156. Beyond Good and Bad: Rethinking Your Feelings After Infidelity

After infidelity, emotions often feel like a storm: grief, anger, hope, and confusion, all swirling at once. But what if those emotions weren’t “good” or “bad”? What if they were simply messages, guiding you through the complexity of betrayal recovery?

In this episode, I explore how to rethink your feelings after infidelity and move beyond the trap of black-and-white thinking. I unpack how our beliefs, past experiences, and subconscious judgments shape the way we feel, and how we can begin to reclaim power over our emotional story.

If you've felt stuck in cycles of emotional detachment, false hope, or self-abandonment, this episode will help you understand what’s really going on beneath the surface, and how to heal it.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn why your feelings after infidelity aren’t good or bad; they’re data.

• Discover how your past shapes current emotional responses without you realising.

• Understand the link between trauma, ego, and your sense of emotional safety.

• Explore how to create space between reaction and response so you can choose differently.

• Begin rewriting the story you’re telling yourself about what happened and what it means.

💬 Reflection Questions:

Are there feelings you’ve judged as wrong or weak? What would change if you allowed them to be valid?

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 you're listening to episode number 156. Okay I'm gonna free flow today and a little bit of a continuation from last week to some extent so let's see where it goes. I hope you enjoy the ride.

We all meet a real variety of people in our lives and sometimes we find those people easy to get along with and sometimes they're a bit harder to get along with. I've always been fascinated by that. What is it that draws two people together and what is it that pushes two people apart? We could consider this from any context.

This can be just somebody you see walking down the street, an assistant in a shop, just a random person that you happen to come into contact with either through your work or an event that you attend and there's that feeling. It's like the body is already pre-equipped with a framework, an assessment of what these people are, what their intentions are, whether they're good or bad, whether you feel safe around them or not and yet when you actually stop to think about it where does that come from? Where does that questioning come from? Now I've noticed through all the people I've spoken to over the years generally speaking the majority of the the women that I've spoken to tend to use the term intuition and the majority of men that I speak to tend to use the term gut feeling. I've come to understand that these are the same thing and our intuition or gut feeling comes from all of the things that we have experienced in our lives.

That could be the things that we've learnt, the people that we've met, the TV shows that we watched when growing up as kids, our parents, our relationships, both the successful ones and the ones that maybe didn't quite end out, end up the way that we thought they would or simply just observing others, witnessing those around us. Our body is capable of taking in a huge amount of data. I remember reading somewhere that we consume something like 11 gigabits of data per second.

That's the available data you know through our sight, sound, vibrations, taste and smell. Yet we're only actually capable of processing a very very small proportion of that. Again I forget the exact number but it's small, it's a significant amount less.

I'm talking like 1%, maybe even less than that, I forget. Just because we're not consciously processing all of that information doesn't mean that it isn't going somewhere. It doesn't mean that it isn't being stored in some place deep within us, even if we're not always consciously aware of it.

And when we see patterns over and over again because I mean ultimately human beings we could be described as meaning-making machines and we often do that by looking for patterns. It's helped us survive in many ways, it's a primal instinct that helps us make sense of the world around us to keep us safe. And we're still doing that even though in the 21st century a lot of the dangers that existed tens of thousands of years ago, for most people at least, aren't applicable.

We can walk down the street and not risk being eaten by a wild animal. Most people are not going to go without food tonight. Most people live in shelter, a building of some description with walls and a ceiling.

And most people have electricity and hot running water and blankets and clothing. We don't face the same dangers that we once did but our bodies and that deeper part of our brain doesn't really know that or even care. All it's interested in is looking out for danger because if we can see something that is a potential threat, that is a potential danger, then the safest thing for us to do is to keep our distance from it.

So if we can't understand something or if we see somebody who represents something that we've seen as potentially untrustworthy, unsafe, unreliable, dishonest in the past, then it is a signal to our bodies, to our brains that this is not safe. And from an evolutionary survival perspective then the best thing to do is to keep away from it and to reinforce our beliefs about that thing or that person or that behaviour. Because, well, it's better to be safe than sorry, right? So we allow these things to happen and in doing so it creates judgments.

So we now have judgments about the people that we see in our lives, even people that we've only just met. And we base it on all kinds of things and, you know, some of those are more socially acceptable than others. Of course they're nearly all flawed but we do need some way of navigating the world around us.

If my daughter is unwell or has hurt herself and I go into a hospital and I see somebody come towards me in a white coat wearing a badge, I'm not going to check for their credentials. I'm not gonna wait and ask them, I want to see all their qualifications and how many people that they've treated before and what their success rate is. I'm just gonna assume that that person can help my poorly or injured daughter.

We make judgments all the time. We have to. Otherwise we're starting from scratch every single time we meet somebody.

So of course we have judgments but it's quite probable that those judgments are misguided and not completely accurate. So what does this teach us? Well, it tells me that we have beliefs and those beliefs are built up through a repetition of thoughts. We have thought something and then we have repeated that thought time and time again.

