Andrea: 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. And 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. Today I have a fantastic guest that I can’t wait for you to hear from. I know that you will want to listen to this next episode again and again. I was so inspired just recording it with Lauren. She, as you will hear in the podcast, she’s a former client who has created quite a life for herself, and I want you to hear her story. All right, without further ado, here is Lauren.

Hello, everybody. I am back here today with a wonderful guest. Lauren is actually a past client of mine that went through my no. 190 program, and she’s amazing and has gone and built herself a really incredible life. And I wanted to bring her on today to tell you a lot about her own journey and hopes that it will help you on yours. So without further ado, welcome, Lauren. So happy to see you here.

Lauren: Thank you so much, Andrea. Ah, it’s such an amazing joy for me to be able to share this story and my journey, just knowing where I was even one year ago. And all I can say is that the magic of time and patience and, and doing all the things to help yourself heal really does make a difference.

Andrea: Amazing. One year. One year, I will say. Before we started recording, Lauren was giving me a little bit of an update, which we will share here as well. Amazing. Amazing to see where she is now as opposed to a year ago. Just there’s no limit to what we can do when we have the right tools, when we allow ourselves to heal in ways that are productive. Anyway, we’re going to get into that. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and talk Lauren. Tell us. I’ve asked Lauren to share her story, and she’s very gracious enough to share her own personal journey. There’s a lot of ups and downs and some things that were very grueling for her that she has generously offered to help, uh, to share with you today. So go ahead, go ahead and tell us about where you where things started for you in the infidelity journey, maybe even where things were before that. And when you started to notice that things were off, just go ahead and dive in and share with us your journey, Lauren.

Lauren: Okay, great. Yeah. So my soon to be ex husband, we’re not yet officially divorced, although we’ve been separated for just over a year officially, but our paperwork is in the final stages. Our marital sediment agreement has been signed and notarized, and it’s with the courts, so it should be a couple of months now. But my soon to be ex husband and I met when we were very young. He was a. He had just finished his freshman year of college. I had just finished my sophomore year. We were camp counselors together. We had a beautiful whirlwind of a summer romance as camp counselors. And I knew very early on that I had found my guy. I had the opportunity to watch him interact with children, and I just knew in my heart that he’d be a wonderful father and a really good partner for me. We dated for about five years, and that included a whole year of separation when I was at graduate school. I was getting my master’s in education and my teaching credential, and he was still a senior in college. We stayed together during that, which, of course, was challenging, but we stayed together. And then after five years, we got married. So we were fairly young. I think I was 25, and he was maybe, uh, 22, I guess. Um, so we were definitely on the young side in terms of getting married. We built a beautiful life together. He went to med school, I was teaching. We lived in a beautiful city right by the beach. And eventually we just started to grow our assets. We bought a condo, then we moved across country. He continued to do his medical training. I continued to teach and work and support the family. And I would say that the first moment when I started to sense that something was wrong was when I was eight months pregnant with our daughter. We had one other child. He was

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Lauren: three at the time. But when I was pregnant, I happened to walk by his phone, and I saw a text message that seemed a little bit flirty. And I confronted him about it, denied, uh, everything. And I had to let it go because I was about to give birth. I had a toddler. I didn’t even have the capacity to find a therapist and, you know, seek out marriage counseling. I just had to trust him, state my boundaries about what felt comfortable to me and what did not. And the flirtatious text messages didn’t feel comfortable. And so, you know, he promised me there Was nothing going on and I had nothing to worry about. We had the baby. Life for me was great. I was a mostly stay at home mom. I was taking care of the kids. He was working really hard finishing his medical training, and I went back to school because it was time for me to start to pursue my career. I’d given up a lot of years for his medical training. And I went back to school, got my admin credential, was hoping to work as an administrator in public schools. And I was recruited to move to San Diego to be the director of a big educational program, a big educational nonprofit that felt like an opportunity of a lifetime. And so I accepted the position. And we, uh, made the decision to move from Seattle, Washington to San Diego, California. Right before, well, right after we moved and settled into a new home, I found not only another set of text messages, but also some email solicitations for erotic massages on his computer. At that point, I did leave the home for a couple of days. I came back and we discussed. We went to marriage counseling. And again, other than erotic massages, he never admitted to anything at all. So, mind you, the kids are really little at this time. 4, 5, 6. I’m working full time as a director. I did not have time to focus on what possibly could be massive infidelity. I just had to continue pushing through.

Andrea: Can I pause really quick, Lauren?

Lauren: Yeah.

Andrea: I’m wondering too, I think that you have in common with so many of the people that I work with that, uh, there’s like this feeling that there’s maybe more, but just not having the bandwidth, like you said. Like, I just, I don’t have it in me to look into it. And so I got it. Just soldier on and hope for the best. And you really hope for the best and that it’ll just go away. Right. Can this just please go away? Right.

