162. When You Don’t Know What to Do After Betrayal

When your world has been shattered by betrayal, making decisions can feel impossible. One moment you're ready to fight for your relationship, and the next you're desperate to run. You're stuck in a loop of overthinking, second-guessing, and fearing you'll make the wrong choice. If you're hovering between hope and fear, you’re not alone.

In this episode of After the Affair, I speak directly to the paralysis of not knowing what to do next. Whether you're overwhelmed by indecision, caught in emotional fantasy, or simply exhausted by uncertainty, this conversation is here to help you reconnect with your inner trust and take your next step, however small it might be.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover why certainty is an illusion and how waiting for it keeps you stuck.

• Learn how the pursuit of control or perfection may be sabotaging your healing.

• Shift your focus from needing to be “right” to becoming someone who can handle any outcome.

• Find out why clarity doesn't come before action, but because of it.

• Embrace the power of small, aligned steps toward your own emotional freedom.

💬 Reflection Questions:

Have you ever felt paralysed by indecision after betrayal? Are you waiting to feel “ready” before taking a step forward?

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. Hey and welcome back to the After The Affair podcast. I'm your host Luke Shillings and today you're listening to episode number 162.

I'll be honest I really wasn't quite sure what to do this episode on. I had a little bit of time allocated and I had a few ideas but nothing seemed to feel quite right in the moment. My brain just didn't seem to be engaged so I waited and then I waited a bit more and then that waiting just continued into thinking and then that thinking became doubting and and then bizarrely it kind of hit me.

This is the episode because it was in that moment of not knowing what to do. This is exactly where I know so many of you are right now. When your world's been turned upside down by betrayal indecision becomes pretty close buddy.

In one minute you're convinced that you should fight for the relationship and the next you're ready to walk out the door. Then comes the guilt. The voice that says you're being dramatic and then sometimes that's followed by another voice that's saying you're being naive and you kind of rehearse these conversations in your head but never quite have them.

You draft messages then delete them. You look for signs perhaps in their words or in their silence, in their phone, in your gut, hoping that something will tell you what to do and every time you almost decide your brain whispers but what if you're wrong? What if you stay and get hurt again? What if you leave and regret it forever? What if you make the wrong choice and there's no way back? So you hover. You hover between hope and fear, between action and, I don't know, paralysis.

It's exhausting because when everything feels uncertain your mind starts to believe that the only way forward is to be sure. So it starts looking for certainty that somehow before you move you have to know beyond all doubt that it's the right move. But of course the truth is that certainty just doesn't exist.

Not in relationships, not in healing, in fact not in life. You see the thing is certainty is an illusion. It's the mind's way of trying to create safety in a world that just doesn't feel safe anymore.

It tells you that if you can just gather enough information, perhaps you can think hard enough, analyse every possible outcome then finally you'll make the right choice. But what it's really doing is trying to protect you from the risk of pain. The problem is certainty and healing don't live in the same space.

Certainty shuts the door on possibility whereas healing requires you to open it. You can spend months, years even, waiting for that perfect moment when you just know, when things just align. But life doesn't work like that anymore.

The ground has shifted, the rules have changed and every time you think you've found the answer, life gently or sometimes not so gently changes the question. I've learned that chasing certainty is really just about chasing control and control feels powerful until it becomes a cage. I often ask people what their relationship with control is and unsurprisingly it's often met with some level of resistance because to be controlling is to be manipulative, to try and force other people to be something that you want them to be and that doesn't feel particularly good.

Yet when you ask the same question in relation to perfection more people are aligned with that. They like things to be done right, often saying things like if it's not done properly it's not worth doing or there must be a better way because control or maybe more softly perfectionism is in some way about trying to predict what's next. Trust on the other hand is about believing you can meet whatever is next.

What I've learned both through my own journey and through coaching hundreds of others is that the goal isn't to be sure. The goal is to be trusting. Trusting that even if you make the... I'm holding my... I'm doing air quotes here... wrong choice, you'll handle it.

Trusting that if something falls apart you'll rebuild it. Trusting that your future self will have the wisdom that your current self doesn't yet have and perhaps more importantly trusting that clarity doesn't appear before you take a step. It appears because you took one.

The act of choosing is what creates the path. It's not about getting it perfect, it's about being brave enough to begin. If you're in that place of indecision right now you don't need to know the whole path you just need to take one step that feels aligned with who you are today.

Not who you were before the betrayal and not who you think you should be afterwards. And if that step feels too big make it smaller because action doesn't just move you forward, it quietens the noise. It replaces the endless what-ifs with what now.

So maybe you don't need to be sure. Maybe you just need to choose. Choose to feel, to rest, to breathe, but most importantly to try.

And if you get it wrong, good, because that's how you'll learn what's right. I didn't know what to do this episode on but the truth is I never needed to. I just needed to start and that's what I want you to take from today.

You don't have to have it all figured out before you move. You just have to take the next step that feels honest even if it's small, even if it's uncertain. Stop waiting to be sure.

Start trusting that you'll know what to do next when you do it. And if something in today's episode has struck a chord, if you realise that you're tired of waiting to feel ready but you don't quite trust yourself to take that first step alone then that's exactly where I can help. My coaching isn't about giving you the specific answers.

It's about helping you find your answers. It's a process of untangling the noise, rebuilding trust in your own judgement and creating the kind of calm confidence that doesn't rely on anybody else's approval. Inside the After the Affair Collective you'll find a community of people who get it.

Not because their stories are identical to yours but because they know what it feels like to stand in uncertainty and keep walking anyway. It's where you learn to stop waiting for certainty and start building self-trust instead. Are you ready? Email me luke at lifecoachluke.com or come and drop me a message over on Instagram.

You can connect with me at mylifecoachluke and we'll figure it out together. Okay thanks ever so much. I know this episode has been a little bit shorter than usual but moving forward is always the key.

Take action. It doesn't need to be perfect. I'll talk to you all next week.

Take care.