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.

Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Heal from Infidelity. Before I jump into this week’s episode, I have a favor for you. So I regularly go and check on the stats of my podcast, see how it’s doing. I’d love to read your reviews, things like that. There’s something that happens in the podcast world when. When they get reviews, especially regular new reviews, they get bumped to the top of the list. So when people are searching for podcasts, the higher ranked podcasts are the easier they are for people to find. And I want people to find this right. It makes me appear more credible. It makes people trust me and think this is worth my time when they see lots of positive reviews. So I ask you if this podcast has helped you, if it has helped your life, helped you move forward from infidelity, given you some insight. I ask you to please go give me, uh, a shout out, give me a review. I would really appreciate that. It’s pretty easy to do if you don’t know how.

You can do a quick Google search, and it will tell you, but it’s pretty simple. All right, thank you. Okay, let’s talk about our episode today. Last week, when I was coaching, an analogy came to me that I need to share here. Okay. Um, so I was coaching somebody who was telling me about how their spouse was giving them some information about some details that my client was asking about in regards to the infidelity. And she was saying to me how she just didn’t quite know what to do with it, that it felt a little off, but she wasn’t sure why and that she just wasn’t sure if she should just believe him. And other, uh, what other choice do I have? Do I just believe it? Do I just move forward? Do I just let it be? And this analogy came to me. Okay, um. Before infidelity, you had an image in your mind of what your life is. And I want you to picture your image as if It’s a puzzle, okay? On your puzzle is your life. There’s your marriage, there’s your kids. If you have children, there’s your extended family and what that relationship looks like.

There’s jobs, there’s where you live, all of that, okay? You have this image of what it all is, what you do for fun, the whole picture, okay? For most people, when infidelity occurs, it feels like the entire puzzle got blown to bits. Every piece is blown up, disjointed, sometimes even mangled and deformed, okay? The way that you saw yourself before. Infidelity can even look different. Like, even looking at you in that puzzle, you’re like, I don’t even know that girl. Like, she looks so different. Okay? For my male listeners out there, same for you. Like, I don’t even know that person. It’s so different now, I don’t even recognize that person. Okay? Also, there’s some things that look different now. Your friendships often change your conversations. The things that used to matter to you don’t quite matter as much anymore.
Your very identity has been rocked, okay? This is very common, and it’s very disorienting. So what happens next is the process of trying to put that puzzle back together and actually finding out what is true.

Like, what is actually factually true. This episode is all about that process and how to distinguish truth, okay? How to recognize it. Now, at first, what we may do when we have that puzzle blown up is we may want to hurry and just throw some pieces together because it feels better. Let’s just slap this back together. Come on. Let’s just put the pieces in. We can shove them together. Use a little puzzle glue if we need. Right? Let me tell you about my experience with this. So earlier on in my first marriage, I found out some things that didn’t make sense. I even had one of my very best friends come to my door and say, andrea, we need to talk. These are the things that I’m hearing. You need to hear about them. And they made me really uncomfortable. But I went and asked my spouse, and he told me what I wanted to hear. He denied everything. Well, why would. Why would people say that about me? Heavens, that’s not true, right? That kind of thing. And while my puzzle, I. I was pretty sure that

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I didn’t have the whole picture. My nice, tidy little puzzle was starting to kind of come undone. Little pieces were popping off, but it wasn’t blown up just yet. Okay? At this point in the game, I didn’t really want to see everything, and I Didn’t want to push on his story because it was a whole lot more comfortable to believe him. Okay. So I kind of just denied my own feeling of discomfort in knowing that there were some things off and believe him. Believed him. I chose to believe. I didn’t want to see it. I was so afraid of what it would mean for me and my six children if. If there was something big to deal with that truly would blow up that whole puzzle. Right. So I crammed those babies together, all those puzzle pieces. I told myself the stories that allowed the pieces to sort of fit. It was a tight fit, but to kind of come back together. And off I went. Okay.

Over time, more and more pieces kind of fell off. It was unraveling. My puzzle was coming undone. I couldn’t keep it together. Okay. Then about six months later, there was a moment when everything changed where it really blew up. I could finally see that he was not at all who he had professed to be, that he had been lying to me for years, years and years. And in one fell suit, my puzzle was like blown to bits, right? All the pieces went flying. I remember feeling so disoriented. Oh, uh, so disoriented. I remember feeling like I have no idea what was real. Like I had this image in my mind of what my family was. And I don’t know what was real there. I don’t know if some of the things that he. He did that seemed kind were to throw me off a scent. I don’t know if I. Like, I just didn’t know anything. It felt like everything that made sense suddenly didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense to me that this person who professed to be one thing was acting quite differently. Okay.

