Ep #164: From Betrayal to Balance: Co-Parenting After Infidelity

Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who want to move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly want to be. My name's Mikki Gardner. I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother, and I'm here to help you do the same. If you're ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, we'll get ready and let's dive into today's episode.

Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. Today's topic is, well, honestly, it's a hard one. It's difficult, it's challenging, it's painful. What we're talking about today is betrayal and really learning how to co-parent after infidelity. Infidelity is one of those experiences in relationship that is just shattering. I don't know how else to put it other than your entire world can be shattered in a moment. It's like what was true in one moment is no longer true. Now, what you knew to be true five minutes ago is no longer true now, and so often we don't see it coming. Or maybe we have a hunch, but we didn't want to let ourselves know that. But whatever it is, all of a sudden you have this elephant in the room that has sucked all the life out of it and all the breath out of your body, and it's how do you move forward in those moments and how do you move forward and support your children with someone that you were so hurt by?

It's a big question. So we're going to dive into it a little bit here today, but I want you to know that what I'm not going to offer you today is like 1, 2, 3. Do step one, do step two, do step three, and then magically you're healed. I mean, we all know that's not how it works, but what I want to talk about, how are the ways that we can actually start to help you move through the feelings that you're having move through the hurt and the pain and the complexities so that you can learn to co-parent in a grounded, healthy way. And so it's not going to be one and done. This is a conversation, but we're just going to talk about step one of what it looks like to start and start moving forward after infidelity and betrayal. Because marriages end for a lot of reasons.

Relationships end for a lot of reasons, and not that one is easier or better than another. But oftentimes with infidelity, there's just complexity because there is a lot of what you thought of the other person, what you knew of the other person to be true is all of a sudden not true anymore. It's like you don't even know who they are. You can look at them and say, who are you? How could you do this? How could you hurt the person that you say you love to? Such a horrible degree, and it really is confusing. It's confusing for our heart, it's confusing for our mind. It's confusing just all the way around. And so there's no way for me to talk about this topic without being sort of honest about everyone has their own experience. Everyone feels it differently, and everyone sort of moves through it differently.

And this came up recently when I was talking to a couple women just this past week, and these are conversations that happen all of the time in my own work and my own personal relationships and friendships as I watch women move through this. But here's what I've noticed. I was talking to some really beautiful souls last week, and one of them is moving forward through a divorce, trying to learn how to co-parent. And the other, her ex-spouse has never acknowledged that there was infidelity. She's like, what? Me? No. And so my client is left wondering, am I crazy? Did I make it up? Is it not true? But she knows in her bones what she knows. She knows what she saw, she knows what she heard, but it's gaslighting. It's being told, oh no, this thing that we both know is true. That's not true.

Look over here. And that creates such a disconnect for her. And unfortunately, it's become so triggering that she can't sit in a room with the other co-parent, right? As they're navigating divorce proceedings. It's hard to stay in the same room. And so we've really had to work on helping her be able to move through it, because even hearing the other person's voice, getting a text message from them, having to have a conversation, all of these things are so triggering because she has so much just really unresolved pain from the infidelity and from the end of the marriage. And so for her, it's been hard to even be in the same room. So she avoids at all costs. She avoids conversations, she avoids interactions, she avoids everything, and it's really not allowing her to show up the way she wants. I had another client that I was talking to and infidelity, it happened.

They tried to rekindle the relationship. It happened again. He left her for this other person. And this time she said, this time I haven't even shed a tear this time. I've just remained numb afterwards. The first time, devastated this time, nothing. And so what that shows me is just she's numb, she's avoiding, she's not able to process the amount of pain and hurt that she is experiencing, and she's focusing so much on trying to do everything for her children. But it's really hard when she is so busy energetically trying to not feel what she's feeling, right? It's like that game of trying to hold the beach ball underwater of trying to not feel all of the pain and the anger and the rage and the hurt from what happened and the infidelity. She's trying so hard not to feel that. So she's holding that beach ball underwater, but that takes so much effort to do that, and then it pops up and it gets hurt.

