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.
Hey friends, welcome to the podcast, Happily Even After Betrayal. I’m so glad you’re here. Today I want to talk about something that I think everyone who’s experienced betrayal struggles with at some point. Worrying that it’s going to happen again. We think, what if my spouse cheats again? What if they’re lying again? What if I miss the signs this time? What if I trust them and I look like a fool again? What if they’re texting someone right now? What if that business trip isn’t really what they say it is? What if I finally relax and that’s when it happens again? I totally get it. I’ve been there, I’ve thought all of these questions. Because once something you never thought would happen actually happens, your brain then has evidence before betrayal. You might not have spent much time worrying about your spouse having an affair. You trusted them. You trusted your marriage. Maybe you assumed that happens to other people, but it’s not going to happen to us. I have so many clients tell me, not my husband, not my wife. No one would ever believe that they would have an affair. Like people, if they do find out, they’re shocked. Not your husband, not your wife. And so we have built this story about them, and then they have completely shattered what we thought and who they we thought they were. So when it does happen, now our brain says, see, we weren’t paying attention before. We better pay attention now. And that makes sense from a survival perspective. Your brain is trying to protect you. But here is what I want to teach you today. Worry is not protection. And I believe worry is optional. It’s an optional feeling. Okay. Just hear me out on this. It doesn’t mean you should never experience worry. Of course, you’re going to feel worried sometimes because you’re a human being. It also doesn’t mean that you should ignore red flags, abandon your boundaries, or blindly trust someone who has demonstrated that they aren’t trustworthy. But I want you to start questioning the belief that worrying about another affair somehow prevents another affair. Because it doesn’t. Worry feels productive, feels like we’re doing something. One of the problems with worry is that it feels productive. It feels like we’re doing something. If I keep thinking about this, if I keep checking, if I keep watching, if I keep analyzing, if I stay hyper alert, maybe I can prevent from ever experiencing the pain of betrayal again. But ask yourself, did not worrying cause the affair? Absolutely not. Your spouse didn’t have an affair because you weren’t worried enough. They didn’t cheat because you weren’t checking their phone enough. They didn’t betray you because you weren’t suspicious enough. And worrying now isn’t what will prevent them from making another choice in the future. I know this is disappointing because we think we can somehow prevent this. But remember, that’s their choice. That’s their agency. You cannot worry someone into being faithful. Believe me, I tried. You cannot obsess someone into being honest. You cannot hypervigilance your way into controlling another person’s choices. And that can feel terrifying. But it can also be incredibly freeing because you can finally stop taking responsibility for something that isn’t yours to control.
Think about other areas in your life, especially if you have kids. If you worry every single time your teenager drives somewhere, does that prevent them from getting in an accident? No. You could sit on the couch worrying for the entire 30 minutes that they’re driving. You could imagine every horrible scenario. You could stare at their location on their phone, on your phone, but your worry isn’t creating a protective bubble around their car. Or imagine you’re waiting for medical results. You can spend three days worrying. You can Google every symptom you have. You can imagine the worst case scenario 400 times, but does worrying change what the test results are going to say? No, they don’t. Maybe your adult child is going through something difficult. You can stay awake until 3 a.m. worrying about them. Does your lack of sleep solve their problem? No. And the same is true after betrayal. You can worry every time your spouse leaves the house. You can worry every time their phone buzzes. You can worry when they’re five minutes late. You can worry when they’re on a business trip. You can worry when they’re being really nice because suddenly you’re wondering, why are they being so nice? And then you can worry when they’re distant because why are they being so distant? Do you see the problem here? Your brain can turn anything into evidence that something might be wrong. And meanwhile, you’re suffering. You are experiencing pain that hasn’t happened yet. It’s like we’re worrying ahead of time, hoping to prevent something. And this is one of the biggest problems with worry. Worry asks you to experience tomorrow’s potential pain today. Let’s say your spouse never had another affair, but you spend the next 10 