224: Going All-In On Your Desires

Hi everyone. I'm Dr. Marie Murphy and I'm a non-judgmental infidelity coach. If you are cheating on your partner or having an affair or engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you're going to do. No shame, no blame, no judgments.

A lot of the so-called advice that's out there for people who are cheating is little more than thinly veiled judgment, at best. But that is not what I provide. I give you guidance and support that respects the fullness of your humanity and the complexity of your situation, no matter what you're doing or what you've been doing. So when you're ready to deal with your infidelity situation in a way that you feel great about, let's get to work. There are two ways you can have me as your coach. You can enroll in my online course, You're Not the Only One, or we can work together one-on-one via Zoom. Either way, you can get started by going to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.

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Okay, let's get right down to it. I just moved to Costa Rica. And by just moved, I mean I got here like just over two weeks ago. So I am still very much in the thick of a major life transition. And although I really wanted to talk to you about this transition for today's episode, which is going to be like the New Year's Eve or like New Year's Day or just after that episode, I do not have my thoughts as well organized as I would like them to be about what I'm going to say. And I'm right up against my deadline. So I'm going to do the best I can to share what I consider to be some points about my experience, my current experience that I see as being broadly relevant to my clients' experiences of infidelity.

This episode is a little tricky for me because my priority is to talk about my own experience because that's my business and what it's appropriate for me to share about. But this move wasn't and isn't just my experience. My spouse and our dogs moved with me. And although the dogs didn't have a choice in this, they didn't participate in any of the decision-making or planning, my spouse certainly did. So this story is his story too, and it's about him too. And I want to acknowledge that, but I also don't want to speak for him too much, although with apologies, I am going to speak for him and about him a little bit today.

So, we made this move because each of us, and both of us together, have long yearned for a different way of life. For years, we have been talking about wanting to move out of San Francisco. We have been considering different places we might want to move to and we have evaluated some of the contenders pretty seriously. We came pretty close to, you know, moving to a few different places that we looked at. Or at least we made very serious investigations.

And we finally settled on Costa Rica because it checked a lot of our most important boxes in terms of what we were looking for in a place we would move to. Now, I know it seems like everybody is moving to Costa Rica these days, so I hate to seem like or sound like a terrible cliche, which I might anyway. But for whatever this is worth, we did not feel like we were riding a trend by choosing to move here, although it seems like that's exactly what we were doing in retrospect.

We visited several times. There was a lot of very thoughtful deliberation that went into this choice. And when we ultimately decided to move here, we did so with the intention that it would be, if not a permanent move, then at least an indefinite move. We aren't here on digital nomad visas. We didn't come here to try it and see. We came with the intention to stay. We, after having visited the area that we moved to multiple times, we decided that we liked it enough to commit to it on a more permanent basis, or at least on a longer term basis. And so that is what we did.

And this is something that I could say so much more about. This is something that I talk to clients about all the time. They say things like, "Well, how do I know what I want to choose?" And the answer is you decide. You choose. You decide that you are willing to commit to a certain course of action, whether that's a person or a relationship with a person or a job or a move or whatever, and then you try it and see, right?

So that's what we did. We decided that we knew enough about this area and we like this area enough to commit to it. And here we are. So there are several things that I want to say about this experience. The first thing is like, we decided to come here. People are like, well, how did you know? I think that asking the question that way implies that you get some sort of message from God or message from the cosmos that something is the right thing to do. And I understand that sometimes people have those kinds of experiences, but even if you get some kind of message from beyond the beyond, you still have to choose to act on that message, right?

So I would argue that there's an element of deciding that cannot be understated, whether or not you get some sort of like message from above that something is right for you. And I wouldn't say that we got any sort of message from above. We just knew what we were looking for. We decided that this fit the bill and that was, you know, in many respects a very significant thing to do.

