Welcome to my podcast, happily, even After. I’m life coach, jen, I’m passionate about helping people recover from betrayal. I rode the intense emotional roller coaster and felt stuck and traumatized for years. It’s the reason I became a trauma-informed certified life coach who helps people like you navigate their post-betrayal world. I have the tools, processes and knowledge to help you not only heal from the betrayal but create a healthy future. Today we begin to help you live happily even after. Hey friends, welcome to today’s podcast.
So if you haven’t listened to Angela’s story, go back to last week, last Monday, and you can hear the recap of her story. But I have Angela Tobler on my podcast and because she just had so much valuable things to say and to teach us, I really wanted to hear the rest of her story. Right, we heard the beginning about her marriage and the betrayal in her marriage, but now today we’re going to share about her healing journey as well as now how she helps women heal from betrayal, which I think is so powerful. Welcome back, angela. Good to see you. Yes, I’m glad to be back. Welcome back, angela, good to see you. Yes, I’m glad to be back. We left off with your custody. It’s been four and a half years that your ex-husband gets your kids five days a week. You get them on the weekends. How did you get through that? Tell us all the things.
Yeah, so really like, the thing that I want to like reiterate is just that healing is so much of a journey. It’s not a one-time thing, it’s not something that you arrive at. So the thing that happened to me, though, is in the midst of when I found out about the affair, and so this like goes back to even more. We were still married, he had I’d found out about the affair, and he had pleaded with me to give him another chance. This was the lowest point of my life, because every day, I was filled with such anxiety, such pain, such torture, so much so that I lost my appetite. I’m not an anxious person by nature person by nature and I was so desperate to like calm this anxiety, because I just felt like I was crazy and just insane. And then I didn’t know it was real. I didn’t know what to believe, I didn’t know what to trust in anything, and I struggled every day, and, as much as it was difficult to take care of my kids, that what saved me, because it forced me to get out of bed, it forced me to put food out, it forced me to do things, but I did. I was just surviving, I was not living, and I was so broken. So I was very desperate to get help in any way I could.
And this is when I had seen my therapist. Before I’d found this therapist actually a few years before that. I wanted as a couples therapy, but at that point I had no idea there was this issue. He refused to go with me. So she became my personal therapist and that’s when she introduced me to Betrayal Recovery and to find a women’s group where I could work through it and it’s basically like AA for for betrayed women, you know, and for spouses of this type of thing. And so, and then I had the different therapy, and then I had books and I had online courses and I dove into it because I didn’t want to live that way anymore. So I was searching everywhere and I was soaking up everything I could and as part of the process of like the A, there’s 12 steps, you know program and you work through different exercises and you have these different things and I was learning about myself in these processes and I was learning how I had so many things.
That like why it hurts so much is because betrayal rips open every wound and every insecurity you’ve ever had your entire life and so everything that’s happened throughout your whole life. It just exposes them all. And now you’re trying to stop the bleeding and you just can’t. So it exposed my fear of abandonment that I had had my whole life, this fear that I wasn’t good enough and I had to prove my value and I had been doing this my whole life.
And this is when I began to learn that, when I met him, I fell in love with the way he made me feel and I realized that it wasn’t that. I mean, he was funny and he was a good guy, but it wasn’t him I fell in love with. Because when I break it down now, it’s like he was actually kind of a bad boy and I wasn’t attracted to that and he was kind of, you know, like the things that he did I didn’t really care for, you know, whatever, but I had again the immaturity I was young, that I was like oh, I can help him become the man.
Yes help him become the man. Yes, yeah, he can be, and I started to learn these things about myself, and I began to learn not only about them, but then how to forgive myself for them and how to move past them and how to change. Yeah, and I started to change, and it started with boundaries, and this is why I started to file for divorce, even though, though I didn’t want it even though I didn’t really believe that that was the right thing, but I knew I needed to take action.
So I would just start doing the process of okay, what changes do I need to make in my life, what things do I need? And I had my absolutes, and one of them was if there’s lying still present, I have to move forward. And that was my guiding line. As long as, like, if there’s lying and like it’s not being honest and transparent, I’m not going to stay here in this marriage. So I just kept moving and growing and learning. And so by the time we were actually divorced because again, like to go back to our story we had stood in front of a judge three months before and I wasn’t ready and they had asked if I believed the marriage was irrevocably broken and I wasn’t. I didn’t believe that yet. And afterwards, like the judge said, well then, I can’t end this, come back in three months. And clicked it. And I sat there of like what did I just do? I had like six months to get to that point and now I’ve just postponed it another three. And I was just like, what have I done? But I was very grateful because that three months when I stood in front of the judge again. I was ready and I knew that’s what I wanted.
