Empowered people make informed decisions that lead to living a life without regret. This is Sara Khaki and Shawna Woods from Atlanta Divorce Law Group. And this is the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. Welcome to another episode of the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. This is Sara Khaki with Atlanta Divorce Law Group, and I’m joined by our managing partner Shawna Woods. Shawna, today we’re going to talk about spilling the truth. And I’m going to put that in quotation mark because I’m borrowing that term.

From the partnership coach, Alison Armstrong, that actually has an audible program on Spilling the Truth, which is really, really good. And the reason she called it Spilling the Truth is because sometimes when we tell the truth about something that we’ve been holding onto, whether it’s a secret or we’ve been telling lies, and then wHen it’s time to come clean, or we choose to come clean, we are going to leave a big mess behind.

And that’s why it’s like a spill, because you’re spilling the truth that is going to make a mess. And first, I’d like to talk to you about are all truths in a relationship or a friendship or in a marriage, in your opinion, necessary?

sShawna (01:23)

I’m going to be such a lawyer here. Define truth. Your truth, my truth may be two different truths. A. If we’re talking something pretty black and white, X happened versus X did not happen. Okay. Right. Is an absolute truth necessary? I say no.

sSara (01:25)

It depends.

Okay.

Okay, tell me more.

sShawna (01:44)

I’ll tell you more. I think that it goes back, and I’ll give you an example. Let’s say we have a fairly long-term marriage. We have a 30-year marriage. 29 years ago, the husband cheated on the wife. Had an affair. Maybe it was a fairly long-term, six months of an affair. He recognized that that’s not what he wanted, that he wanted to be with his wife. They go on together. They have…

sSara (01:52)

Mm-hmm.

sShawna (02:11)

Four children, now have grandchildren, they have built this wonderful business together. What benefit is it of him now to tell her the truth?

sSara (02:23)

Hmm. Well, Sean, I’m sure glad I’m not married to you. Because I would that to me is there’s an integrity value in that marriage that I would feel like is missing. The marriage, I feel like has been stacked upon the woman completely accepting a lie. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m not saying my opinion is for every woman, but that’s where, you know, people are different and relationships are different.

To me, one of the essential things in a marriage is the integrity piece of I feel safe with you, that I know who you are, if somebody was capable of doing that, that would take that away from me, me specifically. But that is definitely an example of spilling the truth that’s gonna make a massive mess. A massive mess, ruin lives, ruin possibly

sShawna (03:13)

Exactly.

sSara (03:20)

Not necessarily ruin the children, but hurt the children. And then how does it get cleaned up?

sShawna (03:26)

And I understand what you’re saying about the integrity issue. I think there are times when people can make mistakes. They can recover from those mistakes. If in that first year, they came clean and they worked through it and that’s great. But we’re now in year 30. To me, I think it is so unkind because you have just now told this person and they’re going to question everything that happened over that last 29.

sSara (03:55)

I sure would.

sShawna (03:58)

Absolutely would to what purpose why did this person spill the truth? What what didn’t he suddenly need to unburden his soul to what purpose because the only thing that came out of it at that part Massive hurt across the board Massive pain. So I go back to If you’re spilling the truth that is going to create a huge mess Is it necessary and is it kind?

sSara (04:25)

This is the Brene River. And I’ll tell you, there’s many, many people that agree with that. Many, many people that would agree with what you’re saying. For me personally, I would really, really struggle with that. I really would struggle with feeling like I’ve been married to a lie. My marriage has been a lie. And I understand that the person who’s carrying this is carrying that burden. The person that made this mistake.

sShawna (04:26)

It is the Bernay

sSara (04:54)

And is now carrying this lie, they are carrying a massive, massive burden. And if I’m married to that person, I’m not married to their true self, because I’m married to them and their burden that I’m not even aware of. And I wanna know my partner’s burdens. I wanna know the weights, the shames, the guilt, all that stuff that my partner’s carrying. You know, there’s so many different ways that I think people need to partner up. What do you need to be in partnership?

And not everybody needs the same thing. Some people actually feel some of these truths are unkind. There are people that get into relationships that are like, I don’t wanna know anything about your past, right? You don’t need to know any of mine, I don’t need to know any of yours. And they can go on their happy way. And there’s some that are like, I actually need to know everything about your past. I need to know everything about my past before we move forward. So it’s a very personal thing, isn’t it? What do you need to…

Feel that you can move forward in a partnership.

sShawna (05:54)

And it’s a very personal thing. This is one of the reasons I think that we struggle So I’m gonna throw another yeah, but let’s throw another scenario in here now. Let’s say again We’ve got this 30-year marriage. We still have that affair in year 29 husband doesn’t decide to spill the the trip The affair partner comes back after 29 years and decides to spill the truth to the wife It’s Arnold’s baby. Yeah

sSara (06:13)

It comes out.

