40. Looking Inside with Jen Frey

After betrayal, it’s easy to become trapped in shame, self-blame, or confusion, whether you were the one betrayed or the one who betrayed. In this raw and revealing conversation, I sit down with Master Certified Coach Jen Frey, who shares her deeply personal story of being the unfaithful partner and how, years later, the emotional fallout continued to affect her life, relationships, and career.

This is an episode filled with real talk, powerful insights, and a refreshing reminder: your past doesn’t define your future.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover how shame impacts both the betrayed and unfaithful, often in surprisingly similar ways.

• Understand the power of the reticular activating system and how it distorts relationship perception.

• Learn why looking outside yourself for worthiness or love can sabotage healing and growth.

• Hear how unresolved guilt can linger for years and how coaching helps you release it.

• Gain insight into building true confidence and emotional resilience after infidelity.

💬 Reflection question:

Have you struggled with shame or felt like you’re hiding your story?

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 episode number 40 with myself Luke Shillings. Today I'd like to introduce you to my friend Jen Fry.

Me and Jen met in the middle of 2022. We are both trained and certified through the same school. Jen is a master certified coach and like me she has her own infidelity story which I'm sure she'll talk more about in the discussion today.

We'll be talking about worthiness and shame after infidelity, the reticular activating system and the problem with looking for external approval. If any of that sounds interesting to you then you're in the right place. So without further ado let's jump straight in.

So Jen, thank you for guesting on my podcast. I've been wanting to have you on the podcast pretty much since we first connected which is actually around the time that I launched the podcast back in sort of October time somewhere around that of 2022. And we have done a few things together.

We have met in person which is actually pretty unusual for me and many of the people I work with and communicate with because I'm in the UK and most of the people I've built relationships with over the last couple of years through sort of coaching and and some of the other business connections I have have many of those have been in the States. So I often don't get to meet the people but in this case I have been fortunate enough to to meet you in person on two occasions now which has been fantastic. So if you'd be willing to would you mind introducing yourself and letting the listeners know a little bit about who you are? Yeah absolutely thank you for having me.

So fun to just keep that connection and continue you know our relationship and watch each other grow and expand our businesses and of course here to serve the people in your audience. So I am currently coaching primarily small business owners, entrepreneurs, other coaches and really focussing on confidence. Where this came from is actually a little bit of a longer story and it's more of how we met.

So I in my marriage so this is 10-12 years ago I was the person who was the wayward spouse or the person who cheated however you want to name it and over the course of you know the 10 years of like managing those feelings kind of dealing with the outcome of it then I discovered coaching. I coached in the betrayal niche for a while and what I discovered is while I really love serving that population and I'm still open to it a lot of the coaching done for the person who the person who has cheated the person who was unfaithful it's still very taboo and so I have found that if I coach on confidence if I coach people in a little bit of a different space it's a little bit more comfortable. It's a little bit more comfortable for folks to say I have a confidence coach versus I have an infidelity coach.

So while I still offer those services and I still coach in those areas it's not the only thing we talk about and which makes sense right? We're very we're multi-layered people. We have a lot of things going on in our lives and sometimes when you are the wayward spouse or partner sometimes it's like top of mind if it's recent and it's coming up all the time but other times like for me it was in the past and it was this sort of undercurrent that I didn't even know was there that was still impacting me even though I wasn't with that person anymore even though you know it was a decade ago and that's what I have found more of my clients are in that situation. So they've already decided what they want to do in the relationship but now like the guilt the shame the all the like feelings that come from those choices are still lingering and they need a place to really they need a place to put it they need someone that feels safe to talk to because in a lot of cases like for me I didn't tell my family I didn't tell my friends like no one knew the truth about our marriage and that's a big burden to carry.

