Why Your "Everyone Cheats On Me" Story Might Be More Fiction Than Fact Ep 96

[00:00:00] If your thing is you're constantly worried that your partner is going to cheat on you, which my guess is if you're here and you're listening to this podcast, you probably fall into that bucket. But if that's your constant thing, your story is that everybody cheats on you or you're constantly worried that your partner is going to cheat on you, this is the episode and the exercise for you.

[00:00:24] Welcome to Top Self, the podcast dedicated to relax your mind, achieve change, and become a healthier, more present you. Are you ready to move past the daily anxiety? Comparing and doubting yourself and feeling like you're not enough? I'm your host, Shanenn Bryant, and I've ruined many good relationships because of my jealousy and stayed way too long in some bad ones because of my insecurity.

[00:00:56] But I stopped letting fear drive my actions. And now I can't wait to share with you as I dive into these emotions, shed light on how they might be impacting your life and uncover strategies to break free from their grip. It's time to start living a life of confidence. So, get ready to ignite your self worth and transform your life because my friend, you are worthy.

[00:01:24] Shanenn: If you're a parent, you either remember the why, why, why, why phase your child went through, or you're currently in the child curiosity phase why, why, why, why. 

[00:01:42] I remember when my son was young, we were in the car, and he was sitting in the back seat. You know, he was still pretty young, and he was just learning, What the stoplight colors meant, you know, green means go, yellow means yield, red means stop.

[00:01:58] And we were sitting at a stoplight, and he said, Mom, I get it. I know what the green means. I know what yellow means. I know what red means. But what does black mean? And I was like, Honey, there's no black. It's just green and yellow and red. And he was like, well, I know what those mean, but what does the black one mean?

[00:02:19] And I was getting so frustrated with him. I was like, what are you talking? There is no black sunlight color. It's red, yellow, green. And then I realized he kept saying, no, the ones that are black, there are, there's one red one and two black ones or what, you know? oh, the ones that aren't lit up look black.

[00:02:42] And so, you know, one, it's just going to that child mind of not having these, these already instilled expectations on them or how the world is. He was coming from strictly curiosity because no one had ever told him what the black ones mean. I just thought, oh my gosh, how amazing to really witness how a child's brain works. And this kind of relentless curiosity is the kind you need to have with your jealousy. 

[00:03:19] I'm going to share some ways I got relentlessly curious and an exercise that you can do too that completely blew my mind when I did it.

[00:03:32] And I just. It was out of curiosity. I didn't learn the exercise somewhere. I came up with the exercise and I was like, I'm just gonna get curious about this. I'm gonna get relentlessly curious. And it blew my mind. It changed my whole perception on my fears. so, if you're driving, I'm sorry, um, you can kind of do it in your head right now, but only if that doesn't stop you from actually doing it on pen and paper or worksheet, either one, this is a must do so that you can actually see the information. Alright, so, first, on a sheet of paper on the left-hand side, you're just going to write out the list of names of your most significant relationships.

[00:04:23] So not the ones, not the rebounds, not just messing around relationships, but the ones that were significant in whatever way to you. And you're just gonna, you know, one, one name per line. So go down line by line by line because you're going to write stuff next to their name. So, you know, Brian on one line or, or Samantha on one line and Trevor on the next line, but each person that you feel like you had a significant relationship with or that was significant to you in whatever way.

[00:05:02] you can pause this podcast if you need to. You might need a really short time to write these out. you might have a long list. I'm not here to judge. Either way, nobody's judging. But now that you have your list of names of people that you felt like you were in a significant relationship with, for the ones that you know 100 percent there is no question they absolutely cheated on you.

[00:05:30] For sure, no question. You either caught your partner red handed, your partner told you they cheated, the girl or the guy that they cheated with called you and told you it happened, and then your partner admitted it. Whatever the case, this has to be, you know 100 percent no questions for sure that they did.

[00:05:53] If that's the case, for everyone that you know 100 percent sure, put a yes sign. next to their name.

[00:06:00] now for the ones you think they did, maybe there were little signs of it, things that I thought maybe they, they kind of felt like they did. So, for example, I remember with one of my exes, I went over to see him on a Sunday and his guest bathroom shower curtain was pulled open and it never was like that.

[00:06:25] He lived alone. He never used that bathroom. And there was what I thought seemed like a could have went either way. Girl shampoo. Gosh. It was one of those weird where you couldn't say for sure. And it's been so long now. I don't really remember the specifics. I just remember at the time thinking, I can't say for sure.

