164. They Chose Someone Else: What Does That Say About Me?

When someone you love chooses someone else, it can feel like your world crumbles. The questions swirl: What did they have that I didn’t? Was I not enough? That kind of rejection hits something deep. It shakes your sense of identity, leaving you measuring your worth through someone else’s choices.

In this episode of After the Affair, I explore the hidden cost of needing to be chosen and how betrayal distorts your view of yourself. If you’ve found yourself comparing, questioning, or tying your self-worth to your partner’s actions, this conversation is for you.

Key Takeaways:

• Learn how the need to be chosen becomes entangled with your self-worth.

• Understand why an affair isn’t about someone being “better”, but often about escape.

• Uncover how external validation traps you in emotional dependency.

• Discover how to separate their actions from your identity.

• Reclaim your worth by learning how to choose yourself, on purpose.

💬 Reflection Questions:

Are you stuck believing that someone else’s choice says something about you? Have you been measuring your value through their betrayal?

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 welcome back you're listening to the After The Affair podcast. I'm your host Luke Shillings and today you're listening to episode number 164.

Chosen. There's something really powerful about being chosen. I reckon it's something that we feel from a really early age when we're picked on the school sports team or maybe somebody chooses to sit next to us maybe even looks our way in a crowded room.

It feels good, it feels safe, it feels like proof that we matter and as we grow up and start to get into romantic relationships that sense of being chosen becomes really tied to the idea of love itself. We want to be desired, we want to be wanted, we want to be seen and especially by the person who matters the most to us. So when betrayal happens it can hit that very instinct because suddenly the person who once chose you seems, at least, and you may believe this to be true as you're listening to me talk about it, seems to have chosen somebody else and that changes things.

Not just in the relationship but probably most importantly in how you see yourself. From childhood we're wired to seek belonging and affirmation. It keeps us safe.

We learn that approval equals safety which can often lead to believing that love is something that is earned by being good, impressive, beautiful, helpful or just agreeable. And while there's nothing wrong with wanting to be chosen it can become incredibly dangerous when being chosen becomes the measure of our worth because then our identity stops belonging to us and instead we outsource it. We start looking to other people for proof that we're good enough, that we're valuable, that we're lovable, that we are enough.

How do you even measure enoughness? And when someone chooses us whether it's a partner, a friend, a boss, an admirer, even a swipe right on a that our own self-acceptance is left behind somewhere. But it's short-lived because the moment that their attention wavers or just at least doesn't appear to be there in the same way, our sense of worth collapses again. It falls in on itself.

This is the trap of external validation. It can feel intoxicating but it's very fragile because the moment your value depends on being chosen you become vulnerable to anybody who doesn't. After betrayal being chosen takes on a painful distorted shape.

The affair partner becomes the mirror that you never asked for, a reflection of everything you fear that you're not. Even when you know logically that the affair wasn't even about you, maybe that's not a realisation you've come to right yet but maybe it is, but even when that logic does fall into place your brain still races to fill in the blanks. Why them? What have they got that I don't? What made them worth the risk, the lies, the loss? Look at what they've thrown away just for that.

What is it? What am I missing? We start comparing every single detail, their looks, their energy, their body, what they wear, their confidence, their personality. We build a story that makes sense of the pain. They chose them because I wasn't enough.

But that story is very rarely if ever true because an affair is almost never about choosing better. It's about choosing different or perhaps more accurately it's about someone choosing escape. Affairs are often rooted in disconnection not superiority.

A person disconnects from themselves, their integrity, their reality and they look outward for a reflection that feels easier to hold. Now this isn't always at a conscious level. It's often deeper, it's often below the surface sometimes even completely unbeknown to the person doing it.

And the thing is obviously that doesn't justify it, it doesn't make it okay and it also doesn't make the other person, the affair partner in this case, any better. It just means that they were standing in the right place when someone else was running away from themselves. But for the betrayed, for you listening to this, it feels deeply personal because betrayal doesn't just take away the person that you loved, it takes away the story that proved that you were chosen and that's where the grief really lives.

Being desired is not a problem, it's part of being human. It feels wonderful to be seen, to be wanted, to be told that you matter, that you're important, you're cared for, you're valued. The problem arises when that feeling becomes your evidence, when you start believing that desire equals worth.

