I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, episode number 246, “Is this a Human Mistake or a Deal Breaker”?

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 trial 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.

Hi, everybody. Welcome, welcome back to another episode of Heal From Infidelity coming at you today. For any of you who are watching this on YouTube, if you didn’t know that I have YouTube. I have YouTube.

There’s YouTube videos of me recording these in video form, so you can go check those out. I’m kind of recently started that, so there’s not a huge, huge backlog, but there are YouTube videos there. Anyway, for those of you watching on that, there’s a little change about me today, which is super fun. I had Lasik eye surgery this week.

Just. Let’s see. Today. It was just earlier this week, and my eyes are.

I can see perfectly. It’s something to get used to. It’s kind of strange to get used to, but I’m. I’m so grateful.

What a. Ah, What a miracle, right? What a miracle to be able to fix my eyes. Oh, uh, it blows my mind.

I went in 24 hours after it was done, and I have 2020 in one eye, 2015 in the other. And they’re just going to get better. So I think that’s pretty cool, Pretty amazing. I’m really glad to be with you today.

We’re going to be talking about some potent things. Like, it’s going to be a really powerful episode. This is one that I just kind of know is going to be one you’re going to want to go back to again and again. You might want to take notes with this one.

It’s one that is a hot topic. It’s something that I get questions about a lot about how to know if it’s a deal breaker. How do I know if this is the thing that’s the thing that says either I’m all in or I’m out. Right.

So we’re going to be talking in great detail about that today. Before I dive into that, I need to Share another little, a little life update I have. I’m in the middle of a lot of, of, uh, changes in the business. I, I’ve been talking about the truth all the way out.

I have a whole new structure, whole thing that I’m, I’m creating right now that’s requiring a lot of my creative force and it’s going to be amazing and powerful. A whole new framework of how I do what I do. It’s in process, it’s being, the trainings are being made, being recorded. I’m going to have something for my men, something for my women, and it’s coming soon, but it’s requiring a lot while simultaneously really, really, really wanting more time with my children while they are home for the summer.

So I’ve been thinking about that a lot and what I’ve decided is for the next little bit, I’m going to only do podcasts every other week. I’m going to give that creative force to the things that I’m creating and to my children. And I’ll be still recording every other week, but not every week for the summer. It’s just gonna be a little bit slower.

So. All right, keep an eye out every other week and I will keep you updated on things as they come. Okay? All right.

Actually, one more thing before I jump into it. I am right now with my current get your life back after infidelity program. I’m not changing the name of the program, but I am redoing some of the content. And right now what I am offering is that, uh, if you’ve been sitting on the fence of joining the program, I have it priced at an amazing price.

You can get in now, right now, and have a few additional months. It’s a six month program and you can join now. And when all the new content is launched with a new cohort, with the new group that starts this fall, you will be a part of that cohort, but you will have already been in since now and going through all of the content that’s already there. So it’s basically like getting three months in the program for free and having all of the content that’s there.

There’s so much, there’s so much content there, plus all the new content starting this fall with a new cohort. So if this is something that interests you, you can send an application. If you’ve already applied, just reach out to our support team, hellondrea giles.com and we can get you in. Okay.

I’d love to have you start. All right, so let’s talk about human mistakes versus deal breakers. Okay,

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why now? Why this conversation? I want to tell you where this came from for me. So I have a really good friend who, who I’ve learned a lot from.

And I started as a student of this person. Now, now this person has become a dear friend. And we were having a conversation recently, and we were talking about how even in the best relationships, we do not show up, come through a hundred percent of the time. And that best case scenario, something like 70 to 80% is actually more like it.

And I was listening to that and just processing that. And I came back to her in that conversation. It was over the phone. And I said, you know, I think the biggest difference is not.

Not that we don’t get it right all the time, but how does each person show up in an attempt to repair, to come back together, to restore, to repair? And that, uh, that piece, to me feels way more important than never getting it wrong, than never messing up. Okay, now, as I’ve thought about this topic, what I really understand is that one of the hardest parts of rebuilding trust is learning the difference between something that really simply is human and something that genuinely threatens the foundation of the relationship. If we treat every mistake like a betrayal, no relationship is going to survive.

Right? Nothing’s gonna survive. And if we excuse every betrayal as a mistake, trust never gets rebuilt. So how do we know the difference?

This is what we’re gonna talk about today. Okay? All right, part one here. The fantasy of never again.

One of the most understandable responses after betrayal is creating a big, long list of never again promises. I need you to promise me that you’ll never again lie, never again hurt me, never disappoint me or trigger me. Don’t make me question you. Don’t ever forget, never get defensive, never again miss something important.

