I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 155, The Boomerang Effect.

Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast where courageous
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Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode. I’m always glad to be here
with you. This week I’m just going to be chatting with you a little bit
about an idea that came to my mind when I was in the middle of coaching a
client. I was coaching this client and this client was sharing with me more
details about the situation she’s in, and this imagery came to my mind of a
boomerang flying out and then as boomerangs do coming back in and how I see
this kind of imagery in the lives of the people that I work with. So I
decided to talk with you today about this, about this phenomenon that I see.
I called it when I was talking with this client the boomerang effect, and
it’s just an idea that I had from imagery that came up in my brain that I
want to share with you.

Now, I have to tell you, I thought, “This is a great idea. It explains
something that happens a lot.” And just to be in the clear, making sure
that it came from my brain and that I didn’t hear it somewhere else, I went
and looked up the boomerang effect, and guess what? It is out there. The
boomerang effect is out there, but not in the way that came to my mind.

So when I went and looked it up, what I found is that people coin it the
boomerang effect when somebody is pushing hard on an issue and it has the
exact opposite effect. It’s often used in parenting, for example, where
when parents come down hard on one thing, it pushes the kids another
direction. It pushes them in the opposite direction. And psychologically
that’s something that happens when we push for something, it often has the
exact repelling result.

That’s not quite how I used it with this client and not quite what I’m
bringing you today. So how do I define the boomerang effect? It’s more
something that I see that happens and that we humans are really good at,
and that is really strongly reacting to something like a really strong
reaction and then realizing after some time that maybe our reaction was very
black and white, that we were really defining this thing that we are having
such strong feelings around with such black and white thinking that we had
to get away from it, as far as possible away from it. And then what can
happen is there can be a softening. There can be coming back to center.
There can be a middle ground. There can be making this decision, whatever
it is that you’re working with, where you have more of a neutral place to
look at the facts from.

I’ll give you a couple examples of where I see this. So one, I see it
around marriages, especially around infidelity. A lot of the time a
marriage will experience infidelity and what will happen is one or the
other, either the person who had the affair or the infidelity or the other
who found out about the infidelity will experience this boomerang effect
where they will go, “I am out. I’m going to fly way over here. There’s
nothing good here. I don’t want to be here. I don’t like how I feel when
I’m with you.” For example, if it’s the person who had the affair, they
might be in a place of really deeply needing to justify it so they don’t
have to look at the shame that they feel, and so their boomerang effect
would be flying way out to where you are the villain, where everything was
bad, where it’s so much better over here, you just wouldn’t understand, I
had to get away.

And on the side of the person who experienced the other side of that where
they found out about the infidelity, they’re very, very hurt by it, their
reactive space might be, “I have to get away from you. You are all bad. I
can’t believe you would do this. I can’t believe you put us in this
position.” And we all probably think those things. I know I did, right? But
it’s a very reactive space to jump all the way to you’re bad, everything
here is bad, I have to get away, and really taking action from that space.
It’s beyond just thinking it. It’s beyond just thinking it in your head.

What I’m talking about is actually acting it out where you are physically
taking your body elsewhere, where you are physically leaving, removing
yourself. Now, one caveat. Sometimes I do see somebody who physically maybe
removes themselves from a bedroom and stays in another room. They might be
in the same house. So the physical changes might be a little bit different
based on who it is. But I’m talking about this is not just like an internal
disgust with this other person. It’s a physical manifestation of it, just
like a boomerang. A boomerang flying through the air, right? You’re
throwing it out there away from you.

Let’s talk about some other ways that this happens. Sometimes in politics,
for example, we can find out some things about a political party, about a
candidate, and with this boomerang effect, we can want to remove ourselves
so fully from it, like complete opposite, like I reject this so fully that
we boomerang ourselves far, far away from this, from whoever it is or
whatever the policy is or whatever. Okay?

Another example, religion. Sometimes when we see some things that we have
been a little bit blind to before where maybe we’ve not had to think about
those issues before and we suddenly see some of the issues, we suddenly
find things that we think are offensive for example, we might boomerang
ourselves far away from that religion, far away, and have very strong
feelings about it and maybe publicly broadcast those feelings.