So when we were divorced, I wasn’t questioning, I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t based on anything else. I was taking the step because I knew that’s what I needed to do for myself and for my kids, and for him too. It was the most loving thing that I could do in all around. So that’s why, like I had really grown a lot and I had come to that place where I wasn’t done I still work on things but I had loved myself more than I ever had my entire life and I was proud of myself and I valued and I held those things true.
So it wasn’t shortly after my divorce that I met my now husband, and it’s one of those things that, when I met him, I if I’m honest, it terrified me because he was, he came across as everything that I had been looking for and that scared me to death. And so I kept telling myself don’t trust him, because I was still very simple, I don’t make sense. Yes, I kind of believed that all men were liars just deep down, and they were always hiding something, and so I kind of was a little bit hesitant, anyway, you know. So I was just like well, we’ll just see what happens, I’m just looking for fun. That was my whole thing. I wasn’t dating trying to get remarried. I was dating because I was ready to have fun, ready to do something, and so that’s all I told myself is I’m like this is not serious, this is just to get to know people and to give myself something to do when I didn’t have my kids. That’s kind of?
yeah, it makes sense.
And it was one that I learned and this is what I kind of work with other women is I wasn’t trusting him as we were dating and doing things. I was trusting his behavior and I was trusting what was there that I could see and before I was in the picture, what kind of person was he? And is it match up what he tells me Right? Yeah, and it all did. Everything was matching up. He was match up what he tells me Right, and it all did. Everything was matching up. He was who he said he was. He didn’t have anybody holding him accountable.
He held himself accountable and he had his own standards. He had his own view and desires and needs and he held to them and he wasn’t asking me to do anything and that was like the moment that I began to fall in love with him. I love that and so it was. I first was trusting me. I knew what to trust and part of that too and I don’t know how spiritual or things you go on but I have this spiritual aspect that I learned how to trust God and all along he had been guiding me and I knew I couldn’t trust people, but I could trust God and I knew that God had put this man in my life and so that’s why we just kept moving forward with it.
And now, today that we’ve been married nearly five years, and I can attest that he is. We are not immune to hurting each other or betrayal or lying Neither one of us are but he’s honest and he’s a good man and he has the same wants and values and desires that I do, and we honor each other and we honor ourselves and it’s really beautiful and it’s what I’ve always wanted my entire life is. He truly is my best friend and it’s just to have that mutual respect and love for each other. It’s. It’s one of those that I’m like I didn’t think was really real, but it is.
Yeah, I love that so much. And the thing is it is so true we have to look at people’s behaviors, because our bodies don’t lie. We can. We can lie all the time, right, like. And actions speak louder than words, right? And I love how you said that we’re not immune, right.
I think one of the gifts that I’ve learned is the repair, because I’m a flawed person, I’m human.
Of course I make mistakes, but when you can take accountability and ownership for those mistakes and say sorry and it’s a genuine sorry you can have so much more connection.
For me, I repair with my kids because I’m not in a relationship, but I just envision someday, if I ever choose to do that, that’s it’s like I made a mistake and we don’t lie right. It’s not like you might say something untrue, but you, you’re able to catch yourself and say, oh, actually that wasn’t the whole truth. Or you know, I didn’t want to tell you because I felt uncomfortable and you make the repair right, like, so it’s not the affair Affair is devastating, but if that person that’s what I believe marriages can overcome Absolutely If they do the repair and if they’re actually sorry and if they acknowledge and take accountability but it’s not a lot of people are willing to do it so the hardest part is because that’s the whole thing is I held on for what was nearly a year, from, like, the separation until the divorce, like till everything happened, because he could say the most beautiful yes, oh, yeah.
And he told me everything I wanted to hear and I wanted those words to be true. So I had fun to him. And then you lied to yourself yes, but his actions were not matching, and that’s where I would go crazy, cause my I was like I don’t know. Like he says that he’s doing this thing, I feel uncomfortable and this is hard. And I had this internal battle because I didn’t know what to trust. And I held on so tight because I wanted his words to be true, because they felt really good when he said them. It was what I wanted to hear, it was the validation that I wanted to hear, it was the doting on and the and that you were good enough and he wanted to be with you and he wasn’t abandoning you.
Yeah, yes, it makes sense. It was all these things. So I held on to that so tightly of like wanting to be this man and the hope, because I could see, I knew that he’s not this terrible person. He was good person too. He has the, the capability we all do. We all have this capability of being both. And I held on to the hope that he would step into the man.
