[Intro] Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host, Corinne Powell.

I help people pleasers find happiness, embrace courage, and experience peace of mind through inner child healing. If you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen, I'm here to guide you along the way. In this space, you'll find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience.

We will talk all things inner wellness with spirituality interwoven at times. Being a mom to three, parenting will be a topic of conversation for sure. So happy to have you.

Enjoy today's episode. 

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Hi, friends. Today's episode was originally published to my YouTube channel this past summer, but now that I have a podcast, I'm moving everything over from YouTube to right here.

So I hope that you enjoy the conversation that I'm going to have with you, and I'm going to relay to you something my husband and I were talking about this past summer. So this conversation that my husband and I were having, it was this. I was saying how I felt almost as if I could choose out and choose in to an affair, and I thought our relationship, my husband and I, we were fine, so it kind of didn't make sense to me.

And then I realized, well, there was this period of my life when most people would date that I didn't actually date because the family that I grew up in and the environment I grew up around had strong opinions on dating, and I chose to just follow with what they suggested, and it wasn't what I would have chosen. And so I thought, oh, I'm grieving that, that piece of my life that I never can get back. I can't date.

I'm in a committed relationship. I'm happy in the relationship I'm in with my husband, and I just need to grieve the fact that I would have done it differently years back, but here we are. And he was saying, as much as that's true, and I can acknowledge that, and I can choose to grieve that and get angry with the people in my world that I listened to their voices and I felt powerless to stand up against it and choose a different way.

I can be sad about it. I can feel disappointment over the fun times that I missed out on and the experiences that I would have enjoyed that aren't a part of my story. And then I can come to that place inside of myself where because of acknowledging and because of grieving, I feel more at ease and more at peace and more okay.

Thankfully, I am happy with the relationship I'm in. I love being married to my husband. He is the man that I wanted.

He's the one that I still hope will look at me across the room and have butterflies inside of myself because he does. Um, we definitely have the romance going on and it's not because we haven't had our difficulties and our challenges. And for those of you that have followed me for a little while, you know that I share some of our story and we have had our issues with trust and honesty and those are things I hold in high value.

And so thankfully, I am so thankful my husband has been willing to do the inner work in himself so that we have really been able to build a lot of trust in our relationship and we are moving forward and we're in a really good spot right now. And honestly, it's not because he had to conform to my ways. It's because I came to the place within empowering myself that I said, you know what? I don't have to stay in this marriage if it's not healthy for me.

I don't have to stay in this marriage if it's not working well for me. And this wasn't petty things. This was like root core issues of I can't trust you because you are constantly lying to me about certain things.

And so when you start lying about certain things, you break trust on every level. And then when my relationship with my husband wasn't good and was extremely strained, that has an effect and takes a great toll on the rest of our family, my kids, our home life. 

So he was willing. He wanted the relationship as much as I did and he was willing to fight for it in the way that he could by working on himself and growing and developing internally so that he could choose a different way. And it's proven really effective and our relationship is at a really good point. And it will be only because we continue to each work on our own selves that we are able to stay in this place.

It's not going to be magically that, oh great, now we're here and we'll forever be here. No, it will be intentional work that we have to continue to do. And I know I'm in, I'm ready for it.

So as long as he is, then there we are. And I don't mind revisiting. I don't mind thinking and seeing where are we down the road and not to make light of a commitment we've made to each other or a family dynamic that we have for our children that I think is important for them to have the stability of our home life and both their parents.

But honestly, if our relationship is toxic and unhealthy and causing tons of tension and stress in our home, that is not better for my kids. And I say that because I don't know where you're at, but if you're in a relationship that you feel is very toxic and unhealthy, creating stress and tension and dysfunction in your home for your children, that's affecting them. And even though it's really the best case scenario when our kids can have both parents together, it's also not best case scenario when it's, what I was just saying, toxic and stressful and dysfunctional.

That's not good either for our kids. So if you're looking for help in knowing how to move forward, how to break out of these patterns and these habits, how to empower yourself, no matter if your significant other is changing, please reach out to me. This is something I specialize in.

It's what I'm all about. I've walked it out. And so these things I'm talking about is so normal that you don't need to feel any bit of shame around them.

And I'm talking about this openly because I want you to feel like it's normal to have conversation about this. It really truly should be considered normal. And it's only by us starting the conversation that we make it feel comfortable to have.

So going back to what my husband and I were talking about, it was that idea that he felt like actually it's not just you grieving things you didn't experience and you can't experience now. It's an evidence that something isn't right in our relationship and your heart is trying to tell you that. And I felt like it was a really valid point and a beautiful point that he was willing to make.

And I appreciated it because it wasn't me saying it. It wasn't even me thinking our relationship was that bad at the moment. I felt like we were in a pretty good spot.

But as he said that, I was able to think about it. And then I was able to just kind of recognize actually days later that, yeah, there's some things I've been choosing. I've been choosing to watch a show on Netflix sometimes in the evenings because he's watching a sports game.

And it's not like he doesn't watch sports. He usually does. But for me to watch a show instead of, I don't know, doing other things is a little bit abnormal.

But I felt like it was me actually saying, I wish I had connection right now. And I'll just like watch this show where there's connection going on between the characters. And I'll kind of enter their world and have this fantasy world of my own where I'm wishing I could be experiencing what they're experiencing.

And so it helped me to see that, yeah, yeah, there's a reason why I feel this pull and this idea that, you know what, if I wasn't aware, if I wasn't aware that I'm being drawn in this way and I'm looking for my needs to be met through another person, and if I didn't want my marriage to last, and if I didn't value the relationship that I have with my husband, then I could see how I could easily allow myself to go down this road that would bring with it a lot of regrets and a lot of pain and turmoil. Yeah, it might feel good for a moment. It might feel like it's meeting a need inside of me for a moment.

But I can choose to have those needs met in another more healthy way. I can help meet my needs. I can tell my husband what I'm needing from him.

I can reach out to friends and get my needs met in these ways that are not going to result in having devastating effects. Again, I'm bringing this up because I know this is not only me feeling this way. I'm not the only one feeling like, maybe that person who's giving me attention, maybe I should reciprocate.

Like, this feels good. It's OK. It's no big deal.

It's just conversation. It's just flirting. The small things escalate and lead to something bigger.

And we need to keep a big picture view of what do we want in the end and is this going to actually help us get there or is it going to destroy something along the way? 

So if I want my marriage to last, if I want to be this example to my kids that I hope they would walk in, if I want to be true to myself, I'm going to make some decisions that might not always be comfortable, that might feel difficult and hard in the moment, but they're going to be satisfying in the long run. I also need to give attention to my heart. 

What's going on on the deeper inner level? What do I need to acknowledge? What do I need to grieve? What do I need to give to myself? What do I need? How can I get there? And just nurturing and taking care of myself and being compassionate and having love for myself and being honest and creating conversation around it.

These are all easy, but sometimes difficult, small steps that feel ginormous sometimes. And we're all in this. We're all able to do this.

I'm giving you that inside view of what's going on in my life so that you know you are not alone and you don't have to travel this road alone ever. 

[Ending] I want to close out today's episode by thanking you for being here with me. We've made it to the end, and I hope what I shared has been helpful.

If there is anything I've mentioned that you want to talk about in more depth, I would be so glad to connect with you. You can always find me on Instagram ⁠@corinne_changeradically⁠ or go directly to my website changeradically.com. Of course, within the show notes, there's other ways that you can connect with me. And if there is someone that you think would benefit from this podcast, please share it with them.

To help my podcast get more growth and reach more people, please subscribe, review, and rate it. And until next week, I'm wishing you the very best.