From a neuroscience perspective, being desired lights up the brain's reward system. Dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, all the same chemicals that make us feel high. It's addictive, it reinforces the idea that I'm okay because somebody else thinks I'm okay.

But that's not self-worth, that's conditional reassurance and it keeps you trapped in a loop of dependency because the next time someone withdraws their attention or perhaps they just choose differently, your identity takes a hit. Being chosen doesn't make you valuable, it simply reveals that someone saw your value for a moment and reflected it back. The reflection isn't the value, you are.

The danger is forgetting that the reflection was yours all along. When your partner has chosen someone else, it can feel like the ultimate rejection. But rejection doesn't always mean you were lacking.

Sometimes it simply means the other person couldn't hold on to what was real. They might have been drawn to comfort, novelty or even affirmation. They might have been avoiding pain, shame or responsibility.

In other words, their choice wasn't about you, it was about them. They didn't do it to you, they did it for them. But because the betrayal feels so personal, your brain translate it like a hierarchy.

They picked them, so they sit at the top, therefore I must be less and we sit below. When really what they picked was the version of reality that allowed them to feel something that they'd lost touch with. Maybe that's power, maybe it's control, maybe it's validation, maybe it's just escape.

Their choice was about their capacity, not your value. And this is where healing can really start to begin. Separating somebody else's behaviour from your identity.

Their actions may very well have broken trust but they never defined your worth. We live in a culture that glorifies being chosen. From romantic comedies to social media, we're told that love is something that we earn, that our value is proven when somebody picks us out of a crowd.

But that narrative, it's a myth. Because love at its healthiest isn't a selection, it's a connection. And connection can't exist where self abandonment lives.

The myth of being chosen keeps you chasing someone else's approval instead of your own. It keeps you evaluating your worth through a another person's behaviour when in truth you were never supposed to be measured that way. To be chosen by someone who doesn't see you clearly isn't validation, it's limitation.

You're not meant to fit someone else's story of who you should be, you're meant to write your own. So what does it look like to reclaim this idea, to redefine being chosen? It starts with choosing yourself. Choosing to see your own value even when somebody else doesn't.

Choosing to protect your peace instead of proving your worth. Choosing to rebuild trust in yourself rather than waiting for somebody else to confirm it. Because real self-worth isn't built on being picked, it's built on being present with yourself when you're not.

And when you choose yourself again and again something surprisingly remarkable happens. You stop chasing the kind of love that needs to be convinced. You stop begging for validation from people who just can't give it.

Instead you start attracting relationships that recognise your worth because you do. You can't control whether somebody else chooses you. You can't control how they see you, what they regret or what they realise sometimes too late.

But you can control what their choices mean to you. You can decide that someone else's confusion doesn't become your identity. You can decide that what they fail to see doesn't disappear.

You can decide that being unchosen doesn't mean that you're unwanted. It just means that you're unmeasured and that's a pretty powerful place to be. Because when your worth is no longer dependent on someone else's perception, you become free.

Free to love, free to risk, free to walk away. Maybe the point of this journey isn't to be chosen. It's to remember that you were never waiting to be.

You were always enough. You just forgot to choose yourself first. And that's the quiet shift that changes everything.

Because when you stop needing somebody else to choose you, you stop negotiating your value. Instead you start living it. You start showing up differently.

Grounded, calm, unhurried. You begin to see relationships not as validations but as reflections of how deeply you already belong to yourself. So if you've been living in the shadow of somebody else's choice, let this be the reminder.

You're not defined by somebody who didn't choose you. You're defined by what you choose to believe about yourself. Now if today's episode spoke to you and you've been stuck measuring your worth through somebody else's choices, then this is the work I help people do every day.

Through one-to-one coaching and the After the Affair Collective, I help people rebuild the kind of self-worth that can't be taken away. No matter who stays, who leaves or who fails to see your value. You can learn more by booking a call at LifeCoachLuke.com or reach out directly via email at Luke at LifeCoachLuke.com. If you prefer the socials, Instagram at MyLifeCoachLuke.

Healing after betrayal isn't about proving your worth, it's about remembering it. Until next time, take care of yourself. I'll talk to you all next week.