18. Road to Forgiveness

Forgiveness after cheating may feel impossible. You’re hurt, angry, and perhaps still clinging to the belief that forgiving means excusing the person who broke your trust. But what if forgiveness was never about them and everything to do with your healing?

In this episode, I break down what forgiveness truly is, how to know if you’re ready, and why it’s a powerful step toward reclaiming your peace. If you’re carrying the weight of resentment or struggling with the idea of letting go, this episode offers clarity, strength, and a starting point for your healing journey.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover the true definition of forgiveness and why it’s a gift to yourself, not the betrayer.

• Learn the 7 steps to start your personal journey to forgiveness.

• Recognise if you’re emotionally ready to forgive and what to do if you’re not.

• Understand how letting go of resentment empowers your healing and identity.

• Learn why forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting or excusing the betrayal.

💬 Reflection questions:

What’s holding you back from forgiveness? Is it fear, anger, or confusion about what it really means?

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 episode number 18 of the After The Affair podcast with myself Luke Shillings. Today I'm going to talk all about forgiveness. This is a common request for an episode so I thought I would delve into it.

I will peel back the first layers, discuss some of the common misconceptions, explore exactly what forgiveness is and why we should forgive, establish whether you are in fact ready to forgive and then of course some helpful steps on how to set you on that journey. So let's get stuck straight in. There are numerous reasons why some people are taught not to forgive.

It may be cultural or societal norms that view forgiveness as a sign of weakness or submissiveness. Some people may have been taught that forgiving someone who has hurt them is the equivalent to excusing them or forgetting the harm that was done rather than recognising and acknowledging it. Another reason may be the belief that forgiveness is not possible or even necessary at all, especially in cases of severe harm or injustice.

This may lead to people holding on to feelings of anger, resentment, believing that these emotions are necessary for justice or revenge. Some people may also be taught not to forgive because of religious or personal beliefs that emphasise strict accountability and punishment for wrongdoing rather than forgiveness and reconciliation. It's important to remember that forgiveness is a personal process and what works for one person may not work for another.

Most often the reason may simply be a lack of understanding of what forgiveness truly means. Forgiveness is the process of letting go of anger and resentment towards someone who has hurt you. The reasons mentioned can make it difficult for people to process their feelings and come to a true understanding of forgiveness.

So let's look a bit closer at exactly what forgiveness is. It's to stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offence, flaw or mistake. It is to decide to not continue being angry about something that someone has done and allow your memory of it to influence your future relationship with them.

Forgiveness is for you. It's only about you. It frees you, not the offender.

It's not the same as condoning and it is a sign of strength not weakness. But why forgive? Well an inability to forgive others, i.e. blame, is often reflected in an inability to forgive yourself which can show up as shame. Forgiving leads to growth, healing and compassion and at the very least understanding.

It can significantly improve physical and mental wellness and it's a gift that you can provide yourself. It's available to you at any time. Forgiving empowers you.

The other person can have no further control over you. You get to take all of the power back. It removes the possibility of a victim status or victim label and it releases you of the heavy burden you've been carrying.

It also helps you release bitterness, resentment and anger towards your partner, your affair partner. Our feelings drive all of our actions and our behaviours so removing this list of emotions from the pot is a major step in improving how you show up. It removes the desire for revenge and it gives you complete freedom.

I know that in my case and many of you will likely relate, it's not just your partner that you feel anger and resentment towards but also the affair partner. The temptation to do something that you might later regret is alarmingly high. Some manage to suppress this, some do not.

Why would I even consider forgiving this person, you might ask. They had so much less to lose and you're thinking someone must pay for the pain that I'm in and there must be something I can do to make this feel better. You begin to fantasise about different ways in which you can cause this person harm.

I had all sorts of them I can assure you but the effort required to resist this urge should not be understated but resist it you must. Now I truly believe that forgiveness is something that everybody should do but not everybody is ready to forgive so how can you assess whether you are or not? Well let's look at a few things. You should be able to accept your current situation where you are right now.

You don't have to like it but you just need to accept it and understand it. You should be ready and open to change. Know that just because things have been a certain way before doesn't mean that's how they're going to be again in the future and then we're not just talking about your relationship status but maybe actually the way that you look at things, the way that you look at other people and how their behaviours and how their actions affect you.

You should be ready to acknowledge the facts, the literal factual statements of things that have happened or things that will happen or things about your current situation that are now true. You should have enough awareness to know that forgiveness is actually an option for you and no longer want to feel the anger and that resentment. I'd highly recommend that you are curious.

The unknown can be frightening and it's often easier to remain avoidant of concepts like forgiveness. You cannot know what you do not know so being curious to other ways of thinking and seeing yourself can be really eye-opening. You've already been doing some soul-searching, perhaps you've been listening to podcasts, maybe you've read some books, you've had several appointments with Dr. Google but you've been unable to cohesively tie it all together.

Well now is that time. You've begun to realise intellectually that forgiveness is for you and it's not for your partner but you can't quite figure out how that's possible. Surely they don't deserve my forgiveness.

If you can agree with all of those statements that I've just said or even the vast vast majority of them then you are almost certainly in a place where you can begin the journey of forgiveness. So let me take you through seven basic steps of how to begin the journey of forgiveness. Step one.

Acknowledge your feelings, your thoughts and your circumstances. Know that the feelings you're experiencing are completely normal and nothing has gone wrong. If you want to get better at processing your feelings then refer back to episode number seven.