years worrying that they will. You’ve created 10 years of fear over something that never happened. And let’s consider the other possibility. What if they do betray you again? Did the 10 years of worrying make it hurt less? Probably not. So you suffered for 10 years and then you still had to deal with the actual experience. Worry doesn’t give us the insurance policy we think it does. It doesn’t say if you worry enough, you won’t hurt later. That’s how emotions work. Worry keeps you in the river of misery. And I talk about the river of misery all the time with my clients. We’re trying to get out of the river of misery, but if you are stuck in worry, it’s going to keep you spinning. Because betrayal hurts. There is so much grief. There is anger. There is sadness. There is disappointment. There may be fear. Those emotions are part of the river. We have to feel them and move through them. But worry can keep you swimming in circles. Instead of moving to the other side with peace and calm and joy and happiness, we go into what if? What if they do it again? What if I can’t trust them? What if I’m missing something? What if there’s another secret? What if I stay and I regret it? What if I leave and regret it? And suddenly you’re not living the life that’s happening right now. You’re living inside an imaginary future. Your body doesn’t necessarily know the difference. Your nervous system can respond to the story in your head as though the danger is happening right now. So you can feel it right in your body. Your heart’s racing, your stomach tightens, you can’t sleep, you can’t concentrate, you’re checking, you’re scanning, you’re looking for danger. And that is exhausting. I want to make an important distinction
here. Alert is different from anxiousness, right? So it’s of course we can be alert, and it’s not like we’re shutting our eyes and putting our head in the sand. But I’m not asking you to become oblivious to what’s going on. Healing doesn’t mean I’m never going to notice anything suspicious again. You can be aware without being consumed by worry. You can have boundaries, you can pay attention to behavior, you can require honesty, and you can decide what you will and won’t tolerate. You can ask when something legitimately fills off. You can respond to actual information. There’s a huge difference between responding to something that’s actually happening, your reality, and constantly preparing yourself for something that might happen. One is awareness, and the other is hypervigilance. So check in with yourself, see what you’re doing. Your brain thinks that worrying is going to protect you. That’s your survival brain, that your survival brain is just trying to keep you alive. After betrayal, your brain learned we trusted before and we got hurt. So now it might create a new rule. Never fully relax again. And I’ve been here and it is exhausting. And I know many of you have too. So, because if you never relax, maybe you never will be blindsided again. But what is the cost of that, right? To your nervous system, to your mental energy, there’s a huge price. Maybe your spouse never cheats again, but you spend the next 20 years waiting for them to, right? In that scenario, it’s like, it’s like we’re pre-worrying ahead of time and we’re wearing ourselves out. Is that the kind of marriage you want? I’m guessing no. Is that the life you want? That’s not healing. Healing isn’t getting to the place where you have a guarantee that nobody will ever hurt you again. None of us has that guarantee. Healing is getting to a place where you trust yourself enough to know if something painful happens again, I will know what to do and I will be okay. That is empowerment. That is the place that as a coach, I want you to get to because things are going to happen again. Whether it’s with your kids, with your job, with your spouse, with a future spouse, things will
happen. And knowing that you can handle it, you will be okay. Move from trusting them to trusting you. This is one of my favorite things that I have learned is to trust myself. And it is very empowering and liberating to know, like, no, I trust my gut a hundred percent. This is where I think so many people get stuck. They think healing means I need to trust my spouse enough that I know they will never cheat again. Have you found yourself saying this or thinking this? How could I possibly know that? You can’t control another human being, even in a healthy marriage, even with a faithful spouse, you cannot guarantee another person’s future behavior. But there is something you can build, and that is self-trust. Instead of, I need to know you’ll never betray me again, try on, I trust myself to pay attention to reality and take care of myself. Instead of what if they lie to me again, try on. If I discover another lie, I trust myself to decide what I want to do with that information. Instead of what if I get blindsided again, try on, I survive something I never thought I could survive. I know I can have my own back, and I will. I think that is so much more empowering to just put it back on you. Own what you have control over. It changes everything. And it’s such a different energy. You’re moving from fear to agency, and that is so much more empowering. Ask yourself, do a
