I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, episode number 250, The Question Beneath the Question – September Q & A. 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. Episode 250. Can you believe that?

That’s a lot of episodes. That’s a lot of episodes. If you’ve made your way through all of them, um, nice work. Nice work. That’s a lot of listening time, and I appreciate it.

At the time of this recording, we are just about ready to hit a million downloads, a million downloads of this podcast. So thank you so much, everybody who’s listening, who is passing it along, coming back to it. I, uh, appreciate it so much and love knowing that you are feeling supported by it.

Right? So thank you so much. I am going to be answering some Q and A questions today that were submitted by you, you listeners. But before I do, I want to invite you to stick around for the whole thing today. There’s a very special invitation at the end that ties right into some of the things that we’re going to be talking about today.

So stick around. Okay? All right. So people send in questions to me that they are dealing with, that they’re struggling with, that they’re grappling with, wrestling with. And this month, as I was reading through all the questions, something.

Something stood out to me. On the surface, all of the questions were different. They had different particulars about what they were trying to figure out. One person’s asking about an affair, somebody else about pornography. Somebody else is asking about divorce or about boundaries or why does it still hurt years later?

Okay, so on the surface, these all look different. But as I sat with your questions, I was realizing that they’re all circling around a, uh, deeper conversation and deeper questions. Hence the title of this episode, the question beneath the question. Okay, there’s a question that you’re asking, but there’s something else that’s actually deeper and more important to be able to answer. And, uh, some of these questions are, how do I know what’s true?

Can I trust what I’m seeing. Can I trust my spouse? Can I trust my instincts? Can I trust my judgment? Can I trust myself?

Right. I don’t believe that the deepest wound that we experience after infidelity is trust broken in another person. I believe that the deepest wound is that it fractures trust in ourselves. It makes us question our memories and our intuition, our decisions, our worth, our ability to see reality clearly.

And lately, I’ve been noticing something in my own work. I’ve been helping a lot of people over the years navigate the question that they come to me with. The initial question, the surface question about boundaries, about how much access should I give, all kinds of questions.

And I am in a place where I’m shifting and looking at the bigger picture more and more than ever of what’s the question beneath the question? Right. I can answer the question that’s at the surface and give support and give guidance. But what’s actually going to move the needle more is getting a layer beneath that and a layer beneath that to really get to the root of what’s going on underneath the thing that feels so important.

Okay. And I want you to know that when we start to make these shift and learn how to ask ourselves better questions, we get out of the weeds. How? Because the weeds themselves, these things that we get so tangled up in, the weeds themselves change shape when we change our perception. It looks different.

The thing that we thought was going to be the bane of our existence forever suddenly doesn’t have the power over us, doesn’t control us the way it does. And as long as we stay in the weeds, we keep trying to solve for today’s circumstance. But when we ask better questions, the circumstances themselves start to look different.

Okay? So today I’m not simply answering your questions. I’m taking you into deeper questions underneath each one, because I have the feeling that those are the things that are actually going to help you move forward more than anything. Okay. All right, let’s jump in.

Okay. This is what one listener wrote in

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this. Last September, I found out that he was seeing someone behind my back and being intimate with her. I am just hoping he will change. But I have caught him on dating sites multiple times, even when I was sick in the hospital. We’re not arguing, and we have an intimate relationship.

He seems to need to get attention from other women, which is so hurtful. I moved in with him last January out of a lot of talking, and I really trusted him. So I gave up my home, all my furniture, and every plate and utensil. I am Stuck. Rents are out of control, and I will have to start over again.

I’m thinking, this is how my life is, and there’s nothing I can do. He makes comments and laughs at me when I get angry and says, oh, here she goes, wanting to start a fight. I know he’s gaslighting me. I’ve always been in bad relationships. What is wrong with me?

Okay, so I hope that whoever sent this in, I hope you’re listening to this. Your question is that you asked is, what is wrong with me? But there’s a deeper question here that I want you to sit with, and it’s what happened to that made unhealthy relationships feel familiar?

What happened in my life that made unhealthy relationships feel familiar? And I would even say, and in a way, safe. There’s a really important difference between those two questions. The first one assumes that there’s something wrong with you, assumes that you’re broken. The second one assumes that you have been shaped.