Absolutely so just out of interest with many of the clients that I work with of course people come to me specifically through the through their experience with infidelity that's usually the reason that we connect but it's quite common that even just a few weeks into our journey together there are many other areas of life which the coaching skills as you and I both know can influence in fact pretty much all areas of your life. So I'm wondering just with what you're what I'm hearing you say there from your perspective are you finding that people are coming to you for more the business that the business type coaching mentoring maybe that you're offering now but you're then almost doing like a reverse experience of what I'm seeing so they're coming to you for the business but then these these more historic these these things that maybe have just been shut away that have been you know turned a blind eye or or maybe believed that they'd processed and moved forward with at that point in their life when they get to some other stage these patterns start to reemerge and then it all comes back up for them is that what you're saying as well? Yeah that's a great way to say it it's kind of like when you go to the doctor and you're like well I'm here for this like more obvious thing like this sprained ankle and the doctor is talking to you and they're like well is there anything else and it's like well there's also this rash could you take a look at that while I'm here it's like we come for this sprained ankle for the obvious thing that seems to be presenting and then through coaching we kind of figure out well it makes sense that there's this underlying thing like let's take a look at the rash it seems unrelated but let's just take a little let's take a peek let's get curious and see what's coming up and I for sure have seen that in my own journey where like for example in leadership roles at work feeling like an imposter feeling like I don't deserve to be here and I didn't have concrete evidence necessarily I didn't have a reason to believe that but when I started looking at more of the infidelity stuff all of these feelings started to bubble up and it's like oh well it makes sense if I think I've done something bad and that makes me like not qualified or not good enough it makes sense that that's going to impact my career it makes sense that that's going to impact my relationship so it might not be infidelity it might be something else for each person but that's where that's where my experience is yeah as you were talking then you threw out the word imposter and of course imposter syndrome let's say generally this idea that you don't feel experienced enough to be doing the thing that you're doing whatever that looks like first so this is quite common for people maybe when they've had a promotion let's say and they're now in a completely new job role where they were working with their you know their peers and now all of a sudden they're maybe one sort of hierarchical level above and all of a sudden they don't it feels almost overwhelming like they don't feel that they are capable or able to to do their to do their job I'm just thinking now this is not actually something I've explored myself as only as it sort of came up as you were talking but when people have been in a relationship and they're starting to struggle with their relationship well most people when they're struggling they look externally they look out they look at see what everybody else is doing it's like well how's how's the couple down the road how are they you know you know doing their relationship how are they what are they doing that's so right that makes their relationship look so perfect and of course you know I think we're all guilty of looking on social media and seeing the perfect lives that everybody else is living you know and that's the only thing that gets to to be shown do you think that there's a possibility that you can feel like an imposter in your own relationship when comparing yourself to those around you 100% I think you can feel like an imposter in every area of your life right and we know as coaches that that feeling is coming from our thoughts and one of the things that I that I teach my clients right away is the concept of the reticular activating system which you and I have talked about and in coaching and specifically in the infidelity space because the the reticular activating system is basically it's like the filter right there's too much input in the world for us to be able to focus on everything so through our thoughts through our brain we are directing that reticular activating system on what we want it to pay attention to so like a simple example is if I buy a new car all of a sudden I'm seeing that new car everywhere because that's what I'm attuned to that's what I'm focused on another example I remember when I was trying to get pregnant everywhere I looked people were pregnant now that's not on my radar I don't notice it in the same way I don't think the number of people who are getting pregnant is different but what my brain is focused on has changed so when we're in relationship and we're focused on we're telling our brain to look for all the reasons why a different relationship is better or where we're lacking or where we're struggling that is all we see and I for sure think that is part of what happened in my relationship is my reticular activating system was set to find all the flaws all the things that were not working in that relationship and it was because I didn't have coaching because I didn't know that I was directing my brain to go find those things it felt very real it felt like this is just what's happening in the relationship and I didn't have the skill set to see any other options yeah I can I can relate to that very closely although not from the exact perspective that you're at in terms of your you know the the position that you played in your relationship and it's it's interesting how these things they show up in in absolutely every single area of your life and you refer to the reticular reticular activating system there and we think of these examples where maybe we are you know we're sat in a coffee shop and we're having a conversation with a person opposite us and there's all this noise going on around us but we're able to focus on that person in front of us which is which is