108. Is Your Relationship Due for an Update?

In this episode of After the Affair, I explore how relationships, like technology, need regular updates to stay in sync. Just like your phone’s apps and software need upgrades to keep functioning smoothly, relationships also require personal growth and communication to thrive over time.

If you and your partner aren’t growing together, you risk falling out of sync, feeling disconnected, and losing that emotional intimacy. I discuss why relationships tend to slow down or feel “glitchy” when one person grows and the other doesn’t, and how personal growth is the key to getting back on track.

If your relationship feels stuck, it might be time for an emotional update. Tune in to learn how personal growth and communication can help you reconnect and stay in sync, no matter what stage of your relationship you're in.

Key Takeaways:

Why Relationships Need Regular Updates

• Just like technology, relationships fall out of sync without continuous growth and change.

Emotional Growth & Disconnection

• How one person’s personal growth can create distance if the other isn’t adapting or growing alongside them.

The Key to Staying in Sync

• Personal growth, communication, and emotional awareness are the ultimate “relationship updates.”

  
  

Why New Relationships Aren’t the Answer

• Feeling disconnected doesn’t mean finding a new partner, it means making sure you’re growing together in the relationship you already have.

How to Apply Updates in Your Relationship

• Self-awareness, open communication, and growing together to maintain a strong connection.

💬 Reflection Questions:

Have you noticed your relationship feeling out of sync lately? What’s one personal or relationship “update” you can focus on this week to get things back on track?

Connect with Luke:

• Website: www.lifecoachluke.com

• Instagram: @mylifecoachluke

• Email: luke@lifecoachluke.com

Join the After the Affair community at www.facebook.com/groups/aftertheaffaircommunity

Episode Transcript:

The After The Affair podcast with me Luke Shillings is here to help you process, decide and move forward on purpose following infidelity. Together we'll explore what's required to rebuild trust not only in yourself but also with others. Whether you stay or leave I can help and no matter what your story there will be something here for you.

Let's go! Hello and welcome to the After The Affair podcast. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. You're listening to episode 108.

I'm your host Luke Shillings. Today I want to talk about a relationship that I'm pretty confident that you have. This comes from a couple of statistics, one being that in October 2023 a report showed that over half of the global population, some 4.3 billion people, now own a smartphone.

Interestingly enough it's estimated that 6.7 billion people worldwide had a smartphone subscription which is an interesting disparity. Of course some people have more than one phone. Now there might be some very legitimate reasons for business and the combination of other things like that but given the context of infidelity it does add a different twist to the whole conversation.

Also as many as 80% of podcasts are consumed on smartphones. So it is quite likely that if you are not currently listening to me on or through your smartphone you have done at some point. And of course it's the relationship with our smartphones, it's our relationship with our phones that I want to explore today.

I have a relationship with my iPhone. Sometimes it's a good relationship and sometimes it's not such a good relationship. Now what do I mean by that? You know when you first get a new phone everything runs perfectly.

It's fast, everything syncs smoothly, the apps do exactly what they're supposed to do but as time goes on something changes. The apps become buggy, the system slows down and suddenly your phone isn't working like it did when you first got it. And the thing is it's not that the phone or the apps are necessarily broken, perhaps they just need an update.

Relationships are exactly the same. They need updates too. If you don't keep growing or adapting as a person or if you're in a relationship where your partner isn't doing the same things fall out of sync and that's when you start feeling stuck or disconnected.

So today I want to talk about what these updates look like, how to keep your relationship running smoothly and what happens when one of you is updating but the other isn't. So let's talk about your phone again. The apps you've got represent different parts of your relationship.

Communication, intimacy, trust, all the good stuff. In the beginning everything's aligned and the relationship runs like clockwork. But what happens after you've been together for a while? After you've settled into your routine let's say.

One of you starts growing. Maybe you're learning new things about yourself. Maybe you're focussing on self-improvement.