So after making the decision that we wanted to move here, we had to go all in on our desire to actually make it happen. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, for starters, we bought a fucking house here. We had to move mountains to make that happen. A lot of the foreigners, as far as I know anyway, that live in Costa Rica who buy houses, buy them with all cash. And we were not in a position to do that. And getting the house purchase done without paying all cash was quite difficult, took many months, and required some Olympic level financial gymnastics on our part.

And I mean, I will tell you, there were so many points during the transition when we could have quite easily could have said, no, this is impractical. No, this isn't wise. No, this is too risky. No, this is financially dangerous or all the things. I mean, a lot of people probably wouldn't have chosen to do what we did in the service of buying this house.

But here's the thing. If we hadn't gone all in on buying this house, where would we be right now? Well, probably sitting in our condo in San Francisco wondering when the adventure was going to begin. And neither of us wanted that. Neither of us wanted to be in the situation of going, well, I don't know, what are we going to do instead of this? It was like, if we know this is what we want, why don't we go for it?

And here's the thing. I mean, even though I'm a big believer in going all in on one's desires, like that doesn't mean that going all in on something is necessarily comfortable all the time. There were times during the financial transaction where I was scared shitless about what we were doing. I think I recorded an episode called Dealing with Doubt during this process. And during that episode, I talked about like a major life something that I was undertaking and how I woke up in the mornings feeling a lot of doubt sometimes. And this is what I was talking about. I felt so much doubt on some days. I was like, I don't know if this is the right thing to do or not. But what I kept coming back to was, this is what I have wanted for years. This is what my spouse has wanted for years. This looks like the opportunity that fits the bill for us the best right now. If we don't go for this, what's going to happen? Well, as I told you, it probably means just sitting on our couch in San Francisco going, I don't know, what do we do now? And I didn't want that. I really wanted us to go for this. And so we did. We kept going. We went all in a lot of different ways.

And although that was deeply uncomfortable, I wouldn't be here right now talking to you about this big adventure I've embarked upon if we hadn't gone all in. There are some things in life that we can get without having to do things that we consider scary or risky or whatever. There are some things in life that we can get without going all in, without putting all of our chips on the table, literally or figuratively or metaphorically or financially or otherwise, right? Sometimes we don't have to put it all on the line. But the bigger your dreams are, the more likely it is that you're going to have to go all in to get what you want.

And what I want you to know is that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be fun or comfortable or instantly rewarding. And I want you to consider that doesn't have to be a problem. Do you want to be lying on your deathbed saying, oh yeah, I'm really glad I didn't take that risk. God, that would have been scary. Oh my God, I don't know how that would have turned out. Or would you rather be on your death bed saying, thank God, I went all in on my desires. You get to choose. I'm not saying that there's a right or a wrong answer here.

I hope I've said this before on this podcast, but I've definitely said it before in some mediums. It is not inherently better to go for the big adventures in life. But if you want a big adventure in life, if you want a big change, you may have to do a lot to make that change happen. And I don't think that we talk about that enough. I don't think that we talk about how hard it may be to do a lot to make a big change enough. And I don't think that we talk enough about how very scary and naked it can feel to go all in on something.

So, getting the purchase of the home done was one thing. And that was hard. And, you know, getting that done felt like a really big accomplishment. And then there was the actual move itself. I can't think of anyone who's like, yeah, moving is really fun and awesome and great. I just love moving. You know, it probably won't surprise you to hear that getting ready for the move and doing all of the actual moving things was a major headache, right?

We vacated our condo in San Francisco. It's rented it out. That was a whole process in and of itself. And figuring out what to pack and bring with us, what to ship, what to put in storage, what to give away or donate or throw away. I mean, you know, it's a major undertaking. I don't think of myself as a person that has a lot of stuff and we don't have, you know, in the American scheme of things, we don't have that much space. But even so, getting packed up and moved out was a just in time production. I was literally like finishing up the moving out of the condo thing like as we were like minutes away from having to leave for the airport, right?

