199: You Are Worthy of Acceptance

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy, and I’m a non-judgmental infidelity coach.  If you are engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgements.  If you are enjoying your infidelity situation the way it is and you don’t have anything that you need help with, that is awesome, I am happy for you, go live your life and enjoy it.  But if you’re starting to feel burdened by your infidelity situation, I encourage you to SEEK HELP NOW.  Infidelity situations can be pretty major pieces of life business that we need to sort through, and if you’re starting to get the sense that you have some of this kind of life business to attend to, I cannot urge you strongly enough to get the support and assistance you need sooner rather than later.  One of the things new clients tell me all the time is “Oh my god, I wish I’d reached out to you so much sooner.”  You don’t want to do that to yourself!  You want to deal with your situation as soon as you know you have a situation that needs to be dealt with.  You do not want to kick the can down the road and let things get more and more complicated and harder and harder to deal with.  I kind of hesitate to say things like that because I don’t want to be all doom and gloom and I don’t want to issue dire warnings about how bad things can get.  But things can get kinda tough, when we don’t address them proactively, and moreover, it is so much easier to deal with a situation proactively than reactively.

So!  If you would like my help resolving your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, I can help you do it.  You can enroll in my online course, You’re Not the Only One, which contains teachings and assignments that go beyond what I offer on the podcast.  If you’re good at learning at your own pace, and putting what you learn into practice, this course is a great option for you.  And if you want to work together one-on-one via Zoom, the first step is to book an introductory coaching session with me which you can also do through my website, mariemurphyphd.com.

Whether it’s my help you avail yourself of, or some other form of assistance, I encourage you to start dealing with your infidelity situation in a way that you feel great about.  The chances of your infidelity situation automatically resolving itself in a way that you love are pretty low, but if you are willing to step into the driver’s seat and take the steering wheel, you can resolve your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you.  So one way or another, get to work, because the rest of your life, beyond all of the drama and difficulty of your infidelity situation, is waiting for you.

Today we are going to talk about the fact that you are worthy of acceptance and love and respect and belonging, no matter what you’ve done or are doing in regards to your infidelity situation.  In past episodes of this podcast, I’ve talked about how people can be total jerks when it comes to relating to other people’s infidelity – in fact, the title of Episode 122 is “Yes, People can be Total Jerks Sometimes”.  But although some people can be insanely judgmental and rude and awful when it comes to dealing with other people’s infidelity, it is essential for you to remember that NOT EVERYONE IS THIS WAY, and you do not need to consider yourself doomed to be hated and judged.  And moreover, you have the right to push back if people try to get all judgmental on you.

But the point that I really want to stress right now is that there are people out there in this world who totally understand that life is complex, and sometimes relationships get a little messy, and sometimes people break promises, and sometimes people do things they aren’t “supposed to” do.  Some people totally understand that, and are at peace with that.  And more specifically, some people will love you and respect you not in spite of your cheating, but because of it.  No matter WHAT your infidelity situation entails or has entailed, some people will understand that that’s just how life goes sometimes, and will respect that part of your history, or your experiences. 

So if you’re in the midst of an infidelity situation that seems impossible to resolve and you’re terrified that if you dare to make the changes you want to make, everyone will hate you and judge you for what you’ve done, you need to know that some people are NOT going to hate you or judge you.

I for one will not hate you or judge you for whatever you’re doing or have been doing.  But perhaps even more importantly, people who are part of your life, people who you interact with personally, people who are part of your community are also going to get it.  People who are part of your life are going to understand your situation, and love and respect you even if they know alllllll the gory details of what you’ve been up to.  Or at least, enough of the details.

Here's the catch.  It’s possible that these people are already in your life.  It’s possible that the people whose judgment you fear most are going to blow your mind with how understanding they are.  Let’s say your infidelity comes to their attention in some dramatic way that you couldn’t have planned for and wouldn’t have chosen.  Let’s say some crazy scandal erupts.  You may have people in your corner who you never imagined would support you.  This does happen, and this can happen.  And it’s such a beautiful thing when it does happen, and it’s important to remember that it could happen for you.  You may find that there is so much more support and acceptance right there for you from the sources you would have least expected it from.

