Speak Honest Podcast: Real Talk on Relationships, Attachment Styles & the Work of Healing Childhood Trauma
Are you ready to heal your attachment style, master healthy communication, and create secure, fulfilling relationships? Subscribe now to uncover the secrets of secure attachment, navigate the challenges of trauma recovery, and improve your communication skills in love and life. In each episode of the Speak Honest podcast, we’ll dive into attachment styles, emotional healing, and proven strategies for deeper connection. It’s time to break free from the cycle of heartbreak and start building the relationships you deserve.
Speak Honest Podcast: Real Talk on Relationships, Attachment Styles & the Work of Healing Childhood Trauma
You Said You Forgave Him... So Why Are You Still Hurting?
Ever caught yourself thinking, “Why doesn’t this feel better yet... even though we said we’re moving forward?”
In this episode of Speak Honest, we’re diving deep into what it really takes to rebuild trust after a rupture and why it’s not as simple as saying “I forgive you.” I share the story of my client Maya, whose partner broke her trust financially, and how she moved from confusion and resentment to clarity and connection. We’ll talk about why self-trust is the real foundation of healing, how testing your partner might be a sign of unspoken pain, and the key difference between asking for what you need versus punishing someone for hurting you. It’s raw, it’s real, and it’s one of the most important conversations we’ve had yet.
You might want to listen if:
• You’re staying after a betrayal but still feel stuck or unsettled
• You’re constantly second-guessing your feelings or reactions
• You’ve been asking your partner for more... and it still doesn’t feel like enough
• You’re struggling to name your pain without feeling “too sensitive”
• You want to rebuild trust without abandoning yourself again
FIND OUT MORE!
- Apply for FREE Coaching with Jenn
- Become a Relationship Reboot Member and access all you need to become secure.
- Join our FREE Community! Speak Honest Facebook Group 🧡
- Schedule your Free 30 min Attachment Assessment with Jenn Today!
- Watch Jenn on the 🔴 TEDx Stage!
- Download your free Workbook: Dance of Attachment
- Visit www.speak-honest.com to learn more
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- Like the episode? Please write a review, your words help others find us!
DISCLAIMER: Speak Honest podcast content is informational, not professional or medical advice. Jenn is an ICF relationship coach, not a licensed therapist. Consult health professionals for specific concerns. Client opinions do not reflect Speak Honest’s stance. We aim for accuracy but are not liable for errors or outcomes fr...
Hello and welcome to Speak Honest. I am your host and certified relationship coach, Jennifer Noble. It has been my passion for over a decade to help women like you heal what's been holding you back from having the relationships you deserve. Are you struggling with a relationship where you can't seem to voice your emotions, needs and boundaries without having it blow up in your face? Then you have found the right podcast, my friend. Get ready for practical tips, empowering truths and honest conversations. Now let's dive in.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Speak Honest. I'm Jen\ Noble, your go-to relationship coach, and on today's episode we are going to dive into something that I think so many of us have experienced, whether we've said it out loud or not, but it's that lingering question can I ever trust them again? It's that moment when something happens. Maybe they lied, maybe they shut you out, maybe they crossed a really big boundary, and suddenly your whole nervous system feels shaky. You don't know what's real anymore. You start second-guessing everything around you and the worst part is, half the time you start questioning yourself. And that's what betrayal does. And rebuilding trust, especially if you're choosing to stay, is one of the hardest things you can possibly do in a relationship. So in this episode, I'm walking you through what rebuilding trust actually looks like the patterns that get in the way, like testing your partner without even realizing it, and how to reconnect with the most important kind of trust the trust in yourself. And hey, if you're listening to this and you're thinking, oh my gosh, Jenn, this is exactly what I'm struggling with, I want you to know that you don't have to do this on your own. Inside the Relationship Reboot Program, this is the work we do together. We get weekly live coaching together and a private space to ask your questions and get support. It's a small group of women who are walking the same journey. So if you've been trying to fix things alone, I want this to be your sign you don't have to anymore. You can get support, we can do this together and you can rebuild trust without abandoning yourself in the process. Now I want you to listen to this week's episode and see what it is that you can take away from it. So let's talk about what rebuilding trust actually looks like, because it's not a checklist, it's not step one say sorry. Step two, give it time.
