135: When Your Infidelity Situation is Brand New

Hello good humans.  Today’s episode is a new and improved version of Episode 8, which is called, “So you’re having an affair – now what?”  The reason why I’m giving you an updated version of that episode is 

because the topic of what to do right away when you realize that you are most definitely engaging in infidelity is such an important one.  If your infidelity situation is brand new, today’s episode will help you begin to get your bearings and figure out how you want to navigate the interesting spot you’ve found yourself in.  I hope you enjoy it.  

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy.  I’m a relationship coach, and I help people who are engaging in anything they think counts as infidelity to deal with their feelings, clarify what they want, and make decisions about what they’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgements.  A lot of the advice that’s out there for people who are cheating on their partners is little more than thinly veiled judgment, but that is not what I provide.  I believe that you are entitled to guidance and support that respects the fullness of your humanity, and the complexity of your situation, no matter what you’re doing.  If you’re ready to begin the process of resolving your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, I can help you do it.  When you’re ready to talk, you can schedule an introductory coaching session with me through my website.  You can also learn about the coaching packages I currently offer, and my current pricing, on the services page of my website.  I offer confidential, compassionate coaching via Zoom, which means we can work together no matter where you’re located.  I can’t wait to meet you.

Okay, today’s episode is for all of you people who have just realized, or very recently realized, that you are officially having an affair, or are very definitely cheating on someone, or are most certainly engaging in something that you think counts as infidelity.  

Here’s what this might look like.  Maybe you are in a committed and ostensibly monogamous relationship with someone, but you were in the habit of making out with attractive people every time you went to a bar without your partner for a while.  And maybe you never considered that cheating... or at least, you were able to write off what you were doing as something that didn’t really have any serious consequences.   But then maybe you made out with the same attractive person a few times, and then you exchanged numbers, and then you started seeing each other, and then you started sleeping with them.  And now you are definitely doing something that you think counts as cheating on your partner, and you’re like, “Oh… okay, well, this is kinda crazy.  I guess I’ve officially crossed a line, and this is kind of great, and also kind of terrible.  Oh my god.”

Here's another example.  Maybe you’ve been getting closer and closer to a coworker of yours.  You’re in a committed relationship with someone else, and you committed to being monogamous with that person, but this coworker is the person you look forward to seeing everyday, or however often you see them.  They’re the person you want to talk to about the things in life you consider most important.  And for a while, you might have been aware that your interest in your coworker was significant, but it didn’t seem like a PROBLEM, but then something changed.  Maybe you got physically closer to your coworker, maybe you got emotionally closer to them, maybe it was a little bit of both, maybe it was something else entirely, but whatever it is that changed, you know in your bones that what you’re doing isn’t quite kosher anymore.  You know that what you’re doing counts as cheating in your own estimation.  And you may also be pretty sure that your partner would think of what you’re doing as cheating, too.  

Now these are just a couple of examples!  There are so many, many ways that an infidelity situation can begin, and there are so many different forms an infidelity situation can take.  And no matter how YOUR unique infidelity situation may have began, the crucial point for today’s purposes is that the moment when you realize that you are officially having an affair, or you’re definitely engaging in infidelity of some kind, can be kind of a big deal.  Acknowledging to yourself that yes, you are indeed cheating on someone, whatever is happening is really happening, it wasn’t just a one-time thing that will never happen again, can be quite a “holy shit” moment.  

You may, on the one hand, be totally freaked out about what you’re doing.  You may not like the idea of cheating on someone you’re committed to, or doing something that’s outside of the bounds of whatever agreements you’ve made to your partner, or partners.  And of course, you may have absorbed the message that if you’re cheating on someone you’ve committed to being monogamous with, you are doing something that’s very bad, and by extension, you are pretty bad.  Generally speaking, infidelity is a pretty loaded topic!  We don’t have much collective sympathy for people who are doing the cheating.  That’s putting it mildly.  We tend to have a lot of collective sympathy for people who are cheated on, but in general, our collective attitudes towards people who are cheating on their partners are not positive, and not very nuanced.  So if you’ve encountered any of the common ideas about how bad people who cheat are – and I’m willing to bet that you have had at least some exposure to these kinds of ideas – you may be freaking out!  You may be thinking, “I don’t want to be That Person!  I don’t want to be the cheater person!”