It's really important to be open to that possibility.  If you’re in the midst of or are emerging from an infidelity situation and you’re wondering what kind of support is out there for you, you may be amazed by how much loving support comes rushing to your side.

But it’s also possible that the people who understand your infidelity situation and love you and respect you no matter what you’ve been doing are NOT in your life yet.  It’s possible that you really WANT love and understanding and support from the people who are currently important figures in your life, but those folks just can’t give this stuff to you.

And if you aren’t getting the support and acceptance and understanding and love from the people around you that you would like to have, that can be hard.  It can be frustrating and alienating and it can seem like evidence that the support and understanding that you want from other people simply does not exist.

But that isn’t true in any absolute sense, and it doesn’t have to be true for you forever, even if it is true for you in some ways for a while.  We’ve gotta remember that some people have experienced a narrower slice of life than others.  Some people have been – and perhaps still are – operating from a narrower range of perspectives than others.  This doesn’t mean that they’re at fault, but it may mean that they are functionally incapable of meeting you where you want so badly to be met.  Some people are able to embrace a pretty broad range of the humanity of other people, or many of the ins and outs of other people’s humanity, and some people just aren’t able to do that. 

And if you seem to be surrounded by folks who don’t seem to embrace a very wide range of other people’s human-ness, it may seem like you’re just doomed to be judged and shunned, and you’re never going to find empathy or understanding or support or acceptance or belonging.

Whether it is objectively true in some verifiable way that everyone around you is judging you and shunning you, or whether it just SEEMS like what’s happening, it doesn’t really matter, and a key component of the solution is the same.

And that is this: You have to believe that you’re worthy of love and respect and acceptance – no matter what you’ve been doing or are doing.

You have to believe that other people out there believe this, too.  You have to trust that just because some people don’t get you, that doesn’t mean that NOBODY gets you.  You have to trust that even if some people are being judgmental jerks in relation to your infidelity, that doesn’t mean that everybody will be a judgmental jerk about it.

It can seem really, really, really fucking hard to have this kind of faith sometimes.  I know. 

When it seems hard to have this kind of faith, here’s what I encourage you to do.  Let yourself have a pity party for a minute.  If you are in the midst of or are emerging from some kind of an infidelity situation and it seems like everyone is pooping on your head, it’s okay to not like that.  It’s okay to feel sad and lonely and angry and frustrated and resentful if it seems like everyone is being awful to you and you don’t have a shred of support.  Let yourself NOT LIKE THAT for a moment.  If we want to get through our current state of being, we have to allow ourselves to be IN our current state of being.

But don’t let yourself keep the pity party going for too long.  At a certain point, you may want to decide that you are going to have faith that there are other people out there who are going to understand your experiences and love you for them, not in spite of them.  At a certain point, you can decide that there ARE people out there who know that life is complex, and relationships are complex, and things get a little messy sometimes, and that’s okay.  We can choose to have faith that there are people out there who want nothing more than to love us and respect us and understand us and enjoy us, not in spite of our so-called missteps, but because of them.  And we can choose to have faith that we can and will find these people.

Here's the interesting thing.  Having faith in anything – like, for instance, that there are people out there who are totally going to understand and respect you and your infidelity situation – is just as much as choice as NOT having faith is.  We think that we don’t believe that anyone could understand or respect our infidelity situation because that’s just the truth – and then we find evidence to prove ourselves right.  But even if you see evidence that people are sometimes total jerks when it comes to other people’s infidelity, you could still decide to believe that since you don’t know every single person on the planet, it is therefore possible that someone out there could be understanding and respectful of your situation.

You do have choices about how you think about these kinds of things, and you want to choose your thinking carefully, because our beliefs inform our actions.  If you believe there are people out there who will love you - you will make yourself open to them finding you, and you will be much more likely to actively find them, if they don’t find you first.

If you do NOT believe there are people out there who will understand your infidelity situation, you may similarly prove yourself right. 

Even if it theoretically takes the same amount of effort to think one thought as it takes to think any other thought, it DOES take more effort to change our thinking than to continue to think the same old things we’ve always thought.

And it DOES take more effort to actively find people than it takes to have them just show up on your doorstep, literally or figuratively. 

But it’s WORTH IT to expend effort to change our thoughts and change our actions when we want to change our experiences of being alive.  I know that might sound really obvious, but sometimes it isn’t obvious to us. 