great because it means that we can actually have some sort of like choice dialogue but our RAS our reticular activating system is filtering out all the unnecessary noise now in those scenarios that's perfect it's doing exactly what we want it to do so that we can focus on the thing that we are discussing and thinking about in that moment in time but of course when it comes to our relationships just like Jen said when you are paying attention to certain things and that's what you're trying to seek out even though it's done on an almost subconscious level you're not necessarily aware that that's what it is you're trying to do you're just recognising these behaviours of your partner as being unwanted and therefore every single thing that they do is unwanted and it doesn't matter what the situation is it's interpreted that way so it could be the you know the age-old example of the husband I don't know maybe not putting the his coffee cup in the dishwasher he managed to get it onto the counter just next to the dishwasher but not quite into the dishwasher so you know that gets picked on very quickly oh I can't even be bothered to put it in the dishwasher whereas actually the week before he'd not even managed to get it from the living room to the kitchen so it doesn't matter what step he does nevertheless assume that he even put it into the dishwasher and actually put it in and turned it on and got it on a cycle then he didn't put enough things in there could he could have squeezed an extra few plates in there or the wrong temperature setting so the point is it's not about the husband in this case doing anything wrong it's just that the interpretation because of the way that the reticular activating system is filtering your perception of his behaviour is always going to be negative and that just gets reinforced and particularly in this case where it sounds like right in this cup of in the dishwasher scenario there's effort that's being made like okay that you know I've expressed I would like the dishes in the dishwasher so I'm making progress it's not just on the coffee table now it's on the counter but we don't see that right and like same thing with imposter syndrome if I if I'm not looking for evidence that I belong in this job if I'm not looking for evidence that I'm worthy of this relationship if I'm not looking for evidence that my partner is trying I'm not setting that that reticular activating system on purpose my brain's just going to do its thing and I will miss it right so the question I love to ask is like how much are we missing because we're living on that autopilot we're just not setting the gps to see what we want to see we're not setting it for the destination we're just sort of accepting whatever comes to us and it's totally normal and common and that is the power of coaching because it just sort of opens up our world to be like what do you mean I have a choice what do you mean I get to decide what I'm looking for like for me that was huge news and I think and this isn't to say that I have a lot of regret but I think it could have changed a lot of a lot of things in my life right if I would have known that on the other hand I don't find a lot of purpose or I don't think there's a lot of utility and I wish or I could have or I wonder right but it's just it's just interesting to be reflective of that of those past choices and understand why it happened because where I do have power and control is in how I move forward yeah I mean hindsight is a wonderful thing and it is very easy to sometimes recognise these things I see this a lot as well working with people and they're starting to recognise that they really they are the author of their own story in many many ways of course you know different people experience different circumstances and and I think it's fair to say that some people have more to deal with than other people however the way that they're interpreted can make it all the difference and often actually the exact opposite is true often those who are maybe define themselves as maybe busy and and like with with lots of stuff generally speaking actually cope with things better than than someone who maybe only has two or three things in you know from their perspective so really is about how you're perceiving the individual situation in terms of the story that you're telling so when you recognise that you are in control of your experience and then you start to look back and reflect on your previous behaviours previous patterns previous way of thinking it's very easy to want to then beat yourself up about it because you you feel responsible all of a sudden it's like oh why so I've been miserable for all these years or I was in this marriage that maybe wasn't as fulfilling as I thought it maybe was or even how maybe how it could have been when I think about looking at the joneses down the road and it turns out it was all my fault and when we talk about that that worthiness that you mentioned a moment ago and tie that in with this being dependent on your partner showing up in the way that you expect them by handing them that power you're actually giving away that worthiness as well so these things are all compounding from all angles and leaving you feeling actually quite lost in a situation and it's like well if I've created this what do I do I don't know I don't know what to do next how do I how do I how do I move forward yeah of course that's really where coaching comes in well and especially if you are the person who who betrayed if you're the person who went outside of the relationship it's so easy to go to that place of it's all my fault I ruined it I I destroyed my family I destroyed my children right there's some really like pretty strong language that we use and then we really see that reflected in the world right if we think about movies and how people who have who have cheated are portrayed very rarely are they are they redeemed very rarely do we see them as multi-layered people we see them as we cast them as the villain or the bad guy and I think that's one of the things that's really important to me to offer is yes you you may have done something that you don't like yes you may have done something that you wouldn't repeat again but that doesn't have to be the end of the story that doesn't have to be the whole thing and I know that that might feel a little