And then, in addition to that, we have two dogs who are feisty little terriers who were not real excited about going in their travel crates, right? And even though we experimented with the drugs the vet gave us to sedate them during the flight, they were like still not getting in the bags, even as we upped the dosage a little bit. And so prior to getting here, I was very focused on a, the moving stuff, which sucked. And B on what was the journey going to be like for us and more especially for the dogs. I was very, very, very focused on the logistics of making the change happen, or I should say, the logistics of getting to Costa Rica, that part of the change. And all of that was taking up a lot of my bandwidth, right? And it was not, it wasn't, nothing is pleasant.

I don't know, I shouldn't say that. Maybe for some people there are pleasant things about moving, but there really wasn't anything pleasant about this experience. It was just a grind. It was just like. So it's tough. It's just significant life stuff that has to be done in order to get what you want. And I think that sometimes we think, oh yeah, of course there's going to be hard work involved in getting what I want. Of course there's going to, like let's say that you're having an affair and you're very much in love with your affair partner and you know you want to extricate yourself from your marriage and get a divorce and be able to have a non-affair relationship with your current affair partner. Even if you want that very badly and you're as sure as you can be that you want that and you have clear reasons for wanting that, it still may be a real pain in the ass to go through with your divorce. It may be painful in all kinds of ways. It may be inconvenient in all kinds of ways. It may be expensive in all kinds of ways. Oh, that's another delightful thing about moving. Like, you know, it's just one expense after another. And even when you think you're reasonably well prepared for this, the next thing you know, you're hit with another major one and it's just like, oh my God.

And this happens. This isn't unusual. It's part of the process of doing a big thing. And just when we think that we've kind of adequately anticipated all the things that could be challenging about the change that we want to make, new difficulties pop up. And sometimes people get really spooked by this. And what I want to suggest is that if you want the big change, you've got to be willing to keep going. You've got to be willing to manage your mind as you go through one challenging thing after another. You've got to be willing to deal with the emotions that come when you're dealing with one challenging thing after another.

And so there was definitely a lot of that going on as I was leading up to actually like getting on the plane and making the trip to Costa Rica. Now, fortunately, the journey itself went pretty well. One of the dogs had a little bit of a meltdown on the plane, but it wasn't worst case scenario. And we made it from San Francisco to San Jose, and then from San Jose to our house on the Southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica, pretty smoothly. And that was pretty awesome. And when we arrived here, I thought we had done it. We drove up to this house, which we'd visited multiple times but had never actually stayed in. And I was like, we have arrived. We have done all of the hard stuff. We made it.

Let me tell you, dear listener, that sounds hilarious to me two weeks after the fact, right? Even if you have a pretty good idea of what you are signing up for when you make a change, there may end up being a big difference between anticipating the change and living in the change or with the change. So what do I mean by that? Well, I've visited this area of Costa Rica multiple times before. I've visited the house that we bought multiple times. Again, without actually having stayed in it, but with having like checked it out and spent some time in it before.

But visiting this area is very different from living here on a day-to-day so-called normal basis. How? Well, let me count the ways. Let's take insect management, for instance. Visiting this area and staying in a hotel is very different from staying in your own house in the jungle. When you're not responsible for your own insect management, a, you don't know what the hell goes into it. You don't know what kind of chemicals are involved, what kinds of other barbaric practices go into it. All you know is that you're largely shielded from the insects that rightly occupy this area, right? It's an insect's world and we're just living in it. But when you're staying in a hotel, other people are doing insect management for you, right?

Similarly, when you go into restaurants, if you're eating in a relatively nice place, like you're probably not contending with the amount of bugs that you theoretically could be. Let me tell you, I have been doing a lot of insect management in the last 15 days. A lot of it, right? We have bugs coming at us from all angles, all kinds of them, all the time. And there's a lot I could say about this. One is, I expect it will get better. As we, you know, learn more about what we need to do to keep the insects at bay, as we develop ongoing relationships with the appropriate contractors who help us manage the insects appropriately. Things have improved since we first rolled up. We, you know, to our delight discovered that we had like ant nests in a couple of window sills. The fumigators hadn't come in months, we discovered. There's a whole like story about the management of this house while we had owned it but weren't yet living in it, but that's another story for another day.