And I don’t know about you, but I believe that all of us come to these places from being shaped. And it becomes our job to understand what shaped us. What outside of me led me to being where I’m at. And that is a place that we can have so much more compassion for than what’s wrong with me. I’m just broken.

What’s wrong with me? Okay. I hope as you’re listening to this, you can feel a softness with this question. What happened that, uh, made unhealthy relationships familiar? A softness, a compassion.

Right. One of the things that betrayal does is it can turn our attention inward in the harshest way possible. Instead of asking, why does this person continue making choices that hurt me? We begin asking, what is wrong with me that I keep ending up here? Okay.

We are so mean to ourselves sometimes. And our, uh, brains are doing this because they’re desperately trying to regain control. And oddly enough, believing that we’re the problem can sometimes feel safer than accepting that someone we love continues making choices we cannot control.

Because if I’m the problem, then maybe I can fix it. Maybe if I become more patient, more understanding, less emotional, more attractive, more forgiving, then maybe things will finally change. Except they usually don’t. Right? And something else in your question caught my attention.

You said, I’m stuck. And I want to separate something here. You may absolutely feel financially stuck right now. Housing. Right.

The housing market right now is insane. You gave up your home, your furniture, your kitchen, your security, and those are real losses. But financially stuck and emotionally stuck, those are Two different things. And they need different things to solve for them. Okay, you can begin reclaiming yourself and your desire to be in a relationship that feels good to you, that feels safe for you, that feels loving and kind long before you decide whether you’re staying or leaving.

And sometimes reclaiming yourselves begins by one small act, like opening a different bank account by talking to one friend, confiding in a friend by gathering information, just getting data. Sometimes it begins with simply admitting, this hurts more than I’ve been letting myself acknowledge. Agency doesn’t begin the day someone leaves a relationship. Agency begins the day someone stops abandoning what they already know.

Okay, and then there is one last sentence that concerns me. You said he laughs when you get upset. Let’s slow that down. Okay? What’s not happening is him getting curious.

He isn’t asking, help me understand what’s happening inside you. He isn’t wondering what this has been like for you. Instead, your pain now becomes the problem. Here she goes again. And over time, something subtle begins happening inside of us.

When someone repeatedly dismisses our reality, we slowly begin dismissing it, too. If we give them the mic, if we believe them, we stop trusting our instincts. We wonder if we’re overreacting. We second guess our emotions. We start explaining away behavior that once would have felt completely unacceptable.

Okay, and here’s something I’ve learned. After sitting with many hundreds of betrayed partners, most of them aren’t actually asking, what should I do? They’re asking, can I trust myself?

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Can I trust what I already know? I already know. But this. This dynamic is not okay. Can I trust myself to make a move?

Do I have to know the. The full path ahead of me before I make one move? Right. And my guess here is that you already know that this relationship is not creating emotional safety for you. The struggle isn’t seeing it.

The struggle is actually allowing yourself to believe what you see. Okay, there’s a quote that I want to pull in here. It says, the truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable. The truth can make you miserable when you see it, because it’s like, oh, I can’t unsee it.

And now I actually have to do something. I think that’s because truth asks us to let go of a story of a fantasy of what we are really hoping would become true. And that hurts very deeply. Okay, but what if nothing is wrong with you? Nothing’s wrong with you.

Maybe you’ve spent a long time adapting to relationships that required you to leave yourself in order to keep them. Okay. And they Are two very different stories, and they lead to two very different futures. Okay? So my task for you is to go look at where did this come from in me?

If I’m not actually broken, if I’m not actually just stuck here, what can I do? Where did this come from? And what do I want to do with that? All right, our next listener asked something that I think almost every betrayed partner has wrestled with at some point. Okay?

Because once we begin trusting what we see, often more questions follow. And here’s what this person asked. My husband has lied to me for 18 years. He has returned to his emotional affair partner, and I’ve learned that he has been looking for an arranging relationships with other couples for three years now. He’s showing up now and in therapy, But I don’t think he is well.

I think I hate him, and I told him that, and I think he’s a monster. But there’s a part of me that thinks maybe he isn’t a monster. He seemed so sad and remorseful. He’s the father of my children. I’m all over the place emotionally, and I think there’s no hope.

I have zero respect for him. My question is, when they compartmentalize, are they really still loving us and our children? Okay? So with this one, the question under the question here, I don’t think that the question we stop at, uh, is, does he love us? Did he love us?

