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? Is. And I’m here to show you how. I’m your host, Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

Hey. Hey, everybody. I’m so glad you’re here. You may or may not notice that I’m talking Funny. I know. I notice. I did a thing today. I got Invisalign today. Those are those clear braces. I have always wanted braces. I have 11 kids, and six of them have had braces. There are many more to come, and I have never had braces. And so I finally decided I want braces. I’m gonna do it. So I got Invisalign, and it’s just gonna take me a little while to learn how to talk. It’s only been, like, four hours, so it’s kind of funny. Anyway, I’m not gonna let that get in the way of recording my podcast.

Anyway, today I’m gonna be talking about a topic that I love to think about. It’s about healing. It’s about what it takes to heal. And. And I put a lot of thought into what I wanted to say to you and what it actually takes. And you can go look up articles and find all kinds of different opinions about what it takes to heal from infidelity. And of course, everyone has their own opinion and what they think. And I want to share with you my thoughts from professionals from my own profession, from my own experience, from my own experience with my clients of what it actually takes to heal. And I want you, as you’re listening to, kind of do a self evaluation of, uh, where you could lean a little more into healing in an area that I’m talking about. I want you to be willing to hold a mirror up to yourself and kind of do a quick check in. How am I in this area? Like 1 to 10? Where am I? How much am I allowing this area in my life?

Okay, so I’m gonna go ahead and dive in. I’ve got quite a bit that I want to cover today. So, number one time, a lot of people think that if you just give it enough time that things will get Better. As they say, time heals all wounds. Let’s talk about that a little bit. I do think that time can be very helpful, but I also think that it’s a myth that time heals all wounds. How many of you know people who experience some kind of painful thing years ago and are still currently living in pain from it? It’s like they replay that painful thing over and over again to keep that pain current. Time has not assisted them at all. They’ve brought themselves back in time, back in the past, to recreate it over and over again. So how does time heal all wounds? I’ll tell you something from my experience. Some of the parts that can become very painful are those anniversaries. First. The first, like first wedding anniversary, the anniversary of the day that you found out if you are leaving the marriage, the anniversary of the day the divorce was finalized or the day itself of when it was finalized.
First of starting to date again. First of staying in the marriage and, and having your dates come up, your marriage dates, like your anniversary. Some of those dates that come up that we can know are coming but sometimes feel like they knock us over anyway. Sometimes those firsts and experiencing them and allowing them to hurt can pave the way for the second where it might not be quite so intense. And I’m going to be talking more about this, about things to do to help it not be quite so intense based on what feelings you’re allowing, what thoughts you’re creating, all of that. But time can be a healer. Time can help, especially if you don’t put a timeline on yourself. Especially if you give yourself space and not expect yourself by this day, I’m going to be all better.

Because that’s not how it works. We don’t get to put a timeline of when we’re going to be done feeling a certain emotion. We have so much power and so much control. But part of healing is surrendering to the things that we cannot control. Part of healing is allowing ourselves to feel all of it. And I’m going to get into that a little bit more. Okay. Number two is allowing emotions, all of them. There really is no shortcut to this. Sometimes we. We might experience some heavy grief and try to mask it with anger. We might experience some

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anger and try to mask it with a different emotion. Right. We can go all over the place with our emotions. We might feel really upset and then judge ourself because of it and think that maybe we’re just extra broken, that if I could just get it together, then things would be better. It’s been six months, I’m still hurting. I want to say, who cares? Yes, your thoughts are creating the pain. But the more you allow the pain when you are in it, the more you’ll make a space for yourself to feel other emotions and, and to go back and access what thoughts are creating that pain.

And when it comes to trauma, trauma is trauma because when we experience an event, it becomes a trauma when our brain does not know how to process it in the moment where it like overloads us and we don’t know how to process it. So part of processing trauma is allowing it to come up, allowing ourselves to lean into it and, and step into it and feel it and literally processing it through our body. This goes back to some of the things I’ve said about self soothing exercises like breathing, yoga, tapping, meditation, prayer, talking it out, talking to a trusted person, hiring a therapist, hiring a coach, getting people helping you, people giving you a safe space to feel all of it, to share all of it, to speak of what you are dealing with, what you’re experiencing in an open way.