Suffice it to say that we've been dealing with a lot of critters. And that, I mean, I'm not the most insect averse person in the world, but even so, it's not nothing. It's a constant quality of life issue. And for my spouse, it's definitely not nothing.

And moreover, visiting, you know, there's just so many things I could say about the challenges of this change. But just generally speaking, anytime you move to a new place, you're figuring out a lot of daily life things that may have been routine for you for quite some time. Where do I get cleaning products? Well, obviously, I know where the grocery store is, but like, do I know if it has the specific stuff that I'm looking for? No, I don't. Do I know where people sell food and produce? Yeah, I kind of do. But have I ever actually had to like stock the house for normal eating here before in this area? No, I haven't. Absolutely not.

And then, oh my God, our poor dogs. So we've taken our city dogs into the jungle and it's been a change. I mean, just the climate alone has been a big change for them. We haven't figured out what to feed them yet. There's been a lot of puking and a lot of diarrhea on the doggies' ends as we've experimented with different options for feeding them that are locally available, right? And, you know, having the dogs like sick and sad all the time and also not wanting to let them run off into the bush. It's an ongoing project. It's a moment-to-moment project. I definitely don't have my normal office setup going on at all. And that is challenging on many levels. Also, you know, when you're living in another country, there's a lot of things that you're adjusting to beyond the differences that come with any move.

And I knew that all of this stuff was going to be a thing. Intellectually, as well as experientially. I have lived abroad before and I've experienced the extreme highs and lows that can come with living in a very different place in the initial throws of the move. But it's been a long time since I've lived abroad, and I had really and truly forgotten about what that kind of a transition is like or can be like. I had been so busy packing and getting ready for the move that I had not spent any time, literally, I had literally not spent any time intentionally organizing my thoughts about what adjusting to a whole new life would be like. I had been so busy worrying about getting the dogs safely through the journey that I hadn't given any thought to how I would deal with any discomfort that I might experience, right?

Theoretically, I could have anticipated this stuff, but I just didn't. I did not have the bandwidth to do it. So I'm not going to lie. As soon as the initial high of having made it here wore off, which happened pretty quickly, I want to say, time is such a blur at this point. It probably took about like 12 to 36 hours to go from being elated to be here to being like, "Oh my God, what the fuck have we done? Oh my God, I think I'm miserable."

And I can't remember exactly what the primary reasons for my misery were. But it was just like all the changes hitting me at once and on top of that being like bitten up by bugs and so many things. Let's just put it that way. Like even though I wanted this so badly, I still was hit with the like, what have we done? Shortly after arriving. And for what seemed like a long time while it was happening, I think this probably lasted all of like two to four days. But at the time, it seemed like a really big deal. I was just like, oh Jesus Christ, like this sucks. Like I don't like this. This is hard. It's just like we're getting hit with like one difficult thing after another and we don't know how to solve for any of these things. And I'm uncomfortable physically and emotionally and like, when is this going to get better? Maybe never, I don't know. Oh my God. And so there was a lot of just like unmanaged discomfort going on.

Fortunately, a few things happened in rapid succession that kind of snapped me out of it. One of the things was, I had a conversation with someone, well, maybe not exactly a conversation. I had an exchange with someone who moved abroad, I think last year and was like, yeah, somebody was congratulating me on my move and I was like, actually, like don't say congratulations yet. I'm still in the like what the fuck did I do stage of things. And somebody chimed in and said, hey, I moved abroad last year. I can totally relate to what you're going through. Hang in there, it gets better. And as soon as this person said this to me, I was like, oh yeah, that's right. I've had this kind of experience before. Like this is just a moment in the change. It's not the entirety of it.

Then I had another conversation with someone and I was like, you know, and they said, how are you doing? And I was like, well, I think I kind of underestimated the significance of the change that I had signed up for. And he was like, immediately without missing a beat said, "Oh, that's a good thing because if you had fully recognized the significance of the change you were signing up for, you would never have made it." And I was like, huh. That is an interesting way of looking at it. I don't necessarily 1,000% agree, but I think there is some useful truth in that is really important to remember.