Yes, the potential that I saw him as being, but that’s when I learned that he never wanted to be that man. He was always doing it for me. So that was what I had to learn, and it was like learning. That process is that he, everything he did, wasn’t because he knew he had done something wrong. He was trying to do what he knew I needed.
And what looked good, what was the right thing it was all about. What is the outside world think I should do?
Yeah, yeah, so it’s. It was just yeah, all of that, and I just again like going back, I just kept learning and just kept trying to understand, because I’m really one that when I understand something, it just clicks for me and I get it Cause it’s one that I’ve never tried alcohol.
I’ve never been even wanted to have any alcohol, because I’ve seen what it does and I don’t really care to like. To me, it makes sense that I’m like I don’t really need to impair my ability to have fun. I can choose to just have fun, like. So it was just this whole thing that it’s never been in something that I’ve wanted to engage in because I didn’t need that for my life. So I’m like one that I’m like I want to be able to understand, and so I just kept like trying to dive in and trying to learn of like where did this happen and how did this happen?
And learning that I had been living in a very manipulative marriage or whole marriage very manipulative marriage or whole marriage I was told I had anger issues and that I was bipolar and that I was a terrible person and that I’m emotionally unstable and that you know, anytime I tried to talk about anything, I was always shut down. And I just started to see this pattern through our whole marriage, like again how I would always adapt and whenever there was something that I felt uncomfortable about or that I would need from him, it would shut down, like he would shut it down and I would have to adapt of like okay, how am I going to get out of this? And so that’s over. This time I had been so much that I didn’t know who I was, and the consequence of gaslighting and manipulation is the loss of self-worth.
We have to give up our worth in order to survive. There’s just no getting around it. And I had no idea I was doing that. I thought I had valued myself. I thought I was keeping my worth and I was like, no, that’s not me, that’s not me myself. I thought I was keeping my worth and I was like, no, that’s not me, that’s not me.
But when I could be honest with myself and when I finally started to exam this, I was like I have abandoned myself over and, over and over again, I have broken my own heart for the sake of him and our family and put my needs so far down on the totem pole. They didn’t even exist anymore. I had no dreams or aspirations of my own. I had no idea. I was just living life. So, yeah, so that’s. That was like my journey of getting to that point. Yeah, and you?
see me shaking my head because I resonate so much with all of it. Yeah, I was so out of alignment. It was like I was two different people. I didn’t even know, like I was like an outer body experience.
Yeah, yeah. And it’s one too, that, even without betrayal, it’s so common for moms, for mothers, we just we give our whole life over to our children and they become our identity so often, yeah.
And it’s so unhealthy. It’s something in our society that we’ve got to change, I feel like younger generations are getting a little bit more aware like yes, but yeah definitely.
But just like knowing who I was without being a wife and a mother, I had no idea. I had no idea.
And you were young, 19, when you got married.
Yeah, so it just all been molded about him and our life together and everything. So you know, and I had to face a lot of fears, because the number one was getting divorced was how am I going to support myself? How am?
I going to like do this? Going to support myself? How am I going to like do this? And that’s again where I leaned on my faith and I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I knew I needed to do it, so I just kept taking the steps and and it was one. You know that for me, things worked out in the way and the timing and we sold our home, but that was the best blessing I needed.
that was the only money I ever got from him was the sale of our home for the 15 years of marriage, as I got half of that house and that was, that was my compensation for the time. But but I I knew when I had reached that point, when I had finally got divorced and everything was done, I knew I couldn’t just sit on it because I needed so much help. I couldn’t have gone through it, I could not have gone, like, done anything that I did without the support and help that I had found, and there were so many avenues of support and things that I gained from it. There were podcasts and there were TED talks and there were websites and there were, you know, there are so many different avenues that helped and I needed different things at different times, and so I wanted to be a beacon of hope and that was like I didn’t know how or when exactly, but I knew that I was going to share my story and that I would do whatever I could to be a lighthouse in whatever aspect.
Yeah, yeah. So when did you decide I want to be a coach?
I mean, that’s the thing. Good question is, I kind of always knew I wanted to. I’ve wanted to do something right.
Yeah, you want to be a lighthouse. How are you going to do that? So then you chose coaching right.
Yeah, so it’s kind of been a organic way to get there. I I’ve wanted to write a book which. I haven’t published it yet, but I’ve written it, but you’re, you’re writing it or working on it like it started, as like I wanted to just get everything I could remember down. I wanted to have my history and as I was writing it, I was like there’s more here there’s more here and it just kept coming of like know that, like this is something that could could help you know so that was what started my flow of like, okay, doing this, and then looking at different avenues what did I want to do?
how did I want doing this? And then looking at different avenues, what did I want to do? How did I want to do this? And I settled on coaching because I looked at, like, therapy, did I want to be a therapist? I want to do different things and I really liked coaching because it focuses on the future and it focuses on movement.