I encourage trying out various forms of self soothing, various means of going into your body, out of your head and into your body and seeing what you resonate with. Try something for a couple weeks. If you’re not loving it, try something else. There’s no set thing and everybody’s a little bit different. But allowing your motions, all of them, is a crucial, crucial part of healing. Number three, stretching to allow new ideas and a new identity. Whether you stay in the marriage or leave, you will be creating something that was not there before. I’m going to use some of my clients as an example. Okay. One client of mine is getting divorced because her, her husband chose to leave the marriage for another relationship. For all of the years of her marriage, she saw herself in a certain way as a follower, as a rule keeper, as a people pleaser, trying to keep the peace.

In all of her relationships, including in her marriage, she tried to jump hoops, she tried to make him happy, and in the end he chose somebody else. And the work she’s doing now is learning to identify herself in a different way. She’s actually going through what I love to call an identity crisis right now. It feels very scary, this identity crisis. It’s like, who am I without that story about myself, that I’m a people pleaser, that I’m a follower? Who am I without that? And if I get to make up any story about myself, what should, what story should I tell? Who do I want to be so for her, she is in a space where she is opening herself up to thinking about herself in a different way, trying on different beliefs about herself and about even what happened. Trying to tell the story in a way that serves her instead of keeping her locked in that same identity that’s keeping her stuck.

Another client has struggled with her husband’s choice to have an affair with a younger woman. And she has said to me tearfully that she doesn’t know how he could do that and has doubted him as a person. She is wanting to make it work. She wants to stay. And so part of her new ideas and new identity is twofold. One is allowing for a whole new identity as a couple, a new marriage. Marriage number two, same people, different marriage. Creating a space where they can be open with each other and actually really talk about the things that they did not talk about before and love each other in a way that they. They didn’t quite reach before. They’re creating something new.

She is creating a new identity for herself. She’s creating one where she is much more honest and truthful than she was before, where she asks hard questions, where she tells the truth. She is seeing herself as a strong, capable woman who can show up and be an advocate for change in her marriage. She is showing up as somebody who can be compassionate and try to be understanding and try to understand his choices and why he did that. It is not condoning them, but it’s allowing a little shift in her identity for the sake of her own healing and the healing of her marriage. And their marriage is already on its way to being stronger and better than it was before because they are both open to creating something new. Another client of mine has been married twice before and is now married to a third husband. And both of her previous husbands had an affair. She wonders why in this third marriage,

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why some of the same triggers come up for her in an entirely different relationship. She doesn’t like her knee jerk reaction to certain things. She feels powerless to it sometimes. Part of her identity is stepping into what she wants to think, who she wants to be, allowing the discomfort, allowing herself to lean into trust even though she might get hurt again. She knows that people are people and that we never have a guarantee of anyone’s behavior, but that she, uh, she knows that she’s causing herself a lot of pain by not trusting. And so she’s trying to learn to be somebody who trusts most of all. She’s learning how to trust herself and to create a place of safety and peace for herself. Okay. The next thing it takes to heal is discipline. Our brains love certainty.

We want to know exactly how things will pan out. And when we can’t know that information, we tend to panic. So where does discipline come in? Discipline comes when we’re trying to stop obsessing about things. I can’t tell you how many clients have said, I can’t help it. I want to replay and replay and I lay in my bed and I replay and I go and I try to be a detective and I see what was I was missing, what I was missing, and how did I not know that? And then I get mad, mad at him, mad at me, thinking, what an idiot. And. And I. They’ll say I do this over and over again, and then I just feel so mad all over again. This also creates panic and fear and, and becomes this vicious cycle where there’s not space to heal. This other obsessing and. And worry is taking up so much space that there’s no room to set, settle into healing. It takes discipline to set boundaries around your own thinking, places where you will not go. So, for example, let’s say you have a child who’s. Who can be rude to you. Okay? It takes discipline, first of all, to tell that child, you may not speak to me in that way.

When you do, I will leave the room. That takes discipline. It takes even more discipline to actually follow through, to actually leave the room. I, uh, can’t even tell you how many times with a kid, I’ve, like, told them, this is what I’m going to do, and then struggled with my follow through. That’s something that I’m really working on right now, is my follow through in the moment. It’s easier to just cave. It’s easier to just justify. Oh, it’s okay. They were really mad. I want you to have the same kind of discipline for yourself. When you have thoughts that are bullies, that are beating you up, that are unkind, that are unfair, whether it be about you, or let’s say that you have thoughts about your spouse, you that, you know, never have an upside, ever.