And thirdly, I just remembered, I was like, wait a minute, making an international move could be considered a major life change. Hello, what do I say to people all the time? Major life changes come with mixed emotions, sometimes intensely mixed emotions, including some intensely uncomfortable emotions. And as soon as I kind of got all of this perspective back, I was like, oh yeah, this is just hard. That's okay. That's not the end of the world. I can actively manage my thinking about this. I can deal with the discomfort I'm feeling about this. And I can start to recognize that there are some things about this transition that are really awesome too, right? I can recognize that although dealing with our ant situation is not to my liking, I also get to see toucans every day, which I quite like.

Yes, it kind of freaks me out that we live on a dirt road that gets kind of gnarly when it rains. And yes, it kind of freaks me out that we live on the other side of a bridge that floods sometimes. And when it floods, the bridge is impassable and you're either stuck at home or prevented from getting home. That kind of, you know, I haven't really figured out how to deal with that yet. But in the present, I can also deeply appreciate that I no longer hear the constant hum of traffic, right? That's awesome. Instead of hearing city noises, I hear like all of these crazy bird sounds all day long. And I really like that. And I can really like that and also still feel really challenged by some of the quirks of this home and some of the challenges of living in nature. I can enjoy nature and I can also feel really challenged by nature. Both of these things can be true for me at once, right?

So now that I am actively managing my thinking about this experience and intentionally tolerating the discomfort I'm feeling without making it mean that anything has gone wrong, I'm trucking along. It's definitely still one day at a time. This is early stages of all of this, but it's possible for me to exist within the challenges without experiencing unnecessary suffering, right? And that for a lot of folks is the benefit of coaching. If you don't know, or at least a primary benefit of coaching, if you don't yourself know how to manage your thinking, if you don't yourself know how to intentionally relate to the discomfort that is a normal part of the human experience and probably an inevitable part of making big changes in the service of going after what you desire, get yourself a coach who can help you learn how to do these things, right? And of course, I am one such coach.

Okay, there's another element of this experience that is really important to talk about and this has great bearing on many people's infidelity situations. My spouse is having his own experience of this adjustment. He's having a tough time. Within days of getting here, he was like, I think it's time to reevaluate. And I was like, okay, dude, I get it. This is super hard. I'm struggling myself, but this is not the time to reevaluate. You do not get to reevaluate before you have even been here for a week. And he was like, okay, one month. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he was like, okay, three months. And I was just like, no. That's not how this works. It can take longer than that to adjust to big changes.

To some extent, it's okay for me to tell him those kinds of things. To some extent, it's okay for me to say, listen, I've lived abroad before and you haven't. And if you don't want to hang in there with this part of this experience, you don't get to experience the things that you actually wanted to get out of making this move. To some extent, it's okay for me to ask him, after he's complained about 7 to 10 things and I've listened attentively, what he is enjoying about our experience here so far. But it is not okay for me to push that kind of stuff too far.

My job, in great part, is to let him have his experience of this transition, which has been tough for him so far, without trying to fix his discomfort for him. And that means I have to bear the discomfort that I feel when he expresses his dissatisfaction or dislike or frustration or overwhelm or so on, right? And it is uncomfortable for me to bear the discomfort that I feel when I know how very uncomfortable he is. But it's my job to digest my discomfort. It is not my job to fix his discomfort for him or to try to convince him that he shouldn't feel uncomfortable or anything like that, right?

Now, just to be clear, if he continues to feel the way that he does, I'm going to take that very seriously. And of course, we can reevaluate this choice. Even though we came here with the intention of staying for a while, as in a long while, that does not mean that we have to stay. We are not committed to sticking with our decisions or our intentions no matter what. But I'm also not going to make any snap decisions and decide to reverse course just because the early days of this transition have been brutally uncomfortable in some respects, right?

