128. Was the Affair Partner Better? The Truth About Comparison

After infidelity, it’s almost impossible not to compare yourself to the affair partner. Were they more attractive? More exciting? Did they have something you didn’t? The mind starts ranking you against them, like a game of Top Trumps, where someone’s ‘stats’ must be higher.

But here’s the truth about comparison: this mindset is a trap.

In this episode, join me, Luke Shillings, as I break down why we compare ourselves to the affair partner, why it makes us feel worse, and how to stop measuring our worth based on someone else’s actions. Because the reality is, infidelity isn’t about someone being ‘better’, it’s about circumstances, unmet needs, and choices.

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “What do they have that I don’t?”, this episode is for you.

Key Takeaways:

• Why we instinctively compare ourselves to the affair partner.

• The Top Trumps Effect: why we rank ourselves in different ‘categories’ of worth.

• The illusion of ‘better’: why affair partners aren’t the reason for the betrayal.

• How to shift from comparison to confidence in your self-worth.

• Practical steps to stop the self-doubt spiral.

💬 Reflection Questions:

Have you found yourself stuck in comparison? How did you shift out of it?

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 back to the After The Affair podcast. I'm your host Luke Shillings and today you're listening to episode number 128. Today I want to talk about something that I know so many of you struggle with, comparison, jealousy and actually the illusion of ranking ourselves against others.

Have you ever walked into a room and instantly started sizing yourself up against other people? Maybe you're at a party and there's someone more confident, more attractive, more charismatic and suddenly it feels like you're losing points in some invisible game. This is what I call the top trumps effect where we mentally rank ourselves in different categories like looks, charm, success, even desirability in relationships. It creates a constant state of insecurity and fear of being downgraded in the eyes of others.

But is life really a game of top trumps or is it just an illusion that distorts how we see ourselves? Let's break it down. Me and my daughter we play top trumps all the time. A variety of different topics have existed throughout her early childhood let's say.

It started with things like Disney and more recently it's Roblox but the principle is still the same. It's one card's attempt to rank and compare against another and ultimately win in some sense. The person with the most cards at the end of the game wins.

They are the top trump. One of my clients recently shared an experience that perfectly captures this. He was at a gathering and everything was just fine until another guy showed up.

This guy was charismatic, effortlessly social and seemed to command attention without even trying and just like that he felt like his confidence just dropped. It was as if his card had been placed next to somebody else's and in his mind he had just lost. He described this game of top trumps where we all have these different stats attractiveness, confidence, success, intelligence.

The problem the moment he started mentally comparing himself he forgot about his own value and instead of enjoying the night he became consumed with how he ranked. And here's the thing this mindset isn't just in social settings it happens in relationships. Have you ever felt insecure about your partner's ex because they seem to score higher than you in some way? Have you ever been in a relationship and worried that your partner might meet someone better and trade up? Or are you struggling with jealousy in an affair wondering if you'll ever compete with the other person, the other woman, or the other man? It's all the same game and it's exhausting.

So why do we do this? Why do we feel the need to rank ourselves in every situation? Psychologists refer to this as social comparison theory. It's the idea that we instinctively evaluate ourselves by measuring ourselves against others and at its core this comes from an old survival mechanism. In tribal times being valued in the group meant safety.

If you were seen as weak unattractive or just not useful you could easily be outcast. So our brains evolved to constantly assess our status to ensure that we belonged. But here's the problem in today's world that survival mechanism is working against us.

Instead of evaluating real threats we're comparing ourselves in ways that just don't serve us. And worse we often fall into what's called the zero-sum fallacy, the mistaken belief that if someone else is winning then by definition we must be losing. But it's not obvious that those two things are actually related.

Sometimes it can seem that if someone else is more attractive, more successful, more charismatic, then it somehow diminishes us. But life isn't a game where one person's strengths take away from another's. It's not top trumps.

This is where most people push back, myself included. You know I think to myself but Luke isn't it natural to compare? If someone is objectively better looking, more successful, or more confident than me then doesn't that mean that they are better? And to that I'd say well better at what? What game are we even playing? Imagine judging a fish by how well it climbs a tree. That's what we do when we compare ourselves to a flawed metric.

You might not be the most charming person in the room but does that make you less valuable? Maybe you're the most thoughtful, the most reliable, the most emotionally intelligent. The things that truly make someone irreplaceable in relationships are rarely the things that we measure in the moment. So the real issue isn't comparison itself, it's how we measure worth.

So how do we shift out of this mindset? How do we stop playing this imaginary game where we're always at risk of losing? If you're playing the wrong game, change the rules. Instead of measuring yourself by how you compare to others, ask well what actually makes me feel valuable? Confidence isn't about being better than someone else, it's about knowing you bring something unique to the table. Comparison becomes toxic when we unconsciously play by somebody else's rules, rules that we never consciously even agreed to.

Think about it, if you measure yourself by society's standard of attractiveness you'll always find someone more conventionally attractive. If you base your worth on career success someone will always have a bigger job title or higher salary. If you compare your relationship to somebody else's you'll always wonder if yours is as good as theirs.

It's an unwinnable game because the criteria just keeps shifting. But what if instead of trying to win at somebody else's game you started defining your own measures of success, the confidence and self-worth? Most people never stop to ask themselves what actually makes me feel valuable? They just assume it's whatever society, their peers or their past experiences have told them it should be. So let's try something.