bit difficult for the the person who was betrayed so the message that I I want to offer for those folks is keeping in mind this conversation that we just had it's not your fault right and and you may have heard the partner saying if you would have done this or if you would have done that or maybe you felt like you were trying really hard to make them happy and the cheating probably still would have happened because it was never about you as the partner it was never about what you did or didn't do now again right that doesn't mean that we all don't take responsibility right there's always like nuance and both and here but I think that's important to know if you're kind of spinning in this idea if only I would have it's very likely that the cheating still would have happened because at least for me in my experience it wasn't about um it wasn't about what he did or didn't do it was about how I wanted to feel and so kind of manipulative really like if if he would do this then I'll feel this way if you would just clean the kitchen in the right way or tuck the children in the right way or take me on a date night then I'll feel loved I'll feel worthy and to your point that's giving an awful lot of my power away but also that is a lot of responsibility to put on another human because really what what was happening is I didn't have the skills to provide for myself I didn't have the skills to provide that emotional safety for myself so I relied on another person and that's just never going to work out no matter how amazing of a partner you have it's not their responsibility and we just don't do a great job of managing other people's mental emotional wellness we just don't no I mean we often get into these conversations and these experiences recognising that we're not very good at managing our own so to to to think that we can control and affect the other people's and even whether they are whether it be the people who are close to us or not is probably a little bit delusional on on yeah you know it's exhausting it is absolutely exhausting if you have ever been in that position where you are trying to keep someone happy and again this is supported by the culture right like um think about like wedding vows or things that we say to each other like I just want to make you happy right and it's just it's a lie we cannot make another person happy we just simply cannot do it and that is such a big part of our culture so it feels terrible to believe that I can't do it because no one's told us that it's an impossibility exactly there's something that um I think that my listeners would find valuable and I know it's questions that I get asked asked quite regularly uh from the betrayed partners they often there are these statements like well you know we said our vows you know did that not mean anything and then there's also how could they do how could they hurt me like this how could they do that to me and that's that's really that and I know you have spoken to that a little bit just then but from from your perspective and in in your marriage and your situation you know how do you feel about you know you you did take vows and you you did stand there at the altar that day and committed to your husband and then of course it came to a point where that changed so just to get get to get in your mind a little bit I think it's I think it's a it's a fair question right and it's different for everyone so I don't you know I I I I'm not trying to speak for every situation and every possibility but some of the research that I have read is that more often and again this is very broad terms but more often men who stray out and we'll just we're just talking right now about cisgendered heterosexual male-female marriage right so that's again a very narrow slice of relationships but in general men are more opportunistic like oh I'm at a and I'm at an event and I meet a woman and things happen whereas with a female again in general it's more of like an emotional need and that's really what the case was for me where I wasn't feeling and here right again like feeling I wasn't feeling loved I wasn't feeling appreciated which looking back meant he wasn't doing what I wanted right that's what that meant at the time now I see it through a very different lens right it was all about me and my um it's almost like an imposter syndrome in the relationship like I don't accept that I should be receiving this love or I don't accept that I should be here and so when and it makes sense that when I'm putting these um expectations on someone else and I'm not giving credit for the work that is that he is doing for the change that is happening it makes sense that he would want to withdraw a little bit right like I can see how that makes sense how it felt was he's not interested in me how it felt was I'm not attractive enough how it felt was um you know very very personal and so then when I got attention it felt kind of good and I noticed that that was also a pattern of like chasing the thing for me to feel good right like chasing the accomplishment the degree the medal for the half marathon or the or the marathon right just always kind of seeking the next thing to make me feel good which again is quite exhausting and it'd be so much easier to be aware of my own brain and provide that internally I just had no idea that that was an option so it was not an intentional and deliberate like I want to go out and hurt someone I want to make this person feel terrible that was never never on the radar and today that that's what I feel most I'll say guilty that's what I still feel most guilty about is negatively impacting another person like that doesn't feel good the difference is I've dropped the shame but I still have the guilt and I think guilt is useful because that tells us what our values are that tells us what's right or wrong shame not so helpful shame is what held held me back shame is what created imposter syndrome shame is what kept that kept that cycle of wanting to chase the next thing that was outside of me in order to feel good so it wasn't his fault and I really don't think even if he would have done all the if he would have followed all my directions I don't think it would have mattered and it was not an intentional you know it wasn't intentional it wasn't trying to hurt someone are you feeling lost and confused after infidelity introducing