184. It Didn’t Work Out Like I Thought It Would - Pt 1 of 4

There’s a moment after betrayal that no one really prepares you for. Not the discovery. Not the confrontation. Not even the decision to stay or leave.

It’s the quieter moment that comes later… when you begin to realise that despite everything you’ve tried, everything you’ve hoped for, things aren’t working out the way you thought they would.

In this episode, I explore that deeply uncomfortable space between holding on and letting go, where hope starts to shift into clarity, and where the future you imagined begins to change.

Key Takeaways

• Hope can both support and delay healing. It helps you stay in the early stages, but it can also keep you attached to a future that may no longer be real.

• You can hold two conflicting truths at once. Wanting the relationship to work while also recognising it might not is a normal, human experience.

• Not all effort leads to alignment. More communication, patience, or trying harder doesn’t always change the underlying dynamic.

• Grief isn’t just about what was; it’s about what could have been. You’re not only grieving the relationship, but also the future you believed in.

• Clarity is not failure; it’s awareness. Seeing things as they truly are is the beginning of choosing yourself, not the end of your story.

💬 Reflection Question:

If you’re honest with yourself…Are your current efforts coming from clarity, or from a fear of letting go?

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 back to the After The Affair podcast. I'm your host Luke Shillings and today you're listening to episode number 184, It Didn’t Work Out Like I Thought It Would - Pt 1 of 4.

At some point after betrayal most people ask themselves the same question. Can this actually work? And for a while the answer feels uncertain but hopeful. You try, you talk, you look for signs that things are improving and then something changes.

Not all at once but gradually and the question shifts from can this work to is this actually working. It's not the moment you discover the betrayal, it's not the moment you confront your partner and it's not even the moment you decide to stay or leave. It's the quieter moment that comes later.

The moment where you start to realise this isn't going to work out the way I thought it would and that moment can be incredibly disorientating because for a long time you may have held on to something. Hope. Possibility.

A version of the future where things come back together, where the relationship recovers, where somehow this becomes something you move through together. But then something shifts. Not dramatically, not all at once, just gradually.

You begin to see things more clearly. Now before we go any further I want to say something about this episode. This is the first in a short series I'm creating around what happens when relationships don't survive betrayal.

Because while a lot of the conversation in this space focusses on repairing and rebuilding there are many people quietly navigating something very different. The realisation that despite everything that they've tried, despite the conversations, despite the effort, it's not going to work. And that doesn't always come with a clear decision.

Sometimes it comes as a feeling, a knowing, a shift in how you see the relationship. So today we're going to explore that moment, that realisation, that gap between what you hoped for and what you're starting to accept. After betrayal hope plays a somewhat complicated role.

For many people hope is what gets them through the early stages. Hope that things can be repaired. Hope that their partner will understand.

Hope that with enough effort, enough communication, enough change, the relationship can be rebuilt. And that hope is not wrong, it's human. It's often rooted in love, history, shared life, family, identity.

You're not just hoping for a relationship to work, you're hoping for your life as you knew it to make sense again. But over time something begins to change. You start noticing patterns, just subtle ones.

Conversations that maybe don't go anywhere. Efforts that feel somewhat one-sided. Emotional distance that doesn't close anymore.

Or in some cases you simply just start to feel different. You feel less hopeful, less invested, less willing to keep pushing. And this is where things can become really uncomfortable.

Because now you're holding two truths at the same time. Part of you still wants this to work and another part of you is starting to accept that it might not. And I mean as if there weren't enough places that could people could feel stuck after betrayal, this is certainly one where many do.

Not because they don't know what's happening, but because they don't want to fully accept it. Because accepting it means letting go of something. Not just the relationship as it is now, but the version of the relationship you believed it could become after the betrayal.

You've committed all of that effort to give this a second chance to hang on to some possibility of hope that things might be different. That this might have been the catalyst for change that you often hear people talk about. Even myself, I use this.

I talk about this on the podcast. And it absolutely can be those things, but it isn't always. And that creates a very different kind of loss.

It's not just losing what you had, it's losing what you'd hoped for. And that kind of loss doesn't always get acknowledged. It's at this stage it's really quite common to go back into effort, to double down, to think maybe I haven't done enough yet.

Maybe I need to be a little bit more patient. Perhaps I haven't given it enough time. Maybe I need to communicate differently.

