Happily Even After Betrayal with Life Coach Jen

189: Women, Betrayal, and How to Stop Comparing, Rebuild Trust and Choose Love Over Fear

• Jennifer Townsend • Season 4 • Episode 189

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When betrayal detonates in a relationship, it doesn’t just break trust—it distorts time, identity, and daily rhythms. We open up about the questions women ask in the aftermath: how to stop comparing yourself to “the other woman,” whether the marriage you remember was ever real, why love can survive alongside anger, and how to hear your intuition again when trauma has turned the volume up on fear.

Across the conversation, we ground big emotions in clear, practical steps. You’ll learn why affairs live in a neurochemical fantasy that isn’t about your worth, how to reclaim your timeline without erasing the joy you truly felt, and what it means to separate love from harmful behavior. We dig into the markers of genuine repair—remorse, consistent action, and movement—and teach a simple filter for decisions: do I feel safe, seen, and supported? We also walk through micro-practices that rebuild self-trust, from keeping small promises to replacing busyness with calming rituals that let your inner compass speak.

If you’re wrestling with “Am I staying for love or fear?” we offer a framework to spot fear talk, assess who’s doing the work, and give yourself time unless there’s danger. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s steadiness. You’re allowed to choose a future that protects your peace, whether that means rebuilding together with accountability or charting a new path with courage. Listen for validation, leave with tools, and remember: compassion and curiosity are your best allies in healing.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a quick review to help others find these tools. Want hands-on support? Reach out and let’s create your happily even after together.