And if you’re thinking anything along those lines, you may feel kinda terrified!  Or completely terrified!  You may also feel guilty, or ashamed!  You may also feel confused, or totally bewildered!  And in addition to this or because of this, you may feel pretty panicked.  Your situation may seem like a big, bad problem – and you may not want to have a big, bad problem on your hands.

But on the other hand, you may also feel pretty damn amazing.  You may have some qualms about what you’re doing, but you may also be very much enjoying what you are doing.  Why else would you be doing it?  You may feel more alive than you have in years, you may feel more connected to the person you’re involved with than you ever have to anyone ever in your life before, you may be feeling loved and seen and understood in way you never have before, and you may be having great sex for the first time in a long time or maybe the first time ever.  Or whatever.  The details of your specific situation may be a little different, but the point is, you probably find your situation AWESOME in some respects.  In addition to feeling not-great about your situation, at times, you may also feel very great indeed about it, at other times.

And this combination of really intensely uncomfortable feelings and really intensely pleasurable and exciting feelings can be a lot to take in!  For some people, feeling such intense and competing emotions feels COMPLETELY overwhelming and impossible to tolerate.  There’s just so much going on, and it seems really good and also really bad and also really crazy, and it just seems like too much to make sense of.  When you’re at that point of realizing that you are definitely having an affair, or you’re definitely engaging in infidelity in some way or another, it can not only be a “holy shit moment,” it may be the most intense “holy shit moment” you have ever experienced in your entire life.

And this can really be quite something, and it’s fine to freak out a little!  BUT you don’t want freaking out a little to turn into freaking out a lot.  When we freak out – to use the most technical language possible - we are less likely to handle our infidelity situation in a way that we are satisfied with in the long term.  And what I want to suggest is that your most basic goal in the short term is to not freak out, and instead, begin to approach your infidelity situation in a deliberate way, so that you can eventually resolve it in a way that you are satisfied with.

So what I’m going to do today is provide you with some guidance for dealing with that holy shit moment.  If you have just realized that you are indeed cheating on your partner, or having an affair, or engaging in something you think counts as infidelity, here are six things I encourage you to do right now.

NUMBER ONE:

If you are panicking about your new infidelity situation, get clear on what exactly you are panicking about, and whether or not you need to do anything about what you’re panicking about right now.

When we feel panic, when we experience the emotion of panic, we tend to interpret it as an indication that we need to take action quickly.  And sometimes that’s an appropriate response to feeling panic!  If you are walking down the street and a bus is hurtling towards you and is about to hit you, feeling panic is not unreasonable, and if you don’t want to get hit by the bus, you need to take action immediately and get out of the way.

But there are many times when feeling panic is not necessarily an indication that we need to take action right away.  Our sophisticated human brains are very good at identifying possible threats to our survival, and very good at inspiring us to protect ourselves from potential threats.  That capacity has served us well, evolutionarily speaking.  Our ability to sense danger and protect ourselves from it has allowed humans to survive and evolve.  But the thing is, society has evolved a lot faster than our brains have.  So there are many occasions, in the course of contemporary human life, when something that seems like an existential threat and inspires panic is probably not an existential threat, and may not even be a problem yet.  

For example, if you have a job, and if you have a boss, and if your boss sends you an email that says, “You did a terrible job on that project and we need to talk,” you may freak out!  You may think that life as you know it is about to end.  And you may experience a very intense feeling of panic, and you may feel like you’re going to die.  But that’s probably not going to happen.  It’s true that your boss MIGHT later sit you down to tell you that your job is in danger, and you need to work on your performance if you want to keep your job.  And that might be a little nerve-wracking for you, and you might want to work on your performance if you want to keep your job.  But what’s important to note is that your boss telling you that you did a bad job on a project and they want to talk with you is not, in and of itself, a threat to your existence.  Your brain might tell you that it is, but upon calm consideration, we can see that it isn’t.  It’s also important to note that your boss telling you that you did a bad job on a project and therefore you job is in danger does not mean you’ve actually lost your job yet.  But you may have reacted as if the things you fear might happen are already happening.  

Similarly, sometimes when people realize they are definitely engaging in something that they think counts as infidelity, they quickly start to think that their lives are going to implode.  And it is true that you might end up making some decisions related to your infidelity that lead to major changes in your life, and that could end up being a pretty big deal within the context of your life.  So I’m not minimizing or denying the possibility that your life could change, as a result of what you’re doing, and possibly in some very significant ways.  But if the changes you’re imagining do occur, there’s a good chance they won’t happen right away.