the on-purpose coaching programme the path to transforming your pain into empowerment by taking back control the on-purpose coaching programme is specifically designed to help you go from feeling paralysed by betrayal to feeling empowered and secure in your relationships as someone who has already walked this journey I understand your struggles and provide a customised coaching experience tailored to your unique situation don't let betrayal define you take control of your life and regain your confidence visit lifecoachluke.com today to learn more about the transformative on-purpose coaching programme plus you can book a let's talk discovery call to explore how I can support you personally and don't forget to subscribe to receive the latest relationship tips and tricks in your email box once a week take the first step towards a stronger more empowered you visit lifecoachluke.com today and unlock your true potential let's get back to the show so I know when you and I've spoken in the past um one of the things that helps us connect in the first place and sort of was realising the similarities from both the betrayed and the unfaithful side in terms of our experiences post infidelity okay the the the what what led up to it may have changed may be slightly different from one partner to the other of course it only takes one person to actually choose to be unfaithful let's say in the scenario but in terms of the experience after that actually we go through many of the same emotions in fact almost all the same um and I think even the betrayed still feels guilt in some way because they start judging themselves they start reflecting back on how how they showed up in the marriage particularly if they they are beginning to take some kind of responsibility for it and starting to recognise those patterns but I just wondered if you could maybe talk a little to how you have sort of seen shame from the side of the unfaithful compared to the shame that we experience as as the betrayed yeah I mean I can't speak as much to the betrayed side but I think for the the the person who has who has done the action of going outside of the marriage um or the partnership it's like you kind of know it's not it's not what you want to do it's not the right thing now again that isn't true for everyone right but I would say the majority the majority of my clients and in my own experience it's like you have that little that little inner voice that's like I don't think this is the right thing but it gets like you override it because it feels good you override it because um it's it's filling some kind of a gap that you have in yourself in the relationship but that like that gnawing that nagging got bigger for me right because it's like not only is there betrayal in the marriage but there's also betrayal to self this isn't the person I want to be this isn't how I want to live my life this isn't like it feels good but then there's there's that worry that maybe it's not as good as what I think it is um and and then the shame and I think this is the same for both of like what if somebody finds out right and even once it's been disclosed to the partner like what's their family gonna think of me what would my family think of me what if my kids find out what if my boss finds out what if my what right insert any relationship what are they going to think of me because I'm obviously terrible so I'd like to talk about a bit as well so I mean you you're right I will I'll actually answer the shame part from the betrayed side a little bit from sort of my experience to sort of complement what Jen has said so for for me and I I started to reflect back on what it was that maybe I've done wrong you know how how could I have not seen this coming what things were that in the relationship was was I maybe not showing up in the way that I thought I was was I not providing enough was I not you know being attentive enough or all of these things and and a lot of self-judgement and and for me a lot of my personal shame that I experienced afterwards was that not meeting my own expectations and I had these expectations of how I should show up in a relationship and some of those were you know well thought through and some that I sort of developed over the course of my life and some were just looking externally like we've already mentioned looking on tv looking at the other friends family people neighbours you know other people in my life and making those judgments and one thing I can say for shame and I think you've mentioned this as well is that it is really not a very useful emotion other than giving you the signal that it's there and then you act you know act to sort of try and relinquish that and release that shame because it's like a really heavy weight that prevents you from moving almost it's like it's like a lead weight that sort of stops you from from taking action but I'd also like to just explore with you a little bit about because you mentioned about other people finding out other people knowing and what that's like and again this is something I get a lot of where the betrayed partner has had this this bombshell they've had this this rug pulled from under their feet and they feel very very isolated and again this isn't the same for everybody but it's certainly a fairly common set up so it's fairly common scenario they've had this complete you know a relationship explosion of some description I know I'm sort of you know exaggerating that a little bit but that's what it feels like very much so in in the moment but then they can't actually discuss it with anybody there's nobody that they trust they in fact the person that they've trusted more than anybody has just betrayed them and if they can't trust that person then who can they turn to and you know and how can they guarantee that person won't say something to somebody else and somebody else and somebody else and so I'd just like to know from your perspective what that felt like and and how that was for you or even if you've seen it with some of the clients that you've worked with on the unfaithful side what that was like because there's two very different things going on here like say the unfaithful is coming much more from the I've done wrong I'm the one that has made this choice I have hurt my partner and maybe I don't want other people to know what an awful person I am like that's