I’m guessing every one of you listening knows somebody who has acted out
what I’m describing here in one form or another. I bet you do. Now, that’s
the first part of this boomerang effect, the rejecting of a thing,
rejecting of a circumstance and going, “No,” and flinging ourselves far,
far away from it.

Now, what happens with the boomerang? This is the part that’s really,
really, really important. Often what happens with the boomerang is it goes
way out there and then it starts to turn around and come back, right? It
comes back. It might come back at a different speed. I don’t know, I
haven’t studied it that much. But it might come back at a slower speed,
right? When you first throw it, if you think of the physics of it, you
probably have to give it a lot of heft and fling it, and then it starts to
turn back and it might be a little bit slower, but that piece is really,
really important.

Some of you listening may be on the receiving end of somebody who is acting
in this boomerang way where they have thrown themselves far away from you.
It can be devastatingly painful. It can feel like the biggest rejection of
all time. Some of you may be the ones that have flung yourself away.

Now, when is this an appropriate thing to do? You know what, my listeners,
you get to decide this, but as I was thinking about this concept, I
thought, “What would be appropriate times?” If you are being abused, you
need to get yourself away. And sometimes being able to hold the line of
really seeing the damage of the thing that the other person is doing and
staying there is really important. Why? Because if you’re experiencing
abuse and you fling yourself, you get to that space where you get yourself
away, and then if you start to ease back and think about the good qualities
of this person and the memories that you’ve had and all the good things,
you might find yourself boomeranging right back in. That is not what we’re
talking about here, okay? There are times when we do need to leave. There
are times when we need to run. There are times when we need to get away.

Speaking from my own experience when I left my first marriage, it had
gotten to the point that it physically was not super safe anymore. There
are some things happening that were alarming that showed me this is not
going to go away. You need to be careful. You need to get your kids safe.
And so I had to get in that frame of mind where I couldn’t think so much
about all the positive things because I needed to keep my kids safe and
myself safe. And so it actually served me to focus on the reasons why I
needed to go, and it was later, after we were all safe that I could come
back and evaluate the whole thing from a more neutral place. I do recommend
being able to get there. But sometimes we have situations that are unsafe
where we have to kind of fling ourselves far away from it.

Another thing to mention here that I see a lot is the concept of a midlife
crisis or a midlife awakening. Sometimes an awakening can feel like a
crisis because so many things are changing. We’re awake. We’re awake to
things that we have been asleep to, things that we have not wanted to see.
We’re suddenly awake. And it can feel like a crisis to see things clearly.
And sometimes in that place we make decisions that might be rash, that might
be shocking to others, but that feel really, really important to us. And it
is in this space that I recommend a softening and really evaluating this is
why I needed to get away from this thing and these are the ways that I can
come back to it, but I have to have some certain things in place for me to
want to come back to it.

So let’s talk about that piece. This is the kind of softening, the
boomerang is coming back to the owner that flung it out, okay? This is
where the things that were so offensive at the beginning, the things that
made you want to get far, far away, they’re still there, but there’s an
emotional softening to where you can also hold and see other truths at the
same time. I do not like this and this and this, or when I flung myself far
away, I was thinking of this offensive thing in the most offensive way,
like I was seeing only one side of this behavior that this person was
doing, and now I can see that it’s not as black and white as I was making
it.

So with somebody who finds out about the infidelity and get away, I’m
divorcing you immediately, that softening could look like, you know what? I
hate this and it hurts and I’m never going to say that it doesn’t hurt and
I’m never going to say that it’s okay that it happened, but it’s a
softening into what else is there to look at? What else is there? What else
needs to be seen? What else is true? I don’t like it. I hate that it
happened. And what else is here?

And what happens when we’re able to soften back is this is where we can use
firmly held values, firmly held standards of the way that we want to live
our life, to help our decisions, to back up our decisions, to guide our
decisions. We are not making an emotional rash I’m going to throw out the
whole thing decision when we can come back to the center.

