133. Letting Go of the Outcome in Infidelity Recovery

After betrayal, it’s natural to want answers.

Will they cheat again?

Will we make it through this?

Will I ever feel okay again?

We fixate on the outcome, hoping that if we could just know where this ends, we’d finally be able to breathe.

But in this episode, I explore a powerful truth:

Clarity doesn’t come from predicting the future; it comes from how you show up in the present.

Letting go of the outcome isn’t about giving up, but about reclaiming your peace, your power, and your presence. Because the most important question isn’t “What will happen?”, it’s “Who do I want to become in this?”

This episode is an invitation to stop gripping the wheel of a parked car, and to start living from a place of grounded self-trust, even when the ending is still unknown.

Key Takeaways:

• Why your brain clings to control after betrayal

• The illusion of “future tripping” and why it leads to anxiety

• What letting go of the outcome really means, and what it doesn’t

• The shift from obsessing over outcomes to embodying presence

• A grounding practice you can try today to return to now

💬 Reflection Question:

If you let go of needing to know the outcome…how would you start showing up differently today?

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:

You know that moment when something breaks in your life and suddenly the future you thought you were walking into just disappears. You find yourself scanning ahead, trying to see through the fog, asking questions that loop over and over and over. Will we make it? Will they cheat again? Will I ever be okay? Is infidelity recovery possible?

It makes sense. After betrayal, your mind grabs for something solid, something predictable, something that will help you feel safe again. But here's the paradox. The more tightly you hold on to the needing to know, the harder it becomes to actually heal You see, we think if we can just predict the outcome, we'll feel better That certainty it.

It will give us peace that knowing where it's all going will make the hurt easier to bear. But that's not how it works. What you are feeling isn't clarity seeking, it's fear management, it's future tripping. It's your mind trying to build safety by controlling what hasn't happened yet. And I promise you I get it.

I've seen it in my clients. I've lived it myself, and it's exhausting and it doesn't work because the outcome, you can't control it and clinging to it. Gripping it with both hands is like sitting in a parked car, hands on the wheel, convinced that you're driving somewhere, but you're not. You're just burning emotional fuel.

In this week's episode, I want to revisit a topic I spoke about very early on in this journey, letting go.

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 this week's episode of the After the Affair podcast. I'm your host, Luke Shillings, and you are listening to episode number 133. Letting go of the outcome doesn't mean giving up. It doesn't mean you are letting yourself be walked over. It doesn't mean you are rolling over or pretending that this doesn't matter, and it certainly doesn't mean that you are abandoning your hopes, your values, or your right to have something beautiful on the other side of all of this.

Letting go of the outcome means something much deeper. It means you are choosing wisdom over worry, freedom over fear. Because the truth is constantly scanning the horizon, trying to guess what happens next. It doesn't keep you safe. It keeps you stuck. Stuck in anxiety, stuck in indecision, stuck in a story that says peace only exists once you are sure.

But peace doesn't live in certainty. It lives in presence. Letting go of the outcome means choosing presence over panic. It means that when your mind wants to rush ahead and play out every possible scenario you gently return to. Now you stop asking what if and start asking what is, what's real, what's true, what's in your control right now?

Letting go of the outcome also means choosing action. Over overthinking. It means deciding who you want to be in this moment, and then being that one breath, one step, one choice at a time. Because when you do that, something really powerful happens. You begin to regain your power, not by bending the future into what you want it to be, but by showing up right now with clarity, with integrity, and with compassion for yourself.

This isn't about being passive, it's about being anchored. It's saying, I can't control what happens next, but can control how I show up in this moment. And from that place, you begin to feel safe again. Not 'cause the world is predictable, but because you are showing up as someone you can trust. I regularly speak to people and work with people who have these questions.

It's the same question. It's the what's going to happen? What's gonna happen to us? They can't sleep. They continually replay every conversation in their mind. Every moment is filtered through one lens. This lens of, will this lead us back together, or will it push us apart? But nothing they do brings them peace because the peace isn't in the answer.

The piece is in the question that's being asked. Who do I want to be right now? Regardless of how this ends, that question, it changes everything. It gives you something that the predictions can't. It provides a sense of agency, a sense of clarity, a sense of self. So I want to ask you the same thing right now, this moment, if you stopped asking what will happen.

Instead asked, what do I want to be in this? Not what decision should I make? Not how do I fix this? Just who do I want to be in this space, in this chapter, in this foggy, painful stretch of the journey, what would shift for you? Maybe you'd stop over functioning. You'd stop trying to be everything for everyone just to hold it all together.

Maybe you'd give yourself permission to rest, to stop performing, to be human again. Maybe you'd stop obsessing over your partner's behavior, constantly watching for signs, decoding every word, every glance, and instead you bring your focus back to your own body, your own boundaries, your own peace. Maybe you'd stop waiting to feel okay before you lived again and start doing the things that help you become okay.

Bit by bit, breath by breath. Not perfectly, of course, but honestly or authentically. Letting go of the outcome doesn't mean the outcome doesn't matter. Of course it matters. Of course you care. You're allowed to hope, you're allowed to want. But when you make the outcome, the only thing that matters, you lose yourself In the waiting.

You lose the part of you that's capable of making choices. Now, the part of you that doesn't need a guarantee to start healing the part of you that already knows how to take the next step. Letting go doesn't mean giving up. It means remembering that your healing your worth, your future isn't defined by what they do next or what the relationship becomes.

It's defined by who you become in the process because the outcome, that's not the prize you are. Who you're becoming as you choose presence over panic, who you're becoming, as you rebuild your self-respect, who you are becoming as you learn to trust yourself again, even in the dark. That's where the healing is.

That's where the power is. That's where you stop surviving and start living again. So if you've been stuck in limbo, caught in a loop of questions that never quite settle, should I stay? Should I go? Will they change? Will I ever feel whole again? This is your permission to pause, not to give up, but to take a breath, a real one.

The kind that reminds you that you are still here. Take your hands off the wheel. The one you've been gripping so tightly, not because you're reckless, but because that wheel was never actually moving the car you've been holding on for dear life. Not because you're weak, but because you're scared, because you've been trying to steer your way through something that just can't be mapped.

But right now, you don't need a map. You just need to come home to the moment you are in. This is your invitation to exhale, to feel your feet on the ground again, to remember that the future you are trying to predict, it's not a place you'll arrive at with answers. It's a reality that you create moment by moment, choice by choice every time you act in alignment with your values, even if it's messy, even if it's slow.

Even if it doesn't feel certain, you are shaping a life, one that is rooted in integrity, one that reflects who you really are, not who you've been trying to be for someone else or for some hypothetical outcome. You are shaping a life that will hold you even if the relationship doesn't survive, even if the story doesn't go how you hoped.

Even if the answers never fully come because the real safety, it was never in the outcome. It's the self you are becoming. So let go of needing to know and instead. Choose to become. That's the real work. That's the brave work is the transformational work, and you don't have to do it alone. And I'm here with you every step of the way.

If this episode gave you something to sit with. I'd love to hear from you. Message me, join the conversation in the Facebook group or book a free discovery call if you're ready to walk through this with support and above all else. Remember, you don't have to see the end of the path to take the next step, that step, that presence, that choice.

That's where your healing begins. Take care. I'll speak to you all next week.