Can you discuss that a little bit?

Yeah, what I say is burnout is the symptom.

It's like a fever.

We don't just treat a fever with success.

We have to find out the root cause.

Is it an infection? What is really going on? So burnout is the symptom, and we spend all of this time, money, resources, energy treating the symptom, and we're ignoring the root cause.

So that's where betrayal comes in.

Yeah.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

And that's exactly what I went into because that's what we hear.

You know, we hear about, oh, the poor man who was left alone or the emotionally neglected woman.

And of course, they had to seek somebody outside of the marriage.

Well, can that happen? Of course, that can happen.

Anything can happen.

Why can rushing forgiveness sometimes actually do more harm than good?

Yeah.

He was also, part of his extremely poor, very bad, abusive childhood, he never connected with other people.

He would have a couple of girlfriends, but before he went into foster care, his mom would forbid him from going to other people's houses.

He was forbidden from having a girlfriend.

He was forbidden from having a car, doing all of these things.

And now he said he reached this point where suddenly he's an adult.

He does have some money.

Okay.

So what actually, you know, breaks is perhaps the wrong word, but it feels like sometimes like it breaks inside us when a betrayal occurs.

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

It does feel like a breaking.

We all live lives where we think we know what's going to happen.

We think that we know if I do good, I'll be rewarded.

If I'm good or kind or try really hard, good things will happen.

And we have this narrative in our head about the way things should be.

negotiation with yourself first right get some clarity around who do I want to show up as right where would I feel most comfortable having this discussion prepare any difficult conversation frankly this is applies for betrayal as Laura so beautifully sharing with us but I would take that a step further and for any potentially difficult conversation you're going to have show up with more intention prepare for it right put in a little preparation makes a big difference so yeah I know a lot of your work centers on reclaiming self belonging, right? So can you talk to us a little bit about that? Like, what does that mean in practice?

So how did you discover this? I mean, were you always able to channel? Did this come after your betrayal and all that or what was that?

In hindsight, I now know that I have always been able to channel.

I remember in high school hearing these wisdom bombs dropped into my brain and not really thinking too much about it other than, well, suddenly I know this.

And it wasn't until after the betrayal that this started coming in very clearly, that messages directly to me, Laura, this is your experience.

You are here on behalf of humanity.

You are here as a part of humanity.

Your lessons and your actions matter more than to just you and your family they matter to all of humanity because betrayal is a unique universal human experience and it's not being talked about there's so many lessons that we all go through there's so many feelings and experiences that we all have and until we talk about it and decide as a collective that we are going to move through that experience and glean all the wisdom that we can from it we're going to be trapped in that cycle

Yeah, that's huge.

and people deal with these in the wrong way what what's some of the wrong ways to deal with betrayal

Yeah, one of the worst things I think that people can do is make it an us issue right away.

You know, it feels like, well, the marriage is broken, so we're going to get married.

And that's not always the best thing to do.

The best thing to do is really to start sitting with yourself and thinking, what did I expect? What assumptions did I have about the relationship that were not met? And what am I fairly or unfairly putting on my partner? And when you can separate yourself from your partner and do that deeper work, then when you come together, if you choose to come together and rebuild, which my partner and I did, then you've got two healthier, more complete people doing the work.

How about the aspect, and I know that I suffered from this as well, is that the diminished value in your relationship when you realize that that it is about you not about the other person and you have these misconceptions about love in this validation so you actually feel that if i don't think this way then i'm really not in love and i really don't value this person in my life because It really has this introspective identity that is not reliant or even contributed to what the other person thinks at all.

Right, right.

It's really hard because, first of all, hurt people hurt people.

What's some of the wrong ways to deal with betrayal?

Yeah, one of the worst things I think that people can do is make it an us issue right away.

You know, it feels like, well, the marriage is broken, so we're going to get married.

And that's not always the best thing to do.

The best thing to do is really to start sitting with yourself and thinking, what did I expect? What assumptions did I have about the relationship that were not met? And what am I fairly or unfairly putting on my partner? And when you can separate yourself from your partner and do that deeper work, then when you come together, if you choose to come together and rebuild, which my partner and I did, then you've got two healthier, more complete people doing the work.

it really has this introspective identity that is not reliant or even contributed to what the other person thinks at all.

Right, right.

It's really hard because, first of all, hurt people hurt people, and trusting people trust people.

[laughs]

[laughs] Exactly.

Yeah.

This was nothing I ever planned on doing, I, I can tell you that much.

Um, I thought I had a really good marriage.

You know, there's ups, there's downs.

I get that.

Doesn't have to end there.