Welcome And Why You’re Here
Welcome to Happily Even After Betrayal with Life Coach Jen. This podcast is where we talk about betrayal and divorce and what it actually looks like to live through those experiences while still being a parent, a grandparent, a partner, or just a human trying to keep it all together. If your heart feels shattered, your nervous system feels dysregulated, and your future feels unclear, you’re in the right place. Here we focus on understanding what happened so you can rebuild your identity, restore your confidence, and find peace. So you can create your happily even after one episode at a time.
Closure And Why We Crave It
Hey friends, welcome to today’s podcast. I’m so glad you’re here. Today I have a great topic. We’re going to talk about closure versus coherence. And so many people I talk to, as well as myself, they think I just want closure about the betrayal. And I think it can be a problem, right? Most of you think the reason you can’t move on is because you don’t have enough information. You don’t have all the information that you needed. You’re waiting for the full truth, the perfect apology, the missing piece that will finally make their affair make it make sense. And I’m just telling you, you may be waiting for the rest of your life. And you don’t need that to heal. Because for many of us, closure is never coming. We’re never getting closure. And if you keep waiting, you’re just gonna stay stuck and miserable. I promise. So, what we think closure is. We think closure is the idea that if I just had all the answers, I could finally feel at peace. Some examples are if they would just tell me why they did it, if I just knew that, right? If I knew the full timeline, if I had all the information from the first time to the last time, if I could trust that I finally have the whole truth. If they could just take full accountability of what they did, then I could have closure. So you see how this is external, you’re creating closure from someone else. You want to get it from someone else outside of you. But that’s not how it works. Why closure is so appealing to our brain is because we want certainty. Our brain likes certainty, our brain likes safety, it wants control. After betrayal, your world stops making sense. And so you feel very out of control, very uncertain, and very unsafe. Your brain is trying to solve a puzzle with missing pieces. I I love this analogy because I personally like puzzling, but also it’s like you have this 500-piece puzzle, and three-quarters of the pieces are missing, and you’re trying to put the puzzle together. Do you know how frustrating that is? Very frustrating. And the problem is the person that has the pieces is refusing to give them to you or has lost some of them that you know they can’t remember. And so it is very frustrating. So having this need, we think that it will help us make sense of everything, but it really becomes a trap.
The Trap Of More Questions
So the problem with trying to get closure is you may never get the truth or a satisfying why. That’s the number one question that I get asked is why? Why did they do this? And I don’t know why. I have lots of ideas, lots of things that I can guess, but they might not even know why they did it. So the why will just keep you spinning. And oftentimes we think if they just say sorry in the right way, it will be enough, right? But chances are they may never even say sorry. They might not even feel sorry, which is really disappointing. And even when you do get those answers, even if your spouse is willing to take accountability, do all the things that are supposedly the right things, your brain still will come up with questions. That’s your survival brain. So it’s like you ask them one question and then your brain comes up with 10 more. Right? They tell you why, and now you’re questioning like, is that really the reason? And so this is why getting closure is not really helping you. Closure keeps you emotionally tied to the person who hurt you, and you are outsourcing your healing to someone who already broke your heart. And I just want you to realize the person that you need to focus on healing is yourself. So we need to go inward. So
Coherence And Enough To Heal
coherence is when you can create an understanding of what happened that allows your brain and body to settle, even if you don’t have every answer. Your brain and body are your that’s what’s going to help you heal. We have to heal in our body and heal in our thoughts and our brain. And they’re very connected to our healing. It’s an internal process, not an external process. It’s about making sense of the experience, understanding patterns, accepting what you do know, and filling in gaps in a way that supports your healing. So closure says, I need them to give me answers so I can feel better. Coherence says I can understand enough to begin healing. I always tell people they have enough information. They don’t need every nitty-gritty detail to heal. That actually may prevent healing or cause their brain to be in more pain, right? It will cause more emotional pain. You know enough. You know enough that they had an affair. You don’t need to know every single time they had sex with that person or where they had sex. The show that just comes to mind is the other woman. And if you haven’t watched that, I recommend it. It is great. But she meets the guy’s wife, meets one of the affair women, and she goes to her apartment and she said, I just want to sit down in your apartment anywhere that you didn’t have sex. And literally the girl looks at her. It’s Cameron Diaz, and I can’t think of the actress’s name, but basically it’s like, okay, I’ve had sex everywhere in this apartment with your husband. So just you’re just gonna have to sit on the couch and and deal with it. Anyways, that’s where my brain went in that moment. But closure, another thing our brain says, closure is dependent, external, and often unavailable. And coherence is self-led, internal, and always accessible. So if you truly want to heal, I want you to become more coherent about your healing and understand it. So closure thinking, some examples of closure thinking, I need to know exactly how many times they met, right? That’s what I just was saying, or how many times or where, right? That’s what our brain is thinking. But coherence, a thought is I know there was deception and betrayal. That is enough for me to honor my pain and decide how I want to move forward. So just remind yourself, I know enough information in order for me to decide if I want to stay married or leave my marriage. And you might not know it right away, but you do know enough. And it might take you a minute to make that decision or months or years, but you still have enough information. Another example is closure says, I need to understand why they did this. And the coherence says they were seeking validation, escape, attention. It wasn’t about my worth. And I think this is usually our problem, right? Because we think, well, what could we have done different to prevent the affair? Or was I enough? They’re telling me that if I did X, Y, and Z, then they wouldn’t have had the affair. They’re always blaming many affair partners or people, the betrayer is blaming you for the affair, at least in my situation, that’s what happened. And so I’m thinking, yeah, maybe I wasn’t enough. What if I did act in these different ways that they’re saying maybe this