Speaker 1:No real trust repair is messy, it's emotional and it's layered. And here's the truth you can't repair something you won't admit is broken. And yet this is where so many women get stuck, especially those of us who are used to being the emotional glue in our relationships. You feel the hurt, but instead of naming it, you swallow it. You say, ah, it's not that serious. You know, I don't want to make things worse, it's not that big of a deal. You start managing his emotions without honoring your own, and that's exactly what my client, maya, did.
Speaker 1:After finding out that her husband had opened a secret credit card and built up debt without telling her she wanted to move on quickly. She told herself oh, you know, at least he didn't cheat, it's just money. It's not that big of a deal, we can fix this. And she's right, they can fix this. But something still didn't feel right. She found herself pulling away, not asking about the bills, feeling her chest tighten when she saw a bank statement. And that's when she came to me and said "Jenn, I don't get it. I said I was fine, I feel fine, I want to make this work. It's not that big of a deal. Why does it still feel like I'm not okay?"
Speaker 1:Because what actually broke wasn't about the money. It was about safety, about honesty, about being kept in the dark by someone who promised to share life with her. And that's the rupture. It's that moment when your nervous system no longer feels safe, even if your brain is trying to rationalize it. Acknowledging the rupture means saying things that you're trying to avoid, the hard things like, hey, this hurt me, this shifted something in me, this changed the way I feel in this relationship. And listen, this isn't about being dramatic or oversensitive. And listen, this isn't about being dramatic or oversensitive. It's about being honest. You're not punishing them by naming the pain. You're protecting yourself from brushing past it and living in quiet resentment. And here's what I told Maya If you can't name it, you're going to carry it, and if you carry it without looking at it, it's going to leak into everything else around you your tone, your trust, your body language, even your self-esteem.
Speaker 1:So the first step in rebuilding trust isn't fixing it, it's feeling it. And after you learn how to feel it, we can actually get into what trusting actually is and what it's not. Because most people think trust is just about someone proving that they've changed and they're doing all the right things now. But real trust, it's about the relationship with yourself. So when Maya first started working with me, she said I just want to trust him again working with me. She said I just want to trust him again. But when we peeled back the layers, she realized that what she really didn't trust was herself. See, she didn't trust that she'd be able to speak up the next time something fell off. She didn't trust her intuition. She didn't trust that if a line was crossed again, she'd be able to actually do something about it and set that boundary that was needed.
Speaker 1:And this is where so many women get stuck, because we've been taught that trust is about whether they behave better. But if you're rebuilding trust without rebuilding your own self-trust, then you're never going to feel safe. You're constantly going to monitor them. You'll overanalyze everything that they say. You'll hold your breath, waiting for the next thing to go wrong, because, deep down, you don't trust that you'll leave if you need to.
Speaker 1:So what does trust actually look like? It's not just about them being consistent. It's about you being consistent Consistent with your values, consistent with your voice, with your boundaries, with your needs. I want you to know that. Trust is knowing that if something feels wrong, I won't gaslight myself out of it. Trust is knowing I can sit with the hard things but I won't tolerate disrespect. And trust is knowing I'll choose myself before I betray myself. And that's what we work on inside of the Relationship Reboot program building a kind of trust that doesn't crumble every time someone lets you down, because you've learned how to anchor in yourself and that self-trust. It changes everything.
Speaker 1:Now I want to talk about what actual repair looks like. This is where things usually get a little bit confusing, because repair isn't about making big grand gestures or saying the right words or showing up the right way. It's about rebuilding consistency and safety slowly, steadily and honestly. And the most important thing I can tell you here is this Forgiveness has to come before the needs and the boundaries are stated, otherwise it's not repair, it's a test. Now let me explain this.
