5: When Words Ignite

When your relationship feels like a battlefield, even the smallest conversation can feel like lighting a fuse. In this episode of After the Affair, I delve into the profound impact of words in the delicate space between betrayal and healing. If you've ever walked into a conversation terrified of how your partner might react, you're not alone.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover how to remain grounded during emotionally charged conversations.

• Understand how your past communication patterns shape present conflicts.

• Discover the surprising power of calmness in rebuilding trust.

• Shift from a “you vs. them” mindset to a collaborative path forward.

• Use tension as a doorway to deeper clarity and emotional growth.

💬 Reflection question:

Have you found yourself lighting the fuse in a conversation, unsure of how your partner will respond?

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 five of the After The Affair podcast with myself Luke Shillings. In relationships we often use words like explosive and fireworks particularly in tense situations where maybe there's a disagreement between one partner and the other and of course after an affair has taken place the relationship is more fraught and more tense than it probably has ever been at any point up until this.

So for those who are wanting to try and reconcile and try and work through this on both sides there's going to be a lot of tension that needs to be dealt with and this tension is perfectly justified particularly for the person who has been betrayed. There's going to be this anger and resentment and then bitterness and frustration and lots of very intense emotions that may be where you want to throw blame and accuse and really try and seek validation or possibly justification for why you're feeling so awful and of course that's very very natural and that is what I think most functioning human beings would experience in this situation. Now assuming that this reconciliation is something that you both want and you want to try and rebuild the relationship, you want to try and allow your unfaithful partner to be trusted again, over time there are going to be lots of difficult conversations that need to be had.

Some of those will be exploring the past, some of them will be exploring the possible future but a lot of them will really need to be focused around the here and now. It's like what are we doing right now? What do we want right now and what do I want right now? And of course at this stage it still feels very much like me versus them. It's like there's two sides, there's this line being drawn in the sand and you're both on opposite sides, almost like you're at war with each other.

In my opinion progress is made through communication and negotiation and collaboration. Now I know you're probably thinking well collaborate, communicate, negotiate? You know it was my partner that was unfaithful, they were the one that caused this situation, why should I have to play any part in trying to fix it? It's down to them to rebuild the trust, to make them believe me that they're worth it. Are they worth my time anymore and that I can sort of invest my future in with them in a way that I had done beforehand? But of course for you to actually do that you're going to have to be part of this dialogue, you're going to have to be part of this negotiation and that will involve dealing with some difficult situations.

You'll have these challenging conversations and certain questions are asked. It's a little bit like lighting a fuse, a fuse to a firework. You know when you've got one of those big rockets, you've got this big rocket and you know it's attached to a stick which is poked into the ground and it's kind of aimed at your partner so to speak and you've got the match and you've lit it and almost every question will feel like you're having to walk up to this rocket and light the fuse and wait for that fuse to you know fizzle away and get up to the base of the rocket where it ignites the explosive powder and then the rocket shoots off and it explodes and at that point of explosion you don't know what you're going to get.

You don't know if you're going to get some kind of disappointing little fizzle or are you going to get some great big colourful display of light or is there going to be a super loud bang or a distracting whistle. There's this point where you have all this anticipation, this point where you don't know what's going to happen next, you don't know how your partner is going to deal with that and then of course there's depending on how they respond, what the firework looks like let's say when it explodes, how's that going to affect how you retaliate and just be aware I don't use the word retaliate lightly, the temptation to retaliate because you put yourself, you put each other on the opposite sides of the fence and okay I know you're going to be shouting at me here but look I didn't put myself here it was it was him or was her that put us where we are I didn't choose this and that's fine but as long as you keep playing this role of war this you versus them then you're just reinforcing that battle line even if it wasn't you that put it here in the first place you do still play a part in how long that how long that line remains there and you get a choice to play a part in helping start to break that thing down, starting to rebuild that trust starting to sort of rebuild that relationship because remember after an affair the relationship is not going to be exactly the same as it was before the affair but that's not always a bad thing in fact sometimes it can be an incredible thing because it causes both people to explore themselves in a way that they just wouldn't have done without this event happening. It gets them to really answer the questions that they were probably too afraid to even ask themselves beforehand and they just ignored and hid them away and this falls on both sides so the potential for something even better something even stronger is very very real.

