I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 196, The Mask of Avoidance: When Protection Becomes
Disconnection.

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.

(00:51):

Hello everybody. Welcome back. Welcome back to another episode of Heal from
Infidelity. Before we jump into today’s topic, I want to make sure you know
about a recent thing that I launched, which is called Heal on the Go. You
are here because you like audio, you like to listen to podcasts. This just
takes it a lot further. Every week I drop at least two audio trainings
where I teach something, I share something I go through in depth a concept
that relates to infidelity. One unique thing about this is that it’s for
both the one that was betrayed and the one who is trying to fix the
betraying, the one that is trying to help heal. It’s for everyone involved.
There’s information for everyone involved. Go check out the show notes. It’s
amazing. It’s so easy to access. You’ll get powerful little snippets, and
now there are several audios.

(01:43):

Once you get in, there are several audios that you can go back and listen
to. You can get caught up. There’s several that you can listen to and
implement right away. Take them throughout your day, little nuggets of
truth, little nuggets of things that will stretch you and help you to make
little shifts that make all the difference over time. Alright, so let’s go
ahead and talk about avoidance today. Alright, I have a bit of a bee in my
bonnet. I’m not going to lie. This episode is coming straight from some
experiences that some loved ones that I deeply care about are having in
this regard, and I decided it’s something that really needs to be discussed
today. So here I am. Okay, so how many of you have dealt with this
situation or have dealt with a situation yourself in this manner where
rather than wanting to engage in a conversation with somebody, rather than
talking through something, you say that you don’t want to talk about it, I
need space from you.

(02:48):

Or you maybe completely ignore the person or maybe you are being completely
ignored. Maybe somebody’s saying they want space from you, but they haven’t
really decided to engage with you in any way for you to understand where
they’re even coming from. And this is something that we are seeing in a
huge way in our world right now. This is a big problem overall, and this is
why I decided to do an episode. This is not just in the infidelity space,
it’s in relationships across the board. We’re going to spend time unpacking
today the cost of avoidance, the real cost of avoidance, how it keeps us
stuck, how it harms our relationships, and even damages our relationships
with ourself. I’m going to be talking about how avoidance is often dressed
up as a boundary, but what it really is, is it’s lacking the courage and
the clarity that a true boundary requires.

(03:43):

We’re also going to touch on cancel culture and how the avoidance of hard
conversations is eroding our capacity for growth, repair, and emotional
maturity and just really overall affecting our mental health. It’s
affecting our mental health, it’s affecting our trust in people when we are
seeing some of these things promoted as having strong boundaries, when in
reality it’s corroding relationships. So we’re going to dive in. This is
going to be a juicy one today. Okay? Alright, so again, avoidance often
wears the mask of self-protection, but what it’s really guarding us from is
growth. It’s guarding us from our growth. First of all, what is avoidance?
Avoidance is a perpetual habit of turning away from discomfort, whether it
be emotional, relational, or internal. Here are some common ways that we do
this, and I wanted to say we all do it. All of us do this.

(04:44):

We all have ways that we avoid. Some ways that we do it are by withholding
our feelings, by not sharing how we actually feel with somebody else and
maybe pretending like we’re fine, pretending like everything’s okay until
we can’t pretend anymore, until there is a rupture. I will say, this is one
that I have struggled with in my life is sometimes having something really
bother me and rather than having the capacity or courage even in the moment
to deal with it, I’ll tuck it away and sometimes it’s really
well-intentioned where I’ll think, ah, it’s not a big deal, Andrea, just
get over it. You can figure it out. Just love that person better. Just be
more patient. And then when things continue to happen, that discomfort
becoming louder and louder until sometimes I then can overreact over
respond. It can kind of look like it came out of nowhere where really
there’s this iceberg building, building, building underneath the surface
and then right on top is the there she blows.

(05:49):

And that’s been something that I know that I have done before. It can look
like ghosting, just completely ghosting somebody. Rather than having the
courage of saying no to you or the courage to say yes to you or the courage
to ask a question of you or courage to dive deeper into a conversation, I’m
just going to ghost you. I’m just going to not respond at all. And then I
might say in my own mind that that’s my boundary and we’ll get to that
later. Okay? We may procrastinate hard conversations. We may procrastinate,
we may put them off. I’ve also been guilty of that. Just putting it off,
putting it off because I know it’s going to be uncomfortable. We might over
apologize without change, we might over apologize. We might give and give
and give when really there might be something that we did or didn’t do that
we can apologize for and move on and we can change our behavior and let it
go.

