I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, episode number 247, “Is It Relief of Real Repair?”

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 you’re 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. In the last episode, I touched on something important that I wanted to spend an entire episode discussing, and it is about the difference between repair and relief. We’re going to go in depth, all in depth about this today. Okay?

My hope is that by spending this time in a whole episode breaking this down for you, you will be able to really understand yourself better. You’ll be able to understand if when you are reaching for some kind of emotional shift, if it’s a temporary band aid or if it’s true repair, that’s actually going to truly heal. Okay, so we’re going to spend the whole episode today talking about that. Before I get there, I have something really exciting and important to share that’s really, really important.

You’re going to want to hear this. Okay. I have been running different iterations of my group for four years. It was initially no in 90.

It is now get your life back. After infidelity, for quite some time, I have felt a shift brewing. I have felt my own energy shifting. As I have grown, as I have changed, as I have developed my own methods, my own frameworks, as I have helped so many people through my program, where I am now is recognizing that change is in the air, that I want to create some new things, but that I want to be able to deeply help people right where they are.

And therefore, for the very first time ever, I am offering everything that is in the get your life back after infidelity coursework. All the coursework material with all the worksheets separate a la carte all by itself without having to join the actual group.

Okay.

Without having to join the actual group, you can buy it a la carte. And just for the summer, you can also add on what’s called a telegram experience. Telegram is an app. I will be dropping in teachings.

I will be dropping in Ideas and thoughts as they come to me. I always try to share my own insights where I find that it would be helpful. I take a look at who’s in my space and offer solutions. And I’ll also be having office hours several times during the summer where you can send in questions through telegram, and I will be actively responding to your questions.

Okay, so you will find both of these offers in the show notes. I suggest that if you’ve ever been sitting on joining the group, if you have maybe met with me to join and decided not to or have been tempted to do that, now is the time. It is at a fraction, fraction of the cost of what it costs to be in the full group. Now, I also want you to know that I’ve got something cooking this fall that you’re going to want to pay attention to.

It is going to be a new group experience because I do believe so much in the power of a group. It is transformational to be in a group. But there’s going to be some new things that I add to it that are going to make it more powerful than it’s ever been. So stick around.

And in the meantime, you can spend the summer deep diving into the transformative work that is inside the program already. All the coursework, all of it, you can go get into it, and I promise you, you’ll feel shifts immediately. You will. You will feel shifts immediately.

I hear all the time people join, they start going into the content, and they start to feel internally that the scaffolding is changing, that they’re feeling stronger, that they’re feeling clearer, that they’re feeling a, uh, knowing of how to proceed. This is out the gate, immediate help. Okay? At a fraction of what it usually is.

So go grab it. It’s in the show notes. All right, here we go. Let’s talk about relief versus repair.

All right, so I’m going to ask you a question here. I’m going to ask you a question,

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and I want you to sit with this with the answer, okay? When you feel a wave hit of suspicion or of ache, some kind of discomfort, some kind of pain, emotionally, what do you reach for?

All right?

What do you reach for? And the second part of this is, does what you reach for make you bigger, more expansive, or does it just make that wave go down or go away? Because they are not the same thing. And I think that this is one of the most important distinctions that people don’t talk about.

I’ve actually never heard anyone teach about this, ever. I’ve heard people talk about repair But I’ve never heard anyone make this distinction between relief and repair. All right, so I want to talk about the difference between these. Because developing your muscle to repair is growing a muscle and reaching for relief is pulling you back.

It might feel good in the moment. It is pulling you back. All right? You’re here because you want to heal.

You’re here because you want to grow. Relief can feel so good in the moment, so good. But it’s not going to get you where you ultimately want to go. All right?

So here’s the thing about relief. It does work. That’s exactly the problem. It works fast.

It’s like, oh, uh, I have a migraine. I use headache examples a lot because I am headache prone.

Okay?

I have a migraine. I need my pill right now. And it does bring relief fast. Okay?

But it doesn’t bring repair. It doesn’t go to the root of why I’m getting migraines in the first place. And this is the same for you. All right, here’s the problem with our.

With our nervous system. Our nervous system does not know the difference between this is actually resolved or this just settled down. It got quieter. All right?

Think about sore muscles. You have sore muscles. Ice is a real thing. It’s not fake.

It. It does help, right? It’s not wrong to use ice. It can really help sometimes.

It can repair. But if ice is the only thing you ever work for, if you’re constantly straining muscles, overextending muscles, and using ice, you’re never actually going to get stronger. You’re never going to understand what is underneath that. And you might just grow your need for more ice for longer and more often rather than really understanding the real root need.

Okay? That’s what relief does in this work. It brings the activation down right now. And because the distress drops, your body reads it as, that worked.

I’m better. Yay.

That it’s better now. It’s better, right? But going down, this relief. Going down is not the same as growing.