Assuming that no one knows about your infidelity situation, other than you and whoever else is directly involved, there’s a chance that NOTHING will happen right away.  There is a good possibility that whatever you are panicking about does not require your immediate attention.

Now, let me be absolutely clear about something – you might be panicking about something that could quite possibly happen very soon, and would be pretty bad if it did.  If, for example, you have a very jealous partner who keeps you under surveillance, and you think they are likely to become violent towards you if they find out about what you’ve been doing, you may have a serious problem on your hands that requires immediate attention.  And if you think that might be your situation, please stop listening to this podcast right now and go seek out resources that will help you keep yourself safe.

But for many of you listening, the things you’re panicking about do not require your immediate attention, and cannot possibly be dealt with immediately, anyway.  For example, sometimes when people who are married realize that they are officially having an affair, they immediately start thinking, “Oh my god, this means I’m going to get divorced, and then I’ll lose all of the financial security I’ve built up, and people will find out I cheated and everyone will judge me and I won’t have any friends and I’ll never get to see my kids again and things won’t work out with my affair partner anyway so basically my entire life will be ruined.”  

These concerns may seem very real and very pressing, but you can’t solve for all of these things in the present moment.  Yes, these might be things that you end up dealing with eventually, but if that happens, you can deal with them one step at a time if and when the time comes.  It’s also important to remember that some of the things you’re currently worrying about may never become things that you actually have to deal with.

However, there is something that a lot of people panic about that you will almost certainly have to deal with, and that is, deciding what you want to do about your infidelity situation.  Getting clear on what you want is probably something that you will want to do at some point.  But you may not know what you want right away, and figuring out what you want in regards to your infidelity situation may be a project that requires sustained, calm attention.  So in the short-term, instead of trying to find an instant resolution to whatever you have going on, I want you to consider the possibility that your job is to allow your panic to settle and dissipate.  

When we don’t allow our panic to settle and dissipate, we may take rash actions that we later regret.  So for example, sometimes people feel so freaked out about cheating on their partner that they tell their partner right away.  And sometimes, while they’re at it, they also tell everyone they know that they cheated on their partner.  Maybe they tell their parents, and their partner’s parents!  Maybe they tell all of their friends and extended family members!  They feel like they have this deep dark secret that they simply cannot live with, so they get it off their chest as quickly as possible.  And then their partner is upset, and their friends and family get involved, and the situation becomes a really big deal, for a lot of people.  And then a week later, the person who was doing the cheating is like, “Oh my god, I wish I’d given myself a moment to think before I went and told everyone what I told them.”

But when we’re panicked, we tend to do impulsive things.  So please, if you are panicking, get clear on what specifically you are panicking about, and ask yourself if you really need to do anything about it right now.  If you really do need to do something, go do it.  And if you don’t, your first job is to allow your panic to dissipate.

That brings me to recommendation NUMBER TWO, which is, be willing to slow down and take a thorough look at what’s going on in your infidelity situation.  Now, I don’t mean that you shove the whole situation under the rug and you put off dealing with it indefinitely.  That’s not what I mean by slowing down.  What I’m recommending is that you allow yourself to ease out of panic mode, and ease yourself into puzzle-solving mode.    

As stressful as infidelity situations may be, as inconvenient or disruptive as they may seem, infidelity situations present us with AMAZING opportunities to get to know ourselves better.  They present us with incredible opportunities to take a close look at what we want in our relationships, or in our love lives/sex lives/romantic lives, and to potentially make some adjustments!  Infidelity situations are often indications that we are due for making changes of some kind or another.  And this may seem like a terrible problem to have, because sometimes we’re terrified of making changes in our lives!  We don’t like the idea of disrupting our own lives, and we fear that if we make changes, we’ll also disrupt the lives of people we care about.  

What I want to suggest is that it’s totally okay to have these kinds of fears – and I will tell you that these kinds of fears, or concerns, are VERY common – but you don’t want to let these fears get in the way of you taking a comprehensive look at what’s going on in your life right now, and being honest with yourself about what you want.  And doing those things can take some time.  When I say that, I don’t mean that deciding what you want to do about your infidelity situation needs to take forever.  Not at all.  I would be the first person to encourage you to deal with your infidelity situation as efficiently as you reasonably can.  But dealing with something efficiently doesn’t mean you have to – or even can – deal with it INSTANTLY.  It took you a while to get to this point in your life, so I encourage you to be willing to invest some energy and time into figuring out what you want to do about your situation.  

