Hurt Meets Healer Podcast

Healthy Detachment: Finding Space to Heal After Betrayal

• Kim Capps • Season 1 • Episode 24

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The fog of betrayal can be suffocating. After discovering sexual infidelity, many partners find themselves gasping for air, desperately trying to make sense of their new reality while constantly being pulled back into chaos by ongoing deception. This powerful episode explores the lifeline of healthy detachment - a misunderstood concept that proves essential for survival and healing.

Kim shares her personal journey of needing to create space from John's persistent lies and manipulation, not as punishment but as self-preservation. "I needed safety. I needed to be able to sleep. I needed to not be lied to for a day," she reveals with raw honesty. The conversation distinguishes between healthy detachment (creating temporary distance to heal) and unhealthy detachment (manipulative withdrawal or permanent disconnection).

John offers the rare perspective from the betrayer's side, admitting how terrifying the concept of "detachment" can be for someone struggling with abandonment fears. "I missed the word 'healthy' when you were doing these steps for your own sake," he confesses, providing valuable insight for couples navigating this delicate territory.

The episode delivers practical guidance for implementing healthy detachment through self-care activities, boundary setting, and surrendering the impossible task of controlling another person's choices. Kim emphasizes: "Forgiveness is for us. Acknowledging our pain is for us. Setting healthy boundaries is for us." This powerful framework helps betrayed partners reclaim their identity beyond the trauma.

Whether you're struggling to breathe through fresh betrayal or still carrying wounds from the past, this episode offers compassionate wisdom for finding solid ground when everything feels like quicksand. Connect with us at hurtmeetshealer.com to learn more about walking alongside others on the journey from hurt to healing.

Thank you for listening! For more information about us and the services we offer, visit www.hurtmeetshealer.com.

Intro & Outro music written, performed, and produced by Kim Capps.


This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical, or professional advice. The views expressed by the Host or any Guest(s) are strictly their own and in no way constitute legal, medical, or professional advice.
Copyright ©️ 2025, Hurt Meets Healer, LLC. All rights reserved.

Speaker 1:

Kim Capps ministry that was created to help individuals and couples who are walking through the devastating impact of sexual addiction and infidelity. Thanks for joining me today. Hey, y'all, welcome. Welcome to the 24th episode of the Hurt Meets Healer podcast.

Speaker 2:

Hey, john Good evening, good evening, good afternoon. Sorry, where are we? Yeah, exactly it doesn't. I mean I'm not sure where I am.

Speaker 1:

We record our podcast in the evening when our home settles down from the goings on of the day, and there's a lot of goings on throughout our day. Oh, my word, so it is evening when we're recording this podcast and there's a lot of goings on throughout our day. Oh, my word, so it is evening when we're recording this podcast, and that's okay, it is what it is. So today, on this episode, I have entitled this Healthy Detachment, which is heard across the recovery, betrayal, sexual betrayal, intimate betrayal spectrum of healing and that journey. There comes a time, there can come a time that this particular thing is needed.

Speaker 1:

Step, there you go. Thank you See. Look at you being a helpmate of there. Wow, all right, and, and that's what we want to talk about tonight. So what, um, what are your? You have any thoughts? Before we just dive in, I want to just have a conversation around this, john, because we have had I have had to, for my safety detach from you many, many times through this process and through this our journey together. I needed to establish clear boundaries. I had to come to an understanding of what boundaries were, how to create them, what that meant for me, and I needed to focus on me for once and my self-care, my health.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

That kind of took a tanker there. I had to learn to trust myself again, which are a lot of the steps I'll use your word in detaching in a healthy way.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah, and just the topic. It's a cautionary tale, if you will. I actually first encountered the term healthy detachment in John Eldridge's book Get your Life Back, and he uses the Paws app. You know created the Paws app and that's where I first encountered his.

Speaker 2:

You know this concept of healthy detachment and so, you know, as a, as a person on a journey, right, a spiritual journey, a life journey, an, an intimacy journey, it is a great concept, it's a great practice, as a recovering addict in a dysfunctional relationship, it's a terrifying two words put together.