If you weren't comparing yourself to anybody else how would you define your own worth? Is it in how deeply you connect with others? Is it in your kindness, your ability to listen, your emotional depth? Is it in your unique perspective, the one that you bring to conversations? Or is it in how resilient you've been through difficult challenges? Maybe you don't have the highest stats in a particular category but does that actually matter? Does that define your actual impact on the people around you? Think of your closest friends, your family or the people who love you. Are they in your life because of how well you rank or because of the experience of being with you? No one, at least not to my knowledge, has ever said I love them because they are a 9.2 in intelligence and an 8.7 in confidence. We're drawn to people for their energy, their authenticity, their presence, not for their scores.

So the real shift comes when you stop asking how do I compare and instead start asking what do I uniquely bring to the table? Confidence isn't about being better than somebody else, it's about knowing that you bring something unique. This is the biggest misconception about confidence. People assume confident people feel secure because they believe that they're superior but true confidence has nothing to do with competition.

Think about the people that you admire most. Are they constantly proving themselves or are they just comfortable being who they are? The most magnetic people aren't the ones desperately trying to outshine others, they're the ones who have, well, nothing to prove. They know their worth isn't based on comparison, they know it's not worth, not based on, sorry, a validation.

They know that their value isn't diminished because someone else is quote-unquote too great and there lies the mindset shift. Instead of seeing life as a ranking system start seeing it as a collaborative experience where everyone brings different strengths and there's enough space for everybody because the moment you change the game you stop being a player in somebody else's and when you define your own rules you never have to worry about losing. Have you ever been jealous of someone? Yeah, then only to later realise that they weren't maybe quite actually as perfect as they seemed? Maybe you envied a couple who looked happy only to find out that they were struggling just as much behind closed doors, if not more.

Or maybe you admired someone's confidence only to learn that they were actually deeply insecure. People aren't top trump cards, they are whole, complicated human beings. The moment you stop seeing them as a set of stats and start seeing them as people, the comparison, it loses its power.

Jealousy is often built on a distorted perception of reality. When we compare ourselves to others we rarely are considering the full picture. We're comparing what we see, the polished, curated, surface-level version of somebody's life, with what we know about ourselves which includes every single flaw, insecurity and struggle.

This is why social media feels so much comparison. We see the best angles, the most flattering photos, the happy couple moments, but we don't see the arguments, the self-doubt or the silent struggles. Have you ever looked at a couple and thought, wow they seem perfect together, I wish my relationship was like that, only to find out later that they were on the brink of breaking up? Or perhaps you've admired somebody's confidence, thinking that they had everything together, only to have a private conversation with them to realise that actually they feel like a fraud half the time, they're experiencing imposter syndrome.

That's because no one is just their highlight reel. People are complicated, relationships are complicated, even the most successful or attractive people have struggles, they have insecurities and moments where they feel lost. The problem isn't that we compare, it's that we compare ourselves to an illusion.

Have you ever been intimidated by someone? Someone who seemed effortlessly charismatic, confident and admired, only to later realise that they were dealing with their own internal battles? Maybe they seemed to have everything, looks, success, charm, but underneath it all they constantly worried about not being enough. I once worked with a guy who was deeply insecure about his relationship because he felt like his partner could meet someone else more confident, more successful, more attractive. His fear came from the belief that if someone with higher stats came along he'd automatically lose.

But as we worked together he started to notice something, the people that he envied, the ones who looked like they had it all, weren't actually as secure as they seemed. The guy who appeared effortlessly confident, behind the scenes he was terrified of rejection. The couple that looked like hashtag relationship goals, they were barely speaking at home.

And the person who seemed to have everything together, they were struggling with crippling self doubt. It's not that these people weren't great in some ways, it's that their greatness didn't erase their struggles. And that's what we seem to forget when we compare.

We assume that if someone is excelling in one area they must have it all. But no one wins every category, and most people don't even feel like they're winning at all. When you stop seeing people as a collection of stats and start seeing them as a whole complex human being, something really interesting happens.

You stop idealising them. You stop assuming that they have it easier than you. You stop feeling like their success or strengths take away from yours.

Because once you realise that everyone is struggling with something, everyone is insecure about something, and no one has it altogether, comparison, well it kind of feels pointless. You don't need to win against someone who's just as flawed and figuring things out as much as you are. You don't need to feel less than someone who, if you really knew them, probably feels less than in their own way too.

At the end of the day we're all just human beings trying to do our best, trying to figure stuff out. And when you see people as people rather than competitors in a ranking system, jealousy stops feeling so overwhelming. Because you were never losing the game, it wasn't real.

What if instead of seeing others as competition, you saw them as inspiration? What if instead of asking how do I rank, you asked how can I grow? Somebody else's success does not diminish yours. Someone else's attractiveness does not erase yours. Somebody else's strengths do not mean you have none.

Look, comparison will always be there. Your brain is literally wired to measure and assess. But the question is, are you playing a game that actually matters? Because life isn't a card game where higher stats mean someone wins and someone loses.

Your worth isn't up for ranking. So next time you catch yourself mentally stacking your stats against somebody else, pause and ask yourself, what am I assuming about them that might not even be true? If I wasn't comparing, how would I define my own value? Or how can I shift the focus back to what makes me feel confident? Because once you stop playing this game of top trumps, you realise you were never losing in the first place. If this episode has resonated with you, I'd really love to hear your thoughts.

Have you ever struggled with the top trumps effect? How did you break free from it? You can connect with me either on Instagram at mylifecoachluke, or you can contact me directly at luke at lifecoachluke.com. And if you want to go deeper into this work, I offer private coaching to help you navigate comparison and security and self worth in your relationships. You can book a free discovery call at lifecoachluke.com. Thank you ever so much as always for spending this time with me and until next week, take care of yourself. And remember, your worth isn't a number on a card.