[00:06:48] I can't say for sure that this was a girl. It seems odd, but I can't say for sure that this was a girl. And of course, when I asked him about it, He said that that was his friend that stayed the night the night before and his friend had to go to church that morning and so he got up and he took a shower.

[00:07:05] Could be. I never knew then and I still don't know today. Maybe. So maybe you had someone tell you after you broke up with your partner that they cheated but there was no way that you could prove it or confirm it. For any of these where you think. Maybe, I'm not sure, kind of thought there was this one thing.

[00:07:33] You're gonna have to put a maybe next to their name. Maybe they did. You're not sure. You don't have a hundred percent concrete evidence, but there were things that you kind of remember or you just have that feeling of, oh yeah, they're the ones that I always wasn't sure about. Put a maybe next to them.

[00:07:54] Then for the ones that maybe you were still jealous in the relationship, but there weren’t any real signs of cheating, and there certainly wasn't any evidence. mark them as no. There wasn't anything, yes, I felt jealous just because I was always jealous or I was always suspicious, but nothing really stood out.

[00:08:14] Like, I couldn't say that there was this one thing or this series of things where I thought, hmm, maybe they're cheating. Put a no next to them. you don't have any evidence. So put a no. They have to be a no.

[00:08:31] Now we're going to go through each of these based on how you marked them. We're going to add to this. For the ones that you marked, yes, yes, a hundred percent. It's confirmed. I absolutely know that they cheated on me. Not a suspicion, not a, well, it really looked like it.

[00:08:51] I know 100 percent for sure that they did. For those I want you to write next to their name, what were the circumstances? For example, maybe you all were really young and I'm not asking you to write potential excuses. I'm saying what were the circumstances just in general. Was this a relationship in your early 20s?

[00:09:18] Was it someone from junior high? Was it, you know, what were the circumstances? Were you on and off again constantly? So, you were together and then you'd break up and then you'd get back together and then you'd break up again. Did they come from a dysfunctional family? Just anything that you can think of.

[00:09:39] What circumstances were either about the partner or the situation. I want you to write that next to their name. Anything that you can think of.

[00:09:51] When you're done writing the circumstances, maybes. And think about the speculation that I had. So, in my example, I gave you the example of the shower curtain was open. I couldn't really tell if it was a guy or a girl. There was no evidence. Nothing really happened after that.

[00:10:11] you have to ask yourself; you know, do I feel like the evidence I have is enough to move this person to a yes? Or do I lean more towards no? I don't really know. And if I had to guess, I mean, that was kind of the only thing that happened. Or there were a couple things that happened, but I was super jealous in that relationship, so it could have just been that I was hyper, focused on things and whatever that is.

[00:10:42] But now you have to decide based on the evidence that you have, the thoughts that you had at the time, um, the situations, and you're either going to move your maybes to a yes or a no. You get to make that choice. It's your call. Did they cheat or not? Move them to a yes or no. And if you can't remember specifics today about why you're lumping that past partner, into a yes, you don't get to move them to yes.

[00:11:15] If you can't remember, like, eh, you know, I've got one where I'm like, I only remember what it was, but I always just kind of put him in the eh category. I haven't even really thought much about its sense of why, and I don't really remember the circumstances. You can't put that person in the yes category.

[00:11:34] But you have to move your maybes to yes or to no.

[00:11:39] Now think of the belief that you have. Maybe that all men cheat or all women cheat or the one that really sticks there is everybody always cheats on me, or everybody always leaves me for someone else. That was my story. My story was everybody I've ever dated cheated on me. I Just didn't think it. I believed it.

[00:12:05] I said it even I said it out loud many many times Throughout the years everybody. I always date. Everybody always cheats on me. I never get picked everybody out. They always pick somebody else. They always leave me for somebody else. I Have fought it and said it You more times than I could ever remember.

[00:12:24] I had you do this exercise for two reasons. One, to see the actual data, the full truth, and I'm going to explain here in just a minute. I heard Joe Dispenza and if you don't know who that is, look it up. I'm not going to go into him now. He's, he's fantastic. But He said science has proven that 50 percent of somebody's memory is not true.

[00:12:55] Like we just made this shit up. Like that means that we're miserable over shit that never happened. Half of our memory isn't even accurate. So, I was continuing this, okay I'm gonna get relentlessly curious and I looked up how many men cheat. How many women cheat? How many people cheat? And so, here's the general census.

[00:13:20] I'm going to read it for men. Just know it's slightly less for women. Um, I don't think that's any shock there, but it's not like as drastic as you would think. And it's going to be interesting. So based on the, the, the search results and the information, the average percentage of men who cheat in relationships ranges from 20 to 23%.