When we have a situation on our hands that seems challenging to solve, we often want to go to one of two extremes – bury our head in the sand forever, and avoid the whole thing entirely, or solve the whole problem as quickly as possible.  In my experience, we need to be willing to find the middle ground between these two extremes if we want to find satisfying resolutions to our challenging situations.

That brings me to point NUMBER THREE.  If you take my advice, and you decide to slow down and think carefully about your infidelity situation before you make any decisions that have major consequences, this might mean that you choose to continue your infidelity situation and everything that comes with it for a little while.  Of course, you could also put a complete stop to doing whatever it is your doing, and think about your life and what you want to do about your relationships from that position, too.  But a lot of people DON’T want to stop doing what they’re doing, infidelity-wise.  They may feel bad about what they’re doing, in some ways, but they also don’t want to stop.

And this can lead to a lot of hand-wringing!  People love to tell me things like, “Oh my god, I just feel so bad about what I’m doing!  I hate being dishonest!  I hate being deceptive!  I feel so guilty!  I can’t believe I’m doing this!  I never thought I would ever cheat on anyone, or I never thought I would have an affair!”  I am completely sympathetic to these sorts of sentiments, but I want to caution you against spending too much time wringing your hands in consternation.  If you want to stop whatever you are doing, infidelity-wise, you can.  You can stop right now if you want to.  That is always an option at any point.  But if you really don’t want to do that just yet, I want you to consider the possibility that there may be value in giving yourself permission to keep on doing what you’re doing for a while, for the sake of giving yourself the opportunity to get clear on what you really want.

People sometimes freak out when I suggest this.  Some people think that doing anything other than putting a stop to their infidelity immediately is categorically bad.  And as I said a moment ago, if you want to stop what you’re doing, stop what you’re doing!  That’s always an option!  But people then often tell me that they can’t stop what they’re doing, or they really don’t want to stop what they’re doing.  And my response to that is, might it not be more productive to allow yourself to be where you are, instead of constantly fighting with your current reality?  When you allow yourself to be where you are, you free up your energy to start thinking about what you want to do next.  When you’re giving yourself a hard time for being where you are and doing whatever you’re doing, you are using up energy that you could be dedicating to figuring out what you want, and making choices and changes.

Put differently, freaking out about your affair doesn’t help you decide what you want to do about your affair.  Some people think it’s morally better to beat themselves up for having an affair than to not beat themselves up for what they’re doing.  Some people tell me, “Well, I may be cheating on my partner, but at least I feel bad about it.”  I know that many of us have been taught that if we’re doing something that’s “bad,” feeling bad about ourselves for what we are doing somehow makes it less bad, or makes us less bad.  But I want to suggest that this is not the way it works AT ALL.  I want you to consider that it might not be possible to shame yourself or blame yourself or scold yourself into making sustainable, positive changes.  I want you to consider the possibility that self-acceptance, self-understanding, and self-love are far better motivators of lasting change than self-reproach.

So to sum up point number three, I want you to consider the possibility that in order to resolve your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, you may want to decide that you are willing to exist in a grey area for a little while.  I’m not suggesting you stay here forever, or even indefinitely.  Remember, in this episode, I am speaking specifically to folks who are in NEW infidelity situations and are just trying to get their bearings.  If you have been in your infidelity situation for months upon months, or years upon years, we need to have a different conversation.  But if you’re new to this whole thing, consider the possibility that being willing to tolerate existing within your conundrum for a little while may ultimately help you resolve it in a way that you find satisfactory.

And I say that knowing full well that this recommendation is very different than a lot of the standard advice that’s out there about infidelity.  A lot of the so-called advice for cheating on their partners boils down to, “If you’re cheating, you better stop it right now!”  Right?!  And if you want to stop what you’re doing right now, by all means, do that!  But for a lot of people, this advice is totally useless, for a number of reasons, one of them being, when you’re in a very new infidelity situation, you may not know what you want – other than knowing that you don’t want to stop what you’re doing, just yet.