Even still, with all of the information that I had, I took the pieces that he handed to me and I shoved them back into a puzzle. Okay? This was in October of 2012. And even at this point, I believed what I could have his story and just kind of dismissed the rest because the alternative was to majorly rock the boat and risk breaking up my family. So I stayed. And once again, I put a semblance of a nice little family back together in my puzzle. And then some more time went by, and then it blew up again. Blew up. And this time there was no going back. And I knew it at this time. Something changed inside me. Something changed inside me. I was no longer in a hurry to just patch it up. I was no longer in a hurry to just take the pieces that I could kind of cram together. And go on my merry way. I couldn’t do that anymore. I knew that I was no longer honoring myself and that I had been giving him more authority to inform what was true for me than really honoring myself and my truth. I could no longer take the pieces that he was giving me.

Have you ever done a puzzle where you try to make a piece fit? Like, it really looks like it should fit, right? It, like it looks like it should match up, but you know that you’re kind of, like, forcing it in? Recently, my little grandkids came over and they wanted to do a puzzle. So we were doing a puzzle, and my little grandson, who’s almost 4, was helping and constantly. Grandma, look, I got another piece. Grandma, look, it fits. And in reality, none of the pieces fit right. Not one. He just was kind of finding ones that looked like they fit and kind of shoving them in, and it looked like it fit. And he was super excited about it, but it didn’t. Right, it didn’t fit. So ultimately, I had to take all those pieces out. Of course, when he wasn’t looking, right up until that point, I was still trusting him to give me the pieces that would make it make sense. Like, just give me something that I can sort of make sense of, and I’ll shove that on in there and smash it in or whatever. Maybe it’s a little lumpy, but it’ll sort of fit. But at this time, I knew, uh, I knew in my gut, I knew in my heart that I could not do that anymore. I knew too much. And I finally understood that I could no longer hand my sacred trust and authority of what was best for me over to him. I could no longer give him more sway in my life decisions than I was giving to myself. Okay?

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Before that, it was easier to make him responsible for the outcome. If he could just tell me what I needed to hear, tell me what I wanted to hear, I could have my nice little life back. Let’s just patch that up, right? Let me remind you of my life, okay? I got married young. I was almost 20. We lived all over the place. He got, um, a master’s degree from Oxford University. He got a second master’s degree from University of Michigan. And then he decided to go to law school. Went to, to University of Michigan Law School. It’s a top 10 law school. He got it mostly paid for. We. He got every job he wanted. At the time of this one, the scene that I’m telling you about, we were living in the Bay Area where he was in house counsel for Google. Highly, highly coveted job. Okay? Highly coveted job. Very hard to get your foot in the door. Lots of room for growth, okay?

I had always been a stay at home mom. Following him around to all his schools, all the things that he was doing, and allowing that puzzle to blow up and not knowing the future and what it would look like was absolutely terrifying. I didn’t know financially how I would fare. I didn’t know if I’d have to move. I didn’t know anything. There was so much on the line and there was so much good in our future. Like he had amazing prospects, right? Like it was just going to go up from there and we were going to have more, more money, more time, freedom, all of those things, right? As he grew in seniority. And I knew that I was looking at probably not having much money, having to sacrifice, having to go work, all of that. I knew that. But there was this part of me, like this deep part of me that I allowed to come to the surface that I knew, I knew that I was willing, finally willing to let it all burn to the ground to get to the truth, to get to what was true, to get an accurate picture of what my life had been with him.

And if I couldn’t get that, if I couldn’t get truth that I could live with, I had to let it go. And ultimately I did let it go because those pieces never came. And the only way forward was in the truth, that I needed to leave, to go live honestly, okay? To live honestly, to live with people who, who wanted to be honest with me, even if it was alone. Okay? Now, I knew at this point also that if there was going to be something that would turn my head around, like if there was going to be something that would go, andrew, you need to take a second look at this. I knew that I would recognize it. I knew that if the pieces handed to me actually fit, I would know. I would know. And that just never happened. Okay, so let me ask you this.

Have you had the experience when someone told you something, let’s go with your significant other. Because you’re here because of infidelity and you knew, you just knew that it didn’t add up. Maybe it was that the details kept changing to the story. Maybe you had other info that they were not privy to. Okay? Maybe you already knew some answers and that info that you had made their story not accurate or possible at all, right? You knew that it was off. All right? Maybe like me in my earlier years, you just took their word for it and put things back in the puzzle, shove them back in or put them high up on a shelf or tucked it away. And because it was a lot easier to do, right? It was a lot easier to just push it away than to deal with the reality that there is a discrepancy here, that it did not add up.