Lauren: You don’t want to see the red flag? No. So much of my life was so great. We lived in a beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood. I felt like I was, you know, well into my 30s and I had arrived. I had, um, beautiful life with my children. I had friends, I had a great job. And so I didn’t want to see the red flags. There was definitely, probably some denial. But, Andrea, I’ll tell you, my body knew, um, my body knew everything that was happening. And now one of the great gifts of infidelity and the great gifts of the end of my marriage is that I let my body tell me when something is right and when something is wrong. I don’t even question it anymore. If I get heartburn, if I get a stomachache, if. If I get sick, I know that whatever is in my energetic sphere is there, is something off, and I have to pay attention. There were times in that span of about 10 years where I probably knew that my husband was not being faithful, but I was unwilling to really examine that closely. Where I had massive heartburn, Major, major digestion issues. Very, very sick. At one point, my back was hurting so badly that I would have these intense spasms, and I couldn’t get off the floor. Um, I had developed incredible anxiety. I was treated for depression my entire 20s and 30s with no explanation, I mean, just zero explanation about why I was feeling this way, you know? And when I went to go get treated for the depression, they always went back to my family of origin. And I worked through a lot of stuff with my mom and dad, and it didn’t cure anything.

Andrea: Yeah.

Lauren: And now I can look back and say, oh, this is why.

Andrea: Amazing.

Lauren: Uh-huh. Yeah. So fast forward, very, very fast forward to June of 2022. Right. So we’re talking probably eight or nine years, maybe a decade, where we’re just living life. We’re raising kids, we’re going to soccer games, we’re going to baseball games, we’re going to open houses and

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Lauren: student teacher meetings and just doing life. Um, and again, our marriage wasn’t perfect, but nobody’s is. And I felt like, you know, my husband was my best friend and that we just had a great time together. We traveled well together, we raised our kids well together, we co parented well. But there were definitely some telltale signs from the beginning of the pandemic, moving forward that something was wrong. He was drinking more. He was much more distant. He was on his phone a lot. He would stay up very late, um, and not come to bed with me. Now, mind you, he’s an infectious disease specialist. So during COVID life, m was very intense for him.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah.

Lauren: He was on the front lines. And so I just kept the kids at home. We did not go anywhere. We kept him very, very safe by not getting ourselves sick. Uh, we did not see our friends. We did not leave the house. I ordered all of the food in. We would only go outside for walks. So it, you know, I was at home taking care of the kids and homeschooling and doing all that while he was taking care of the very, very sick and dying patients in our. In our large community. So June of 2022, my daughter was just about to graduate from 8th grade I was up late that night. He happened to go to bed early. We had a bit of a role reversal and I went into the bedroom to turn down the music. He had been playing music very loudly on his phone. And I down the music and it was clear that he had just been on his phone, but probably had just very quickly passed out. And when I went to touch his phone, a text message popped up and it was incredibly flirtatious to the point that I knew something was up. Yeah, I knew the woman. She’d been in our home. She was a coworker of his, um, a high level director like him. And though I confronted him the next day, but I didn’t want to do anything major because our daughter was graduating and she was giving a speech and so we wanted to make sure that day was perfect for her. So I just kind of held everything in until later. I did confront him. He denied everything. I suggested we get our marriage counselor back into the picture. He agreed. We met for about two weeks with our marriage counselor and he never admitted to anything. He just lied to me and lied to the counselor for two weeks straight. We decided that we were going to continue on our planned trip to Mexico. We had friends that were getting married and we, uh, are driving up to Los Angeles to catch our flight to Mexico. And um, I just point blank asked him, are you dating her? And the answer was yes. Have you kissed her? And the answer was yes. Have you slept with her? And the answer was yes. So at that point I knew we were dealing with a full fledged affair. And I think for him it was this amazing cathartic release because he started to tell me everything. He admitted everything about the affair which had been, had lasted a bit over a year. It had started during COVID when they were setting up a clinic together and we spent a week in Mexico. Interestingly enough, he went on a run, got very dehydrated, got very, very sick. I woke up one morning about three in the morning and I just knew that we had to adjusted my gut up and I said we must leave. And so our uh, flights and we flew home. And as we were flying home, he started to feel very sick. A day later, he ended up testing positive for Covid for the first time and was sick for two weeks. I nursed him back to health at home, but on the way back he ended up divulging everything to me, which included about 20 years of infidelity, basically our whole marriage conferences. He would meet random women at hotels, he seduced a couple of women at his Work that were medical assistants. It was devastating, to say the least, to hear of absolutely everything that he was. Had gotten away with over the years. And while my body definitely knew there was something going on, I will tell you, Andrea, I did not know.

Andrea: Right.

Lauren: And that is because he was extremely covert about it. Excellent liar. He can get away with so many things so easily. And I am a smart, savvy woman, and I did not see it.

