Happily Even After with Life Coach Jen
Happily Even After shares weekly insights and tools to create more fulfilling relationships with yourself, your family and God. Jennifer is a certified life coach that was married for 26 years . She has 4 amazing children and 1 son in law. She doesn’t have it all figured out but she has lots of personal experience and has learned what to do and what not to do in relationships. I help women and men who have experienced betrayal in their marriage or have been divorced learn that their is happiness to be had even when your life doesn't go as planned.
Happily Even After with Life Coach Jen
Breaking Free from the Bargaining Cycle After an Affair
Have you ever found yourself grappling with the guilt and confusion that inevitably surface after an affair? You're not alone—I've been there too. I'm Life Coach Jen and in this revealing episode, I share my personal journey through the often-ignored 'bargaining stage' of healing, shedding light on the emotional turmoil both the betrayed and the unfaithful undergo. This is no time for sugarcoating; we lay bare the temptations to rationalize infidelity, self-blame, and the struggle to make sense of the reality thrust upon us. We explore why this stage is not just a pitstop but a critical phase of the grief process, which, when navigated right, can empower you to take control of your life.
In the second part of this candid conversation, we dive deeper into the treacherous waters of the bargaining stage. We address the perils of justifying poor behavior, of jeopardizing personal wellbeing in a desperate bid to mend a broken relationship—a trap many of us unknowingly fall into. We talk about setting boundaries, restoring self-esteem, and paving the way forward with confidence. This episode is much more than just a guide—it's a lifeline for those stuck in the bargaining cycle, yearning to break free and build a healthier, more stable future. It's high time we stop trying to pick up the pieces, but instead, create a beautiful mosaic from them. Let's reclaim our happiness, even amidst life's greatest tribulations.
Please follow me on instagram and facebook @happilyevenaftercoach and if you want to see what coaching is all about I offer a free 45 min. clarity call via zoom.
Email me: hello@lifecoachjen.com for any comments or questions.
Thanks for listening, please like and review as well as share with your family and friends.
My website is www.lifecoachjen.com
Hi friends, welcome to Happily. Even After I'm Life Coach Jen, a certified life coach that specializes in relationships. I'm a mom of four awesome kids and one amazing senile, a home decorator, a remodeler, a shopper, a scrabler and a snuggler. I want to help you with your relationships, mainly the relationship you have with yourself and your family and God. Thanks for listening and letting me share the tools I have learned that can help you live happily even after some of life's greatest challenges. Hey friends, welcome to today's podcast.
Speaker 1:I've been just thinking about different things that I experienced during my healing of an affair, and so I just wanted to share some insight on that and in the grieving process, the different stages of grieving. One of the stages is called bargaining, and someone mentioned this to me and I'm like, did I bargain? And I'm like, oh, I definitely did. And guilt is often bargaining's companion, and oftentimes the person that had the affair feels some sort of guilt, and also the person that was betrayed could feel guilty for things that they did or didn't do, and so it's just an interesting topic I thought we could discuss and kind of figure out why this is something, but it's a crucial in the grieving process. It's crucial, it's part of the healing. So going through all the different stages, and bargaining is definitely one of those stages. So the affair partner, the person that had the affair, how they, instead of bargaining, they might feel a lot of guilt. They might come back into the relationship and act really affectionate towards you, and this might be confusing because it's like, ooh, I got caught and I feel guilty now, and so then I'm going to come back and try to be who that person wants me to be or who I think I should be. They might feel remorseful, but they also might not, and so this is super confusing, I think when this happens. Meanwhile, the partner who was cheated on might feel their emotions and try to provide logical explanation for the infidelity. I think our brain, we want an answer, we want to know why and I know that this is my brain it's like, no, we need the facts, we need to know what happened, how this happened Anyways. So in this phase, both partners might decide whether they want to make the relationship work or if they want to move separate ways. So this process of the guilt that comes into it, there's just a lot of different emotions and a lot of things that could be happening and you're doing it from a space of guilt, or I'm also thinking shame is in this too, for sure. But then the bargaining. So this is the main point I want to talk about.
Speaker 1:So a lot of times when someone's dying if you've ever had someone close to you die, like from cancer or a sickness, you can imagine begging, bargaining, like oh please, take this pain away from my child or my spouse and you want to bargain with God, make a deal, or just because you're so desperate for the reality of the situation not to be that way, because we can't go back in time and make things unhappen. We can't like, of course, they could be healed or whatever, but when it comes to infidelity, the act, the betrayal, has already happened. So we want to go back and try to make it unhappen in our mind, but obviously that's not going to work. A lot of times when you think back the 2020 hindsight, coupled with self-blame, so like why did this happen? What is going on here? People ask lots of questions like if only I would have done this, I should have done this, they should have done this, and so we ask lots of these questions that I can totally.