You can get really, really good at, uh, relief. You can become like a black belt in relief and still be exactly where you were when you started. Exactly back to day one. All right?

The muscle growth is different. The muscle is uncomfortable in the moment. It doesn’t bring that wave down fast. Sometimes it actually makes things feel worse before they feel better.

But it changes your baseline. Okay? Before talking about the nervous system, the nervous system doesn’t know the difference. But if we keep reaching for relief, it doesn’t change the baseline.

The nervous system is still operating at the same baseline. And when you start to work with the muscle, when we start to work with real repair, it changes your baseline and how you respond next time and the time after that. And that’s the whole difference between coping and healing. One gets you through the night, the other gets you out of the cycle.

Okay, I’m going to show you what exactly this looks like because it can be very, very sneaky. I’m going to give you a lot of examples here. So you know.

Okay.

All right, here’s example number one. Reassurance seeking versus self soothing. Let’s say that you text him for the fourth time today. Do you still think about her?

And when he answers, the wave passes. Relief. Woof. Okay?

For this moment, I’m safe. Woof. The muscle is noticing the wave, naming it for what it is. Okay?

This is the spiral. It’s not new information. And writing it without that text, without reaching out and saying, I need to know, are you still thinking about her? That is what is going to build the muscle.

Not doing that. Not reaching for that quick hit of relief, that’s the rep. Okay? That’s what teaches your body.

It can survive the wave without proof from outside

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of you. And I want to push on this a little bit more. Not only that, but you are teaching this other person that I can just say what this person wants to hear and she’ll back down, she’ll feel relieved, and I’m off the hook for a little bit longer until the next wave.

Right?

This is not what we’re going for here. This, it’s kind of teaching. It’s teaching each person to stay in comfort, to stay in what’s familiar. It might be uncomfortable, but it’s not as uncomfortable as growing that muscle.

Right? It’s a temporary solution. Here’s another example. Checking his phone versus tolerating.

Not knowing that scroll is going to give you a hit. Okay? Nothing today. Nothing today until tomorrow when you need that hit again.

Okay? The muscle is building the capacity to not know in real time and stay regulated anyway. Okay? And I want you to hear this part.

That muscle isn’t about rebuilding trust in him. It’s rebuilding trust in yourself. It’s about building trust in yourself. Okay?

We make it about them. It’s not about them. It’s about you. It’s about getting back in your body and building trust that I don’t have to be hyper vigilant to know that I’m safe.

Because who wants that for the rest of your life? Not I. Right. It’s going.

I will Know if there’s something off, I will know. And for right now, I’m not reaching for that. I’m not reaching for that quick pill that’s going to quiet this down. I’m going to sit in this discomfort, grow my muscle to metabolize it, and know that if I need to pay attention to something, I will know and I will act.

All right, here’s another one. Venting on repeat versus sitting with it. Metabolizing it. Telling the story again and again to your friend.

Getting the validation hit, feeling lighter for an hour, feeling that relief. And there’s nothing wrong with needing it sometimes. Hear me out. We all do this.

I do this, okay? But it’s not the same as slower, less glamorous work. Doing the reps, doing the reps. Growing your capacity.

The somatic work, the writing, the grieving, the feeling all the way through, the sitting with truth. That changes what the story does to your body. The next time you tell it, the story itself changes. You don’t need to be talking about it every day to your best friend because you have the capacity to sit with it yourself.

Okay, here’s another. Staying busy versus letting yourself collapse, throwing yourself into work, the kids, the house, anything that keeps you moving so you don’t have to feel it. Right? You know this one?

You know this one. Distract, distract. Look away. Throw myself into somebody else’s stuff.

All right, this is over functioning. And it’s one of the most well disguised relief habits there is. Because from the outside, it looks like strength, from the outside it looks like strength. But from the inside, you need more and more and more of it to feel that relief, to feel stable.

And over time, you will collapse. Over time, you will collapse from your own exhaustion. All right? Okay, now I’m going to go somewhere a little more tender into the marriage itself with two people.

All right, here’s an example. You get into an argument or you’ve. It feels tense and you reach for being intimate with each other, having sex, being intimate with each other. Instead of doing the repair that earns closeness, it’s putting the cart in front of the horse.

It’s saying, let’s do this first. And that will kind of ease all the tension and then that will kind of fix it. And we’ll feel close. We’ll have that, that quick hit of oxytocin that will make us feel more calm and feel better.

Right? You may be had a tense moment, a, uh, tense day, a tense week. And initiating intimacy can close that gap fast. It really can.

That, uh, oxytocin does its job. You both feel better, the air feels clear. But please hear me here, okay? This is very nuanced.

Sex can absolutely be part of real repair. But if it’s the thing that you reach for instead of the conversation, it’s relief standing in for repair. And the same rupture will show up again just wearing

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a different outfit. And if we reach for the same thing, we’re never going to slow down and grow our muscle to understand and sit in the discomfort of real repair. All right? Sometimes the relief looks like a talk that gets you back to status quo versus the talk that actually moves something.

