I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity Podcast,
episode number 166: The Gifts of Uncertainty.

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
ever. If you know there’s more freedom 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.

Hello, hello, my beautiful people. Thank you for being here today. Thank
you for listening. I am really delighted to be here with you. I am going to
go deep today. I hope you are ready with your pen and paper to take some
notes. We’re going to go deep. I want you to think about some deep things
today. Before we dive in, I want to give you a little update of some things
happening over here in Andrea Giles Coaching. I continue to grow my
program. And it gets better, and better and better. And one of the things
that is going to be happening in this next year is the cost of the program
is going to be going up and we are adding some more things to it to match
the price. There’s going to be a hybrid between lots of one-on-one coaching
and group coaching. There’s going to be virtual events. Regularly, there’s
going to be guest people that come in and teach different things.

It’s already amazing. It’s already amazing and we’re just adding more to
it. And I want you to know that now is a good time to join because the
price is going up significantly. And if you know that you want to be in,
the last day to join at the current price point is the end of the year, and
then the price is going to be going up as we upgrade the entire program.
It’s already great. And those that are already in get all of the benefits of
the upgrade, minus quite as many one-on-one sessions. I do have a current
bonus running that’s going to be happening for the next little bit, where
you get one-on-one sessions with the program that you buy. But after people
join at the new year, there’s going to be quite a bit more sessions, lots
more support, different things that we’re adding in to make it a really
beautiful, holistic, hybrid program of group and one-on-one.

So, if you know you want in, get yourself on in because it’s going to be
going up, up, up. So, all right. One more thing to mention is that the day
that this episode comes out is going to be on Black Friday. So, if you’re
listening to this on Black Friday, go check out the specials in Black
Friday. Check your email, check social media. There’s some pretty awesome
things that are very focused on the question of staying or going and helping
yourself with that decision. All right. Now, on to today’s episode. All
about uncertainty. Uncertainty. Now, why this topic? Because your
relationship with uncertainty is what is going to help you more than
anything. Let me say that again. Your relationship with uncertainty, this
is the thing that will help you heal the most, that will help you propel
your life forward the most, that will help you take the most risk, that
will help you grow back trust in yourself. It will help you more than
anything else.

Why? Let’s dive in. Most of the time we humans cling to certainty as if our
life depends on it. And we have been wired this way. We’ve been wired to
resist uncertainty. We do not like loss. We do not like change. Our brain
really likes predictable patterns, even if they’re not healthy. Our brain
likes to know what we can count on, even if it’s not healthy, even if it’s
not serving us well. Forever, from the beginning of time, we humans have
sought certainty by creating things that make us feel more certain.
Religions, organizations, political stances, marriages, all the things. All
the things that we go all in on and say, “Now that I have this thing, now I
get to feel this, and this and this.”

And part of the problem with infidelity is that it shatters the things that
we took for granted. It shatters the things that we felt certain about. We
might have issues in our marriage, but he would never do that, she would
never do that. And there’s a whole book about infidelity. The title of the
book you’ll resonate with, it’s called Shattered Assumptions. That’s the
name of the book. Shattered Assumptions. The things that I assumed are not
accurate, like the rug was pulled out from under me in a big way. And so,
it makes everything feel very topsy-turvy. And from this space, we will do
anything to cling to some kind of certainty, to some kind of knowing, to
some kind of give me something to stand on, some kind of footing to stand
on because everything feels out of control. Infidelity destabilizes our
sense of control and safety in a big way.

Now, how do people cling to the familiar after betrayal? I’ll tell you some
of the ways. Staying in unsatisfying relationships to avoid being alone.
Staying in unsatisfying relationships to avoid being a single parent, to
avoid the fear of never finding someone again, to avoid the fear of not
knowing how the finances are going to pan out. Another way that we cling to
the familiar is by reverting to old habits or avoiding deeper
self-reflection. So many people come to me saying that there was an
infidelity earlier on in their marriage. And rather than really dealing
with it then, they both kind of just carried on and put things back
together as if everything was just fine again. And then they come to me
because either there was another infidelity or they just can’t handle the
pain of it anymore, and they’re ready to dismantle everything, to really
get to what is true for them.

