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I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast, episode number 206, When the Results Don’t Match the Effort.

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Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast for courageous women learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal, but to become the boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions of themselves ever. If you know there’s more for you than the life you’re currently living but don’t quite know how to get there, you are in the right place. Stick around to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks off. Is it possible? It is, and I’m here to show you how I’m your host, Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

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Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Heal from Infidelity. Today I’m going to be sharing with you something that we all deal with, this frustration between putting in effort, putting in a lot of effort to try to change some kind of result, try to change some kind of outcome, and not having it work and not feeling like your efforts are paying off. We all have been there in one way or another, and surely in the realm of healing, in the realm of trying to fix relationship issues. We all can feel this frustration where we feel like we’re just giving and giving or putting everything we’ve got in and it’s not going the way that we want. It can be very disheartening and very frustrating. I myself have felt this lately where I have looked at some goals that I’ve had and seen how even though it felt very aligned, the goals felt very aligned and very good, and what I mean by aligned is not for some outward praise or somebody for somebody else to approve of me or anything like that.

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You know how sometimes we can have goals because we think that it’ll make us more valid in some way. If I weigh this certain amount or if I achieve this thing, then maybe somehow I’ll be more valid. Not that kind of goal. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about when there’s something in our heart that we feel that we really want, that feels very good to us to pursue that we know that it can help us grow and expand, and then honoring that and trusting that and feeling aligned with that and then going for it, and then, ooh, we put in all that work and then sometimes it feels like things are flat or stagnant and how difficult that can be, and I’ve been feeling a touch of that lately around a goal that I have, and so that’s why I decided to do this episode because I’m sure you also feel this way sometimes, right?

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And where we can tend to go isn’t going, am I doing something wrong? Was I off? Did I have it wrong in the first place, right? Is it even working? So let’s talk about this today. Okay? How many of you listening might feel the same way on your journey of moving forward from infidelity? Maybe you’ve been journaling, going to therapy or coaching, trying to stay open and you still feel stuck, or your partner still hasn’t shown up in the way that you’ve hoped, even though you really can honestly say that you have been trying in every way that you know how. Alright, so first, let’s talk about this experience, this mismatch. Part of any growth process often has this stage, there’s a mismatch. There is a place where we are putting in the effort and the results are slow or invisible even, right? Sometimes we can’t see any results.

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Sometimes the seeds that we plant take time to root in the ground before anything is yielded that we can actually see how many of you have had this experience? I will raise my hand first that I totally have. Let’s say that you make goals to get healthier, and so you start going to the gym and let’s say you’ve gone three days in a row and you stand in front of the mirror and you’re like, I swear I look worse than I did three days ago, or my pants feel tighter, and it can be frustrating. It can be like, come on, I’m putting it in. Look, three days in a row, come on. There should be something to show, and sometimes there’s not, and so it can be very easy to throw in the towel to be discouraged and say, nevermind, I’m not going to do it anymore.

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Sometimes we do things like planting bulbs in the fall and then everything freezes and we’re like, I hope something comes of those because right now they’re frozen in the ground and we don’t see anything until the springtime several months later. It really truly does not mean that nothing is happening. It means something is happening underground in the unseen. I can tell you this just from a business standpoint, I’ve been now working in this infidelity space since 2019. I started out with zero clients, zero, and I just started talking and sharing and saying, Hey, this is what I do. This is how I help people. And then little by little, I had more and more people coming. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll get discouraged or down and feel like, does it even matter? Is it making an impact? I’ll just have people show up that say, oh, I’ve been listening to your podcast for years, or My friend told me about you, or I got a sign from God that I needed to work with you.

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It was so loud and so clear, that kind of thing, and to me, I don’t often see the seeds that are planted. I see the work that I do, but I don’t necessarily know what soils they’re getting planted, meaning who is touched by my work, who out there is listening? Who out there is considering working with me that I might talk to next week? I never know that I’m not privy to it, but I keep showing up because I have faith in the process and that me continuing to show up means that I’m continuing to plant those seeds and that my reach will get further and further that’ll be able to help more and more people make a bigger impact and of course continue to grow my business. The work that you’re doing is much the same. It can feel like such a mismatch. It can feel like it doesn’t matter that nothing’s happening.