the internal thought maybe I'll let you talk to that and then from the betrayed side it's oh my god I was so stupid how could I not see it coming maybe everybody knew and now they're just laughing at me behind my back and I feel now lost and trapped and you know what kind of father I am what kind of role model I am to my children and and again all of this sort of really unhelpful language that you then start talking to yourself so yeah you could just yeah and I think I think you hit the nail on the head and notice the similarity is on the other people right it's still looking at the outside yes and what I notice is both people want the same thing both people want to be understood both people want to be valued both people want to be heard and yet we don't turn toward each other and don't turn inward inward we still are looking to the outside world for approval and I think that it's like the same thing that got us here isn't going to get us out so the only way out is we have to be able to change that pattern and there is vulnerability required right whether that's vulnerability with your partner vulnerability and being really really honest with yourself about where can I take responsibility because it's also a very common narrative as the person who has betrayed the person who has been unfaithful to blame it on the partner right and we're still not taking responsibility in that case and the person who who was cheated on for them to same thing blame it all on the other part on the other person like I did everything I could and it's their fault and they're right it's like neither of those scenarios helps anyone so how can I be really really honest with myself and I think that's very difficult to do without the help of a therapist a trusted friend a coach someone to help you get out of that pattern and it goes back to that ras again that reticular activating system if all I want to do is see the other person as the bad guy it's going to be hard for me to move out of that so for me it was I mean honestly it was being willing to be honest with myself and that took a while I mean that was not something that happened right after this whole thing went down it was I would say probably in the past like three to four years really that I've really gotten honest with myself about the impact I had about how I'm treating myself the inner critic in my own brain that has held me back and I don't think that's uncommon I don't think it's uncommon for us to not want to look at it for five years ten years I had one client who her her affair had happened 40 years ago and she was still carrying that shame right so it's like that's where I think it's so important like yeah it's part of the story but it's the whole thing we don't have to hold ourselves captive to this thing and one of the what has really helped me is to recognise I I did know that it was wrong I had that I had that little nudge inside of my body and I didn't listen to it and every time I don't listen to my inner nudge I I regret it every time I don't listen to myself it's like and and I feel bad that it took hurting someone else to learn that lesson of my own wisdom of my own authority but unfortunately and I think and again this is something that we we work on with clients is the reality that people do hurt people it it absolutely happens and if we go into a relationship believing that it shouldn't or it can't or it won't I think we're bound for disappointment now that's not to say affairs should happen that's not to say we should expect pain and suffering but we are humans and as humans sometimes we learn things in ways that hurt and harm other people and so how do we how do we for sure learn and not repeat those mistakes how do we learn and because me me staying in self-blame and shame and and and hurt and closed off that that isn't learning that's just that's protective so the best way for me to grow from this experience is to be vulnerable be vulnerable again to do better to love more and that includes myself yeah I love that bit where you you not paying attention to that little inner feeling that little signal that you're getting to sort of saying every time that you do that it ends up usually with some some outcome that was undesirable that you didn't get and I think that's important to to notice that you know we live our lives and we experience their world through emotion ultimately you know everything that we do is a matter you know anybody listening to this me right now Jen talking to me we're all experiencing emotion in some way shape or form which is how we're interpreting how we feel at this moment and okay there might be a wide spectrum of vocabulary available to us in terms of how we describe that but really it's just a case of recognising what's there recognising what's coming up in your body and using that to your advantage rather than using it against you because it's very easy to ignore these little these little you know moments of like uncertainty discomfort regret you know knowing that maybe you're doing something that you know isn't right or it even goes against your own values um but just not paying attention to that and just almost like you know turning a blind eye to it very rarely leads somewhere you you want to go and this applies to all areas of life and I think it's it comes down to being able to trust yourself yeah we talk about because that's part of that's part of the betrayal right is this the betrayal of self and yes I mean you you can the relationship right depending on the partner and what you what you sort of decide to do together you can make changes you can grow all of the things it is very hard to carry that like self-hatred it is very hard to carry that shame against yourself because there's no escape from you um and and that's where we can start getting into some kind of negative patterns right of abusing ourselves through alcohol or gambling or over scrolling or right whatever that might look like to just try to escape from our own our own selves to escape from our own brains yeah so let's move this forward so like I say you've you've you've explained that for you this experience was sort of a decade or so ago and you know a lot of time has passed and now you're in a very very different place although like Jen has already said you know we're by no means advocating infidelity as a way of moving your