214: What If You Make the “Wrong Decision” About Your Relationship(s)?

Hello everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy, I’m a non-judgmental infidelity coach, and it is a pleasure to be back at it with this podcast.  If you’re new to this podcast, here’s what happened.  I had this thing coming out on a regular basis for about four and a half years, and I got to the point where I wanted to try something different.  So I started up a YouTube channel, and put a pause on the podcast.  And this was a really good experiment.  Sometimes in life you just want to try something new, and I did, and that was a useful exercise in many respects.  But then, after a few months, I realized that I liked doing the podcast more than I liked doing the YouTube thing.  For various and specific reasons.  So I checked in with my wonderful podcast production company, Digital Freedom Productions, and they said they’d be happy to have me back as a client, and I said, okay great, that seals the deal for me, I’m going to pick back up with the podcast and stop doing the YouTube videos.  For now, anyway. 

Now here’s the thing.  I am quite confident that me telling you that I decided to pause the podcast for very clear reasons that I liked, only to decide to go back to doing it within a matter of months, is going to get some of you thinking, oh my god, what if I make a decision about my infidelity situation and I hate it?  What if I think I’m making the right decision, and it turns out to be the wrong decision?  What if I am as sure as I can be that I really want what I’m choosing, and then, after I live with my decision for a while, I come to realize that I really don’t like it, and perhaps more specifically, what if I really want to put humptee dumptee back together again?  What if I just want to go back to the way things were?  And what if that isn’t an option?  What if there’s NO WAY for me to reverse my decision, like you reversed your decision on your podcast?

These kinds of questions about what do I do if I make a decision and I hate it come up a LOT in my work with clients.  The most common specific concern behind these questions is, what if I leave my marriage because I want to be with my affair partner and then I realize that I gave up a really good thing and the thing that I gave it up for isn’t all that great.  But of course, some people’s circumstances are different.  Some people aren’t choosing between a spouse and an affair partner, but they are scared of making a decision that they end up disliking, and can’t un-do.

So today we’re going to talk about how you can handle it if you make a decision about your infidelity situation, and you find that you really don’t like living in the results of your decision.  What if you make what seems to be the “wrong decision” about your relationship, or relationships?

First of all, I must stress that there is a lot we can do to increase the likelihood that we will NOT make a decision that we end up hating.  If you’ve been following my work for a while, you know that I place a lot of emphasis on the importance of HOW we make decisions.  When we systematically and deliberately consider our options, when we make decisions for clear reasons that we like, and when we’re committed to managing our thinking and having an intentional relationship with our emotions, we can set ourselves up to make decisions that we feel really good about.  And I can help you with this entire process, tail to snout, if you want my support and guidance.  My self-guided course, You’re Not the Only One, has a whole unit on making decisions for clear reasons that you like, and it’s a fantastic resource that you can access quickly and easily.  

So before we get too worried about making a decision that we end up hating, it’s really important to be aware that when our decision-making process is robust, we are much more likely to make choices that we DO like.  Sometimes people think that liking the results of decisions they make is a matter of chance, but that is largely not the case.  And it’s also incredibly disempowering to believe that liking your choices is simply a matter of chance.  

So if you’re worrying about making a decision that you end up not liking, I want you to start considering that you have a lot of power to prevent that from happening.  You may need to learn how to exercise that power, and that’s fine, if you want to learn, I can teach you, but I want you to start to build trust and confidence in your capacity to make choices that you do feel great about.

The second thing that I want to stress is that some decisions aren’t as irreversible as we think they are.  When I paused production of this podcast, I figured there was a chance that if I ever wanted to re-start it again, my production company wouldn’t take me back as a client, and then I’d have to look for a new team to work with, and I didn’t love the idea of that, but that didn’t end up happening.  And if it did, I would have dealt with it.  For sure.  Might the process of finding a new production company taken up some of my time and energy?  Sure.  But that’s just part of life!  Sometimes things change, and we just have to deal with those changes – even if it is a pain in the ass sometimes!

Now of course, pausing and re-starting a podcast, is likely to be quite differerent from being involved with a specific human, and breaking up with them, and wanting to get back together with them.  If you end a relationship and then come crawling back, it is possible that the person you were involved with will not want anything to do with you!

BUT it is important to keep in mind that sometimes people DO end relationships, and then reignite them!  Or re-start them.  It DOES happen.

