WTF Do I Do Now?

44. Stop Shaming & Blaming Yourself After His Cheating

• Mandy | Betrayal, Break Up & Empowerment Life Coach • Episode 44

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of What the Fuck Do I Do Now? A safe space where we talk about all things healing and empowerment after their cheating porn use and betrayal trauma to remind you it's not your fault in hearing is absolutely possible. I'm your host Mandy, a certified woman's empowerment life coach, trauma-informed relationship coach, meditation teacher, and trauma-informed breathwork teacher.

 Welcome back to another episode of, what the Fuck Do I Do Now? I am so excited to record this podcast. I know I see this every time. It has been a few weeks since I recorded the last podcast, and honestly it's not that I don't care about this podcast.

I actually love making podcast episodes, but there has just been so much going on in the background. I've been spending. And loving and pouring so much of my time and energy into my one-on-one clients, women who have left the relationship after Betrayal, doing our weekly sessions together and talking to 'em outside of sessions and working with the women in my private group membership.

What the fuck you do now that helps women heal after betrayal, and it has just been what's even the word for it? Like expansive. Getting to. Work in me with all these women. And of course, I say that lightly. Like I wish I never had to work with the women. I wish no woman went through betrayal. I wish you weren't listening to this podcast episode.

I wish you couldn't relate to being treated on or relate to Discovery Secret Life in this phone or relate to sex addiction, porn addiction, any of that. Like I wish none of that existed. But that's not to say. There's so much positive in goodness that can come out of betrayal. There's so much positive in goodness that can come out of leaving and walking away from this person who very clearly wasn't meant for you.

Your person, your soulmate, your love of your life isn't going to lie to you, isn't going to manipulate you, isn't going to gaslight you, isn't going to disrespect you. That's not love. That's abuse. I love my job. 'cause I get to see women thrive and glow up. Walk away from disrespect and create a new life for themselves.

Is it scary? Hell yeah. Is it painful? Hell yeah, of course. Like I'm not here to say that healing is all butterflies and rainbows and it's easy. It's actually really fucking hard and takes so much work. But it's possible. And the other side of it is so beautiful and expansive and happy and joyful and it's just I don't, I dunno if even had a loss for words, but it's.

Yeah, I'm just going on a tangent, so I'm just gonna dive into the episode , I don't have a script today. I'm just speaking from the heart. Again, I think that's where most, the most wisdom come from me, where I can just speak upfront instead of having to read from something.

But I also go on little tangents in my a d. Deep brain kicks in and I am waiting for my period. So I have a lot of brain fog today, but whatever, we're going to dive in. So I think I want the focus of today's podcast episode to be on forgiveness and shame spirals. And what I mean by that is not forgiveness for him.

But forgiveness for yourself. And something I have been noticing working one on with my clients and in my membership for women who left the cheater is a lot of just anger and shame towards ourself. And this is something I went through too, where it's like, God, why did I forgive him so much?

Why? Did it take me so long to walk away? Why did I stay? Why did I give him more than one chance. And so I wanna dive into that today and,

Something I just wanna say upfront is if you were having those thoughts of why did I forgive him, why did I allow him to disrespect me? Why didn't I catch this earlier? I just wanna say, you are not weak. You are not stupid, you are not insecure. You are just being emotionally and psychologically abused.

And I don't mean to say, oh, you were just being abused, like you were going through emotional and psychological abuse and there's so much science about how that literally changes or brain structure. And I could go on such a tangent about that. But today I kind of wanna talk more about the emotional aspect of it .

And something I see with a lot of my clients and something that I went through myself is

we look back at the relationship and like 70%, 80%, whatever, the majority percent of relationship was really good. There was a lot of laughter. He was your best friend. There was so much good companionship. You were building a life with this person. You thought he was forever. You were engaged, you were married, you lived together, or you were in a relationship.

This was a person you were building and creating a life with, and there were a lot of good moments, and that's why it makes leaving so difficult because our brain wants to focus on those good moments.

But then there's the 20, 30% of the relationship that was bad. That was unhealthy. Maybe you felt like you had to. Suppress some of your emotions or maybe you felt like you had to keep the peace around him and didn't wanna cause conflict 'cause you didn't know how he'd react. Maybe sometimes you felt like you were walking on eggshells.

Maybe there were parts of him that you wish you could change. Maybe you were the one who was focusing on your personal development and your self growth and he was holding you back. Maybe he was the one who was lazy and didn't do much with his life and was

not as ambitious as you are in your career. Maybe there were things about you that bothered him. Maybe there were things about the relationship that bothered you, but at the end of the day, you're like, oh, but he makes me so happy. He's my best friend. We have so much fun together.

