I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 181 Truth, the Doorway to Freedom. 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 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.

(00:49):

Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode. So glad you’re here with
me today. Today we are going to be talking about truth and how important it
is and how really owning truth stepping into truth sets us free. We’re
going to go into great detail in this stick around. This is for those who
have betrayed. This is for those who have been betrayed. It actually is
applicable to anybody. Okay, so stick around. There is a moment in every
healing journey where there’s truth standing before us. It’s raw, it’s
unfiltered, and it’s often unrelenting. And the more we ignore it, the
louder it gets. And in those moments when it’s staring us down, we have a
choice. Do we look away? Do we distort it or do we dare to face it and
stare it down knowing that once we do, we can never return to who we were
before?

(01:50):

We know too much. Now, today we’re talking about the power of truth telling
and how it changes everything and why when it comes to infidelity, truth is
the threshold between devastation and transformation. The first piece we’re
going to jump into today is the first kind of truth that we have to tell
and that is the truth that we tell ourselves. The hardest truth that we
tell is often what we tell ourselves, telling ourselves the truth. We often
resist our own truth because our mind’s natural instinct is to protect us
from pain. So if there’s something that we have an inclination about, we
know that by really acknowledging this thing, it will hurt, and so we often
don’t acknowledge it. We often justify or deny or minimize what we know
deep down to be true. We find all the reasons in the world for it not to be
true.

(02:51):

We fear that if we admit the truth, we have to act on it, and often that is
the case. Often when we actually willing to look at the truth of something,
it means that there’s something in front of us that it would be going
against our own integrity to not do anything about it. Okay, so an example
of this is when a client finally hears the truth about their spouses
infidelity, they often can’t sit on it for long. They know it and they know
that they know it and they can’t just hide it and pretend like they don’t
know it for long because it eats them up inside. Okay? Often when people
are unfaithful, they hide from themselves. They deceive themselves, they
tell themselves stories about how it’s not that big of a deal or how it was
deserved because the other person didn’t treat them well.

(03:45):

They minimize it, they deny it, they do not want to see it, and often when
they’re finally ready to tell the truth to themselves, then they often
can’t live with that truth without sharing it, without telling the truth to
their partner. A betrayed partner often feels something is off, but for
many people that come and work in my world, they knew something was off,
but they convince themselves for a while that they’re overreacting or that
what they’re picking up on isn’t quite true or that other people just don’t
know our spouse like we do. We can tell ourselves all kinds of stories. I
remember, and I’ve shared this before, so bear with me, but I remember when
my best friend at the time came and asked to talk to me, came to me and
said, I know that he’s lying to you. I know that he is, and I so did not
want to see it.

(04:37):

If I remember right, I was pregnant with my fourth kid. I did not want to
see it, and so she left and I addressed my husband at the time and he just
quickly denied it, had all the reasons in the world why it wasn’t true, and
I just believed him like, of course it’s a lie. Of course that’s not true.
I didn’t want to see it because of what it would mean, what action I’d have
to take staring down my family and children and decisions I’d have to make.
I wasn’t ready until I was ready and part of that was that there was
undeniable truth in front of me. I had hard evidence. I knew there was no
denying it. When I had that evidence in my face, I couldn’t look away
anymore. A lie that the unfaithful partner often tells themselves is that
it just happened.

(05:27):

It just happened. I don’t really know. It just happened when in reality it
was a series of choices. No one made ’em do it. No one pushed them into it.
No one dragged them into it. The real truth is that they chose it and they
chose each step further down that path further and further into it, and
then they chose to go deeper and deeper into it before turning around and
saying, I need out. I do not want to do this anymore. Okay? Sometimes stay
in marriages that they know are not good for them. They know that they’re
unhealthy and that they’re not good for them and they often stay anyway
because they’re afraid to admit what their heart already knows to be true.
Their heart already knows this is not a good place for me to be, but their
mind, it keeps convincing them to stay and look at the reasons and look at
how it would break the kids’ hearts or I don’t know what I would do, so I’m
going to convince myself that everything is fine and hope for the best.