Oftentimes when the emotions pop up, we get triggered. We end up not doing things the way we want to. We end up overreacting. We end up raging out on the other person, whatever it is. And I can remember back to very early in my separation and my divorce, I really struggled with this trying to figure out how can I move past all of this so that I can just figure out how to co-parent really, really well. But what I did is I just tried to think my way out of it. I tried to act like I was okay, just like both of the stories I just told you. I tried to act like it wasn't affecting me. I tried to act like I could just think my way through it and then figure out how to do it later. But the problem was this isn't how our body works.

This isn't how we function. This isn't how emotions work. When we suppress them, when we avoid them and we do not attend to what that they need, all we end up doing is creating more mess. And so I can remember one Easter. It was the Easter after we separated, and I was trying so hard to co-parent really well, and we went to Easter brunch at my ex-husband's restaurant, and I told everyone I was going to be just fine. There's no problem. I can do this. I'm doing great. I had a full panic attack in the restaurant, complete panic attack in the bathroom, and I left my son with my family. Everyone had the entire meal, and I didn't come out of the bathroom, right? Because I was too busy in there trying to keep myself together, which I couldn't do. And I'm not saying that any of us are doing it wrong.

I'm just giving you examples of how each one of us moves through this. Sometimes we move through it really, really well, and sometimes we don't. But the instinct is really I that I see so much, and I know in my own life is that trying to figure it all out, trying to think our way through the pain and the suffering to think our way through. How can I co-parent with this other person? How can I do this in a great way? But unless we are willing to process the betrayal, the grief, the anger, the shame, the hurt, unless we're willing to do that, we actually can't move forward and heal. Instead, what we do when we're not attending to the pain that we're feeling, when we try to avoid it, when we try to ignore it, when we try to suppress it, it creates a misfire in our nervous system.

It's like a little misfire in the wiring. And so every time we feel that, it creates that misfire again. And what that does is it actually creates more of what we're already experiencing. So when we don't attend to the feelings, we actually end up creating more of the negative feelings that we are trying to avoid. It's this really downward spiral. So how do we start to move forward? Well, the first step is to really give yourself permission to pause with the pain. And this is the hardest piece because we don't want to feel the pain. Of course you don't. Nobody wants to feel it. But we have to be willing to give ourselves the permission to feel the hurt, to feel the feelings that we are feeling, because it is only when we do that that we actually can start to step into the healing.

It's like otherwise, if we're just avoiding and ignoring and suppressing, it's like we keep reopening the wound. And so for us to be able to heal it, we actually have to just stop to slow down to be with the pain, be with the hurt. And this is where it is so important to have support because this is hard to do on her own. I know this as I was sitting in that bathroom 10 years ago, having a panic attack because I wasn't reaching out for help, I wasn't willing to feel the feelings that I was feeling. I was too busy trying to ignore them and rush past them. And I know when I was talking to my client the other day, we had to really stop and acknowledge, which we do over and over, that what she sensed in the relationship, the infidelity, that she knows to be true, that it was true, that it was her experience and her feelings are valid, and that as long as she listens to the other person tell her, no, nothing like that happened.

It just continues to open this wound for her. So what we need to do is to stop and to pause and to be with the feelings and to be with the reality of what's going on. And my other client who hadn't shed any tears, who didn't want to cry, listen, I understand that, but tears are a way of our nervous system letting stress out, right? Tears are natural cortisol. So it's a way for us to let the stress out. I'm not saying you have to cry 24 7, but we do have to be willing to pause and to feel the feelings that are we are feeling in the moment so that we can look underneath at what is the need here. Because every emotion and feeling is a messenger, and it is telling you a story of a need that is there. The wound has a need, and the pain is its way of coming to the surface so that it can be healed.

