This is part two of the Why Did They Cheat? series—a four-part journey to help you decode betrayal, find your footing, and reclaim your power.
Is an emotional affair really “just” a friendship? Is a one-night stand easier to forgive than a years-long emotional betrayal? In this revealing episode, betrayal recovery coach and attorney Lora Cheadle breaks down the core differences between emotional and physical affairs—and why each one requires a different healing process. Learn how each type of betrayal impacts your identity, body, and soul—and how to start rebuilding yourself from the inside out.
Top 3 Takeaways:
- Emotional Affairs Cut Deeper Than We Realize Emotional betrayals often feel more painful because they involve secrets, emotional intimacy, and being shut out of your partner’s inner world. They strike at your identity and your sense of worth.
- Physical Affairs Activate Shame and Insecurity Physical infidelity can trigger body shame, fears about sexual adequacy, and deep questions around desirability—especially in a culture that already pressures women to look and perform a certain way.
- Healing Requires the Right Tool for the Right Wound Emotional betrayal heals best through somatic (body-based) practices, while physical betrayal often needs emotional and spiritual processing. True healing includes repairing your relationship with yourself before your partner.
Who This Episode Is For:
- Women reeling from emotional or physical infidelity
- Listeners struggling with comparison and shame
- Anyone unsure why the pain still lingers or feels “disproportionate”
- Survivors ready to process betrayal on a body, mind, and soul level
Subscribe, Rate & Review: If this episode spoke to you, share it with a friend and leave a review—it helps other women find the support they need!
Betrayal Recovery Guide
Find Relief, Reclaim Yourself, and Rewrite Your Story
Download your Betrayal Recovery Guide at www.BetrayalRecoveryGuide.com and start reclaiming yourself and your life today!
About Lora:
Lora Cheadle is a betrayal recovery coach, attorney, and TEDx speaker who helps women heal from betrayal on an energetic, emotional, and ancestral level—while also providing legal guidance to help them navigate the practical complexities of infidelity and relationship transitions. She empowers women to rise from the ashes, reclaim their identity and self-worth, break free from repeating patterns, and step into their power with confidence, clarity, and grace.
After being shattered by her husband’s fifteen years of infidelity, Lora knows firsthand what it takes to transform devastation into an invitation for healing, freedom, and joy. Her unique approach blends deep emotional healing with tangible legal and life strategies, guiding women beyond betrayal into lives of unapologetic confidence and purpose.
As the founder of Life Choreography Coaching & Advocacy, Lora provides comprehensive legal, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual support on demand. She believes that infidelity doesn’t have to be the end of the dream you poured your heart and soul into—it can be the beginning of a life filled with sovereignty, connection, and joy.
Licensed to practice law in California and Colorado, Lora is also a trauma-aware coach, clinical hypnotherapist, somatic attachment therapist, and advanced integrated energy practitioner. She is certified in yoga, mindfulness, group fitness, and personal training, bringing a holistic perspective to healing.
She is the author of FLAUNT! Drop Your Cover and Reveal Your Smart, Sexy, & Spiritual Self (an International Book Awards Finalist and Tattered Cover Bestseller) and It’s Not Burnout, It’s Betrayal: 5 Tools to FUEL UP & Thrive. She also hosts the podcast FLAUNT! Create a Life You Love After Infidelity and Betrayal.
Based in Colorado, Lora is an adventure-seeker who loves travel, a great book, and saying yes to life’s magic.
Let’s connect! Share your thoughts or questions from this episode with Lora at loracheadle.com. New episodes every week.
Subscribe, like, share, and join Lora Cheadle on your journey to reclaim your sparkle and create a life you love.
Special Offers from Our Sponsors!
Thank you to BetterHelp for sponsoring this podcast! Take charge of your mental health and get 10% off your first month of therapy at https://BetterHelp.com/FLAUNT
Are you ready to Rise, Reclaim, and Reign as the Queen of Your Life? Infidelity may have shaken your world, but it does not define you. You are powerful. You are worthy. And you are more than capable of creating a future filled with confidence, clarity, and joy.
I’m here to walk beside you, giving you the perspective, permission, and proven tools to transform betrayal into your greatest awakening. Whether through one-on-one coaching or my on-demand Affair Recovery Programs, you’ll gain the guidance and support to untangle yourself from the past, reclaim your power, and step boldly into your next chapter.
Your transformation starts now! Learn more at www.AffairRecoveryForWomen.com and visit www.LoraCheadle.com for even more resources and inspiration.
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- International Book Award, Finalist Motivational Self-Help, 2021
- Tattered Cover Bestseller, 2019
Have you spent your life playing by the rules, only to realize those rules weren’t made for you? What if you could break free—from expectations, from betrayal, from the roles you were taught to play—and reclaim your true self?