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I promise you. It doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. It means something is just happening underground where you can’t see it in the background. You don’t know. You just don’t know what’s going on in the heart of somebody else. What’s being recalibrated in them. An analogy that I use all the time in my coaching with my clients is that when they are living with somebody who’s intentionally deceiving them intentionally, often what happens is their normal meter is broken. I say Your normal meter is broken, right? We don’t register even what is normal? What is gaslighting? What is somebody intentionally trying to throw us off their trail intentionally trying to turn us against our own intuition so that we look away from them? And when we start to recalibrate, it can take time. It can take time for us to start to even realize, okay, I used to be able to see things in this way and now I think that this is what this is, and we’re trying to recalibrate to that before we move mountains in our relationships.

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Often it’s us first that we are trying to recalibrate, trying to get back into alignment, get our own intuition back online before we can really even register that somebody else is having changes within them. And often in this place too, we get so impatient because we’re like, I’m putting in all this work and it looks like nothing’s happening over there. And what happens is that we can get hyper fixated. We can get hyper aware watching every move of our partner paying attention to every little thing, and ultimately what happens is that we are continuing to mess with that normal meter by continuing to play that cycle out. And how we recalibrate is by slowing that down and trusting the process and trusting that the more we focus on recalibrating our own normal meter, the more impact we are having in the other person feeling that shift in us and we can just set it down and trust that their work is their work and that the more we focus on our own health, that we are sending out those energetic waves, that something’s different within us, and hopefully they take those cues and decide to do something as well, but we don’t have to be in control of that.

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We want to be, but we don’t have to be. In fact, we can’t be. We can’t be, okay. What is the emotional toll here of feeling like it’s off? Feeling like the results don’t match the effort? I know how I feel. It can feel confusing to me. I swear this felt so right and so good and so like the thing to do, so why is it not going the way that I planned? We can have these aha moments, these moments of absolute clarity, these moments of peace, these moments that just feel so true. We’re never going to forget them and how quickly we can get pulled out of that when something is different than what we expected when our spouse says or does something that we don’t like. When we have these clear moments and then confusion comes right on the tail end and it’s like, gosh, I’m putting us in all this effort.

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When does it get easier? We might feel disappointed. We might question our worth. We might want to quit. We might again get really confused. I swear that was something that felt so real to me. I am going to talk all about what to do with this. It’s really, really, really important. Hang in, stay with me through the end of this episode. After betrayal, you might think I have already forgiven. I’ve tried to rebuild trust, but I still feel anxious all the time. Did I do something wrong? You might feel like you have missed a step. You might feel like there’s something broken in you, and the problem with this is that often what we do is our own confusion or our own anxiety around where we are actually makes this whole cycle worse. It just speaks shame into it saying that there’s something wrong with us, that we’re making it mean that our lack of the results that we want so quick, you can hear me snapping so quick.

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We make it mean that we’re failing and we can just make this whole process so much more intense. For those of you who betrayed you, I’m sure feel this too. You may honestly feel like I am doing everything I can. I’m doing everything I can to mend this, to offer love, to offer support, to offer remorse and my regret and trying to correct the regret that I feel with aligned action and I don’t see that it’s working at all. I don’t see that it’s making things any better. In fact, they seem more angry at me daily, more resentful. What gifts, what am I supposed to do? Do I throw in the towel and just say, forget it. It’s not working. And to you, I want to say, remind yourself, what is the point of you doing this in the first place? Why are you doing it in the first place?