[00:13:41] 20 to 23%. So, I want you to think about what you would have guessed that percentage to be based on the story that you told yourself. Everybody always cheats on me. So, 20 percent to 23%. so, there was one report that said 20%, one that said 23%. Yes, we can say, okay, that's also self-reporting.

[00:14:07] So even if we just bumped it up a little bit, right, even if it's still probably not as drastic as you think. Now, it does kind of go up, which I thought was so strange when a man gets between 60 and 69, it bumps up a little bit, but it's still nothing like probably what you thought. And if we look up the divorce rate and it's 50 and 60 %, well, guess what?

[00:14:37] People aren't getting divorced 50 and 60 % of the time because of infidelity. A lot of its finance and some other things. So, we can't base it on that, too. And it also varies based on factors like age and relationship status. So unmarried, it's, that's what kind of bumps it up a little bit higher.

[00:15:00] Married is not as high as unmarried. So, people take their commitments seriously. And you can see that in the numbers because it's a little bit less for married people than it was for unmarried people. so, I want you to look at your numbers. Okay, I want you to look at your numbers, your yeses and your nos.

[00:15:20] You're going to take the total number of people that you have on your list and then figure out your percentage of yeses or if you want to do it the other way, of nos. But do the math. Guess where mine came out to? My story of everybody cheats on me, my absolute yeses was 25%. About 25%. 

So about 25 percent actually cheated on me. Interesting. So, I'd love to hear what yours is. Feel free to email me at sbryant@topself.com. Just tell me what your percentage was. Even if we doubled it. So, if you believe that more people cheat, if you're like, I don't believe that, and you think it's 50 50, it still makes you wrong, makes you potentially wrong half the time.

[00:16:14] But what we're doing is saying, I'm all in on that everybody cheats.

[00:16:18] I'm all in that my partner's definitely going to do this. and If yours is higher than the 25 to 30%, if it's more like 50% to 75% of your actual list, when you look at the data and you do the math on your people, your number of yeses, if it's up there higher, then I would say you may have a I pick bad partners challenge that of course starts with healing your core wounds and that belief that you're not good enough because we know that we pick people that will keep us the same. Keep us thinking we're not good enough. Right? 

So, you may have a I pick bad partners challenge for you. We do that. we do the core wounds in behind your jealous mind boot camp. and there's another one that's coming up in January so be on the lookout for that. So that was the first. I wanted you to look at your numbers and see really what is the real truth. And if you can't say, everybody always cheats on me or most people, stop saying it. if it's not the data, then stop saying it. Stop saying it in your head.

[00:17:27] Stop saying it out loud. Stop saying it. It's not true, right? The number two reason I wanted you to do this exercise and what I really pulled out of this is if you go back, the reason I wanted you to do the, what were the circumstances, again, it wasn't to excuse your partner's behavior if they did cheat on you, but you should see by looking at that, Oh, this has nothing to do with me.

[00:17:56] You can disassociate that it's you or that you're not good enough. 

[00:18:01] it doesn't make it okay that they did it, but some of those relationships might've been when you both were young, and that person just didn't have their footing yet. They didn't know a hundred percent what they wanted. They were still finding themselves.

[00:18:21] or maybe they were seeking attention that they didn't get from their childhood. You absolutely could have been dating somebody that had their own core wounds that they were operating from. They were using unhealthy strategies because they didn't process information correctly because of their childhood.

[00:18:39] Just like I've heard so many times, not saying this is you, but I have heard that maybe you've cheated in a relationship not because the other person wasn't good enough, but because you were trying to protect yourself from getting hurt, or you were trying to, you know, get them before they get you. It's a weird, twisted, unhealthy way you cheated on them because you really, really liked them.

[00:19:09] So, we don't know. It could be that. It could be. We don't know. It's not for us to go back and look at now, but I just want you to look at the circumstances and go, oh, this, this, these circumstances, the things that were going on had nothing to do. That wasn't because I wasn't good enough. It wasn't because somebody else is always better.

[00:19:35] Right? There were probably things around it that have really nothing to do with you. And of course, everything to do with them. So, hopefully that has helped. You've got real data now. You can actually say the numbers, I can take a look at my belief and go, hmm, maybe it isn't true.

[00:20:00] Maybe I have all the more reason to lean into my partner and to assume and operate as if most likely that's not going to happen, and I don't need to worry about it. And again, if you're at that higher percentage, this is a real opportunity to go, I might be picking poorly. I just might be and how and what can I do to make those changes? 

[00:20:33] I hope this was helpful. Please don't forget to email me. I'd love to hear your percentage and, um, you know, let me know what you got out of this exercise. Until next time, take care and remember, you're not alone.