Rebecca Silence responds to someone who had an eight-month affair. She frames it as a coping behavior to learn from, recommends self-forgiveness and honest communication with their partner, and assigns homework: identify your harshest self-criticisms and list what gifts they've given you.
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Okay. This comes from cnykiss.com Dear Rebecca, I've been in a relationship for over five years. We have two kids, none together. I met a married guy a year ago. We started having an affair. This went on for almost eight months. I ended it. But we still talk now and then and would meet up once in a while just to talk. I recently put an end to our friendly rela to our friendship and meeting him to repair my relationship. He knows about the affair and he forgave me. But I'm having a hard time forgiving myself and now I have trust issues and get mad when he talks to other girls. How do I get over this? I know it was a huge mistake and I would never do it again.
Thank you. This email is really brave, and I think that the fact that your partner knows the truth is huge. You being honest is the first step. And then what if you're not good or bad or right or wrong, but there's a reason why you made the decision you made? What if the affair happened for a reason? I'm not saying that this was a good decision, but what if it wasn't a bad decision either? What if it was just you being exactly where you were, doing the best you could with the tools you had? When we're talking about forgiving ourselves, it's so important. Because what I believe is no one will ever treat you better than you treat yourself. So if you're beating yourself up, putting yourself down, making yourself wrong, the world is going to give you an experience of proving you right about all those things that you're beating yourself up about. And how does that serve anybody right? I mean, I really believe that we're all doing the best we can with the tools that we have and that there's a reason why so certain choices are made. What I teach is instead of just coping skills that you've always done right, an affair would be a coping skill. Maybe you were afraid to do emotional intimacy like we were just talking about being honest and real about where your needs weren't being met in the relationship. So we have an affair. Learn from it. Don't beat yourself up. I think the best gift you can give yourself as you're in the repair stage in your new relationship is to be honest about where your needs aren't being met. Now, that doesn't make it the other person's responsibility to meet your needs for you. But if you're not open and honest about where you're unhappy or unfulfilled, how's it gonna get better?
Right?
Nobody can read your mind, so be honest about that. And one of the areas that you might be unfulfilled is self love, is being willing to give yourself credit for being the amazing person you are. And you know, you are a gift to your partner. Show up that way. Show up like you're lucky to be with me and I'm lucky to be with you and see how the relationship goes. We can't era the past, but people do what they've learned. People do what they've seen. People make choices that they probably don't want to repeat when they're scared. It doesn't make you a bad person. I believe that we are not the choices that we make. The choices we make, they're coping skills. And then you can either grow from it and learn from it or repeat history.
I've just. Through the course of life, I've realized that the people that are the most afraid or the most, like, jealous or things of that nature are the people that have done things before because they know what people are, you know, capable of. So that's. I. I think that's. That's part of this too, is because she's done it. She knows that it's possible. You know, you know, they take, take away the, you know, the picket fence and the 2.3 kids and the dot and the whole thing. Um, so how do you kind of get past that kind of, you know, it. It's your own stuff that you have to deal with. How can you kind of get through that and realize that not everyone is like you at that point in time?
Well, I'm gonna say something a little bit different. I think jealousy is a distraction from looking at myself. And I'm saying the same thing you're saying, just a little bit of a different way. Right? Yeah. We are looking in the mirror with other people, reminded of what we're capable of. And it's easier sometimes to focus on them instead of me, but is about me not necessarily wanting to face that I'm capable of this thing.
Okay?
And I'm saying love yourself anyway. Just love yourself anyway. You had an affair. Love yourself anyway. You made a bad choice. Love yourself anyway. Or you're probably destined to keep repeating history until I think we make these choices to cry out for love until we get. We're lovable. Great people are either loving or they're crying out for love. Get your lovable and you won't need to cry out for love.
So much words of wisdom. Get your lovable.
You are lovable.
Get you. Get your lovable on. Please get your love on.
Do yourself a favor. Do your relationship a favor.
Get you. Get your love on.
Love you. And so a great homework assignment here would be to make a list of maybe the top three areas that you're beating yourself up over. Don't go and make a list of 50 things, like pick three. Pick three areas that you're making yourself wrong in your life and then make a list for each one of those areas of 10 gifts that you've gotten from that thing. Right. Like I moved to Vegas with a guy without really thinking clearly and kind of fell on my face for a minute and then I didn't actually fall on my face. That was my first impression. There were a lot of gifts that came out of that I got to see, oh, I'm actually a leader. I'm stronger than I thought I was. I know what I want when I didn't think I did. There's so many gifts. So if you can take these areas that you're making yourself wrong and then look for the good, maybe because of your affair, this relationship is closer now than it ever could have been.
And a lot of times I would imagine that even if, you know, you say, list the top three of the negative things, even if there was more than three that you listed, a lot of times most of them could be classified under three big things and they're just, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah. Symptoms of a bigger problem.
Right? Uh huh. And that's. That was my point.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think it's important to find what that root issue is. But my point is if you look hard enough, and that's the ticket, you have to be willing to look hard enough to find the gifts that you've received from every issue or every situation that you've gone through. Right. We were talking about cyberbullying last segment. What if this was a wake up call? What if it's not a bad thing? So you can either stay awake and get closer to your partner and more real and find out that he's either going to love you for exactly who you are, he never was. And then you could have it with someone else, or you can stay in the shadows, not quite sure what you've got and what you don't.
Local life coach Rebecca silence inspired results. Coach.com coaching circle tonight details on the website. And of course you can like her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter as well.
Even though you made bad choice. Love yourself anyway.