This intention makes a lot of sense, right? We want to keep ourselves safe. We want to know if this is somebody that’s going to try actively to protect our heart or if they’re going to be careless and not protect our heart. We have been deeply hurt.

We want certainty. We want guarantees, right? We want safety. We want to know that what happened won’t happen again.

Now, the problem here is that some of those promises are realistic, but some aren’t. And when we lump them all together, we can create a standard that no human being can actually meet. Trust is not built through perfection. Trust is built through integrity.

And they are not the same thing. Okay? Integrity doesn’t mean I never miss. It means I tell the truth when I do integrity doesn’t mean I never fail.

It means I take responsibility when I fail. Integrity doesn’t mean I never hurt someone. It means I care deeply about the impact when I do. Okay, so part two here.

What actually belongs in the, uh, never again category? I want to give some things that, from where I sit, from the many, many people that I’ve worked with, these are the things that I do believe deserve a hard line. Okay? Not because people are perfect, but because these behaviors directly, directly undermine the foundation of trust.

You’re not going to get far if these things are happening. Okay, so here’s some examples. Continued contact with the affair partner. Secret relationships.

Hidden accounts. Ongoing deception. Gaslighting, Active addiction. Behaviors that remain hidden.

Intentional manipulation. Repeated violations of agreed upon boundaries. Now, these are not simple human mistakes. These are choices.

They’re choices. These are trust violations. These are foundation issues. Now, someone may occasionally forget a grocery item, but someone does not accidentally maintain a secret relationship.

You don’t just accidentally do that. Someone may become defensive in a difficult conversation, totally human. Someone might be tired or hungry and have physical needs where they might be a little shorter than they would be otherwise. Right?

This can be that human part of us showing up. But someone does not accidentally create a hidden email account. One is humanity. The other is integrity.

And if we confuse the two, we lose clarity. Now, there’s this space that I’m going to call the blurry middle. And this is where many people get stuck, okay? Because most relationship pain doesn’t happen in the obvious

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categories. It happens in the gray areas. You said you’d be home at 6. You arrived at 7.

You forgot something important. You got defensive. You weren’t present. You were checked out.

You missed your partner’s bid for connection. They’re trying to connect with you and you missed it. You dropped the ball. Completely dropped the ball.

You got distracted. You didn’t follow through. Okay? These things absolutely matter.

And sometimes they matter a lot, especially when they occur repeatedly. And this is where many people become confused because they start asking, am m I expecting too much? Am I being too sensitive? Should I just let this go?

Maybe this really isn’t a big deal and I’m making a big deal out of it. But I think that there’s a better question here. Not simply did they mess up, but what happened after they messed up? What happened after they messed up?

Okay, on to part three. Sometimes the response is the real issue. It’s not that they were late. It’s not those things.

It’s their response. And this is where discernment becomes so important. Sometimes people ask me, Andrea Giles, is this a deal breaker? And my answer is, often, tell me what happened after it happened, what happened next?

Because sometimes the event itself isn’t what destroyed trust. The response to the event does. Let’s say your partner forgets something important. Human mistake.

Right? Human mistake. You may feel disappointed, you bring it up. Okay, now we learn much from what happens next about their ability to be with you, to sit with you, to hear you.

Okay, so do they say, oh, my goodness, you’re right, I completely forgot. I can see why that hurt. How can I make it right? Or do they say, you’re too sensitive, it wasn’t a big deal.

Why are you making such a big thing out of this? I said I, uh, was sorry. Nothing I ever do is enough for you. It’s the same mistake with a very, very different outcome.

One will lead towards putting drops of trust into a trust bucket, and one will lead to pulling them out. All right, let’s say that they said they’d be home at 6 and arrived at 7. Right? That can be frustrating.

It can be a little bit nerve wracking if this is something that happened during the affair where they would come home at different times with no explanation. So it can be triggering, sometimes it can be annoying. Right, but is it actually betrayal? Not necessarily.

Right. But what happens next? Do they communicate? Do they acknowledge the impact?

Do they apologize? Do they own it? Or do they lie, get defensive, turn the conversation back on you, make you the problem. Refuse accountability.

Because here’s what I’ve learned, okay? Many relationship problems are not created by the original mistake. They’re created by the inability to repair the mistake. The inability, the unwillingness, the pride of.

I won’t. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to admit that I did anything wrong here. The missed target isn’t what creates lasting damage.

It’s the refusal to acknowledge it that does. And sometimes what makes something become a deal breaker isn’t the original behavior, Right? It’s the repeated pattern of defensiveness, blame, minimization, dishonesty, and refusal to repair afterward. And I will use myself as an example here.