Speaker 1:I think when bargaining started happening for me in 2018, when my husband had called me on the phone and said I want to. He didn't mention he was having an affair, but the second I heard those words out of his mouth, I knew it and because in my mind we didn't have an A plus marriage at that point, but we had just bought a beach house like our dream. He had just taken our girls on a European vacation. I was at Disney World with our boys. We had just moved my parents into our home to help take care of my dad and give my mom a break. So they moved from Colorado to Utah. So in my mind I mean, we had a lot going on, but it wasn't like this. In my mind, it wasn't signs of your husband's getting ready to leave you. That's not how I read the room. And then I get the phone call and I was like wait, what? So? I remember coming home from that trip and just begging him to stay and bargaining and I'll do this and I'll do that. Because I of course thought, okay, maybe if I'm thinner, or maybe if I cook dinner more, or maybe if I did this or that more, then he'll stay. And so I just found myself doing a lot of bargaining, which is completely normal, but like crazy.
Speaker 1:And so just notice like, if you find yourself bargaining, it's like what are we really bargaining for? Because our brain doesn't want this undesirable thing, this horrible thing that is very painful, it doesn't want it to be a fact, and so it just fights with reality. Something that's helpful is that you can imagine yourself acting differently and far as the brain is concerned, it's the same thing. So our brain is wired to know like it doesn't necessarily know danger, like, okay, there's a bear chasing you or danger your husband's having an affair. They feel very similar. And so it's just interesting to watch your brain and know, like, okay, you're not gonna die. This is really hard and painful, but you're gonna be okay Because I don't. I mean, obviously, people have died from affairs because someone killed them, but in general, you're not gonna die, right?
Speaker 1:The bargaining is part of post-traumatic stress and so, like, there's a lot of trauma when something like this happens, and so this is what causes our brain to start bargaining, and it's usually an unconscious attempt to create the different reality for yourself. So just know that this is all happening in your unconscious self and that's why, becoming aware of your thoughts and knowing, like, okay, what is really going on here, and stepping away, getting a life coach, going to therapy, getting help, is so helpful because sometimes, when we're right in it, we don't even know what we don't know and a lot of times our brain wants to tell us this is stupid, this is wrong. But don't believe it, because this is 100% okay. However you're acting, however you're feeling, and just being mindful and aware of what is going on with your brain, another thing we do is we bargain with our pain so not necessarily our spouse, but with our pain like, okay, I can't feel this way. So many people tell me and I know I felt this way, is this so painful? I can't deal with it? But that's a lie, because you can deal with it and you need to.
Speaker 1:Instead of negotiate and pretend you're not feeling all these feelings, we need to feel all those feelings and process them and have a witness to them and share them and have them acknowledged, and so I think you have to move through it. You might ask questions like how am I gonna move forward? How do I tell my kids Like we just start asking ourselves a million questions and we can't slow down, we're too fast. We're too. We have so many thoughts that just consume us and then we start thinking, well, we bargain with our personal wellbeing, like we're not taking care of ourselves but we're taking 100% care of our spouse who just cheated on us, or we are excusing their poor behavior because of our fear of getting divorced. We accept things that are definitely unacceptable and we bargain our way out of our personal integrity.
Speaker 1:I know the past few years I've really done a deep dive into this because I'm like what is it inside of me that totally ditched my values, ditched my personal beliefs, how someone should treat me and then allow a man to treat me so poorly? And I think it was my bargaining okay, Because I didn't. I wanted my family so bad, my eternal family, my eternal marriage so bad, that I was willing to bargain and convince myself All these things were okay. He was eventually going to change. And so I think that's really harmful when we do that and to get really honest with yourself, because in reality, none of that was worth trying to save my family for and my family is doing just fine now. But our brain convinces us because it's almost like our life as we know it has changed.
Speaker 1:How do we recognize if you're in this phase? You're gonna be saying stuff like if I just do this, then he'll do that. If I just explain things to him in the right way, he will understand and want to change. I think that's such a thing, because we want, we think people should act how we would act If I had an affair. I would feel so terrible and awful. I'd want to repent and never do it again.
