Andrea. I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, episode number 241, The Cost of Staying the Same.

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. So happy to be here with you. Today. We are going to be talking about the cost of staying the same, especially when you know better. We’re going to get into what that means. Before we jump in into today’s episode, I, uh, want to remind you that there’s a couple new things to check out. One, if you go in the show notes, you will see that there is now a link to asking questions. Q and A. If you have questions about your situation that you want my eyes on, go put your question into that link. Put your question in. And on an upcoming episode, I’m going to be answering questions, and I can do it anonymously. I will not be naming names. I will just be reading out the questions and answering them as many as I can during that time. So if you’d like my eyes on some of the things going on with you, go ask. Okay. The second thing is that, uh, I added in also something that is a link to where you can donate to this podcast. If this podcast has helped you, if it has helped you to move forward, to feel peace, to think about things in a way that feel like you’re gaining traction again, there’s a link there to make a donation. I use those donations in lots of different ways. It does help fund the production of this podcast. I also use it to be able to offer scholarships to people who are unable to pay for services themselves but really need help. So if that calls your name, go find that link. And I would be more than grateful. M so grateful for any kind of donation you’d like to offer. Okay, so let’s get to it. Today we’re going to be talking about the cost of staying the same, especially when you know better. I decided to do this because a lot of the people that I. That I work with and myself at different times in my own growth, they’ll do all of this work to really get to a place of clarity. Like, it’s just so foggy, so, so foggy that, like, I don’t. I don’t trust anything. My normal meter is so off. I don’t. I don’t know if I’m being fooled or if I’m just way off kilter. But there comes a time where there’s so much work done to. Where clarity is actually there, where there’s way more understanding, where there’s way more moments of calm, of peace, of understanding, of even if you might not like your situation, that there’s a feeling of, like, I at least understand what’s going on, right? And not doing anything with it. Staying in that place of. I actually have the awareness now, but I’m just going to stay here. And today we’re going to talk about the cost. Sometimes it’s hidden costs. We’re going to talk about what those costs are. Okay? Most people think that the hardest part is growing your awareness of being able to see, right? Being able to see, seeing the patterns, understanding what’s happening. The thing is, that is one huge part of the work. But it can become a part where we hide behind it, where we think that we have to understand more, where we think we have to have more clarity before we make a move. And that’s a deception. It’s not real. The hardest part of all, actually, is when you do have the awareness where you do understand something in your cognitive awareness. And you know that the thing that you are aware of and some changes that you might want to create for yourself might rock the boat and be very uncomfortable. And so sometimes we go back to, I just need to see a little bit more. I need to understand a little bit more about this before I make a move. And this is where you have a choice of, um, am I willing to choose truth over comfort? Or m, am I going to double down on comfort and go, this is good enough. This episode is for you. If you already feel like you’ve arrived at a certain level of awareness, you’re not confused like you used to be. You can see the patterns. You can see your patterns. You can see their patterns. You’ve done a ton of work. You’ve thought about this deeply. But if you’re really honest, you’re still tolerating things that don’t actually work for you. You know it. You know that there’s things that still don’t sit right with you. And then you try to argue with that, well, maybe I should be fine with these things. Maybe it’s me.