There’s a conversation where you both say just enough to de escalate. I hear you. I’m sorry. Come on, let’s move forward.

And the tension in the room drops. You feel close by bedtime. And then there’s a conversation where someone says the harder, truer thing, the thing that risks not resolving by bedtime. Okay, that one’s actually honest.

And it often feels worse in the short term. That’s why we don’t like it, right? It feels worse. Our brain’s gonna come up with all kinds of stories about what’s going to happen.

I’m blowing up my life. Why did I do that? Why did I say that? Did I overstate that?

Am I too needy? But here’s the thing. This is investing in something better on the other side of this discomfort, Right? This is really important here.

A fight that resolves quickly is not always a sign of health. Sometimes it’s a sign that someone backed off the truth to get the relief of peace faster. Many of you were modeled this in your homes. You saw parents that either didn’t even have conflict or.

Or hid it, avoided conflict, and just kept everything suppressed. Or maybe they came back together really fast and it seemed like everything was fine, but they both were dying. And like such, suppressed resentment and anger and hurt, right? Compliance is not the same as honest disagreement.

Okay? Agreeing and smoothing it over, saying, you’re right, you’re right. Just to end the conflict, just to. Just to get back into status quo.

That’s not what we’re going for. Because somebody in this conversation, maybe both people, are not being honest, your nervous system will register that it’s better because the threat might be gone, but the muscle growth here has to stay in the game in the disagreement long enough to actually be known, even though it keeps the activation up longer. Okay, here’s a question I want you to think about here. When closeness arrives quickly after a rupture, does it make you grateful?

Does it make you curious? All right, what is it? Do I feel this sigh of relief? Oh, uh, dodge that bullet.

We’re okay this time? Or is there a piece of you that can be curious? How did we get there so quickly? How did that happen?

Was there actual truth? Or was there maybe avoidance of truth? Because both can look identical from the outside. You’re talking again.

You’re intimate again. The house feels calm again. Nothing’s on fire. But only one of those actually changes the marriage.

Only one of them actually changes you. All right, now, I want to be really clear about something here. Please hear me. Relief is not the enemy.

Relief is not the enemy. Sometimes the pain can feel so intense that just a little bit of blessed relief can be really what. What we really need in that moment. But I want you to keep in your back pocket just your own awareness.

This is relief. This is not repair. Why? Because guess what?

You can take that knowing and you can instigate a conversation that shines a light on it. I’ve noticed that when things get intense, this is what we tend to do. And I do enjoy this, and I do appreciate this, and I do feel relieved. But what I’m noticing is that we seem to keep revisiting, recircling, coming back to the same things over and over again.

And I’m wondering if there might be a different way to go about this. What if we held off on this and actually sat with it longer? Or you, instead of talking about it, you could just keep it in your back pocket and do it different next time. All right?

Sometimes relief is needed. Sometimes we do need that ice on the muscle. All right? The line here is not to never seek relief.

The line here is know which one you’re reaching for and why. That’s it. Just know. What am I reaching for and why?

And don’t mistake the relief or repair. Don’t let the quiet convince you that something healed, okay? Don’t let the quiet convince you that something healed. All right?

Relief is not the same as repair.

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Both have their place. Both are important. But knowing your own personal way of reaching for relief is going to help you choose something different. Be on to yourself.

Just be onto yourself. All right? And as I mentioned before, as you keep working this, as you keep just day by day, little by little, you’re going to grow your inner strength so much to where you won’t be able to even tolerate the relief, because you will know it’s not the real thing. You will know it’s not the real thing.

Why would you want that when you can have that right? Why would I reach for that? I want the real thing. That’s what we’re going for here.

Not the cheap substitutes, not the quick little fill ins. Both have their place. But what we’re going for is that truth all the way out. What do I actually want?

What do I desire? What does it look like when I actually let myself be the center of my own life? We’re all meant to be the center of our own lives. What happens when I let myself be the center of my own life and don’t try to manage anyone else’s comfort and tolerate my own discomfort in service of the life that I really, really want?

That’s what I want for all of you. Okay. That’s what I want for all of you. All right, my friends, wonderful to be with you today.

Go check out the get your life back course. It will be limited time that this is available, especially at the price that it’s available. I would love to hang out with you in the Telegram channel this summer. It’s going to be a fun group.

I’ll be dropping in teachings and it’ll be a really fun place to be. And you can get your questions answered directly from me in the office hours. You can drop in questions anytime and I will be responding to them during office hours. It’s going to be a blast.

Okay, go get those. It’ll be great support through the summer as I create what’s coming next. I guarantee it’s going to be good. All right.

So wonderful to be here with you. Take care.

Thank you for listening to the Heal from 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 athttps://andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. Again, it’s https://andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. I will see you next time,