FLAUNT! is your guide to stripping away societal conditioning, healing from the heartbreak of betrayal, and rediscovering the fierce, confident woman you were born to be. With humor, wisdom, and powerful, actionable steps, Lora Cheadle empowers you to rise above the narratives that have confined you and boldly choreograph a life that is smart, sexy, spiritual, and uniquely your own.
It’s time to stop living for others and start living for you.
Buy Now on Amazon, or wherever books are sold.
It’s Not Burnout, It’s Betrayal: 5 Tools to FUEL UP & Thrive
Burnout isn’t just exhaustion—it’s a betrayal of your time, energy, and trust. This essential guide redefines burnout, exposing its hidden roots and equipping individuals, teams, and leaders with five powerful tools to reclaim their passion, purpose, and well-being.
If you’re ready to break free from burnout and step into a life of clarity, confidence, and fulfillment, this book is your roadmap.
Available now on Amazon. Download your free guide, BURNOUT UNCOVERED: Fostering Candid Conversations for Teams at www.ItsNotBurnoutItsBetrayal.com.
Transcript
Lora Cheadle [00:00:04]:
You’re listening to Flaunt, find your sparkle and create a life you love after infidelity or betrayal. A podcast for women who’ve been betrayed by their intimate partner and want to turn their devastation into an invitation to reclaim themselves and their worth. Tune in weekly so you can start making sense of it all and learn how to be okay on the inside no matter what goes on on the outside. Download your free betrayal recovery toolkit at betrayalrecoveryguide.com.
Speaker B [00:00:38]:
Have you ever wondered what is worse, an emotional affair or a physical affair? Today, we are going to talk about the difference, the differences between the emotional and the physical affair. And the reason this matters is because there’s a different healing required for each. So if you’ve ever wondered which one was worse or why you’re having such a hard time recovering, then stick around. Today is the show for you. I also wanna start with the reminder that if you haven’t done so already to please review this show. We are different than most of the betrayal recovery shows out there, and a review from you will help other women in our situation get the help that they need. So subscribe, rate, review, and let’s get this information out there. Let’s keep busting all the myths that are out there, and let’s start spreading some sanity.
Speaker B [00:01:49]:
So now on with the show. Physical versus emotional affairs. Which one hurts more? This is tough, especially from someone whose partner had all kinds of affairs. He had both emotional and physical. I felt, and so many of the women that I work with have shared, that sometimes it’s not even about the sex. What makes the affairs so devastating is that it was about connection. It was about a secret that they weren’t privy to. It’s that somebody else now has a part of their husband that they didn’t have.
Speaker B [00:02:38]:
It’s an emotional intimacy that we should have had. And I think this really cuts deep, especially if you, like me, sometimes felt a little bit neglected, neglected emotionally. I always wanted to talk. I’m a talker. I’m an external processor. I love that. And when I found out that for fifteen years, my husband had spent time and energy and effort talking and texting with other women. It really took me down because it made me feel like, how can I even be good enough? How how how am I even a human? How can I even have friends if I am so pathetic and unworthy that my own partner doesn’t even wanna talk to me and share secrets with me, that was really, really hard? And yet it was also really, really hard to hear that he did things physically with other people, that he would allow himself to be that physically close, that he would take risks not only with his health, but with my health.
Speaker B [00:04:09]:
That produced a different kind of a rage, a different kind of an injury. And it’s my guess that if your partner had both emotional and physical, you might be feeling that too. So let’s start by talking about the difference between an emotional and a physical affair. So what is emotional cheating? Is it long, deep conversations on the phone, in person, via texting, at work? Yeah. It can be all of that. Is it just a secret emotional bond? Yes. It can be that. Is it just shared fantasies or dreams? Maybe they’re both married and they’re just talking about this life that they wish they would have had.
Speaker B [00:05:03]:
Yes. It can be all of that. It does not have to be sexual. And that’s something I think sometimes people don’t understand. They’re like, that wasn’t an affair. There was no sex involved. It doesn’t matter. There’s a huge emotional betrayal happening if your partner is best friends with a woman and that they’re sharing dreams and thoughts and visions of the future and they’re collaborating together.
Speaker B [00:05:32]:
That’s cheating. That is cheating as well, especially if you don’t know anything about this person. It’s different if you know that this has been your partner’s best friend since middle school and that they have this deep, rich, emotional life. And there’s conversation with the three of you, and there’s conversation just with the two of them, and you’re fully aware of that, and they have a deep emotional bond, that’s different because there’s no lie there. There is no cheating there. There is no betrayal there because everybody knows what the relationship is like. And sometimes in a fair recovery, sometimes the the couples that I’ll see, that’s one of the excuses that gets thrown out there. Well, she has male friends too.
Speaker B [00:06:28]:
Really? You know about them. They come to your house for dinner. Sometimes it’s the three of you. Sometimes it’s the two of you. She tells you what happened with her best male friend at work. You are being let in to this relationship. No. You might not be there every second, but you know the bounds of the relationship.