life forward it doesn't need to happen for this to happen for you to make progress in other areas in your life however sometimes these difficult experiences often are the catalyst for some major change so how has the work that you've done in the last few years that you'll experience through coaching really like you say you've already described that you've come to recognise you know an earlier version of you let's say through some lens and and taken responsibility ultimately how has that helped you do what you're doing right now yeah I think it's helped me to um to not to just be nicer to myself right that I'm I'm much more in tune with my own brain with my own feelings with how I want to show up it doesn't mean I've never made a mistake it doesn't mean that I've never said something hurtful or right like done done something in a relationship that was hurtful but when it happens I um it's like I asked myself that question like what would love do right how can I use love in this situation to make repairs to make amends in the relationship and within me and that whole idea that the concept of loving yourself the concept of self-compassion I probably would have said oh yeah like I think I'm pretty great but that is not the same thing as I love and accept even even the things that aren't great I love and accept myself for the mistakes that I've made I love and accept all the parts of me and ultimately I think that's what most of us are looking for in relationship is to be loved and accepted for who we are but it is very tricky when we put all of that onto another human and we're not there yet we're not ready to accept ourselves and what about the effect it's had on your business and your coaching and the the other things outside of your personal relationships how has it how has it impacted those yeah it's been really interesting because even um you know changing niches working now more like in sort of that broader confidence realm um being able to have a place for women who have been unfaithful to bring their stories has been really impactful because there is so much shame I mean it is it's still one of the taboos in our society for a lot of reasons which is probably a totally different podcast episode but believing that women um that women have sexual desire believing that women um are like that we can take responsible responsibility believing that it can be redeemed believing that it doesn't mean like you'll never be with someone again or you're unloveable right like just really changing lives because of offering offering that acceptance offering that uncompromising love and and people can borrow that from me as their coach until they're ready to get it for themselves and it's a space where you know like I didn't tell my friends like we were talking about nobody really knew that this was happening so just to have a place to tell your story it feels like such an unburdening um and I imagine it's that way for your clients also who are still in that space of secrecy yes yes it's often the case yeah yeah and then what happens then when people unburden that right then then they can thrive now their relationships are suddenly better then they're the way that they show up at work is different the way we dress the way we talk the way we interact with the world is so different when we're not trying to protect protect a secret we're not trying to protect this shame that's bubbled up inside of us and we really desperately don't want anyone to know is there it's it's an authenticity that is completely different than what people are experiencing when they're still in it I think for me one of one of the things that's helped me in not just in this area but actually in all areas is this this thought that I'm happy for people to be wrong about me I'm happy for people to judge and to to criticise and to fault and to to do all the things and they can do that you know and I think much of what we experience in terms of when it comes to letting people know to opening up to the wider sphere of our you know friends and family is actually our anticipation of what that looks like is usually far worse than its reality and I think that's true on both sides that and at the end of the day as well if there are certain people that decide to distance themselves or space themselves or make changes as a result of some information that you've divorced then actually you could question how valuable they are as friends in your life anyway in terms of the kind of support network that you're you're looking for so I think although there's no rush to to go out telling everybody your story I'm not saying that at all but at least confiding in the people that you can trust to start to rebuild that connection because when it comes to rebuilding trust it's not just about your partner or or maybe even your ex-partner depending on the dynamic of the relationship but it's about how you rebuild trust with yourself and then how you rebuild trust with other people in general which I think is just such an important part of this journey for for everybody involved so Jen thank you for being vulnerable and thank you for being here and sharing some of your story it's been a pleasure as always so I always like to offer the opportunity for you to share how people can get in touch with you and what you can and can't offer for them and obviously I can put all the details in the show notes as always yeah thank you so I have a podcast the Think On Purpose podcast which is primarily stories tips tricks things of that nature for for leaders so entrepreneurs solopreneurs coaches and the like but I like to think that everyone can get something out of it and I have a website jenfrycoaching.com you can also find me on Instagram and I you know I just offer if you are in that situation whether you've been unfaithful or you're the betrayed and you're looking for that perspective you're looking for a safe place to tell your story message me on Instagram and I always do a free consultation and sometimes honestly that's enough 30 minutes on a call to just tell your story can really make a huge difference so I invite that from your listeners absolutely and I'm sure there'll be some people that will take you up on that thank you ever so much Jen I hope you have a great rest of your week and I'll talk to you again soon and I'll talk to everybody else next week.