Okay? But still, even with that shoved away, put on the shelf, shoved back into this puzzle, there was still something that felt off that you could not shake. It just still is there. You just shove it away. Okay, Are you following here? Time goes by, uh, and something else is revealed, which actually validates why you felt off in the first place. You are right. All along you knew. Now, at this point, sometimes my clients feel embarrassed. How did I not know? How did I just go along with it? My friend, for all the reasons I’m saying here, okay? Have so much compassion for yourself. This stuff is hard, right? It’s hard. Like, it’s hard to look at rocking the boat, really looking at blowing up your life, right? But what happens over time is you get wiser. You learn that you were right, that you did know, and now you have some hard won wisdom. Um, okay. All right, let’s go back to my puzzle pieces. I started trusting my experience over his words. I started listening not only to my intellect, but to the truth my body

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was telling me. Uh, I remember one time he had asked to talk to me. He said he had some things that he wanted to tell me. Like, okay, here we go. And I remember going to meet him to talk about these things. And in the entire conversation, I felt so sick, like, completely nauseous, because I knew that pretty much every word out of his mouth was a lie. He knew that I was serious about ending the marriage. And he was basically throwing out there anything he could to get me to stay and to cover his tracks.

And I knew it. And I left just so disgusted. I’m like, I don’t even know that person. I knew it. Now, at this point, instead of trying to justify it or make excuses for him or somehow making it okay, I instead chose to take the pieces that he was trying to hand me and set them squarely outside my puzzle and knew they did not fit. I knew the things he was saying were not accurate. So I did not try anymore to force them to feel true. I. My body rejected it. My body knew my mind did too. And I got braver and I kept looking for truth. I kept asking for questions that I already asking questions that I already knew the answer to to see if I could get a straight answer. All Right. Over time, I had to come to terms with the fact that my new puzzle of my new life did not include him. It could not. I could not make it fit and still be honest with myself. It was a painful, painful pill to swallow.

But inside, I knew that I was honoring my highest truth. I wanted to live honestly, and I wanted to be around people who also held that same standard. And I would just be an accomplice to his lies. A co creator of the life that we are patching up. If I did not stand for more, okay, I would be trying to take puzzle pieces that did not fit and keep trying to force them in to keep the image of my family I so wanted at all costs earlier, right? I knew that I would. That’s what I would be doing. I knew it would not bring me peace because it was not based on truth. Okay, now, in preparing this episode, I had a memory come to me of a childhood movie. Cinderella. The animated one. Disney, right? Okay, go with me. I’m sure you’ve all seen this. Okay? The glass slipper. Cinderella loses her slipper. They go all, ah, through the kingdom to see who it belongs to.

Go to everyone. Everyone’s home. Everyone wants it to fit. They come to Cinderella’s house and her stepsisters are there, like, shoving it on their foot. I. And. And at one point, one of them says, I’ll make it fit. And she shoves it on her foot so hard that it flies up in the air and it risks getting broken altogether. Okay? Fortunately, it was caught. And just after that, Cinderella breaks out of the room she’s been locked in, comes, and it effortlessly fits on her foot. Sometimes we are like that stepsister. I will make it fit. I want my kingdom. I want my prince. I want the things that were promised to me. I want them. So dang it, I’m gonna make it fit. Okay? And guess what happens when we do that? When we shove those pieces together, we make it so it almost breaks, okay? We are adding to our own hurt. We are adding to. To the facade that all is well. Okay? I understand it because I did it. All right? I did it. I understand it. But the truth is that, uh, with the real owner of that slipper, I know it’s just a story, but go with me here.

There was no forcing. There was no resistance. It just fit. It was easy. All right. This is how the puzzle pieces are supposed to fit. Easy, smooth. Okay, now fast forward. Over time, I have helped to co create a puzzle that, uh, is so different than what I imagined. So different. So different, and it’s so beautiful. It looks more like a rich tapestry than a puzzle. I have double the amount of kids for my first marriage. I have a little baby girl that I cannot get enough of. I adore her, and I can’t believe that I get to raise another little one. Hearing her follow me around mama just melts my heart, and I just can’t believe I get to do it again. I have a husband that I absolutely adore and who adores me back. We are good friends. We push each other. We hold each other accountable or committed to making our own personal puzzle better and better by rooting out the pieces that take away from it. Okay. We both are responsible for creating something really good by owning the things that we’re adding that are not serving our puzzle. Okay. I

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also want to add that I know the difference through hard won experience of when something feels right and when I’m trying to shove a piece where it doesn’t fit or, uh, trying to push a square peg into a round hole, as the saying goes, I know in my body what that feels like. Okay, so let’s talk for a minute about what happens internally when we are not honoring truth. It feels off. Like, let’s say that something is said to you, some explanation for something that you found, for example. It feels off. It feels incomplete. There’s. You’re not. It doesn’t quite make sense. Like there’s information missing. Like it doesn’t quite make sense. You have to do some mental gymnastics to make it fit. There’s some sorting.
There’s some pushing things to the side to make this story fit. It feels like work. Okay. How to recognize truth. There will be a peace to it, a, uh, calm. You will recognize it as truth in both your mind and your body. It will add up. Now, I want to be really clear about something here. It very well will bring up discomfort. It may really hurt. May really hurt your ego. Okay. If somebody’s telling you the truth and it’s something that’s hard to hear, like something that they’re saying, you know, I really don’t like it when you do this thing and you recognize that they like that this is true. Uh, oh, my gosh. I actually do do that. It can sting.

