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
Beyond Betrayal: Rebuilding Your Marriage Without Fixing Your Spouse
The aftermath of betrayal often leaves us scrambling to "fix" our broken marriage, convinced that our happiness depends entirely on our spouse's transformation. But what if these beliefs are actually preventing your healing?
Drawing from years of helping clients navigate post-betrayal recovery, I challenge the misconception that rebuilding a marriage is solely your responsibility. When your spouse has an affair, they—not you—must own their choices completely. No matter what challenges existed in your marriage, you didn't cause their betrayal. Their willingness to take full responsibility and seek help understanding why they strayed is essential to genuine reconciliation. Without this commitment from both partners, one person alone cannot repair what's broken.
Even more damaging is the belief that your happiness depends on your spouse changing. This mindset surrenders your emotional well-being to someone else's choices. While their actions certainly affect you, your thoughts about those actions largely determine your happiness. Many marriages get trapped in unhealthy power dynamics where one partner positions themselves as superior (one-up) while the other feels inadequate (one-down). Breaking free requires recognizing everyone's strengths and weaknesses without keeping score. What if both partners could be simultaneously amazing and flawed? What if different approaches to tasks weren't automatically judged as right or wrong?
True healing begins when you reclaim responsibility for your own happiness while releasing the expectation that your spouse must transform to validate your worth. This doesn't mean accepting ongoing betrayal—rather, it means developing the emotional independence to make clear-headed decisions about your future from a place of personal strength rather than desperate dependency. Whether your marriage ultimately survives or not, you deserve to find your way to "happily even after."
Ready to break free from betrayal trauma? Connect with me at hello@lifecoachjenwithn.com or @HappilyEvenAfterCoach on Instagram and Facebook to learn how we can work together toward your healing.
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.
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My website is www.lifecoachjen.com
Welcome to my podcast Happily, even After. I'm life coach, jen, I'm passionate about helping people recover from betrayal. I rode the intense emotional roller coaster and felt stuck and traumatized for years. It's the reason I became a trauma-informed certified life coach who helps people like you navigate their post-betrayal world. I have the tools, processes and knowledge to help you not only heal from the betrayal but create a healthy future. Today, we begin to help you live happily even after. Hey friends, welcome to another podcast.
Speaker 1:So I kind of touched on this a few podcasts ago, but I just kind of wanted to delve into it a little more because I think a lot of people have this misconception. Believe this. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. Basically, the thought is thinking you have to fix your marriage, or that it is your job to fix your marriage, or that your spouse needs to change for you to be happy. Okay, so I'm going to talk about both of these ideas. First of all, I for sure thought the first time my spouse had an affair very early on in our marriage and I thought it was my job to fix it, because I thought it was my fault, right, and it's never your fault. And I've been speaking about this on Instagram and I have all sorts of people coming out Well, if they had more sex or if you know they were nicer, or whatever. But it's fundamentally not true. There is no reason that your spouse, they need to take full ownership of the affair. It is not about you, it is about them. If you disagree with me, that's okay, but for those of you that have been betrayed, just want you to know that it isn't your fault. They're, of course, going to blame you and try to blame you, blame it on them to make them feel better. But it's not your fault. You didn't choose that and I guarantee you weren't happy in your marriage and so in that moment and if you were, you still didn't choose it. They did. They have to take full ownership of what they chose to do.
Speaker 1:So often we think okay, especially women. I think men think this too, but women especially think okay, how am I going to fix this here? Our marriage has been blown up, they've had an affair, but they're coming back saying I want to work on our marriage, I don't want to lose our family, and so we take it upon ourselves to fix the marriage First of all, like it is broken, but I just want you to reframe it, and how can you rebuild your marriage together? This isn't a individual job. This is a together job. This is something that needs to happen together. This isn't a individual job. This is a together job. This is something that needs to happen together.
Speaker 1:So so often, the wife or the husband that has been betrayed feels so devastated and as they begin healing which is so great you can get a little bit more healed so you can make better decisions, better choices. But if the betrayer, the spouse that had the affair, refuses to get help, it's going to be really hard to rebuild your marriage. So I just want you to consider where is the spouse that betrayed? Are they willing to own up and take responsibility for what they did and then get help to figure out why they did it? Great, I totally believe you can rebuild your marriage. But if not, it's going to be a lot harder.