We have sought out evidence to prove ourselves right or in some cases we filter things and we ignore the things that might prove us wrong. This is one of the reasons that we tend to feel aligned with people who see things the way we do. It's one of the reasons that you see so much polarisation in the world.

It's one of the reasons that people support a specific football team over another and how they see the opposite as the enemy. Of course there can be friendly conflict of course but it can also go quite far and those things aren't really based on anything real. They're based on an attachment, an association with something that feels good to you and then when you combine that with other people who see it from a similar perspective that reinforces that belief.

So now the likelihood of you actually coming to terms or to understanding what somebody else's perspective, what the person on the other side might be thinking or feeling, it becomes harder to make that connection because they're the enemy. They're not like you. They're not like us.

They're different. But of course they've just been on the same journey too. It's just that chance, biology, genetics, where they were born, what football team their father supported, political affiliation they had, just their general approach in life, what their relationship with money is like, whether they were terrified of thunderstorms.

You're thinking what are we on about? Well think about it. If you as a child every time a thunderstorm comes around and you see your parents going into the middle of the house, keeping away from the windows, turning all the electricity off just so there's no surge, maybe getting some candles out, then that's telling you something. It's telling you that what's outside is very dangerous.

Or you could have parents that every time there is a thunderstorm you all go to the window. I love thunderstorms and I often wonder if it's because of this. When a thunderstorm came over it was really exciting.

I like the idea of counting how long it was between the flash of lightning and the crack of thunder and then noticing that time get either shorter or longer. You could tell whether the storm was coming closer towards you or it was moving further away. I was always fascinated by that, as long as I was inside of course.

So what we experience has a huge impact on how we then see the world. Think of all the different possible ways that you've been impacted based on the things that you've experienced from the people close to you, the people you've trusted, the people you've believed. And I'm not saying you're wrong for doing that, we're just acknowledging that actually that has quite a big impact on how you see the world.

Given that, it's pretty clear to me that we interpret all the situations that we see through our beliefs and not through objective truth. Because beliefs are just repeated thoughts they ultimately shape our perception. When we repeat those thoughts time and time again they become true to us, to the point where we stop questioning them.

It feels like they are factually correct, but of course they're not. They're subjective. There are eight plus billion people on the planet and it seems pretty unlikely to me, in fact it's almost statistically impossible, that you're right.

Yeah, you. It's impossible that you're right. How can you be? If we line up any random selection of people the likelihood that all of those people are going to see this situation, whatever it is, in exactly the same way you do is very, very, very unlikely.

So that tells me there are many different ways for which we can interpret the same situation. And if each one of those people thinks they're just as right as you think you're right, then something's wrong. That can be quite destabilising as you acknowledge it.

Sometimes it's being right that is your place of safety. When you have confidence in your own opinions and your own thoughts then at least that's something you can hang on to. And the idea of them maybe just being random and as a consequence of your upbringing and where you were born and your family and all of the different factors that go into the equation can feel like you've got a little less control.

But of course control is not about being able to predict the future. It's not about certainty. It's not about knowing truly what is the right decision or what is the wrong decision.

It's never about that. It's about being able to respond to any given situation in the way that serves you best. It's about the choice in how you respond to any given situation.

Now I want to talk about our feelings, our emotions and I also want to tie it to something else. I'm sure it's something you've heard of and maybe it's something that you've given a little bit of thought to before, maybe not. But I want to explore the relationship between our feelings and our ego.

If we think of our feelings being as the thing that creates our experience because ultimately it's all about how we feel. Every single thing we do it's all about how we think it's going to make us feel. You know even as you're listening to this now you are feeling something.

Could be curiosity, could be excitement, intrigue, uncertainty, questioning, doubt, boredom. It could be many things but you're feeling something. Now feelings themselves are not necessarily good or bad.

I used to think that happy was good and sad was bad literally and that might sound really obvious. Well yeah of course obviously happy is good and sad is bad. I mean sad even rhymes with bad.

But what if that wasn't entirely true? What if all feelings were just neutral and it was really a case of finding the most appropriate feeling for a given situation or experience. So rather than it being good or bad maybe it was just about wanted versus unwanted. For example if you lose a loved one then grief is probably the feeling that you want to experience.

You don't want to be feeling all jovial or on ecstasy or unbothered. You want to feel grief because it represents the importance of that person in your life and the meaning that you apply to it. It's not about it being a good or bad feeling it's about it being the most appropriate emotional response to the situation that you are currently in and something you get to choose.

I choose to feel grief. I choose to feel sadness. I choose to feel loss or hurt when I lose something that's important to me.

And of course we can extend that beyond the feelings of grief in terms of the loss of somebody important to us and we can extend that to how we feel about our own relationships. But of course the problem with feelings is for many of us they do feel objectively good or bad and there's another part of us that doesn't like that and that is our ego. We experience the world through our senses.