check-in. Is there a problem right now? Oftentimes we create problems for ourselves. Here’s a tool I want you to try on this week. When you notice yourself worrying about another affair, ask, is there actually a problem happening right now? If not, could these potentially be a problem? Because your brain can always find one of those. Ask, what are the facts right now? I think it’s a really powerful thing to put your facts, which I call our circumstances, write them down and then separate the facts from the thoughts. And I’m guaranteeing most of you just have lots of thoughts that are causing you lots of pain. Maybe your spouse is 20 minutes late. That’s a fact. Your brain says they’re probably with someone. That’s the story, right? That’s your thought, and that’s causing you so much pain. Maybe their phone buzzed at 10:30 at night, that’s a fact. But your brain says, who is texting them? They’re hiding something, that’s your story. And your story’s creating all of your negative emotions. Learning to separate facts from fear is such an important part of healing. Okay. So get good of this. Start, I call it a thought dump or a thought download. And I think it’s really powerful and it can really help get you unstuck. What do I need agency over right now? You have agency over whether you check their location 25 times. Right? You can choose. Like, do you need this? I know your brain’s telling you. Well, if you don’t, something bad might happen, but that’s a lie your brain is telling you. We don’t know. Something bad happened when you weren’t checking their phone. You can have agency over whether you interrogate them the second they walk through the door. You can choose whether you can take 10 slow breaths and regulate your nervous system, right? Bree, it’s so important. You have agency over if you believe every scary thought that your brain offers you. You can choose how you communicate. If you’re communicating clearly, you have agency over if you have boundaries and if you uphold your boundaries. You can choose how you take care of yourself. But no, you do not have agency whether another adult chooses to be unfaithful or chooses to be faithful. And worry doesn’t change that, I promise. So remember, worry does not equal love. Sometimes we equate it to that. Well, I love them so much, I’m just gonna worry about them. We can see this with our kids a lot. If I didn’t care about my marriage, I wouldn’t worry. That’s a lie. But you can deeply love someone without constantly fearing losing them. You can care about your marriage without monitoring every second. You can want fidelity without trying to control another person’s choices. You can love someone and still allow them to have their agency. And most importantly, you can love yourself enough to stop abandoning the present moment because you’re terrified of what might happen in the future.
What would you do if you had all this extra energy that you have spent so much time worrying? Think of all the energy you’ve spent checking their phone, analyzing everything they’ve said to you and not said to you. The replaying of the affair, the imagining of what possibly happened during the affair, the stalking your social media, their social media, the rereading of texts, the watching their behavior, the interpreting their town, the trying to predict the future? What if you took even 10% of that energy and put it towards your healing? What if you used it to sleep? Sleep is so important, especially when we’re healing. What if you exercised just if you weren’t exercising or going on a walk, journaling, praying, meditating, connecting with your kids, going to coaching, getting a coach, having a therapist, building friendships, learning to regulate your nervous system. Think of all that negative energy you could put to good use, right? Rediscovering who you are, creating something, laughing again, living again. Because worrying about whether your spouse will betray you again keeps your attention focused on them. And healing brings your attention back to you. Who do I want to be? And I know it’s so easy to get focused on your spouse, but I really healing’s all about you. And that is where your power comes from. That’s where healing happens. Think about how do you want to live? What matters to you? All these questions, I think many of us, especially women, we totally lose sight of. We don’t even know because we’ve focused all of our energy on our spouse and our kids. And these are really great questions to ask yourself. So be curious. Don’t judge yourself, just be curious. What are your boundaries? What kind of relationship do I want? What do you need? What can I control? What choices do I have today? And when you ask yourself these questions, this is where your power lies. So think about that.