Speaker B [00:06:51]:
You know that they have got some intimate emotional connection, and you are being let into it. There are not secrets being kept. That is a totally different story. You can have intimacy and emotional connection with somebody of the opposite sex. And when your partner knows about it and agrees to it and you’re all be everything is being shared between the three of you, that’s not infidelity. That’s not betrayal. An emotional affair is any time your partner and another person are saying things and doing things that they wouldn’t want you to overhear. For example, my husband with his affair partners, as they were all not all.
Speaker B [00:07:48]:
Many of them were long distance. His long term friendship slash emotional affair slash sometimes physical affair lasted the course of fifteen years. I did not know he was in contact with somebody. I did not know this person was a, quote, friend. I didn’t know he was on the phone. I didn’t know he was texting. I didn’t know he was emailing. I was shut out of their relationship.
Speaker B [00:08:20]:
They lived in different states. Not a lot of physical contact happened, but a lot of the emotional stuff happened. What made it an emotional affair? What made it a betrayal was that I did not know that was happening. I did not know there were phone calls. I did not know there were texts. I did not know there were emails. I was being shut out of an entire relationship. Had I been aware, hey.
Speaker B [00:08:50]:
I talked to this woman again. Great. What’d you guys talk about? Oh, here’s what’s going on. Or if she would have called in the days where we had a landline and I would have answered and we would have had a conversation, and then, hey. I wanna talk to Sean. I’m really struggling with x, y, and z. It’d be like, great. Hey, Sean.
Speaker B [00:09:05]:
Come over here. Here’s the phone. That’s the difference is that secrets were being kept. That’s what makes it a betrayal. Yes. This can take place on social media. This can take place over WhatsApp. This can take place in real life.
Speaker B [00:09:24]:
So then what what defines a physical affair? You would think that this would be really simple to answer. You would think that it would just be, hey. Physical sex sex is involved. Physical contact is happening. Kissing, touching, whatever. But actually, not always. Porn use, sexting, trading photos, phone sex. In this day and age, there’s so many different ways to be, quote, unquote, physically intimate with somebody without ever really touching them.
Speaker B [00:10:04]:
And I think the bottom line around was it a physical affair really goes to what you define as a physical affair. If you define phone sex as a physical affair, that is your right. If you define sexting as a physical affair, absolutely. If you and your partner both are like, that didn’t really count, That’s up to you too. You get to define what it is for you. You get to define, to me, does this feel like a physical betrayal? Yes or no? To me, does this feel like an emotional betrayal? Yes or no? I’ve talked before about the difference between impact and intent. And one this is one of those places where impact versus intent is really important. If your partner is trying to gaslight you and manipulate you and say, I was not really having an affair because we never met in person, it doesn’t matter if that was his intent.
Speaker B [00:11:13]:
If he intended to keep you safe, quote, unquote, by not actually meeting in person, but just by FaceTiming or Zooming or trading photos. Let’s let’s call them out on that because the impact is the same or is at least very similar to what it would have been if it was a physical affair. You, as the aggrieved party, get to decide. You, as the hurt party, get to decide what was the impact on you. Their intent doesn’t matter. What was the impact on you? So that’s the difference between physical, it’s kind of a range, and emotional. It’s a relationship that you don’t know about, that you are not being let into. Which one is worse? It’s hard to categorize because they injure differently.
Speaker B [00:12:17]:
But what I will say is I believe that oftentimes emotional affairs are harder to get over because of the injury that they create. Let me explain what I mean by that. Betrayal is the deep injury. It’s secrecy. It’s intimacy. It is planning things with another person that necessarily excludes me, excludes us, excludes our family versus just the physical act of sex. Many people can understand how in the sex act, it can just be an act. If we are being violated, Rape survivors, abuse survivors often talk about dissociation.
Speaker B [00:13:11]:
We can dissociate from our bodies and things can happen to our bodies that don’t impact our hearts. Sometimes it can be just sex. It can be just physical, and it can be kind of meaningless. But it’s hard to say emotions are meaningless. It’s hard to say intimacy is meaningless. And it’s hard to say secrets between other people that exclude you are meaningless, especially when some of those secrets are about you. Because what happens in my case and what happens in a lot of people’s case is your partner and their affair partner start talking about you. They start talking about you behind your back.
Speaker B [00:14:10]:
And then your partner goes with all of these stories, and the affair partner validates and sympathizes, and, oh, I would never treat you like that. And this whole character persona of you is built up that you never have a chance to see or defend. So then your husband, your partner starts building this image of you, not only in the mind of the affair partner, but in his own mind as well. And this is all done as a justification and as an excuse. He is probably not going to the affair partner with a fair and valid assessment of the struggles that you’re going through. He is coloring everything in his favor, and her job is not to be fair and impartial. Her job is to build him up and validate, and, oh, you poor thing and what a horrible woman she is. And then that gets fed back to him and that it increases his image of you.