Our brain applies a belief, often a pre-existing belief, which acts like a filter and our body has an emotional response to that. But then our ego judges what it is that we're feeling and it doesn't feel safe and the ego doesn't like it and it wants to restore balance. So often based on how it's gone through life it tends to try and get away from that discomfort because that's what it believes restoring balance means.

Get away from the discomfort. Let's level the scales. Let's balance things out a little bit.

And of course the easiest way that it has perhaps learned how to get away from discomfort is by reacting, resisting, avoiding. But it turns out that doesn't work, at least not for very long. It might give you a bit of short-term relief in the moment.

You might even be able to metaphorically kick the can down the road for a little while but there's not really any way around a negative feeling. Sometimes we have experiences that leave emotional scars. These are more commonly referred to as trauma where we have an experience or we witness an experience, a moment, an event, an emotional reaction and it leaves an imprint in our body.

And even though our brain can rationally move beyond that over time, it can acknowledge that that experience was whatever it was and maybe we saw it from a different perspective or who knows maybe we just get over it in some sense, the body keeps the score. Literally. It does not let go of things sometimes if it's had a traumatic response to a situation.

But it's not very good at tying that original trauma response to your current situation. Instead you now take a feeling of abandonment that maybe you picked up as a child because maybe you felt left out of your social group, maybe your teacher didn't give you as much attention as somebody else, maybe your parents always seem to be too busy with their work or other things, maybe you had an older or younger brother or sister that just seemed to get more attention and you felt abandoned and you adapted over time and you carried that wound within your body and now 10, 20, 30 years later you're in a long-term relationship and something that your partner does, completely unrelated to that event all those years before, they've now done something that in that moment your body is interpreted as feeling abandoned and it brings that trauma response back to the surface. So now your emotional reaction to the situation, no matter how irrational you can make it seem in your mind, your body's not interested.

You've heard me say before you can't out logic emotion so in these moments it can really feel like that emotional response you are having now could actually just be a scar from some completely unrelated previous event. Now that doesn't dismiss your partner's behaviour necessarily but it could change the light or the lens for which you look at it. Just knowing this doesn't change it, it doesn't fix it on the spot but it creates space for it to exist.

It offers a little bit of breathing room for you to be able to step back and acknowledge that what you are experiencing right now, the emotional response that you are having right now, might not be tied directly to the event that you are currently stood in front of. Let's tie this back to the people that we find difficult, the people that we are drawn to and the people that we feel we need to create space from. Those preconceived judgments that we have about other people, they're like these trauma responses.

They're not necessarily trauma but they're coming from a place that's deeper. They're coming from something that happened potentially a long time ago, maybe whilst looking through a very younger, less mature, just completely different lens based on what you were going, what was going on in your life at that time and then it was reinforced and now it just feels true so therefore when we see that person or that type of person we automatically have a response to it. Even if you were to just pause and genuinely question all of the beliefs that you actually have in that moment, what would you do differently? How would you choose differently? Would you still choose the same thing? One of the biggest things that gets in the way of people's healing is not noticing the progress they're making and this is usually because they're not taking the time to look back at the progress they've already made.

So it can often feel like you are still stuck in the same situation and then that becomes a narrative in and of itself. Probably one of the most common challenges that people I work with face is the story they tell themselves about the situation that they're currently in and it's not just the quality of that story, it's the the prominence in which they give it. It might as well be written on the mirror when they're brushing the teeth in the morning.

It might as well be the only book that they read before they go to sleep at night. It might as well be a Facebook ad that always appears every time they scroll on social media. It might as well be the next podcast episode that they listen to specifically reinforcing the belief that they currently have about their situation.

It keeps it front and centre and it lingers because it has no choice because you keep putting it there. Now this might have sounded like a bit of a random ramble, maybe there's a thread to what I've said, maybe there's not, but let me leave you with this. If you consider how you want to feel about the person or situation that you are currently facing and you were to undo all of the pre-existing beliefs about what you're making that mean, imagine you were starting with a clean slate.

What else could be true? What story do you think you would create? What if you just looked at the facts and we let go of the narrative that we've been reinforcing? This is not about changing the person, it's not about changing their behaviour, it's not about even condoning their behaviour, it's just about what it means to you or what it means about you. Because at the end of the day, if it didn't feel so bad, there is no problem. Okay, thank you as always for listening to this episode of the After the Affair podcast.

It's an absolute pleasure as always to be here and to share this time with you. I don't take it lightly. I really appreciate that you are here and listening and I hope you have found this helpful.

As always, if you want to reach out, to contribute, to share your story, to find your next steps, then let me know. Contact me. You can reach me at luke at lifecoachluke.com or you can come and join me over on Instagram at mylifecoachluke.

I can't wait to meet you. I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your week. Take care.

I'll talk to you soon.