Speaker 1:And the thought that we can only be happy if our spouse changes. Now, of course, if our spouse continues to have affairs, you're not going to want to feel happy. But then what you need to consider is do you want to be married to someone that does that? That's, someone that lies to you, right? That's the radical honesty I was talking about last podcast. So just consider what that looks like for you. But can you be happy? Like, what does happiness mean for you? I want you to figure out, because it is your job to make your life happy, right? What are you not doing or doing to bring happiness, more happiness, into your life? And if you are stuck in betrayal trauma, if your nervous system is stuck in freeze right or fight or flight, if you're having a trauma response, your capacity to feel happy is going to be very limited, if not at all impossible, because you are frozen and so you are not feeling any emotion whatsoever. So you also have to practice feeling the negative emotions so you can also feel the positive emotions. But I don't want you to think your spouse isn't the one making you happy. Your thoughts are making you happy. Now they can contribute, right, to make you miserable or happy, like for sure. Their actions are going to contribute. But don't give them all your power. Don't allow them to determine if you're happy or not. I know it's really hard, for we'll just say your spouse comes home from work and is really grumpy and has had a bad day. Like it's really hard to not take on some of their emotions. But the better you can get at allowing your spouse to feel however they need to feel and then allowing yourself to feel however you need to feel, the happier your marriage and your life will be, I promise.
Speaker 1:The belief that a marriage is inherently fixable or that a partner's change is a requirement for happiness can lead to an unhealthy one-up, one-down dynamic. So I for sure had this dynamic in my marriage. My spouse thought he was better than me and he would put me below him, right, and I. Sadly that was easier for me, so I stayed there Like I didn't challenge that dynamic. It's a very unhealthy dynamic and unhelpful to have a great marriage. That's not going to be where you're going to have a great marriage. It's when you guys are working together.
Speaker 1:This mindset often stems from misplaced blame and expectation, hindering individual growth and marital satisfaction, which I 100% agree with. So for sure my spouse had an affair. He would blame it on me because for whatever reason like I wasn't thin enough, I wasn't attracting, I was pregnant, whatever his reasons were right Like we didn't communicate well, but this woman, like she's such a great communicator and so amazing, right, she lights me up, and so blame that on me. And then he had these unrealistic expectations of what a wife, a mother, a person, a human would be right, and so this created the one up, one down dynamic. So I'm going to give you some things that we sometimes do to create this dynamic and that make it really hard to get out of and to rebuild our marriage. Blame, for sure, is one of the biggest issues, especially in betrayal, and that comes from shame. We feel shame, so we don't want to feel shame, so we're going to blame it on someone else.
Speaker 1:So, the more you can, if you find yourself ever blaming something on someone else, I want you to look inward and say, okay, what part of that was about me? What part of that do I need to own? What part of that was really my doing, right? So look inward instead of outward. When you look at your spouse, like, are there like 50 things that they need to change for you to be happy, right? Well, that's never going to happen and you're going to be miserable and unhappy. If that's your thought, what if your spouse is who they are today and they never change? Do you want to be married to them? Can you love them. Can you accept them Not saying that they won't ever change, but unless you can get to, I love them just how they are today. They don't take out the garbage. They're unhelpful.
Speaker 1:Whatever your gripes are about them or complaints, the problem is you become so fixated on them needing to change in order for you to be happy that you'll never find happiness and you'll be miserable and stuck in that cycle for a long time. So instead of focusing on what your partner needs to change, I want you to go inward and say, okay, what are some behaviors I'm contributing to my marriage, or what are the emotional needs I have? This can just help you look at yourself like, oh, maybe if I changed how I asked them, or maybe I need to bring them. We need to have a conversation. Right, don't come from blame. Come from curiosity or compassion or a different emotion to get the same result. But I promise that will help you get the result way more than blame will. Okay, because the person's going to feel criticized. There's resentment there and a lot of defensiveness when blame is involved.