I want to be really clear about why I’m saying this, and I also want to be really clear about what I do NOT want to imply by saying this.  What I am NOT saying is, don’t worry about ending a relationship because you can always get back together with the person you broke up with later if you want to.  If you are considering ending a relationship, I encourage you to assume that that decision will lead to a permanent change.  But it is also the case that sometimes people break up and then get back together, and if that ends up being something that you truly want to pursue, it’s not an impossible outcome.  SO many things are possible in the realm of human connections, and it’s important to remember that!

That said, sometimes we make a decision about our relationships, and we really don’t like it, and there’s no way to effectively un-do the decision, or get out of living with the results of our decision very quickly.  So for example, if you decide to leave your marriage, and you and your spouse split up, it’s possible that if you later decide that you actually want to get back together with your former spouse, and you tell them this, they may say, “Sorry, I have moved on.”  Same thing if you end a relationship with someone other than your spouse, and then you decide that actually you really do want to have a relationship with them.  If you go back to them after breaking up with them and say, “Oh my god, I made a huge mistake, will you take me back,” they might say no.

And if this happens, you may be quite upset.  You might hate the fact that you don’t get to have a relationship with this particular person anymore, and you might hate yourself for having let this particular person go.  I’m not saying you SHOULD hate yourself, of course.  But you might, and you might hate everything about your decision.  It is COMPLETELY fair to regard a particular human as a uniquely precious person, and a connection that you have with a particular human as a uniquely wonderful experience.

That said, when we start thinking that we HAVE to have a relationship with a particular human in order to be fundamentally okay in the world, we can run into a lot of problems.  More on that later.  For now, let’s start to flesh out what you can actually do if you find yourself in a situation like this.  What can you do if you end a relationship with someone and then you go, oh shit, I really messed up.  I really don’t like what I’ve chosen.

The first thing I want you to do is ask yourself, why don’t I like my decision, or the situation I have created?  And get really SPECIFIC about what you don’t like.

It’s really important to remember that it is LEGITIMATE to dislike things.  So let yourself catalogue what you dislike, and really dislike what you dislike.

SOMETIMES just letting yourself fully dislike whatever it is that you dislike is enough to help you digest the matter, and start moving on.

And the reason why this is the case is because we so often resist disliking things.  Because if we dislike something, then that might mean we might have a problem, and we don’t want to have a problem!  So we try to ignore or gloss over our dislike of whatever it is we don’t like.  We try to tell ourselves that everything is fine.  

But this usually just makes things worse.  Telling ourselves that something is fine when we are not at all fine with it is NOT helpful.  Thus, sometimes, simply allowing ourselves to tell ourselves the truth, and acknowledging our dislike changes everything!  Sometimes our dislike just wants to be acknowledged!  Simply allowing ourselves to tell ourselves the truth can be remarkably relieving – and sometimes the truth is that we don’t like something!  Sometimes just allowing ourselves to say that to ourselves resolves a LOT.  Sometimes after we let ourselves acknowledge that we dislike something, we find that we dislike it a lot less.  Or maybe we don’t even mind it at all.

But if you allow yourself to dislike the thing and you find that you still very much dislike the thing, getting really clear on what you dislike is HELPFUL.  Sometimes when we’re unhappy with a situation, our unhappiness is too vague to do much of anything about.  Getting specific about what we dislike will help us DEAL with what we dislike.

So let’s say you left your spouse to pursue a non-affair relationship with your affair partner, and now that you’re living with that change, you don’t like it.  That’s fine – see if you can allow yourself to dislike that without fighting it.  Then, get specific about what you dislike.  Articulate everything you dislike, as comprehensively and specifically as you can.

Then the second thing I want you to ask yourself is, what do I want to be different right now?

Often, our answer to this question reveals that we just don’t want to have to feel the way we currently feel.  We feel all sorts of uncomfortable, and we just don’t want to feel uncomfortable anymore, and we think that we SHOULDN’T have to feel uncomfortable anymore, or we think there should be a really quick fix for our discomfort.

So for example, if you left your marriage to pursue a relationship with your affair partner, and your relationship with your affair partner seems to be fizzling, and you’re freaked out about that, and, by extension, you’re starting to think that you might have ended your marriage too hastily and you’re starting to get freaked out about THAT, you might be very upset that you aren’t delighted by your relationship decisions.  You might want to be HAPPY with your relationship decisions, and if you aren’t, you might want to NOT be unhappy.  And you might want to feel happier as soon as possible.

Here's the interesting thing.  It’s possible that there is some dissatisfaction with your choices that merits close examination.  But it’s also possible that your expectations for what you should be feeling are a little unrealistic.  Relationship transitions can come with mixed emotions.  And they may come with some pretty intensely uncomfortable emotions.  If the problem is that you aren’t deliriously happy, the solution may be to readjust your expectations, and increase your willingness to feel some discomfort.  

