Nothing stirs up the core wound of betrayal faster than discovering your partner had an affair. The core wound of betrayal is one of seven core wounds we all work through as we grow in our relationships and in consciousness. (You can learn more about the core wounds here)

Infidelity is one of the hardest things to get over and forgive in a relationship, but it is possible. You can do it, but only if you decide that you want to forgive and heal. Your partner has to want to move forward, too. Unless he used the affair as a cowardly way to end your relationship, he’ll probably be anxious to be forgiven and willing to do whatever it takes to earn back your trust.

Trust is the crux of it; the wounding from an affair has many layers, but the bottom line and the root of it all is that when your partner has an affair, he betrays your trust. With that betrayal, your world feels unsafe. If you can’t trust your partner, who can you trust? And worse, if your partner cheated on you, can you even trust yourself? Could your judgment be that flawed, could you really be that naive? The betrayal erodes the foundation of your relationship and it erodes your self confidence.

The only way to repair the relationship is to re-build the foundation of trust. I recommend that you don’t try to do this alone. Whenever a core wound is involved, it’s wise to get the help and support of a trained life coach or therapist.

Trust is rebuilt one brick at a time. Here are some important components.

1. Reliability. He does what he says he’ll do, when he says he’ll do it. He comes home on time, picks up the kids, fixes the broken cabinet… whatever it is, you trust his reliability.
2. Love. He actively demonstrates that he still loves you. There are 5 love languages, according to author Gary Chapman. These are ways that your partner can let you know he loves you. Figure out what your primary love language is and tell him so that he will know how to show you he loves you.
3. Communication. I feel like a broken record, but if you don’t have open, honest communication, you don’t have much of a relationship. One of the main reasons men and women have affairs in the first place is because they don’t communicate well with their partner, and that sends the relationship into disrepair. Tell him how you feel, tell him what you want from him, and expect nothing less from him.
4. Responsibility. Each of you has to own up to your part in the breakdown of the relationship. How did you stop paying attention to each other? When did the relationship become a lower priority? What are you each willing to do to repair it?

It is possible to recover from an affair. And while sometimes relationships just run their natural course and end, more often than not, a spurned lover throws the baby out with the bathwater. Problems in relationships are never one person’s fault, and if you take the time to look at the dynamics present within your relationship, you might find that there’s still life in it. If you ditch the relationship without examining the dynamics, you’ll get to repeat the process with your next partner.

Some coaches and therapists believe that their clients don’t really understand the dynamics at work in their lives. They think their job is to illuminate the dynamics so their clients can shift them. I encounter people all the time who are very aware of their interpersonal dynamics, but they can’t or don’t want to shift them. Even when those dynamics cause pain and suffering, they’d rather dance with the devil they know. I often say, “Inertia is a very powerful force.”

But at some point, it becomes more painful to stay stuck that it would be to grow. Anais Nin put it beautifully when she wrote, “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” That time is different for everyone. Some people have higher tolerance for the unknown, and they’re more willing to risk the fear of moving forward. Others have to hit a bottom that is a hundred stories below one that I would choose. But sooner or later, for anyone with even the slightest desire to grow as an individual, that time does come.

When that time comes for you, it’s time to say hello to what I call the Seven Dwarves of Smallness. Others call them your demons, but I think that gives them too much power. The Seven Dwarves are the gatekeepers to your soul. They are there to protect who you really are. When faced and conquered, you will find JOY. You will, at long last, be able to Just Own Yourself.

The Seven Dwarves are probably the most misunderstood and under appreciated creatures on the planet. They get a bad rap as dragons, demons, and shadows. I’m here to stick up for them, because the truth is, they have a very important job. They were put in place to keep your greatest gifts safe from harm.

As soon as you decide to take my (or someone else’s) advice and “just do it;” as soon as you decide to apply the magic formula for a better life, your Seven Dwarves will start screaming. Their job is to keep you small so you don’t realize how big you really are. They keep you in fear so you continue to experience yourself as a mere mortal, when in fact you are a spiritual being having a human experience. The Dwarves tell you seven lies. Actually, they tell millions of lies, but they’re all variations of seven themes. The seven themes are:

