Self-confronting | Ep #80

I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal From Infidelity Podcast,
episode number 80, Self-confronting.

Hello, and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity Podcast, where courageous
women learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal, but to become
the boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions of themselves
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Stick around to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks
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Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

Hey, everybody. I’m going to jump right into episode number 80 here,
Self-Confrontation. Last week, we talked about self-soothing and
preparation for this episode about self-confrontation, so I’m going to just
go. I’m recording this the night before my family and I take off for a trip
to California. We are getting out of town, getting to warmer skies. I’m so
excited, but it’s been a little crazy trying to get out the door with a
three-month-old and all of her stuff. I forget how much stuff babies have.

Anyways, self-confrontation, what is it? As it sounds by the name it’s
confronting yourself, seeing yourself as you really are, looking at
yourself, really seeing yourself. As I was preparing this episode, I was
thinking about a couple examples from the New Testament. I know not all of
you are religious. I know a lot of you are. Whether you are or not, just
listen for a little bit, and you can learn from the examples that I’m
sharing.

I’m going to give two examples, one of when we watch a really good example
of self-confrontation, and another where we’re taught some things about how
to confront ourselves, okay? First of all, in the New Testament, Jesus
Christ goes to His disciples, to His apostles, and He tells them that one
of them is going to betray Him, and they all get sad. They’re sad. They
don’t want to betray Him and they say these words, “Lord, is it I?” They
demonstrated humility. They demonstrated wanting to know and wanting to
correct, ‘kay? That’s one example.

Another is found in the Book of Matthew, Matthew 7:3-5: “And why beholdest
thou the moat that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam
that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, ‘Let me pull
out the moat out of thine eye, and behold, a beam is in thine own eye’? The
hypocrite first cast out the beam out of thine own eye and then shout thou
see clearly to cast out the moat out of thy brother’s eye.”

Before I go any further, I just want to say that I know many of you have
been very deeply hurt by your partner or your spouse, deeply, deeply hurt.
I know many of you believe I would never do such a thing and you probably
believe correctly in many ways, okay? However, for us to move forward and
to heal and to step into the next version ourselves, this is still
essential. Why? Because it gives us clarity. Self-confrontation gives us
clarity. It helps us to know exactly what we want to work on. It helps us
to know when we are growing, help us to know what we need to address in our
relationships, and how we want to show up. Self-confrontation has a high
personal reward. You can see your spouse through a clearer lens because you
aren’t seeing them as the person that you need to see them as.

Let me explain what I mean by that. We often, when we are not
self-confronting, see our spouse in a way that we want to see them so that
it reflects back on us what we want to see in ourselves, so if our spouse
is behaving in a way that we don’t like, it’s easier to blame them for
feeling bad ourselves, like, “You hurt me. I don’t want to feel bad. If you
would just do this and that and that, then I wouldn’t feel so bad.” Yeah,
the hurt is real, okay, I’m not negating that.

But oftentimes, where some of that is coming from is because it’s making us
question our own goodness, our own validity, our own lovability, and so we
think, “Well, if they would do this or not do this, then I get to feel this
way about me.” With self-confrontation, we’re letting them do them and
letting us do us. We’re really getting clear on who we are. Lord, is it? I,
who am I? What is my contribution?

‘Kay, with infidelity, it’s very easy to see the problems with our spouse
to see where they let go of integrity. We can see the breaks in their
character, and often, we feel like we have to control them and feel
powerless ourselves without things to work on ourselves, ‘kay? If we’re
just sitting there spending all of our energy, trying to control another
person, it’s exhausting, right, and ultimately, we’re missing an
opportunity for ourselves to grow.

Some examples, ‘kay? One example is a client learning to communicate wants
and needs better without expecting the spouse to mind-read and then
becoming resentful when they don’t mind-read, ‘kay? This would be an area
to self-confront to say, “I expect these things for my spouse, but I have
not articulated it, and because they’re not giving it to me, I’m going to
resent them instead because that’s easier than really getting clear on what
I want, and then communicating it, knowing that he might say no, and then
I’d have to feel bad.”

Example number two: letting unprocessed anger turn into bitterness, and no
matter how hard he tries, you still feel resentful. This is something to
self-confront about, so look at yourself and go, “Why am I holding onto
this? How is it serving me to be bitter? Do I like how I show up when I am
bitter or resentful?”

Number three: keeping so involved with kids or work to avoid things that
are difficult in marriage. We do this sometimes because being around our
spouse sometimes can feel like a mirror being held up to ourselves that
feels uncomfortable, so we keep busy and scramble to be the super mom and
do all the things. Often, it’s to avoid. With self-confronting in this
space, you can look at why you’re avoiding. What is it that I’m avoiding?
What would happen if I stopped avoiding? What would change? How could I
grow?

Number four. Just to say, there are so many examples I can give here, there
are so many, I’m just giving a few, but there’s lots of areas where we can
self-confront. Number four: not looking closely at why you are not
interested in intimacy. Keeping things surface level, “I have a headache.”
Why do you always have a headache? Why are you too tired? What is
underneath that? What’s under not being interested in intimacy? Now, I
understand that with infidelity, it often can make us not as interested in
intimacy, it cannot feel safe, but I’m talking even before that, before
this occurred, if we are avoidant of intimacy, keeping it very surface
level, keeping it very kind of cold. Why? What’s actually going on? What
are you afraid of? What needs to be addressed? What needs to be allowed to
be seen? What happens when we do see ourselves? What becomes available to
us?