You have to be willing to find those people.  And you may also choose to let go of or step back from connections with people who are being judgmental jerks to you, even you’ve considered those people important people in your life for quite some time.  It may mean deciding what you are and aren’t willing to tolerate from other people, at this point in your life.  And it will almost certainly involve changing your beliefs about your worthiness of acceptance – and changing your beliefs about other people’s beliefs of your worthiness of acceptance.

And changing your beliefs about your worthiness of acceptance may take some serious effort.  But it’s worth the effort, because when you change your beliefs, your life automatically changes in some ways, and you’re able to actually do the things you need to do to generate non-automatic changes.

But I also want to stress that sometimes it isn’t that hard to find the acceptance from other people that you want.  Sometimes you’ll tell people about your infidelity situation, or they’ll find out about it, and they’ll come to you and say, “I totally get it.”  Or they might tell you about THEIR experiences with infidelity.  And you may think to yourself, “Wow, I never thought THAT person would have cheated on their spouse, or have done whatever it was they did” but all of a sudden, you start to see that other people have had experiences just like yours.  You start to see that you aren’t the only one, your experiences aren’t unique, and even if other folks haven’t experienced what you have, they understand what you’re dealing with in a remarkably nuanced way.  Sometimes this kind of support just falls out of the sky and into our lap.  That doesn’t always happen, and it does not have to be the end of the world when it doesn’t, but sometimes it does!  Sometimes people just show right up and support us, and it’s important to remember that this is a possibility, and that you are worthy of this happening for you.

Okay, now I’m going shift topics and answer a question from a podcast listener.  Here’s the question:

“My question is about the aftermath of an affair you "got away with."  I fell into an accidental affair which ended almost a year ago.  My marriage would be considered perfect by most: loving husband, active sex life, great chemistry and children.  Married over 20 years, I felt loved but a lack of interest in me as a person.  Like he didn't really see me.

Along came a handsome new dad through kid sports.  It was a slow burn on my part while he was chasing from day 1, I later learned.  A switch finally flipped and it was on.  I was more alive than I had been in years, giddy like a teenager and finally feeling like a main character in my life again.  Ultimately his wife became suspicious and threatening towards him and we had nowhere to go with the relationship.  It was heartbreaking to end and took ages to move on for me because we would still run into each other.

Finally we have had space and no contact and I have put it in the past.  I have done all the "right things"- refocusing on my marriage and putting in more effort, all of which has worked.  My marriage is stronger than it had been and I appreciate my husband more than ever.

However, when my husband looks at my lovingly or I see us smiling in photos together I often feel like a fraud.  That if he knew what I had done he would hate me and leave.  The love would be gone in an instant.  I will never confess, but how can you cope with this nagging feeling?”

Okay, great question.  This is a predicament a lot of people find themselves in.  They’ve had an affair, it’s definitely over, the person who had the affair knows they want to stay in their marriage and they feel good about that, they know they don’t want to tell their spouse about the affair, but they feel really bad about it and they don’t know what to do about that.

For today’s purposes, there are several things I will say about this.

The first is that – as we’ve talked about before on this podcast – uncomfortable feelings are natural, normal, inevitable part of being human.  But we often forget this.  We often forget that we’re just not going to feel awesome all the time.  In fact, we’re going to feel way less than awesome, some of the time.  And this is just part of the human experience. 

Now what I’ve noticed is that even when we’re on board with this idea intellectually, in a very general sense, it’s still hard to apply this knowledge to our lives when we’re feeling a specific flavor of discomfort, for a specific reason, or in a specific situation.  We know, or we at least kind of know, that in the abstract, discomfort isn’t really a problem, but sometimes it still seems like a REALLY BIG problem.

But is it?  Remember that fundamentally, our emotions are sensations in our body that are created through our thinking.  Even if we don’t LIKE the sensations associated with particular emotions, we can usually tolerate them.  Unless of course they are so intense that we have a heart attack and die, and if that happens, we’re dead, and we don’t have to feel the discomfort anymore. 