They’re ready to really look at it. They’re ready to see what they need to
see to make the decisions that they need to make. Sometimes we avoid this
deep self-reflection because we’re afraid of what we might see and the
truth that might live there that we don’t want to see. It can be very, very
scary. All right. Now, let’s talk about the cost, though, of clinging to
the familiar. All right. One of the costs is emotional and relational
stagnation. Our relationships are going to stay stagnant if we cling to what
is familiar, if we cling to what we know. Not much is going to change. I
can be the first one to tell you that this is true. I was in my first
marriage for 16 years. And there was betrayal happening well before the
16th year, like years before that 16th year. Well before for many years
there were things that I was avoiding looking at.

There were lies, there were little white lies, there were big whopper lies.
There were lies that I didn’t know were lies until later, but I was so
afraid of going out alone. I was so afraid of looking at it all that I
tried to believe whatever pieces of story that I was told to patch things
back together and keep my family together. And it wasn’t until it was too
big, and the impact on me and my children was too big, that I was ready to
step out into the unknown intentionally and risk that sense of belonging,
risk that sense of knowing and stepping out into a future that I had no
idea how it was going to go. Another thing that we often do when we’re in
stagnation and relational stagnation is sacrificing long-term happiness for
short-term comfort. We think that by just staying here where it’s cozy and
warm, that should be good enough. It’s good enough.

And one of the things that I live by for myself and for my clients is that
the things that you want, the deepest desires of your heart, you’re meant
to have them and your growth is becoming the person that has them. It
requires a lot of growth to go out and get the things that we want. It
requires intense growth. So, often, though, to stay in this place of the
familiar and clinging to it, a cost is giving up on long-term happiness,
long-term sense of satisfaction, self-respect, knowing that we are willing
to step out and grow. Another hidden toll on our own self-esteem and growth
is ignoring our personal needs and dreams to avoid risk. Ouch, ouch.
Ignoring them, putting them aside, saying, “Oh, maybe another day. Maybe 10
years, maybe 20 years, maybe it won’t be an inconvenience for me to want
the things that I want down the road sometime. For now, I’m going to go
ahead and put everything else, everyone else ahead of me because I just
don’t want the pushback of being vocal about what I want.”

Sometimes it’s real that when my clients start really taking up space and
really saying, “I actually want more. I want to go pursue that degree. I
want to go pursue that promotion. I want to work. I want to be a career
woman,” or whatever it may be. Even being a stay-at-home mom. And keep in
mind, I was a stay-at-home mom for my first 15 years of being a parent.
Even with that, trying to pursue things to broaden your horizons, there’s
lots of things you can do. I went to night school after I had a kid.
There’s lots of things that you can do. And even then we can push that aside
too and say, “No, it puts too much strain on the family. It puts too much
strain on me, so I can’t be there as present as I need to during the day.”
We do this all the time. And this is part of the cost of clinging to what we
know.

Clinging to what we know, I did that a lot. I did it a lot because the
thought of really rocking the boat was so scary to me, because it was
taught that it was scary. The reactions I got from the home I grew up in
and from the marriage that I was in, showed me that stepping too far out of
that comfort zone, that little homeostasis place was not welcomed. It was
not welcomed. It was quite shut down and criticized. So, it felt safer to
ignore those things that I really wanted to avoid that risk. And I helped
create safety for myself by doing that, but at what cost to myself? What is
it costing you to hold onto the familiar?

Now I want to talk with you a little bit about the transformative power of
embracing uncertainty, the gifts that come from embracing uncertainty.
Stepping into the unknown creates massive opportunities for growth. I’m
thinking of particularly Frozen II. I hope all of you have seen Frozen II,
because it’s really good and it’s deep. And it’s a cartoon, but it’s got
some pretty deep story in it. And one of them is about Elsa who goes out
into the unknown and that she hears this voice calling to her. She doesn’t
know where it’s taking her. She doesn’t even know who it is that’s calling
to her. And I’m not going to give any spoilers here for those of you who
have not seen it, but it’s pretty cool when she finds out who that voice
was.

We have tremendous growth ahead of us when we let go of our need to know,
when we let go of our need for this certainty. One of the biggest questions
that I get from people is, “How do I trust myself again? My self-trust is
just destroyed. It’s destroyed. How do I get it back?” And what I want to
say to you is that there is no quick fix. There is no shiny, positive
mantra that you can say to yourself every day. Self-trust is built by rites
of passage. It is built by our own walking through the fire, walking
through the unknown, and teaching ourself that we didn’t die. It’s not going
to come from just reading books about self-trust. It’s not going to come by
having people tell you how great you are, by being validated.