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me. Maybe if I go to do a little more work, then it won’t bother me as much. But they keep coming up. These things just keep coming up. Maybe it’s a way that you engage with your partner in ways that just don’t feel good to you. Patterns that used to be there that you’re so tired of, like, that you don’t want to keep engaging in. You might still be overriding your own truth in small, quiet ways. You might still be waiting and hoping and softening and adjusting. And at this point, it’s not that you don’t know. You do know. It’s not an awareness problem anymore. It’s a follow through problem. It’s a discomfort problem. It’s okay. I see it, I know it. But, ooh. I, uh, don’t. I just. I don’t want to do it. It’s too scary. It’s too risky. So why do we do this? We do this because most people choose comfort over truth. Most people choose what they know. What they know. And when I say what they know, I don’t mean like capital T, truth know. I mean what they know to be familiar, what they know to be comfortable. What system they know they can operate in, in this way and not rock the boat too much or not have to push themselves internally too much. And this is not because anybody’s weak, okay? It’s because comfort is predictable. We know pretty much if we put in this input, this is the output. If I do this, this is what’s going to happen, right? It doesn’t require you to disrupt your life. Comfort wants to stay comfortable, which would mean let’s be cozy here with what we know. Even if we don’t love it, at least we know it. Comfort does not risk conflict. Comfort thinks conflict is like the devil. No, conflict. Conflict is bad. Don’t do it. Conflict believes that risk is not good, that risk equals loss, that if I take a risk, I might lose the very thing that’s comfortable to me. And it doesn’t ask you. Comfort does not ask you to step into the unknown. Truth does, though. Truth does. Truth has a price to pay. Truth comes with some risk. Truth may change your relationship. Truth may change how you are seen, how you are perceived by others. Truth might require you to stop pretending something is okay when it’s not. So, of course most people choose comfort. Most people, even when they’re really, uh, working hard on their own growth, they will really believe that all of the awareness that they’re getting is creating a different life for them. And really it’s not just the awareness. It’s when they’re willing to take all of that awareness and put it into action, to do something with it. To say the thing, to ask the question to, to uh, the. The big. Ask all of those things to push forward, right? And it makes sense that people avoid it because of the, the cost. Whether it’s a perceived cost or a real cost, there is risk involved. And this is the part I want you to hear and why I’m recording this episode for you. The cost isn’t that your relationship stays the same. Yes, that’s part of the cost. But the real cost is what it costs inside of you. What happens inside of you. Every time you see the truth, you see it and you don’t move and you argue with it and you make yourself wrong for it. You are teaching yourself that truth doesn’t actually matter and that you can’t really trust it anyway. Because look, I can change my mind. I can make it not as important, I can make it not as real. I can negotiate with it, right? And then you start to erode your own self trust. You become someone who knows but doesn’t act. You have the golden ticket. You know what it is, but you don’t cash it in because you’re too afraid of what might happen when you do. Right? And over time, here’s the even bigger cost. That turns into resentment. It turns into numbness. It turns into this quiet disconnection from yourself that you can’t quite explain. It is expensive. It’s very expensive resentment towards others. Because you know that there’s this, these things that you have awareness of, but you’re making it somebody else’s fault that you don’t have it. Rather than you pushing your own limits here with your own discomfort towards truth, you’re thinking it’s their fault. If they would X, Y and Z differently, then I wouldn’t even be in this situation and I wouldn’t even have to shine a light on these things that are uncomfortable for me. So it’s your fault and I’m going to resent you for it, right? Or we end up eroding the trust within ourself that we kind of go back to where we started of not of. Of just questioning all of it. Questioning our own awareness. Why? Because when we