Andrea: I want to interject here because I think this is really important for my listeners to hear because it’s so easy to go to the place of how did I not know? And judging ourselves and saying unkind things. And sometimes

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Andrea: it is that, uh, it was right there in front of you and you didn’t want to see it. Right. Which is understandable too. Like, we do that. Right?

Lauren: And.

Andrea: And sometimes, like in your case, you knew there was something, but you had no idea at all the magnitude because of who you were dealing with, because of the ability to lie so well. Right. And that is sometimes what, uh, what kind of personality some of my clients are dealing with is somebody who’s an expert, like, very, very good at it, or you. Where you couldn’t have known. You couldn’t have known.

Lauren: I think that one of the most helpful things that I did when I found out about the extent of the infidelity. I mean, we’re talking regular trips to massage parlors, cashing checks that he would make from little surveys he would fill out so that he none of the money could be traced back to a massage parlor, lots of pornography online, lots m of reaching out online for those kinds of erotic experiences. All of that was happening when I, you know, was asleep or when I was working. And we trusted each other, so we had a very, very trusting relationship, which meant that I did not check his phone, I did not check his laptop or email. The few times that I found these text messages. I just have to trust that some power larger and stronger than me was. Was guiding me towards, uh, all of this out when I was ready for it.

Andrea: Yep, absolutely.

Lauren: And I had started doing a lot of work on myself back in 2018. I had lost a job, and it was devastating to me. And so I did a lot of work on myself, for myself. And I know that all of those experiences and all of that work that I did, training and meditation, yoga, a lot of somatic stuff, nutrition, all of that, nutritionist, all of that was all so that I could be prepared for what happened and the information that I would gain in 2022. Now, moving forward, I Knew the extent of what he had done based on what he had told me. And he did divulge a lot. People are quite surprised to learn how much he did tell me. But again, I. For him, it was very cathartic to just get it all, like, almost like I was his priest and he was confessing.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lauren: But I did find out that the infidelity started very, very early in our marriage. Later on, I found out that a friend told me that they had witnessed him with another woman at a wedding. And the wedding was not a wedding I attended because I was in Guatemala adopting our first child. So the thought of me being in Guatemala and being with our new son and starting our family, and he was off doing who knows what at this friend’s wedding and being witnessed by other friends of ours, you know, uh, incredibly brazen, to say the least.

Andrea: Yes.

Lauren: And just to know that people knew that and didn’t say anything to me was really shocking. But also to know that in all of his admissions, he left that out as well. Okay, so at that point, that was sometime in late December of 2022. Now, I had asked him to leave. We. We tried to stay together and work on things. July and August. In fact, we even took an international trip together to try to figure out what we were going to do. And we wanted to do it away from the kids. I thought things were working really well. He was off of work. He had taken a leave of absence for his own mental health. And when he went back to work the very first day, he ended up meeting behind closed doors with his affair partner. He ended up having lots of conversations with her privately, despite boundaries that he and I had agreed upon with our therapist. And he broke them all. So I asked him to leave for a month. He did. He asked to come back. I let him come back. He moved back in, and he was home about three weeks. We spent Thanksgiving together. And the day after Thanksgiving, I was driving my car. He had left his phone in my car, and I hadn’t checked his phone for months. And because I did, I’ll, uh, backtrack and say I did start checking his phone and email after I found out about the infidelity. So up until marriage, for 24 years, I had violated his privacy. But I did start looking at his phone and email. So I looked at his phone and almost immediately found an email that he had crafted to his affair partner. And that was the day. So a year ago, the day after Thanksgiving, I asked him to leave. He packed up all of his things. He moved out of our home. And that was the really, the end

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Lauren: of our relationship at that point. I think that he had hoped I would take him back, but I knew, uh, there was no way that I could ever trust him again. And I don’t exactly remember when our program started. Do you remember?

Andrea: It was, like, beginning of November.

Lauren: Okay. That’s amazing timing, because one of the notes that I wrote down was. It was called no in 90, but I knew in 14.

Andrea: Yep. 14 days. 14 days.

Lauren: I knew.

Andrea: Yes. Yes.

Lauren: So let me just. Let me just kind of pivot to that, because I think that one of the most important things I did was happen upon your podcast. I listened to every single episode, sometimes two or three times, and it was like. It was like my life raft. It was the only thing that I could hold on to when I was completely lost, because I wasn’t talking to anyone. I wasn’t talking to my family members. I hadn’t told any of my friends. I was alone. And so all I.

Andrea: So much to carry.

Lauren: It was so much. And, uh. But I had you. I had your podcast. And I knew that at some point there would be something that would push me into the right direction. And so joining your group was, for me, the next best step. I wasn’t ready to make a decision to leave. I was ready to make the decision, um, to end our marriage. But I knew that I needed some support and help. And in the meantime, I had been trying to find a counselor or a therapist to help me, and I just kept hitting brick walls. I did eventually find someone who’s an expert in sex addiction, and she has just been brilliant in helping me through what I came to understand as my husband’s addiction.