Sometimes we assume that making certain decisions about our relationships will automatically make us happy, or happier – and consistently so.  But this is not necessarily how it works in practice.  Sometimes making changes in our relationships is really weird.  Sometimes transitions in our relationships feel really strange, EVEN IF we are, on the whole, moving towards more of what we want to experience in our lives.  So if your expectation was that leaving your spouse, and beginning an above-board relationship with your affair partner would automatically feel awesome all of the time, the problem might lie in your expectations, or assumptions.

So being willing to reframe your expectations and tolerate a little discomfort – or a little more discomfort - MIGHT be all you really need to do!  

Now, if you are cool with the idea that feeling some discomfort is not a problem in and of itself, and isn’t necessarily a sign that anything has gone wrong, and you can identify concrete things that you want to be different, the question becomes, what do you want to actually do about those things?

So that’s the third thing you need to do.  Start to identify what you might do to take action to address whatever it is you are dissatisfied with.

Now that you have identified what specifically you would like to be different, you get to pick ONE THING AT A TIME to examine.  You cannot solve for all of the things at once.  You cannot eat the whole elephant in one bite.  So let’s figure out where you’re going to start.

Let’s say that you’ve left your spouse and you’ve moved in with your former affair partner who is now just your partner, and you are freaking out.  Specifically, you miss your spouse and you do not like that.  And you do not like living with your former affair partner.  You wish you had taken some time to live by yourself before living with a romantic partner again.  And you’re worried that by living with your former affair partner right away, the relationship is doomed to fail.

So, in the spirit of taking one thing at a time, let’s look at the matter of missing your former spouse.  To reiterate what I said a few moments ago, it may be that the main thing you need to do is reframe your expecatations of your relationship, or relationships, and the experience of making changes in your relationships.  It’s possible that starting to embrace the idea that the changes you’ve made are not bound to make you feel amazing all of the time, you feel much better, and the “problems” you perceived within your situation no longer seem like problems.  Sometimes people really miss their spouse after they leave them – even if they really wanted to extricate themselves from their marriage!  And when this happens, some people freak out and say, oh god, I must have made the wrong decision.  

But what if it’s just NORMAL to miss someone you’ve been involved with for a long time, and shared some significant aspects of your life with?  What if a little sadness when a relationship ends is to be expected, even if you really didn’t want to continue the relationship?  When we can normalize the mixed emotions that come with major life decisions, we may find that everything is actually quite okay.  Maybe missing your spouse is sad, but maybe it isn’t a problem to feel sad.

But it’s also possible that you think that what you’re experiencing is more than just the strangeness associated with change.  It’s possible that you have identified some things about the decision you’ve made that you did not anticipate, and truly do not like.  It’s possible that you realize you made a hastier decision than you thought you did.  It’s possible that you want to seriously reconsider your decision to leave your marriage.  It’s possible that you might want to talk with your former spouse about your decision to leave your marriage.  It’s fine to consider doing any of these things, but you want to actually MAKE DECISIONS about which considerations you are going to seriously entertain.  If you think you want to seriously reconsider your decision to leave your marriage, do that seriously and deliberately.  And if you need my help doing that, let’s work together.  DO NOT just sit around wondering whether or not you might have left your marriage too hastily.

Or maybe the first thing you want to deal with is your living situation.  Maybe that’s the most urgent priority.  Maybe you simply don’t want to live with your former affair partner – at least not yet – and you’re having a hard time thinking clearly about anything else.  If that’s the case, it may be time to talk to your affair partner about your feelings, and to decide what you intend to do.  Maybe it’s time for you to find another place to live – ASAP.

Now when I talk to people about taking these kinds of steps, they sometimes say, oh god, but this is so hard, I wish I had just made different decisions at the outset, and then I wouldn’t be dealing with any of this!  I don’t WANT to tell my former affair partner that I don’t want to live with them!  They’re so excited to be living with me, and I don’t want to disappoint them!  And I also don’t want to put THAT relationship in jeopardy, since I already left my marriage!  I can’t imagine being single right now!   

Here's the deal, people.  Sometimes dealing with the consquences of our decisions IS kind of unpleasant!  And sometimes the only way out of that, or through that, is to be willing to make one unpleasant decision at a time, and do one unpleasant thing at a time.  Sometimes the only way to get to circumstances we like better is to be willing to deal with circumstances we dislike, one step at a time.