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have this awareness and we do nothing with it, it’s just there to kind of fester, right? We can numb it out, we can make it wrong. We can put it on a shelf and say that’s not all that Important, okay, that’s not all that important. But this can create such a disconnection inside yourself that it can become quite corrosive with your own relationship, not only with yourself, but with others. So when I talk about the phrase truth all the way out, this is what I mean. It’s not just internally seeing it, but it’s actually allowing that truth to lay it out and take shape in how you actually live. Because a lot of people do the work to get to a, uh, truth. A lot of people are willing. Some people, Some people are willing to do the work to grow their awareness. But it’s when we meet that awareness and put it to real life that a lot of people quit. A lot of people back off. A lot of people compromise with themselves. They compromise with themselves and say, um, this is good enough. I should just take it. So I want to ask you this, okay? If you’re honest with yourself right now, listening, are you choosing truth right now, or are you choosing comfort and calling it having patience? Are you choosing truth or are you calling comfort timing, it’s not the right time or. I just need more clarity, okay? If I had a little bell here, I would ring the bell of calling it patience or timing or clarity and say, pay attention to these. Do you really need something more than what you have? Do you need more? What do you need the patience for? What are you waiting for in timing? Those are things to just slow down and pay attention to. When is it the right time? What about this? Timing is the problem. What do you need more clarity on? And kind of call your own bluff, okay? Call your own bluff. Because at some point, staying the same becomes more painful and more damaging than telling the truth. It actually costs more. The risk to staying the same can ultimately cost more than taking the risk of honoring your truth. All the way out, inside out. You have to be willing, though, to feel that and to face that, right? And here’s the shift. You don’t actually need more time. You don’t need more information. You need to become someone who moves on. What you know, doesn’t negotiate, it doesn’t revisit it again and again. It’s just like I already know that I don’t need to do that again. And here’s what you need to know too. It does not mean blowing up your life overnight. It doesn’t mean ultimatums or dramatic decisions. It means small, honest follow through something that you know is moving you towards this truth that you know, this thing that you know. It means saying the thing, asking the question, setting the Boundaries. Speaking a little bit more vocally about what it is that you even want. Taking up more space, being willing to take up space, Stopping a pattern that you normally engage in your relationships. Stopping that pattern. Holding yourself completely accountable for how you participate. Stopping the pattern without blaming somebody else and letting there be the space there to learn if the, if other people are willing to engage with you in a different way or if they can only engage with you when you are in that pattern. Okay? Letting your actions match what you already know is true on the inside, bringing what’s on the inside outside. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting comfort. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? We all want it. I, I’m sitting here recording, I have a candle lit, I have a blanket on my lap. Like, I, I recently had my space heater on. Like, we all want comfort. There’s nothing wrong with that. We want comfort. But sometimes we can’t get to a place of real comfort, of real ease, of, of real truth telling, of real alignment until we are willing to take the risk and say the things all the way out, be willing to get them out. This truth, this, it can be jolting, right? Getting the things out, doing the things, saying the things, asking for the things, pushing for the thing that you know that you want, right? Getting those things out and on the other side of that is a real comfort. That is real alignment top to bottom with your head, your heart, your soul, your whole body, knowing that you are living in alignment because you were willing to stand up for it. You are willing to stand up for it. And I want you to hear this. I don’t care if you are the one who was betrayed or the one who did the betraying. Wherever you are in this scenario, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same. It is the same. I see it in both sides of, oh, we’ve

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we’ve done this work together. Shouldn’t it be good enough? Isn’t this good enough, right? Where there’s like big truths that somebody’s withholding. It can be like, I have this awareness to understand why I did the things that I did. I, I wish that I would have made different choices. This is how I’m choosing differently now. But what if there are things about the initial relationship before infidelity occurred that were really, really challenging for you, but that you didn’t have the courage to speak up for. And those things are still there. But now you have guilt piled on. Now you have shame. Now you have all these things of like, am I even allowed to speak up for those things because of what I did. I’m, um, talking to you, too, and saying that there’s no way around this. There’s no shortcut. That in order to be in alignment and have a life that you can feel is calm, that you can rest in, that you can kick up your heels, that you can trust yourself, that you know is in alignment, where you know you can really live in peace. There’s no other way out but through. But through taking the risk and doing the hard things. Moving out of comfort and into truth. Recognizing that the cost of staying the same is too expensive and that you’re not willing to do it, that you’re not willing to pay that cost. Okay, that’s what I have for you today. Take a look at your life. Take a look at what you already know and maybe where you’re holding on to some things that you already know, and let them out. Let her rip. Tell the truth. Say the thing. Okay. And if you know that you want to do this, but it feels, like, so impossible that it feels, uh, daunting that you know some stuff but you don’t know what to do with that, knowing. This is the work that I do with my clients all day long. This is the work that we do in my group, Get Your Life Back After Infidelity. It’s for you to get clear on what you know and then grow the capacity to honor what you know in the ways that move things forward to building a life that is in alignment and in truth and. And knowing that you have your own back, that you have your own back, that you have you. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here. And I will catch you, uh, next time.

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, me, go subscribe to my weekly email. You can subscribe at Andreagiles.com lies-about-infidelity forward slash. Again, it’s andreagiles.com forward slash, lies-about-infidelity forward Slash. I will see you next time.