137. When You Suspect an Affair

When you suspect infidelity but don’t have the proof, it can feel like you’re living in emotional limbo, caught between your gut and your guilt. In this episode, I unpack the messy, painful, and very human experience of wondering whether something’s going on behind your back.

You’ll learn how to stop spiralling and start grounding, why your feelings are valid even without confirmation, and how to begin reclaiming trust in yourself, no matter what happens next.

If you’re frozen in fear or stuck in overanalysis, this is your lifeline.

Key Takeaways:

• You don’t need “proof” to honour your pain; suspicion itself creates emotional distress worth tending to.

• Overanalysis feels like control, but often creates more confusion and disconnect from your truth.

• Grounding and anchoring practices help shift you from obsession to self-alignment.

• The path forward begins by asking: “What do I need?” instead of “What are they hiding?”

• Clarity doesn’t always come from answers, it comes from reconnecting with your values, boundaries, and self-trust.

💬 Reflection Questions:

What would it look like to honour yourself in this moment, without needing all the answers? What helps me feel more like myself, even in the middle of this?

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. I'm your host, Luke Shillings, and today you are listening to episode number 130. Seven. Let's be honest. Suspecting your partner's, having an affair is one of the most disorienting experiences that you can actually go through. One minute everything feels fine enough, and the next, you're scanning their texts, you're watching their eyes, you're second guessing everything from a changed password to a missed call.

And here's the thing, you don't even know if anything's actually happened yet. So you are kind of grieving and doubting yourself at the same time, and that's its own kind of torture. So in today's episode, I want to meet you right in the middle of that spiral, whether you've seen clear changes. Or it's just a growing sense that something's off.

This is for the part of you that feels lost, unsure, and scared to trust your own instincts. So let's talk about how to respond to the suspicion of an affair with clarity, self-respect, and calmness. The thing is, you don't need proof to feel what you're feeling. You don't need screenshots, confessions, or undeniable evidence just to justify your emotional response.

If you are overwhelmed, you're heartbroken or, or just frozen. That's real. Suspicion is a neutral emotion. It doesn't pass through quietly. It doesn't just whisper. It roars through your mind, through your body, through your sleep, through your ability to even think straight. It stirs everything up. Grief for the version of the relationship that you thought you were in grief for the part of the relationship that is yet to be anger for the disrespect you might be imagining or, or starting to see confusion because things don't quite add up, but you don't wanna believe it.

Shame because, well, maybe part of you wonders if you are making it more about you and anxiety, my friend. Anxiety. Because when trust is shaky, nothing feels stable anymore. And too often I see people starting to gaslight themselves before anyone else has even had the chance to. They say, what if I'm wrong?

Or I don't want to ruin things by overreacting. Maybe I'm being dramatic. Maybe it's just my insecurity. Maybe I'm being paranoid. Let me be clear. Feeling hurt doesn't make you dramatic. It makes you human. When emotional safety starts to erode away. When patterns start to shift and intimacy maybe drops a little bit, or communication goes quiet, your nervous system responds before any kind of logic can kick in.

You feel the disconnect before you can even explain it. So yes, cry. Yes. Sit in stillness. Take a walk. Write a sentence or a page vent to a voice. Note that you don't send lie still with your hand on your chest. Say nothing if that's what you need. Say everything if you finally can, but please don't guilt yourself for being affected.

You're not fragile. You're not paranoid. You're not too much. You're responding to something that feels unsafe and whether or not the suspicion is confirmed, the pain of emotional uncertainty is still real, and it deserves to be seen. It deserves to be tended to moved through gently because even if nothing is happening, your trust has already been disturbed, and that's not small.

Something. And it's okay to care about something even if other people don't understand when you're dealing with suspicion, especially the kind, you haven't spoken out loud yet 'cause it's not real until you speak it out loud. Is it the temptation to keep it all in and feel overwhelming? You might think, I don't want to make a big deal out of nothing.

If I talk about it, it becomes real. I don't want people judging my partner. Or me, I should be able to handle this on my own. So you stay quiet. You smile when you're meant to. You nod through conversations, you keep going even when your insides feel like they're fraying at the edges. But the truth is, carrying this kind of emotional weight alone will just bring you down slowly at first, quietly, even in ways that you won't even realise.

Until you feel completely disconnected from yourself, there's that ache in your chest. Maybe it's short temper the way your mind keeps replaying old conversations, even when you're trying to focus. That's the pressure building. You weren't meant to process betrayal or even the possibility of betrayal in silence.