Maybe I'll go and for sign up for another course. So I keep seeing these Facebook ads that keep trying to help me communicate in a better relationship so that I can reconnect with my partner. Maybe I just need to create more space so that we can give this a real chance.

Maybe I've just been, you know, so caught up in my own emotions that I've not really created enough room for us to connect and move forward together. But I think it's probably worth just gently asking yourself, is this coming from clarity or from a reluctance to let go? Because there is a difference between choosing to stay and struggling to release. I speak about this in the context of fear.

You shouldn't stay in a relationship because you're too afraid to leave. And you shouldn't leave a relationship because you're too afraid to stay. When you begin to accept that it might not work, grief shows up.

It was sat there waiting all along but now it's just been given permission to open that door and step right into your life. And it's not always obvious grief. It can look like a quiet sadness, a heaviness, a lack of energy, a sense of something ending, even if nothing has officially ended yet.

And what you're grieving is layered, it's complicated. You're grieving the relationship, you're grieving the version of your partner that you believed in, you're grieving the future you had imagined, and sometimes you're grieving the version of yourself that existed before all of this occurred. If you're the one who was betrayed, this moment can feel particularly unfair because it can feel like you've done everything you possibly could.

Look, you didn't choose this, you didn't create this, you're not responsible for your partner's behaviour, and yet somehow you're the one now having to face the possibility that it doesn't work, that it ends, that everything changes, and there can be a real sense of, I didn't choose this outcome but somehow I'm the one living with it, and that's a really difficult place to be. And just briefly for balance, there's also cases where the unfaithful partner reaches this very same realisation that despite all of their positive intentions, all of the acknowledgement of their regret, their efforts, something fundamental in the relationship just isn't aligning. And that can come with its own form of grief and accountability.

But regardless of which side of the experience you're on, this moment, this realisation, is where something important starts to shift. Because once you see it, it's very hard to unsee it. Once you recognise that things aren't moving in the direction that you hoped, continuing as if they are becomes even more difficult.

And this is where the work really starts to change. Because up until this point the focus might have been, how do we fix this? Or how do we rebuild? How do we make it work? But now the question becomes different. Now it becomes, what is true for me today? And this is really important.

Because just like we talked about back in episode 180, this is not a moment that requires immediate action. You don't need to rush into a decision. You don't need to force clarity.

You don't need to justify anything yet. This is a moment of awareness, not action. And sometimes simply allowing yourself to acknowledge, this isn't what I thought it would be, is enough for now.

One of the hardest parts of this process is letting go of the imagined future. The version where things work out. And remember, this is perhaps something that you've already been through.

When you originally discovered the betrayal, there was this moment, this realisation that your future was not going to look the way you thought it was. And yet you have chosen to stay, to reconcile, to try and save the relationship. And now at some point in the future, whether this be weeks or months or even years after the choice to reconcile, now you feel like it's all back again.

It's where you thought the relationship became stronger, where it would become this story of resilience and joint growth. And again, that future isn't impossible for everyone by the way. But when you begin to see that it might not be your path, there's a quiet process of release that has to happen.

Not all at once, but gradually. And that process, it deserves time. Instead of seeing this moment as it didn't work, you might begin to see it as I'm seeing things more clearly now.

Because clarity is not failure. Clarity is awareness. Clarity doesn't exist ahead of time.

You can only gain clarity once you reflect back on what was. And you have tried to make this work. And now it has become clear that perhaps this isn't going to work in the way you thought it would.

And it's that awareness that allows you to make the decision that you are aligned with who you are now. Not just who you hoped you would become. So if you're in that space, that space right now where something inside you is starting to recognise that this isn't going to work out the way you thought, I want you to know that you're not alone.

And you're not doing anything wrong. This is a difficult but honest part of the process. You don't need to rush it.

You don't need to force a decision as you sit here listening today. Just allow yourself to acknowledge what you're starting to see. Because that awareness is where everything begins to shift.

If you're navigating this stage, where things are becoming clearer, but the next step still feels uncertain, that's something we can explore together. Not to push you in any direction, but to help you understand what's true for you. You can visit lifecoachluke.com and book a discovery call.

And in the next episode we're going to explore something that often follows this realisation. What it looks like when you leave, but you still love them. Until next week, take care of yourself.