Andrea: Good. That’s awesome.

Lauren: Yeah, good. There were a lot of things that I learned in your program, a lot of things that complemented the work, you know, that I had done in 2018. But I think that two things really stand out in my mind right now. One is I’ll never forget the first day looking at all these beautiful, professional, incredible women on the screen and just knowing that there was this, like, community that I now belonged to, this group that I now was a member of. And none of us wanted membership in that.

Andrea: Nope. Nope. Yes.

Lauren: And the pain that I could see in everybody’s eyes and on their faces and just knowing that I wasn’t alone anymore. It was a powerful experience. It was sad. I remember just sitting there crying, But I also remember thinking to myself, lauren, look at all these women. They’re beautiful, they’re smart, they’re Professionals, they. They also thought they had, you know, great marriages, and we’re going to get through this.

Andrea: Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren: Several of them are still very good friends of mine. We talk regularly. We’ve been supporting each other through our challenges. And, you know, what’s interesting is that I decided very quickly to leave my marriage and end it. And I have other friends who have made the opposite decision. They’re staying, they’re working, and it doesn’t matter. No, there’s no judgment in. In those groups and among the women. We are all supportive of each other and what we want out of our lives.

Andrea: Yep. Yep. As I’ve now run, um, so you’re in no. 1 90. I, um. You’ve probably heard me talk about how I’ve tweaked it a little bit. I’ve changed the focus a little bit to get your life back after infidelity. So mainly so that people know that there is no pressure in the group that you have to decide. Right. Like, and really, the way that I see my program is that I help my clients return back to themselves after feeling so disconnected from who they are and so unvalued, uh, so tossed aside. Right. And really helping them get back to themselves, who they are thinking from that mindset of more calm. Right. Less reactive. So that when these things come as it did for you 14 days in. Right. When we. When we are open and where we, like, help our mind know, I can handle the truth. I can handle it. Right. Where we get to a place where we’re calm enough in our mind that we can look at the data and then make decisions from that data, from m. A place of trust. And really, that’s. As a coach, that’s what I see as my role is helping my clients get to a place where they are calm and grounded so they can recognize truth and have the courage to follow it. Right. And that’s exactly what I’ve seen you do. I remember. I remember

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Andrea: there’s a private Facebook group for the members that are currently in the program. And I remember the day that you wrote that you knew today’s the day, and you shared what had happened. And I remember you even saying in there, it’s not 90 days for me, it’s 14. I know. And she did, and she honored it. Never wavered on it. I remember there was some coaching and helping you navigate just the change and the emotion of going, this is for real. And, uh, this is what I have to do. And let’s talk about that. You said that there was a second thing that uh, I’m curious what you, what. What you’re going to say, because I think that might tie into where we’re going here.

Lauren: Yeah. So the second thing that was the most powerful in Those, in those 14 days was envisioning a plan B and a plan C. And what that meant for me was, uh, you know, I. On the outside, I had a seemingly beautiful life. I’m not going to say perfect, because nobody has a perfect life, but it was a beautiful life. And I knew that leaving the marriage meant that that life was going to change. And I had to trust that the life that I could create for myself was going to be even more amazing and beautiful than the life that I was leaving. Now, for some women, that meant they had to accept that they were going to be leaving a marriage that looked one way because their marriage had to change. And I remember you saying that over and over and over. Your marriage will never be the same. You can create a 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, but can’t go back to the original marriage that you had. And what I realized for me, I didn’t want a 2.0 or a 3 point. I wanted my own life back. And living on my own for a couple of months made me realize that my life was more calm when I wasn’t dealing with my soon to be ex’s stress, anxiety. The way he lived his life, I just didn’t have to take that on anymore. And I don’t think that I cognitively or intellectually realized how much of his dysfunction in his life affected my body and my psyche. So when he was gone, my life was calm and I was. I was actually quite happy. I. I did not miss him. I missed having a partner. I missed having a warm body next to me. But the reality is that our intimacy had been gone for a very long time, at least over a year since he had been with his affair partner. And there was a lot of gaslighting that was happening. So, for instance, I developed an eating disorder during the pandemic, which should have been red flag, red flag. Something is really wrong, Lauren, because I had never had issues with eating before. And so I sought out the help of a nutritionist. And I was starting to lose weight, starting to feel really good about myself. And he called me fat and frumpy. He blamed our challenges in the bedroom, in our intimate life, on meats, fully 100%. And you know, as it turns out, it was exactly the opposite.

Andrea: Right?

Lauren: So I knew that I needed to create a life for me, and that was My plan B, that was going to be free of that stress, free of the drama, and free of, uh, never not trusting him, because I knew I never could. I knew I could never, ever trust a word that he said because he had lied to me and gaslighted me

Andrea: so much for many, many years.