Speaker B [00:15:22]:
And over time, you become the enemy. You become the wrong one. And then in his mind, it’s built up. It just gets worse and worse. She is in the wrong. She is cold. She is uncaring. She is whatever it is.
Speaker B [00:15:39]:
And you never have the chance, not necessarily to defend yourself, although that is part of it, but you also never just have the chance to interject your presence and to have people see you as you are. So it starts creating this false narrative in your partner’s mind about who you are. That’s why so many people will say looking back, they knew something was going on. Their partner was argumentative. Their partner was cold. Their partner was just had all these wrong ideas about them. They’re like, what the heck is going on? That happened with me too. My husband would come home and I’d think, wow.
Speaker B [00:16:28]:
It must have been a bad day at work because he is just finding fault with me in everything that I do and everything that I say, and I haven’t done anything. In hindsight. He was out talking to the affair partner and they were both spinning it up. She was spinning up all of these things about how bad I was about all the things I did wrong. And he was being validated and felt great being validated because everything he said about me was amplified by her. So then he would come home with this big amplified version about how evil and stupid and bad and awful and neglectful and all of the things that I was. And then I was always feeling like, why do I have to defend myself? Shouldn’t he know who I am? Isn’t he the closest person in my life? Wow. Why does he not know me? Why does he not know me? So that’s why so often emotional affairs are harder to get through Because there is that piece of intimacy that you should have had that you didn’t have, and it also created such a difficulty for you because suddenly you’re not being seen for who you are.
Speaker B [00:17:47]:
And then there’s that horror, just that normal horror of, oh my god. People were talking about me behind my back, and they were saying things that were absolutely not true. And I can’t even stand up and either defend myself or share my side of the story, at least. This is completely one-sided and unfair. So the injure injury around that is really to the identity and to our sense of worth and value. Why am I not seen? Why am I not known? If you saw me or knew me, of course, you’d love me because I’m a really good person and I’m trying really hard. And how can you be such a bad person? How could you be such a gossip about your own wife? And I think especially as women going back to little girlhood and and the pain of gossip and the pain of being excluded and the pain of being judged, what are the women, one of the injuries that women have is that huge fear of judgment. We are terrified of being judged.
Speaker B [00:19:07]:
The media society, it breeds this fear of being judgment judged in women. What will people think You don’t wanna wear that. What will people think? Oh my god. If you dress like that, people are gonna treat you this way. Have some self respect. Why would you do that? Oh, this matters. Do that. Wear this.
Speaker B [00:19:32]:
Don’t wear that. Don’t age. Don’t gain weight. Don’t look vain, though. Don’t try too hard. You nobody likes a woman who tries too hard. We are we are afraid of the mean girl. We are afraid of judgment.
Speaker B [00:19:47]:
We’re afraid of being whatever it is, the bad girl, the dumb one, the ugly one, the slutty one. So we have this fear of judgment. And then to find out that day in, day out, our partner and another woman judged us. Oh my gosh. That cuts to the core of that wound of judgment. And that can crumple you. That can crumple you so hard. Add on top of it that not only was it your partner, but another woman who did this to you, who participated in this, who is complicit in tearing down another woman, and are you freaking kidding me? Don’t we go out of our way to support each other? Haven’t we gotten past the mean girl phase, and don’t we now realize we have to have each other’s backs? Isn’t it hard enough in this patriarchal world? Don’t we support each other? And, oh, you’re kidding me.
Speaker B [00:20:58]:
Another woman would come in and would manipulate and take me down when she knows full well what I’m going through as a woman. Huge violation of woman code. Huge violation of that sisterhood. Huge violation that a woman would do that to another woman, and that is another one of those injuries in the whole emotional part of the affair. And, yes, I get that that injury is there too in the physical part of the affair, but for some reason, it doesn’t hit as hard that way. For some reason, this hits on the emotional level harder than on the physical level, because we want to trust other women. We know men can be scary. Who can we rely on? We rely on our sisters.
Speaker B [00:21:54]:
And are you kidding me? You did that to me. So for those reasons, I really feel like emotional can oftentimes hit harder and be more painful. Not the getting over the physical part is easy either. That’s hard too. With the physical part, what makes it hard is that physical relationship as well as that emotional relationship. But that physical relationship is something we are supposed to share just with our partner. And it makes us feel so physically icky and so physically unsafe Because we have opened ourselves up physically to our partner. We have bared ourselves physically, emotionally, all of that.
Speaker B [00:22:58]:
And to find out again that somebody that it’s not that somebody else let them in, that they that they did that. It makes us feel like our worth is nil. I think a lot of women struggle with the idea of sex too and with insecurity that, am I good enough? Do am I doing this right? Am I pleasing him? Am I pleasing me? We struggle because sex is a taboo topic. And so many women are deeply insecure that they are pretty enough, that they are attractive enough, that they are doing enough, that they are doing things the right way. We have body shame. We have self loathing. And then to find out that our partner has been with somebody else, it brings up all of that body shame. It brings up all of that self loathing.
