Ep #107: Co-Parenting in the Aftermath of Infidelity

[music] Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who wanna move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly wanna 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, well, get ready. And let's dive into today's episode. [music] Welcome back to the podcast. Today I wanna talk about something that is hard to talk about. It's co-parenting after infidelity. The aftermath of infidelity impacts pretty much every square inch of your life, as you know, if you've gone through this. And there are so many moms and dads that reach out to me and tell me, it's just not fair, right? They made these choices, and now I'm the one that's being punished. I'm being the one that's being pushed out, ignored, tossed aside. Maybe you're watching your kids in this new Insta family moving forward with your ex and maybe their new partner. It happens so often, and I wanted to address it here on the podcast today because I've had so many people reach out recently with this same topic, and so I know that it is really relevant, and I wanted to address it. You know, one mom that I had a call with recently, it really broke my heart. She was struggling so much because she told me it was impossibly hard to feel like she was a family with her kids, now that she's watching them travel and do this whole new life with their dad and his mistress, now turned fiancé. So in what feels like an instant to her, she's watching her family move forward without her. And it is so painful. And she felt like because of this, that there was no way to co-parent, there was no way for her to be happy. And she felt like she was losing her children, and nothing felt fair about it. She told me if they could just understand, if the kids could just know my part of it, if they could just understand what was really going on, they wouldn't have so much fun. They wouldn't go and do all these things, right? And that, as much as I understand where she's coming from, and I can feel the pain that that is coming from, her kids understanding the "truth of the relationship," the demise of the marriage isn't their responsibility to know. And that's what I wanted to really talk about today, because it does feel impossibly hard to co-parent with someone that you have lost all trust and faith in after infidelity. Once you are not chosen in the marriage, it feels like you are not chosen anywhere. And I hear that, and I understand that, and nothing feels fair. But I wanna talk about the same thing that I talked to her about, which is the hard reality is that it is not your kid's ability to understand your side or the other co-parent side or the mistress's perspective. Their only responsibility is to be a kid and to grow and to live their life. The adult problems are the adult problems, and they're not the kids' problems. And your healing post divorced, post infidelity is your responsibility. And remember that I define responsibility as the ability to respond, response-ability. And so today what we're gonna talk about is really you deciding after infidelity, how much responsibility do you wanna accept? Again, how much responsiveness and ownership and empowerment do you wanna have? And so that's what we're gonna explore a little bit today. There are some truths about infidelity that we need to talk about First. One, it shakes you to the core of your foundation of what you thought you knew, what you thought your life was like nothing else. It is earth shattering. It feels like the rug has been pulled out from under you, and you are on your back looking up completely disoriented. Again, everything you thought you knew about this other person, about the marriage, about yourself, it all comes into question. And it starts to eat away at you from this self-doubt. Yes, you might be completely angry, so upset, so hurt at this other person. But oftentimes what I see so many times is right behind that. Right behind those thoughts of anger, of blame, of resentment are the little insidious questions. What did I miss? What was wrong with me? Am I not enough? What else don't I know? How long had this been going on? How many other things had happened, right? It's all of these little questions that just eat away at any certainty, any knowledge, any confidence that you have in yourself. And that's the hardest part, because yes, infidelity destroys trust. Certainly, right? It is a breach of trust with the other person. We often see that this new information casts a shadow on everything. It's right, like all of a sudden they have been reduced to this one action, this one behavior. And we can often forget or negate things that came before that that might be good, because we get so clouded in seeing only the infidelity, only the faults. When this happens, we also start to... It's totally normal and human nature to start to blame everything on the infidelity. It's like we throw the whole kitchen sink at it, right? Because it's obviously they've made this huge indiscretion. So that's to blame for everything. And that is a dangerous perspective because it narrows our focus into putting everything into this one bucket, which may or may not be true. But the real breach of trust that I see with infidelity or post infidelity is the mistrust with yourself. Again, what didn't I know? How could I let this happen? How am I ever gonna move forward with this? All of the mistrust that we have in ourselves, that is the biggest concern that I have for you and for every one of us that have experienced infidelity, and this is where we start. Because yes, it completely sucks to watch your kids be part of a new Insta family, right? And it's much easier to blame the other person, to be upset, to be frustrated, but that doesn't move you forward. That doesn't help you step into responsibility. Yes, you want the truth to come out. Yes, you want everyone to know how unfair it is. That's normal, right? And for a period of time, it's completely normal to be in that. But to heal, to move on, to move forward, right? To co-parent well, we have to start letting the adult problems be the adult problems, separating them from the kids, but also separating them into this happened but how do I wanna move forward? And when you are to this place, when you're willing to start getting curious about how can I move forward, I wanna be done in the stuckness, I wanna be done in the misery. I wanna be done in the wondering and the feelings horrible all the time. So this is where we wanna start to move forward into solutions. And it is a reminder to ourselves, first and foremost always, this happened, we cannot change the past. But now what do you wanna do with it? Because when we start to ask that question of ourselves, well then we have momentum to start moving forward. And one of the first things that I help clients with is starting to start the forgiveness process. And no, I am not saying that forgiveness is accepting, donning, or agreeing with. It is not. The forgiveness process is really making the decision not to carry the weight of someone else's behavior, their bad decisions on your back. Because you are carrying that weight of what happened in the marriage. You're carrying the weight of the infidelity on your back, and that is what is keeping you weighed down. And so part of the process is learning how to decide, I'm simply not going to carry it anymore. So in those moments, when you find yourself like this client that I have, where she was feeling so stuck, so thrown aside, so