I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 178, Self-Repair After Betrayal. Hello and welcome to the
Heal from Infidelity podcast for 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 ever. If you know there’s more
for you than the life you’re currently living but don’t quite know how to
get there, you are in the right place. Stick around to learn how to create
a life that will knock your own socks off. Is it possible? It is, and I’m
here to show you how I’m your host, Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive
in.

(00:49):

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of Heal from
Infidelity. As always, delighted to be here today with you. Today we’re
going to talk about self-repair, what it is, what it means, why it matters,
how to do it. Okay? That’s where we’re going today. Today we’re just going
to go ahead and get started and jump right in. Alright, how many of you
have been so focused on fixing a relationship that you forgot about the
relationship with yourself in the process after infidelity? It can be so
urgent. It can feel so instinctual to want to hurry and repair the
relationship, working on trust, communication, deciding whether to stay or
go or being in a really reactive mode of what’s he going to do? What’s she
going to do? Are they choosing me? Are they not choosing me? To where this
piece of self-repair is just skipped over?

(01:53):

This can feel really instinctual like you’re not even thinking about it.
While healing the relationship is important, what’s more important is
healing our relationship with ourselves, and we often neglect that and it
is the most critical repair because without self-repair, even the most
fixed relationships won’t feel safe and they won’t feel fulfilling, and
sometimes the relationships need to be let go of. You need to leave them or
let somebody choose to leave, and this is where this work of self-repair
becomes even more important. So we don’t take on any meanings about
somebody else’s choices that weren’t actually our thinking, that were not
enough or that if we were better, et cetera, et cetera. Okay? The first
part here that I want to talk about is how infidelity shatters self-trust.
Beyond the betrayal, there’s a deep rupture in how we see ourselves. It can
be so fast, just so fast that we had this idea, this sense of stability,
this sense of who we were, this sense of the ground underneath us, and just
like that, it can just be kind of ripped out from under us.

(03:15):

Some common things that come up are, how did I not see this? How did I not
know? Or why did I ignore this or that? Why did I not push on this more?
What was wrong with me that I didn’t push on it more? Was I not enough? Can
I ever trust my own judgment? Again, we tend to abandon ourselves in this
process, neglecting our needs, silencing our emotions, making choices from
fear and survival and wanting to not be rejected and not feel loss rather
than self-worth. I’ve seen this again and again and again where I’ll talk to
people who are looking to work with me, and many of them have carried around
really deep wounds for years, and what they’re thinking is a relationship
problem with their spouse and that if they would do this and this and this,
then I would feel different.

(04:16):

And really it’s just a relationship issue with themselves that they have a
damaged relationship with themselves and it is clouding everything. It’s
making it so they can’t actually see the relationship with anyone else
through a clear lens. It’s making it cloudy and mucky and dark because they
see themselves through a specific lens. They see everything through that
lens. There’s no clarity there. There’s no real clarity there. They see the
relationship through the lens of, I’m not quite enough. I’m not quite worth
fighting for, or I think I’m kind of worth fighting for in theory, but I
don’t feel it inside. I’m so ashamed. I’m so embarrassed. If I were really
amazing or beautiful enough or intimate enough, then he wouldn’t have done
this, and so I’m just going to mask how I feel. I’m going to just hope that
I don’t get rejected, right? There’s so much betrayal that we do to
ourselves in the aftermath of our spouse’s betrayal, and there’s likely
betrayal before it ever happened where we are minimizing patterns that we
see in the relationship where we’re minimizing areas that we feel
uncomfortable and saying it’s for the sake of the relationship when in
reality it’s to avoid pain and it’s to avoid confrontation.