(06:55):

Or sometimes we over apologize and we don’t change and we keep doing the
same thing, but we keep apologizing for it. But we keep doing the same
thing round and round and round. And this can be something that other
people do to us that they’re, oh gosh, I’m so sorry. Yes, I’m sorry. Oh
yeah, I did that again. I’m so sorry. But they’re not actually changing, I
promise you. It comes down to an emotion that they’re afraid to feel. Okay.
It can look like physically or emotionally withdrawing. It can look like
physically removing yourself from a situation and just walking out, hiding
out, going, it’s too intense. I need a minute. And the way that this looks
in avoidance looks different than a very conscious, I need a minute because
in a very conscious I need a minute. This actually happened last week in my
home.

(07:53):

I had just gotten off a day of calls and was thinking about some things
going on in my life and just started to feel a little bit flooded, a little
bit anxious, a little overwhelmed, and I walked out into the kitchen and my
little as three year olds can be, she was being pretty demanding. My
husband was sitting there wanting to go over some finance thing with me and
I could just feel my body feeling more and more like, ah, just anxious and
worked up. And so rather than just running out, I said, Hey, I want to talk
about this and we can get back to a little bit later, but for now, I just
need to give myself a second. I need a minute. And it was a beautiful day.
I sat outside on the back deck sitting on my porch and took some deep
breaths and just sat with myself and of course my little girl toddled on
out after a while.

(08:46):

But it was fine because I was in a position where I was taking control of
myself, and that is different than avoidance, okay? That’s responsibility.
Avoidance is where we just bail, where we’re like, ah, I got to get out of
here. And there’s no accountability. Sometimes we’re making the other
person wrong for it. Sometimes we literally just walk out of a
conversation, mid conversation, and we’re going to talk a little bit about
the impact of that, the cost to that. It is heavy. It is heavy, okay? These
forms of avoidance, they can give us short-term relief. They can make us
feel a little relief in the moment, but they are creating some long-term
damage and not just with yourselves but with others, not just with others,
but also with yourselves. It goes both ways. Alright? What does avoidance
with ourselves look like? When we avoid our own pain, our own truth or our
own emotional responsibility?

(09:44):

It compounds. It compounds, okay? It can look like making it a habit to
numb out, to just peace out, to keep ourselves busy, to do behaviors that
are keeping our brain busy, keeping our mouth busy, keeping our hands busy
so that we don’t have to think, so that we don’t have to actually drop into
pain. It can look like perpetually staying in a blame cycle of blaming
others and finding everybody else around you wrong instead of looking
inward and going, okay, I’m not saying to turn that finger around and stop
blaming others and turn that finger around and blame yourself. That’s not at
all what I’m saying. It’s more like if I were willing to feel here instead
of blame, what might I feel and why do I not want to feel that? Oh, I might
feel where, yeah, there’s some things that I was responsible for too.

(10:40):

There might be just real raw hurt there that blame and that kind of
indignant like, oh, how dare You can feel less threatening and less painful
than letting yourself feel deeply hurt. Interesting, right? Another thing
we can do is keeping really busy over busy, over functioning, always have
things going on. I always have things that are distracting us. I always
have stuff happening so that we don’t have to face our own feelings so that
we are too busy to be still. We’re too busy to feel what’s going on inside
of us at a deeper level. The problem with this is that this is actually
keeping us from our own medicine. Did you know that you have your own
medicine in you? You really do. You are your best medicine, and this kind
of avoidance keeps us in a perpetual state of self-abandonment. We keep
abandoning ourselves by staying too busy, by numbing out, by blaming, and
the sad thing, the reality is that we can’t heal what we don’t face.

(11:49):

It cannot be done. We can’t heal what we don’t face. It’s like, for
example, if somebody has an injury, like a physical injury and they just
keep masking it with medication and then need stronger and stronger
medications and then might feel some relief for a little while, you know
what? Eventually there’s not going to be any medication that is strong
enough and they’re going to have to face it. They’re going to have to deal
with the injury. It’s the same with our emotions. We can mask it. We do. We
do it all the time and it’s going to get louder. What we resist persist. It
gets louder until we listen to it, until we face it and it’s in the facing
it and in the surrendering to whatever we have to feel, pain, loss, grief,
anything, whatever it may be, then that it actually starts to heal.