The kind of self-trust here that I’m talking about is one that is
unshakable, that no one can take from you. No one can take from you. I’m
going to share something a little bit personal here. When I was going
through my hardest time in my first marriage, when I was leaving, I clung so
tight to all of the religious things that I had been taught. I clung so
tight and it served me really well. It helped me to create safety. It
helped me feel some security when the ground underneath me was falling. It
helped me to feel like I had a community, which my community showed up for
me. I had the most incredible community during that time.

And it helped me to have something bigger to think about, like that this
was part of a bigger plan, a bigger purpose, things like that, that helped
me to not feel so angry about it all. Because it was so hard to know that I
had played by all the rules that I was taught in the religion I grew up in
and that it was turning out this way. There was a lot of anger there. And
ultimately, holding on, clinging. I will say clinging to my faith during
that time really, really helped give me some certainty in a time that was
very uncertain. Now, fast-forward many years. A couple years ago, some
things came up that I’m going to not share. It’s very personal to somebody
that I love dearly.

Some things came up that really shook me. That this person told me some
information that really shook me, that really changed my ideas about how
things were. I thought it was this way and it’s not that way, it’s this
way. And changed the way that I think about different social issues. And I
know that I’m being vague here. It’s intentional to protect the privacy of
this person. But what I’ll say is that at this time in my life, a couple
years ago, something shifted in me and there was this deep knowing that I
needed to pursue the unknown. And that I needed to release my hold on all
the things that I clung to and take a step out into the unknown to really
discover what I thought about different things.

And it has been quite a journey. It’s been quite a journey. What this
journey has led me to… I’m still on it, by the way. I’m very much still
on my journey. It has allowed me to release my hold on needing to know
anything. It has allowed me to be more present with the things that are
right in front of me because nothing else is certain. There’s nothing that I
can say that is just 100%, that I just know, know, know like I used to.
There’s a lot that I don’t know. There’s more that I don’t know than what I
do know. And I feel more grounded within myself than I ever have in my
life. That’s the irony. I have more self-trust in myself than I ever have
in my life. Why is that? Because I’m not looking to these outside voices,
and institutions, and people, and even relationships to tell me my worth,
to tell me my value, to tell me how I’m doing, how I’m not doing.

I’m looking to me, I’m looking to my own morals, my own values that have
been deeply explored during this time. And I’m honoring those. And there’s
nothing that builds self-trust more than that, to know that you are living
in alignment with your deepest values, with your deepest morals, and
principles, and standards for yourself and standards for your life. It’s
scary. Not going to lie, it’s scary because it means doing things
differently than you’ve done them. My faith has changed. The way I think
about a lot of things has changed. And it has been overwhelming at times
and also the most beautiful journey, because it is showing me who I am at a
deeper level than I ever have seen before. And it’s scary, and it’s risky
and it’s vulnerable, because as you step further out into your own journey,
other people are uncomfortable with it because it shows them where they’re
stagnant.

They often make you wrong rather than them being wrong and being
uncomfortable, because we really like certainty. They want to feel certain.
So, they want to stay certain, so that makes you wrong for your
conclusions. A lot of the time, this is what happens. I encourage you to
push forward anyway into uncertainty. One of the things you’re going to
learn on your own path, besides learning to trust yourself again, is you’re
going to find strengths that you did not know you had. You’ll find things
in you that you did not know were there. Things that are gifts that were
buried underneath so much certainty, under so much this is what you should
be, this is what you should look like to be good. You’re going to find that
you’re this magical person that has so many gifts, and traits, and things
that are incredible about you that have not been given an opportunity to
shine. And you are unearthing them and you’re giving them air.

You’re giving them space. You’re giving them a voice. You’re giving them
room to grow and to flourish. What a gift that is. What a gift that is.
This journey that I’ve been on has led me to deeper connections with my
children. For example, when you strip away all the things that you think
your children should be doing to be good, to be following the rules, things
like that, and meet them where they are, there’s this question of, is this
what I want for them because it makes me look good or because it’s according
to the rules? Or is this something that this child needs for their own
journey and can I release my hold? Can I surrender that this is the journey
that they’re on? Can I surrender to that? It’s tough. It’s tough and it’s
freeing. It’s liberating. It is very liberating.

Same thing goes for wayward spouses when we can think apparently this is
the journey that they needed to take. I don’t like it. I will never like
it. But apparently, this is the journey that they needed to take for their
own fall, for their own development, for whatever reason, that I don’t even
need to know the reason for. But for me, I’m taking this uncertainty and I
am going to run with it. I’m going to open myself up and allow myself the
freedom of not knowing. What does this look like for you? This means a few
things. There are some things that have to happen for you to be able to hold
this space. One is being able to hold onto curiosity.

