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.
Today I’m going to talk about how to rebuild trust after an affair and also as well as talk about healing after an affair. I think so many people this is like my number one question asked from clients and the struggle is real and I’ve totally struggled with trust and I probably still struggle with trust and I may always, but I know it is possible to trust again, and the person of course I want you to learn how to trust the most is yourself. So I’m just going to talk about this concept that a guy he’s a psychotherapist on Instagram that I follow, matthias Barker. If you’re not following him, go follow him because he has such great content and I just like his demeanor, his way of saying things. He’s a very kind man and I like his ideas. So he talks about the five A’s, the letter A how do you know if you can trust someone that has betrayed you? Because often many of us, when we discover betrayal, we consider maybe can we stay married, like, is it possible to trust again Most people, even though you said years ago, before you ever got married, if someone ever had an affair, if my husband ever cheated on me or my wife, I’m leaving. But usually that isn’t really the thing that happens, because we have kids, we have a life, we have a home, we have family members. We’ve been. You know, however long you’ve been married. It isn’t just an easy I’m going to leave. Now, if you’re dating and you’re not married, like by all means, like this is your sign, probably it’s time to go. I’m just going to say but if you’re married, it’s just a lot a bigger decision to leave. And so most people want to know how will I ever know if I can trust my spouse again? And so these five A’s, I really liked them.
So the first one is do they acknowledge what they did? This is paying attention to your spouse that had the affair. Are they acknowledging it? Do they tell you what happened, how the betrayal happened, what caused them to make this choice? And the answer is not well, if you were skinnier, if you were nicer to me, if it has anything, if they acknowledge that they did this but it was because something you did, that is the wrong answer and that is not going to help you rebuild trust. Or if they blame it on the person they had the affair with, well, they were convincing me, they talked me into it, they seduced me.
Whatever they say, that’s not the answer either, because they have to take full ownership and acknowledge what they did. Okay, they have to acknowledge it, they have to come clean. You get to decide how much information you want or need to know in your healing, but this A I think is really important Are they even acknowledging that they did this? Because many people that have affairs they can’t even admit that they did it, and so that’s a problem. That’s not going to help you rebuild trust. Help you rebuild trust. Okay, are they going to make amends? Okay, do whatever you need to reestablish trust. Now. I don’t want you to live a life of checking your spouse’s cell phone email, becoming a detective. I’ve talked to you about that many times, but at the beginning, the initial discovery you’re going to want to, like, check, you know, find my iPhone. Where is he, is he where or is she? Are they where they say they are. You have to rebuild trust in that way having access to his phone or her phone that way, having access to his phone or her phone.
So it is important to decide together what you need to rebuild trust, because it is going to be important to have transparency and full transparency and whatever that looks like for you, I think, the affair partner. That’s hard for them because they feel shame, which they want to hide, and they feel, oh, you’re invading my privacy. Well, you gave up the privacy when you became secret and started erasing text messages and started telling another person that you love them, you want them or whatever right, and you were having sex with them. So if you want to rebuild your marriage, you’re going to have to have full transparency and make amends, and so you guys get to decide what that looks like together. And it’s important to really pay attention Do their actions match their words? It’s really easy to tell someone what you think they want to hear and for you as well, right, even the betrayed partner you need to be honest with yourself, honest with your spouse. This is hard for you. Say it right. Don’t just say, oh, I totally trust you, like you don’t lie when you don’t trust them, right. So make sure your words and actions match, as well as pay attention to their words and actions.
Match Acquire is the next one, and this is really is the person that had the affair. Are they acquiring new knowledge? Are they discovering? Are they going to therapy? Are they figuring out why they did this in the first place? Because there was a reason and it had nothing to do with you? Are they figuring out ways that this won’t happen again? What inside of them was hurting? What need were they not getting met in their own life that they decided it would be a great idea to go and bring someone else into the marriage? Right? And so really pay attention. Are they willing to acquire new knowledge by hiring a coach, hiring a therapist? Both reading books, listening to podcasts? There’s so much great content out there for people to discover what happened. So many of us live on autopilot and we’re unconsciously living our life, and so it’s time to get conscious and figure out why they did this. That’s not your job. The betrayed partner. Right, it’s the person that betrayed you. That’s their job. They need to figure this out on their own, okay, and hopefully they’ll share that with you, but it is important for them in order for you to trust them again.