All they do is create more pain. That’s where discipline comes in. It’s drawing a boundary for yourself and saying, this is a place I will not go. I’m not gonna go there. Another example is when many of my clients have felt like they must not have been enough, right? I’m just not good enough, or he wouldn’t have done these things. There’s no upside to this thought. There never is. There’s never a good outcome. When we think we’re not good enough. This thought results in feeling maybe depressed, anxious, sad. It creates us hiding more and more and then basically shrinking ourselves to where we’re hiding. And we’re, like, shrinking down so people can’t see us. It’s keeping us not enough. Even though that’s never true. It’s never true. We’re always enough, but that thought is keeping us small.

That’s an area that takes discipline to say, nope, that thought does not serve me. I will not go there. Another example is what if. What if you were a contributor to the marriage and you see where you are at fault and you see how you could have handled things differently. Discipline. It takes discipline to not go down these roads where we punch ourselves in the face over and over and tell ourselves painful stories of I should have known better and what’s wrong with me? And no wonder he did that, and making yourself the villain. There is no upside. So having the awareness to see how these thoughts are affecting you over and over again, that there’s never a good outcome, and then having the discipline to not go there.
An unrelated example that I can give you is from my coach, Brooke Castillo, who is the founder of the Life Coach School where I got certified. Brooke spent years struggling with body image, really struggling with different eating disorders, and tried all kinds of different things, binging and starving herself and back and forth. And then she got to a point where she realized that body shaming never had an upside, ever. And so she drew a boundary for herself where if her brain started to go there, like if she was looking in the mirror and her brain started to criticize her, she set this boundary that she held of, we are not doing that. We’re not. We’re not going to tell that story. We’re not going there. And she has held to that solidly.

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She’s used discipline to decide thoughts that are not serving her, that she will not indulge in. Okay, next one up is patience. Patience. Healing is a process. It’s not perfection. It’s a process. It’s very much two steps forward, one step back. I can’t tell you how many times clients will come and say, shouldn’t I be further along by now? My husband wants to know when I’m going to not need to talk about this anymore. He’s going to want. He wants to know when I’m going to feel better or if they leave the marriage. They want to know when they won’t hurt anymore or when they won’t want to feel sad or things like that.

When do I just get to feel better. Well, my friends, the more you can allow the slowdown to really evaluate your thoughts, to really evaluate your emotions. It’s like a slowing down to speed up. The more you can slow down on the front end, the faster you’re going to heal on the back end. The more you allow all of it on the front end, the less you’re going to experience pain on the back end. It’s this give and take, and it requires patience as you allow your body to go through these things. Uh, we need to have patience with our own emotions, patience with everyone involved, patience with our children, patience with the judgments of others, and a reminder to our brains that people who know what’s going on in your life with your situation, they’re going to have their judgments, and their judgments are based on the lens in which they see the world.

You get to decide how much merit you’re going to give other people’s ideas. You can have patience for people’s humanity, patience for people’s humanness like that. People are just going to be human and have their opinions about things, and you don’t have to believe them. Giving space to all of that is what will help you create a space between yourself and the opinions of others. And it will create a space between you and your thoughts and feelings. You are not your thoughts. You are not your feelings. You are perfectly whole and good, and you’re having thoughts and you’re having feelings that might be causing something for you. Okay? That’s it. Patience can help push that pause. That can give you the space between you and your thoughts and feelings. And. And you can do that for other people, too. And kind of see, oh, if I had this experience and I had this thought about it, I might be saying this thing too. I might be doing this thing too.
Okay? It allows us to step into a little bit of compassion. Okay? The last thing, the last tool that it takes to heal from infidelity is my favorite one. It’s courage. Did you know courage is my favorite word in the whole world? I love the word courage. I love the trait of courage. I love how courage feels. Even though it feels terrible sometimes, it doesn’t always feel good. In fact, I would say that most of the time, courage doesn’t feel great. But I love how I feel when I know I’m doing something that scares me to better my life, to better the life of other people. So why courage? I’ll tell you why. It takes courage to be willing to go and ask tough questions, especially if. If you know that the truth might hurt. Especially if you know that the answers might sting and that you might have some thoughts about them, that you might have experienced some pain around those answers. It takes courage to forgive. Now, just to be clear, forgiveness does not mean staying. It doesn’t mean you stay, you go.