The fourth thing I want you to do if you’ve made a decision that you really don’t like is get your narrative in check.  Get clear on the story you’re telling yourself about what happened, and if it isn’t helping you, it may be time to change it.

So for instance, sometimes people say, oh, woe is me, I left my spouse for my affair partner, and that relationship isn’t going very well, but there’s not much I can do about that, and I can’t leave that person, because if I did I would be lonely, AND I would also have left my marriage for nothing, and I can’t have THAT.

If that’s the story you’re telling yourself, you’re boxing yourself into a pretty tight little corner.  If you want to be happy, if you want to be more satisfied with your relationship and your life, you’ve got to allow yourself to think differently about the choices you have made, and the choices you have available to you now.

And here is a narrative I suggest you consider adopting:

Sometimes the only way for us to move forward in life is to make the best decision that we can and then see what happens.  Sometimes the only way to refine our sense of what is truly right for us is to make decisions, and see how they turn out.  Yes, to echo what I said earlier, we can save ourelves a lot of grief if we make decisions deliberately and systematically, for clear reasons that we like.  But sometimes we do that, and we find that we still don’t love living with the decisions we made.

We do not have to let that be the end of the world.  We do not have to interpret that as an indication that we are doomed to misery, and we do not have to doom ourselves to misery by believing that and acting as if that is true.

And on the other side of that coin, sometimes we make sloppy decisions!  Sometimes we either can’t or don’t want to make decisions systematically and deliberately!  And sometimes sloppy decisions work out okay, and sometimes they don’t, but if they don’t, we can put on our grown-up panties and deal with our situation by being willing to make new choices.  One after another after another.

And we have the opportunity to do this without turning this into a terrible burden!  

So let’s say you left your spouse to pursue a non-affair relationship with your affair partner, and let’s say that after you did that, you realized you really didn’t like your decision.  You have the opportunity to say to yourself, “Okay, what do I want to do about all of this?”  And then come up with a plan of action.  You may want to reevaluate your decision to leave your marriage.  You may want to reevaluate what you want with your relationship with your former affair partner.  You might want to make some very deliberate attitude adjustments.  You might also want to make some very deliberate changes to your circumstances.  And you can decide to deal all of this with as much good humor as you can muster, even if you find the process uncomfortable.

We can also choose to adopt the perspective that life is for learning.  We can decide that we’re willing to become students of life, and students of what it takes for us to create the love life/sex life/relationship life/romantic life that we want to have.  We can step up to the challenge of learning how to create these kinds of experiences with humility and curiosity – rather than a sense of expectation and entitlement.

Okay, the last thing I want to touch on pertains to something I said early on in the episode.  It is WONDERFUL to appreciate individual humans as the uniquely precious beings that they are.  And if we end a relationship with someone and then come to think, wait a minute, maybe I let someone wonderful go, and maybe that was a mistake, there can be beauty in that.  Mourning the loss of the special connection we shared with a particular person can be an intensely sad thing, but also a beautiful thing.  It can be an opportunity to experience the fullness of being alive, and the richness of the human experience.

But sometimes what people do instead is say, basically, well, if I can’t have THAT particular person, then I’m never going to be happy with anyone.  I’m never going to find anyone else as amazing as them.  It just isn’t possible.  

That, my friends, will only be as true as you let it be.  There are about eight billion people on the planet these days.  Even if we control for geography and age and gender and sexual proclivities and eye color and income and dietary preferences and anything else you might want to screen for, there are a LOT of other humans out there who you have the chance to connect with, and possibly forge a wonderful relationship with.  Don’t let losing someone great translate into closing yourself off to future possibilities.

And allow your relationship mistakes – if you choose to consider them as such – become your greatest teachers.  If you make decisions about your relationships that you hate, give yourself the opportunity to learn from what happened!

This doesn’t have to happen INSTANTLY.  Sometimes the process of moving away from a choice, or set of choices that we’ve made, takes time and dedication.  So be gentle with yourself, but also firm with yourself.  If you’ve made a decision about you relationships that you really don’t like and you experience that in a very difficult way, give yourself some grace, and allow the difficult times to be difficult, without forcing yourself to attempt to make everything better right away.  But don’t tell yourself that things can’t get better.  They absolutely can – but you need to be an active participant in that process.

All right everyone!  That’s it for today.  It’s really nice to be back here with you in this medium.  If you’re ready to resolve your infidelity situation in a way that’s truly right for you, there are two ways you can have me as your coach.  You can enroll in my self-guided, online course, You’re Not the Only One, or we can work together one-on-one via Zoom.  To learn more about both of these options, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.

Thank you all so much for listening!  Bye for now.