And maybe there were times where he was quite disrespectful, where he would give you the silent treatment where you didn't know how he was going to respond about things, where when you were having arguments or you would bring up something that was bothering you,

he would do a Dvo technique and turn it around on you, and he would play the victim or he would get defensive or he would not take accountability. Who knows. My point being, it's hard to walk away from betrayal because most of the relationship is good and something I try to help my clients understand too is.

When we're in these emotionally and psychologically abusive relationships where there's lying, where there's gaslighting manipulation, control, where he's hiding a secret life where he's saying that he doesn't watch porn, that he does watch it, or you're finding things in his phone, or he's cheating in real life, whatever, that's abusive.

That's not just disrespect, that's not just him being an unhealthy person. It is straight up emotionally and psychologically abusive, and it can create trauma bonds. It creates this abuse cycle, which I've talked about in other episodes before, and it's actually really hard to get out of. I forgot what the stat is, but.

I believe for for domestic violence relationships, it takes the woman up to seven times to leave. And I don't know if there's been a study on that for about betrayal or emotionally abusive relationships, but I do know most women I talk to, it takes them multiple times to leave. And that's not because you're weak, that's not because you're insecure.

It's 'cause you, your brain, your body, like everything about you is quite literally. There's a different chemical react. Your brain is being restructured because of the abuse. You're craving the highs, you're craving the lows. It's just trauma, bonds, abuse cycles, all of this. And I feel like I'm talking in circles right now, but I just wanna say, you're not weak.

You're not stupid. It's not your fault. It is never your fault that someone is lying to you, betraying you, manipulating you, ever, but.

And I say this slightly, but it is our responsibility to walk away and to put ourself first. It is our responsibility to choose our healing, to choose our peace of mind. I see so many women. And women are just naturally nurturing or caretakers We're loving, but I see so many women lose themselves in relationship because they're trying to fix him.

They're trying to change him. They're trying to be like, oh he had a bad childhood, so maybe I can love him, and maybe that will change his behavior. No, he just needs to go to get professional therapy, which he probably refuses to do, or you probably had to beg him to go to, which is such a red flag.

Anyways, I digress. But that's not your responsibility. You can't change someone. You can't fix someone. Only people can change themselves because they generally want to change themself. But what I see so many women do is they lose themselves in this relationship. Trying to hold onto him, trying to fix him, trying to change him, instead of just pouring that love and energy into yourself.

And that's really where the real healing happens. And I feel like I'm gone on a bit of a tangent 'cause I want this podcast episode to be about forgiving yourself and the shame spirals that come of, why didn't I catch him earlier? Why did I stay, why did I forgive him? And it really does come down to having this loving and compassionate, and respectful relationship, not for him.

For herself. At the end of the day, you have to put yourself first before anyone. The relationship you have with yourself is the only relationship you will ever have with someone for your entire damn life. And often, depending at where we're at in our healing journey, when we leave the relationship, we can look back at the relationship and notice like, oh shit.

I did have this teeny feeling deep down of my gut intuition going off saying something was wrong about him, but I didn't listen to it. And. I'm gonna say, that's okay that you didn't listen to it again because you were being emotionally and psychologically abused because he was lying to you because he was pretending to be someone he was not.

So you were dismissing your gut intuition and you're wanting to believe him instead of believing yourself. 'cause quite honestly, believing ourselves in a situation like that, having to come to terms with weight, this man is cheating. He's lying. Whatever it is terrifying. It's scary because again. This is a relationship.

This is someone you were creating a life with. And it's this plan that we're creating. It's the future that we're creating, and it's this path that gives us this sense of comfort and stability. And so we wanna keep going down this path with this person. So then if we're having this tiny feeling deep down that something's not right with him, that means we're also having to give up this perceived future that we've created and that can feel really scary.

So that's often why a lot of women do dismiss our gut intuition about someone, because then we also have to change our life path and change the future we thought we were going to have with them.

And even just from a societal standpoint, like yes, we know women's intuitions are so fucking strong, even think back to previous times in your life, whether it's with a person or a career or a situation or whatever. When your body wa was like, oh no, this doesn't feel right, but then your logical mind tried to have you outthink it, and your logical mind was like no.

This is all right. This is okay. And then maybe hours, days or weeks or months later. What you predicted to happen actually came true And that was your gut intuition warning you. So a huge thing I work on with my clients is we look back at the relationship to notice these moments of where our gut intuition was speaking to us and recognize those bodily sensations that our gut intuition is telling us.