Speaker 1:See, after Maya and her husband had agreed to move forward after the whole card incident, she started asking him for certain things. Well within her right, in fact, I worked with her on this to show up for what she needed. She needed weekly financial check-ins, she needed more transparency with their finances and she needed more emotional openness. Those are all beautiful, but every time he tried to meet her needs, she changed the rules on him. She kept moving the goalpost. Do you see what's happening here? One week she wanted weekly check-ins, but when he wasn't showing up exactly how she wanted him to the next week it became daily updates and then it was well, you're not remorseful enough and you're only doing this because I told you to. Do you see how this becomes a moving target? This is where we keep moving the goalposts on our men and it leaves them feeling confused and frustrated. But now, this doesn't mean that he didn't have work to do. Of course he had a lot to do, but what was happening here was not repair, it was testing. See, when we looked deeper, maya realized she hadn't actually fully forgiven him yet. She still felt hurt and she didn't feel very safe with him. So instead of saying that, she was trying to make him prove his love by jumping through all of these emotional hoops. But here's the problem when you keep moving the goalpost on your partner, your partner can't show up for you in a real way. They're not sure what you actually need and eventually they'll either burn out or completely shut down.
Speaker 1:Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. It doesn't mean excusing what happened, but it does mean making a conscious choice to stop punishing them, to start focusing on what you actually need, moving forward and coming from a place of forgiveness. While you do See, once Maya forgave her husband, she was able to get clear again and she said here's what I need to feel safe. And she stuck to it. She didn't keep changing the needs or the boundaries, she didn't turn her needs into a guessing game. And you know what? Her husband started showing up more consistently because the expectations were more clear and the energy shifted from punishment to partnership. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking I keep asking for more and it still doesn't feel like enough, then I want you to pause and ask yourself have I truly forgiven them yet? Am I asking for what I need or am I asking them to make up for my pain, them to make up for my pain? Am I repairing or am I testing? This isn't about shame. It's about clarity, because clarity creates safety for you and for them.
Speaker 1:When Maya learned to acknowledge her pain, not dismiss it, not say oh, it's not that bad, he didn't cheat on me, it's not a big deal she started to shift something inside of herself. That self-compassion gave her permission to stop minimizing and to stop overriding what she felt, and that changed everything, because when she honored her pain, she realized that her instincts were real, her feelings were valid, her body was telling the truth and it was safe to listen. From that place she was able to start trusting her husband again, not because he proved himself enough, but because she knew that, no matter what happened next, she could trust herself. And when she trusted herself, she stopped asking for things from a place of fear or resentment. She began asking for what she needed from a place of clarity and forgiveness. And that's when the repair started to feel like a partnership. She wasn't testing him anymore. She was working with him to rebuild the relationship and, as a result, they didn't just get back to where they were, they built something even stronger. They built resilience, the kind of trust that's deeper than oh hey, we never fight or we're doing okay all the time. No, they built the kind of connection that weathers hard things, because it's rooted in truth.
Speaker 1:Thank you all so much for being here with me this week. I really hope that you see that trust is the foundation of connection, and you deserve a connection that doesn't keep you in survival mode, one where you don't have to over-function just to feel secure, a relationship where your needs are honored and where you feel proud of the way you're showing up. So I want to leave you with this when in your life have you been minimizing a rupture? Where have you been testing instead of forgiving? And what would it look like to rebuild trust, not just with someone else, but with yourself?
Speaker 1:If this episode stirred something in you, I want you to know that this work doesn't end here. This is what we do every single week inside the Relationship Reboot Program. We go deep, we go hard and we do the real work. We talk about how your attachment style plays into these patterns. We explore the emotional wounds underneath your communication struggles. We build your confidence in setting boundaries and asking for what you need and staying rooted in your truth, without all the guilt or all the shame or all the second guessing. And you don't have to do it alone. Inside the Relationship Reboot program, you get weekly live coaching calls with me and a community of women that are so incredibly supportive oh, they mean the world to me and you get a step-by-step program that takes you from feeling insecure in your relationships to communicating like the badass.
Speaker 1:I know that you are and if you're ready to stop spinning in circles and start creating emotional safety inside of yourself and in your relationships, then this is your next step. You can get all the details and join us using the links in the show notes. I hope you scroll on down, find what you need and come and join us. But listen, I cannot wait to speak with you all next week here on the Speak Honest podcast. Until then, take care.
Speaker 1:As we wrap up today's conversation, always remember that healing is a journey, not a destination, and it is an honor to be a part of your healing journey. If you want to dig deeper into the topics we covered today, be sure to head over to our show notes, where you can find all of the valuable information mentioned in today's episode right there, and please remember to rate, review and subscribe if you enjoyed today's podcast. Your feedback means the world to us and helps others discover our podcast. Until next time, remember to speak up and speak honest.
