Affair Recovery for Women - Heal After Infidelity & Betrayal

The first step of the 5-step FLAUNT! Affair Recovery process is F, for Finding your Fetish. This is important because it helps you set your direction. Moving on is impossible if you don't know where you are going!

So many women claim that they can't move on or say that they don't know how to move on, but the truth of the matter is, unless you know where you are going, how could you move on? Move on to where? To what? Infidelity is huge. It pulls the rug out from under you and shatters your reality. You do not have to know everything going forward. You do know have to plan out the next 10 years. You only have to know generally where you are going and which direction you are facing.

Broad strokes. Are you going North, South, East, or West? That's what Finding your Fetish is all about.

• What lights you up?

• How do you want to feel?

• What will you no longer tolerate?

• What brings you joy?

These questions are hard! When you force yourself to answer, you will become stressed and feel blocked. When you relax into play, into joy, and stop looking backwards at the affair, backwards at your marriage or your spouse, and start looking inwards towards your heart and forwards towards your future, life will unfold in miraculous ways.

Enjoy and connect with me about your experience reconnecting to the power of play.

*Resources include a short activity and a guided meditation on the Sacred Power of Play.

Reclaiming yourself and figuring out what you love requires testing the waters. When you think of self-reflection and self-awareness as teasing, or even flirting with possibilities, it feels much less intimidating and a lot more fun! After all, that's what Finding your Fetish is all about. Exploration, fun, and reconnecting to play and the power of possibility.

Attached to this section is a "Fetish Finder" worksheet that I encourage you to print out. It's like a day planner, except instead of planning your day, you plan your joy. It's shocking to see how little intentional you we put in our lives! When you first start filling it out, it will be uncomfortable and you will find your mind making excuses why you can't put fun in your life.

Keep going! Like anything, intentionally carving out time for fun and joy is a process. Build the habit, even when you don't feel like it.

*Resources include a "Fetish Finder" worksheet so you can track and schedule time for yourself and your joy every day.

Did you  know that the mind doesn't know the difference between fantasy and reality? If you have ever cried over a book or jumped a movie or while reaming, your mind has mistaken fantasy for reality.

Take advantage of this by "fooling" your brain into releasing endorphins that make you feel better. How? By smiling, even if you don't feel like it. Put on makeup, fix your hair, or wear a nice outfit. When you look in the mirror and see your smiling and well-out together reflection smiling back, you can't help but feel better.

*Resources include a roadmap for rewiring your subconscious mind.

When we are stressed, we go into a state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Which means that we are in a reactive, survival state and are not in the rational, reasonable portion of our brain. How can we make decisions that will impact the rest of our lives from a state of stress and survival?

We can't!

The number one most important thing we must do if we want to make good decisions is to learn how to calm and reregulate our nervous systems so we can take back our brains, and our capacity to think rationally.

How? According to the May Clinic, laughter is the number one way to calm and reregulate the nervous system. Plus, laughter has many other benefits! It reduces stress, depression, and anxiety, and improves immune functioning and general wellbeing. Honestly, there is no down side to laughter.

Infidelity is painful and it's all to easy to get stuck looking at all the drama and pain. Even if you don't know where you are going, try implementing this exercise on a daily basis.

Consciously look for 5 things a day that make you laugh. Name those 5 things. Go on a quest, search social media, download funny books, or call a friend who always makes you smile.

Looking for 5 things a day that lights you up helps you develop the habit of seeing the good. So you can be OK on the inside no matter what's happening on the outside.

Remember this fundamental truth:

What you seek is what you will find.

1. What are you looking for?

2. Are you looking for all the ways you  were victimized, lied to, and cheated?

3. Why not try looking at the future?

4. Why not try looking for peace, calm, and even a little joy?

*Resources include the guided meditation, Be in Joy and Enjoy Life and a small challenge.

While nobody can predict whether your partner will cheat again, here are some insights that will help.