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It cannot be only because you want to save the relationship. That cannot be the only reason. I know at first it might feel like if this doesn’t save the relationship, what’s the point? And please hear me when I say you have to have another point. You have to have another point because what they do is for them to decide and part of respecting their decision after the betrayal is not trying to control it for them, but you deciding how you want to show up, what integrity now looks like to you, what showing up in your most powerful self with your heart open, trying to mend what was broken means to you, and it can get very, very frustrating when you are putting in all that effort, when you are trying as hard as you can, when your heart is open, when you’re being sincere, and by all intents and purposes, it looks like it’s not being received.

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You’ll have to go back to why you’re doing it in the first place. You have to decide why you are doing what you’re doing, why it actually is who you want to be and how you want to show up and continue on regardless of what you’re seeing on the other side. My hope for you is that the other person is likely watching to see are they only doing this for a week or two a month or two, and then is it just going to go back to normal or is this actually the new them? They’re wanting to know when I’m not giving the accolades, when I’m not constantly asking for them to share their phone with me, are they still going to be transparent if I’m not checking in with them, are they still going to tell me what they’ve been up to, what they’ve been looking at, who they’ve been seeing?

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Are they still going to be open with me even if I’m not constantly hounding them for it? Right? Keep at it. Remember that you’re doing this because it’s who you want to be with the hope that it hopes to heal the relationship, but the person that needs healing the most is you. Your own integrity here needs to be restored within you regardless if this particular relationship can be rescued or not, we don’t know yet, but either way, you get to leave knowing that you showed up in a way that you can now respect and that is so valuable and so important, right? Okay. Now I want to talk about the truth about this place, like the reality of this space, this in-between, that feels like a mismatch. Come on. The results are not matching up here. The mismatch does not mean failure. It just means you’re in a lag phase.

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That’s all it means. Okay? How many of you, I’m sure all of you listening, know the concept of compound growth? Small efforts add up invisibly until they suddenly break through. Small efforts add up, often invisibly until they break through, okay? We often do not see them. We often do not know the impact of the small things that we do until suddenly we have some big result that we’re like, whoa, that was coming the whole time and I didn’t even know, and we can get so discouraged in the meantime and anxious and worried about when are we going to see these results, and the more you can focus on what you want to do and why and set down the results, the faster you’re actually going to have the result, okay? I want you to remember that the delay in results is often where the most important identity shifts happen.

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Why? Oh, this piece is so valuable. You know why? Because you are showing up because it’s what you want to do. It’s who you want to be and not because you are getting this external validation hit. It’s real easy to keep going. When we see the numbers dropping on the skill, when we are seeing the accolades, when we’re seeing somebody else responding in the way that we want them to, what’s hard? It’s really hard to keep showing up when you’re not getting those things and growing your own self-trust in yourself that you’ll show up anyway because it’s what feels right to you. It’s what feels true to you. It’s what feels good to you. What in your quiet moments when you’re just still with yourself, it felt like the thing, it felt like this is the thing that I need to practice and go all in on, and I’m going to trust that that thing that I felt is true today, even if it feels a little bit hard because I’m not seeing the payoff yet.

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I want you to remember that there’s something in my world that I’m in this too. That’s what inspired this episode today. There’s something that just can feel really frustrating of the clarity that I’ve had around it, the peace that I’ve had around it and to feel like it coming to fruition feels slow sometimes, like pulling teeth, it can be really easy to question yourself and go, was that real when I had that stroke of genius or that inspiration or whatever you call it? Was that real? Here’s the thing though. First, you have to believe in the reality of what you have felt in those moments. What you believe to be the right course of action based on what is right for you, your own integrity, who you want to be, who you respect, and we have to remember that sometimes we have to get out of the way of what we think the timeline should be, and that is so frustrating.

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We want the timeline. We want to know exactly on this day, I’d like to never remember that this very painful thing happened or I want to stop doing this, or I want to know for sure that I’m staying in my relationship or I want to X, Y, and Z. We could go on and on and on, and often we have a timeline and in some contexts there’s areas that I push timelines on. Sometimes for some of my clients, I say, okay, let’s give ourselves a date in which we are going to reassess this thing and make a decision. Sometimes that can help our brain settle down to know that we’re going to revisit something later on in this regard. Sometimes when we get so hung up on the timeline, it can get in our way and if we had a timeline, I want you to remember a thought around, I thought it was going to be this day.