Speaker 2:

So I have seen it from both sides. And you know, because in my fear state, in my addiction state and in my recovery process, I missed the word healthy when you were going through these steps for your own sake, sure, and the word that I kept hearing was detachment and that triggered all sorts of abandonment, fears and just all sorts of stuff and just all sorts of stuff. And so I love the concept of healthy detachment and have practiced it myself on the spiritual side, again, using Eldridge's steps, and so it's not new to me, but when it was applied, it was being applied in my life right by you, and I'm not saying it was being applied to me right. It was a healthy detachment for you to you know, as the as the steps go, to kind of back off from everything and take a deep breath and get some perspective and and remember who you are and whose you are.

Speaker 1:

I had to find out who I was Right, remembering man, the decades of you're broken, kim, something's wrong with you. It has to be you, because it can't be me Overarching theme of our marriage. I had to discover myself and go to God to find who am I anymore. Am I my job? Am I my business that I run? Am I just a mom? Obviously I'm not a very good wife. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?

Speaker 2:

And we construct these identities that we hide behind to try to create what we're longing for right, and so we lose ourselves in all of these various identities that we create. You know, you mentioned a bunch of them our jobs and our ministries and and our roles in in the. We have this desperate longing in us to matter and to matter to those that we love, and so we create these identities to try to fit that and fit into that, and we lose ourselves in the pursuit of that and oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

well, and when you're flat out being told that you're the problem and that if you would just do xyz and um straighten up and fly right which I didn't know I was flying wrong, straighten up and fly right which I didn't know I was flying wrong, then that would fix everything. And even after D-Day, that was still. The experience that I had with you was that if I would just forgive, if I would just do this or that and the pressure I had it from not only you but from my friends, from my family, from our kids I didn't cause the mess. Yet I was the one that if I would just straighten up and do whatever they thought, whatever you thought, then that would fix it. And, ladies, that is not the case. Not the case at all. It will not fix it. It's like putting a band-aid on a gaping, gaping wound. It's not going to stop the bleeding. Just putting a band-aid on a severed artery not going to stop the bleeding. Just putting a Band-Aid on a severed artery. Some of you are going to bleed out. A Band-Aid won't do squat for that.

Speaker 1:

And so, detaching for me. I finally had to just say no more. I need space, I need a break, I need a separation. I can't.

Speaker 1:

I value these things, and because our relationship is not exhibiting these things, I'm going to choose to take a step back to figure out number one, what I need, which was safety. I need a breath. I need to not be lied to for a day. I need to speak to people who will give me encouragement and lift me up. I need to go for walks alone, not be chased by someone begging. Please help. I needed safety. I needed to be able to sleep.

Speaker 1:

Oh, my goodness, that was a big one. I wasn't sleeping for a long time and being able to physically move to a different place helped me. But the emotional detachment helped tremendously for me to come to a point that I could release what I thought I had control over, which I really didn't. And I had to come to that understanding that it didn't matter what I said to you. You were going to choose. You're your own human being. You choose for you how you want to show up, and it didn't matter if I said you hurt me. It wasn't going to change your behavior or your attitude. You had to come to the conclusion and the I guess resolution or understanding that, oh my gosh, I'm hurting Kim.

Speaker 2:

And because I'm hurting, and I don't want to do that because I'm hurt and I don't want to do that Right, and so I just needed a break from it all.

Speaker 1:

And when I learned about healthy detachment because there's definitely unhealthy detaching that goes on and I did that a lot in our marriage you did that pretty much our entire marriage. Would you agree with that? You can say no, I don't agree with that, I can handle it.

Speaker 2:

Unhealthy describes a whole lot of what I have done and I wouldn't say and this might surprise you, but I wouldn't say it was unhealthy detachment, because I don't think that there was ever any real significant attachment.

Speaker 1:

Oh, that's good, Look at you, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I mean we struggled from the beginning with attaching to each other.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was like this trauma bond.

Speaker 2:

We were both trauma.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was like this trauma bond. We both had so much trust, so many trust issues, that it was not to be crude, but it was. Somebody said, you know, two porcupines making love because there was so much, because there were so much. And you know, of course neither one of us knew any of that at the time, but looking back, I mean that that's the. I don't think that we ever got attached, and so it was a struggle all along to really try to figure that out. And it was the ebb and flow of these attempts to connect and because of our own woundedness and brokenness, we often most of the time, I would say we rubbed up against each other's raw spots rather than comforting each other.

