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 today, today, my subject is are you a bomb or a bomb maker in your relationship? And I am not talking about love bombing. I totally did experience love bombing in my marriage, but I think I totally experienced this and I’m going to tell you what I mean by bomb or bomb maker. So I love Jennifer Finlayson Fife. If you’re not following her work, I would highly suggest it. But she has a private podcast called Room for Two and I think it costs like $100 to be a member of it for an entire year and I would also suggest joining that, because what she does she coaches couples for like five or six sessions about their relationship and about their marriage. And I’m not even married, but I find it so fascinating and for me. I’m working with people that usually want to save their marriage after betrayal. Not all the time Some people are divorced, we’re at different things, but it’s very helpful and it’s actually been really healing for me to kind of see the dynamics in other people’s relationships that I also felt were in my marriage, and so I think I’ve learned a lot. And she said this to them and it just resonated with me. She, she said which one of you is the bomb maker and which of you is the bomb. So I’m going to explain what that means and I think sometimes we are both.
Sometimes we are the bomb maker and sometimes we are the bomb in our life, in our relationships, and I think this for sure happens a lot with betrayal. The betrayer is living a double life. They’re lying to you and sometimes even the person that they’re having an affair. A lot of times people also want to blame the affair partner and sometimes they’re a victim too. They’re also being lied to by your spouse saying they’re divorced or they’re not married or whatever. They take their wedding ring off. They’re trying to juggle their job, their kids, the family and the affair.
The spouse feels this constant undertone of negative emotion, not even sure if what they say will cause their partner to explode. Oftentimes they will go silent, making their spouse justify the affair even more. So do you see how the person your spouse having the affair, they’re kind of making this bomb right In their own life, right, they’re the bomb maker because they’re creating all this negative energy and all this stress? And then you, as the betrayed partner, the person experiencing this, you feel all this negative emotion and eventually you’re just going to explode. Right, and it could also go the reverse, and sometimes for me, often I just would go silent, I’m not going to say anything. It’s like so I was a diffused bomb, but not really. And so that would be like my spouse would always be. Like you just have nothing to say, like you’re just, that’s just so unattractive, right, like you’re not even communicating with me. Well, anything I felt like I would say would be wrong or attacked or criticized, and so for me it felt safer to go silent. But oftentimes people don’t and they just explode.
So some characteristics of an emotional bomb or bomb maker in a marriage are emotional outbursts. So if you have a partner or if you yourself have a lot of emotional outbursts, you’re unpredictable and you have an intense display of emotions like anger, sadness, fear, and they’re usually triggered by unresolved issues or stress, and that’s why communication is so important. But we have to be uncomfortable to have those conversations. It feels scary, right, but if you know someone, if your partner or whatever has this have a lot of emotions. They’re like an emotional ticking time bomb. If they like to create chaos, they start arguments, they make contradictory statements, crazy making, having drastic mood swings and sudden emotional outbursts right.
I think gaslighting fits into this. Well, right, a lot of people that are having an affair. They gaslight their partner because they’re trying to cover up the affair and their spouse feels crazy. Blaming and shaming, refusing to take responsibility for their actions and shifting blame onto their partner happens all the time with an affair. Emotional blackmail, manipulating and controlling their partner through guilt trips, humiliation and playing on their fears. Like threatening divorce or threatening to take the children right that I know that happens so much. The spouse like threatening like if you divorce me, I’m never going to, you know I’m going to take your kids away. Like we’re using our children as weapons, which is just so sad and devastating.
Invalidation, dismissing or distorting our partner’s feelings, experiences and reality, and that’s another. Also that’s gaslighting right, making them wrong for what they’re saying. You didn’t really see that, or do that? Controlling and isolated behavior, demanding to know their partner’s whereabouts, monitoring communication or discouraging them from spending time with friends and family. Monitoring communication or discouraging them from spending time with friends and family. And it’s interesting because I think, as someone that betrayed spouse, we become controlling and are terrified for our spouse to have go outside of us, like leave our sight because of it feels that feels very dangerous, right. So it’s like they kind of use it against us as a weapon because it’s like we’re scared for them to go hang out with their friends. At least I felt this way. It’s like okay, go out, hang out with your friends who knew you were having an affair and seemed to be okay with it and I need to feel okay for you doing that, right. So it can be twisted and confusing and that’s why I’m saying both of us can get caught up in becoming the bomb maker.
Unrealistic expectations, placing unreasonable demands on our partner become dissatisfied, no matter how much their partner gives. This really happens a lot. We have these expectations. I call them manuals. We have a book of what the perfect spouse is supposed to be and look like, and no one is perfect and no one unless we’re saying what we want. A lot of times we don’t, and so our spouse has no idea. So this can play in us creating this bomb that will eventually explode.
So why is this harmful? It creates an erosion of trust, right, it’s really hard to trust someone if we don’t know when they’re going to blow a fuse or cause us to blow a fuse. That feels very unsafe. It feels very manipulative, unpredictable, very unsafe. It feels very manipulative, unpredictable. It can make us just really. Are they being honest with us? Are they being sincere? It creates a lot of wonder. Okay, it feels exhausting, right.
If this is happening, the emotional roller coaster can be mentally and physically draining, leading to burnout or disconnection. Who wants to be with someone that is constantly making us feel like we’re on a roller coaster? Roller coasters are fun when they’re planned, but when they’re in our life, and especially our emotional life, they’re exhausting. We have a loss of self-esteem. Being subjected to put-downs, blame and constant criticism can damage our self-worth. Increased risk of physical violence right, emotional abuse can escalate to physical violence over time. So hopefully that’s not happening.