That brings me to my FOURTH suggestion of the day.  I cannot stress this one enough.  I want you to allow yourself to be really, really, really honest with yourself about what’s GREAT about your infidelity situation.  So much of the standard advice – if you can even call it that – about infidelity stresses that infidelity is bad and wrong and that’s all there is to it.  And if there are elements of your situation that you do not like, that’s fair enough.  For instance, you might really dislike lying.  And if you don’t really mind lying, you might not like some of what tends to come with lying, such as having to keep your stories straight, and remember the details of the lies you’ve told.  So in asking you to be honest with yourself about the good things about your infidelity situation, I know you may be tempted to think of what’s not good about it.  And those are important things to consider, but that is not what I want you to do right now!  What I want you to do right now is think about all of the things that are WONDERFUL about your infidelity situation.

For instance, you may have connected with someone amazing!  You may have met another human who is just the most amazing creature you have ever encountered.  You may feel like you were born to be with this person.  That kind of experience usually feels pretty good!  Or maybe you aren’t involved with one particular person, but you’ve been connecting with a bunch of different people.  And maybe the variety of these experiences has been really enjoyable for you!  And that might be really great!  Sometimes variety for its own sake is awesome.  It can be incredible to receive attention and affirmation from a bunch of different people.  Maybe you’ve always thought that love and desire and connection were experiences that were scarce, or hard to come by, and lately you’ve been experiencing an abundance of all of this stuff.  And that may be wonderful for you on so many different levels.  

Also, let’s face it.  You may LIKE the excitement that comes from sneaking around and being deceptive.  You may LIKE having a secret.  You might find lying kind of thrilling, and you might be reveling in having something to lie about.  And even if you don’t like lying, the novelty of having a secret romance might offset the stress of lying, or doing anything else you don’t feel great about doing.

Anyway, these are just examples.  There are a million and twenty ways that you may find your infidelity situation wonderful.  What I want you to do is get really clear on what they are.

There are a lot of reasons why it’s important to be honest with yourself about what’s great about your infidelity situation, but here are two.  One: if you’re going to eventually get to a point where you clarify what you want, and start making choices about what you want to do about your situation, and start taking action in the service of those choices, knowing what you like and appreciate and value and enjoy is essential.  And being able to acknowledge what you appreciate about your infidelity situation is part of that process.  People sometimes think that denying what’s great about their affair will ultimately help them make better choices about their affair, but that’s just not the way it works.  Denying what you like or enjoy usually leads to decisions we don’t love.  And knowing that you like or enjoy something doesn’t mean you have to pursue it in a particular way.  

The second reason why it’s so important to be honest with yourself about your infidelity situation is this: you are alive.  Why not allow yourself to enjoy experiences that you enjoy?  This may seem like an insignificant thing but it’s really important.  If you’re doing something that you enjoy, you might want to allow yourself to enjoy it in the ways that you enjoy it.  That doesn’t mean you have to keep doing whatever you’re doing forever!  But if you’re going to do it, why not enjoy it while you’re doing it?

Recommendation number FIVE is this: consider that you may want to treat this situation as an opportunity to get to know yourself better, and to reevaluate what’s important to you.  So often we prioritize being faithful to other people, or to commitments we’ve made, over being faithful to ourselves.  Many of us have never even gotten the message that being faithful to ourselves is a Thing.  Here’s the deal: being faithful to other people, and honoring commitments we’ve made can be great.  But it’s pretty hard to do this if we are not being faithful to what is true for us, or most important to us.  So often we really want to be honest with others, or do the right thing for others, but it’s almost impossible to be honest with others if we can’t be honest with ourselves first.  Your infidelity situation may be an indication that it’s time to check in with yourself about some very important matters in your life.

Now, a lot of people are scared to do this, because they’re afraid of what they’ll find.  For example, folks who are married and have gotten involved with someone else are often terrified of the possibility of getting divorced, and dealing with all that they think will come with doing that.  It’s fair enough to have fears, but you don’t want to let your fears get in the way of you taking a brave look at who you are and what you want in life right now.

And I know that taking a brave look at what you want might sound like a very tall order.  Your infidelity situation may present a disruption to business as usual, and you might not want that!  You may just want to keep the train on the tracks.  And there is the possibility that if you’re radically honest with yourself, you might decide to rock the boat and make significant changes to your status quo, and that prospect might seem terrifying!  And what I’m encouraging you to consider is that it might be worth it to take a close look at yourself and what you want right now in your life even if it’s terrifying.  But the reward for doing this is that you will be in a much better position to ultimately make choices that you feel great about for the long haul.

Recommendation number SIX is this: decide to take responsibility for your part in this situation.  