Is your partner engaged in doing work on himself and the relationship? Cheating is a "tool" that some people use to help ease their pain or discomfort. Life is filled with pain and discomfort. Is your partner seeking new tools to o help with pain and discomfort. Are they practicing those new tools until they become habitual?

Accepting the other person as they were in the past sets you free to accept them as they are now in the present. NOT as you hope they will be. Not as you think they might become, but as they actually are.

Do not fall in love with someone's potential! Fall in love with how they show up!

Yes, people make mistakes. Yes, you and your partner will both continue to make mistakes. There is a difference between minor slip ups and a pattern of behavior. If your partner is truly changing, accepting this new version of who they are, and becoming the new version of who you are, can be life-altering!

*Resources include a full length podcast on discerning whether he will cheat again.

What's the difference between forgiveness and acceptance? Do we really need to forgive? What if I'm not ready to forgive? Don't worry! forgiveness is a high bar and you do not need to forgive, you simply need to accept.

This lecture also touches on accepting yourself. Your flaws, your "inability" or unwillingness to forgive, and anything that you did in the past that may lead you to feel like you "caused" the affair. Spoiler alert: You didn't!

*Resources include two full length podcasts on forgiving yourself and the process of moving towards forgiveness.

Recovering from infidelity is hard, life is hard, no matter how "good" you are or how much you try, things are going to go wrong. Instead of freaking out, shutting down, or giving up, learning a few navigation skills will help,

Three of the most powerful tools to use to navigate negative or difficult situations are:

1. Learning how to communicate using "I statements."

2. Setting and enforcing healthy boundaries,

3. Developing a habit of mindfulness.

"I statements" require you to identify and own what you are feeling and to communicate clearly to others.

Boundaries are for you, and declare what you will do, NOT what you want someone else to do.

Mindfulness can be anything from breathwork to journling to meditation or hypnosis.

Your challenge is to practice these 3 tools for 30 days so they become habits. Learning a tool is meaningless unless you apply it. Application comes through the development of habitual new behaviors.

*Attached resources include a guided meditation, three somatic processing videos, and a short assignment.

Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, your power has been inside of you all along.

Betrayal ruptures your trust and before you can ever hope to trust anyone or anything again, you need to rebuild trust within yourself. Slowing down, sitting in silence, reconnecting to your intuition and staying embodied will help you come back home to yourself.

Start slow, listen to your heart, gut, and soul, and just begin.

*Resources include a short assignment, a 7-minute practice to ground, center, and clear as well as a 10-minute practice to connect to your intuition and get the answers you need.

Congratulations! You just took the first steps in reclaiming yourself and your worth. Infidelity changes who you are and rebuilding your identity after betrayal is a necessity. It takes time, it requires mistakes and missteps, and it is worth it!

For more information and insight, please listen to Lora's Podcast, FLAUNT! Create a Life You Love After Infidelity & Betrayal, wherever podcasts are found. You can also listen on Lora's website, www.loracheadle.com.

Want connection with others going through this journey? Join Lora's Facebook group, Affair Recovery For Women and find your community.

Need more? Ready to go deep? Reach out to Lora at lora@loracheadle.com and let's explore how we might work together.

This lecture will give you a lot to think about! Unconditional acceptance is the secret weapon that brings peace and power to any situation. Instead of wasting your time and energy worrying about what you wish "would have" or "should have" happened, you are released from the drama and set free to  be in the present moment.

Accepting unconditionally begins by accepting the situation unconditionally as it is. Your partner cheated. You are here, like it or not. What are you going to do from here? It's like using your GPS without your location setting. Unless you know where you are at, the directions will be meaningless.

What is holding you back from full acceptance of this situation? We will also touch on the concept of secondary gain, and why you may subconsciously be keeping yourself miserable as a way to "punish" your cheating partner.

I'm attaching a journal that will help you begin to process and accept. Remember, acceptance is not condoning!

*Resources include a full length journal (entitled Free to Flaunt Infidelity) and a short challenge.