So the whole point is that with coaching, we’re focused on getting you out of where you are and moving you, and I just I know therapy can do that too, but most of the time in therapy it’s getting into the mud.
All right let’s go back, let’s get deep. Let’s like really get dig deep and find things. But with coaching, although we look to understand and to know our past, it’s a rear view mirror. We’re looking forward and we’re going to take action of like, what can we do? What are the necessary steps to get you where you want to be? And let’s make that happen.
Yeah, I love that. It is so true. I mean, I think for me having a therapist was helpful and a coach like I and I know not everyone can afford that, but having both was so, I think, helped me heal so much quicker. As well as the podcast, the books. I told a client the other day. I’m like listen, if you really want to change, you’ve got to spend your entire time. You’ve got to be reading and listening. You can’t just expect once a week for an hour to help you get better. Like, if you really want this, you have to go all in. I think and that’s been my experience is jumping all in, and it sounds like that’s your experience too.
Yes, yeah, I mean because the truth is you have to or you’re you’ll drown, kind of yes, and I have this analogy that I loved hearing that was from. It wasn’t even about betrayal, but just life in general. And shout out to Jodi Moore If anybody knows who she is.
Everyone on my podcast knows who she is, because she’s one of my faves and I talk about her all the time.
So, if you’re familiar, she talks about the river of misery. Yes, and I love this analogy that we can often stand on one side and we see what we want, but we know what we have to do to get through, and we don’t want to go through that river of misery.
Right.
And like it’s a silly little analogy, but I loved it how she’s like. Imagine getting making a bath and you put all your salts and get everything ready. It’s the perfect temperature. You slide in and right as you get into the water you have to pee. You realize you have to pee. So what do you do? Do you sit there uncomfortable and just accept it and just not enjoy the bath and just kind of grit through it and accept it? Or do you get out of the bath dripping wet and cold and go over to the bathroom and go to the bathroom and then come in and then enjoy your bath? It’s like that’s the river of misery. You have to up, you have to go, do something uncomfortable and hard and then you reap the rewards of that.
Yeah.
That action.
And some people just pee in the bath and make it even worse.
Yes, right, make their life even worse.
Like right, I don’t. She probably didn’t say that, but you know it’s true.
Like I watch people like they’re making their lives, they’re just adding to it right adding to their misery by doing other things, yeah, and that we don’t even realize that we’re doing, or you know, or that we think that this is going to be a solution and we just create pieces, and so, yeah, it’s kind of that whole thing that I help other women and I want to help other women realize that it’s not easy, recovery is not easy and it’s going to make you face things that you’ve been avoiding. That’s the whole purpose, but that’s where you come. That’s the healing is on the other side of that.
Yeah.
It’s on the other side, and it’s hard and it’s painful, but it is the most rewarding thing and it’s the best gift that you will ever give or you will ever receive. And that’s just what’s the requirement, and it’s that one that you have to be so uncomfortable and so ready for change that you are willing to step into that river of misery, you’re willing to do whatever it takes. And it’s not going to be easy, and I just I talked to a potential client just today and she’s like the thing that sucks the most is it’s not, you know, trying to decide between two good things. It’s really trying to decide between two really crappy things you know, anything and I’m like, unfortunately, it is
like it doesn’t matter if you stay in the relationship, it doesn’t matter if you leave. Honestly, healing can come in either aspect. That is not a conducive of what you need to heal, but you’re going to have hard on either side. You have to walk through really difficult and neither way is going to be easy. To walk through really difficult and neither way is going to be easy. But you just have to decide what do you ultimately want? What’s the life that you ultimately want, and is that choice taking you in the direction that you really want, or is it just sitting in your pee?
Yeah, and keeping stuck, and it’s so true and I think so many people they get so hung up. This wasn’t my fault, this isn’t my problem, this wasn’t why do I have to heal? But it’s like, okay, we could go there, but that’s going to just keep you stuck and more miserable. So, yes, the healing, and honestly I mean, I started the same as you did, started healing in my marriage and as I healed and I’m, we’re all still healing, right, no one’s ever healed.
You gained an ability. Yes, you were strong enough. I mean I love me so much more than I mean I have a lot of compassion for past me, but I just think the healing part, it’s the greatest gift you can give yourself. I’m like I am so grateful for choosing that, and I know you are too.
