136. The ABCs of Infidelity Recovery – Acceptance, Boundaries, Compassion

When betrayal shatters your world, knowing where to start can feel overwhelming.

In this episode, I break down a simple yet powerful framework to help you regain clarity, direction, and strength: The ABCs of Infidelity Recovery: Acceptance, Boundaries, Compassion.

These three pillars aren’t just concepts. They’re tools.

Tools to help you stay grounded when your emotions spiral.

Tools to help you protect yourself, reconnect with your truth, and create healing on your own terms.

Whether you're rebuilding your relationship or choosing a new path, this episode offers the emotional clarity you’ve been craving.

Key Takeaways:

• What real acceptance looks like, and why it’s not the same as approval or resignation

• How to set boundaries that come from self-respect, not fear

• Why self-compassion is foundational to lasting emotional recovery

• How these three principles work together to create momentum and healing

• A practical way to return to clarity when you feel stuck or overwhelmed

💬 Reflection Question:

Which of the ABCs do you find hardest to practice right now, and what’s one small way you can lean into it 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:

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 Airfare podcast. I'm your host, Luke Shillings, and today you are listening to episode number 136. As hard as it can sometimes be to acknowledge there is no manual for how to recover from betrayal. There's no checklist. There's no straight line, and often when people first come to me, they feel overwhelmed.

They feel frozen between pain and uncertainty, often unsure even where to begin. So today I really want to just offer something very simple, something memorable. I'm not gonna make this episode too long. I just want to provide a simple framework that you can come back to when your thoughts are spiralling or your emotions just feel too heavy.

You just wanna put them down. What I'd like to offer is the ABCs of infidelity recovery. That's acceptance, boundaries, and compassion. These are three pillars. Each one pretty powerful on its own, and when they practice together, they create momentum. They help you move from surviving to truly healing. So let's begin.

I wanna start by clearing something up. Acceptance does not mean approval, and it doesn't mean giving up. Acceptance means facing reality exactly as it is without distortion, denial, or delay. It means saying, this happened, not I'm okay with it. Not I deserved it, not. It's fine. Just this is what's true for me right now.

Because when you resist reality, when you cling on to how things quote unquote should have been, or constantly try and rewrite the past to maybe protect your pain in some way, you stay stuck. And trust me, I get it. Sometimes resistance feels like control. Like if you just refuse to accept it, maybe you can still fix it.

Maybe you can rewind the tape and undo it, but you can't heal from a wound that you won't admit is even there. Acceptance is that moment when you stop arguing with the past and start working with the present. It's where clarity really begins. So here's what practical acceptance actually looks like. It's recognising that you didn't cause somebody else to cheat, but you can still take responsibility for your healing.

It's acknowledging that your relationship has changed whether or not it survives. It's letting yourself actually feel the grief, but without rushing to get over it. And if you find yourself thinking, but I don't want this to be true, that's okay. Accept acceptance doesn't require your permission. It just asks for your honesty.

Next up, we have boundaries. Boundaries is the big one. It's the one that seems simple in principle, but is actually quite hard, much more challenging in reality. When betrayal happens, it's, it often reveals where your boundaries were, were weak, unclear, or maybe even non-existent. It's easy to look back and realise that you tolerated things that just didn't sit right, or perhaps you never fully voiced your needs because you didn't want to seem difficult.

You didn't want to upset the other people around you. Or maybe you assumed that your partner would honour what you never clearly defined like they were mind readers in some way. But of course, the truth is boundaries are not rules for somebody else to follow. They are declarations of what you will do to protect your own emotional wellbeing.

Boundaries are not a punishment. They're about self-respect. They sound like I feel unsafe or disrespected in the conversation. I will end it and return to it later, or I, if rebuilding trust is the goal, then honesty and transparency must be non-negotiable. Potentially, it could be. If my needs are dismissed repeatedly, I will consider how I show up in this relationship.

And boundaries aren't just communicated once they're lived, they're lived out again and again. They don't even need to be verbalised necessarily. It's how you demonstrate them. It's how you commit to your own boundaries. It's what will you do to protect yourself if somebody else's behaviour, somebody else's choices, continually putting a place where you are experiencing unnecessary discomfort, they're violating your boundaries.

And that's not forcing the other person to change. It's just making it clear what you will do if they don't change. So perhaps you could ask yourself, where do I need to be clearer? Or where have I been waiting for somebody else to kind of honour a need that I've really never directly expressed? And what would it look like to choose boundaries, not from a place of fear, but a place of self respect.

And talking of self-respect, this brings us on to see compassion. Compassion, and you know, let's start where it's hardest with yourself. Self-compassion isn't weakness. It's not wallowing or letting yourself off the hook. It's courage. It's saying this hurts. This is messy. But I will not beat myself up for being human.

So many people I work with feel guilty for how they're reacting. They say, I should be over this by now. It's like, it's like they measure themselves on some scale about how well they're doing compared to how well they think they should be doing. But of course, there is no should be doing. There is no scale.

Everybody's journey is different. They all have different bumps in the road, different opportunities, different challenges. They say things like, I should be over this by now. Maybe if I was more confident, they wouldn't have looked elsewhere. I keep spiralling. I just keep spiralling. Luke, what's wrong with me?

Well, the thing is nothing. Nothing is wrong with you. You're grieving. You're grieving a rupture in a, in the very place you thought you were the safest. And that pain deserves compassion, not criticism. So how do you practice that self-compassion? Well, you can start by speaking to yourself like you would to a dear friend.

Treat yourself like somebody you really care about. You rest when you're tired instead of pushing harder. You stop measuring your healing based on somebody else's timeline, and if reconciliation is part of your journey, compassion for your partner doesn't mean a raising accountability. It means remembering that healing isn't built on blame.

It's built on honesty, empathy, and sometimes when it's safe and earned a shared commitment to growth. But it starts with you. Because you can't offer compassion outward if you dunno how to hold it inwards. So there it is. The ABCs of infidelity, recovery, acceptance, boundaries, compassion. You don't need to master all three at once.

You don't need to do them perfectly. But when things feel overwhelming, when you ensure where to begin, come back to these three. Am I accepting what is true right now? Am I honouring myself through clear, respectful boundaries? And am I showing up for myself with compassion even when I'm hurting? Because these three simple practices, they create movement, they create space, they create healing, and they remind you that you are not.

Helpless. You are not too broken. You are not alone. You are already doing the work, and I can assure you, I'm proud of you. If today's episode helped bring something into focus, I'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts with me on Instagram. Drop me a DM you can visit me at at my life. Coach Luke, you can also join the conversation in the Facebook group.

You can find the link in the bio, and of course, if you are ready to take the next step in your recovery journey, then come visit life coach loop.com. Book yourself a discovery call. Let's, let's get on a call. Let's talk, let's see what the next steps for you look like, and if you want support applying the ABCs in your real life.

Your day-to-day experience through the fear, the doubt, and the slow rebuilding. Well, I'd love to walk alongside you because you don't have to do this alone, and you don't have to do it perfectly. You just have to keep showing up. I'll speak to you all next week. Take care.