(06:27):

Okay? It takes immense courage to say, this is what’s real, but here’s the
thing. The moment we stop lying to ourselves is the moment real healing
begins and not a second before, and it takes incredible courage to sit with
the truth. Before we speak it out loud, just to sit with it just to see it,
I’m going to take you through a quick little exercise that I’d like you to
do when you can do this quietly and in a distraction free place, you can
pause it and come back. I want you to close your eyes and imagine yourself
standing in front of a mirror. It’s not the mirror you see every day. It’s a
mirror of absolute truth. There is no BSing this mirror. You look into this
mirror and they’re staring back at you, is the version of yourself who is
not afraid of truth.

(07:24):

She is not afraid of it at all or he not afraid. This person knows that
truth is what sets them free. They know that truth is what makes them the
most powerful. It’s the one who speaks it boldly, who owns every choice
they make, who sees reality as it is and still stands strong. I want you to
see yourself as that version of you and listen to what that version of you
has to say. What do they know that you have been afraid to admit? I want you
to take a minute and think about that and you can replay it as many times
as you need. Alright, now to the next part, truth that we struggle to hear,
it’s one thing to tell the truth. It’s a whole other thing to hear the
truth. Truth is really hard to hear sometimes because it disrupts the
stories we’ve been telling ourselves.

(08:24):

It disrupts the stories we’ve been telling ourselves. It’s painful. It can
be painful. It can be painful. For example, when we have been trying to
make excuses for our partner’s behavior and look at childhood wounds and
look at all the things and then come to a realization that this person was
pretty cruel, that this person was pretty mean and you didn’t know they were
capable of, it doesn’t mean you have to leave them. It means that you are
telling the truth. When we tell ourself the truth, we’re then able to decide
how we want to protect ourselves going forward, what we need going forward.
Okay? Truth is hard to receive because it forces us to face emotions we
don’t want to face. We’ve tried to bury them. I’ll give an example here in
my life there’s been an individual that has not been very kind at times and
sometimes pretty mean, and I am in a place where I recognize where I have
tried to keep the peace with this person rather than telling the truth and
letting the chips fall where they may, and I can see how my avoidance of
facing emotions that I’ve not wanted to see and not wanted to feel have
kept me in that place and now I’m seeing how it’s kept me a prisoner to
telling the truth by not being willing to feel those emotions, which really
are some rejection, having this person reject me when I share how I really
feel about something and it’s been scary and I recognize that I’ve kind of
been hiding from it and don’t want to hide anymore, and so part of me
hearing the truth is seeing that I now have a choice, right?

(10:19):

I can choose to honor myself and feel what I need to feel to pass through
this or I can continue to resist it and bury it and go back and know that
there’s a part of me that is being deceptive to myself. Truth demands that
we either integrate the truth that we receive into who we are or we reject
it and stay stuck. Now, let’s talk about when truth comes after infidelity.
It is very painful often for the betrayed partner to hear the words, I was
unfaithful, I cheated. It can be like a dagger, so painful and we often
don’t want to hear it so painful. Often the unfaithful partner hearing, I
don’t know if I can ever trust you again, can be very painful and other
such things. I remember saying, I thought you were my friend. I thought you
were my friend. I’m sure that was painful, but it was what was true.

(11:24):

Okay? Some other truths that come after infidelity can be, I have needs and
wants. I’ve never spoken aloud. I don’t know if I ever have really felt
seen in this marriage. I don’t know if I can ever actually be who I am
here. I don’t know if there’s room for me here. I don’t know if you would
even receive or be open to who I actually am and the person that is just
aching to come out, right? We’re often so afraid to tell the truth because
we don’t know what the other person is going to do with it, and so we often
hide the truth from ourselves or hide it from them or both. Part of the way
that we receive truth without breaking under it is recognizing that truth
is not a weapon, okay? Truth is not a weapon. It might sound like it
sometimes.

(12:22):

You know why? Because it’s powerful, and sometimes when I think about
truth, I see somebody with a really powerful sword that just is hammering
it down, sweeping it through the air, going, no, I will not participate.
I’m not going to participate in this. But part of that sword swinging is
clearing the way for truth. It parts away for truth telling and for freedom
it is a doorway and if we let it, truth can be the thing that liberates us
from what was never meant for us. It is the biggest gift. It gets us on our
way to the life that sets us free, the life that we really want. How to do
this without breaking under it. It’s this practice of pausing, breathing,
and integrating before reacting. So let’s say that you hear a truth that
feels really hard and your instinct is to get really defensive.