And this is one that I’ve heard so many times. Did he ever really love me? I think the. The deeper question here is, what kind of love actually creates safety? Okay?

So this shifts your brain from searching, searching, searching to the answer to a question that, I don’t know that you’d ever land on something that feels good to you in that search. Okay? But what you can give your brain the job of is looking for, what does love mean to me?

What kind of love actually creates a place that feels good to me, that I respect, that I respect myself for being in that I respect them, okay? They’re not the same thing, Right? And I think one of the hardest truths to accept after betrayal is that human beings are very capable of incredible contradiction. Incredible contradiction. Somebody can genuinely love their children and deeply hurt them.

Someone can genuinely love their spouse and betray them, okay? It is not black and white. Someone can feel profound remorse and still not possess the emotional maturity necessary to create a safe relationship. He can feel remorse and still not have the capacity right now. Maybe hasn’t developed the capacity to take the actions that change, uh, would require that creating trust would Require.

It can be possible that the love is real, that the remorse is real. But neither of those automatically create trust. Okay? Neither of them do. And that’s where I’m going to set this one down for today.

What kind of love actually creates safety? What is missing here that I want coming from you, not from what’s outside of you, but what actually is true for you inside you? Okay, setting him down for a minute. What he’s doing or not doing and looking at you and what you want and what you need to feel safe.

All right, now, going back to some of these contradictory questions before I go to the next question. How can someone love me and do this to me? Okay, we want to know this because we think if we have the answer, then that answer will tell us what to do, right? For example, if he didn’t love me, then leaving makes sense.

If he didn’t love me, why would I stay? Right? If he did love me, maybe I should stay. The thing is, love isn’t the deciding factor. Love is not the deciding factor.

It can’t be. Okay? Love has never been the only ingredient of a healthy relationship. That’s the romanticized version. But we love each

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other, right? In the words of Tina Turner, what’s love got to do with it? Okay, it does have a lot to do with it, but there’s more. Love matters. It matters a lot.

But also, so does integrity. So does honesty. So does humility. So does follow through. So does the ability to tolerate difficult emotions instead of escaping them.

The willingness to repair, the courage to tell the truth, especially when it costs you something, when there’s risk involved. And without those things, love can be sincere. It can be real, but it’s still not safe. All right? It’s still not safe.

And some of these questions around people’s behavior about acting like a monster, like, I didn’t know he was capable of that. That’s something that I hear a lot, like, how can I be with somebody and choose somebody who’s capable of this thing? And we put these labels on, like, if someone is a monster, then I must leave them.

Right? If someone is not that and they’re this really good person, then it becomes something else, right? And where real healing will happen and where I’m pushing you towards is where two things can be true at the same time. Okay? The person who tucked our children into bed that told me they love me is also the person that lied.

The person who held my hand and looked me in the eye and told me that they love me. Shattered trust. Okay? Human Beings are very complex creatures, very complex. And while complexity should never be an excuse, it can become an understanding.

And understanding, it’s not saying it’s okay, but understanding says, now I can see what actually needs to change. All right? Because the opposite of compartmentalization is not a confession. It’s integration. Okay?

Another confession does not necessarily bring about change. It’s integration. It’s becoming the same person inside and outside, one person, the same person in every room, the same person online, the same person at work, the same person at home, the same person your spouse experiences.

Okay? That’s integrity. And I think your real question isn’t did he love me? It’s this, is he becoming someone who has integrity? Does he have integrity?

Does he care about integrity? And that’s the question that I’d be looking for. Not for whether he cries or apologizes or feels terrible or whether he’s remorseful enough, but what is that remorse pushing him to do? Right? Trust is not built by emotion.

We can show all the emotion in the world and it doesn’t do anything. Okay? It’s. It’s built by congruence, by becoming the same person everywhere you go, every room. All right?

Okay. Now for reals, I’m moving on to the next question. Okay, question number three. I have heard multiple times and understand that there is no competing with an affair, the limerence, passion, allure of the forbidden, etc. For decades.

I excuse my husband for not being passionate or romantic with me. And as he just isn’t one of those kinds of men. However, he showed up as a completely different person for his affair partner. Writing poems and songs for her, buying thoughtful gifts, spending weeks planning their dates, spending money, being forgiving, compassionate, and curious and on and on.