Lauren: Many years. We were married 24 together, 29.

Andrea: It’s a long time.

Lauren: Very long time. So, um, yeah, so I made the decision that I was going to file for divorce. I told him in January of 2023, so the beginning of this year. And right before I told him I was carrying that decision with me. And I actually was admitted to the hospital with unexplained pain in my abdomen and back. And I was in the hospital for 48 hours. They ran every test under the sun, every MRI, every scan, everything. I’m thankful at 49, perfectly healthy. But, uh, all it was was the emotional pain that I was carrying. It was totally psychosomatic. And I just told him right there in the hospital room, I said, I’m leaving you. We can’t stay married. And that, ostensibly, was the beginning of, you know, the divorce proceedings. Now, I will say that I am very, very grateful that we have resources that allowed him to rent an apartment for six months and he was able to afford to live on his own while still supporting us.

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Lauren: I absolutely know that that is not the case for a lot of people, and I know that that was a blessing that I had. So I stayed in the home. He rented an, uh, Airbnb for six months, and then plan B was that I was leaving him. Plan C was when I decided that I actually wanted to buy my own home.

Andrea: Which you did not have on the radar at first. Right.

Lauren: I never thought it was possible. I could not envision that during Plan B. Plan B was just simply file for divorce, figure out, you know, how to end this marriage peacefully. We read, um, Conscious Uncoupling together, and we decided that for our children, we were going to try to be as civil as possible. I’m not saying there weren’t uncivil moments. There absolutely were. But we did do a very good job. Splitting our assets was actually quite easy. We hired a mediator, and we were able to treat everything as respectfully and fairly as possible. So for me, those things all went very, very smoothly. I also think I did my research. I interviewed four different lawyers.

Andrea: Wow.

Lauren: I got a really good picture of what my rights were and what I should be asking for. And then at that point, I felt like I was knowledgeable enough to hire A mediator. And he agreed. So we were able to mediate it all and do it all for about $3,000, which is. Wow.

Andrea: Um, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. Okay, I want to pause here for a second and ask you a question. One of the things that I coach a lot around, whether people stay or go, is this piece of really understanding what your choice is. Right. And really looking at what your options are. When you first made that first phone call to the first lawyer, was it scary?

Lauren: Everything about this has been scary.

Andrea: Yeah.

Lauren: Every step of the way. Meeting with the lawyer for the first time, the second time, the third time, meeting with the mediator, you know, getting the paperwork in my hands and signing it. Yep. Uh, sitting down in meetings with him to divide our assets and decide how we wanted to co parent and what custody was going to look like. Everything was scary. And I think that one of the second benefits of this whole experience to me as a human, has been I have literally faced one of the most devastating things in life that you can face. I have grieved an intense grief, and I have faced incredible fears. I think I could do anything right now.

Andrea: Yep. Right.

Lauren: I really believe I could do anything.

Andrea: Yep.

Lauren: Because I’ve. I have gone through what I was the most scared of doing, which is moving out on my own and leaving my very comfortable lifestyle.

Andrea: And not only that, Lauren, but just the emotional part of all of this, of every single person I’ve ever worked with, has their own unique meanings that they associate with the choices of their spouse. Right. And for. For most of the people I work with, it hits on a really tender nerve of, uh, stories that are old and painful, and it exposes them. And so in addition to the fear of the unknown, there’s also this piece of those old stories rearing their head. And so that’s why when I, when I say infidelity can be a catalyst for intense, serious growth. Right. Where you’re like, don’t mess with me. You know, like, if I can handle this. Bring it, bring it. Right. Because, uh, so what, uh, my question for you is with all of the things that you did, and we’re not talking years ago, I want all of you to hear this. Do you hear the timeline? Like, this is all within the last 12 months here, like radical, radical growth. And tell me what emotional, like, what stories about yourself you’ve had to confront, if you don’t mind talking about that a little bit.

Lauren: Absolutely. I. I have really had to. I wrote this down in my notes, so it’s kind of Funny that you asked that question. I felt so put down by my husband. I felt so not pretty, not loved, not sexy, not adored, not admired. And I knew that my friends loved me. I knew that my students loved me. So I felt incredible and immense love and admiration and support from my friends and my students and my two children and my family.

Andrea: Yeah.

Lauren: But I was not getting from my spouse the person who should be giving that off to you. I was not getting that from him. And so the stories that I had to shed,

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Lauren: literally, like a skin, was that I was unlovable, that I was not sexy, that I was never going to find a man again, that nobody would ever adore me and think that I was just, you know, this amazing, beautiful human. I had a lot of shame. I carried so much shame that my husband would cheat on me. It must be a reflection of me. I wasn’t skinny enough. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t athletic enough. I didn’t. I dressed the right way. Well, Andrea, as it turns out, he has some fetishes, and his addiction goes far, far deeper than just one night stands. So there were things that I could never be for him.