(13:26):

That can’t be true. What are you talking about? You’re the one who did the
betraying so you don’t get a vote and getting really defensive rather than
hearing what the person has to say. Our real path to freedom is pausing,
breathing, and integrating. So this looks like giving yourself a minute to
get grounded back into your body so you’re grounding back into your body.
Next, you’re breathing, you’re giving yourself a breath. Maybe this looks
like going for a walk or moving your body in some way, journaling, doing
something different than what you’re doing to get back into your body.
Integrating the piece about integrating means that we are taking a second to
hear the truth that somebody is telling us and going, is there any truth to
what they’re saying? Is this meant for me? Is this mine or is this not mine?
Or is there maybe 30%, 20% truth here and the rest of it is untrue?

(14:34):

I’ll take my 20%, I’ll take that 20% and I will hand back the 80. Okay?
This is truth telling at its finest, really going, what actually is mine?
What am I getting blamed for? That never was mine. Another exercise I want
you to go through here is imagining yourself sitting in a wide open space.
It’s open, okay? It can be a beach that’s vacant, it can be a big field,
something really beautiful with flowers in it. Whatever comes to mind across
from you sits truth itself. It’s truth. However you picture truth. I want
you to see it as whatever form feels right to you. It’s truth. It’s just
truth. Does it look calm? Does it look angry? Does it look fierce? Does it
look powerful? What form are you seeing? This truth holds nothing back. It
tells you everything you need to know and everything you’ve been afraid to
hear, but instead of running, you courageously sit.

(15:41):

You don’t run and you listen. You listen, and in listening you find
something really surprising. Just in listening, you find not destruction,
but clarity and power. Power because you finally know the truth, clarity
because you finally know the truth, clarity and power help you on your way
to know what to do next. So you’re hearing this truth and instead of
running, you’re listening and then listening. You feel yourself getting
stronger and stronger and clearer and clearer, and you get to determine what
you do with that truth. Now, part three, stepping into the identity of
truth. What if we became the kind of person who always tells and lives the
truth? What a world that would be, right? Who do we become when we live in
truth? We stop negotiating with lies. We stop negotiating with them. We
stop trying to make something that we know is not true, true.

(16:57):

Now, I want to clarify something on this, okay? Sometimes when we know
something, we think that everyone else should know it too. We think that if
they would just be honest, they would know this too, okay? For example, we
live in a world that is so mixed up right now and so divided with politics
and with religion, and sometimes we can have something that feels
completely 100% true to us. That doesn’t feel true for somebody else, and we
can judge them for it and we can think that they’re wrong. What matters the
most is you listening to you, you listening to what is true for you and
letting that lead out, okay? Letting that truth lead out. Sometimes it
means that there are maybe relationships that you might want to challenge
because your beliefs are so unaligned and sometimes it means that you
recognize that there’s a lot of growth in having relationships with people
that see things differently than you do.

(18:06):

There’s no right answer to that, but what we do is we stop negotiating with
the lie. We just let it be. We accept it, and we can develop self-trust
here, deep self-trust because we no longer are making ourselves wrong.
We’re no longer gaslighting ourselves into thinking that how we actually
feel isn’t how we actually feel. We’re just accepting it or that the facts
aren’t the facts, and we become the most powerful version of ourselves, not
because we have control over others, but because we are fully in alignment
with ourselves, and that is a very powerful way to move through the world.
Truth telling is not something that happens in one moment. It happens over
and over. It becomes a practice, the practice of truth telling. It’s not
just about one big confession or one big revelation. It’s about daily
decisions to honor what is real and to check in with yourself constantly so
you can answer that question. What is real? What is real? This may have
been real a month ago, but what is real now? And really checking in with
that again and again and again, okay? It is about aligning our actions with
what we actually believe, getting clear, what do I believe and how can I
honor that?

(19:34):

Now, I want you to imagine another scene, and this is where you are, a
version of you who speaks truth, who hears truth, who moves through the
world completely unburdened by illusion of any kind. If nothing was
blocking you, if fear was no longer dictating your choices, what would you
say? What would you do? What would you do differently today? How would you
show up in your relationships, in your work, in your own reflection? And
part of the difficulty in answering this is knowing that it is very likely
that relationships would change that some people who are not used to that
version of you might be uncomfortable and you do it anyway because you know
that the greatest reward is living in alignment with you. There’s something
very, very powerful in that. Now, make no mistake, it requires great
emotional maturity to tell the truth, to tell the truth, and to hear the
truth.