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Apparently I was wrong, but that doesn’t mean that I’m never meant to have those things. It means that there might be some things that I need to reassess. It may be that there’s some information I’m missing. Okay, so I’m going to spend the next few minutes talking about what you can do when you’re in this space, okay? First of all, I want you to look at how you are defining success and is there a way to redefine success? Even if you had a specific goal in your mind of what success looked like, is there some other micro success that you can say, yeah, I am this far along and I used to be here and I’m not quite here, but I’m further along than I was. Right? Am I responding in a calmer manner? Am I pursuing more honest conversations? Am I speaking to myself in a more kind, compassionate way?

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Okay, this is really, really important. What can I say that I am doing? And if you do this, you will find answers to it. They are there. Those micro shifts of success are there, even if it’s not quite where you want to be, okay? It will help make a shift in your mind if you can praise yourself for the success that you have had, even if it’s not as far as you want to be yet. Okay? Next, detach from the outcome. I know this is so much harder than we think. Okay? Focus on showing up consistently, not the immediate payoff. Yes, we want to focus on the end game. We do want to look at that, but remember that often, this is a long game we’re playing, not a short game, and the more that you can focus on showing up consistently, just this is what I’m doing now and I’m trusting in the payoff over time and I’m just going to keep going without needing to know exactly when.

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Kind of set that down. Be certain that you will arrive. Be certain that you will get there, and I want to say this too. Sometimes we shift lanes, sometimes we move in different directions. Sometimes this looks like I thought that the result that I wanted was this. I started pursuing that, and as I continued to pursue that, I realized that what I actually want is something different than what I thought I wanted, but I wouldn’t have known until I started pursuing this first path in the first place. Okay? I’ll give you an example from my own life. Many of you know that I for years knew that I wanted to work with people. I thought that I was going to be a therapist, so I went back to school with the intention of becoming a therapist. I was taking classes, going to school, and what happened?

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I was introduced to coaching and it was so much more effective and powerful and quick for me than any of the therapy that I personally had done or anything that I was learning about that I finished that semester up and I completely shifted gears. I thought that I was pursuing the goals in the way that I had a timeline. I knew when I would be done with school. It was very planned, and instead, I took a leap of faith and I shifted gears entirely and I jumped into life coaching and here I am years later, sometimes by taking action, by deciding you are going to start working towards something that is enough to send out to the world, the universe, God, whatever you believe in this sign, I mean it so much that I’m willing to pursue this thing, to put skin in the game, to get uncomfortable, and then oftentimes what happens is something else is revealed to us.

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We get new information, we get new data points, something different to look at, and sometimes we do change our mind and we think the thing that I thought I wanted is not actually what I wanted. I’m going to go in a different direction. Just trust the process. Just trust it. Keep going, keep going. Next, allow the disappointment. Allow the grief. It can feel very disappointing. It can feel disheartening. It can be very easy to try to make yourself wrong that you got it wrong. What if you didn’t get it wrong? What if you were right? What if your timeline is not quite what you think it is? What if there’s something that you just need to tweak in your approach? What if rather than making yourself wrong, there’s maybe another way to go about it that you just don’t know yet, but maybe this frustration is actually like a little knock at the door going, Hey, have you thought about trying this way?

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Have you reached out to anybody and asked for help with this? Have you put it in front of somebody else and said, Hey, what am I missing here? Right? What about that? Please don’t make yourself wrong. Please don’t make yourself wrong. Expand yourself. Open yourself up to what’s going right, and then you can ask, what maybe could I tweak? What maybe could I do differently? Or maybe I know what I need to do and I just need to keep doing it. Maybe I need to do nothing and I just need to trust that like those bulbs that we planted in the fall that they’re going to pop up in the spring with beautiful flowers. Maybe. That’s it. Stay the course. Trust the long game. We are playing the long game. This life is not about a sprint. This life is about who are we becoming when we have this one life, this one shot in this human body of ours, these bodies that experience so much joy, pain, sorrow, grief, loss, happiness, wonder, all the things that we experience, right?