Andrea: Right. Yep.

Lauren: And once I realized and learned that, I grew into a new story. And those new stories are that I love my body, I love my sexiness. I look in the mirror and I just think, wow, Lauren, you do not look 50.

Andrea: And you don’t. I’m sitting here talking to Lauren on Zoom, and she does not look 50. You’re so gorgeous.

Lauren: I turned 50 in. In, um, about seven days.

Andrea: Amazing. Oh, happy birthday.

Lauren: Yep.

Andrea: Amazing.

Lauren: And I think also I had to shed this story of, like, oh, poor me.

Andrea: Yes.

Lauren: You know.

Andrea: Yes.

Lauren: I’m such a victim.

Andrea: Yep.

Lauren: And I lived in victimhood for a long time. And I don’t. I think that sometimes it’s okay to sit in your victimhood for a while.

Andrea: Yes. Yes. I think there’s a place for it.

Lauren: Yeah. At times you have to accept that, like, what was done to you was not fair.

Andrea: Yeah.

Lauren: You did not deserve it, and you deserve so much more. But at a certain point, you have to step out of that victimhood and you have to step into your own power. And I think that the day that I made the decision that I was not going to rent, um, a small, tiny little apartment that I was not going to move, you know, 45 miles away and try to figure out how to manage getting my daughter to school every week, I decided to buy a house, and I sat down with a bunch of people, and we Brainstormed all whole bunch of ideas about how I could generate the income, um, to do that. And it took a lot of hits to my ego. I had to ask to borrow money, I had to ask my father to co sign on my loan. But I’m telling you, within the last year, I got a new job that I love more than anything. I’m a finalist for an assistant professorship. You can be hearing any day now. And the fact that I just made it to the final round means that there, that uh, even if I don’t get this job, I’m on the brink of getting one in the next, you know, couple years. I bought a house that it may not be in the best neighborhood in San Diego, but I am a single mom homeowner, amazing bedroom, two bath house with a garage. I’m going to change it into an ADU and rent it out and make more income. I mean, I am, um, and I love my new home. It’s bright, it has light. I decorated it exactly the way I wanted to. I did it really inexpensively. I got everything on buy nothing groups and consignment. And I just, I am so happy. Just so happy.

Andrea: Lauren. Oh, uh, there’s so much here, there’s so much here in our conversation that I think that this is one that the listeners will come back to again and again and again. And here’s why. Because you, you spoke of something that is so important. It’s so important that, uh, when we are in the mindset of, of loss, of everything we’re losing, we, we cannot even see. We just can’t see what is possible. We can’t see it at all. And there was something that. Give yourself all the credit for a time where you opened up to what if, right? Where you thought, okay, what if? And um, something that I teach all the time is about tapping into our desire, like going into what we want and trusting that we’re meant to have it and really going there in our brain because that’s where we go. Okay, I guess I meant to have this. So what needs to happen? And we get scrappy. And that’s exactly what you just described. You get scrappy, you get creative. Sometimes we have to swallow, uh, our pride a little bit and ask for help. Right? You just described that and here you are. And before we went live here, Lauren took her camera and showed me around her beautiful home. That

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Andrea: is her home. That is her home. And it was only a year ago, uh, one year ago that you were even going, okay, this is it, I need to divorce and here you are. It’s just astonishing and such an inspiration. I hope. I hope, listeners, that you’re so encouraged by this, so encouraged by it.

Lauren: And let me say also that I just, you know, I just have. I’m not a very religious person, but I am, um, a big believer that when you articulate and say out loud what it is that you want and what it is that you desire, that it comes back to you tenfold. Yep. So in terms of the house, when I made the decision that I was going to buy a house, everyone was a naysayer, including my mom and dad. And, you know, God bless them, they continued to walk the path with me. But my mom kept saying to me, are you sure this is what you want to do? Are you sure? And I said, yes, Mom. I want to build equity in my name. For me, for my children, this is an important step for me to gain freedom.

Andrea: Yes.

Lauren: I’ve known my life with you and dad and then with Christian. There was only about a year and a half or two years where I was not with either them or with Christian. So, yeah, um, yeah, for me, that’s really important.

Andrea: Yeah.

Lauren: So, um, I sat down with my kids, and I said, what do you want?

Andrea: How amazing.

Lauren: They listed the things they wanted, I listed the things I wanted, and then I just started looking at houses to check out neighborhoods. I wasn’t really looking at houses. I was checking out neighborhoods, and I was in neighborhoods that I could afford.

Andrea: Yep.