Deciding that you’re going to take responsibility for your part in your situation does not mean that you’re going to do everything perfectly, or that you should try to do everything perfectly, or that there’s even such a thing as doing everything perfectly.  Rather, it means that you decide that you’re going to deal with your situation as consciously and deliberately as you can, one step at a time.  You may not know exactly what that will look like yet, but that’s okay – you don’t need to.  

What you do need to know is that it’s one thing to approach your infidelity situation from the position of believing that you do have some power in the situation, you do have some options, you do have some choices – and deciding that you’re going to step up and take responsibility for the things you have the power to control to the best of your ability.  It’s another thing entirely to approach your infidelity situation believing that you are at the mercy of forces beyond your control.

Here's an example of what this sometimes looks like in practice.  Sometimes, people find themselves in an infidelity situation and they tell themselves they don’t know how it happened, they don’t know what they want, and any decision they make about what to do next is bound to be bad, so therefore they can’t do anything.  And then they just sit around and wait for something to happen.  Actually, they usually don’t JUST sit around and wait – they usually keep on doing whatever they’re doing, but they don’t attempt to clarify what they want, they don’t make any decisions, and as a result, they don’t take any decisive action.  

This is very different from someone saying to themselves, “Okay, I have found myself in an infidelity situation.  I never imagined I would find myself here, but here I am, and I am going to take it upon myself to figure out what I want to do about this, one step at a time.  And today all I need to do is take my first step.  And I may not know what that is yet, but I am going to take responsibility for figuring that out.  I may not be able to make all of the decisions today, but I can take responsibility for making one small decision today.”

And your decision, for today, might be that you are going to carry on with your infidelity situation for another day.  Today you might decide that you are going to continue doing what you are doing, because you like it, and you want to keep exploring it.  That’s a legitimate choice to make, and there’s a big difference between making that choice consciously and just doing that because you don’t know what else to do.

Okay people!  The journey you have embarked on – and by that I mean, the experience of engaging in infidelity – may be one that you that you never anticipated taking.  To recap, these are my six recommendations for what you can do to begin to navigate your way through this journey:

Number one: notice if you are panicking, and if you are, ask yourself if you actually need to do something about whatever it is you are panicking about.  If you think your safety is at risk, stop listening to this podcast and go take appropriate measures to protect yourself.  But if you discover that you don’t need to take immediate action in response to the things that you’re panicking about, your job right now may be to let the panic subside.

Number two: consider that it might be in your best interest to be willing to slow down and take a comprehensive look at what’s going on with your infidelity situation.  Consider that you may not be able to rush to a satisfactory resolution.

Number three: ask yourself if you’re willing to dwell in what you might consider moral and ethical grey area for a little while longer.  If you are not willing to do this, that’s fine of course.  But if you’re already cheating, you might decide that you’re going to give yourself permission to keep doing what you’re doing for a while longer for the sake of getting your bearings, and ultimately making decisions that you are happy with.

Number four: allow yourself to get really clear on what’s AMAZING about your infidelity situation.  And allow yourself to appreciate those things.

Number five: treat your situation as an opportunity to get clear on what’s most important to you right now, and as an opportunity to learn how to be more faithful to yourself.  

And finally, number six: decide that you will take responsibility for your part in your situation, and that you will figure out what it means to do that one step at a time.  Assuming you WANT to take responsibility for your situation, of course.  I recommend that path because it’s a simpler and more liberating way to live, but if you want to operate from the belief that you are powerless, and therefore can’t take responsibility for anything much, that is your choice to make.

I am well aware that if you are new to your infidelity situation and you’re kinda freaking out, you may be disappointed that I haven’t given you any magic answers to all of your pressing questions, or provided any ways to instantly resolve your dilemma.  The bad news is, there may not be any ways to instantly resolve your dilemma.  There may not be any magic answers.  If I had them, I promise I would share them with you.  

But the good news is that this isn’t a problem.  It is totally possible for you to resolve your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, one step at a time.  It is possible to deal with all of your intense feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you’re going to do.  And I can help you do these things!  When you’re ready to work with me, you can schedule an introductory coaching session with me through my website, mariemurphyphd.com.  

All right!  Thank you all so much for listening.  If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard today, I would love it if you would give this podcast a five-star rating on iTunes.  Your ratings help other people who would benefit from hearing what I have to say find this podcast, so thank you for sharing the love.

Have a great week everyone!  Bye for now.