In my first marriage, it wasn’t the infidelity. I stuck around. I was there, I was willing. We went to therapy.

I was open. I’ve shared in a previous episode how I really felt like I’m going to give all the love that I have and show up in the most powerful way that I can. And I was willing. And ultimately I was shown in many, many ways in, uh, These smaller things of not returning phone calls, of not being where he said he would, of a defensiveness, of arguing, of on and on and on, that this is not a person who’s actually interested in repair.

This is a person that actually wants to hide more. And that that’s not a relationship that will ever build the kind of trust that I need to be safe here or for my family. Okay. It wasn’t about the infidelity.

And many of you find yourself in that same situation where it’s not the initial infidelity, it’s things that come up later. And how this person learns how to repair. Are they going back to those same patterns or are they learning a new way? Right.

Okay. I also want to say that this is for both of you. It’s not just the person who was unfaithful. In order to actually build something sustainable, this has to go both ways.

It has to go both ways. Everyone involved has to learn how to repair. None of us are above any

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kind of reproach. None of us are perfect. Right? None of us just get it right all the time.

None of us never. And we never will. So it makes sense that we have to learn how to apologize. Right.

I actually had a conversation with my daughter recently where she’s like, mom, it’s so hard for me to apologize. It’s so hard. And I asked her, why, tell me more. And she shared with me about how when she was younger with her dad, when she would try to repair, he would turn it back on her and say things like, why even apologize?

You’re just going to do it again tomorrow. And it taught her that apology would not be met with any kind of attempt on his side to also repair, to connect. And that, uh, taught her that it wasn’t even safe to apologize, that it would be turned against her. And I’m so glad she shared that with me.

And we had a really beautiful conversation about has to go both ways. Right. If we really want the kind of relationship we say we want, we have to both be invested in this. Okay?

It takes both of us. All right? Okay. So in this next part, I want to talk about what your body might actually be responding to in these misses And I think this is something that we get wrong a lot, too.

Sometimes people think that they’re upset about the forgotten errand, like, I really needed you to actually go to the post office or grab that thing from the store or whatever it may be. Okay. Or they might have forgotten to do the dishes or they’re late or they. They missed it didn’t respond to a text or they.

They gave a defensive response. Often, though, that’s not what their nervous system is responding to. They’re responding to what the moment means. They’re responding to the pattern.

And I will say that sometimes, okay, oftentimes we might make up a meaning. That’s not entirely true, but it’s worth, uh, slowing down and looking at. They’re responding to whether they feel alone, whether they feel considered, whether they feel valued, important, seen, whether they feel like the other person is willing to protect the relationship with them or if they’re on their own. Okay?

I’ve worked with many people who absolutely can tolerate a mistake. They’re not going for perfection. What they can’t tolerate is being dismissed. They can tolerate imperfection, but they cannot tolerate being gaslit.

They can tolerate a missed target, but they cannot tolerate feeling like they’re the only one carrying the weight of the relationship. Okay? The only one paying attention or protecting connection or reaching back. And that’s why the response, the repair matters so much, because the response tells us something important.

It tells us about this person’s character, about their humility, about their emotional maturity. It tells us about accountability. It tells us whether growth is actually possible. Okay?

Now, this skill of repair is a skill that most people never learn because we. Most of us have not been modeled. It. Most of us have not seen what healthy repair looks like.

What we’ve seen is two extremes. Defensiveness or appeasement. Okay. Defensiveness looks like.

It’s not my fault. You’re overreacting. I didn’t mean it. You’re making too much of this.

Can we just move on? I know in my home growing up, it was comments like, you’re so ungrateful. If you knew how good you had it, you wouldn’t be complaining about this, Right? Just like shutting.

Shutting us down when we tried to talk about things. Right? Appeasement. Uh, sounds like I’m horrible.

I’m the worst. I’ll do anything. Please stop being upset. When is it going to be enough for you?

I’m such a failure. I’ll just keep disappointing you. Right? And neither creates safety, and neither creates trust.

Neither. Right? Both are attempts to escape discomfort. And this is really important.

This is important. Repair is not relief. They are not the same thing. Repair is not relief.

Okay? Relief seeks to end discomfort. Repair seeks to restore connection. And one is a harder ask.

Relief asks, how do I make this stop? Repair asks, how do I understand what happened? Relief wants forgiveness quickly. They want to move on.

Can’t we just move on, sweep it under the rug. Why do we need to talk about it again? Right. Repair wants to slow it down and understand first, relief once the tension gone, and repair once the relationship strengthened.