Speaker 1:

And here's what's interesting I had no idea how much fear you lived in. You did not show that, and I'm not a psychologist. I had no idea. The fear of abandonment? No idea. You wouldn't talk to me, you would suppress emotions. I don't even know that you would have named an emotion, except for anger, anger and fear.

Speaker 2:

Well, I wouldn't have named fear because I wouldn't acknowledge the fear.

Speaker 1:

Oh, wow, Interesting. So would you say that you have lived your life, most of your life, emotionally numb oh absolutely. What's that?

Speaker 2:

like Numb.

Speaker 1:

It sucks, you don't feel anything.

Speaker 2:

It sucks is what it's like. Yeah, it's like being drunk and you're at this great party party, but and you can, and you're at that level of drunk where you can see the party going on around you, but you can't enjoy it or appreciate it. That's the numbness, because you're just trapped and, no matter how you try to get up and party, you can't get to anybody, and so as soon as you get up and reach, the room starts spinning and so it is safer to just be still, and it's crushing at the same time.

Speaker 1:

Wow, wow, that's quite revealing. Thanks for that.

Speaker 2:

And it's hard to come out of that. It's hard to have these connected moments and then to cycle back to disconnection. Yeah, I mean, it's't ever experience the pain of loss. Maybe you don't get the joy and the ecstasy of connection, but you protect yourself, you think, from the pain of loss, but there's no protection from that and that's why it's so hard to risk for me. It's so hard to risk because you have these moments and then the cycle and the cycle always is going to happen. It doesn't. The cycle of connection and disconnection happens in every relationship and you know, some of those valleys are a lot deeper and wider than others, but it's going to happen. So I don't. It doesn't really matter who you are out there and what relationship experience you have. There are peaks and valleys in everybody's journey and for me, the, the, the pain, so the joy and the ecstasy of the of the peaks is, makes the valleys so much more excruciating when I've lived so numb for so long and it just rekindles that fire of the fear of rejection and abandonment.

Speaker 1:

Wow, okay, wow, wow, okay, wow. I don't know what to say to that. To be quite honest, with you. You've left me speechless. That'll shut her up.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Speaker 1:

So, alright, let me circle back to unhealthy betrayal. Unhealthy betrayal, oh my Lord, help me. My bedtime dinger went off. I hadn't silenced my phone. It is our bedtime. It's my bedtime anyway, talking. It is our bedtime, it's my bedtime anyway, talking about the peaks and the valleys.

Speaker 1:

The unhealthy way of detaching, I think, is the result, is those valleys, because I think that if we're healthily discussing things, not cutting off communication, without dealing with the betrayal, without processing that, I'm not going to talk to you until you go get help. I'm not going to talk to you until you go get help. I'm not going to talk to you until you forgive me, I'm not going to talk to you until Whatever the it's just so unhealthy and cutting off communication. There's a time when I think there is a time to be quiet and a time to reflect and think about things. If, if a discussion is escalating, it's there, in my opinion it's take a break. Take a break, take a 10 minute, 20 minute, whatever it takes, but you have to circle back to it. Call it it closing the loop. Closing the loop. If you don't close the loop, it's not healthy detachment, that's unhealthy detachment If you're just saying well, we're done, that's just a separation, healthy detaching is working your healing journey in a safe environment where you're getting the help that you need, you're not constantly being abused by your spouse, either verbally, spiritually, mentally, physically, whatever it is.

Speaker 1:

You have time. You have the opportunity to take some breaths, to spend some time with God, to spend some time alone with yourself and begin clearing the fog that comes with betrayal. Our whole life gets blown up and for the dust to settle, that takes time. For the dust to settle, that takes time. We're thrown into a oh my gosh. Well, what was he doing at this time? Oh, and all of these thoughts just come racing in our heads. And when you're in the middle of this battle and we battled a lot you have your beliefs on how things were supposed to go, and I have mine. And they do not even connect. One, not one single dot connects.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't Now. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Now, but not in the thick of it and not for a long time.

Speaker 2:

Just recently they have begun to come, and the saying is unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments, and I'm guilty of that. I thought you were supposed to know, right? I don't know what you were thinking, but it felt like at times. You think that I'm supposed to know. Why should I tell you?