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



SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to my podcast, Happily Even After. I'm Life Coach Jen. I'm passionate about helping people recover from betrayal. I read 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 today's podcast. Today I'm going to talk about questions that women have after they've experienced betrayal. Last week I talked about men, and this week I'm going to talk about women. But having worked with lots of men, I've had a different perspective. But just know that I think a lot of times women get labeled as like you're being dramatic or you're creating lots of drama. But no, this is trauma. This is betrayal trauma. And it causes us to do, I guess, what maybe someone else might say is crazy or over the top. But that is your body reacting to something that feels so dangerous and so terrible. And it's why they've named it betrayal trauma. So I think this happens a lot, inevitably. How do I stop comparing myself to the other woman? Remember, comparison is the thief of joy, and comparison is never a good thing to do, but of course it's normal, right? And I think our brain tries to make sense of something that doesn't make sense. And so that's why it's so hard in betrayal. And we're just trying to, you know, our survival brain is trying to keep us protected. And so if we have this threat out there of this other woman, we of course get defensive and think, what does she have that I don't have? But we also have to remember someone that is having an affair, they're in fantasy land. And so they are on this high, like a drug high, literally, and aren't experiencing life and feelings and relationship in a normal, healthy way. It's like a drug-induced coma or thing that they're experiencing. And so that's why I always find it fascinating because beautiful, I mean, I've talked about this so many times, like people like Christy Brinkley, she was a supermodel when I was growing up, and Jennifer Lopez, and so many, I mean, so many people in Hollywood have been cheated on. And they're beautiful. You would think, like you would look at them and think, they have it all. And yet their spouse had an affair. That's how we know it's not about looks, it's not about the perfect body, it's not about your amazing personality. It's something going on with your spouse. So it's not about the other person, right? It's just maybe that was convenient. They work together. Who knows why? Right. But you comparing yourself to them is just not going to be helpful in your healing journey. You really just need to have lots of compassion for yourself. And when I work with women, they want to talk about the other woman, which is fine at first. But eventually we are asking our spouse to end the relationship, right? If you're trying to stay married, you're asking your spouse to end the relationship with this other person, right? And then we keep bringing the other person up. And so we bring the other woman into our marriage, right? And so it's funny how our brain does that. And so we can't continue bringing the other woman into the marriage if we expect to heal our marriage and expect our spouse to leave or stop connecting or contacting the other woman. It's just, see how that's the problem. Anyways, number two, was any of my marriage even real? Now, this is a very common question, and I really struggled with this one because I was like, oh my gosh, my entire life experience up until this point, the past 26 years, has been a lie. And that is a very hurtful, awful thought. I hated that. It really was painful. And so the truth is your reality might have been different than your spouse's reality, but your reality was still your reality. And for me, I worked on doing a timeline. And I would, you know, I kind of went through my life and different moments. And I just decided, you know what? I had an amazing family vacation that time we went to Hawaii. Now, my spouse may have been texting or talking to another woman at that time, but I didn't know that then. And so my experience was we had such a great time. And I just decided I'm going to go with how I was feeling instead of maybe what my spouse was experiencing or doing. That just felt better for me. I don't think it was a lie. It wasn't like I was lying to myself. It just that was the truth of my experience. I could only feel my experience. And I think a lot of times our reality just has a lot of grief in it, right? And so we have to feel the grief to feel those feelings. And we have to validate them. Betrayal collapses the past, present, and future all at once. And that's why it's so devastating. Because we all of a sudden, everything in our life just doesn't make sense. And so I just I think it's really important eventually as you heal to just know like your what you experienced was your reality. And what they were choosing to do was hidden. They were lying, right? You didn't know the truth of what the reality of their reality was. So I think it's important as this is gonna come as you move much farther through healing, depends on where you are on your journey. You have to reclaim what was true for you, and you can rewrite your story if you want, or you can just start from today and work on rewriting it, creating your story of who you want to be and who you want to become. But for me, I just look at my past and I have peace. I've made peace with my past. And my truth was my truth, and my spouse's truth was different than mine, and that's okay. Number three, this is a big one too. Why do I still love him after what he did? I think love is such a powerful emotion. And just because we find out our spouse had been lying to us doesn't for most of us, I mean, it might at the moment we feel hate or anger, but we still love them. We have a history with them, we have attachment, we have habit. Like for me, one thing that was really hard, I would probably call my spouse like four or five times a day for our entire marriage. This is for 26 years, right? And sometimes it would be, hey, hi. It wasn't texting because back in the day we didn't have cell phones, and so I just got in the habit of calling him. And maybe it was texting a bit more towards the end, but usually just calling him to say hi. And so when we got divorced, I didn't do that anymore. And it just was some of those things were just hard, right? And and it was confusing because I'm like, I hate this person, yet I still love him. And so it's really complicated, right? That's why betrayal is hard. I feel like it just makes things, especially when you get divorced, it is complicated. You have to give yourself a lot of grace. You know, we have trauma. Trauma bonds us to people, and so we are