(05:38):

So let’s now dive into part two of this, which is why do we focus so much
on repairing the relationship first? There is a good reason. It feels more
urgent. It feels more urgent. There’s a fear of losing the relationship. We
want stability. We might feel pressure from others to keep the relationship
together, to just make it work, and we might have people pleasing
tendencies to try to please the people around us by trying to be who they
tell us we should be rather than really diving into what we want. This is
another big one, focusing on repairing the relationship can give an
illusion of control. It might make us feel like we’re regaining some
control in a situation that has left us feeling out of control or like an
uncontrollable situation. So if we’ve got out our little planners and we’ve
got all the things down of what we’re doing and how we’re working on things
and what he’s doing and how he’s working on things, it can make us feel
some kind of control. But the reality is that if anything falls through the
cracks there, we quickly spiral out of control because we’re not dealing
with the actual core wound, which is the wound of our own sense of who we
are. When we skip self-repair, this is actually what happens. Our anxiety
stays high because we’re using that need to control as a way to be
hypervigilant about their choices. Instead of feeling safe in our own,
we’re putting all of our focus on them. We’re giving all of our authority,
all of our power over to them.

(07:26):

Resentment builds. We do the work that’s on our little checklist. Okay,
we’re doing the work, we’re checking in, we’re having accountability talks.
We might be going to therapy, we might be getting some coaching, whatever
it may be, but we still feel empty and unseen because this is just to save
the relationship without really looking at what we need to repair within
ourselves. And the saddest thing is we often lose ourselves further. I talk
to people all the time who have gone to a lot of therapy and then they come
find me, and a common theme that I hear is that these things didn’t work,
and it’s often because it was focused on the relationship and not on them.
It was focused on how to repair the relationship and not on how to repair
the broken relationship with themselves and letting the relationship come
next, their relationship with another individual come next.

(08:29):

When we have it in reverse order, we end up losing ourselves even further
because then we’re getting into what we think others expect of us and
letting people down, making decisions from a place of fear instead of
clarity. So what does self-repair look like? Self-repair looks like
rebuilding our self-trust. It looks like learning to listen to your again.
Okay, so for example, something happens that’s uncomfortable for you and
rather than writing it off as me just feeling crazy or me, I just need to
stuff it or me yelling and screaming it, take a beat. You take a minute and
you think about it and you go, what do I actually want to think about this?
What do I actually want to make this mean that this is showing up? Either
there’s something going on that this trigger is trying to draw my attention
to. Maybe there’s more deception.

(09:32):

Maybe there’s more happening with him that I need to see or with her if the
situation fits or maybe this is coming up now because it’s time to give it
all the love that I have so I can heal it, so it can loosen its grip on me.
That’s part of intuition. It’s part of when you hear things, when you
notice truth that comes up in you, part of learning to trust yourself is
not second guessing it and taking action on it immediately, and then
learning from that, and little by little your trust is restored that you
learn that at the end of the day people are going to do their thing and I
can count on me. I have a deep relationship with myself. I can always count
on me, and I want to go a little further on this. I would say that in my
own life, I’ve always had a strong sense of independence that I can take
care of me, but a lot of that came out of necessity because of how I was
raised.

(10:38):

A lot of it came because I had to, because I did not have a lot given to
me. I had to learn to take care of me. Now, where that has bit me in the
butt in different ways is in being sometimes too independent and avoiding
close intimacy because it feels scary or because there’s a lack of trust
that someone’s going to be there. For me, that has been part of my
self-repair is going, okay, where is my independence? Something that is a
strength and where is it actually something that’s hurting me? Where could I
set it down? Where could I receive? Where can I let people in? Where can I
soften my boundaries a little bit? Because the boundaries are not healthy.
Boundaries here to keep me from feeling uncomfortable or exposed or getting
hurt, right? Part of your self-repair is going to be learning how to
process your emotions instead of bypassing them, instead of just doing what
you’ve always done and pushing things down.

(11:43):

And again, to that example, being independent because it’s what I do and I
can just handle it and I can plow through. It’s going, I think I need to
sit in this. Sometimes it looks like grieving the naive version of you
before the betrayal going, I will never be her again. She’s gone. That girl
who just didn’t think that this would ever happen to me is long gone. It
means making space for anger and sadness and uncertainty without judgment
that you let it be, that you let yourself be a human with human emotions
and give space to them and learn the practice of processing your own
emotions, allowing them room in your body. It means reconnecting with your
own desires and values. Who do you want to be? Not just in this
relationship but in your life? This goes beyond. It transcends the
relationship. This is the whole what kind of energy do I want to bring to
my own life and where do the relationships fit with that?