(12:42):

Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that beautiful? Alright, let’s talk now about
avoidance and relationships. Avoidance in relationships appears like
keeping the peace, but it actually really erodes connection and trust. It
can look really noble. It’s a tricky bugger. It can look really noble. It
can look like, look what a peacemaker I am. I’m not going to fight with
you. It can look like you’re the one that keeps bringing stuff up. You’re
the one that keeps having problems and we should just be happy and move on
and be positive and look how negative you are. And the problem with this
form of avoidance is it can lead to assumptions. For example, if we’re not
talking, we don’t know what the other person is thinking, if we’re not
saying it, we don’t know what’s going on. If we’re not asking questions,
we’re left to our own devices, right?

(13:41):

Of whatever we concoct in our brain and sometimes a lot of the time we get
it dead wrong. I find with myself that more often than I’d like to admit, I
make assumptions that I really don’t know and why we do this to protect
ourselves. We do this to avoid things within ourselves, and when we can
just cut the crap for lack of better terms here and actually talk and work
through the conflict, we move past assumptions and into real data, real
information. Another thing that we do that really erodes connection trust is
passive aggressive behavior of just making little jabs saying things in ways
that we’re hoping they pick up on what we’re laying down, but we’re not
courageously just laying it down and going, I don’t know how this is going
to be received. We’re doing it in a passive aggressive way. It’s called
passive aggressive on purpose.

(14:40):

It is passive. It’s like, I’m going to aggressively come at you. I’m going
to aggressively leave this pile of stink for you. I’m going to aggressively
say this thing, but I’m going to do it in a way that can pretend like it’s
kind. It’s not funny. I’m going to do it in a way that I can feign
innocence or ignorance. Isn’t that interesting where I can just kind of be
like, what do you mean? I didn’t mean to, come on. Come on. No, no. It’s a
way of trying to say something without courageously saying it. It’s a way of
trying to say something without the accountability of, yes, I did say that.
Yes, I do feel that. Yes, I do want this and I’m willing to stand here in
this even if you’re uncomfortable, even if I’m uncomfortable. Another
problem with avoidance in relationships is that it just creates more and
more and more distance and eventually, most of the time some kind of
rupture.

(15:41):

I know for many of you, the rupture was in the form of infidelity. The
rupture was in the form of a huge rupture with a heavy, heavy cost, and how
much avoidance happened on the front end of that? How much was there not
talking about the relationship, how much was their passive aggressive
comments? How much was their contempt? How much was their silently seething
and blaming, but I’m not going to talk about it. How much was it? But look
how busy we are. Look how much we have going on and look what a great life
we have and look how much money we have and all the things that we built
and what good parents we are, and on paper we look great, and so that means
that we don’t actually need to talk about anything real, and I don’t need
to be held accountable for anything real because look at all these amazing
things that I’m involved in.

(16:30):

If you’ll hear a little bit of snark today, please take it with so much
love, and please know that this girl on the other side of the mic has been
guilty of every single thing that I’m saying, okay? I’m not just speaking
at you. I’m speaking to the collective with something that has just been
really heavy on me today and lately, something I’ve been thinking about a
lot. Okay? It’s this calling it noble. By keeping so busy that we completely
avoid each other. It makes me tear up even saying that because how much pain
we’re all in, how much pain we are all in because we keep doing this to each
other. I am too busy to make the time for you. I’m too busy to listen to
what you have to say. I’m too busy and too afraid, which is what’s real.
It’s fear to actually have an uncomfortable conversation with you.

(17:29):

Oh, the damage this does. The reality, my dear listeners, is that hard
conversations are the bridge. Hard conversations are the bridge to intimacy
and avoidance burns it on down. Avoidance burns the bridge down, it burns
it to the ground, and avoidance makes it much harder to build a bridge
later. Okay? The hard conversations, conflict, frustration, anger, hurt,
those are not the things that burn the bridge down. Those key things
engaged. We’re here. We’re in this together. We’re both on this bridge.
We’re going to engage because we care about each other, and I’m not talking
about tit for tat. You did this, you did that. It’s like, I care enough to
continue to stand here. I’m not standing here just to be right or just to
win. It is really more about, I’m standing here because I care about you
and I don’t quite know how to handle this and I don’t quite know the way
through, and I might lack the skills and I care enough to stay here.