1. Abandonment/Rejection: Nobody likes me, or the people who love me will leave me
2. Humiliation/Shame: I’m a bad, horrible person; if you really knew me you’d hate me
3. Scarcity: There’s NotEnoughtoGoAround-tive thinking
4. Betrayal/Trust: People can’t be trusted; I’m not safe
5. Injustice/Punishment: I will be punished for speaking my truth because life is unfair
6. Unworthiness: I’m not worthy of love, happiness, money, etc.
7. Doubt/Lack of Faith: Self doubt and lack of faith in God/the Universe

I mentioned that the Seven Dwarves have an important job: to keep your greatest gifts safe from harm. What they don’t understand is that that job is temporary. The Seven Dwarves were set up by your subconscious mind when you were a small child. Whenever you were told that it wasn’t acceptable to be yourself, one of the Dwarves sprang into action and created a story for you. The purpose of the story was to keep you from acting in a way that would get you in trouble. Its effect was to hide different aspects of your personality.

Once you reach adulthood, the Dwarves job should end. But adulthood is more than just an age; I’m talking about emotional adulthood. People reach emotional adulthood when they’re ready to take full responsibility for their lives, regardless of their story. They’ve reached their own “bottom” and the risk to remain tight in a bud becomes too great. They no longer need the Seven Dwarves to keep them safe; they can and want to do it for themselves. At this point in a person’s life, they get to essentially re-parent themselves. It can be a frightening prospect, but when it’s less frightening than staying stuck, you will begin. I have a roadmap, and I will share it with you here as we explore living a life of JOY.

They are insidious. They have been so deeply ingrained in our habitual thought patterns that we don’t even question them. But as I just said to a friend of mine, “It (life) will be as difficult or as effortless as you say it will be.” We sometimes forget that our thoughts and our feelings create our reality, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

One of the dwarves, Scarcity, tries to keep us for seeing the world as it’s meant to be. It also tries to make us forget that we live in a world of our own making. Scarcity would have us believe that there is Not Enough to Go Around, which is the root of NEGAtive thinking. And it’s a big, fat lie.

NEGAtive thinking keeps people trapped in relationships that aren’t working for them. You fear that you won’t be able to find another partner, there aren’t enough good men to go around, that yours is better than none. It’s a lie. If your relationship isn’t working, you owe it to yourself to either fix it or leave it. Don’t get caught up in scarcity consciousness, believing the lie. Don’t settle for anything less than you deserve.

We live in an abundant universe and in an abundant world. In our country, even the poorest of us are wealthier than most of the rest of the world. Look around you now, wherever you are. You will likely see an abundance of something: books, trees, grass, flowers, furniture, cats, or something I can’t imagine. Are these things you want, or things you don’t want?

The Law of Attraction tells us that what we focus on, we attract into our lives. What you may not realize is that the Universe doesn’t hear negatives. So for example, if you say something like, “I don’t want more bills,” the Universe hears “I want more bills.” You’re putting your attention on what you don’t want, rather than what you want. The Universe sends you a match to whatever you put most of your attention on, whether it’s something you want or something you don’t want.

Here’s a simple exercise I use for myself when I get momentarily caught up in the lie of scarcity. Close your eyes, and focus your attention on your breath. Breathe deeply and evenly, filling your lungs all the way down on the inhalation and exhaling completely. Ask yourself, “In this present moment, am I safe? In this present moment, do I have enough food in my body to sustain me? In this present moment, do I have a place to sleep? In this present moment, am I loved? In this present moment, can I open my heart a little wider?”

Scarcity sits heavy on you when you cast your fear into the future. When you imagine your future, try instead to imagine it brighter. Rather than worry you won’t have enough, what if you were to trust that the Universe is conspiring on your behalf? What if you decided to believe that there is, in fact, enough to go around, and that you will get your share?

It may help to recognize that there are many faces of abundance. If you think of it in a limited way, it will come to you in a limited way. For example, thinking that you have to earn a certain amount of money to thrive is limiting. Earning money is only one way to receive abundance. You can also be gifted with a place to live for free, you can earn a scholarship for free education, and you can be gifted with free food in a number of ways, just to name a few examples. Be willing to accept abundance in any form it chooses to grace you with.

Abundance vibrates at the same resonance as love, joy, and gratitude. Scarcity resonates with fear. And while you may not feel abundant in a given moment, tapping into gratitude will help raise your vibration so that you can align better with abundance. I’ve created a home study course here that will help you shift your energy from fear and scarcity to joy, love, and abundance. And remember to watch your focus. Scarcity is not real. It is the son of False Evidence Appearing Real.