Maybe kids have come along and it's changed the dynamic within your family. But the other person, they've stayed the same. It's like your phone has got a system update but the apps haven't caught up yet and suddenly things feel slow, glitchy or just plain out of sync.

That's where a lot of people hit trouble in their relationships. It's not because someone's done something wrong necessarily but it's because one person is growing, changing and evolving while the other hasn't quite kept pace. Now I want to be clear here.

This is totally natural. Life does happen and maybe you're focussing on your career or you've gone through a personal transformation. It doesn't mean your partner is failing or that something's inherently wrong with your relationship.

It just means it might be time for an update and when that update doesn't happen things start to feel out of sync. So why do we fall out of sync? Well why does that initial smooth running connection start to feel so bumpy over time? It's because we're always growing as individuals. We are constantly changing.

There is no static version of you. It's interesting you know when you ask that question of what who are you and what does it mean to be you you tend to give a description based on a combination of things but usually it's about how you feel right now about your past. But at any given point that's going to change because more time has passed and therefore there is more information.

You've made more decisions. You have made more mistakes. You have had different life experiences which ultimately shift your perspective of how you are or who you are as an individual.

So we are continually evolving and growing and that's a good thing. But here's where it can get tricky. If one person is focused specifically on their personal growth or maybe they're going to therapy getting more in tune with their emotions or even just gaining new experiences but perhaps there's been a new opportunity at work or a career ladder step that wasn't available to them before or maybe their family has grown and is lit up a part of them that they hadn't even realised they had within them or vice versa.

Maybe it's highlighted something in the individual that makes them feel quite frightened and disconnected and therefore they start to modify their behaviour in a less positive way. And of course if this change is happening and the other person isn't doing the same it's like the relationship's emotional software is getting outdated. Think about it like this.

You've probably heard the term growing apart. You know it sounds cliche but it is real. What happens is one of you starts evolving emotionally, mentally, maybe even spiritually while the other person stays in the same emotional place they were when you first met.

That's when disconnection happens and this doesn't always come with big fights or dramatic conflicts. In fact it's often much more subtle. You might still love each other, still get along but sometimes something just feels off, like you're not quite on the same page anymore.

And that's the point where a lot of couples start to feel frustrated, sometimes without even knowing why and we then feel disconnected. We often assume that the relationship itself is broken but that's not always the case. Sometimes all it takes is an emotional update to get things running smoothly again.

So how do you avoid falling out of sync or if you're already feeling a bit disconnected how do you get back in sync? Well the answer is actually pretty simple, at least in principle, but not always easy to implement and it is growth. When I talk about updates I'm really talking about personal growth. You've probably heard that phrase, relationships take work and while that's true the kind of work that makes the biggest difference is the work that you do on yourself.

Think about it this way, if you're constantly updating yourself, learning more about who you are, challenging your own beliefs and growing emotionally, you bring that energy into your relationship. It keeps things fresh, it keeps things moving forward. But here's something I see a lot, people get comfortable.

They think, oh we've been together for years, we're fine, why change it? You know, that's how we've always done it. If it's not broke don't fix it. But that's where things can often start to break down.

Just because your relationship has been running smoothly doesn't mean that you can just stop updating. It's like ignoring those little pop-up notifications on your phone that say update required. Sure, things might work for a while but eventually you'll hit a wall where nothing works like it used to.

Growth doesn't mean that you have to change who you are. It's about being open to learning, adapting and staying curious about your partner and yourself. And when both of you are growing that's when the real magic can happen.

Now I want to tackle something that a lot of people think when they hit this disconnect. They start wondering, is this the right relationship for me? Maybe I need to find someone new or who's perhaps more aligned with who I've become. And I get it.

When you're feeling out of sync with your partner, a new relationship can feel like the shiny new phone that you've been eyeing. It's tempting but here's the thing, just because something feels new and exciting doesn't mean it's better. A lot of the time when you feel that spark with someone new, it's because they happen to be emotionally or mentally aligned with where you are right now.