It can feel really uncomfortable. But there’s some real beauty in seeing the truth, even if it’s uncomfortable. And you can recognize it and have peace. Even if it’s hard to hear. Okay. It may be hard to hear because with this new information, you might have to do some things that are really uncomfortable and scary even.
Okay? But looking beyond those things, it will feel true. You will be able to place it in your puzzle. Okay? There may be some resistance because the image that is being created in the new puzzle may look so different than what you had hoped for. But there is peace in knowing that it’s based on truth. What lines up with you. So as you are gathering information and looking at that information to know if you should stay or go, or if you have already decided and are still putting your new puzzle together for your life, I want you to lean towards truth, even in the discomfort and dissonance that can come with that. Okay? This is what I want for you, my beautiful friends, to be able to grow your capacity to sit with both truth and error. Both of them. Sit with truth, sit with the untruth, and know the difference in your body. Give yourself time to see if it fits in your puzzle. Sometimes you will know right away. Sometimes you need a little time to test it out.
Okay, if it feels off, notice.

Does it feel off because my ego is resisting it? Because it’s uncomfortable in that way, does it feel off because of the fear that is accompanying it? In looking at what it might mean for me, if this is true, is it cognitive dissonance? And I’m going to do another episode on that soon to explain more about what that is. But this is a very real thing where basically we have what we think about something and then a, uh, different experience of that thing made to light, and it’s super uncomfortable. There’s like, this disconnect that we’re trying to sort out. Okay? So questioning yourself, giving yourself space, letting the puzzle pieces not fit until they do. Okay? It is a super power to be able to grow your willingness to not know and to be uncomfortably comfortable in that. To feel unsettled, uncomfortable, but have a comfort in knowing that you’re doing it on purpose, that you are giving, uh, yourself time and space to really see what fits and what doesn’t fit.
What I can say is that truth, if it’s true, you will feel aligned in both your body and your mind. When something is untrue, sometimes your intellect will try to make it true, but your body will reject it. Your body will say, no, no, no. And your brain is like, oh, no, let’s come on. If it’s. It totally fits. When things are true, you feel it, uh, in both your body and your mind. We are very wise. Our bodies know what’s up. Okay? So even if your intellect is. Is pushing for making it fit, check in with your body and vice versa. Okay, I can say again. My life is much richer than I ever could have imagined, and I could not possibly have seen it back then. All right? It was my rejection of the pieces that just no longer fit that led me to be willing to let that puzzle be blown up and to start creating a new one with different people in it with different

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life experiences and a different version of me. Is that cool? I look at that girl 10 years ago, I can’t even believe, like, where I am. 10 years. That’s not that long, right? 10 years is not that long. And I have been married for almost seven. I have five more step kids. I have a new baby. I have grandkids. I have a business that I adore. I have clients that I adore. I have a thriving business that brings in a good income. Sometimes I just. I can’t believe my life 10 years out how much has changed. For the better. I am better for it. I am better for this whole process because I have grown so much and gained so much wisdom that I don’t know if I could have learned in any other way. Okay, my friends, one last point I want to make before I go. Sometimes I still look at that old puzzle of the family that was. And now I can look at that and smile at the parts of it that I do think now were real.

And I can also thank myself for not forcing it to fit when it no longer did. I outgrew, uh, that puzzle. I needed to step out of it. I needed to allow it all to fall apart so I could put something back together that was true based on truth. That was more true than. Than anything that was in that first puzzle. And that is what I am living now. That is my current experience. I want that for you, too. Okay, my beautiful friends, that’s a wrap for today. If you want help getting to the bottom of your own truth, growing in your capacity to sit in the discomfort, if knowing how to recognize in your own body what is true, and sorting through all of this, please come, um, join my program. There’s so much support in there. There’s so much love in there. It’s profound. The massive growth that I get to witness in very short time.

In a very short time. And if you want support with all of these things, this program is for you. Okay? It is what I’ve created for the girl that I was 10 years ago. I wish that I had that program then for myself. Would have saved me a lot, and I’d love to help you. All right? That’s it. I will see you next time. Take care. 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 subscribe to my weekly email. You can subscribe at ah andreagiles.com lies-about-infidelity forward/ Again it’s andrea giles.com lies-about-Infidelity forward slash I will see you next time.