wouldn’t have happened, maybe I caused this, but I just want you to know 100% you didn’t. And the affair is about them. And I really do believe it’s about insecurity, desperate need for validation, escape, attention. It’s like this just drug. That’s why I call it a drug, right? It’s this seemingly very addictive drug that they are addicted to. And it has nothing to do with love. It has nothing to do with you. It is all about them. Another example that may be helpful for your brain is closure says, I need to know if they’re still lying. Right. We may have like our lying alert on all the time, scanning, are they telling the truth or lying? And coherence says, I may not be able to control or know everything, but I can decide what I will tolerate and what safety looks like for me. So many people think they have to get safety from their spouse, but safety is an inside job. You can choose to feel safe or not. And so looking outside of your spouse, your spouse may not be trustworthy right now, but you can decide if you want to trust. And I would encourage you to begin with yourself. Can I trust myself to know that I will make the best decision for me and my family and my kids? Can I trust myself to know if my spouse is trustworthy? Am I listening to my gut? Because our gut is, in my opinion, a human lie detector. And when we are really honest and open with ourselves, we can decide, like, yeah, that doesn’t really sound right, what they’re saying to me. So I’m gonna just make note of that and decide, okay, I am gonna scan and look around to see if I want to trust what they’re saying in this moment. So why coherence
Nervous System Safety And Rumination
is healing? It helps to regulate your nervous system. And this is so important in healing to be self-regulated. You can do this, right? You just have to know what that even means. And that’s why coaching is so valuable is to understand how your unique nervous system works. Coherence allows your CEO brain, which is your prefrontal cortex. I talk about this all the time, to come back online. When we are in survival mode, which is what we’re doing, when we’re trying to get closure, we’re not thinking straight. It’s like we are the inevitable scroll, the, you know, that nightmare scroll when your computer’s thinking and it’s not going fast. That’s what’s going on with our brain. We’re not making good decisions in that moment. It stops the obsessive loop of rumination. And so many of you are stuck in this, and it is possible to stop the loop, I promise. And it creates internal safety, which is what I was talking about before is it is your job to create safety with inside of you. You don’t need more information, you need a transformation. And that’s really what I love working with clients because I help them transform their lives from complete devastation to actual healing and creating the life that they love. And I’ve done it in my own life, and that’s what I love helping other people do is helping them transform their life. So they’re not stuck in the miserable thought of if I just knew one more thing about the affair, then I could feel better. Or if I just knew exactly why, then I could feel better. It just doesn’t work that way.
Acceptance Boundaries And Next Steps
So, how to start creating coherence in your life? Really acceptance. Accept what you do know. There was betrayal, and that matters, right? Acceptance is the fastest way out of any situation. When you can accept your reality, even though it sucks to know your spouse cheated on you with whoever they did, the acceptance doesn’t mean you agree or approve of or think it’s okay that they had an affair. It’s just accepting that it happened. You’re not in denial. You have to name the impact. This hurt me. This changed me. There’s a lot of emotions that happen with betrayal, and so I think it’s important to own that. How it impacted you. It’s called betrayal trauma for a reason. Stop chasing every detail. More information isn’t giving you peace, it’s feeding the loop. Okay. And we want to get out of the loop because we don’t want to wake up at 3:25 a.m. every morning and think of all the, you know, things that could have happened, would have happened, go down the rabbit hole, start scrolling on social media, looking up, you know, who they’re related to, the other woman, comparing her outward appearance to our appearance, looking up the other man, did they make more money than me? Or I don’t know. Maybe guys look at their body too. I don’t know. I know girls do, but men probably do too. Like, what does he have that I don’t have? And that’s miserable, miserable, especially at 3 a.m. Create your own meaning. What do I believe about this? What do I want to take from this experience? Now, this is a whole other level. Like, this is intense. Like, I’ve healed a lot to get to here. So I’m not telling you to do this if you just discovered your spouse had an affair. There’s a whole process to healing, right? You can’t jump from, I just discovered my spouse had an affair to coherence. That’s not the path. There’s a lot of steps in between that. And that’s why having a coach or a therapist or both is so helpful to help you make sure you can walk through the path properly. Bring it back to you. That’s something you can do. Remember, your healing, your boundaries, your next steps. So many people think or say to me, like, Oh, I’m just gonna wait and see what my spouse wants to do. I’m like, why are we waiting for them to choose? They already chose to lie to you and cheat on you. Why are we letting them decide one more decision in your life? We have to empower ourselves. Okay. A common pushback, I think, that happens is that I I can totally hear some of you saying this, but I need to know. I get it, I really do, but I want you to ask yourself has needing to know everything actually helped you feel better or has it kept you stuck? And if you’re really honest with yourself, I think it’s probably kept you more stuck. So in closing, just know you may never get closure. And that’s disappointing. But you do not need closure to heal. And my whole platform is about healing. You deserve to heal. I want you to heal. I want you to live your best life. I don’t want you to be consumed by the betrayal for the rest of your life. It’s just it’s like this quicksand or seaweed, it’s just awful. It’s yucky, it’s murky. It’s gonna hold you back in your life if you don’t choose healing. So, what you need is coherence, and that is something no one can take from you, and no one has to give you. You can totally get that on your own. So if you feel stuck in the loop of needing answers, replaying the story for the hundredth time today, trying to make it all make sense, this is exactly the work I help my clients do. You don’t have to keep suffering while you wait for someone else to give you peace. You can start creating that in yourself. So, if you want more information, sign up for a free call. I give free consultations, and I would love to meet you. I would love to hear your story and help you on your healing journey. Thanks so much for listening and have a beautiful day, and I’ll talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Happily Even After Betrayal. If you want to understand what stage of betrayal you’re in, head to my website at lifecoachgen.com. That’s Jen with one N, and take the free quiz. It’s a simple step you can take today toward creating your own happily even after.