Now I just want to highlight and I will talk about this a little more at another time but the statistics around infidelity are not great and that's fine and I don't want you to go out and do a search on the internet and find some statistics that tell you you know that 85% of couples don't make it after the affair and this statistic and that statistic because as far as I'm concerned you can pull these figures out of the air. To be honest everybody has got a slightly different perspective. The data collection and it's quite complex anyway you don't know how truthful the people who are even filling in these surveys are.

There are all manner of things that come to play. One key thing that I've noticed is that you often don't see data that is actually did the partners want to rebuild the relationship after the event because if they really want to that's the thing we're looking at this as a whole. We're looking at how many people survived the affair like it's survival only like that's all it's based on.

Almost picturing yourself a little bit like Kate and Leo in the Titanic where you know the case on where on the wooden door the wardrobe door whatever it is and he was freezing to death and there was certainly enough room for both of them on there by the way but they're fighting for survival. Now what I'm saying is that in the event of an affair if both partners want to rebuild their relationship then it's not about survival it's about growth it's about rebuilding. You know if you approach the building of a house and you want to start to build that house and you design it and you have this idea of what you think it wants to look like well where do you start? Well you don't start with a chimney pot do you? You start with the foundations you dig the holes and you start to lay these foundations and then you start brick by brick and then cement and then more bricks and you know and gradually this house gets built and the relationship is just the same.

Again I know I'm hearing it again there's people saying in my ears you know but but that's what I've already done I've already built up the relationship and then my partner has just kind of basically knocked the whole thing down they've knocked our metaphorical building down through this careless act this selfish act and it's easy to think that that's the worst thing that could have possibly happened. Everything was so perfect well it's some hard truths here. The reality is that if everything was so perfect for both people then the affair probably wouldn't have happened.

Now I'm not putting that blame there's no blame here to be put on the betrayed partner in fact it's never the betrayed partners fault that the unfaithful partner chose to have an affair it's never their fault. As human beings we get to choose what we want to do and nothing can force us to do or not do those things and the same applies in terms of our influence on other people we can't force them we can't make people do other things we can't control other people as tempting as that might be it's just not something that we can do so perhaps the relationship that has been knocked down maybe that's not such a bad thing. You think with the example of the house you knock the house down but now you get to rebuild an even better house if you want to of course or you could just move away and build another house somewhere else with somebody else or on your own all these are options but to think that everything that has come before has been destroyed and wrecked as a result of your partner's behaviour then I'm gonna have to call you out and say that's just not always the case.

So bringing this back round to the firework analogy well what you what can you do as the betrayed partner to engage in these difficult conversations to ask these difficult questions to make these difficult requests of the unfaithful partner so that you can start to work towards trying to rebuild the trust within your relationship. Some of these things are going to take some work and they're not always going to come naturally and you're probably not going to be able to even maybe use them straight away but let's start with the simple things. Just remain calm.

Now I know it sounds easy and I acknowledge that it's not always easy and it is in fact harder for some people than it is others. There is no one-size-fits-all but by staying calm it stops you from being reactive to the situation because when you're reactive to the situation you tend to not have the outcome you desired. You'll bring other things into the discussion and you'll get frustrated and then voices will raise which will cause the other person's voice to raise and then it ends up just being a shouting match and neither of you are listening anymore and no forward progress is being made.

It's also worth not, don't ignore your partner when they say something that you don't want to hear in a conversation after breakup. It just doesn't help to ignore them as tempting as that might be. It's still your duty for you to remember that this is for you, this is not for them, it's about you.