cast aside, watching her kids travel and have this new amazing experience, part of it is starting to reframe, right? To train her brain that as soon as she starts to get into that, woe is me, this is awful, everything is wrong place, she knows it because she can feel it in her body. As soon as she notices that in her body, it's time to address it, right? And how do we address it? We acknowledge it. We say, oh, I can feel the pain rising. I can feel the loneliness. I can feel the anger. It's all right here, and I am going to decide that I'm not carrying this, right? We acknowledge it, and then we say, this happened, I can't change it. How do I wanna move forward? Now what? It's really rewiring your thoughts of what you wanna look forward to, what you wanna look towards. Do you wanna look to the problems or the solutions? And we're not discounting, we're not ignoring, we're not slapping some toxic positivity on it. No. We're acknowledging. I am feeling angry. I am feeling frustrated. I am feeling lonely. Acknowledging those feelings, sitting with them, breathing into them, and then saying, now, what do I need? Now, how do I wanna move forward? This is the process of building self-trust by being there for yourself and choosing to move forward. It's learning how to heal from infidelity. And that starts with healing you and your heart and your spirit by choosing you, meaning choosing to acknowledge where you are and helping yourself get where you want to go. It's noticing how you talk to yourself. It's noticing how you talk to others about your situation. It's noticing how you talk to the kids, right? We're not looking to judge or blame or condemn you or anyone else, but noticing, how do I talk to myself about this? Am I beating myself up? Am I in a victim mentality? How do I talk to others, right? Is it the only thing I talk about? Am I constantly rehashing it, or am I moving forward? How do I talk to my kids about it? Am I trying to get them to see my perspective? Am I trying to get them to understand the pain that I'm feeling? Because these are the choices that you have to make. What is the story that I wanna be telling be? What is the narrative that I wanna write about this? Yes, the infidelity happened, we can't change that, but we can change the story, meaning the story, how it ends, your story, how you experience it. And part of it is deciding what you want, deciding who you wanna be in this situation, because you get to decide whether you're going to rehash the past, or whether you are going to be part of the solution forward. You get to decide to learn to love and accept. You get to decide if you can accept the other person in your ex's life. You get to decide how you feel about your ex. You get to decide how you interact with them. They get to decide on their side with you, of course. But you do have that ability to decide. And when we start to take responsibility to start to respond, instead of just reacting, right? Reacting from the emotions that we have, reacting from the past, reacting from the story, reacting from watching all of this on social media. Really choosing, what do I wanna bring into my life? What do I wanna watch? And if you're watching it on social media, watching them have this Insta family, and you feel horrible, well, maybe not watching is the better option. You can still engage with your children without doing it at a point of destruction for yourself. And you get to make those decisions when you're calm, when you're grounded, and when you are consciously moving forward with intention, with purpose, and with love. It is possible. And I know it is possible. I know it's possible from my own life. I know it is possible from watching my clients do this work and move forward. But it is a process, and it's a journey, and it's a healing journey. And we need support on that journey. And as it relates to your kids, because I know, again, I know so many of us just want the truth to come out so that things are more fair. But we have to stop and ask, at what cost does that need to come out? Or can I find another way to learn how to feel more calm, more grounded, and more trusting of myself without having everyone have to sort of agree with me? And one simple way that I invite you to start to decide what do I wanna say and what don't I wanna say, especially when we're feeling triggered or activated, is to stop and use the HALT method. So what does HALT stand for? Well, first you stop. You take three deep breaths to ground yourself, to calm your nervous system down when you're activated, you ask yourself these questions, HALT, is it helpful? Is it accurate? Is it loving? And is it true? Again, helpful, accurate, loving, and true. If what you want to say next, either to another person or to yourself is all of those things, or at least three out of four, I'd say four out of four, then move forward. But if it's not helpful, if it's maybe not accurate, if it doesn't feel loving and it's not true, you get to decide how you wanna move forward because that is part of the process from healing. We all make mistakes. We all get stuck in the gossip. We all get stuck in wanting to rehash it and to feel justified and to feel seen, and to feel heard, and to have someone say, oh my gosh, that's awful. But do you want pity or do you want to be the example of how to move forward with grace and with kindness, and with love, and with strength? And that is the most powerful place to come from. And that is where you end up creating a life that you love beyond measure, because it's true, because you've come from the ashes and you've grown and you've moved forward. And listen, there is a lot of movement upwards from infidelity because it again, puts you on your knees, but you can move forward with strength. You can build a life that you want after infidelity, and you can co-parent, and you can co-parent well, even after the pain and mistrust of infidelity. And you do this by deciding to choose wholeness, to choose love, strength, and grace. You get to decide to feel whole and loved and appreciated and confident and chosen, even if your ex didn't. This is the gift you give yourself when you choose to heal through infidelity, to grow through the pain, and to bloom after the storm. Listen, it's not easy. I'm not saying that it is, but it is possible, and I know the process to help you get there. And if you need someone to link arms with and just show you that process and to grow, so that infidelity isn't your story, it's just a paragraph in the book, then I want you to grab one of the clarity calls, the link is in the show notes, so that you and I can talk about your unique situation and how we can help you move forward, because this is the greatest gift. You didn't choose infidelity, but it can become one of the greatest lessons of your life, I promise. And you can turn it in to the next best chapter. You're not alone in this. I love you. I'm grateful for you being here each week for listening. And this is not the end of your story. It's only the beginning, my friend. So I'm gonna do another episode soon about this topic. But I hope that this helped you give you some ideas on how to move forward and how to start to heal even when infidelity has rocked your world. I'll talk to you soon. In the meantime, take really, really good care of you, friends. 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 a 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 co-parentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week. [music]