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I’m Andrea Giles, and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, episode number 204, What You’re Not Saying and Why.

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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.

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Hello everybody. Welcome back. Welcome back to another episode of Heal from Infidelity. There has been a theme in the last several episodes, and I’m going to keep going with that theme because it seems to be really important. I notice themes that come up for myself. I notice themes that come up for my clients, and when I notice those things continuing to come up, I’m just assuming that you out there are needing to hear more about this topic too. So that’s why we are going into that this week. Once again, we all have things that we want to say that we don’t say, things we need to say that we don’t say, and I want to talk about that today. Okay? Now, on a personal note, I’m going to just lay it out here right at the beginning with full transparency. This is something that I have a hard time with.

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I am just like you in that I struggle with sometimes saying how I actually feel. I struggle sometimes in saying what I know to be real or true. The truth is I see it. Sometimes I hold back, sometimes I dance around it. And what I have learned over the years is that the cost to this has been great. The cost to relationships, the cost to taking on resentments and frustration rather than saying the thing, risking what might come of that, and then setting it down, going, I got to say what I needed to say and I can now set it down, and we’re going to dive into that a little bit more with some examples, things like that. But I’ll tell you that I just got back recently from a wedding, I think I should win a prize, some kind of price because two of my daughters got married this year, one in April, and then I had another daughter get married in California recently.

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And it has been a lot to pull together. As these things go, there are lots of dynamics, there’s lots of things that go into these kinds of events. Many people involved, many moving parts, money, all kinds of things. There’s often emotions involved. There’s often in the best of situations, family dynamics, right? In the very best of situations. Then you throw in the family dynamics of blended families, of divorce, of all of those things, and you better believe there’s going to be comments. There’s going to be things that are said sometimes about you, sometimes to you, things that you might want to say that you don’t say, things that maybe need to be said and are not said. And why do we do this? Why do we do this? I know for me, fear comes up of what if this person rejects me? What if this person doesn’t like me anymore?

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That kind of thing. And this work, I’ve been doing this work for quite some time, and it’s still hard. It’s still hard, it’s still uncomfortable, and I don’t know that it’s ever going to just be something that’s comfortable. But what I will say is that what I have learned and what I feel called to lean into is understanding the necessity from the standpoint of if I want to create my life, design my life in the way that feels really true and authentic and good to me, I have to go first. I have to lead. I have to say the things right? And I’ve also been thinking about how this work is so non-linear, right? So you have breakthroughs and you have things that you understand and that you climb to this new level where you can see so much clearer. And the nature of life, if you are on board for this, if you say yes to growth, is that there are going to be new mountains to climb always, which means we got to double down on those skills that got us to that first mountain and to that second mountain and to the third mountain, we’re going to have to grow our skill, increase our reps, grow our strength.

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And for this last six months or so, I’ve had a lot of practice in this, a lot of opportunities to speak up, and it’s been really uncomfortable, but I can feel myself growing. And you know what? There’s nothing that feels better than that to me than knowing that I practice what I preach and that I’m trying to lead out in a way that is authentic to me, to where I can speak to you from a place of my own truth of what I know for myself. So what I have realized in my own journey and in working with so many people is that we often keep back the big things we keep back. The little things we often keep back, subtle truths, awkward needs, things that we need that we feel might be uncomfortable to talk about, uncomfortable reflections, the words sitting in the very back of your throat like a big fat lump because you’re scared of the ripple that they’ll cause you’re afraid of the rupture they might cause, right?

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And what I’ve come to realize is that we can become so aware of our own flaws and our own contributions to whatever patterns we’re in, that we start using this self-responsibility as a silencing tool. Oh my goodness, who knew? Right? Okay. I can see this in me. I want to be the kind of person that takes radical responsibility. I want to be the kind of person that can see my part in a dynamic. But I also can see how there have been times where I have just shut it down and not said anything because I’m like, well, I’m not perfect either or I don’t know if I’ve earned the right to bring this up or, well, I played a role too, or I don’t want to come from a place of reactivity. And sometimes in trying to be an emotionally evolved person, we can actually abandon what’s true.