So many things that were not present in our 25 year marriage, but that I yearned for and asked for repeatedly. I know I can’t compete with the affair, but I do think I deserve at least the same amount or more of effort, consideration, passion, curiosity, time, money, etc that was given to the affair partner. I can’t pretend or excuse that he just isn’t capable anymore because clearly he is.

So if my husband gave more effort, attention, passion and thoughtfulness to the affair partner than he ever gave to our marriage, is it fair to expect that same level and investment from him now? Great, great, great question. And I know that many of you listening there are like, thank you for asking that question because you get it.

And I’ve heard this question many times and done a lot of coaching around this question. And here’s the thing, okay? I don’t think that you’re grieving the lack of flowers or poems or gifts. I think you’re grieving a story you told yourself that he’s not wired that way, that maybe romance isn’t natural for him. Maybe it’s just not his thing.

Maybe this is just who he is. And that story helped make your marriage make sense. Until one day it didn’t make sense anymore. Right, because suddenly you discovered something devastating. He was capable.

He was always capable. Capable of planning, capable of anticipation, capable of generosity, capable of pursuing, capable of paying attention. The affair didn’t just reveal another woman. It revealed a different version

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version of your husband. Right? And that can almost feel harder to grieve, because now you’re left wondering if. If he could do it, then why not for me? And I want to say this very clearly to you.

You’re not crazy at all for asking this question. It’s very real. It’s not jealousy. It’s grief. It’s grief.

And I want to offer something I think is really important here, okay? Affairs create a particular environment. They create novelty. They create fantasy, secrecy, escape. The brain becomes flooded with dopamine.

Okay? People often show up in exaggerated versions of themselves. Not necessarily healthier versions or even true versions of themselves, just chemically amplified versions. Real love isn’t tested in this space. Real love gets tested on ordinary Tuesday afternoons when someone is sick or you’re exhausted, or when money is tight or when parenting is hard, or where there’s conflict when disappointment shows up.

Okay? That’s where a real character lives, not fantasy. Not in these little snippets of time where you get to sneak away and have this amazing moment. But. But.

But this is a really important but here, okay? I don’t think your husband gets to hide behind. Well, that was just the affair, all right? Because the affair did. Did reveal something important.

It revealed a capacity. It revealed he is capable of intentionality. He’s capable of thoughtfulness and planning. And those capacities do exist. So the question is not, will he recreate those things in our relationship?

Right? That’s not the thing. That’s actually not the thing. It’s not about him bringing you flowers and planning and doing all those things. Now, that’s not it.

My guess is that if he did start showing up with, like, bringing you flowers or planning a date, that you’d be quite skeptical, and you’d be like, uh, can I trust this is only doing this because of. Because I am now demanding it. Right? Here’s the deeper question. Will he bring that same level of intentionality into healing.

Will he pursue understanding with the same energy? Will he plan connection? Will he stay curious and open? And this is a big one. Will he continue showing up after the excitement is gone?

Because rebuilding trust requires far more character than starting an affair ever did. And I think that’s what you are longing for. Not romance, investment, not even poems, but presence, awareness of you, of your relationship, of what’s needed. Not grand gestures, but consistency. You want him to pay attention, right?

You want to know that he’s paying attention and being intentional and doing the things that matter for you, to you, for the relationship. And those are things that are beautiful to long for. Valid, right? And going back to this grief we touched on, this is something that you can allow yourself to process. Just feeling all of that grief, like wow, wow, okay, feeling the grief.

And then on the other side of that grief is clarity about what you want in a relationship, in a conscious relationship. I want somebody who pays attention, who is present, who’s intentional. Intentional with themselves. Intentional for everyone. Right?

But especially for the person that they claim to love the most, which is you. Right? Okay, onto the next question. Our next person asked something that I don’t think that we talk about as much in this space as we should. So I’m really glad that this question was asked here.

It’s been three months since my husband self disclosed a nine and a half year on and off sexual relationship with this woman. I had no idea he hid his addiction to sexual online materials and adultery so well. The affair partner has been cut off so my spouse and I can work on starting over.

But her close friend from childhood keeps messaging me to come around for a barbecue with the social group. The latest invitation is to introduce me to the guy the adulteress has started a serious relationship with. I moved from responding we’re busy to not responding at all. My husband is incredibly ashamed, remorseful and focused on addressing his demons, demonstrateably so no one our friendship network has been told because we need peace and space to work on healing.