Speaker B [00:24:04]:
It brings up all of those insecurities, and it makes it makes us think, what did she do that I don’t do? What did she know that I don’t know? What did he find so compelling that he’s never gonna get with me? And it brings up all of that physical pain. And then for most people, these two wounds are intertwined. It’s hard sometimes to separate the emotional from the physical. Just the fact that he was lying could be enough. The fact that he was lying for an emotional connection and then that he was lying for a physical connection, that’s even more. And here’s what I wanna say about why it hurts. Let’s talk for a moment about brain science and kind of the science of trauma and triggers. We don’t have to have a physical trauma.
Speaker B [00:25:06]:
An emotional trauma codes the same way in our brain, in our nervous system as if we were physically being attacked. And I know I felt gutted. I physically felt like somebody had taken a knife, had gutted me, had stabbed me in the heart, had stabbed me in the back. And in my brain, in my emotional system, in my nervous system, that injury is the same. So if if you’re thinking, what’s wrong with me? Nothing really happened to me. What I want you to know is it didn’t have to happen to you physically. Learning about it, hearing about it, having the emotional injury is the same as a physical injury. And when we talk about healing, if you were run over by a bus and you broke your back and you had internal organ damage and you broke a leg and you broke an arm and you had a concussion, I want you to think about how long that healing would take place and how you might heal the broken arm or the broken leg first.
Speaker B [00:26:24]:
You might have bruising on your body externally, but you couldn’t see that the liver was lacerated. You couldn’t see that internal organs were bruised. You just have to trust that they’re hurt, and you have to give it however long it takes to heal. Same thing with the concussion. Concussions go on for freaking ever. And the impact can be so long term and we hold space for people who have internal injuries, and we hold space for people who have external injuries. And, yes, it’s easier to see when there’s a cast on somebody’s leg, when there’s dark bruises and stitches, and we can go, ow, that looks bad. Go sit down.
Speaker B [00:27:13]:
This is an internal injury. Just like we can’t see a concussion, just like we can’t see the lacerated liver, it doesn’t mean the injury isn’t there. The injury is still there and the impact on your body is still there. And how can you give yourself time and compassion and space to heal? And one of the questions that people ask me is, how do I know when I’m healed? How do I even know what that looks like? And my answer is some of the typical betrayal trauma responses, Notice those and notice the frequency that they are occurring. So hyper vigilance. Are you constantly afraid that the other shoe is going to drop? Are you constantly afraid that something is going to happen? Does somebody touch your body and you jump? Has your identity completely collapsed? Do you not know who you are? Are you being more passive? Are you being more angry? That’s a huge one. People are like, I don’t even recognize myself. When you say you don’t even recognize yourself, it’s because your identity has temporarily collapsed.
Speaker B [00:28:31]:
And no, you don’t recognize yourself because yourself is not yourself anymore. And you’re rebuilding yourself back up. Are you dissociating? Are you like, la la la la la. Just I’m plowing ahead and we’ll deal with this later. Or are you in a state of freeze? Are you in a total state of shutdown and you just can’t get off the couch and you can’t do anything? These are some symptoms of betrayal trauma. The hypervigilance, the collapsed identity, the dissociation, the freeze, the anger. If they’re happening a lot, you’re in the thick of it and you’re not healed. Over time, these behaviors, these symptoms will start slowing down.
Speaker B [00:29:16]:
You will be able to relax more. You will be back in touch with who you are and how you show up. You’ll find joy. You’ll find pleasure in things before. You’ll be engaged in life. You’ll be present. That’s how you know you are healing. And we’ve talked about this before, but healing doesn’t happen on its own.
Speaker B [00:29:42]:
Of course, time can heal some things because you’re processing it. But you can’t just not process and expect time to do all the healing work for you. You have to actively do things. And that’s what I wanna talk through next. I wanna talk about how to heal from emotional betrayal, and I want to talk about how to heal from physical betrayal because they are different. And before we go into this section, what I want to say is don’t ever, ever minimize. It was just an emotional affair or it was just sex. I don’t ever want you to minimize this or to have somebody else minimize it for you and to have you left be left kinda scratching your head thinking, well, what was the problem? It was just sex.
Speaker B [00:30:32]:
It was just a one night stand or it was just an emotional connection, but nothing physical ever happened. Number one in healing, do not minimize. Do not minimize for yourself, and do not allow somebody else to minimize for you. Feeling the full breadth of the injury and being present with the full breadth of that injury is what is going to help you move through it and heal. Now that said, if you need to titrate, if you need to go slow, if you only need to process certain things at a time, do that because you don’t wanna flood your system. You don’t wanna completely reread every text, reread every email, completely flood yourself, and shut yourself down. But you also don’t wanna minimize how bad it really was. I know in my case, there were some things that I knew.