Speaker 1:So when you have this one up, one down dynamic, it's because someone the person that's in the one up thinks they're always right, like they're in, like I'm right and you're wrong, I'm better than you. They have this superior thought. They need to have a sense of control and power, right, and so this is very unhealthy. And so, instead, what if you could create a dynamic? That, what if you're both right? What if you're also both wrong? That, what if you're both right? What if you're also both wrong? Like, could you consider trying it their way? Like, what if there is I know this many ways to load a dishwasher? There are many ways to do laundry right. There are many ways to take out the garbage. There are many ways to vacuum, like those things, I think, the little things in our life. We tend to make them big things. There are many ways to get home to your house, right, but we sometimes get fixated like no, this is the only way, this is the right way, and then it causes us to feel like superior. And then, if you are this person, if you are the person that you are, more one up, consider what are you trying to control? What are you willing to let go of? What are you willing to consider Like, okay, maybe there are several ways to do this. Do you know there are several ways to parent a child, right To change a diaper, to feed a baby, right.
Speaker 1:We get so into, well, my way's right and your way's wrong. It's just very unhealthy for your marriage and for your relationship when we have misplaced expectations, right, right, we just will get stuck in trying to expect things that really maybe our partner is not capable or unwilling to do. Then we get disappointed and frustrated. And I'm going to say humans, we don't like to feel disappointed at all. We avoid feeling disappointment. But really, if you could get good at feeling disappointed, I think your life would be a lot less disappointing because you wouldn't be disappointed so much which sounds contradictory, but it's really true, right. Because you also wouldn't have these grand expectations of someone either, because you would know that wouldn't be realistic or possible. And allowing people to be who they are I love. So, of course, I'm not married, but I'm in my family dynamic with my kids, and so I don't love grocery shopping and cooking, and I think I've shared this before.
Speaker 1:But my daughter does love to cook and she likes to go to the grocery store. She likes to meal plan, she likes to go to the grocery store, she likes to meal plan, and so I've released that to her right. The byproduct of that is she's messy. She doesn't like to clean up after herself. But I've decided you know what? That's what I'm good at. I can totally clean and do all the dishes and I don't get mad at her. I let her make the biggest mess, right. Like not let her, but like I don't let that create any frustration or disappointment. I just know ahead of time like, oh, every time my daughter cooks and goes to the grocery store or whatever, like I may have to help her put away the groceries or it's going to be messy.
Speaker 1:So I just think being realistic about we know who our people are in our life, like they're strong qualities and they're not so strong qualities, and if I think I'm really good at cooking, allowing other people in my life to also have that opportunity, but not sit there and micromanage them right, and you're just going to have a much more satisfying relationship when you can get really clear on allowing people to disappoint you or to do things differently than how you would do them. So in order, I think to, if you want to strengthen your marriage or any type of relationship, stop focusing on the idea of fixing someone right. We all have good things about us and not so good things. We have strengths and we have weaknesses, right? What if we focused more on our each other's strengths and be honest about our strengths and talk about them and really lean into those and hopefully, in a couple or a family, we all don't have the same strengths and we all don't have the same weaknesses. But if that is true, right, maybe we need to hire someone or have a friend help us, or you know, there's lots of help out there.
Speaker 1:And so I just think the idea that when you're rebuilding your marriage especially if betrayals happened to not have the idea I can only be happy if they change, I can only be happy if this happens right, that's just going to not make you more happy. It's going to make you more miserable and disappointed every single time when they don't do something. And the idea that you are better than your spouse is only hurting you and your marriage and the idea that you're not as good as your spouse is only hurting your marriage, your partner and you. So what if both things are true? What if you guys are amazing and you're not so amazing? What if both of those things could be true and you could accept them, I think your marriage would be a lot more amazing because you wouldn't have these crazy expectations and think like I can only be happy if they change.
Speaker 1:If you need help with this, this is complicated stuff, right Like this is stuff our brain, our society has taught us for so long that we have this idea that it's our spouse's job to make us happy. It's our spouse's job, you know. We have to look at all their qualities that they need to change in order for us to be happy. But what if it's your job to make yourself happy? And I promise you're going to be happier when you can get that idea.
Speaker 1:It's okay sometimes for your spouse to be mad and irritated and disappointed Doesn't mean you have to be mad, irritated and disappointed. You could just feel whatever you need to feel. Allow yourself to do that. I hope this was helpful. If you need help and are struggling and you really are ready to start healing from betrayal, reach out. I'd love to chat. Have a beautiful day and if you like this podcast, please share it with your family and friends. If you want to learn how to live happily, even after sign up for my email at hello at lifecoachjenwith1ncom, follow me on Instagram and Facebook at Happily Even After Coach, let's work together. And Facebook at happily even after coach. Let's work together to create your happily even after.