That's what it's wanting. It's wanting to bubble up to the surface to be acknowledged, to be processed, to be moved through so that it can heal. But if we are too busy suppressing it, ignoring it, avoiding it, we don't get there and we continue to make those misfires. So it really is allowing yourself to slow down to create the space within your emotions, within your nervous system, through nervous system regulation and nervous system healing so that you can integrate the pain that you're feeling, right? I know that sounds like a weird concept, but again, the pain is coming up to the surface. We can either push it back down or we can allow it to come to the surface, acknowledge it, name it, feel it, so that it can integrate back into everything. And that's what the healing is all about. When we integrate the pain, we come back to wholeness, to that completeness.

It's understanding what's underneath the pain, what is the need that you have, what needs do it, be acknowledged and to be felt so that it can heal. And it's a process that we do over and over and over. But the beauty of it is, is that when we are doing this, we stop reacting so much to the wounds and we start responding. We can look at what is necessary, what needs to be attended to, we can attend to it, and then we can start to move forward into different ways. I mean, this is when we start actually walking around as grounded, responsive adults when we take the emotional responsibility for our pain, for our wounds, for the triggers, right? And we let life bring that to the surface, and we allow ourselves to actually feel it, acknowledge it, and move through it. And part of that is getting support.

Part of that is nervous system healing work. Part of this is pausing, breathing, taking a breath, allowing yourself to feel what you're feeling. However you do that, sometimes it happens when we're coaching, sometimes it happens when you are releasing the emotions that you're feeling. Sometimes it can happen through journal work, through conversations. But when we allow the pain to come up and to be there, that's when we can start to really look at it. But as long as we are not doing that, we don't get the opportunity to heal it. And if we're not healing, it makes it really difficult to focus on anything else. That beach ball analogy, when we're so busy trying not to feel the pain or try not to be hurt, or even when we're completely consumed by it, to the point that we're overtaken and we're allowing our emotions being triggered and reacting to those triggers, that's also a way of avoiding, because we're not really getting to the understanding what's underneath it.

We're just reacting and trying to offload it. So there's so many ways that this comes out. But most importantly, we have to realize that the only way to healing is through. I mean, the truth of it is, is that there's no amount of thinking. There is no amount of cognitive effort that can get you through the pain. We cannot think our way out of pain. It just does not work that way. Healing the pain is a somatic experience. It has to be felt in the body because that is where emotions live thinking happens in our brain. And we can't think our way out of this. We can't think our way to freedom, emotional freedom that comes from when we are actually willing to experience the pain in our bodies when we are willing to experience the feelings, acknowledge them, learn from them, and then move through them, right?

There are lessons to be learned, even from the most painful of feelings. So when I was talking to my client the other day who her ex is still denying what went on, part of it was just the acknowledgement between she and I that she knows what she knows, that her truth matters, that her truth is valid, that she doesn't need anybody else to acknowledge it, to agree with it, to validate it. She can go ahead and allow herself to feel the pain and the sadness and the grief and the anger. And as we started to actually process some of these feelings as we started to release them, because we use the analogy of a tea kettle. They're coming up and we can either just turn off the heat for a minute, but we know that the heat's going to get turned up again right when we go out into life or we're with the other co-parent.

And so instead of just trying to not let it out, we actually, she needed to let it out. So we started doing this through anger release. We started doing this for her through processing the painful feelings, looking at the grief, looking at the shame, talking those things through, feeling them somatically in her body so that she could release the pain, learn from what is there, and then move forward differently. And it's been amazing to see her transformation, right? She's able to interact with the other co-parent. She's able to have conversations. She's standing up for herself in the divorce proceedings, using her voice that she hasn't been able to do before, right? She's able to do these things because she's willing to listen to what is going on within her own body. She's proving to her body over and over and her mind and her heart that she can be trusted, that she can process the pain, that she's feeling, that she can be with it, that she can notice it, she can integrate it, and she can move forward.

That's what being a really an emotional adult and taking responsibility looks like. And that's required from infidelity and betrayal, is to learn how to take responsibility, not ownership, not taking the blame, not taking what is other people's, but really taking ownership over what's happening for you, taking responsibility for the feelings that you feel so that you can move through them and choose how you go forward so you're not just reacting to everything. And the more and more that we do this, the magic really comes in because what we start to do is we're able to witness the pain. We're able to witness the feelings of hurt and betrayal. We are able to see all of those, but from a position of really like an observer, we can see it without attaching to it, without attaching story to it. That's where I think so many people get so stuck.