Assuming the sensations of our emotions are NOT so intense that they occasion a medical event, we can practice tolerating them, one moment at a time.  So in the simplest terms, when this listener’s nagging feeling comes up, she has the option of being present with the sensations associated with that nagging feeling, one moment at a time, one breath a time, and letting those sensations arise and peak and dissipate.  And if we do this, without thinking a whole bunch more thoughts that create even more emotion for us to deal with, the initial bout of discomfort will start to subside.  If we allow ourselves to fully feel a feeling, without resisting it or avoiding it or distracting ourselves from it, it will arise and peak and dissipate in about 90 seconds to two minutes.  And while we’re allowing ourselves to fully feel that feeling, really, all that’s happening is we’re feeling some uncomfortable sensations in our bodies.  Which might not be pleasant, but we can DO it.

So on one level, when that nagging feeling comes up, we can simply say to ourselves, “Oh yeah, there’s that nagging feeling again.  I know this one.  I can ride out the sheer, immediate, physical experience of this feeling, and pretty soon the sensations will dissipate, and it doesn’t have to be any bigger of a deal than that.  I don’t have to make the ‘nagging feeling’ into a big deal at all.  I don’t have to make it mean anything that I’m feeling this ‘nagging feeling’ again.”

Now, on another level, it’s important to remember that our feelings are created through our thinking.  What that means is, if we want to shift our feelings, we need to be willing to examine our thinking and adjust our thinking.  And one of the things that this person wrote to me was, “I feel like a fraud.”  When my husband looks at me lovingly, or when I see photos of us smiling together, I feel like a fraud. 

Yuck, right?  This isn’t even my situation but as I think about being this person and I think about being a fraud, I feel pretty terrible, and it’s not even my life.  Yuck.  So we need to be able to identify the thoughts that are generating our uncomfortable feelings – and in this situation, I’m willing to bet that the thought “I feel like a fraud” is one of those thoughts.

The thought “I feel like a fraud” may seem like a FACT.  When you think that thought, you may simply be telling yourself what you are sure is objectively true.  Oh my god, I cheated on my husband, and oh my god, if he knew he would hate me and leave.  Oh my god, that’s a FACT and I know it!  Oh my god, OBVIOUSLY I’m a fraud.  That’s just the truth!

Not quite.  There are no objective criteria for what it means to be a fraud, so the thought, “I feel like a fraud” or “I am a fraud” is not a fact.  It’s a meaning you’ve chosen to apply to your circumstances, or in other words, it’s a thought.  And all thoughts are optional, so you get to negotiate with that thought if you want to.

And there are lots of ways we can negotiate with our thoughts, and if I was coaching this person, there are a lot of avenues we might explore together.  But here is one.  Even if you think you are indeed a fraud in some respects when it comes to your husband or your marriage, are you a fraud in ALL respects?  It sounds like you’ve reconnected with him in a way you find really satisfying.  When you engage with him, are you ALWAYS being fraudulent?  My guess is no.  My guess is that you probably only think you’re a fraud because of the affair. 

So what if the affair is only ONE of the facts within your history with your husband?  What if there are many other important facts, too?  What if you’ve also loved your husband deeply, for a long time?  What if you’ve also been a committed, engaged partner to him and with him for a long time?  What if you’re currently very dedicated to the relationship – even if, for a while, you were also very dedicated to enjoying someone else?

If you feel like a fraud, you may want to expand the scope of your focus to see that there are also probably a lot of ways in which you don’t feel like a fraud within your relationship.

And you can start actively thinking differently about being a fraud, or thinking that you’re a fraud.  You may want to say to yourself, “Yes, I may feel like a fraud sometimes.  But I also KNOW I’m not always a fraud in my marriage.”  Or, “I may have been a fraud in my marriage in some ways, but I’m not a COMPLETE fraud.” 

What we want to do here is start to ease you out of black-and-white, all-or-nothing, either-or thinking.  Meaning, like, either you’re a fraud or you aren’t.  Because what if it isn’t that clear cut?  Maybe you’ve been fraudulent in some ways – maybe – but maybe you’ve been anything BUT fraudulent in lots of other ways.  When we start to ease ourselves out of the “I’m either good or I’m bad” lines of thinking, we stand the chance to find a lot more ease and peace within our lives. 

Finally, it’s important to remember that we have the capacity to forget things.  Right?!  We forget things ALL THE TIME.  Often, we do this unintentionally, but we can do this more deliberately, too. 