Arnold’s baby.

sShawna (06:23)

Now, here’s one of the questions that I always ask in these scenarios. Did the wife want the truth spilled? Was she happier? And did she would have she preferred that that truth stay buried? That she could have gone on living this life? And some people do.

sSara (06:43)

I’ve actually have had close people in my life that wish that this thing had never come unshuffled. So that is a real thing. That some people are just like, why did we have to make this mess out of this? And it’s a little bit of old school thinking, actually. The generations before us, the marriages, they didn’t actually need all this information. Was even a school of thought.

That hey, the man does what the man does in a very male chauvinistic environment. And we don’t need to worry our pretty little heads with everything that’s going on.

sShawna (07:26)

I think there’s actually something that occurred a lot in prior generations. One of the things with DNA tests, I know if you’re aware of this, is that people are submitting their DNA to different ancestry.com or these genomes to find out what their history is. And suddenly they’re finding out they have a hidden brother or sister, or maybe their dad’s not their dad. And they’re uncovering these truths, right, that people have intentionally kept covered up.

So a lot of this is how is it you want to live your life? And what is it you’re trying to preserve? Okay, and I think that’s one of these questions for me. Yeah, I think it’s a Unfortunately, I’m one of these let’s tell the truth with yeah put it all out there and let’s deal with it I say unfortunately because a lot of times people don’t want to hear the truth

And they would rather pretend that you have this happy little relationship, family, friendship, whatever it is, the problem is going to be the person who’s bearing the secret, right? What is that burden that’s costing them? And is there something to be benefited by? Telling that truth.

sSara (08:38)

Well, so let’s say you are carrying this weight whether it’s You know, I somebody had an affair somebody spent the family savings Somebody is dealing with a tax fraud issue that they’re keeping from their spouse We see that a lot and they decide they are going to spill the truth and now the mess has been caused What is their responsibility afterwards because now you’ve made the mess?

sShawna (09:06)

Well, you made the mess all wrong. And I don’t want to take away from that because if you were the one who committed the wrong, right, you hid your tax fraud, which one you shouldn’t commit tax fraud, but hiding it’s even worse. You hid that, you hid your affair, you hid whatever it is. Let’s face it, it was your action who caused this. So taking ultimate responsibility, not only for the thing, but also for the mess that it has comes afterwards and sitting in it.

And sitting there and saying, accept this. I accept that how you’re feeling is on me.

sSara (09:44)

And I think that’s the key here because people will spill the truth and say, well, I told you the truth. Like it’s a magic pill. And now I deserve to be made feel better about myself. Cause look at what an honest person I’m all sudden overnight became. So why am I being punished for telling you the truth? Would it have been better if I had lied to you? And that is so manipulative.

sShawna (09:52)

Like it’s some magic

It’s extremely manipulative and it often goes with people who are dishonest by nature is be manipulative in those particular situations. But say you are a person who has made a mistake and you are living with that guilt and pain and you’re about to have to tell this person it is better for whatever or you’re just, cannot bear it anymore. I think you absolutely have to be 110 % ready and able to say, I hear your pain.

I take your pain, am with you in this pain. This pain is my responsibility. What can I do?

sSara (10:49)

Yes, and they may not be able to tell you anything initially, but accepting the fact that spilling the truth is the first step. Now you’ve made a mess. And I think part of the taking responsibility is seeing clearly that you spilled the truth for you. Yes. Yes, that person deserves to know the truth, right? 100%. But you did something wrong and then you lied about it. And then now you need to come clean to feel

Better about this weight you’re carrying to unload your weight so you can feel lighter. Telling the truth wasn’t necessarily just for that person. It was for you to unload. And now you’re asked, so now, like you said, what do do to make that other person feel better? And I think that is a process and that’s a very personalized process of that person. And you have to sit with them through it, like you said. And Alison actually says that,

sShawna (11:30)

Absolutely.

sSara (11:47)

Your work is not done until both parties are happy about the mistake and the spilling of the truth because we’ve actually grown stronger and better out of it. So your work isn’t done until we’re both in a place where we’re like, I’m actually happy this happened because we grew out of this together. There was a benefit out of it, but it requires a lot of work.

Self-reflection, and most importantly, self-responsibility.

sShawna (12:20)

And oftentimes what we see is someone who’s unable to take responsibility after this truth comes out and then the marriage does dissolve. The relationship does dissolve because they absolutely cannot, it’s not in their soul, it is not in their being to be able to look at that person across the way and accept their pain over what they caused.

sSara (12:45)

Because again, that idea of I told the truth should have been enough. And that’s a sense of entitlement, isn’t it? Covered that one already in another podcast. Thank you so much, Shawna. Thanks for listening to the Happily Ever After Divorce Podcast. If you’d to learn more, go to atlantadivorcelawgroup.com/resources.

sShawna (12:52)

It sure is.

Thanks, Sara.