Yeah, and it all stems down to and this is what I teach and that I want every woman to experience is, most of the time, people pleasing codependency, the fear of abandonment all comes from this place of just wanting to feel enough. But when you can give that gift to yourself, when you can honestly truly believe and feel that you are enough and you give yourself that validation that you’ve been asking everybody else to give, it finally fills that void that you’ve been trying to fill with everybody else. Tell me, tell me you love me, Tell me I’m good enough.
Yeah, and we don’t have to fill it with cookies and ice cream or anything else or any other buffer, whatever issue, right, like, yeah, it’s, it’s like magic, but the problem is to get to that magic. It’s very, it is the river of misery, but I think the reward is so amazing. But so many people, they get stuck in the mud, right, they get stuck on the one side and just they’re like well, maybe if we get in a boat or if we go walk around, right, right, We’ll find an easy way.
Well, let’s try the easy way. But it’s like, okay, there’s no easy way to do this. Yeah Well, how do people work with you, Like, do you have a program or how?
I do. Yeah, I have a couple of different options. I’m getting ready to launch one of them. Okay, I do work one-on-one, if you’re interested in working like one-on-one with me, and I have a three month program where we dig into that and really just help to work through your things and your issues and give you the tools and the setup. And my whole purpose of that is that, again, you’re not going to end the three months and be failing off in the ocean, but my hope is that you will see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Yeah, and have the tools. Don’t you think, have some new skills that you didn’t?
have before. Yeah, that you’re able to like. Okay, it’s worth it. There’s a purpose in this, there’s somewhere to go, there’s a direction to have, and that you have the ability and the tools to get there, yeah, and so that’s the purpose of that.
The other option that I’ve had, that I’m looking, is to setting up group coaching. So you know, if it’s something, that it’s a little bit more affordable, it’s a little bit kind of more of like let me just see if this is going to help. You know that it’s like a testing and you’re not so like the spotlight’s not just on you and you can kind of learn and grow from other women in the session is like what?
Yeah, you know I was nervous about groups, but I have done some group therapy things and you do, even if the people don’t have your same issues right, they’re not the same stories or whatever. You can heal a lot in a community, I think, especially women, and obviously your clients will be in the betrayal world. So, and obviously your clients will be in the betrayal world. So so much connection, like I think we heal a lot more in community than for sure that I realized. So I think group coaching can be really beneficial for people for many reasons, financially as well, as they have connection they because bizarrely the community, yeah, don’t you think?
at least for me, me I really thought I was the only woman that had ever been betrayed yeah, or they could feel the way you’re feeling yes, right, or they could understand it yeah and so you have this sense of, immediately, a group of people that know the other thing.
Like, I only do work with women, and I just want to preface that it’s not because I don’t think that men get betrayed In fact there’s very much the same story on the flip side, and betrayal is not one gendered. But I specifically only work with women because that’s a personal boundary of what’s personal and it’s intimate and it’s you know there’s a lot of emotion that goes into that and I just I don’t want to step in that, cross that boundary, to do that with another man.
Yeah, and you’re married, right Like I do work with men. But you know I’m seeing it, it doesn’t feel fuzzy, right Right, it feels different.
Yeah, which I totally respect. It’s like I’m respecting my relationship now and it’s it’s our thing that we safeguard. Like I said, we’re not immune.
Yeah.
So it’s how we keep that safe, you know, and how we protect that.
Yeah, I, I I agree with you. I think if I was married, I don’t know if I would coach Ben, but for me it feels, I feel fine with it, but I totally get it. Yeah Well, angela, thank you so much for coming on two episodes. That was so awesome, thank you. I just really admire you and for me, I needed to be vocal about my story.
I held my story in for 26 years and now that I don’t need to, or that I feel safe that I can share it, that I don’t need to, or that I feel safe that I can share it, I realized how much that hurt me by staying silent, but and how much it’s helped me in my healing to say my story. And not everyone needs to share their story, but for me it just has. It’s been a healing part of my journey, and that’s not every woman but I. So I really appreciate your willingness because there needs to be all of us right, some of us that can share our stories, and then some of us that we help others also heal from there, from themselves. So, anyways, okay, thanks so much for listening.
You guys, if you liked this podcast, please share with your family and friends and leave a review, and if you want to learn all the information about Angela, it’s going to be in my show notes. So thanks so much for listening and have a beautiful day and I’ll talk to you next week. If you want to learn how to live happily even after, sign up for my email at hello at life coach Jen with one ncom. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at happily even after coach. Let’s work together to create your happily even after.