Speaker B [00:31:39]:
I mean, even in the moment, I knew I can’t deal with that right now. I absolutely cannot even think about that right now. Right now, I have to deal with figuring out, coming to terms with the fact that this happened? This happened to me? This happened in my life? That is so unfair. I’m good, and I’m kind, and we have a special relationship, and we are really bonded. How could this happen to me? My very first layer of healing was trying to figure out how the heck this could happen to me in my life, in my marriage. That didn’t make sense to me. That was what I had to figure out first. Later on, I could figure out some of the other pieces.
Speaker B [00:32:28]:
But first, I just had to wrap my head around what the heck was happening. So go slow, but don’t minimize or shove it under the carpet. Alright. Physical and emotional betrayals require different healing work. Somatic practices, I think are one of the best tools for reclaiming that internal sense of safety. Somatic practices mean using your body. So when you have are confronted with an emotional betrayal, I want you to feel what it is you’re feeling, and I want you to label what it is you’re feeling. The emotional is kind of amorphous, is out there.
Speaker B [00:33:26]:
It’s not something we can necessarily see or touch or taste or put our finger on. So I feel like it’s incredibly important to physicalize what is happening emotionally in order to heal more quickly. So what is that injury? Are you feeling like it’s unfair? Are you feeling what is it that you’re feeling around the emotional affair? Betrayal from the woman, rage, unfairness, disbelief, whatever it is that you are feeling, name it. Name just a few emotions at a time, and then figure out where those emotions are in your body. So if the the emotion is horror, absolute horror, I am aghast that this would happen. How does that present in your body? In my body, when I think back, it’s almost like water shedding off my back. It starts, like, at the base of my neck, and it goes down my shoulders and down my back. And it feels like running water is running off my body.
Speaker B [00:34:45]:
It’s this horror that is moving so fast, and it’s coming down my body. And it’s behind me, so I can’t even necessarily see it, but it’s this intense down my back. Okay. I’ve named what that is and where I’m feeling it. And the next level then is what can I do with my body to move this feeling through? For me, what I needed to do was circle my shoulders. I’m doing it right now. It’s like this, and to shake and to shimmy, almost like getting it off. It’s like if there was a hive of bees and they had all come out and they were all buzzing around my neck and shoulders, ah, that twitchy feeling.
Speaker B [00:35:34]:
I would twitch. I would shake. I would kinda be like, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Do physically what your body is telling you to do. Get those bees off. It’s like I’m gonna be stung in a million little places, and I’ve gotta shake and shimmy and shake and shimmy and get that off. That’s physicalizing the emotion. And although that’s small, it is so powerful to do because I’m getting that emotion and I’m moving it.
Speaker B [00:36:05]:
And it’s not controlling me anymore. I am controlling it because I can control my body. So find that emotion, figure out where it’s at in your body, and then control your body around it. And it gives you that sense of control, but it also releases physically what’s happening. Now on the opposite end, when there’s a physical injury, If you have actually been hit, been stabbed in the heart physically, oftentimes, the healing is the energetic, the emotional. While the body is physically relaxing, moving to the mind, using hypnosis, using journaling. So when the affair is sexual and it’s physical and it feels like a physical injury and you feel like you wanna keep your body safe and that you don’t even want your partner to touch you or hug you and you think how can we ever be intimate again, and it’s a physical injury. This is where I want you to shift to the emotional and start journaling around that.
Speaker B [00:37:28]:
Start journaling. Start thinking. Start meditating around that. So to heal a physical wound, you go emotional. And to heal the emotional wound, you go physical. If you want more, definitely reach out, and you can also download my betrayal recovery guide at betrayalrecoveryguide.com. And in this guide, there are five different tools. I’ve got a short meditation, which again helps heal that physical injury.
Speaker B [00:38:12]:
I’ve got some somatic processing, which helps heal the emotional injury, and I’ve also got a journal prompt and a few other goodies in there. So if you’re like, I’ve never thought about this this way. Download the betrayal recovery guide at betrayalrecoveryguide.com and work with some of those tools. Name how you were hurt emotionally. Name how you were hurt physically, and do the tool that is the opposite to help you process and get through what’s happening in your body. So many people say, I can’t get through this. And our language is really powerful. Getting through it is what we’re asking our bodies to do.
Speaker B [00:38:59]:
We are swimming through this sea of injury, of belief, and we have to keep moving. Moving physically, so important, but also moving mentally by challenging ourselves with new journal prompts, by challenging our understanding, and then walking it off, shaking it off, brushing it off. Another one of my favorite ways to heal is using fitness in terms of how can it give me what I feel like I am missing. So do you feel like you’re not strong enough to get through this? What builds strength in the body? Weight lifting. Go lift some weights. I don’t care if it’s only three pounds. I don’t care if it’s a hundred and three pounds. Go lift weights.