bonded with this person because we've had this similar yet different experience. And then they're the person that caused us this pain, yet we still love them. And we've had a lot of people are like, but I've been married for 35 years, and it's so it's an investment. We've had all this time that we've invested in, and it's really hard to walk away from. And we don't necessarily have to, but that's why it's just hard. Just because we love someone doesn't mean we justify what they did. So I think we have to separate love from their actions. And I think when we're healing, we can figure out what we're feeling and then bring wisdom into it. Is it wise for us to still stay married and in relationship with this person? Sometimes yes, and then sometimes no. And we can still, I don't know, for me, I I want to love my former spouse like I would just love humans in general, right? Like I love people, right? I don't like to hate people. So hating for me never felt right, but I don't want to love him in a romantic way. Or I just love humankind. And that's where I needed to get to. Now everyone's different, what you want to do, but you've got to decide that and then work your way to that feeling or emotion. Anyways, it just takes time and practice. Number four, how do I trust my intuition again? Okay, this one's tricky, right? But betrayal creates internal self-doubt. If I miss this, what else am I missing? So it gets complicated. And so we have to just really get familiar with how we hear and how we feel our intuition. The thing is, you probably didn't miss everything. There were probably moments and things that felt off, but you chose which you felt was the best choice, which I did often. I'm going to believe what my spouse is saying to me and kind of ignore this little nudge, like, eh, that felt a little off, right? It makes sense that you did that. So don't judge yourself. Just know, like, okay, maybe I did feel some things and I just was choosing to trust him. Or I was really busy in my life and there wasn't any way I could go there. Like, I didn't even want to go to why is he spending hours at the gym? Or why is he showering every day when he comes home from work? Like that feels off, but okay, he had a good reason why. So I'm just gonna trust him. Trauma disconnects intuition, not your ability to sense truth. So just remember that trauma. Remember that we go into fight, flight, or freeze. So we're on high alert, but that's not the best place. We can't get to our intuition there. We have to calm ourselves and know, like, we will figure out the truth. If you want some tools for this, so often I think we think just stay busy. That's a trauma response. We need to actually slow down. We have to find some grounding, find some reconnection to ourselves. We have to self-validate, understanding, give ourselves lots of compassion. I always say compassion and curiosity are your best friends during your healing. The more compassion, the more validation you give yourself. Of course, I'm feeling irritated right now. I just got this text message from my husband. And so just validating whatever your reality is. Remember, trust isn't rebuilt overnight, it's rebuilt through small daily acts of honesty. And honesty, you have to have honesty in yourself as well as your partner if you're trying to rebuild trust with them. You have to be honest with yourself too. Keep your word. If you say you're gonna do something, do it. And if you don't, don't beat yourself up. Just be like, oh, I guess I thought I was gonna do that, but I guess I wasn't. And so just acknowledging it is really powerful. Okay, the last question: how do I know if I'm staying for love or out of fear? And another one, I for sure stayed married out of fear. Like I know that now. I was totally unaware of that before, but now I know I stayed from fear, not from love. And I could beat myself up about it, but that would be unhelpful. And so I'm not. I just like, oh, now I can see it. So that's why healing is so important. That's the unhealed version of me was doing that. When fear is driving you, it sounds like I can't start over. I don't want to hurt the kids. What if I regret leaving? Okay, so this is fear talk. When you're love-driven, staying sounds like there's remorse, repair, and movement in my spouse. Like you're moving through it. Like you can see, you can tell when someone is trying to change versus someone that's just stuck and blaming you. What version of me is making this choice? The one in fear or the one in truth and love? So you've got to ask yourself these questions. Do I feel safe, seen, and supported? Now, this isn't the time to ask these questions, isn't the day of discovery? It's like, you know, after some some time, you're working through things asking yourself that. And I always tell people there's no rush to get a divorce unless you're, you know, in true harm, getting hurt, but emotionally there's no rush. And so take your time because I just think you you would be making rash, a rash decision. Is he doing the work or am I doing all the work? Now I totally can see that I was doing work. He was not doing any. My former spouse did not do any of the work. He was just saying things that made me think, oh, maybe he is, but did he read any of the books? No. He was for sure just staying for the kids. And I can see it now. I couldn't see it then. And that's okay. I just maybe wasn't ready to see it, but now I can totally see it. So hopefully these questions made you at least feel seen and know, like, oh, these are normal questions to ask. But if you have any more and you want me to answer them, you can send me an email or you can send me a text in the show notes. There's a spot to send me a text and you can ask me any questions. I would love to answer them for you. Remember that you get to create a life that you whatever you want. And you can create a life that you feel peace in, that you feel grounded, and that you find yourself again. I think it's so important to figure out who you are now that this is your experience. So if you need help with this, please reach out. I would love to be your coach. I'd love to help guide you and help you navigate healing from betrayal. It's very important and it can really change your life from staying stuck in victimhood to healing and creating an amazing life, whether it's with your spouse or with someone else or just on your own with your kids. Anyways, have a beautiful day and I will talk to you next week. If you want to learn how to live happily even after, sign up for my email at hello at lifecoachgen with onen.com. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at happily even after coach. Let's work together to create your happily even after.