Speaker 1:

I have told you things and you are supposed to know, and then, all of a sudden, you don't, and I I could do another episode on feigned ignorance. And yeah, write that down, feigned ignorance. So, all right, let's keep it on topic there, senior, keep it on topic. So what I? What I've learned on this journey is if I'm detaching to make my spouse do something, that's not really detaching, that's manipulating. If I am truly and I did my I healthily detached under the care and guidance of my counselor, who is wonderful, and she helped me walk through the steps and encouraged me to really look inward and make sure it wasn't a manipulative tactic to use and it wasn't.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, I had to get a breath, I had to get away from deception. I couldn't get a clear answer, I couldn't get a straight answer, I kept getting lied to, and so it was necessary for my mental health to step back and take a break and we were on a break and just detach from the saga of the betrayal for a little while, a few, several days, whatever it was. I've had to do it multiple, multiple, multiple times, and every time there's a betrayal that happens to me, I have to detach for a little bit. I have to step back and practice some self-care activities, be it exercise. I have been known to binge watch YouTubes and Instagram. That is not healthy at all, unless it's the talking animals that is flipping funny.

Speaker 1:

I love that stuff. But then I go down a rabbit hole of watching healing or these narcissism and all this stuff emotional abuse and then I get ticked off and that's not good. So I really work to read scripture, listen to music. I go outside in the mornings and sit on our deck and just watch the sun come up and talk to God. I go swimming. I at times have gone up to a place and played golf, just hit balls. Go and play putt-putt, just get outside, get some vitamin D, mow the grass, do self-care and not think about the betrayal for a time. Believe me, there'll be plenty of time to think about it.

Speaker 1:

That, to me, is what healthy detachment was for me not to take my focus off of the betrayal because I couldn't get a straight answer. I couldn't get, we hadn't had, we'd had these many disclosures, but that's all they were. I hadn't had a full. I thought I had, but I hadn't had a full disclosure. And so if you're, if you are doing and calling healthy detachment a storming out, I'm leaving thing. That's not healthy detaching. That's not healthy detachment. That's not healthy detaching. That's not healthy detachment. Remember manipulation. There's a fine line between telling someone what we need, an expectation, telling someone what we need and expecting them to behave differently. I think there's a fine line between manipulation and that whole scenario there.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

And there is a great line. I can't remember where I heard it from, but it's we are responsible to our spouse. We're not responsible for them. It's up to them to do their work. It's up to them to walk their healing journey. It's up to them to show up kind and caring and considerate and honest. It's up to them to communicate in a way that we can understand. It's up to them to ask questions to gain understanding, to be curious about what we're feeling. It's up to them to do their own work. And my responsibility to them is, I believe, to my husband, to you, john.

Speaker 1:

You are my husband yes okay is to tell God on him, Tell, yeah, just tell God about it. To do my work, to walk my healing journey, to stay in my lane. To stay in my lane and become the healthiest, the best Kim that God created me to be on this earth. That's my responsibility. I can't control what he says, does, thinks, believes. It frustrates the poo out of me a lot of the time because it's a um, I can't uh, help me understand what I would consider this wackadoo belief that you have here and that does not make sense to me. Help me understand so. Healthy detachment requires a lot of seeking God, acknowledging your pain Yep, this hurts. And talk to God, man. I told God on John. I told, yeah, I told on John to God a lot. I told on John to God a lot and he did not act in the way that I thought God should act. When a person consistently lies. I wanted lightning to just a little zap, not like this big boom, Just a little zap here and there Like a dog shot collar.

Speaker 2:

Not dead.

Speaker 1:

Just awakened, just shaking off the ground like a taser.

Speaker 2:

Remain calm, that's right.

Speaker 1:

Forgiveness is a big step in healing and in being able to detach, because you have to forgive that debt and it's also it's forgiveness is. And we're going to be talking about forgiveness for the next several episodes. So gird your loins, get prepared, because we have a lot of differing ideas on forgiveness. Those should be very fun, but forgiving is for you, remember it's for you, and it can release that vengeance side, that you can release them to God. You can still hope that a bug flies up their nose or something that you know will irritate. This. That really makes sense. Irritate the snot right out of them. Or, you know, lightning Just a small zap. I've always wanted to invent this neck like a dog shock collar for guys who just have issues telling the truth and every time they lie it's like this AI thing and it knows that they're lying and it zaps them. And you know I haven't figured that one out yet. So anybody smarter than me out there, go for it.