Speaker B [00:39:56]:
If you feel weak, go do something that will make you flex physically strong. If you are feeling inflexible, like you cannot move through this, I can’t get through this, I can’t get through this, That’s an inflexibility. What can you do to create more flexibility in your physical body? Yoga maybe. Stretching. Sit on the floor and stretch. Stay in bed in the morning and stretch. When you feel locked in and inflexible, create flexibility in the body. Have you ever said, I don’t even feel like I can breathe? That was me for so long.
Speaker B [00:40:37]:
It was like there was this crushing weight, and I couldn’t breathe. Okay. Ask yourself, what can I do to create breath in the body? Can I do big full body breaths where I’m reaching up and then exhaling and folding forward? Can I do breath work? If it’s not happening, how can you create it physically? That is what healing is all about. That is what moving through this is all about. So if you’re saying I can’t move through it, choose what it is you need to move through and do that thing in your body. Okay. Lastly, in healing from an emotional affair and or a physical affair, it’s really important to address the soul, the connection with ourselves. Infidelity is a relational wound because it impacts us and our partner.
Speaker B [00:41:40]:
Our relationship has been ruptured by their behavior. Yes. I get that. But what is really the most damaging is when our relationship with ourself is damaged, when our relationship with our soul is damaged. And one of the biggest mistakes that people make is seeking marital help first. Our marriage is in trouble. We’re gonna get marriage counseling. Big mistake.
Speaker B [00:42:10]:
Yes. You can do that. But the number one place to turn is to the relationship with yourself. The self is always primary. And when somebody cheats on us, it ruptures our relationship with our self. And we disconnect from ourselves because we’re in fear. We’re in trauma, and suddenly we think, I am not safe. Not only am I not safe from this person, I’m not safe to be in my own body because I can’t trust my own intuition.
Speaker B [00:42:42]:
I clearly trusted the wrong person, and I am not safe, and it ruptures our view with ourself. I can’t trust anybody else because I can’t even trust myself because look at what happened. I made the worst mistake. How could I have trusted it? How could I not know? How many of you have said, how could I not know? When you say, how could I not know, it is evidence that your relationship with yourself is being ruptured. So the first place to turn, the first thing to heal is the relationship with yourself. It’s not about your partner and the relationship with each other. It’s about the relationship with yourself. And until you repair, rebuild, re see with new eyes, the relationship with yourself, there is no way you can even start to rebuilding the relationship with your partner.
Speaker B [00:43:36]:
Few things around that. We so often confuse that sense of emotional intimacy with a sense of worth. We think we are good enough if somebody else trusts us emotionally. We think we are good enough if. Rewriting that can be challenging, but it can also be one of the greatest things that you do for yourself, whether it’s a personal future or a career future or any aspect of your future, rebuilding your own sense of worth. I am worthy whether I am naive and too trusting. I am worthy whether I am cynical and bitter. I am worthy whether I am in a relationship, out of a relationship, between relationships.
Speaker B [00:44:27]:
I am worthy. I am worthy whether I’ve made all the mistakes or none of the mistakes. I am worthy whether I was egotistical and arrogant and self centered or whether I was a complete overgiving doormat martyr. I am still worthy. So rebuilding that sense of self and that sense of worth is one of the first places to begin. Here’s a journal prompt that I want you to write down and work on. What did I lose? What did I lose when I lost emotional connection with myself? What did I lose when I lost emotional connection with myself? And then what did I lose when I lost emotional connection with my partner? And these are kinda head scratchers. I’m not gonna lie.
Speaker B [00:45:42]:
They’re kind of head scratchers. When we lose emotional connection with ourself, we are unmoored. We are unanchored. When we lose emotional connection with our partner, did you go deeper into yourself and connect more fully with yourself? Did you unmore even further? The reason I’m asking both of these is it’s important to start determining and ascertaining how connected are we to ourselves. We all lose connection with ourself. That’s okay. What matters is how soon we come back home to ourself and repair our own connection. So when things are falling apart with your partner, did they fall apart more with you and everything fell apart? Or when things fell apart with your partner, were you more grounded and anchored in yourself? These questions bring up a lot, and it’s not like there are right or wrong answers.
Speaker B [00:46:47]:
Just notice what happens when I lose connection with myself and what happens when I lose connection with others. Reconnecting and rebuilding your own emotional depth before rebuilding with a partner is what matters. And, again, there’s no right and there’s no wrong. This is about noticing patterns in yourself. Because when you know the patterns within yourself, then if you need a pattern interrupt, you know when and where to bring in a pattern interrupt. For most people, for many women, for myself included, we have a tendency to self abandon. And sometimes people are like, I don’t even know what self abandon means. How that showed up in my marriage, how that showed up in my life is if somebody else was angry or stressed or disconnected, I would try to fix it because I’m good and I’m kind.
Speaker B [00:47:54]:
Right? I would take care of them. I will make you your favorite dinner. I will sit here and listen. I will smile. I will walk away and give you your space. I will kind of fly into some sort of action to help you manage your emotions. Now the subtext of that is because you can’t manage them yourself, that’s not really healthy, or because you won’t love me unless I manage your emotions, Yikes. That’s a transactional relationship.