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How interesting is that, right? And just silence ourselves altogether in the name of trying to be emotionally mature, right? That’s an interesting dynamic, right? Interesting to see this episode is for you. If you know that there are things that you need to say, if you are really wrestling with something you’re not saying. If you’re waiting to have something perfect before you can deliver it, before you can speak, let’s talk about why we do this, what it costs us, and how to come back to the truth without needing it to be polished or packaged just right. Okay, here we go. Alright, part one, why we don’t say it? Oh my goodness. So many reasons we stay quiet. So many. Sometimes it’s fear of conflict. Sometimes it’s fear of being seen too clearly. I think that me, myself, that I have grown a lot of muscle in my life of being pretty strong, of carrying a lot of having big shoulders.

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And sometimes I will carry that and say, I can handle this as if I should be able to handle something because somebody else might not be able to handle it and they might crumble, and I know that I won’t crumble, so I’ll hold it in so they don’t crumble. Isn’t that interesting? So I’ll keep piling more on me so that this other person doesn’t crumble. But what happens if that other person does crumble? And what emotion would I have to feel, right? I want to ask you that, okay? Is there something that you know you want to talk about or ask or say and you don’t necessarily want to deal with how the other person responds? It’s uncomfortable, and so you just think, ah, I’ll just hold it in. I’ll keep it here. Okay? We keep it in. Sometimes we have a lot of fear that what we say will change everything.

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That will totally change the whole dynamic that we might have to make radical changes in our life from what we’re about to say. This can be very, very scary. We are so conditioned. We are wired, not just conditioned. We are wired biologically to need to belong. We’re wired biologically to not be rejected. So it makes perfect sense that we have a hard time really saying the thing that might be responded to with rejection, with somebody thinking differently of us, with someone not liking us right now. There’s another layer here, and this is where it can get really tricky. For those of us doing deep inner work, and I touched on it a little bit ago, we start to over own our side of the street. I want you to imagine what’s supposed to be a two-way street, okay? I want you to imagine it right now. How big is your side? How big is your side? Is the other person responsible for a sidewalk? And you will take the rest. You sweep up this over here and I’ll take that and that’s enough and I’ll make sure I clean a all over this. Or are you over on the sidewalk going, you over here, you made this big mess. This whole street is yours, and I’ll take this little tiny skinny sidewalk.

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Where do you fit? Or do you feel like it’s pretty even a pretty even street where you work on your side and you give them yours? We often over own our side. We take on more than what is ours. We become hyper aware of our own reactivity, our own past patterns, our role and relational dynamics. We start to think that unless we can show up fully healed, we shouldn’t speak at all. Oh, my friends, I just want to wrap you up. Those of you who are listening to this and might feel this as true, that might feel this as something that you do, that you have this expectation that you need to be fully healed. Oh, my dear listener, I wish I could hug you and just say, that’s a big fat lie. It’s a big fat lie. You can speak today. You can own how you feel.

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It is valid. Something that has been interesting is parenting again, in my late forties and having a toddler in my late forties, I became a mother for the first time at 21. Being a mother again, I had her at 44 is a whole different game. And being able to get down on eye level with her and want to know her feelings, even though she’s three, right? She doesn’t have the language. Sometimes she expresses her language through violence, right? Or she’ll reach out and smack me or do things like that because she doesn’t have the language. But I want her to know that even if she doesn’t know the words yet, I don’t expect her to, but that all of her feelings are welcome, my friends. The same is for you. We’re playing the long game here. I don’t care how old you are listening to this, we are playing the long game.

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Life is long. We are going to be perfecting these things forever. Forever, okay? So you get to speak Now, we don’t have to wait until it’s all buttoned up and polished and everything, just so, and why do we do that anyway? Because we think that if it’s perfected that we can control how other people respond. Oh man, ask me how I know just talking about these things with you. I’ve done it all. I’ve done all of these things. I understand the fear. I understand the pain. So I’m saying all of this with so much love and compassion, okay? Waiting until you’ve worked through something perfectly often just means you never say the thing. Isn’t that sad? It doesn’t make you safer to be with. It just makes you more invisible. It makes you more invisible. I don’t want any of you being invisible. Not any of you. Okay? Your voice matters. Your words matter. Your heart matters. Okay? Now onto the cost. What is the cost of staying silent? Silencing yourself may feel like strength or maturity or even spiritual neutrality. It may feel like the noble thing to do, like, look how strong I am. I’m just going to take it. But here’s what it actually creates Over time, over time, the things that it creates are resentment. It starts with, I’ll let this go, and it ends with why am I always the one who has to let things go?