(20:42):

It requires emotional maturity because it means taking responsibility for
our own emotions instead of blaming others. It means recognizing that truth
isn’t just about being honest, it’s about being accountable to that
honesty. We can tell the truth, but are we going to back it up with action?
We can hear the truth, but are we going to back it up with what we need to
do in response to that truth? It means sitting with discomfort instead of
running with it, learning how to sit in our discomfort, trusting that we
will not always be as uncomfortable as we are now, it will move through us.
Immaturity around truth makes us defensive. It convinces us that hiding or
justifying is easier. It leads us to telling half-truth. So we twist reality
to fit our own comfort zone, but avoiding truth keeps us stuck in the same
patterns, repeating the same pain again and again and again.

(21:44):

We keep repeating until we learn a different way. Emotional maturity is
what makes truth a path to freedom, because when we own our truth, whether
that’s admitting our own mistakes or acknowledging what we need, we take
our power back. Whether it’s telling the truth about this is what I’ve
done, this is what I did, this is what I’ve been hiding from myself. Or
when we are hearing what somebody else is trying to say to us, it steps us
on our way because we stop relying on external validation because our own
self-trust becomes unshakeable. That is the gift, that is the power, that
is the freedom. We learn to trust ourselves above all else, and there is a
gift in that. The moment we accept truth fully without resistance, we
become free. Not because truth is easy, it’s not, but because it no longer
has power over us, it no longer has power over us, which is so amazing.

(22:48):

Truth is the foundation of everything real. It is the birthplace of all
healing, and it’s the only way we ever become truly free. So today, my
beautiful listeners, I invite you to step into truth not as a weapon. It is
not as a weapon, but as a doorway to the life that you are meant to live.
Truth releases us from lies, the ones that we hear, the ones that we tell to
ourselves, and it shapes us into the kind of people who can handle freedom.
That is the biggest piece. It shapes us into that person that can handle it.
The more we practice it, the more we grow those muscles of being able to
handle what comes after telling the truth. Freedom is only ever possible
when we have the emotional maturity to hold it and what a gift, what
self-respect in that. It is liberating.

(23:46):

It is freeing. It gives us our power back. Now, if this resonates with you,
I have an offer for one special couple, one special couple. My one-to-one
most impactful offer that I have that I offer is where I work with a couple
one-on-one, and there are lots of sessions that we spread out over a long
period of time and the woman gets into my group, my Get Your Life Back
After Infidelity Group. But I work with both of them, both individually and
as a couple. It is the most impactful. It is the most high end. It is the
most exclusive offer that I have. I have one spot open, just one. If you
heard this episode and you know that you and your partner, your spouse are
ready for truth telling. If you’re ready to grow your ability to hear
truth, to practice telling the truth, and are done playing the same games
that you’ve always played, if you’re done muting your voice and need help
learning to speak, if you’re done hiding, I invite you to send me an email.

(25:02):

Just reach out directly to me. This is for one special couple. When you
email me and ask me, I will tell you about it. And if I feel like you’re a
good fit and want to continue into a call, we will have a call where I will
meet both of you and talk to you. And if we’re a good fit, then you’ll be
this lucky couple that gets to move forward and I look forward to see who
reaches out and be prepared that we dive right into the deep end of truth
telling like maybe you never have before, and it is the biggest gift you can
ever give yourself. Alright, thank you my friends. I look forward to hearing
from you again, andrea@andreagiles.com. For those of you who have a
situation where you aren’t in a partnership or your spouse isn’t ready, or
you know that you need help yourself to learn how to tell the truth and to
grow your capacity to tell and hear the truth.

(26:00):

That is what we do in my group all the time. All the time. That is the work
that we do. The second milestone in the program is called Facing Truth. We
will not get through this infidelity as a free individual if we do not
learn how to hear truth and how to tell truth and how to act on it, and
that’s what we do inside my group program. Get Your Life Back after
Infidelity, so invite you to apply there. The links for both of these are in
the bio, and I will see you very soon. Take care.

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
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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.