So that moving forward when. Our gut intuition starts speaking, whether that's in dating or work or friendships, family relationships, like really anything we can start to trust that gut intuition. Instead of having our logical mind try to talk us outta things.

Our body, the sensations we feel in our body are so much quicker. So much smarter, but then that logical mind tries to come in and be like, oh, you know what? Maybe you're overthinking it. Maybe you're overanalyzing it, maybe you're being insecure, maybe you're being controlling, maybe you're, whatever.

But no, our body will tell us if something is right or wrong with us. And so that's something that's really important to go through after this healing journey is to look back at the relationship. Notice those signs where your body, maybe that meant where your body was trying to tell you that something wasn't right, and maybe that showed up as increased anxiety, not being able to sleep at night, having nightmare.

Going through his phone, getting suspicious when he was out at night or with friends, or when he would tell you something and your body was just like I don't know if that's right. And you would ask him a lot of questions about it to try to catch him and investigate it. All those moments is quite literally our woman's intuition and be like, Hey, you need, we need to wake up.

Something isn't right, , this isn't right. And so after trauma, after betrayal, trauma, one of the most empowering and loving things we can do for ourselves is learning how to rebuild that women's intuition. And something that's really important is when you look back at this relationship, you're like, oh, okay.

Yeah. Like maybe I did have this tiny feeling deep down that something wasn't right.

And something that's really important to point out is when you're looking back at the relationship and you are thinking of these moments and remembering these moments of Oh yeah. Maybe my gut intuition was going off, or, oh yeah, I did have a feeling something was wrong there.

It's really important to not shame yourself for those moments. It's really important to not be a bully to yourself or criticize yourself for those moments, and instead recognize that you are being emotionally and psychologically abused and you did the best you could with the information that you had at that time.

Okay, I'm gonna repeat that. You did the best you could with the information that you had at that time. You would have never predicted that he was doing what he was doing. When you got into this relationship, you would've never thought it would end the way it did. You had no idea that he was capable of hiding and doing what he did.

You had no idea that a human, that a person could ever do this type of betrayal to someone. And that's okay because you shouldn't have to think like that in a relationship. You never thought someone was capable of doing this because you are not the type of person who would ever do this to someone.

And something I work on a lot with clients is they're like, I can't understand why he would do that. And my answer to that is good. You can't understand why he would do that, because you are not the type of person who would do that. And that says so much about how opposite and how incompatible you two are

you are someone who lives with integrity, honesty, empathy, sympathy, compassion, respect, love, kindness. He doesn't.

And sure. Maybe he had a bad childhood. Sure. Maybe he hasn't avoided attachment style. Sure. There's so many ways you can psychoanalyze and intellectualize who he is, how his brain works, all of that. But at the end of the day. He was not the person for you because you deserve someone who matches your values, who matches your morals, who matches your integrity, and that was not him, and that's why you walked away.

Another big thing I work on with my clients after they leave their relationship is I say something along the lines of, I can't believe I wasted so much time with the wrong person. I wish I would've left earlier. And I feel you. It's hard. It is really hard to think of however long you're with this person to think of this time as being wasted.

But I want to reframe that for you and say, that was not time wasted. Going back to what I was saying earlier, there was still a lot of good moments in the relationship and that may have brought you healing in other areas of your life. There were still a lot of moments of friendship, companionship. Love, although it wasn't, and I say love lightly, but love on your end.

That's not real love from him. You deserve better loved, but there were still moments of you feeling fulfilled and happy, and I'm sure the beginning of the relationship didn't feel like how the end of the relationship felt, and that was not time wasted. Sometimes we look at relationships and think that it's a failure if that relationship didn't last your whole life.

But sometimes people aren't meant to be here forever. They're just meant to serve a purpose. They're just meant to teach us lessons and then they leave. And that's why he was in your life. He wasn't meant to be here forever. He was here to teach you a lesson. And what I asked you is, what were those lessons?

Maybe he was here to teach you how to love yourself, how to choose yourself, how to stop people pleasing, how to stop putting someone else's needs and wants above your needs and wants. Maybe he was here to teach you how to walk away. Maybe he was here to teach you how to rebuild your life.

Maybe he was here to teach you the power of self-love and finding friendships and not using a relationship to fulfill you. Maybe he was here to change your career path.

Maybe he was here because along this journey of ending relationship with him, you're going to go meet new soul aligned friends who open you up to new opportunities, new careers, new travel, new friendships, new maybe your new soulmate, who knows?