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Why am I the one that has two x, y, and Z? I love my family, I love my family, I love every member of my family, all 12 of my kids in our big, old blended family, and it’s been interesting to parent biological kids and kids that are not biologically yours. Some of them that became your children as adults, some that were close to adults, and really understanding that line. And this has been something that over the years has been challenging and really looking at the areas and owning the areas where I have let some resentments build because I’m not willing to say something challenging or difficult is the motivation for me to speak up. Another motivation for me is this, and I’m going to share this with you in case it helps any of you. I love my family, I love my family, and I love my family enough that I want to be and strive to be the kind of person that will speak up when something needs to be corrected, when there’s some kind of behavior that I can see hurts another family member or hurts me, or that hurts us as a collective, I want to be the kind of person that leads my family by speaking up.

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It can come from love. Love can be quite a motivator, but guess what? When we turn it off and when we don’t say the things and we let resentment build and build and build, it can turn into resentment and then it can turn into self-doubt to where you start questioning your instincts. It’s like you’re taking the very instincts that you have, your intuition, your knowing this is not okay, I’m not okay with this. And then you build it up and build it up until you start turning on yourself and questioning your instincts and going, am I overreacting? Am I making this up? Which then leads to disconnection. You’re not sharing the real you, and so you feel unseen, even in relationships where you’re physically present every day. Isn’t that interesting? Walking around feeling invisible. How painful is that? And often the people closest to you start to feel it.

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They can’t name it, but they feel it. They can feel that there’s some kind of distance, that there’s some kind of wall. They feel a gap, a shift in tone, a subtle withdrawal, and suddenly there’s this quiet, invisible wall made up of all the things that you didn’t say and that you’re either resenting them for or you are doubting yourself for, or that you are keeping yourself disconnected. Okay? It’s costing you greatly. It’s costing you greatly. Alright? Next. You can speak without being perfect. You don’t have to wait until you can say it perfectly in order to say it lovingly. Truth does not have to be cruel. It does not have to be dramatic or definitive. Okay? You can speak from process, not from conclusion. Okay? What does that mean? Process. When we’re processing, it means we’re in process. We’re in it. We’re not at the end.

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We haven’t arrived yet. You can say things like this. I’m not totally clear yet, but I need to name something I’ve been feeling. I know I have my own part in this and I want to share what’s coming up for me without placing blame. This is really hard for me to say, but not saying it is hurting me more. Okay? Can you hear the love in all of those statements? Can you hear that? I’m going to say them all again. I’m not totally clear, but I need to name something I’ve been feeling. There is no blame there. There’s no accusing. I know I have my own part in this and I want to share what’s coming up for me without placing blame. This is really hard for me to say, but not saying it is hurting me more. Oh, so honest, so true. It’s okay if you say it shaky.

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It’s okay if you say it messy. It’s okay if it doesn’t fix anything right away. It’s okay. It’s okay if you’re so scared. What matters is that you stop silencing the part of you that already knows something. It already knows. It already knows, and you’re deceiving yourself and trying to shove it away. It’s a self-deception and it’s a self betrayal. I don’t want you to do that to yourself anymore. I don’t want to do it to myself anymore either. Okay? Now, this is a really important piece, however, to this last section last before we speak, we often do have to sit. We have to sit in the discomfort of what’s true without rushing to smooth it over, without adding some kind of positive or spiritual spin. I’m going to give you a quick example here. I don’t really like to share things that would be discriminatory to anybody close to me in my life.

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Of course, something happened, really, really tragic, happened to a family member of mine in his extended family, really, really tragic. And right away I shared this information, this tragedy that’s very public with another family member, some family. And the instant, instant response was around, oh, there must just be a higher plan. And we say things like that to put this spiritual spin, to try to smooth it over, to try to put something positive on this tragedy, trying to put a nice little bow on it that makes it easier for someone. And I don’t agree with that. And you know what? If I’m honest, I probably used to be that person. I may have said, well, at least this, well, at least they’re not in pain anymore, and please hear me. I’m not judging people who might say these things or do these things. It’s that sometimes truth is just really hard.