Don't mention the F word. Step number two. Understand that forgiving is not forgetting.

This is not the same thing. It's very tempting to believe that we're letting people off the hook, that they're just getting away with it but the reality is they've already committed this betrayal, whatever that may be and the wheels are already set in motion in terms of the consequences of that. Those consequences although are obviously affecting you in a very significant way, it will be having an impact on them in some way shape or form even though that might not be obvious right now.

The resentment and the anger that you're holding on to just keeps you as the victim. Step three. Practise empathy.

Be open to being wrong about why your partner chose to be unfaithful. There was something that really helped me here during my healing process and that was being the kind of person that was happy for other people to be wrong about me. It wasn't a problem anymore.

I was okay if somebody misjudged me in some way, if they didn't fully understand. I mean how could they? They're not me. They're not looking at my life through my eyes.

They're looking at it through theirs. Which brings me on to this separate part of sympathy versus empathy. Now I think most people can sympathise.

That's not that difficult to do. We can imagine what it would be like for us in any given situation. It's a little bit trickier to be able to put yourself truly in the shoes of somebody else because you're not imagining what it would be like for you to be in that situation.

You're imagining what it would be like to be them in that situation with their thoughts and their beliefs and their experiences and the things that go on in their life. What filter that they are looking through and of course there's no way of doing that accurately but just being open to the fact that you might be wrong about how they see the world is a significant changing factor in terms of how you view and how you process the things that have happened to you. Step four, deal with the need for revenge.

Revenge almost never pays. One of the reasons is we repeatedly overestimate how good we think it'll feel after we've taken revenge and we usually significantly underestimate the damage done by doing so. It's extremely difficult to take revenge on one person and have nobody else affected even if that effect is an instant.

Step five, seek closure. But be warned, closure does not mean finding out every last detail of the affair. It does not mean checking through emails and text messages and cross-referencing everything to make sure everything lines up.

It doesn't mean that you won't rest until you're absolutely sure your partner has been 100% truthful about every little detail. Refer back to episode 17 online for more on that. Step six, self-care.

Throughout this whole healing process, not just forgiveness, but self-care is so important. Have compassion for yourself. Forgiving is not an easy process.

Okay, I might be laying it out here in relatively logical steps but it's still very difficult. Each step can be very, very challenging and what might be extremely challenging for one person may be less so for the next and then the next step could be the other way around. So have compassion and have patience.

These things don't happen overnight. Making that decision to start the journey to forgive, that's the key step. And then finally step seven, if you're struggling with any of the previous steps then seek support.

This can be through friends, it can be through professional help. I've mentioned before the the challenge that we have when confiding in people close to us and friends or people that are connected in some way. The problem is these people although very, very well-meaning, they love you and care about you, they also can have their own agendas.

Not necessarily intentional ones but things that come into play when it comes to helping you make decisions. Let's say that up until this point in your healing journey you've been confiding with a close friend and they've been very, very supportive and it's really helped. They've been a great listener and and they've been there for you.

But there is an element that's obviously very useful for this person. It means that they've seen more of you and they've built that connection. That connection's got stronger perhaps whilst you've been in your relationship or you've been married that you have maybe not spent as much time with your friends.

So this particular friend might be feeling great, you know, it's not all great, I don't want this to stop. So when you start talking about forgiving your friend might see this as letting them off the hook. You're letting your ex-partner or your current partner off the hook and maybe going to go back which means that you would then start seeing less of your friend again.

And although there wouldn't necessarily, hopefully in most cases with good friends, there wouldn't be an intentional, like they weren't trying to manipulate you, we all have desires and we all say things that feel more comfortable and it's likely that this will happen in friendships as well. So just bear that in mind and that's why it's often much wiser to use the support of a therapist or a counsellor or a coach like myself who can really hold that non-judgemental space, allow you to talk about anything in a very, very safe, protected environment and not force you or guide you in any direction. This is ultimately your decision, it's your journey and it's going to be completely unique to you.

Even with my own clients they vary from one to another significantly despite the fact that the reason we're connected is through this topic of infidelity, through this shared experience. But the route and the journey to their destination, to that forgiveness, to that place where they can move on with their life either in the relationship or not, is completely unique for every single person. So remember that forgiveness is a completely personal journey.

There are no specific markers to say that you are at the certain stage but like any journey it begins by taking that first step and that step can be as simple as saying to yourself I want to be the kind of person that forgives. It's important to remember that forgiveness does not mean forgetting, does not mean forgetting the harm that was done or excusing the person's behaviour. Your partner still chose to be unfaithful, that's all still true, but it's about letting go of the anger and the resentment towards that person and moving forward with your own life.

Of the people who do not forgive, most choose not to because they are afraid of what forgiveness means. I know this podcast is about infidelity but forgiveness applies to any situation where you felt betrayed. So I ask you this question, are you ready to forgive? Now before I go today I would love to ask for your support and help.

If you have been listening to this podcast, either this is your first episode listening to it or you've listened to several or even all of the episodes that I've produced so far, it is hugely beneficial if, assuming you like it, you rate and review on your preferred podcast platform, Spotify, Apple or any other, it doesn't matter. It all really helps get it in front of more people. So I would be very very grateful and so will all of the future listeners who will discover it as a result of your feedback.

So thanks ever so much and I shall speak to you all next week.