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You are in an experience in this human form that feels painful. I know, I know you will not stay here forever, but what is it that is needing to be felt by you right now for you to open up to what needs to be seen for you to recalibrate into what you already know you need to do, for you to get your conviction back, of the importance of what you are doing and knowing you’re doing a darn good job at it, right? Stay the course. Your efforts are not wasted. Your efforts are not wasted. Keep going. Okay, keep going. If you’re in that place of putting in so much effort and not seeing what you hope for, yet you are not alone. I understand this place. We all do. We’ve all been there. If you’re feeling that in your relationship, if you’re feeling like you are trying so hard and you are just making yourself crazy, please check in with yourself of where maybe am I trying to control something that’s not mine to control?

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Maybe I’m trying to manage how somebody else responds to me rather than how I respond to them. Maybe I’m trying to control the timeline of if I do this, it should deliver this. Maybe I’m trying to control how this person decides to show remorse by making sure they see again and again and again and again how badly they’ve hurt me and they still don’t seem to get it. Slow it down. Slow it down. We cannot control anybody else’s process. We can only control our own. Get back in your lane. Keep going. Keep doing the things that you know matter to you, the things that are important to you. Okay? Keep going. Sometimes we have to get recalibrated. See where we might be going off on some other trail a little bit. Get back with our own aligned action and keep going. The results will come.

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What you’re actually building is compared to a castle versus a tiny little shack. We can slap up a shack. You can have the result of a little shack. You’re not building a shack, you’re building a mansion. It’s going to take time. It’s going to take deliberation. It’s going to take intention. It’s going to take good stuff. We’re not just slapping in a quick fix here. That’s going to get blown away at the next storm. We’re building something that is going to last. We’re going to build something intentional that is going to last. This is so much bigger than the immediate result. It’s who you are becoming in this process. Okay. To wrap this up, I actually am going to share with you a podcast review that came in this last week from a past client of mine. This is to reiterate the importance of building.

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What we build now is going to have long-term results when you do it in a way that is sustainable over time. This person says, I participated in Andrea’s program in November, 2022 and left a review. After completing the program, I felt that it was necessary almost three years later to leave an updated review to share the Andrea’s methods and podcast continue to benefit not only me in the continued repair of my marriage, which I chose to stay in, but all relationships in one of the most recent episodes. When to let the old stories go, Andrea poses four questions at the end of the episode that really resonated with me. Working through that exercise allowed me to reflect on stories that I needed to let go, and it helped me continue to progress in my healing. Andrea’s methods are tried and true, and they really work. If you’re hesitating on joining her program or nervous about the cost, trust yourself that the investment you’ll make in yourself will continue to return rewards for many years to come.

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I’m living proof. Thank you, Andrea, for continuing to release podcast episodes. You are most welcome. You’re most welcome. Alright. I will wrap it up by saying if you want the support that you need to build something that three years down the road, five years down the road, 10 years down the road, you can say what a great investment that was and it has changed the trajectory of my life. It has helped me in every relationship, just like this client did. I invite you to apply to the Get Your Life Back After Infidelity program. You’ll be able to speak with me right away and find out if it’s a good fit. We can make sure that it’s a good fit for both of us, that you will get the help that you need and that we can get you started right away and on your way to having the support that you need to build something that lasts, to build something that you can sustain, to build something that you’re so proud of. Okay? That’s what we do inside the group every day, and I invite you to go apply for that right away. Alright? Thank you my friends. Thank you so much for being here. Keep going, keep going. You’re doing so much better than you think. Alright, have a good week and I’ll see you next time.

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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.