We’re going to try to regulate our nervous system, regulate our body before we ruminate. So I like it. It’s two hours. Regulate before you ruminate. Are you on board? When worry shows up, which it’s going to, you’re human, right? You don’t have to immediately solve it. Notice it. Oh, I’m feeling worried. Notice where you feel it in your body. Usually, for me, I get tightness in my chest. It’s kind of a pit in my stomach. I feel tense and like just not relaxed. And then it feels like almost there’s a lot, you have lots of urges. I don’t experience obviously any more worry with my former spouse. I mean, occasionally, very randomly, but mostly it’s with my kids. Right. And so I can see it. I’m like, oh my gosh, I’ve just caused myself so much worry because I just checked where they were on their find my iPhone app. And I wish I wouldn’t have done that because now my brain’s thinking, I need to pay attention. Where are they going? When are they going to get home? So if you can just take a minute and just regulate yourself and just be onto your brain, be onto yourself. Like, oh, I see what I’m doing here. Breathe. Come back into your body. Feel those emotions and remind yourself, nothing has gone wrong in this exact moment. As far as you know, everyone’s safe. You’re safe. Everything’s okay. And then you can decide using your what I call your CEO brain, your prefrontal cortex, instead of letting your survival brain take over, right? We don’t want the lower brain to run the show. It’s not going to go well. That’s when you can stop and get more control over if you choose to worry or not.
You don’t need a guarantee to heal, right? There are no guarantees in life. So the the idea that you’re thinking that is just a falsehood. It’s not even true. It’s not possible. You can’t even guarantee that you’re never gonna make a mistake, right? Nobody’s perfect. We are human trying to do our best. And so I think one of the hardest truths after betrayal is you may never get the guarantee that you want. Like we think, you know, we could get this do-over guarantee, right? Like if it would, it will never happen again. I think your spouse, probably that had the affair, wishes that they could say it and they probably try, but our nervous system, our body’s not, we’re not believing it, right? We’re still worrying about it. And you may never know with 100% certainty that your spouse won’t hurt you again. But you don’t need the guarantee to heal, I promise. You need something much more powerful. And that comes from not abandoning yourself. So many of us, I know I was guilty of this. I completely abandoned myself for my spouse. We’re not gonna do that again. You have to focus on trusting yourself, setting boundaries, because boundaries are protecting you. They are a positive thing, they are a good thing. Getting good at making decisions, asking for help. And no, you’re not gonna die from disappointment. You will survive disappointment. Life is full of disappointments, and just remind your brain, you can do it. You can live through disappointment. You can create a beautiful life, whether your marriage works out, or even if it doesn’t. And that’s what I like to call my our happily even after, right? It is totally possible to have whatever, if it’s a happily even after betrayal, divorce, whatever your happily even after is, it’s totally possible. It’s not a life where nothing painful ever happens again. So get that out of your head if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s a life where you know that whatever happens, you still have agency over what you do next.
So this week I want you to practice seeing if you can stop worrying a little bit, right? And even if you need to give yourself what I call like a protocol and give yourself be worry-free, but maybe on Tuesday and Thursday at eight o’clock, that’s when you can worry. Create just a time that you can worry so you’re not spending your whole day worrying about it. And ask yourself these three questions. Is there an actual problem right now? Or am I imagining a future problem? Is worrying helping me solve anything? And the third question, what do I actually have agency over right now? Because you don’t need to spend today trying to prevent every possible pain that may or may not happen tomorrow. So just try to sit with yourself, come back in the present moment, and just know, like, okay, this is what I have control over, and this is what I don’t have control over. And know that your spouse’s infidelity is their responsibility, not yours. And your healing is your responsibility, and you deserve to heal. Anyways, I hope that opened your mind up and know the main point is that worrying is optional and it’s not helping you, it’s keeping you stuck. So if you can start letting go of the idea that if you worry about them having another affair, that they will not. It’s just, it’s a lie your brain’s telling you, but you can still do things to help you create the life that you want and heal from that. Anyways, have a beautiful day. If you like this podcast, please tell your family and friends, and I will 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.