(12:45):

When I’ve really gotten clear on what I want, what dreams and goals and
parts of myself have been neglected, I can’t tell you how many people I
have talked to, especially women who cannot tell me the last time they’ve
really thought about what they want and they don’t even know how. It’s been
so silenced in them that they don’t know how. They don’t remember the parts
of them, that dream and the parts of them that desire and that want things.
Reconnecting with your own desires and values gives you a life force. It
gives you a reason to keep showing up. It gives you a reason to keep
advocating for something more. Putting your stake in the ground of wanting
more and that I’m willing to stand for it. Knowing that you will stand up
for you is huge, knowing that you will be there for you knowing that I
haven’t always been there for me, but I will be here for you now.

(13:47):

I will be here for you. Now, I was embarrassed of you. I was embarrassed of
this part of me that was so timid, that was so afraid, that was so afraid
of conflict, that was so afraid of being left, so afraid of a reaction that
would feel scary to me or that would make me feel small, and so I made
myself small beforehand. I shrunk myself beforehand so that somebody else
couldn’t, I’m sorry, and instead of shrinking myself again, and instead of
trying to cut that part off of me and feeling ashamed of it, I’m pulling up
a chair offering some compassion and saying, of course you did it that way
because that’s the only way you knew how you are trying to survive, and part
of me showing up for you. Now, this part of me that I’ve wanted to cut off
is by pulling up a chair and saying, you didn’t have the tools.

(14:42):

Then I’m learning how to have them now, and I’ve got, you don’t need to be
afraid anymore. I’ve got you did the best you could. Okay? When we start to
heal these parts of us, this is what happens. You stop over-functioning in
relationships. You no longer have the need to control anything. You don’t
need to function because you recognize that there’s only one of you.
There’s only so much that you even want to give and that the other person
is either going to fill in that space or you’re going to learn that they
don’t want to, and you’ll have that information. There’s room there for
people to grow. When we are operating in an over-functioning space, there’s
a lot of need for control there, and there’s not a lot of room for the
other person. Another thing that happens is you start to set clearer
boundaries without guilt, without apology, without overexplaining, I really
need this time from this time to this time when you take care of the kids
because I just know that I do and because this and this and this.

(15:52):

It’s like, no, we’re both parents here and this is what I need. What do you
need? Okay, great. I’ve got that too. We can help each other out here
instead of over explaining and the guilt piece. Let’s talk about the guilt
piece. Guilt sometimes comes out of habit, out of pattern because we’re not
used to standing up for ourselves, and sometimes the guilt comes as a
reaction to us standing up. What I want you to know is when you can do
things, knowing you might feel guilty after and then learn how to tolerate
feelings of guilt, that’s a game changer to go, ah, guilt. Alright, do I
actually need to feel guilty here? Is there something that I’ve done that I
need to apologize for? Is there something I’ve done that’s out of alignment
with who I want to be? Have I really done anything wrong?

(16:48):

No. Awesome. It’s just my protective self trying to keep myself safe by
saying, don’t do that. It’s uncomfortable guilt. I see you and I’m not
playing this game today. You can hang out for a minute, but I’m not going
to give it a whole lot of attention. Okay? You’re setting boundaries around
that even like, yeah, you’re welcome to be there, but I’m not going to give
you the microphone that I usually would. Another huge piece here when you
learn how to self-repair is engaging from a place of choice, not
desperation. You no longer desperately need something. You do things
because you want to. The paradox here is that the stronger your
relationship is with yourself, the better your external relationships
become because you’re no longer seeking from them what you need to give
yourself. Okay? I’m going to say that again. The stronger your relationship
with yourself, your external relationships become because you are no longer
seeking from them what you need to give yourself.