Doesn’t mean any such thing. Forgiveness means you go through the work of healing your own heart so that you can feel better yourself. Yes, it’s a gift for the other person, but it’s also the greatest gift for you because you get to be the person who feels forgiving. And it takes courage to do that. Sometimes it’s easier to be mad and to blame. M It takes courage to grow your tolerance for discomfort. It takes courage to step into emotional adulthood where you take full responsibility for your own healing. It’s an inside job. No one else can do it for you. Partners can certainly do and say things to help build trust and credibility, but it takes courage to choose to trust again. It’s a choice whether you’re staying in the marriage or not. It takes courage to trust yourself, to advocate for yourself, to believe it can be for your good, to open yourself up to how this could be the biggest opportunity for you to grow. It takes courage to allow yourself to be messy and sloppy and do it wrong and love yourself anyway. It takes courage. It takes courage to be willing to pull yourself out of the cycle of, ah, blame and shame, where what a lot of us do is rather than actually feeling an emotion, we

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want to react to it by getting mad. It’s your fault that I feel this way. And then we feel bad for our judgments, and so we swing back to shame. We’re like, what’s wrong with me that I feel this way? And that feels lousy. So we go back over to blame. Oh, uh, if he wouldn’t have done this thing, then I wouldn’t feel this way. And back and forth. It takes courage to stop that swinging pendulum and to actually feel what you’re feeling and own that you’re creating it. And maybe, just maybe, I could do something else that doesn’t feel this way. That all takes courage. It does. It takes courage. It takes courage to see yourself hold the mirror up to yourself. Takes courage to love yourself. It takes courage to let people be wrong about you and to see your own flaws and weaknesses and love yourself anyway.

My question for you is, what do you want to lean into this week? What can you practice on your journey to healing? I am noticing for myself that as I continue to practice these things, I feel like I’m just growing at such a fast rate. In fact, since I first started learning about coaching, I can see how I have healed much quicker than the years before. Uh, just by small, simple thought tweaks. For example, I remember when I first started learning about coaching. I’d gone to a lot of therapy. It’d been quite a while since I had first gone through the hardest parts of my marriage and divorce, and I was still carrying around so much pain. And what I learned. I remember when I heard just a few thought adjustments. Some of them were, it was always going to happen this way. Our marriage was complete. It always was going to end. I thought that it was going to be forever. That’s what I thought. And it turns out I was wrong. And it’s okay. It’s okay.

Our relationship as a married couple is complete. Our relationship is different now. I still have a relationship with him. I still think about him. I still pray for him. I still look forward to the day when I will see him again. He will always be my friend, but my romantic relationship with him is over. It’s closed. And that feels good to me that I can say that and mean it. My kids were always going to experience divorced parents. It was always going to happen this way. So some of these little shifts where I was kind of arguing with reality, still going, no, it shouldn’t have happened this way. He shouldn’t have died. Like all of these stories, the second I dropped that and tried on different thoughts and allowed myself to be open to them, oh, it just like sped my process up so much, my healing. Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing has gone wrong. That thought alone has given me such comfort and strength and clarity. Okay, if nothing has gone wrong, then what do I need to learn here? What is the lesson? How do I need to love better? How do I need to love myself better? And back to this last trait. All of those things take courage.

It takes courage to be willing to be wrong yourself. To go, maybe I’m wrong. That takes courage. And it’s the best thing you can do to open up, to expand. What if my harsh judgments of myself are wrong? H. What if they are? I invite you to go through and pick one of those things that you want to lean into this week. Do you want to practice more courage? Do you want to practice allowing your emotion? Do you want to practice feeling? Do you want to practice having a conversation that you keep putting off? What is it? What do you think? Do you want to practice patience with the process and just allowing it without being in a hurry? I encourage you to pick something and focus on it and lean into it. I love you all. I’m so thankful that you’re here. I know that healing is 100% available to you no matter how much you’re hurting right now. 100%. Thank you and I will see you next time. Bye Bye.

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