Speaker 1:

I believe healthy detachment requires setting boundaries and healthy boundaries. And remember all of these are for us. They're not for our spouse, the betrayer, they're for us, the betrayed. Forgiveness is for us. Acknowledging our pain is for us. Setting healthy boundaries. That's for us and that leads us to be able to restore our self-worth and our identity in Christ and trusting God through the process. Because I believe God can absolutely yank a knot. That's what my dad used to say. I'm going to yank a knot through you. I believe God can take care of John way better than I can. I hurt myself attempting to exact punishment upon him and it ended up hurting me worse. So just stay that in those few practical steps of acknowledging your pain and work on that forgiveness. And it's a daily thing, y'all it's not. I absolutely do not believe in this forgive and forget thing. I think that is so not what God had intended for us as humans. How do we ever forget? I don't have that ability. If somebody else does have at it. We'll talk about it, though in the next few episodes. I see I know you want to say something there, but just stay with me. Stay with me. Learn how to set healthy boundaries to protect yourself. Boundaries are for our safety and the safety of those around us.

Speaker 1:

I had to tell my granddaughter that today that, um, when, when we say stop, because there was a wasp flying around and I had hit it somewhere and we didn't know where it was. We were looking for it, and so we told her to stop, and and she did not stop. She ran right through my boundary of stop and our daughter's been stung by a wasp that someone hit and we couldn't find it. We're in the pool, by the way. So we're looking for this sucker all over the place, and setting boundaries are for safety, and that boundary that I had set for my granddaughter was for her safety, and she blew through it. Thank goodness she missed it by a little bit, not by much. That thing was floating right by where she was.

Speaker 1:

So, in setting those healthy boundaries, well then, what it did for me is it strengthened my I don't want to say resolve, but it really gave me an ability, some strength, gave me some footing that hey, okay, I got some traction here, okay, that I can set these boundaries, because it's not what I'm going to make John do. It's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make John do. It's what I'm going to do. This is what I will tolerate in my life, this is what I will accept, and you can either be a person who matches this of what I will accept or not. That's your choice. If you're not going to behave this way, then I'm not going to be around you. That's my boundary. I'm not going to be around you, that's my boundary.

Speaker 1:

And that really helped establish my self-worth again that I had some semblance of I don't want to use that word control, but it was this power. It was very empowering for me. And then, trusting God with the process and allow John to show up as he was going to show up, and my responsibility was to gather information and then just make adjustments in my life as needed, depending on how he decided to show up. If he was not going to be approachable, if he was unable to handle my pain, I would find someone who could. And that's where having your posse around you, having your group, having a counselor, is so helpful in this process, is so helpful in this process. So that's my take on healthy detachment. What do you have? A last word there, john?

Speaker 2:

I'll say my last words for the next episode.

Speaker 1:

You want to, so talk about forgiveness don't you.

Speaker 2:

That way we don't run too long on this one.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

But I agree with all of the healthy detachment conversation. I mean, like I said, if you're on the other side like I have been, most likely when you hear healthy detachment, the word that you hear is detachment and it's frightening. But healthy detachment is that it's separating yourself from the pain long enough that you can heal.

Speaker 1:

It's not ignoring the pain.

Speaker 2:

No.

Speaker 1:

That was the first.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's intentionally setting the pain aside, and I'm going through that physically right now. There are some pain therapies that allow me to set the pain aside and actually do the things I need to do. But if I don't do that, it's debilitating, I'm sitting on an ice pack. But if the pain therapy is working, I can actually engage in life in a somewhat semi-normal manner. And that's what healthy detachment in this context is all about being able to set aside the pain long enough to remember and recover your life.

Speaker 1:

Right, yeah, absolutely All right. Well, thanks for that. Thanks for joining us today. And this is just a tool that is available, that, if you've never heard of it before in your journey, it's a tool that can be employed to, especially for the spouse, the betrayed spouse, to get a breath, get some footing, gain some just some rest, just some rest, and clear out the fog of betrayal for a little bit before you jump back into the fire. So we'd be happy to come along and walk beside you in your healing journey if you would like that, if you desire that, you can reach us at info at hurtmeetshealercom. Thanks for joining us today, y'all, god bless. Thank you for taking the time to listen today. Remember you are more than what happened to you. We'd be honored to come alongside and guide you on your healing journey. Connect with us at wwwhurtmeetshealercom. Until next time, god bless.

People on this episode

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Kim Capps

Host
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John Capps

Co-host