Speaker B [00:48:26]:
Or because if I don’t do this, you just won’t love me at all because I have no worth other than being at your beck and call and taking care of things. That’s an icky one too. And in any of those scenarios, what I want you to notice is, where are you? If somebody comes home and they’re having a really, really, really bad day, and your cup is really, really, really full, and you have capacity to help, and you love this person, and you wanna partner with them and help, yay, you can help. That’s awesome. But where’s your boundary? If that person comes home and they’ve had a really, really bad day and you’ve had a really, really, really bad day, are you draining yourself further? Are you putting on a false smile? How are you abandoning your needs? How in those moments can you show up and say something like, here’s what I need. Here’s what I here’s what I need. Here’s what you need. How do we make this work? And then, ultimately, how can I meet my own needs? How can I go take care of myself? Maybe I need to step away and go have a bubble bath, and I can meet your needs in an hour.
Speaker B [00:49:41]:
But right now, I can’t. How can you not self abandon in service of partners, parents, kids, careers, neighbors, families? Oh my god. What will people think? How can you always show up and meet yourself first? In last week’s show, we talked a lot about the biggest reason people cheat is pain. Pain because they’ve got a lot of pain, then they don’t know how to meet themselves, and they don’t know how to care for themselves. So they externalize, and they use cheating as a tool to make themselves feel better and to give them the validation that they are craving. And it kinda creates this downward spiral, this self fulfilling prophecy where the more they cheat, the worse they feel about themselves. The worse they feel about themselves, they more they the more they, quote, need to cheat to start feeling better about themselves. It’s the same pattern here.
Speaker B [00:50:47]:
Even though you and I aren’t cheaters, even though that is not in our vocabulary, even though that is not a tool we will use, we are still using tools. And one tool is not really better than another tool on the maladaptive side of things, whether it’s cheating, whether it’s gambling, whether it’s drinking, whether it’s self medicating in some other form, whether it’s online shopping, whether it is overworking out, a maladaptive coping mechanism is still maladaptive. It’s not that I’m superior to you because I online shop and you cheat. I get those different arguments around that, but they still hurt other people in different ways. And it’s not about who has the healthiest of the maladaptive coping mechanisms. It’s about who can move into true authenticity and power and be vulnerable enough and courageous enough to identify what we’re feeling, to face ourselves, to not run and hide, to not abandon ourselves, and to show up fully from a place of power and presence for ourself in service of first ourself, but then in meeting the needs of our beloved as well, in caring for our children and our communities and our families and our whole world. It’s coming back home to that beautiful relationship with yourself and your heart and your soul so that you can flourish and allow everybody else to flourish and rise with you. That’s what this is all about.
Speaker B [00:52:40]:
If you need help, go to betrayalrecoveryguide.com. Start there. If you’re like, oh, Lora, there’s so much more. There is so much more I need to do. I miss myself. This is not the life I had planned, and I really deserve and want to get through this, then reach out. We can coach one on one for as many or as few sessions as you want. We can do a whole package.
Speaker B [00:53:08]:
It doesn’t matter. What matters is having the courage and the bravery to do this. What matters is not letting this story, this cheating define you, but to let it refine you so you can flourish. It’s from crumpled to flaunting. From the dark night of the soul to the brightest dawn to the fullest expression of all that you are. That’s what this is about. I really, really believe that together, we can create that kind of situation for you. So when you are ready, reach out betrayal recovery guide dot com.
Speaker B [00:53:59]:
And as usual, always remember to flaunt exactly who you are because who you are is always more than enough. And, hey, it’s me, Lora, again. Just reminding you that I have partnered with betterhelp.com. So you or your partner, but especially your partner, can reach out and find a qualified therapist and get the help that they need so they cannot make this, quote, mistake of cheating again. So they can figure out where they were at, what went wrong, and what they can do better next time. So the next time they feel invalidated, the next time they feel disappointed or angry or frustrated, they have real tools that they can use, and that cheating doesn’t even become an option for them. The way that I’ve partnered with BetterHelp is you get 10% off your entire first month of therapy. If you or your partner doesn’t like the therapist, you can switch.
Speaker B [00:55:07]:
It’s all confidential. It’s all online, so it’s very easy. How you sign up using my discount is go to www.betterhelp.com/flaunt, f l a u n t, then your little forwardslash, then it’ll take you to my page. You’ll see a picture of me. And when you sign up through that link, that is when you get 10% off the entire full month. So don’t wait. Reconnect with yourself. Let your partner start doing their healing so you can each heal on your own and then come back together happier, healthier, and stronger than before.
Lora Cheadle [00:55:54]:
Tune in next time to flaunt, find your sparkle, and create a life you love after infidelity or betrayal with Lora Cheadle every Wednesday develop the skills and strategies necessary to embrace the future and flourish today. Download your free Betrayal Recovery Toolkit at betrayalrecoveryguide.com.