And I know I got stuck for so many years, is I attached to the story that I had about what was going on. And that story kept me from being able to co-parent better because I was so consumed with who that person was and how they were or were not treating me or my kid or anything else. So it puts all the focus on them or on me and our dynamic and inevitably takes it away from how we show up for our children when we're not resolving the hurt and the pain. It leaks out into communication. It leaks out into our decision-making; it leaks out into everything. So we have to really learn how to separate from the pain of the past and the relationship so that we're able to really attend to the needs of children and be there for them. But that's only possible when we process and integrate our hurt on our own by being able to integrate and to be with our pain, be able to move through it.

To be able to move beyond it in a really healthy way is what allows us to be more grounded as what allows us to be able to separate ourselves from the past version of us. It allows us to be able to separate our co-parent from the past version of them. And once we start to do that, then we can actually start to shift into what good co-parenting looks like. But if we are trapped in that trigger, if we're trapped in the wound, if we're trapped in trying to think our way out of it, we can't get to that shift. So the only way that we can get to that place where we can actually shift from the hurt and the betrayal to focusing on co-parenting in a healthy way is for us to be able to really integrate our experience, to be able to feel our own feelings, and then be able to move past it to be in that observer role.

And when we are, we're able to have really realistic expectations for the other person. I know so many of my clients say, I just want to be friends with them. I just want to get to a place where I can sort of be really neutral, or we can be friendly again. But you know what? I don't know. We have to define what that really looks like. But we can only start to do that once we get to a place where we've actually started to process some of the pain and the hurt and the feelings internally for you, right? Because when you change what's happening on the inside, then the world starts to change, and you can start to have more realistic expectations about what does co-parenting even look like? What is the relationship that you want to have with the other co-parent? How do you think about them?

It's when we can really start to prioritize our children and what they need and what their wellbeing looks like. We can do that when we actually are attending to our own. And this is why so many times on this podcast, I talk about what are the ways that you can take care of yourself? How can you really nurture and take care of and love on yourself? Because when you can do that for you, then you naturally are able to do it for your children and for others. But as long as we are not attending to the pain and the hurt and the wounds and the triggers that we have inside, we're actually just cutting ourselves off at the feet, not allowing ourselves to really grow and bloom. And it starts by being willing again to pause, to slow down, to acknowledge the pain, to acknowledge the hurt that you've been through.

And this doesn't mean you have to set camp and live in it, but it's learning how to regulate your breath. It's learning how to regulate your emotions. It's learning how to support your nervous system as you have these feelings come up so that you can move through them without attaching to them, without being run away by them, without being bulldozed by them. Instead, being able to be the observer of, oh, I'm seeing that feeling. I'm feeling this feeling. I'm feeling the pain. What's underneath that? What is it needing? How can I heal it so that we don't keep reopening the wound, but we actually heal it for good? And from that place, we're able to move forward and shift into really beautiful, but it starts with your own healing first. And that takes time, and it takes intention, and it takes dedication, and it takes support.

And so at the end of the day, I just want to remind you that no matter what you've been through, healing isn't about pretending the past didn't happen. It's really about making sure that it doesn't run the show anymore, that your past isn't in charge of your future because it is not. You are. And you are the greatest tool for reclaiming your peace, for breaking reactive patterns and to building that more cooperative, grounded co-parenting dynamic. And it comes by giving yourself the space to process, to feel, and to heal, even from infidelity. You are not alone, my friend. There are so many of us who understand what you're experiencing, who know what you've been through. Maybe not the specifics, but we've had that felt experience. And if you want support, just know that there is support out there. I'm sending you so much love and many blessings. Until next time, take really good care of yourself.

Oh, and one more thing, the legal stuff. This podcast is solely intended for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for any medical advice. Please consult your physician or the qualified medical professional for personalized medical advice.

Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit coparentingwithconfidence.com . I'll see you next week.