What is triggering is the knowledge that the adulteress has very swiftly move on while I endure the devastation of her and my husband’s actions. Being asked to social events is like rubbing more salt into

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a deep wound. I don’t know what else to do other than ghost persistent people. How do I deal with the trauma of spousal betrayal with a woman in our friendship network? Okay, this is a, ah, lonely place to be. Right?

It can feel so lonely. And this is not just about a barbecue Obviously about how to navigate the social scene. The bigger question is, how do I live in a world that seems to have moved on and carrying on as normal when my nervous system has not? How do I do that? Okay.

One of the cruelest parts of betrayal is this. Your world stops. Everyone else’s doesn’t. People keep planning vacations and going to parties and barbecues and talking about the weather and laughing over dinner while you’re over here trying to remember to breathe.

And then something else happens. The affair partner moves on. Maybe they start another relationship. Maybe people still like them and nobody knows. And you’re over here carrying all the rubble.

And it can feel profoundly unfair and profoundly lonely. And it is. And it is. But one thing I want to give you permission for is this. You do not owe people access to you while your nervous system is trying to heal.

You do not owe it to people. If not responding is what creates peace right now, if that’s what creates a little bit of space for your nervous system to go, okay, we’re not putting ourself in that situation just yet. It’s okay to do that. And sometimes we think that boundaries are for unsafe people. That’s not true.

Okay? Sometimes boundaries are simply for situations like this where our nervous system doesn’t currently have the capacity to hold what’s being asked. And it’s not punishment. It’s not bitterness or immaturity. What if it’s wisdom?

Right? And you may decide to explain. You may try to reconnect, or you may not. Full permission granted. You don’t have to do any of that.

You don’t have to force yourself into spaces that repeatedly reopen the wound simply because someone else doesn’t understand why they’re painful. Sometimes healing requires creating enough space for your heart to catch up to reality. Okay? And that isn’t selfish. It’s actually showing yourself so much compassion.

And what I foresee for you is that as you make it less about the people at the barbecue, the people in these circles, and more about checking m in with your own body and nurturing your own body and taking care of yourself, there will come a time where it actually will not be a big deal. Where your nervous system is like, actually, we’re cool. We can do this.

And you will be able to walk into a room with your head held high and not be thrown back into the that dark place that you’re afraid of going. Right? I do think that’s coming for you. But right now, you. It’s okay for you to not go without explanation and to honor what your body is asking of you.

All right, now on to another question. My husband had an emotional and sexual affair with a coworker while we were in an. In an in home separation. He believed we were done at the time. But even after a few years of therapy, the betrayal still hurts deeply.

Some days I think about it 10 to 20 times, especially when I have too much time alone. It’s better than it was, but I still feel stuck. I’ve recently shared my pain with my husband, and he said he understands, but I sometimes wonder if he truly does. I don’t always tell him when I’m hurting.

And I’m also struggling to forgive. Why does the betrayal still sting so deeply and take up so much space in my mind, even years later and after therapy? Okay, so the deeper questions here, okay, the question asked is, why does it still hurt? And I believe that the deeper question here, one of them is, why doesn’t understanding automatically create healing? We live in a culture that quietly teaches us that once we understand something, we should be over it.

I’ve, uh, gone to therapy. I know why it happened. I understand attachment and my attachment wounds. Okay, I’ve forgiven. So why do I still get triggered?

And here’s the real answer. Because trauma doesn’t live only in our thoughts. It lives in our bodies. It lives in our nervous systems. Okay, Imagine that your house caught fire.

The smoke detector saved your life. Now imagine the fire is out, the house had been repaired, and months later, the smoke detector starts blaring because someone burned toast. Would you yell at the smoke detector? No. You would understand that it’s trying to protect you.

And your nervous system is very similar. It isn’t measuring time. Your nervous system could care less about time. It’s measuring safety. It isn’t asking, has it been three years?

Okay, we’re good now. It’s asking, do I believe this danger is truly

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over? M. And that’s why insight is important. But it’s not quite enough. Healing happens through repeated experiences of safety.

Okay? That’s true. Whether you stay in the marriage or leave it. Safety isn’t one conversation. It’s hundreds of moments where your body slowly learns.