Lauren: Um, and by afford, I mean, like, air quote afford. So we walked into a house in a neighborhood that seemed like maybe there might be some homes going up for sale. It was an older neighborhood. And I walked into the house, and it was perfect. It was everything that my children and I had envisioned. Right. But I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have my loan. Nothing was in place. And so I knew I wasn’t going to get this home, but I was hopeful that I would get a home like it. So I told my real estate agent, this house is exactly what I want. So find me this house in the months, and we’re going to have the golden ticket.

Andrea: Mm.

Lauren: So on the back end, I did a lot of work and getting the loan, and let me say, that was not easy. There were a lot of tears. I hadn’t had a job for two years. That was, you know, straight, consistent work because I’m an adjunct professor, so I’d been hopping around a lot. Um, they wouldn’t loan me money, so I had to get my dad to co sign with me by the time I got all of the funds together, got the loan together, got approval, two days later, my real estate agent called me and said, lauren, you’re never going to believe this. The house that you looked at two months ago just went back on the market.

Andrea: Oh, my gosh.

Lauren: It had fallen out of escrow.

Andrea: Oh. Uh. And now it’s yours now. Wow.

Lauren: I really, truly believe that the work that we did together in talking about plan B, plan C, go as far as D or E. Like, yeah, yeah. Planning. I mean, I’m already working on my next plan. My next plan is in two and a half years, all of the properties that we own, you know, we’re going to sell them when my daughter graduates from high school and I get to go pick where I want to live, I’m going to buy a piece of property, I’m going to open up a bunch of different ranches. I’m going to start a business. I mean, there’s a lot of dreaming that I’ve been able to do because I get to dream it by myself without the constraints or the stress or the worry of somebody else that I realized I was tiptoeing around us to help him be happy.

Andrea: Yep. Yes.

Lauren: Because when he wasn’t happy, the family wasn’t happy.

Andrea: Yeah.

Lauren: And I stopped tiptoeing around. I realized I just had this vast,

Andrea: limitless potential, uh, just so powerful. And for. For listeners who are staying or going, this message is for everyone. Right. And that, uh, in your recovery and you’re moving forward, there has to be a focus on you. And then there’s the part where you. Where you do build together, if that’s what you choose. And Lauren shared her that here, that she was kind of willing, that that’s something that she originally thought that she wanted. Right. Until it no longer she would have to be kind of lying to herself of what she was okay with when she was not, and she knew she was not. Right. And so you had to honor that and go, nope, I won’t. I won’t be able to trust you. But there has to be this space where for so many of us, myself included, my pattern was to follow the. Their career path. And I’ll kind of take the crumbs, right? I’ll just. Whatever’s left over, I’ll. That’s what I’ll take. And he had great

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Andrea: success, right? Great success. Very, very good at what he did, all of that. But it took really going to this place, just like you’re talking about, of, uh, digging deep and going, okay, Andrea, what Do you want? What do you want? And having the courage to look, because for so many of us, we know that it’s going to ruffle some feathers. We know that, like, you will have people that are, like, really? Are you sure you want to do that? Right. But whether you stay or go, how your. How the relationship, if you, if you’re staying is going to heal is where there’s truly room for both of you. And you will not know if there’s room for both of you if you take up space yourself. Unless you take up space yourself and really explore what it looks like to take up space and do it and practice it. And just the simple phrase of that actions bring clarity, right? You. You start moving, right? You start moving towards your dreams.

Lauren: What’s the next best step? Just every. Every day ask myself, what’s the next best step? And sometimes there were days where I could barely get out of bed. I mean, I’m not, uh, I’m not gonna lie. I’m not painting this, like, cheery, sunny picture. The last 365 days, there’s probably been at least half of them that I was in a puddle of tears.

Andrea: Yeah. Yes.

Lauren: Wrapped up in blankets in bed, crying with my therapist, crying with my best friend. But sometimes the next best step is to go take a walk or to join a gym or to, you know, make yourself that really healthy salad, or to, you know, take the bottles of wine that are in your house and give them to a friend and say, don’t get these back to me.

Andrea: Yes, take them.

Lauren: Yeah. You know, making the. Making the step to get medical help if you need that. Um, you know, my daily meditation practice is invaluable in supporting and helping me through the tough times. But you have to sit in the hard emotions to get through it. And I think that that was the hardest lesson I had to learn was you don’t heal by avoiding the pain. You heal by sitting in the pain, feeling the pain, and you will emerge from it.

Andrea: Yeah.

Lauren: Um, you absolutely will emerge. There will be relationships that will be lost along the way. I’ve had to just trust that a lot of friendships and a lot of relationships were seasonal. And I think one thing that’s been a surprising lesson and a somewhat painful lesson is that as I began to heal and change, I was changing the dynamic in my original family with my mother and father and siblings. And when I made those changes, for instance, different kinds of boundaries, different kinds of expectations around communication, that ruffled a lot of feathers, like you said earlier.

Andrea: Yeah.