Accountability kind of talked about this, but they have to take full accountability for what they did and not blame anyone else. This is really hard because our brain wants to make it someone else’s fault for doing what they did, because they see the pain in their spouse and maybe their kids, whoever else was affected. What I have learned from betrayal? It doesn’t just affect your spouse. It could affect your co-workers, your in-laws, your other family members, could affect your co-workers, your in-laws, your other family members. There’s a lot more people affected by a person’s betrayal than them, the affair partner and the spouse, especially when it becomes public or it leads to divorce and the reason is discovered, right, and so not just the spouse is betrayed, but the kids feel betrayed. Maybe some relatives feel betrayed. There’s a lot of people that feel betrayed. Maybe your neighbors Depends on you know what your relationship was.
So that person needs to take full accountability for what they did and make amends, which we talked about as one of the A’s and then accepted. And accepted means that you have accepted what has happened. Okay, which in my mind is the hardest thing to do, because we like to argue with reality, we like to pretend that this isn’t really what happened or this isn’t really the ramifications of what happened. And how you can learn to accept is creating boundaries because you realize, okay, the reality is my spouse had an affair. I don’t want this to ever happen again. What kind of boundaries do we need to create in our marriage, in our life, so we can hopefully prevent this from happening again? And I’m telling you can’t happen again, right, but there are many people, yes, this happens in their life, but then they never.
If you do all these five A’s and actually get help and actually figure out why and heal those wounds, for whatever reason you decided you needed to bring someone else into your marriage, into your life, to make you feel better or to make you feel more confident, whatever you were searching for, if that person can heal this, then you really can accept the reality of your situation. But I think reality, we argue with reality all the time and it is a hard concept to sometimes. Our brain does not like to deal with reality sometimes, anyway. So these are the five A’s that Matthias Barker shared, for how do you know if you can trust someone that has betrayed you? Now, these are the five A’s that he talks about to heal from betrayal. So, as we are building our trust, we also have to heal ourselves. Right, because it’s very painful lots of wounding, lots of damage but your job as your spouse that has betrayed you is rebuilding their trust and, hopefully, healing on their own is healing yourself, and I think a lot of couples make this mistake and they think that this is a marital problem.
No, this is not a marital problem. This is an individual issue and until they figure out why they did this in the first place, you cannot go to marriage counseling. I think that’s the biggest mistake that we make is the second. We find out our spouse has an affair. We rush into marriage counseling and I have done this, so I know it can be very damaging and it’s not helpful. It actually almost makes it worse, in my opinion. Almost makes it worse, in my opinion. I didn’t begin healing myself until I started going to individual therapy and coaching and I was able to realize, because the thing is when you’re in therapy. Well, if she wouldn’t do this, then I you know it’s.
It becomes this blame game and a lot of shame, and if you’ve been the person that was in an emotional abuse of marriage, it’s really hard to speak your mind in that situation. There’s not a lot of really amazing therapists At least I haven’t found some in a marriage situation. They have to really be able to call someone out. I mean, there are a lot of great therapists out there, but there’s also a lot of bad ones, and so, unless you landed on the really great one, I think this is going to be hard. And so doing individual first and then going after you feel like you’ve healed enough to then go work together on your marriage, I think is my suggestion for what you need to do after discovery of an affair, because I think there’s just a lot of wounding that needs to be healed first before you can come together and actually talk about even knowing if you want your marriage to work, and I just think a lot of things could be said in that environment that aren’t helpful.
Anyway, so the five A’s for healing from betrayal same thing you have to acknowledge the betrayal. It’s hard to admit that, like I had so much shame and I actually, early on, when my husband had had an affair, I totally forgot about it. I disassociated with that until like 20 years later which is so fascinating to my brain and luckily I wrote in a journal about it and I didn’t remember anything about it until I read that journal again. My brain was protecting me because I had babies to raise and I had little kids. But acknowledging the betrayal and the problem is not all of us, but many of us in that situation start blaming ourselves. We look at ourselves and try to fix us because we think we’re the problem.
And whether you consciously do that or unconsciously do that, it can be really damaging to yourself. And so I just want to remind you the affair was not about you. I don’t care what your partner is saying, it had nothing to do with you. And so of course, there are things that no one’s perfect, no marriage is perfect. There are things maybe you would like to change. Like that, that was me. I mean, I blamed myself for many years but when I realized, okay, this wasn’t my fault, but yeah, there were things that I wanted to do better and be better, that’s 100% okay and valid. But you’re doing them because you want to, not because someone else is telling you you need to change those things.
Okay, so acknowledge, allow, allow yourself to feel all your emotions. Whether you’re angry, sad, depressed, whatever you’re feeling, your emotions are valid. And having someone tell you you shouldn’t feel that way or stop being sad, or if they’re telling you this, that’s not good. You get to feel however you want to feel Now, eventually, if you truly process those emotions because most of us like to avoid our emotions, we like to resist our emotions or we like to react to our emotions but really we need to feel them and sit with them and acknowledge like, wow, I’m feeling really sad today and when you can do that, that is going to help you heal, because you’re going to move the emotions out of your body. When you resist or avoid them, they get stuck inside of you and they can’t come out and that’s why you feel depressed, that’s why you feel anxious. Your nervous system is screaming at you to help by releasing those emotions and you can get sick and IBS, like a lot of health issues, come from your emotions getting stuck in your body and it’s not going to allow you to heal.