(17:55):

You no longer need those validation hits to feel safe. You no longer need
to be told that you’re worth loving and that you’re good enough or anything
of the sort. You know how to give it to yourself. It no longer is an issue,
what they’re doing or not doing, especially for you out there listening who
are no longer in your relationships, whether they left or whether you left,
you no longer even have to care what they’re up to. It’s like, okay, noted.
Great. Good luck to you. It doesn’t have the same weight anymore because
you haven’t given it to it. You haven’t given the weight to it. You have let
that go because you have strengthened your relationship with yourself. You
have forgiven yourself for parts that you wish you would’ve done
differently. You have forgiven yourself for the harsh judgements that
you’ve placed on yourself.

(18:50):

You have forgiven yourself for the times that you knew something was
happening and you dismissed it. You have forgiven yourself for how hard you
blamed yourself for it. You’ve let those things go. You’ve repaired and you
have a habit of repairing. You know what repair looks like for you. You
know how to speak to yourself so that you can get back into repair. Just
like any relationship, sometimes we get in disrepair with ourselves. We go
from harmony to disharmony to repair. We do this with ourselves. We get out
of harmony with ourselves. Getting back into repair is a relationship
skill, and it needs to start with us getting back into harmony with
ourselves, knowing that we’re acting in alignment with our highest selves,
one that we can be proud of, and knowing what that looks like for us,
knowing what your own repair cycle looks like.

(19:47):

Do I pull up a chair and listen to whatever emotion is in my body and give
it love rather than judgment? Do I give myself the benefit of the doubt? Do
I allow myself to be wrong about myself? Do I allow myself to go, yeah,
you’ve made a lot of assumptions about yourself. You’re not very kind, and
we’re not doing that anymore. Okay? Before you focus on repairing the
external relationship with somebody else, please ask yourself, what does my
own repair look like? Ask these questions. What part of my self-trust has
been broken? Where am I abandoning myself in the pursuit of fixing the
relationship? What is one small act of self-repair I can commit to? Today,
I want you to take action, whether it’s journaling these things out,
applying for my program, just making space for your emotions. I want you to
do something and I want you to remember that no matter what happens with
this relationship, your healing starts with you, and that’s something you
can reclaim today.

(20:56):

It’s something that you can own today. It’s yours. It’s yours. No one else
can do it for you, and it’s the greatest gift you can ever give yourself.
Before I wrap it up, I can’t leave without telling you about my group
program. Get your Life back after infidelity. I tell you this because it
just keeps getting better and better and better and better and better and
better with quicker results, with more profound shifts, with people coming
in, listening for two weeks, getting coaching and feeling different than
they have in years. These are results that we see all the time, all the
time, and people ask me, what makes this different than therapy? What makes
this different than other groups? The entire program is about self-repair.
The entire program is about healing our relationship with ourself so that
we can make the best decisions for ourselves moving forward.

(22:01):

That is the crux of the entire program. It might not sound as flashy as
Save your relationship. Do this program and you’ll for sure have your
relationship saved. My guarantee, I can’t make that guarantee. I can’t make
that guarantee, but the guarantee I can make is that your relationship with
you will be better than it ever has been in your entire life. You will have
a better relationship with you. You’ll have the best relationship with you
than you’ve ever had that I can stand behind and I cannot imagine anything
more valuable. There is nothing more valuable. There’s nothing more
valuable, and when our relationship with ourself heals, everything else
changes. Everything else rises. The things that we do not have energy for
anymore go away because we make them go away or they fall off on their own.
We ask for more money in our jobs. We have better boundaries with our
relationships. Everything gets better. Is there anything worth more than
that? Is there anything more valuable to gift yourself? The gift of you,
and really knowing yourself the most intimately than ever? I don’t think
there’s anything better. Go ahead and apply for the program. The
application link is in the show notes. It’s on my website. We’re ready for
you. Ready with open arms? Alright, take care of my friends. So good to
talk with you again today. We’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.

(23:42):

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 at https://andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/.
Again, it’s https://andreagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/ I will see you
next time.