I’m not alone with this anymore. All right? And one thing that stood out to me is you wondered if your husband really understand. And maybe he does, but. And maybe he doesn’t.

But I wonder if that’s actually the question that’s keeping you stuck. Because if, even if he understood perfectly, your nervous system would still need time to have a different lived experience. Okay, Understanding Helps experience, transforms. This is the integration. You hear that word thrown around?

Integration is when we are putting the rubber to the road where we’re out in the world practicing the tools that we have been learning, practicing staying in conversations and breathing our way through it instead of bailing as soon as it gets hard. We can understand something all day long, and it won’t mean a thing if we don’t know how to use it. It’s the experience that transforms, not the understanding.

So that’s why healing can often feel very slow. It’s not because you’re failing. It’s because your body is learning something your mind already knows. And I want you to know this, okay? You have so much more power here than what you think you do.

So much more power here to shift your timeline. And I want to jump into that with this next question. Okay. In the example you gave in your podcast, Relief vs. Repair, when you contact your spouse and ask, are you thinking of her?

And then feel momentary relief, what would real, lasting repair look like? Excellent. Excellent question. And I love this question because I think it highlights one of the biggest shifts I’ve made in my own thinking and that I. That I help people with all the time.

Relief and, um, repair can look very similar on the surface, but they’re completely different experiences. Relief sounds like, are you thinking about her? No. Woo. Good.

Okay. And then for a moment, your anxiety comes down. For a few minutes, maybe a few hours. Okay. Relief isn’t bad.

We all need relief sometimes, but really fades. Then the anxiety returns. So we ask again, what real repair looks like Is something different. Okay, Repair sounds like. I noticed you’ve been quiet today.

Yeah, I’m having a hard day. Tell me about it. I’m scared you’re thinking about her. Thank you for telling me. Come here.

Let’s stay with this together. I’m here. I’m in it with you. Okay, Notice what changed? The question wasn’t answered.

The relationship deepened. It wasn’t, are you thinking about her? It was, I’m scared that you are. And then him responding with, come here. I’m with you.

I’m here. I am with you. Okay? And the question wasn’t answered because that wasn’t the question, uh, to begin with. It’s, can you be here with me?

Right. The relationship now deepens. Okay. Sometimes those relief things can quiet anxiety temporarily. But what this does, this example, is it builds attachment.

One gives reassurance and the other creates safety. Okay? So one of the best questions after betrayal becomes, can my pain be held without either of Us running from it. And that’s what repair is. It’s not the absence of triggers.

It’s the presence of connection, especially when you’re right in the thick of it. Okay, so to the question that was asked before this again, you have so much power to shift your experience and your timeline. So right now you’re a few years in, you’re like, oh, my gosh, this is taking forever.

Okay? And so much of it is because you’re looking outside for, uh, for him to give you your cues of what’s going on, of what’s true for him. And you have the power here to ask some of these questions of. Of what do I actually need? And do I have the courage to show up and speak my truth and be vulnerable and risk exposure?

And what’s going to happen when I do? Right? Can he handle where I’m at? Can he stay with me? Right?

First of all, can I stay with me without abandoning myself? And then can he. And we can close space and time very quickly when we have these kinds of interactions again and again and again. It can teach our nervous system, you’re okay, you’re okay. You’re safe.

Okay? You’re safe. It’s not the absence of triggers. It’s the presence of connection. Are you reaching for connection?

Is he reaching for connection? Okay, now onto,

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um, another question. It has been about four months since D day, and there are still trickle truth and half truths that are coming to light. I have given countless opportunities for him to express the truth all the way out. What would your advice be, um, on when enough is enough regarding trickle truth, and how does trickle truth impact the chances of repair?

Okay, so I don’t actually think that trickle truth hurts because it’s one more lie, right? I think it hurts because it keeps shifting your reality every time another piece comes out. Your brain has to rebuild a story, and you’re trying to get your legs under you, right? You’re trying to go, what’s the ground that I’m standing on?

And every time something new comes, you’re having to rebuild. You’re having to shift your foundation again and rebuild the story again and again, and it’s exhausting. Okay? So imagine trying to build a house while someone keeps moving the foundation underneath you, okay? That’s what trickle truth feels like, and it’s exhausting.