What if? What if? Reframing the unknown as a space for possibility. What
if? Mindfulness practices to stay present and manage fear. Now, I know you
probably hear mindfulness all the time. It’s legit, though. To me, I think
of mindfulness as staying present with what’s real now. So, when my mind
starts freaking out about the questions of the future of, “Well, I don’t
know. I don’t know how this is going to work, and I don’t know how this is
going to work.” For example, my husband and I, I love my husband dearly,
but we don’t see eye to eye on some things. There’s some big things that we
don’t see eye to eye on. And sometimes my brain likes to freak out and worry
about that and worry about the future.

And I bring myself in by going, what’s real today? What’s real today is
that we are deeply connected, that we talk about these things, that we
adore each other. That I have more security than I ever have with him right
now, currently. I have not always felt that way, but it’s currently true.
It brings us back to the present. We’re able to see what is true now,
mindfulness. Am I in danger now or am I safe now? I’m safe and this is how
I’m creating safety even when I don’t know some things. Part of this is
identifying and challenging beliefs that you have held to that you have
never examined. I’ll give you an example. The idea that you get married
once and you should stay in that marriage forever, I think that that
warrants questioning. I think that warrants looking at.

Too many people stay in miserable marriages because they’ve not questioned
that. Too many people stay. And on the flip side of that, people often
think that the only way to stay is by not rocking the boat and keeping
things as they are. And what if you can stay, and rock the boat, and have
the kind of relationship that you actually want? It’s not actually about
staying or going. It’s about the quality of your life there and standing up
for something more. Part of this work is really tapping into the future you
and what you want there, even if you have no idea how you’re going to get
there, like no clue how you’re going to get there. As the saying goes, when
the student is ready, the teacher appears. The teacher will appear. The
teacher will appear and you’ll know the next step to take. And it’ll be a
small actionable step.

Actually, that’s kind of not true, because sometimes the next step is
massive. Staying in a marriage and going all in on a marriage is massive.
Leaving a marriage and all the growth required to leave is massive. It’s
not about staying or going. It’s the energy behind it, and the commitment
to the transformation and stepping into the unknown. Lastly, I encourage you
to seek support in this space, whether it be through therapy, coaching, a
community, during this process because this unknown is very uncomfortable.
It’s uncomfortable. It brings up our deepest fears. One of our deepest
fears is not knowing. Uncertainty, we don’t like it.

Again, whole religions and governments have been made to create certainty
for people. That’s how much we want it. That’s how much we want it. And if
you think about the biggest movements in time, the biggest things that have
changed the world, it is people who band together to step into the unknown.
And thinking of the great experiment of those that fought in the
Revolutionary War, to do something new and unchartered, brand new, no rule
book, in developing the United States with the government, and constitution,
and breaking away from tradition, doing something different, risking their
lives for the unknown. They risked their lives for something they didn’t
know. They didn’t know how it was going to go. They could have lost and
they were willing anyway.

Are you willing? Are you willing to fight for something more for yourself
that you believe in, something deep, something true, something that keeps
you moving, your desires, something to live for, something to stand up for?
It will require you to step out into the unknown. It will require
uncertainty. And this is where you’re going to get your legs back. This is
where you’re going to get your foundation back. This is when you are going
to have such a trust in yourself that you don’t need to spend your days
worrying about infidelity, if he’s going to do it again, if he’s not going
to do it again.

Because you’ll develop so much faith in yourself that you’ll know, first of
all, I’m showing up in a strong way that he would be a complete idiot to do
it again. He or she, depending on your situation. Second of all, if
something did happen, I have developed so much trust and faith in myself
that I know I would be fine. I know. I know what I would do and I know I
could totally handle it, because I’ve stepped out into the unknown before,
and I can do it again, and again and again. All right, my beautiful
friends. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to these
thoughts that sometimes feel like ramblings, but I hope that you find them
useful.

This is what I’ve been thinking about in regard to my own life, in regard
to you and the necessary opening, cracking open, stepping into what you
don’t know to really discover what you do know, and what you do want, what
you do need, what is worth fighting for. You, my dear listeners, are worth
fighting for. You’re worth fighting for. All right. Thank you so much for
being here and I will talk to you very soon. 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
episodes, and other ways of working with me, go subscribe to my weekly
email. You can subscribe at andriagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. Again,
it’s andriagiles.com/lies-about-infidelity/. I will see you next time.