Now, I also truly believe that once we get our bearings, we are going to find that we that what we get to experience here is what we hoped to experience out of living here. I have faith that this is going to work out pretty darn well. And moreover, I am committed to doing everything I can to make this experience work out pretty darn well. And if I get to the point where I or we are like, look, you know, we've done what we can to make this experience positive for us and it's not working out like we'd hoped it would and it's time to reassess and maybe make some different decisions, that will be fine. But for now, I'm going all in on allowing this transition to be challenging and very challenging in some respects, and also doing what I can to create the experience that I want to have.

Now, what I really want to stress is that I am thinking this way very intentionally. It does take effort to think this way. I could wallow in poor me, I don't like this. The mean ants bit my feet again this morning and I'm itchy and hurty and sweaty and sticky all the time and I just, right? Like I could get into that. I could let my brain go there. This is a funny thing to say. I think that at times, thinking intentionally comes very easily to me because I am practiced in doing it. But man, my brain can run away from me just like anybody else's can. I can indulge in feeling sorry for myself like with the best of them. I can indulge in thinking that my discomfort is a problem. Like I have a human brain too. I've practiced dealing with my mind's tendencies for long enough so that I don't tend to get sucked into big bad pits and stay there. But I can. It's a very human tendency. And I could be going there right now.

And the reason why I'm not is because is not because I have like special powers that just came to me without any effort. It's because I am choosing to believe that there is great value in believing that this is going to work out the way that we wanted it to, or perhaps to put it differently, that we are going to find things in this experience that we have been looking for a long time. I believe that there is great value in going all in on this desire and making the best to realize or, I don't know, make manifest, make real the possibilities that we see in this experience, right? But if I didn't deliberately choose to think that way, like who knows what would be happening right now, right? I might be on the next flight home, or home. What is home at this point? I might be on the next flight back to San Francisco.

And what some people think is that this kind of thinking is hard or that only some people can do it. And what I want to suggest is that it may take effort, but that doesn't have to mean that it's hard. And the reward of investing that effort is that you get to experience more of what you want to in life. You get to make the best of your adventures, even if they don't necessarily turn out exactly like you want them to. You get to deal with challenges without the challenges handling you, right? Or I should say, you get to handle challenges without getting handled by the challenges. And on the whole, I find this to be a much richer experience of being alive than just letting our thoughts have their way with us and not knowing how to deal with our uncomfortable feelings when the going gets tough.

So, let's see. There's so much more I could say about this whole move to Costa Rica, but I'm going to wrap it up here for today and say that if you are looking to make big changes related to your infidelity situation in 2026 and you are like pooping in your pants terrified about doing it, I get it. I understand. And I want you to know that the fear doesn't have to stop you. We can work with your fears together. We can work with the challenges associated with the changes you want to make. And you can do big, bold, brave things that a, blow your mind and b, set you up to create the life that you want to be living.

I am totally agnostic when it comes to like past lives and future lives and reincarnation and all that kind of stuff. But even though I recognize that, you know, we may live again and again and again and again and again, who knows? This experience of your life is a singular thing. At least I think so, right? Maybe there's more to that than I know too. But what I want to encourage you to do is to think about how you want to live out this incarnation or this iteration of your existence and go after what you want like your life depends upon it because your life does depend upon it.

All right, people. That is enough of my semi-rambling for today. I wish you a happy new year if this is when you're celebrating the new year. And I invite you to employ me or enlist me to help you get your shit together and make this year of your life the best one yet. If you want to work with me one-on-one via Zoom, the first step is to schedule yourself an introductory coaching session with me, which you can do through my website, mariemurphyphd.com. If you love working on your own and you want to go beyond the teachings that I offer on this podcast, enroll in You're Not the Only One. You can access the teachings in total and all the time as soon as you enroll, and you can work at your own pace. It's a terrific resource to go beyond what I offer on the podcast.

All right, folks, you only live once. Let's make the most of it. Have a wonderful day. Have a wonderful beginning to 2026. I'll talk to you next time. Bye for now.