But if you're not working on yourself, updating yourself, that new relationship is going to eventually hit the same problems. It's not about finding a person or a new person who fits, it's about both of you growing together so your relationship evolves with you. And a lot of people miss that.

They think if something's off it means it's time to move on. But more often than not what's needed is a shift in perspective and a commitment to growing both individually and as a couple. So what does it actually look like to update yourself in a relationship? What does personal growth even mean in this context? Perhaps I can break it down.

Self-awareness. This is really where we make the first step. It's about becoming truly honest with yourself and asking the really difficult questions.

Or even just the really curious questions. Like when was the last time you actually questioned why you do the things you do? Like what's really going on in your life right now? What are you feeling? What are your frustrations? And a lot of the time when we feel disconnected it's because we're not fully aware of our own emotional state. So taking time to reflect on where you are emotionally is absolutely critical.

Then of course we have communication. Once you've got a handle on your own emotions the next step is communicating that with or to your partner. And I'm not talking about surface level stuff like we need to talk.

I mean really sharing what's going on for you. Being vulnerable and listening when they share their side too. Communication is the ultimate update that keeps the relationship flowing smoothly.

Now it's easy to get stuck here because we often think that we can predict exactly what it is that our partner is going to say. If we bring up a particular topic or we share a particular thought or feeling that it's going to get ridiculed or dismissed or maybe just deflected in some way. They're going to show no interest or they're going to overreact and take it out of proportion or assume that you're attacking them in some way.

This miscommunication and perception or prediction of that miscommunication can can lead us to not really communicate at all. It actually closes the door on both sides and sometimes it takes just one of us to be able to say okay I'm going to say what I think and feel and I'm going to accept that my partner might not respond in the way that I would most like them to. However in doing this I am being honest, I'm being true, I'm being vulnerable and I'm giving myself and them permission to be able to see me for who I am rather than who I think they want me to be.

And it's at this point even if it's even if it's not on the very first attempt, it's at this point where you get to really see the other person. And once that person begins to see your true like true self then they also get the option to maybe feel safe where they can start to share things in a way that maybe they haven't considered before. It's never going to be exactly the same both ways because you're two different people, you have different communication styles.

But by opening up that door and being true to yourself even if you don't always like what you hear back, that is a way of knowing and being able to check. It's like okay well this is important to me, I am being in line with myself and if this other person, even if I do love them very much, if they're not able to provide me with what I need or support me or care for me in a way that I would like or to be able to hold space for me emotionally, then well okay that's provided me with some genuine real-world evidence that I can then decide whether I want to either continue in this relationship or not or I want to try and take some more definitive steps to to try and resolve it in some way. And this really is, this leads on to the third point which is ultimately growing together.

And this is where things really do come together. Personal growth doesn't have to be this solo journey. You can grow together by learning new things, exploring new experiences or even just deepening your emotional connection.

It's like upgrading your phone with new apps that enhance the experience. Together you're adding value to the relationship by evolving in sync. Alright so if you're feeling out of sync in your relationship, I want you to take a step back and ask yourself when was the last time you updated yourself emotionally? When was the last time that you and your partner had a real conversation about where you are, where you're going and how you can keep growing together? Take the next week to reflect on one area where you can apply an emotional update.

Maybe it's communication, maybe it's your own self-growth or maybe it's just being more present in the relationship. Whatever it is focus on it and see how things start to shift. Remember relationships aren't just about staying the same forever.

They're about evolving, adapting and growing together. And just like your phone needs updates to keep working smoothly, so do you. Thank you once again for joining me today on the After The Affair podcast.

If you found this episode useful as always please share it with someone who might need to hear it and please rate, review and follow if you're not already doing on your respective podcast platform. If you'd like to take this journey a little bit further then come over and join the conversation in the After The Affair Facebook community. You can join the group by visiting facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash After The Affair community and as always I'll pop the link in the show notes.

Excellent, okay so thank you very much and I'll talk to you all next week.