Speaker 1:But not everyone feels that way. Not everyone thinks it's wrong. Not everyone thinks what they did was bad. They think they've convinced themselves that it was better for their marriage. It made them be a better husband, be a better father. So we all have ways of convincing ourselves that what we are doing. And so be careful when you think that your spouse is going to change like you think that they should. What if I dot dot dot lost weight, had better sex, had sex more often, whatever you think made dinner more, kept the house spotless all the time, made sure none of the kids cried or complained while around their father? All these things are just bargaining chips, right, and we just convince our brain like what if these things didn't happen, then he's not gonna have an affair. If I had just done X, y or Z, if I were blank enough, like, just so you know, your spouse's affair had nothing to do with you and it has everything to do with what's going on with them. And bargaining your weight out of it or into it, or keeping your marriage is, of course, a normal thing to do, but it is something that we need to move through and move out of quickly.
Speaker 1:Why people get stuck here, I think, so often, so many people. I think I was stuck in bargaining for five years 2018 to when I got divorced in 2022, maybe that's four years Because I was still trying to convince myself that if I was this way or that way, hey, if we do a podcast together and talk to people about our experience, then our marriage is gonna be better, then you're gonna wanna stay married to me, then you're not gonna wanna have affairs and cheat on me again and again. So it is normal to do this and it's part of the healing journey. It feels normal, it feels good, we're trying to create safety, we're trying to create stability and we think that the person is gonna change. But this is a recipe for long lasting self-esteem issues which I have been digging my way out of my low self-esteem for the past four years and I think I'm really thriving and realizing like, no, I'm a confident woman and my former spouse did nothing to help me with that, but I have dug myself out of that hole and that's what we have to find as ourself, because we can totally get depressed, anxiety, we have lack of progression when we are stuck in this bargaining cycle, and to move forward, we need to create boundaries and, honestly, I've been talking to my brother who also got divorced, and it's like we weren't top boundaries.
Speaker 1:I didn't even know what boundaries were until a few years ago. And so, creating boundaries, as soon as I gave my former spouse a boundary, he was like, nope, not doing that. And I was like, oh my gosh, that's exactly what I needed to hear. Okay, great, let's get divorced and I'm out. So, for whatever reason, I know it doesn't normally happen like that, but I just clearly saw like the moment I made one boundary, he wasn't willing and I'm grateful he was honest and he was like, nope, I'm not doing it. And so it was really great information.
Speaker 1:But creating boundaries and a boundary is what you are gonna do, not forcing your other spouse to do so, getting some good boundaries, paying attention to what your triggers are. So if you are triggered about certain things, creating a boundary around that, hey, if you're going to, let's see, let's think of a boundary. No, going out to lunch with other women that would be a great boundary. If your spouse is cheated on you and husband or wife, if you do do that and I find out or you tell me, then I'm going to, I'm gonna leave the house and move out, or it's something you have to do. So say the boundary and hopefully, if you're trying to repair your marriage, you're both on the same page. And or, hey, spouse, if you're going to yell at me, then I am going to go on a drive and when you're calmed down then we can have a conversation. So say your need, but also then create what you are going to. Do Not say you can't yell at me anymore, because that's not a boundary, that's just a request.
Speaker 1:So, paying attention to your triggers, which will help you know what you need a boundary for. You need to prioritize creating a safe place for you to thrive and heal so that you can progress through your healing. And I think this has been such a eye-opener for me is that when I got divorced and I moved into a home that I felt very safe in and I have done so much healing there and it's been such a beautiful thing for me because I have safety. I feel like my kids have thrived in the environment, even if it wasn't their childhood house. It was much it's much smaller than what they were used to. It didn't matter because it felt very safe. And I've been realizing that I was able to get out of the bargaining and now I can just thrive. And so it can be hard if you're trying to stay married and heal, but you'll know that it's still gonna be safe because your spouse that had the affair is going to be doing just as much work as you are, and so you can have that space.
Speaker 1:And if you don't feel like, find a space in your home or maybe in your car that you can feel totally safe in and that's where you can listen to podcasts and do healing and find that space for yourself, because I think that's so important. But pay attention, if you are bargaining, that's totally normal. We all do it. It is part of the way that we get through grief and pain, but don't get stuck in it. Pay attention Like what kind of boundary do you need to move you through the bargaining stage? And if that's happening to you and you don't know how to get out of it, please reach out. I'd love to help you. I'd love to help you move through so you can live the amazing life that you were meant to live. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great day. If you want to learn how to live happily even after, sign up for my email at lifecoachjennwith1ncom. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at happily even after podcast. Let's work together to create your happily even after.