And this is why flowers and grand gestures and promises and apologies can sometimes feel empty. It’s not because they’re bad, but because they may be attempts

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at, uh, relief rather than repair. It may be trying to get back into your good graces without actually showing up in a really courageous way. They may be just trying to smooth things over. But here’s the thing.

Real repair requires real honesty and presence and humility, accountability, curiosity, a willingness to stay in the conversation. A, ah, willingness to understand the impact rather than defend your intention. Okay. Even if their intention was not to blow you off or hurt you in some way, it’s saying, I want to understand how this impacted you.

Right. All right. So what does real repair sound like? Real repair sounds like, I can see how that impacted you.

I can understand why that hurt and why you might feel that way. I see it. I wish I had handled that differently. I understand why trust was affected.

I’m not asking you to get over it. I want to understand. I want to learn from this. I don’t want to just feel better.

I want to do better. Okay. Notice what’s absent here. There’s no defensiveness.

There’s no excuses or justification or minimization or pressure. Repair stays present with the impact. Okay, I want to back up to one word I just said. I said pressure.

There’s no pressure that the other person moves quickly to repair. Although that would be a, uh, relief and be comfortable. This repair process requires hanging out in the discomfort as long as is needed so there’s no pressure on the other person that they have to get. Get with it now and see it your way.

Right. We allow it to settle on its own in the, uh, in a way that feels honest. Right. Repair stays present with the impact even when it’s uncomfortable.

Especially when it’s uncomfortable. All right, now let’s talk about behavior change and an ingredient that’s often missing when repair is. Is attempting to be made. Okay.

We can say words. Words are potent. Words do matter. But words are not enough.

They are not enough. Repair ultimately requires action. If someone says, I, I’m sorry, I was late, and they make adjustments, that builds trust. If someone says, I’m sorry, I got defensive, and then work on catching themselves more quickly, that builds trust, like this person means it.

If someone says, I understand how that affected you, and they consistently show up differently that builds trust. However, if someone says, I’m sorry, and nothing changes, trust doesn’t grow. It’s just empty words. Because trust is built when words and behavior begin to match not perfectly, but consistently.

Okay. Not perfectly, but consistently. Now, in the end, repair creates far more trust than perfection. I strongly, strongly believe that the strongest relationships are not the relationships with the fewest ruptures.

They’re the relationships with the strongest repair, with the most honesty. Or they have both worked through so much that they’re able to say the truth all the way out, that they are able to hear somebody else’s truth all the way out and grow their capacity to sit in that all. Uh, right. When you think about a healthy parent and child relationship, the parent will absolutely miss things.

And the child will feel hurt. May feel hurt, right? There will be misunderstandings. There will be moments of disconnection.

But the trust comes from knowing when we lose connection, we find each other again. Okay? I believe that healthy marriages work the exact same way. Not because people never fail, but because they know how to reach back for each other.

They know how to tell the truth. They know how to own their impact. They know how to repair. The goal is not to find someone who never misses the mark.

The goal is to find someone who doesn’t abandon accountability when they do, or to become this person and learn if the person you’re with is willing to do this growth as well. All right? Because every relationship will experience rupture.

Everyone.

But not every relationship contains the skills necessary for repair. All right? So if you are trying to rebuild trust, ask yourself this. Am I looking for perfection?

Or, um, am I looking for integrity? Am I asking for someone to never make a mistake again? Or am I asking for someone who knows how to repair? Okay, There are some things that should be never again, absolutely. But there are also moments when the healthiest thing we can do is recognize

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the difference between a human mistake and a true threat to the foundation of the relationship. Because trust will never be built through perfection. It will be built through honesty, accountability, consistency, and the willingness to reach back toward each other when we’ve missed the mark. Not making it one person’s job, like you’re the repair person.

I know that my spouse or partner will always come to me, so I don’t have to learn how to do that. Nope, nope, nope, nope. It takes two, okay? The safest relationships are not the ones who have never had a break, a problem, a rupture.

They’re the ones where both people know how to find each other again, how to repair. And sometimes the question is not, did they make a mistake? The question is, when they made the mistake, what came next? What did they do next?

Because that answer will often tell you far more about the future of the relationship than the mistake itself. All right, that’s what I’ve got for you today. Thank you so much for being here. If you have not yet taken the time to leave a review for this podcast, go into the show Notes no matter where you listen to this podcast, you can click on one button and fill it out and it will put it wherever you listen.

Okay, the reviews help so much. A five star review with some, um, words around how it has impacted you. You could put whatever name in you want so you can do it anonymously. It helps so much to help other people who are in this situation find this podcast easily and get the help that they need.

So I ask you, if you have not yet, please go ahead and rate the podcast and thank you so much and I’ll see you next time. 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.