Here are some characteristics of seeing ourselves. Less anxiety and shame
and more acceptance, feeling more relaxed. We might feel hurt. We might
feel disappointed in some of the things that we do, but it feels like
healing pain rather than contracting against it, and arguing with it.

Several episodes ago, I did an episode called Clean Pain, Dirty Pain.
Today, I’m going to talk a little bit more about this. When we’re looking
at ourselves and self-confronting from a place of dirty pain, we are
arguing with what we see. We are defending deflecting, denying, not
accepting, not accepting the past, pushing against it. This creates dodging
yourself, hiding. This creates repeating the same patterns over and over
again. Clean pain from the space creates clean action, ‘kay, moving forward
from an accurate self-picture, accepting the past and accepting what
currently is and using that information to determine the next steps.

For example, let’s say the one about the example of keeping so busy with
kids and work to not have to deal with hard things in marriage, one who
really looks at that and self-confronts might see that the reason they
don’t want to be emotionally intimate with their partner and spend time
with them is because they’re afraid that their spouse might not want to.
They’re afraid that they might be rejected, ‘kay, so they keep avoiding.
From this space of self-confrontation, from this space of clean action, you
step into it, you go and you make attempts to repair attempts to be with
this person knowing full well that it might hurt, but it’s coming from this
place of clarity and courage, so much courage, ‘kay?

Now, I want to make a point that this is a continuous process. It is not
one-and-done, ‘kay? Several episodes ago as well, I talked about after my
divorce, doing this work, I remember it. I remember going, “Okay, Andrea,
where did I hide? Where did I avoid? Where did I deflect? Where did I
defend?” I found some stuff and it hurt. Some of it I found after he died
and I have not been able to apologize, right? There are things that I have
to just wait until a later time to apologize for, and I’m okay with that.

Acceptance of myself looks like this: I know that I made some mistakes. I
also know that I did the best that I could with where I was, and I know
that as I grow and mature, I trust myself that I will grow and mature in
how I show up, that I’ll do better with the new information that I have
found. Guess what? I’ll continue this process until I die. All of us will
because we’re all flawed. We’re going to keep doing this over and over
again. It’s not one-and-done and it’s okay, ‘kay?

Even though you did not betray the trust in the relationship through
infidelity, you are doing yourself a disservice to not self-confront. When
we avoid this work, we tend to create the same situations over and over
again. Self-evaluation is a gift you give yourself, even if it’s hard, even
if it’s painful. You people that are listening to this podcast, you’re
courageous. You are courageous. It takes courage and you’ve got courage. It
takes courage to see yourself, to really, truly see yourself and to go,
“Oh, that hurts a little bit,” right? “Oh, that stings.” Then you get to
fix it. You get to move forward. All of you have an opportunity to be
heroic. Whether you are alone or with your partner, you can heroic just for
yourself.

I want you to think for a minute about your favorite movie. In every good
story, there’s a hero, and there comes a time where the conflict becomes
unbearable to the hero and self-confrontation must occur. My favorite movie
is Pride and Prejudice. In Pride and Prejudice, both Mr. Darcy and
Elizabeth Bennet have to self-confront. They both have to look at their
pride and their prejudice, right? Hence the name, Pride and Prejudice. They
have to see it. They have to see where they have been dead wrong, dead
wrong, where they made assumptions that were false, where they made
judgments that were false. If they would not have done that, they would not
have found the love that they did. Is this fictional? Yes, it’s fictional,
but sometimes a good fiction serves well, right?

Spider-Man, obviously also fictional, although I think it would be cool if
it was real. Spider-Man has to self-confront after his uncle dies. He has
to see where he has been prideful and arrogant and angry and decide to do
something about it and then he goes and saves the world, right? We all have
heroic qualities inside of us. We all do. Self-confronting is a gift and a
tool that we can use to step into who we are meant to be. It’s a way to
stop making excuses. It’s a way to say, “This is the thing that I want and
I’m done making excuses. This is what I want and this is why I have not
been able to create it, because I keep holding onto this story. I keep
doing this thing. I keep waiting for my spouse to do this thing.”

It’s having the courage to really tell yourself the truth and then do
something with it and then using the tools that I taught last week about
self-soothing, loving yourself, having compassion, practicing compassion,
determining how you want to grow, who you want to become for you. For you.
This is a gift you’re giving you. It’s not to make you more worthy. It’s
not to make you more lovable, ‘kay? It’s for you to grow your trust of
yourself that you’ve got you. Yes, other people benefit from it, but you,
my friend, benefit the most. It’s a gift. Let’s all go self-confront.
Doesn’t that fun? Super fun.

All right, my friends, this is a shorter episode today. We’ve had a lot of
talk leading up to this episode. I hope that you have enjoyed it. I hope
that you’ve enjoyed the last few weeks where we’ve talked about holding
onto ourself. Holding onto ourself is so powerful, so powerful and this is
just one huge piece of that. We can hold onto ourselves when we know
ourselves, right, when we know who we are, all of it.

I want to add one more quick thing. Another huge part of self-confronting
is allowing for the good, allowing ourselves to own all the wonderful
things about us, to really own our own power, to own our own strength, to
know who we are, all of it, so when you’re doing this work, when you’re
looking at what you see, see all of you in your magnificence, ‘kay, your
strength, your weakness, your flaws, your strengths, all of it. ‘Kay,
sending you so much love, and I will see you next week. All right, bye-bye.

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
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it’s andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. I will see you next time.