So let this be your permission. You can talk about it. You can reach out without having all the facts. You can speak the fear out loud, even if you're still unsure what's real. You don't need to shout it from the rooftops. You just need one person you can trust. Maybe that's a friend, a coach, or some other professional, someone who won't rush to fix it, but will sit beside you while you figure it out.

Saying it out loud doesn't make it worse. It helps you carry it better. It gives you a place to offload the questions, the fear, the not knowing. And often that's the moment things start to become clearer. Not because someone gives you answers, but because you finally give yourself permission to feel without apologising for it.

'cause remember, reaching out isn't weakness. It's strength in motion. It's self-respect. It's choosing not to let fear shrink your voice any longer. You don't need all the answers. You just need a safe space to start asking the questions out loud. When you suspect an affair, your mind goes into overdrive.

You become an investigator, scrolling, scanning, watching for patterns. You overanalyse the tone of voice. Maybe it's a new. Perfume or aftershave, the way they set their phone down. You scroll back through messages looking for a clue that you missed. You rehearse how a confrontation might go over and over in your head.

I'll never forget the amount of conversations I've had in my car driving to and from work, you know, playing out all of the different scenarios. Imagining what my partner would say in those moments and how they would respond. I was usually wrong. But this kind of mental sparring is what I often consider to be emotional surveillance.

It feels productive. It feels like control. It gives your brain a task when your heart feels overwhelmed. But the problem is it doesn't create peace. It just creates exhaustion and more confusion, and it often pulls you further away from what you are aiming at. And the worst part, the more you obsess, the more disconnected you become from the one thing that you can actually rely on yourself.

So what do you do instead? You shift from obsessing to anchoring. Anchoring does not mean ignoring your gut. It means tending to yourself instead of trying to manage them. It sounds more like this. I'm not going to scroll their messages at midnight. I'm gonna write down what I'm afraid of. What I need instead.

Or maybe I can't control their behaviour, but I can decide how I respond to what I see. Maybe it's right now I need to ground myself, not prove or disprove any theory. It's these small, steady actions that really matter. Here, breathe, touch, something real. Get outside, drink water, move journal for five minutes, do a thought download, not necessarily about them.

Do it about you. 'cause the reality is this, you don't find clarity by spiralling outward. You find it by turning inwards gently, of course, but consistently and with compassion. That doesn't mean you ignore the signs. It means you meet the signs with self-trust, not self-destruction. You don't have to fix this today.

You don't need all of the facts, but you do need to stop bleeding out your energy, chasing answers that only exhaust you Start by asking what helps me feel more like myself even in the middle of this, and then do that. It won't change everything, but it will change how you move through it, and that's where your power is.

One of the most damaging side effects of suspected infidelity is how quickly it turns inward. You start asking, did I miss something? Wasn't I enough? Is this my fault? What do they have that I don't stop right now? Honestly, just stop somebody else's deception. If it's happening, it's not a reflection of your worth.

And you questioning your intuition or criticising yourself for not seeing it sooner. It just doesn't help you heal. It just deepens the pain. So do the boring things. Eat something nutritious, drink some water. Move your body, put your phone down for a bit. Wrap yourself in a blanket and watch a show that makes you laugh.

Simple grounding. Just natural. Because self-kindness isn't a luxury when your heart's in crisis. It's your lifeline when you suspect an affair. Your brain wants resolution like now, but that pressure to figure it out often leads to impulsive conversations, reactive behaviour, and often leads to deep regret.

So here's permission from me. You don't have to confront them tonight. You don't have to decide whether to stay or leave today. You don't need all the answers to begin taking care of yourself. Sometimes the best next step is a small one, a pause, a breath, a commitment to gather yourself before gathering more evidence.

Suspicion just shrinks your world. Everything becomes about them, the phone, the messages, the lies, or lack of them. So start creating space again. Pick up something you used to love, reconnect with a friend. Start something small that's just for you, not just to distract, but to remember. To remember that you are a full human being with joy, purpose, and depth outside of what's happening in your relationship.

If you're in that space right now sitting in suspicion, feeling frozen between intuition and doubt. You don't need to have it all figured out. You just need to take one grounded, honest step at a time, and each of those steps, they'll lead you back to yourself. That's where you'll find your truth and your peace, that you're not broken, you're not weak, and you're not alone, and you will find your way.

Sounds a little bit like Liam Neeson from. I won't kill you. Sorry if today's episode resonated with you. As always, I'd love to hear from you. You can contact me directly over on Instagram at my life, coach Luke, or you can learn more@lifecoachluke.com. You don't need to walk this path in silence. You don't need to carry it all on your own.

You deserve support, you deserve clarity, and you deserve a life that feels steady, honest, and fully your own whatever comes next. As always been a pleasure. I'll speak to you all next week. Take care.