But I just invite you to reframe that thought of. I wasted time with him, or how did I not see this? Or

why did it take me so long to leave? Or why did I forgive him? And just reframe that with love and compassion and respect for yourself. You didn't know then what you know now. You did the best you could with the information that you had at the time. That relationship wasn't a failure. It was just here to serve a purpose, a lesson, and it served it, and now he's gone.

Your life isn't ending. Your life is just beginning

right now. It feels messy. It feels complicated because you're grieving. You're grieving the person you thought he was, grieving the relationship you thought you had, your grieving, the future that you thought you had. You grieve in the life path that you thought you were on. And that's okay to grieve and to mourn that you have every right to grieve and mourn that no matter what he did, no matter the pain he caused you, no matter the abuse he caused you, and it's going to feel messy and complicated and that's okay.

But I want to offer a piece of hope to say that your life did not just end, your new life just started

you have limitless possibilities that your life can turn into now. You can go be and do whoever you want. You just removed this dark energy, this man from your life who was holding you back, who was causing you pain, who was abusing you, who was dimming your light, who was making you settle. Even if you don't see that right now, the more you heal.

The more you apply healing techniques, the more you seek professional help, the more you go on this healing journey, you're going to look back and see him and see the relationship for what it was

and. You're going to be creating this new life filled with new friends, new hobbies, new interests, new creative outlets, new career opportunities, new traveling, new everything. And of course, that's going to feel uncomfortable. There's going to be growing pains. Growth is uncomfortable, but the only way we grow is by stepping out of our comfort zone, and you're going to grow and deepen this relationship that you have with yourself.

You are going to look back at those moments of disrespect and notice that your gut intuition was speaking to you. And a lot of times when I'm working with my clients and in my membership, women say, how am I gonna trust a man again? How am I going to get in a relationship? That pain, that fear, is totally valid

but by doing the healing work, by applying these healing techniques, you're going to look back and realize that your gut intuition was speaking to you all along, and now you're going to rebuild trust with your intuition and know that, maybe it will be hard to trust someone again, but you're going to be able to trust yourself. Now when your gut intuition goes off

you're going to listen to it. You're not going to let someone lie to you or manipulate you or gas let you into it. You're going to feel when something doesn't feel right anymore. And that's not just the overnight change, that's not something that just magically happens. It takes consistent work. And that's what I work on with my clients and in my membership

because when you go through betrayal, that relationship dies. That life, that routine, that lifestyle you had with him dies, but also sold as that version of you, the version of that woman you were. It dies. You're not going to be disrespected again, you're not going to be gas that manipulate or emotionally abused.

You're not going to settle. You're not going to settle for breadcrumbs. You're not going to settle for a relationship that's good 70% of the time, and then unhealthy, disrespectful, and emotion psychologically abusive, the other 30% of the time, you're not going to do that because you deserve more.

And I know, deep down you deserve more. 'cause I know the women who listen to this are women who want to create change. They're women who want to heal. They're women who don't want to get into another relationship with a man who watches porn. They don't wanna get into a relationship .

Because they know the pain that it can cause again, and they don't wanna go through that again.

But one of the first steps on this healing journey is learning to forgive yourself and not shaming yourself, and not criticizing yourself, and not staying up with the thoughts of I, why did I forgive him? Why am I so weak? Why did I do this? Why didn't I catch him earlier? The more you shame yourself, the more stuck you're going to feel.

And forgiving yourself isn't as easy as just looking at yourself in the mirror every day and saying, I forgive myself. It takes a lot of deep work of us looking back at the relationship and seeing who were you when you first met him? Was there something you were trying to avoid or numb or distract in your life?

Were you hoping he could come fix a certain part of your life where you just came out of another relationship or just being rejected by another man or getting tired of being on dating apps? Who were you? What were you doing when you first met him?

And it also looks at looking back at the relationship. And noticing those signs of the small moments of disrespect that we may have forgive or ignored or made excuses for, or gave him the benefit of the doubt about, and looking at that and recognizing, Hey, I don't deserve that and I'm not going to settle for that again.

It also requires looking back and at us and. Having the honest conversation with ourself about what parts of you wanted to be loved, even though this man was bringing you pain, what parts of you wanted to believe in the best of him, or what parts of you wanted to put his emotional needs and wants before your own?

What part of you would rather be in this relationship than start over again? And that's a normal fear. , And that's okay.

But forgiving ourselves doesn't look, doesn't revolve us blaming ourselves. It's truly just having compassion, love, and respect for ourself. And by doing that's how we grow this deeper relationship with ourself. And so the next time we date, we don't give second chances when there's disrespect. So that we have the strength and the courage and independence to walk away at that first sign of disrespect so that It never gets to this point.

