Intimacy After Infidelity | Cut Contact, Rebuild Trust, Shed Shame, Avoid Divorce, Forgiveness for Adultery

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) You cut contact. You're doing the work. And he's still showing up in your head! Uninvited, frustrating, relentless. Today I'm giving you the neuroscience behind why that's happening, and a practical framework for what to do when it does. This is a part 2 to EP 123 on lim...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) Have you ever wondered if God can even hear your prayers when you're living in sin? Have you felt the weight of believing that if you run home to Him, you'll be met with disappointment? Today I'm sitting down with Heather O'Brien, healing coach, author, and host of the H...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) "Am I allowed to be happy when my husband is still hurting because of me?" That's the question a client asked me, and I've heard versions of it more times than I can count. Today I'm answering it directly, with theology, with neuroscience, and with my own story of accide...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) For years during my affair I felt like the poster child for hypocrite every time I tried to pray, take communion, or lead devotions. Shame told me I had no right. That God doesn't hear prayers when you're living in sin. Today I want to talk about what actually broke that...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) Closeness after an affair doesn't come back all at once, and you can't think your way into it. Today I'm getting practical and a little scientific about what actually rebuilds intimacy in a marriage after infidelity: oxytocin, the bonding hormone, and five simple ways to...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) There is a kind of lonely in affair recovery that doesn't have a name in most churches...and today I'm naming it. If you've ever looked at GriefShare, DivorceCare, or Celebrate Recovery and thought I don't quite fit here, you're not alone. The grief of ending an affair i...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) What if everything you've been doing to earn your way back isn't actually making you more worthy? The over-serving, the shrinking, the never asking, the carrying your healing alone.  Today I'm reframing one of the most quietly damaging beliefs I see in women after an aff...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) I want to tell you about the kitchen table I sat down at in 2022. In a beach house I almost didn't go to, with coaches I barely knew, carrying a secret I was convinced I would take to my grave. What happened at that table is the reason this podcast exists. And it is the...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) Three years. 128 episodes. 52,000 downloads. And so many of you who showed up in ways I never anticipated when I hit record for the very first time. This episode is not a teaching. It's a thank you. I'm pulling back the curtain on what this podcast has actually looked li...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) For three years I have told (many) parts of my story. Today I'm telling the whole thing. The parts I've protected, the patterns I've never named publicly, the nights that still live in my body when I think about that season. If you are going to trust me with your story,...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) You know you need to move on. You’ve made the decision. You’ve done the work. So why do you still feel stuck? Why are you still asking why can't I let go? Today, I break down what's actually happening when transition feels hard (or impossible), why grief after a right de...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) What if the thing standing between you and healing isn't shame, or willpower, or even the affair partner, but fear? Not the fear of failing, but the quieter, more confusing fear that whispers: if I actually heal, I'm giving up a lot, and I don't know who I'll be. Today I...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) The affair doesn't survive on feelings alone. It survives on lies. Carefully constructed, completely convincing stories your brain tells you so you can keep going and still sleep at night. Today I'm naming the five lies I told myself to stay in my affair. Not to shame yo...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) What if your obsession wasn't a character flaw? What if the intrusive thoughts, the emotional dependency, the way your entire inner world revolved around whether he responded...what if that had a name? Today I'm teaching on limerence, one of the most important concepts I...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) What if healing wasn't about trying harder, but about experiencing something different? Today I'm introducing one of the most powerful concepts I teach my clients, and giving it a name you'll use for the rest of your healing journey: the corrective experience. A correcti...

🌊 Ready for the Encounter Retreat? Email me RETREAT and let’s chat! (PS- You get 6 months in the Rooted Community for free! 🤭) 💙 This episode is personal, and I think that's exactly why you need it. Today I'm answering the questions I wished someone had asked me during my own affair recovery. Not the polished, coaching-voice answers, but the real ones. The one about sitting at my kitchen table...

This episode is unlike anything I've done before, and I think it might be exactly what you need today. If you are the woman sitting in fresh shame- newly caught, newly confessed, newly trying to end something and not knowing who you are on the other side of it, this episode was created specifically for you.  Today we step inside the story of the woman caught in adultery from John 8, not as observe...

You said you wouldn't. And then you did. If you broke no contact with your affair partner and you don't know what to do now, this episode is for you. Not with shame. Not with a lecture. With honesty, compassion, and a clear path forward. I'm sharing my own story of breaking no contact more times than I can count, what I learned from it, and the five steps I walk women through when this happens. Be...

Sister, I know there’s a part of you that still wants him. Even after no contact. Even after you’ve decided to move forward. Even after you know the truth. So what do you do with that? In this episode, we’re talking about how to: understand the part of you that still feels attached remove shame around desire recognize the deeper need underneath the longing and begin choosing something different wi...

Today, I talk honestly about something many women feel but don’t know how to explain- the addictive pull toward an affair partner. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking, “Why can’t I just stop?” you’re not alone. The pull toward an affair partner can feel intense, confusing, and even out of your control, leaving you questioning your strength, your faith, and your ability to move forward. In today...

What does real freedom actually look like for a woman who's trying to walk away from her affair, but whose heart hasn't caught up yet? In today's episode, I'm unpacking Romans 13:8-14 and challenging the version of freedom most of us were never taught to question. Because freedom was never meant to mean "no limits." It was meant to mean the right ones, rooted in love, grounded in salvation, and li...

You ended the affair… but now you’re left wondering, “What do I actually do next?” This in-between season can feel overwhelming. Your emotions are all over the place, your thoughts are pulling you in different directions, and you’re trying to move forward without a clear path. In today’s episode, I walk you through what those first days and weeks can really look like. I share my own experience fro...

If you’ve been asking yourself, “Do I really need to tell him?” you’re not alone. This is one of the most complex and emotional decisions after an affair, especially when you’re trying to do the right thing, honor God, and also consider the impact your words could have moving forward. In today’s episode, I share my own experience of wrestling with this decision, what led me to choose confession, a...

If you’ve been asking yourself, “What am I supposed to do about my marriage after everything that’s happened?” You’re not alone. This is one of the most weighty and personal questions you’ll face in this season, and it’s not something that can be answered with a simple rule or quick advice from someone else. In today’s episode, I walk you through the same kind of questions I had to wrestle with in...

If you’ve found yourself wondering, “Is he a narcissist… or is this just the fallout from everything that happened?” you’re not alone. This is one of the most confusing and emotionally loaded questions women ask after an affair, especially when you’re trying to take responsibility for your part while also making sense of the dynamics around you. In today’s episode, we slow things down and bring cl...