So when is enough, enough? All right, I don’t have, like, a. I wish that I had a. Like a calendar answer. Like, if it’s been this many, then it’s.

It’s enough. Okay? I actually have a trajectory answer. I can look at the trajectory of, uh, if it continues going this way, this is what I can predict is probably going to happen. Is this person becoming increasingly committed to truth, or are they still more committed to protecting themselves than protecting the relationship?

All right, those are two very different trajectories. Repair requires a shared reality. Okay? Not a perfect reality, not an easy reality, but a shared one. And that’s why truth matters so much, because truth isn’t always pleasant, right?

It often is not. But without a shared reality, truth has nowhere to grow. It has nowhere to grow. Sometimes people think trust is rebuilt by promises. I don’t believe that.

I believe that trust is built when two people are finally standing on the same ground. They’re on the same ground, okay? Even if that ground is painful, truth gives you some solid ground. Solid ground and lies keep the earth shifting beneath your feet. So the way that I see this is, it’s like one person is finally telling the truth, for example, of, uh, why they had the affair in the first place, of what was going on for them, where they were unhappy, where they might have not liked some of the dynamics in the relationship.

They’re finally telling the truth. This can be a difficult conversation, but it can get some steady ground underneath us where we’re willing to say the hard things. And it goes for both people involved, right? That getting on steady ground of a, uh, shared reality. It doesn’t mean that we agree with each other’s stories about everything, but that we are both going, okay, if there.

If there’s a way forward, we at least have to start on the ground of truth and go from there. All right, we’re about done here. We have one more question for today, but before I get there, I want to say that sometimes what we’re doing when we’re asking these questions is we’re hoping that we can get some kind of steady ground under us, something that we can then respond to, right?

And what we are often trying to do is we’re trying to explain away certain patterns or we’re waiting for potential instead of responding to behavior, okay? I think that we want to have hope, okay? But hope deserves to be rooted in something solid. We want hope. We want to hope for something.

And the problem is that sometimes hope is asking us to argue with reality. And the only way through here is by looking at what’s real and growing your capacity to face it. Hope sometimes will push away the true things that need to be seen. And what’s real and what’s solid are Behavior, consistency, integrity, not promises.

All right? And one thing I’ve learned over the years is this. People often think the opposite of giving up is staying. I don’t think that’s true. Sometimes staying is giving up.

Giving up on your own longing. Giving up on what you know, Giving up on the possibility of something healthier. And sometimes leaving is the most hopeful thing a person ever does. Not because they’re hopeful about divorce, but because they’re hopeful about living honestly.

And I don’t think that your job here is to try to live without regret. I don’t think that’s possible. Every decision we make is going to carry grief that can sometimes be morphed m into regret.

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It. It’s often just grief, okay? But then we try to make ourselves wrong because we don’t like feeling grief. So we’re like, oh, no, what if I made a mistake? Your job is not to make the perfect decision.

Your job is to become someone who trusts herself to meet whatever comes next. And those are very different things. Because if your self trust depends on making the perfect decision, you’ll always be terrified. Okay? But if your self trust comes from knowing whatever happens, I will not abandon myself, then suddenly you don’t actually need certainty.

You need courage. All right? You need courage. And there’s another thing that’s been on my mind. There is a big difference between giving a process time and giving a process your entire life.

All right? Only you know where that line is. How much of your life are you giving to a process rather than taking the long view and playing the long game of, uh, you know, like, the things that matter most generally take some time, right? That’s giving it time. Am I giving the process time, or am I giving it my entire life?

All right, now that’s a question I want you to sit with. Not have I suffered enough? All right? But am I still participating in something that still has life in it? Relationships are not going to be perfect, but they do need to have some life and realness and growing and movement and flow and opening and repairing and receiving.

And if nothing is changing, if you are fighting for something to be alive when it consistently is showing you that it might not be, that’s information, too. All right, this is our final question. Now. My husband had an affair with a woman in his karate club. He allows her to remain because he doesn’t want to hurt her or damage his business.

I don’t believe they’re still seeing each other. But for five years, I have lived with the torment of knowing she is there. He Says, even if I got rid of her, nothing would change. I feel unsafe and disrespected. Am I wrong for still feeling this way?

What boundaries should I have? All right. I don’t think this is a question about karate, right? It’s not about karate. It’s about what actually communicates that my healing matters, that I matter.