It’s interesting because physical abuse. I mean, I was just talking to my daughter. You’ll be hearing a podcast from her and if you would tell someone that I don’t want to talk to that person because they’ve been hitting me, everyone would be like, oh my gosh, like, stay away from them. Of course you don’t want to, especially if it’s your dad or your spouse, but the emotional abuse is just as painful. Right, it’s a different type of pain, but the problem is you can’t see it. You can see it in people’s actions, their responses, their behavior. So that’s why I love I know I’ve talked about this like what happened to you? Like why are you like this? Right, something clearly happened to you. We can’t see it, but we feel it.
Many times people will be called too sensitive. You don’t understand. You blame it on stress, right, like I was told this so often. Like you’re just too sensitive, right, quit imagining things and you’re making stuff up. Right, I’m just stressed from work. Well, no, you’re stressed from work and then covering up the affair or whatever you were doing before you came home. That’s really what’s stressful. Not work Like yeah, work might be stressful, but not this amount of stress. Work like yeah, work might be stressful, but not this amount of stress. So it’s like you’re feeling something from this person that is supposed to be your spouse and that loves you, and once you know, you think like, oh wow, their work is really stressful. But what the stress really is is, yeah, their work is stressful, but then they’ve added on all this lying and dishonesty. That’s really stressful.
So what to do if you are in a relationship with an emotional bomb or bomb maker? Because the problem is, when you’re with the bomb maker, you become the bomb, and it’s like I feel this way. I for sure feel like I became the bomb a lot because. And then I would explode. And guess who I exploded on? Not my spouse, usually my kids, right, I feel so bad, right, I’ve had to do lots of repair with them, like I’m not a yeller I don’t swear very often, but when I do it’s like bad, right, and so I for sure would explode on them. Or the Wendy’s person at the Wendy’s drive-thru, or someone else, right, a random person that didn’t deserve my mom or my dad or I don’t know.
Usually I feel like it’s my kids, and some people yell I wouldn’t say just in my tone. Even now I have two kids that are super sensitive to tone and so if my tone sounds mad or angry, they’ll be like mom, why are you mad? I’m like, wait, I’m not mad or angry. They’ll be like, mom, why are you mad? I’m like, wait, I’m not mad and I’m talking just like this. But they’re like, yes, you are. And so I have to just check. I’m like, okay, it’s my tone. Okay, let me redo this and say it again in a different tone, because I think they’re very sensitive to that.
So I think it’s important to acknowledge what’s been going on. If you want to name it emotional abuse, I think it’s good Recognize that the behavior is harmful and that you don’t deserve it. So even if you’re not telling the person right your spouse, or you’re divorced or whatever you can just acknowledge like, no, this isn’t right, this isn’t good, this isn’t helpful, I don’t deserve this. And I think the dynamic that this creates is the one up, one down. If you’ve heard of that like someone, it’s like almost like a parent-child relationship in a marriage. It’s very unhealthy and for sure. I had a one up, one down marriage. My former spouse thought he was better than me in all ways and so he was above me and I was down and that is really hard to connect and have a really strong marriage that way.
Set boundaries right. Clearly, communicate your limits and the consequences if the boundaries are violated. So if someone is doing something, you feel like they’re doing something that you’re not okay with, how you do it is you know what, when you, if you continue doing that, I’m going to leave the room. We’re gonna end this discussion. I’m gonna go on a drive. Whatever, you have to clearly state what you will or will not agree with or tolerate, and then you are the one that leaves. You can’t ask someone to stop yelling at you. You can, but they may still yell at you. So you just are like great, you continue yelling and I’m going to leave, so you don’t have to hear it.
Avoid engaging. Do not get drawn into arguments or try to reason with them when they are exhibiting abusive behavior. Right, you’re not going to be able to communicate someone that is so triggered they’re in fight mode, right, they have to be able to calm down. Their nervous system is way too triggered and it’s going to be pointless. You’re going to use a lot of energy to try to get them to hear you and they are not listening. Seek support. Talk to a friend, a family member, a coach. Why I think it’s so helpful to talk to someone neutral is because our friends and family members have an opinion Not that your coach isn’t vested in your well-being, but they are neutral, right. And so I think a family or friends can be problematic.
Create a safety plan, find safety. I think emotional safety starts with you. You have to create that inside of yourself. You can create safety by reminding yourself you’re safe, by reminding yourself you’re safe, calming your nervous system down. And creating that within yourself, not having to rely on someone else to make you feel safe.
And then, if it’s, you know, too bad, obviously, if the bomb is too explosive, you might need to leave your marriage, you might want to step out, you might want to take a break, get separated, right. But I think for sure there’s many steps before that. That could happen, right. Someone might not even know that they’re making these bombs because they’re so emotionally immature or this is just how they were raised or whatever. Right Awareness, hopefully they’ll listen, be teachable and you can help them out, okay. But betrayal it really almost makes the bomb bigger, because there’s a lot of emotion attached to betrayal and the person that has been the betrayer, and then, once the betrayed partner finds out, it’s just like it’s a lot, and so that’s why it’s important to get help, and you can heal and you can defuse your bombs if you need to. Anyways, hopefully this analogy was helpful. I thought it was really helpful for me, so hopefully I did it justice and helped explain it to you.
If you liked this podcast, please share it with your family and friends. If you are needing a coach to help you navigate betrayal, I would love to help you. You can totally heal and it’s totally possible. Anyways, have a beautiful day and I will talk to you next time. If you want to learn how to live happily even after, sign up for my email at hello at lifecoachjenwith1ncom. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at Happily Even After Coach. Let’s work together to create your happily even after.
