s the clearest right.

And you keep messing with it until you get it just right. And I think of that as in this situation, as tuning into your own emotions. Tuning in, cranking it just the slightest bit until you can really hear yourself without all of the noise and the buzzing sound that you would hear on the radio. That, that chatter that, that low hum, right? Rebuilding self trust by tuning back in.

By teaching yourself that you will continue to tune in. This looks like clarifying your desires, Getting clear on what it is you even want. Getting

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clear on what your values are. What do I value? What are my standards for myself? And what am I operating from right now?

And what needs my loving care. Okay, now we’re going to talk about what it actually looks like to put yourself back at the center. Healing is like reorganizing your whole solar system. Now keep in mind again, as I mentioned earlier, we’ve been doing this our whole lives.

This is not new. And uh, we learn to do this as children for safety as well. We learn to center our parents, our caregivers, for our own safety.

So this is not new again. But when we grew up with situations where we had to monitor other people’s emotions for our own safety, to gauge what we Are allowed to talk about, not talk about what we are allowed to feel and express and not feel and express.

This is how much we learn to center other people early on. Okay, so we’ve probably, you listeners have probably been doing this a long time.

So this work is like reorganizing your whole world, reorganizing your whole solar system. You pull back from centering, revolving around your partner, your children, your parents, everyone else’s needs and becoming the center of your own life again. You start to recenter your values, your standards, your desires, your goals, your healing, your joy, bringing it back to you. And some of the ways that you can do that are by asking yourself good questions. What do I want?

And even if I don’t know exactly in concept what that could look like of like where would I want to live and financially what would that look like? You know what you can know, you can know how you want to feel. How do I want to feel? What feels true? What have I put on hold and am I willing to continue to put that on hold?

What kind of life do I want to create and what is one step, one step that I can take towards that life right now? So how do I help clients do this? This is the heart of the work that I do. Okay.

This is the heart of it. We navigate infidelity, right? Yes. Often people come with a difficult decision of if they’re going to stay or go.

But underneath all of that, I help my clients return to themselves. I help them re center themselves to enjoy their own company, to enjoy their own presence, to pay attention to themselves. Not just from a place of I’m in so much pain and how could I stop hurting?

But in really caring for all the parts of themselves that need this nurturing so bad. We work on calming the emotional chaos together. We work on ending the rumination cycles and the hyper focusing on our partner. We work on rebuilding self trust. We work on getting clear about what they want.

We work on strengthening boundaries. Boundaries in this context are not walls. We’re not putting walls up. We’re not putting walls up. We are putting boundaries up. It’s very different. We are looking at what we need and how to protect that.

And we’re not pushing people out. This is where we can actually keep our hearts open. We can still be aware of other people. We can still care about other people and their experience. We’re just not making their experience more important than our own.

And we are looking at areas where we are doing that and we are setting boundaries. We’re not doing that Anymore. We’re learning about relationship skills that are rooted in self respect.

I want you to think right now about your relationship patterns. Areas where you might know that you are maybe being mean. Where you know that your rage might be not kind and that you hate it and that you don’t respect it.

That you don’t know what else to do and you feel panicked that if you don’t get loud enough that they’re not going to hear you. I want to push on that a little bit and challenge you m that in this context who you need to hear is you.

And do you like and do you respect some of these things in yourself. And if you don’t, you get to decide what works for you, what feels good to you.

And if somebody else cannot hear you, won’t hear you. When you are being clear, when you are being honest, that my friend is not on you, that is on them, okay? That is on them. So learning relationship skills

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rooted in self respect is going to let you know that you showed up as the best version of you. That you learned to communicate in a way that was honest to who you want to be. Okay?

And we work on building a life that you are actually excited to live in. Whether that you stay or whether you go. The goal is the same. To become the center of your life again. Become the center of your life again. Hence the name of my main group program which is get your life back after infidelity. Okay?

I want to remind you that you can love someone and stop carrying them. Something I say inside my program, a lot of soft heart, strong spine. Okay? You can have a soft heart and a strong spine where you have boundaries, but that all of it is done with love. Love for yourself, love for everyone involved.

Even if you’re angry, even if you’re so upset, you can still go about it in a way that is respectful of you and your experience. Okay? You can remain open hearted and still have boundaries. You can want the relationship and still prioritize your truth. In fact, you have to for it to work.

There’s no shortcut to this. You cannot expect to have a relationship while you are minimizing you and minimizing what is real for you. Okay?

For example, you can say I love you and I’m no longer willing to make you and what you’re up to the center of my life. I’m no longer doing it because sometimes we think that having check ins every day and monitoring them and watching what they’re doing is good and helpful.

And I’m here to tell you it robs you of your joy. It robs you of your own creativity that you could use towards solving this for yourself, of really paying attention to yourself. We’re not doing that anymore. Okay? It doesn’t mean we don’t communicate.

It doesn’t mean we don’t have discussions and talk through things. Not at all. It means that we’re not doing it anymore to hopefully get them to do something so we don’t have to really confront ourselves.

So we don’t have to deeply go inward and ask the scariest questions of all. Nope. We are actually going to skip the line and go up to the front, where we are going inward, where we are growing our tolerance to everything that we meet there. And we are making that our focus. All right, now guess what changes when you return to yourself.

When you stop orbiting someone else. You think more clearly, you feel calmer, you trust yourself more, you make stronger decisions, you become less reactive, and you reconnect with joy. You stopped waiting for someone else to hand you your life back and you begin creating it. Isn’t that wonderful? Wonderful news.

Isn’t that great? So here are a few ways that I want you to take this and run with it. I’m going to ask you a few journal prompts. I want you to write them down and actually answer them. In what ways have I made my partner the center of my life? What parts of me have been neglected? What would it look like to return myself to the center?

What do I want my life to revolve around now? And in closing, I invite you to sit with this. Decentering your partner is not giving up on love. It’s actually the opposite.

When you decenter your partner, it gives you the space to really get clear about what you want and what you want to invite into your space with open arms. Not out of obligation, not out of fear, but out of true choice. It is giving up on the belief that someone else’s choice determines your peace. It is returning home to yourself.

And from that place you can love more honestly, decide more clearly, and live more fully. This is where we get to our truth, all the way out.

And that’s what I want for every one of you. If this is something that you know you need, I invite you to come and apply for my program. Get your life back after infidelity.

This is the work we all are doing in there every day, every call. And you too can learn from everybody else in the group and have the support to do this for yourself. Go ahead and apply. The application is in the show Notes and I can’t wait to see you inside. All right, take care. Until next time. Foreign thank you for listening to the Heal From Infidelity

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Infidelity podcast. If you would like to be kept in the know about upcoming free classes, new podcast episodes, and other ways of working with me, go subscribe to my weekly email. You can subscribe at andreagiles.com lies-about-infidelity forward/ Again, it’s andreagiles.com lies-about-Infidelity forward slash I will see you next time.