Analyze the situation Now. I think it’s hard to analyze because it’s not going to allow you to heal. Analyze the situation Now. I think it’s hard to analyze because it’s like when you find out that your spouse is having an affair. It’s like shocking to your system. Okay.
But when you can get a little bit of healing, you can analyze and decide, like, what do you want to do? And you know there’s not a right or wrong decision about whatever you decide, Like I think we put a lot of weight on is this the right thing to do? Just go with if you can focus on. What does your body feel you need? Focus on what you need more than what you think they need, because then we become graspy and needy. And so analyze, decide and you can decide hey, I’m going to try to work on this for the next six months or three months or whatever you decide. But just analyze your situation. You know what are your kids’ needs. What do you feel would be best for your financial situation? Maybe you need to go back to school to get some education so you could go get a job. If you decide like, I want to get divorced, maybe there’s some things I think sometimes we just rush, we react, of course, and that’s normal. Of course you reacted. It’s very shocking, but once you can pull yourself back a little bit now analyze the situation.
What could help you the most to set you up for the best life possible? Act on self-care. This is hard for women especially, but I think men too but make sure you’re taking care of yourself women especially, but I think men too but make sure you’re taking care of yourself, like get dressed or even if the only thing you can do is take a shower that day, drink water, eat something Sometimes it’s hard to eat after your system has been shocked. Make sure you’re getting something right, resting, and don’t judge yourself in doing this. Don’t call yourself lazy or what’s wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong with you. Your whole entire system in life has had this huge shock and of course you feel this way. But make sure you’re doing things. If you can go on a walk or call a friend not to tell her what just happened or tell them, it’s not just to connect with someone that you know loves you or cares about you. So really focus on your self-care, aspire to move forward with renewed perspective.
I like this one because many of us, I think, might forget this part. But if you can look at your future and create a goal or what you envision it could look like, because really an affair is a big awakening in a marriage and it could destroy it or it could make it the most amazing marriage ever. I’ve seen both happen to couples. And even if your marriage does end, that doesn’t mean you have to like end right, you could have this amazing life as a divorced person. Like divorce doesn’t mean your like life is over and you’re miserable the rest of your life. Like I know for sure. I had that vision of what divorce means. I was very wrong about that. Like you can have an amazing life whether you’re divorced or stay married. So it’s not like you’re like choosing a better option. Both are going to be hard and both could be amazing, right, and so just really reframe and I, like the word, aspire that you’re going to figure this out and you can move forward with whatever decision you decide to make.
As you’re rebuilding trust, it’s important to implement healing on your part, right? Hopefully, the person your spouse that betrayed you is working on them. Now it’s time to work on you. So I’m going to remind you those five A’s are acknowledge that the betrayal happened right. Don’t live in pretend land and pretend it didn’t. The betrayal happened right. Don’t live in pretend land and pretend it didn’t. And I know it is hard to admit that this happened. I get it. It’s very devastating. Allow yourself to fill your emotions. Analyze the situation, decide what you want to do, act on your self-care, make sure you’re taking care of yourself and aspire to move forward. So I think trust is 100% necessary.
If you’re going to work on your marriage and rebuild it, you have to have trust, and it’s going to take time. Don’t think it happens in a day or a week, or a month or a year. It’s going to be drop by drop by drop, one honest thing after one honest thing. And make sure you’re being honest too, even if it is hey, I’m having a really tough day today. I think I need some extra help. Can I look at your phone? Can I look at your email? Don’t go sneak and do it. Let’s be honest about it. Like hey, because we have full transparency, and make sure you’re asking for what you need in order to rebuild the trust.
Trust gets rebuilt and at the same time, you’re healing you so you can make better decisions, because you’re not going to make a good decision when you’re in the fetal position and crying in your closet. It’s just you’re not in a mind space, a head space, to make a good decision when your nervous system is out of whack and you’re not in your zone, okay. When you’re in fight, flight or freeze like that’s not the time to make the decision. So that’s why it’s really important for you to heal. I hope this was helpful. If you liked this podcast, please share it with your family and friends and leave me a review and I will talk to you next week. If you want to learn how to live happily even after, sign up for my email at hello at lifecoachjen with one n dot com. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at happily even after coach. Let’s work together to create your happily even after.