If you are happy in your post-affair marriage – and it sounds like you are, and that’s terrific – what’s the point of thinking about the affair, at this point?  That’s a serious question.  What’s the point of thinking about the affair at all?  It sounds like this person IS thinking about their affair, at least to some extent, and although there’s no way I can know this for sure, it sounds like the issue isn’t just that a random memory is popping up every now and again.  It sounds like this person might be thinking about their affair more than occasionally, and more than randomly.

If you are indeed thinking about your affair more than occasionally and more than randomly, I want you to ask yourself if you really want to keep thinking about it.  Because you sure don’t have to.  If the affair is over, it’s over.  It’s part of the past.  There’s no reason why you have to keep thinking about it.  Sometimes we tell ourselves that we actually DO have to keep thinking about an affair that’s ended, but we really don’t.

However, it's entirely possible that you are getting something that you like out of thinking about your affair.  It’s entirely possible that even if thinking about your affair stirs up feelings of guilt, or gets you thinking about being a fraud, you are getting some benefit out of doing so, even if it seems like a weird benefit.  For one thing, your brain may like the drama of thinking that you’re a fraud more than it likes the lack of excitement that sometimes comes with just going about your business, and allowing yourself to relegate the affair to the compost bin of history.  Simply getting a little entertainment out of thinking about your affair may be enough of a benefit for your brain to think it’s a good idea to keep on thinking about the affair.

But if you want to, you can start to ease yourself out of this pattern.  If you want to, you can start to intentionally forget about your affair.  How do you do this?  The same way you unintentionally forget about anything else.  You shift your focus elsewhere.  If you’re actively thinking about your affair on a regular basis, you have the option to decide that you’re going to actively direct your thinking elsewhere.  Instead of thinking, “Oh my god, if my husband knew about my affair, he would hate me and leave” you can shift to thinking about all of the great things you’re contributing to your marriage now.  If you find yourself thinking that you’re a fraud, you can shift your focus to thinking about all of the ways that you are NOT a fraud.  The point isn’t to pretend that the past wasn’t what it was, or that the affair didn’t happen, rather, the point is to CHOOSE what you want to direct your attention to, and then PRACTICE focusing on that.

Do you remember what you had for dinner a year ago today?  I sure don’t.  And I bet you don’t remember what you had for dinner a year ago today, either.  And it’s not because what you or I had for dinner a year ago isn’t important.  Whether or not something is important is always a matter of our thinking.  It’s not that some things are objectively important and some things aren’t, and we obviously remember the important things and we obviously forget about the unimportant things.  That’s not how it works.  If we focus on something, and we rehash memories of it over and over again, we’re going to remember it.  And if we don’t focus on something, and we place our focus on other things, we may not remember it at all.  If we don’t make it important, it won’t be important, in other words.

So you have the option of deciding that it isn’t useful to keep thinking about your affair.  You have the option of deciding that your affair is not something important that you have to keep thinking about.  Maybe it was important in some ways at some point in time, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s important NOW.  And you can practice focusing on what’s important to you in the present, and when memories of the affair come up, you can practice allowing those memories to float through your consciousness without making them into a big deal.  When random thoughts come up, we don’t have to allow ourselves to be hijacked by them.

And the more we practice doing this, the more we allow ourselves to forget about the affair – or perhaps it’s better to say that the less we think about our affair, the less we think about our affair, and the less important the whole thing seems.

And then the day may come when your husband smiles at you, and you have a fleeting thought about the affair, but you just don’t make a big deal out of it.  It’s just like a fly buzzing in a room and then quickly escaping out a window.  It catches your attention for a second, but then it’s gone, and it’s not a big deal.

AND, the day may also come when you wake up one morning and remember that you had an affair, and you realize that you haven’t thought about the affair for weeks or months or even longer than that.  And although technically you may remember that you had an affair, you aren’t actively remembering your affair, or thinking about your affair, because you’re so damn busy living your great life.

And that is it for today.  If you would like my help resolving your infidelity situation in a way that you feel great about, let’s get to work.  We can work together one-on-one via Zoom, or you can enroll in my self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One.  To get started with either of these options, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.  I can’t wait to work with you.

Thank you all so much for listening!  Bye for now.