And if you're listening to this and you can relate, I would love to help you strengthen this sense of forgiveness and self-love and self-compassion and self-respect with yourself. This is a huge thing I work on with my one-on-one clients, if you wanna join my three month coaching program or if you just wanna try a one-time call, I have a link for that in my show notes for both the three month coaching application, the one-time coaching call, and also my private group membership, which I highly recommend.

It is I've had a loss of words I had never seen such a supportive and loving community of women just coming together and uplifting one another and the vulnerability that they show in the chat. And during our weekly support hour and during our group calls every other week, I've just never seen them show up and be so loving and compassionate and encouraging to one another.

It is amazing. And just seeing the growth that these women are having, it's absolutely fucking amazing.

And if you have any questions on the membership, on my coaching, on any of that, 'cause you wanna see if it's the right fit for you. I just wanna say, I know that talking about betrayal, talking about our deepest fears and traumas and rejection and abandonment can be so difficult. I hear you. I feel you. And I just want you to know

it is a shame free judgment free space for me, and if you wanna see if it would be a good fit for you, just reach out to me on Instagram or TikTok. My handle is at wtf do I do now coaching and that's also in the show notes and we can talk about where you're at, what you're looking for help with, and how I can help.

But I just want you to know what you went through is not your fault. You're not weak, you're not stupid, you're not insecure. You are just. Feeling the impacts and the effects of emotional and psychological abuse and what you're feeling is normal. And I'm truly sorry that you're feeling it, but I also want to just offer that light at the end of the tunnel and let you know.

You can transform your life. You are the author of your life and you get to create this next chapter. You can go be and create whoever the fuck you want to be and whatever the fuck you want to do, this person was removed from your life. 'cause they are not the one. This person was removed from your life because

you were settling and they were holding you back, and it might not feel like that now. That's okay, but take it from me. I am more than two years out and I am so thankful I did not end up with that man. There are literally no words to describe it. I do not miss him. I do not feel love for him. I worked my ass off to heal and to create a life that I could truly be proud of. A life that felt in alignment with me and a life were my biggest fucking dreams that I never thought I was capable of. I never thought I could create this life. And then I did it. And none of that would've happened if I did not take this opportunity to truly heal, to not spend my time dating men, to truly focus on getting to know myself, doing deep personal development and deep transformation work to understand who I am and what I truly want in life.

And now I get to be a digital nomad. I sold everything I own, and now I get to travel the world. I'm living in Australia. I get to work for myself with women, but also with another business that I have on the side. I get to have these amazing new friendships with single women who are creating powerful lives who are

focusing on their career, who are focusing on travel, who are focusing on personal development, who are focusing on also creating soul aligned friendships, who are focusing on creating this one wild, beautiful fucking life. 'cause that's all we really have. At the end of the day, and instead of pouring my love and time and energy into a man who is disrespectful and lying and manipulating and cheating, I get to pour that love time and energy into myself.

And just think of where you would be if you poured as much time and energy and love into him, and if you poured that into yourself instead. Imagine the potential. Imagine the potential you saw in him. Now, imagine that potential you can see in yourself when you're on this healing journey, when you're rebuilding your self worth, your self love, your self respect and you're chasing your fucking dreams.

Whatever those are, and you might not even be able to think about your dreams are right now because you are just hurt by everything he did. And that's okay. But that's why I work with women. Because I wanna help get you outta this pain, help get you outta this hurt and help you focus on the future in this new life that you want to call in and that you want to create.

And that's what I'm doing with my clients and that's what we're doing inside my group membership what the fuck you do now? Teaching the healing techniques and the resources and all of that, but also having you step outta your comfort zone and creating this one life that we have that's, there's so much out there.

There's so much of life that's meant to be experienced and felt and seen, and you were going to do it no matter what.

And so again, if any of this feels like it's calling to you, reach out to me on Instagram or TikTok. My handle is at wtf do I do not coaching or you can also check out the show notes where I have links about the group membership.

You can also book a one time support call with me, or you can also apply for my three month coaching package. There are resources here to help. I want you to know you are not alone. I'm sorry for what he put you through, but you are going to glow the fuck up and he's going to have to live with the fact forever that he fumbled you and you are going to move on and you are going to create a new and better life without him.

I know you are because I am seeing women doing it and I know that you are going to do it. Alright, that's all I had for today. I feel like I rambled a lot, but you know what? That's life. Okay. I love you. Goodbye. I'm proud of you.