(18:35):

Avoiding it altogether is going to burn the bridge and it becomes much
harder and actually requires a lot more skill because you’re starting from
a burn bridge. It becomes much harder. Okay? Now onto the next. When
boundaries are really avoidance, rail boundaries are communicated clearly,
rail boundaries are about what you will do. Not controlling the other
person, it’s not about control. Real boundaries require a lot from us.
Actually, real boundaries do not let us off the hook from our own growth.
Setting a real boundary requires us to dig deep and go, what am I willing
to stand for? What am I willing to walk away from? What am I willing to
uphold? And it’s our own growth to be able to uphold it. A boundary is not,
I need you to do this so that I don’t have to feel uncomfortable. Okay?
That’s not it.

(19:40):

We are not placing the burden of something that we’re uncomfortable with on
somebody else and calling it a boundary that is not a boundary, that is
avoidance. For example, looking at, I’m blocking them for my own peace. I’m
blocking this person for my own peace. That’s a avoiding the discomfort of
being seen or misunderstood. It’s avoiding. It’s avoiding it’s, I don’t
want to have to feel this way, and so I’m just going to block them and then
I’m going to call it me taking really good care of myself. Now, I do think
that there are times that blocking can be really beneficial. I think when we
have done our best to really work through conflict, to really speak in a
mature way and somebody is still unwilling to honor that, that may be a
solution, but too often in this culture that we are in, it’s like, oh, you
said one thing that made me uncomfortable, and rather than actually having
a mature conversation with you and caring about you as a person who is
human, who is messy, I’m just going to you out and I’m going to call it
protecting my energy, and instead me protecting my energy is really, I’m
ghosting you because I don’t want to say the hard things and I don’t want
to feel the conflict, and it can masquerade as strength, but true
boundaries don’t come from that place.

(21:07):

They come from a place of ownership, not escape. They come from a place of
strength. They come from a place of I know that I can handle myself even if
it gets really uncomfortable and I care enough about myself and I care
enough about this relationship that I’m willing to set this boundary
knowing that I can uphold it and maybe we can work out something in a more
respectful manner. Now, cancel culture. It reinforces disconnection over
dialogue. It reinforces it. We praise cutting people off. Instead of
learning how to have uncomfortable conversations, we praise cutting people
off without naming what the hurt is, without blame, without growing our own
relational skills to get to the root of why it’s bothering us in the first
place. Like instead of, oh my gosh, this is so triggering to me, so I just
got to cut this off so I don’t feel triggered anymore.

(22:04):

The real flex is understanding why is this triggering to me? Why does this
bother me so much? What is it a trigger touches on something that is
unhealed in us? A trigger is an invitation to look deeper and go, why am I
giving this so much authority and so much power? It doesn’t mean eventually
maybe we don’t move away from this thing or do something different, change
our relationship with it, but when we are just cutting it off at the start,
we are cutting off our own healing. We are keeping ourselves in such a
bubble that life will become quite impossible. This cancel culture piece can
become quite performative. It can look like somebody who’s really strong and
look how they’re taking care of themselves. It is not transformational. It
is not relationship growing. It is very keeping people in a very immature
state. Actually.

(22:59):

It’s keeping people playing small. It’s keeping people from their own
growth, from their own healing, from their own healing. Alright, to wrap
this up today, what to do instead? Avoidance is costing us emotional
maturity, connection, integrity, peace, and it’s delaying our growth. What
to do instead? Learn the difference between discomfort and danger. Practice
repair, not just retreat. When you feel the urge to avoid, pause and ask,
what am I afraid to feel or to say? What would it mean to stay just a
little longer in the discomfort? Is there an opportunity here for clarity,
honesty, or repair? And it may be that I say, Hey, I care about this
relationship enough. I’m not cutting you off. I’m giving myself a minute to
get clear so that I can respond from a place of clarity and not anger. That
is maturity. Okay? We can give ourselves space, but there’s a way to go
about it that keeps that bridge there.

(24:08):

We’re not burning that bridge down. We all again, we all do this, we all
avoid at times. It’s a human thing to do, but healing and growth and depth
live on the other side of staying present. Boundaries are really powerful,
but only when they’re rooted in self-responsibility and not escape. Not
escape. You don’t build stronger relationships by avoiding fire. By
avoiding pain. You build them by learning to walk through it and holding
your head up high and growing and giving yourself grace as you do it.
Alright, my friends, thank you for being here today. I hope every single
one of you takes this today and goes inward and asks yourself these tough
questions and look around to at where you see others avoiding you and speak
up. Okay? Alright. Thank you. I’ll see you 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, go subscribe to my weekly
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slash. Again, it’s andrea giles.com/lies about dash infidelity slash I will
see you next time.