Something that I have seen numerous times with my clients is this kind of
rash I’m going to end it immediately, and then they realized that there was
a lot that they were not looking at. There was a lot that they were not
taking into consideration because they were leading out with really intense
emotions. And when they can kind of come back, sometimes the answer is to
leave, but they’re making this decision from a more grounded place.

And sometimes when they can get back to this softer place, the decision is
to stay and to go, “There’s so much here that’s worth fighting for that I
could not see before the infidelity, that I could not see when I flung
myself far, far away from this person, and now that I’m softening and kind
of leaning back in, I can see that there’s so much here worth fighting
for.” But this is how it needs to be. Okay? This is where we can look at
our standards, our values, look at the things that are our bottom line, like
I can’t fully go back if these things do not change.

This is coming from strength and not fear. Often the initial boomeranging
out is coming from so much fear. This middle ground placement, it’s kind of
softening back in, this is strength. This is looking at all of it and being
mature and being respectful to yourself, holding a very high line of what
you want, and this is where you ultimately get more of what you want.

On a personal note, there are some things that in the past couple of years
I’ve been evaluating about my faith, and there are some things that have
been really hard for me to look at, really difficult for me to look at. And
at times I feel that kind of boomerang of I need to get away. And what’s
happened is over time I’m able to really assess things from all different
angles, look at it from all different angles, and look at all the things
that are here, the good, the bad, the ugly.

And I would venture to say that in most situations, there’s the good, the
bad, and the ugly. And when we can come back to a softer place, that’s
where we really can check in with our deepest truest selves and ask
ourselves how does this land with me, again based on my values, based on
what matters most to me, based on what I can get behind honestly? It’s a
much softer place than just flinging ourselves out and fully rejecting
something without being able to hold the nuances of all of the pieces of
it.

So my listeners, some of you are in this space of softening where you’re
kind of going, “Okay, what else is here?” Some of you have flung yourself
way out into outer space and you’re scared. You’re so scared for that
boomerang to turn around. You feel so much resistance to inching back in.
What is it costing you to stay out there? I can tell you one thing that’s
costing you is growing your self-trust that you can handle the nuance.

There’s a misconception that if we soften, that if we open up and look at
some of the bigger things at play, that it’s going to make it okay, that
it’s just okay that it happened or that it didn’t matter. I’m here to tell
you that is not true. It is not true. In fact, sometimes in this softer
place it solidifies, no, no, I’m not going back to that. Okay? What it does
is it opens you up to more truth, where flinging yourself way out there
there’s so much resistance to looking at anything else other than this
story that you are hell-bent on focusing on. When we soften and ease back
to this middle place, this is where truth can come through.

Truth cannot come through when we are in high resistance. It cannot reach
us. We cannot hear our own highest truth when we are hell-bent on holding
onto a story. It cannot come through. So when we can soften, that is where
we can see, okay, these are the things that I must see for me to move
forward. These are the things that I must let go of. These are the things
that are deal-breakers. This is where truth lives, and this is where your
own self-trust is going to be restored. That’s where you soften into
yourself and remember your own wisdom, your own strength, your own ability
to hold all of it, your own ability to hold many opposing truths at the
same time.

I want you just to check in with yourself. Where have you flung yourself
out and where are you resisting leaning back into softness and openness and
being able to hold nuance? And where has maybe somebody done this for you
and flung themselves far away from you and you’re feeling the pain of it?
For those of you who are in this camp, hold on, okay? Hold on. Whatever the
story is of the person who flung themselves away from you, it’s not the
whole story. It is not the whole story. There’s so much more to you, your
essence, your goodness, than whatever the story is that they’re telling
about why they had to go so far from you. Please believe me on this. Some
people will stay in that fear space where they have to hold onto that
narrative to feel okay. It’s okay, they can do that. But you don’t have to
buy into it. You can soften into the things that you know, and it can be
different from this other person’s narrative and it’s okay. Okay?

That is what I have for you today. I want you to think about where you land
and challenge you if you have been rejecting, resisting, softening back
into a space where you can explore more, I’m challenging you to lean into
that today. Okay? All right. As always, thank you so much for being here
today and I look forward to chatting with you at the next episode. Bye-bye.

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