It's your duty to yourself. Make sure that you listen to and comprehend what it is that your partner is saying. Try to understand where they're coming from and it doesn't matter if you agree with them or you don't agree with them, just try and listen and try and understand what their point of view is, why they're trying to make it rather than just shutting them down and dismissing them and getting on your well you cheated on me high horse which is a very natural place to want to retreat to but it's just not going to be useful.

Sometimes when things do get a little bit heated then just give yourself some space, give your partner some space, both of you. Just suggest to each other that maybe you just need a little bit of time to cool off because this clearly isn't getting us anywhere. Something else to consider is anger.

So if you suffer from anger and that's something that's been repeated it's a thing in your life in general and now that you are the betrayed spouse your anger is heightened and understandably so, what I want to say to you is maybe you should pay attention to that because although that might be your default response, how successful is it? How have you moved through a difficult situation as a result of your anger or have you tended to actually create a larger divide? So you still play a part in this negotiation between you and your partner and if anger is something that you find yourself heading towards very quickly and very easily then perhaps you should look at working on it. Maybe you seek some professional help, maybe you take up some mindful meditation. Do what it is that's going to work for you but at the very least acknowledge it, comprehend it and notice that you have the power to experiment with it and just take it from there.

Another thing you might come across is the unfaithful partner is going to offer apologies or at least you would hope they would offer some apologies if they're wanting to reconcile the relationship. You might find that this might come in excess in some cases or sometimes it may not come very often, maybe they're not as apologetic as others but it's worth accepting the apology. If it's sincere of course you know you're not going to want to accept a false apology and you're just going to have to make an assessment based on the combination of factors that you have available to you to try and identify a genuine versus a non-genuine apology.

Now I'm not forgetting the fact that up until quite recently you probably thought that your partner was a faithful long-standing monogamous partner and now all of a sudden they've turned out to be something a little bit different. So there's going to be an element of uncertainty, an element of self-doubt, of trust within the reliability of that apology but really my point is here it's worth accepting it just on face value as opposed to fighting it or challenging it or saying I accept your apology but because usually if there's a but then you really just haven't and you're just offering a retaliation of sorts. Now this last one, this is about and we have talked about this a little bit before, this is about the interpretation of one person's experience versus another.

So let's just imagine a scenario here. Imagine that you, the one who's listening, imagine that you grew up in a household with several brothers and sisters and shouting was like normal. It was that the really normal thing for you to experience growing up as a child.

In fact actually it was almost like encouraged, it was the only way to survive in a situation like that. You had to shout to be able to get your point across, to be able to win an argument, to be able to move forward or to even get food. Now imagine your partner, imagine your partner perhaps grew up in a household where shouting was not considered appropriate.

In fact actually their parents and the people in the relationships around them gave them silent treatment. It's like silent treatment was the way of making your point, making it clear that this was their form of communication. Now this can cause a major misunderstanding when two people come together, where one's experienced one thing their whole life and the other experienced this other thing their whole life.

The way in which we judge each other in those situations can be miles off. So for you who experienced shouting as a common form of getting your point across when you were younger, even just a slightly raised voice to the other person might seem overly aggressive, very disproportionate in comparison to how you're actually feeling. You might be thinking, well I barely raised my voice.

I mean it's like it was nothing, you know, I was just, I wasn't even that annoyed in that particular situation. Yet the other person interpreted it as though you were shouting at them two inches from their face because based on their reference of silent treatment it was just a real miscommunication. So my advice is challenge the difficult situations, light the fuse, ask the questions but be prepared.

The explosion just might not look like how you expected it to. Okay well thank you once again. That's everything I have for you today.

Something I'd like to ask for future episodes is that if you've got anything that you want to know or want me to talk about on the show then send something in. You know contact me, go to my website, drop me a message or visit me on social media on Facebook or Instagram at MyLifeCoachLuke and I'll put the details in the show notes as usual. And yeah ask some questions and I can introduce some answers to those on future episodes and really look forward to doing so.

So once again have a wonderful rest of your week and I shall talk to you next time.