Lauren: And so I’VE been both navigating the new relationship that I have with my soon to be ex husband and I’m also navigating interesting relationship dynamics with my original family. And at the end of the day, I think that we’re all going to be stronger and more powerful, more knowledgeable, more loving people as a result. But when you take a step into your own power and you take your own space, that is your right to have you definitely ruffle feathers.

Andrea: Yep. Yep. I think of it as, uh, you’re raising, raising the bar for everyone around you. Right. And like the only way I can stay in this space and integrity is if. Is if we elevate the way that we’ve done things. And you, you speak to a really important point that it’s like when we’re doing this work where we can see the other areas in our lives where we’ve been willing to take the crumbs, where we’ve been not. Not taking up as much space as is ours to kind of try to keep the peace and hold onto those roles that we hold onto so tight of being the good girl or whatever it is for us. Right. And to really go, you know what? I’m not bringing this with me. And it’s hard work and it’s the best work you’ll ever do. You’re a testament to it. It’s so amazing to hear you share all of this. And I know people need to hear it. It’s beautiful. Uh, beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you, Lauren.

Lauren: I do want to say just one more thing, and that is about the children. I think that I was just reflecting on it. And one of the things that I was the most afraid of was the impact this would have on my kids. And I know you spoke to this a lot.

Andrea: Yep.

Lauren: And I had at the time my son was 18 going off

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Lauren: to college. He was a senior. I was afraid of ruining his senior year. And then my daughter was a freshman in high school and I was really concerned what it would be like for her and her busy life in high school to have to go back and forth between the houses. Telling the kids was probably the hardest part.

Andrea: Yeah.

Lauren: Of all of this. But kids are amazingly resilient and I knew mine could be. I just didn’t want them to have to be.

Andrea: Yes.

Lauren: Right.

Andrea: Yep.

Lauren: And we have just been very open. We talk about everything. My daughter’s in therapy. That’s been really helpful and supportive. They have stayed in contact with each other. Even though my son is off at college, I communicate with them, um, regularly. When things get Tough. We talk about it. Yes. I want to be really honest. It was devastating to have to share custody of my daughter. I didn’t become a mother to become a 5050 mom. Uh, yeah. But I’m also grateful that they both have a relationship with their father that is getting better and better and better. And it’s getting better because I do think that he is doing some work to repair some of the damage that he did with them. We just celebrated my son’s 19th birthday together. It was the four of us. We went out to dinner and it was lovely and civil. And again, I’m very grateful that he’s willing to co parent with me in the way that he has been able to and the way he’s supporting us. But at the end of the day, what is has been said over and over and over, and I just had to trust it was true that when you are a happy parent, you are a better parent whether you’re married or not.

Andrea: Yep.

Lauren: And I was unhappy for so long. And just the other day, my daughter said to me, mom, I am glad you and dad did not stay together. Had you stayed together, knowing what you knew, you would have been miserable and unhappy, and it would have been a very uncomfortable existence. She said, yeah, it’s tough switching, uh, every week. It’s hard. She goes, but I’m getting used to it. And I love your home and I love the, the life that we’re building together.

Andrea: Amazing. Of course, none of us want this for our kids. Right. But you’re sure teaching them beautifully. And as you were talking about, I didn’t become a mother to have them half the time. Right? Of course. Right. And such a hard, hard adjustment to not seeing your kids every day. But I think that when we look at a lot of what we want to do for our kids is have a really strong impact that will help shape their life. Right. And look at the impact you’re having. It’s not about time. It’s not about your body in the house. Right. It’s about the impact and how we show up to our kids. The intention and presence. And it sure is hard to be present when your entire being is consumed with the actions of another person. Right. And so, yeah, thank you for sharing that. I know that’s such a huge, huge fear for, for my listeners. And I remember being there, you know, I remember being there. It was, it was crushing. So hard. And the hardest part about it for me as well was around the kids. So I appreciate you talking about it, especially as it is a recent thing that you are navigating. Right. It’s. It’s still relatively new, and you are doing it so gracefully. So, Lauren, I’ve had you on for a while. I know we could go on and on and on. This conversation has been so powerful, so wonderful. Thank you so much for being here. Before we go, anything else that you want to leave with my listeners?

Lauren: Well, I um, would just say that you have to. You. You know, it’s kind of cliche, but you only have one life.

Andrea: Yep.

Lauren: You have one life. You have a very brief amount of time on this planet, and it is so important to live it in joy and happiness and peacefulness and calmness. And whatever it takes to get there is what you should do.

Andrea: Amen. Could not agree more. Yes. Thank you so much, Lauren. Thank you so much. I so appreciate you being here.

Lauren: Thanks for having me, Andrea. Foreign.

Andrea: 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 at. Ah. Andreagiles.com lies-about-infidelity forward slash slash. Again, it’s Andrea Giles.com

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Andrea: lies about infidelity forward slash. I will see you next time,

Lauren: Sam.