Because imagine if the other woman disappeared tomorrow. If your husband still dismissed your pain, would you actually feel safe? Probably not. I want you to notice something in his response. He says nothing would change.

That’s an argument. That’s a hard line. That’s not curiosity. All right? It’s not curiosity about your experience.

He’s making a statement for you without asking you how you feel. It’s not curiosity. Repair sounds different. Repair asks, help me understand what it’s like for you, knowing she’s there. What happens inside your body?

What would help you feel safer? Okay? Huge difference, right? One response tries to win and shut it down. The other tries to understand.

And I think that’s one of the greatest indicators of repair. Not whether someone actually agrees with your every request, but whether they become deeply curious about the pain underneath it. All right? Because empathy changes everything. Boundaries aren’t ultimately about controlling another person.

They’re about honoring your own reality. Honoring your own reality. Do you hear that? Boundaries are not about controlling anyone. They are about honoring what is true for you.

And sometimes a boundary sounds like, I cannot continue participating in a relationship where my experience is consistently dismissed. Okay? That’s very different from trying to control someone else’s choices. All right? Okay.

Now to wrap this up. In preparing this episode, there are so many themes that came through, right? Almost every single person who wrote in asked to help them understand someone else. Does he love me? Will it change?

Does he understand? Should he know this by now? I understand you guys. I understand those questions. I’ve asked them, too.

But eventually, our healing begins. When our questions start changing. Instead of asking, can I trust them? We begin asking, can I trust myself? Can I trust myself?

Can I trust myself to see clearly? Can I trust myself to stop minimizing what I know? Can I trust myself to respond to reality instead of arguing with it? Because here’s what I’ve been discovering. Betrayal doesn’t just ask us whether another person will tell us the truth.

Okay? It eventually asks whether we will. Me, Me. Whether we’ll tell ourselves the truth about our own experience. Whether we will live in it.

Whether we’ll stop abandoning ourselves in order to preserve

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something that may no longer be real. All right? And honestly, that’s become one of the conversations that I’m, like, the most passionate about right now. In fact, I asked you at the beginning to stick around to the end. And this is why, for years, I have been coaching around infidelity.

It’s near and dear to my heart. It is near and dear to my heart. But I have felt a bigger conversation bubbling up inside of me. A bigger conversation. This is not just about infidelity.

Infidelity was the doorway, okay? It was the thing that was painful enough to crack you open to be willing to ask some of these bigger questions. And what I’ve learned is that underneath almost every conversation, whether betrayal in a marriage or by family or work or by friends, or even feeling betrayed by life itself, is a deeper invitation to learn how to tell ourselves the truth and then learning how to live in it.

And that’s why I have created a brand new group called the Truth Teller Circle. It’s not a course. It’s not a place to come and get tons more information. It’s a place to practice becoming the kind of woman who can bear the truth without abandoning herself. And I’m intentionally keeping this first group small.

20 people. I’m doing this because I want the people in the group to feel safe enough to be known, to be seen, to be held, to have space to be challenged and pushed and know that they are held. All right? I want this to be an intimate space for the 20 people in it. We begin on October 13th.

All right? And because this is such personal work, every person who joins will first have a conversation with me, all right? Not because it’s like an interview, but because I want to make sure it’s the right fit for both of us. And if, as you’ve been listening today, you have found yourself thinking, I actually don’t want more answers outside of myself anymore.

I want to know how to go in here and trust myself again. I want to know how to see things differently. Okay? If that’s where you’re at, this is likely the group for you. Okay?

So if you are listening to this today and something is tapping on you that you need to pay attention to, I invite you to book a call with me. The link is in the show notes. Just get on my calendar, and I can tell you that the spots are filling up very quickly for those calls. Very quickly.

Okay? So if there’s something in you that feels activated by this, don’t wait. Trust it. Go book the call. Go book the call.

Okay, I want to say, everybody who sent in questions, thank you thank you for sharing. You can send in more questions in the link in the show notes. Thank you for spending this time with me today. Thank you for the vulnerability in these questions asked. Thank you for trusting me with your stories.

And more than anything, thank you for continuing to do the courageous work of becoming someone who tells herself the truth. All right. You’re doing it. All right. I’ll see you next week.

Take care. Thank you for listening to the Heal From Infidelity podcast. If you would like to be kept 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.