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Sometimes life is really hard. Sometimes truth comes with grief. Sometimes truth comes with anger. Sometimes it comes with ambiguity, just like gray area, a lot of, and no clean resolution. Let it come anyway. Let it be true. Even if it’s not tidy, you don’t need to make it make sense. You don’t need to apologize for feeling what you feel you just do and being able to sit in something and let it kind of wash over you. Like, Ooh, it is really uncomfortable to really sit here and feel this thing and not put a shiny bow on it and not try to put a spiritual spin on it and not try to get ahead to some future time where I’m out of this pain. But just to sit here in it, it can be very difficult and very painful, but often it isn’t. The slowing down and letting it sit and marinate and be there is the thing that’s going to give you the courage to speak up.

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It’s going to give you the courage because you’re sitting there and allowing yourself to feel what you feel, whether it’s grief or anger, or, I don’t even know how this is going to go. I just know I need to say it sometimes. I don’t even know exactly what it is I want here. I just know that something is off and I need to say it. Okay? So it’s okay for you to sit in this truth before you say anything and just allow yourself to really feel it, to feel the weight of what you’re feeling, to hear the truth in what you’re feeling. Let yourself face it, okay? Don’t put a shiny bow on it. Don’t try to hurry out of it. Now, what’s the thing you’re saying right now in this moment, I want you to pause and ask yourself, what’s the thing you’re not saying?

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Is it a desire that you’ve tucked away? Is it a boundary that you’ve been ignoring? Is it a resentment that keeps rising but gets pushed back down? Is it a question you’re afraid to ask because of what the answer might mean, right? Is things are tough. Sometimes we can have a resentment that bubbles up to the surface and maybe we tiptoe around it and say something, and it’s enough to kind of almost like taking a pill, making it a little more tolerable, but it’s not actually curing it because we’re not getting to the root. Sometimes we don’t ask certain questions because we’re so afraid of how we might feel when we hear the answer. We’re afraid of what might happen if we give truth a voice, even if only to yourself first. I know for me, a struggle that I’ve had for many years is in having something bother me, something that I know bothers me, and then thinking that if I were X, Y, and Z, then it wouldn’t bother me if I was stronger, if I was not as sensitive, if I were this, if I were that.

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How many of you relate to this? And it’s been something of growing in me to go, no, it’s okay for me to feel this way. It’s okay for me. And usually if it’s something that keeps coming up again and again and again, it’s an indication that I need to pay attention to it. So these things that you notice keep bubbling up and bubbling up. They need your attention. They need your attention, and they need a voice. Okay? They need you to use your voice. So how do you say it? How do you begin saying it? You don’t need to blast it out. You don’t need to painfully bleed it out. It could look like journaling at first writing the thing You’re not saying as if no one will ever read it. It could be saying it out loud to yourself, hearing your own truth in your own voice.

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It could be saying it gently. There’s something I haven’t said because I didn’t want to make these things worse, but I realize not saying it has made things worse for me. You can try recording yourself first, like in a voice note, you can practice saying it in a concise way over and over again. Delete, delete, delete until you get it in a way that feels really good to you. And I want you to know that if you’re afraid, it’s going to hurt someone else, okay? Okay. Your truth might be disruptive, but you disappearing slowly is far more devastating to the relationship Over the long haul, it’s far more devastating. You may temporarily disrupt the pattern, disrupt the system, and this disruption can be the thing that starts the trajectory in a different direction. But you disappearing will cost you you, and often it costs the relationship because more damage is caused over time.

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My invitation to you, don’t wait until it’s perfect. Don’t wait until you feel safe. Don’t wait until your inner critic gives you permission, says yeah. Now you can do it. If something needs to be said, then say it. You can say it without blame. You can say it with truth. Not to win in an argument, but to be real with your heart, your mind, what is true for you as you see it. It doesn’t mean they have to agree with you. You’re owning your own truth, okay? Because ultimately what you’re not saying is still shaping your life. It is still shaping your life, and you deserve to be known fully anderly. And honestly, you deserve to be known. You deserve to be heard. Please hear yourself first, my friends. Please hear yourself first and then share what those that need to hear your truth. Alright, thanks so much for being here again, and I will see you on another episode. Take care.

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Thank you for listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast. If you would like to be kept in the know about upcoming free classes, new podcast episodes, and other ways of working with me, go subscribe to my weekly email. You can subscribe@andreagiles.com slash lies about dash infidelity slash. Again, it’s andrea giles.com/lies about dash infidelity slash I will see you next time.