Hello, my loves. Today, I have one of my incredible clients (who also happens to be a fucking badass relationship and self-love coach) here to talk about some deeply vulnerable and potentially controversial topics…please welcome Ashlee Tegen!

I am so excited to have Ashlee here. Truly. I’ve said this to her so many times, but she is one of my star students. It’s so rare that I see someone literally just be an absolute sponge to new ways of thinking and being, but she is that kind of person.

I know you need to hear her story, because fuuuck, I’m crying just thinking about it all over again. So without further ado…

Ashlee’s Story

Michelle: If you want to start by sharing a little bit about yourself, who you are, and what you do, that would be amazing.

Ashlee: Well, first off, thank you for inviting me to do this. Secondly, as Michelle said, I’m

a relationship and self-love coach. I have been married for going on thirteen years, and I have two beautiful children.

In my business, I really love being able to help women deepen their connection with themselves and with the world, as well as figuring out how to set boundaries with themselves and really tune into their bodies and find things to love about themselves.

Learning to love my own body and cherish what I have has been a journey for me, as well, so it really lights me up when I get to help my clients do the same thing. 

Healing a Marriage

Michelle: So you help women love their bodies and have better relationships, but you haven’t always had those things yourself. They were things you had to work for.

One thing I’ve seen a lot is that people can look at someone who has a great relationship with their body, or someone who is in an excellent relationship with their partner, or someone who has a great relationship to parenting, etc., and they go, “Oh, you’re just like that. You’ve always been that way. It’s easy for you.”

Ashlee: Oh, fuck no. It takes a lot of work to get here.

Michelle:  Can you talk us through that journey?

Ashlee: So before I started listening to Michelle’s podcast and doing her courses, I was a hot fucking mess. Seriously. I did not know how to set boundaries. I did not use my voice unless I was losing my shit. I was not the wife and the mom that I knew that I was supposed to be. In fact, I actually found Michelle when my husband and I were separated after infidelity.

Because of all these different things, I self-sabotaged my whole life. I ended up having an affair, and when it all came out, the shame and the guilt that I felt was so overwhelming.

My husband and I separated, but even after infeidelity, my husband told me, “I still want to work on this. our marriage is something that I want to save.”

In that moment, I wasn’t sure if I did too, because we had horrible communication.  That was not a marriage that I wanted to go back to. And seeing him and my children after infidelity and the separation made me feel like the biggest piece of shit ever.

Eventually, I decided we needed to do marriage counseling after infidelity, even though we were separated. Our counselor recommended podcasts to us, but the ones she was recommending were mostly geared toward religious couples. Those didn’t really fit with where we were in our life at that time.

I ended up telling my husband, “I need to find a podcast that resonates with me,” and he’s actually the one that sent me Michelle’s podcast. I literally binged it and I was like, “This bitch knows everything. She is amazing. I have to do her Connected Woman course.”

I actually took a loan out of my 401k to pay for it, because I just knew something about it was going to change my life. And I told my husband, “I don’t want to make a decision about our marriage, whether we’re getting back together or not, until after I’ve finished this course.”

So I dove deep. I did all the journaling practices. I did the embodiment stuff.  I listened to the calls. I think there were only three live calls that I got to attend, that’s how far they were into the program at the time. But it didn’t matter to me.  I watched all the replays like they were live calls. I literally was talking to Michelle on the replay like it was live!

After taking just that one course, I learned so much about myself. I learned exactly why I reacted to things the way that I did, why I was a people-pleaser, why I had the hardest time setting boundaries—because I was scared of being abandoned. If I set a boundary, I was afraid I would get left.

It literally changed the way that I saw myself and the way that I saw my life, and I decided, “Okay, my marriage is worth saving. And if my husband wants to do this with me after infidelity and has been patient with me for this whole time, what am I even doing? I’m done self-sabotaging.”

From there, he and I took Michelle and Drew’s relationship revival course. We do relationship check-ins even still, and our communication is beautiful and our marriage is thriving. It is better after infidelity than it was before infidelity. And that feels really fucking good.

When people are like, “Oh, you guys have such a perfect relationship,” they have no idea it took a lot to get here. A lot. We had to literally burn the whole marriage to the ground after infidelity to start over and create something that we both are proud of.

Coming Back After Infidelity

Michelle: The fact that your marriage is better after infidelity than it was before is so fucking cool.

This is what people don’t get. Your marriage did die after infidelity. You separated, first of all, but you were also like, “We’re not going back to the old version of that marriage. We’re starting something completely fresh.”

Now, I’m really curious; I know there are people who have experienced infidelity, either on the receiving end or as the one who had the affair, who will be wondering this too: how do you come back after infidelity?

What’s your advice? Because for a lot of people, it’s a fucking deal-breaker. After infidelity, it’s done. Relationship over.

However, I don’t think it’s that black and white.  I think there’s a lot of gray area in it. So what would you say?

Ashlee: You know, some situations are a lot harder than others. For me and my husband, we’d been married so long—and we could so clearly see all the different breaks that happened the foundation of our marriage—it was easy for us to decide it was worth working on even after infidelity, because we both acknowledged our part in it.

I obviously had my things, but he took responsibility for his part, too. And the more we were able to come together and have these vulnerable conversations where we were taking accountability and not blaming the other person, it was easier for us to recognize that we gave each other the bricks to build the wall between us.

Break It Down, Build It Up

Michelle: That fucking hits. That’s so fucking true.

Whether it happens after infidelity or not, relationships break down, and it’s so easy to fall into accusations and “you did this, you did that,” blah blah blah. But no one wants to take responsibility for their part in the demise of a relationship.

You so easily could have gone, “Well, I cheated because you didn’t help me around the house,” and he could have gone, “Well, it doesn’t matter if I don’t help you, you should have never done that.” You could have easily gotten into a fucking shit-flinging fight versus both of you hearing each other out and acknowledging responsibility on both sides.

I think that saying, “We gave each other the bricks to build that wall between us,” is so impactful.

Ashlee: He actually said that to me when I was literally killing myself with shame. I told him, “I don’t know if I can get back with you, because I don’t deserve you. I’m the one that messed up so bad.” And that’s when he came back with, “I gave you the bricks to build that wall.”

It wasn’t just one person handing the other the brick; it was both of us. There were so many things in our marriage that needed to change that would have never fucking changed if this hadn’t happened.

Now, I’m obviously not saying, “Go have an affair so that your marriage can be better.” I’m just saying nothing was going to break down our marriage quite like this.

This is our, 2.0 marriage. That’s what we call it. We prioritize each other now ,and we listen, and we’re both able to really speak our needs now, which is something we didn’t do before.

Michelle: Sometimes we need to burn our relationships to the ground in order for them to rise like a phoenix, right?

Work with Ashlee!

Michelle: Is there anything else on your heart that you’d like to say to the people reading before we wrap up?

Ashlee: I really just want people to know they are worthy of whatever they want.  Even if your life feels like it is so far down in the dumps, you can change it.

You have more control than you’ve let yourself believe. And when you are ready to make those changes, there are so many resources out there.

There are so many different coaches for whatever it is that you’re going through—relationships, self-love, parenting, fitness and health—you name the thing, there’s a coach for it.

Reach out. Find people in your community. Take Michelle’s courses, because they have literally changed my life. Come do one-on-one coaching with me. I have tons of different offers and packages, and I just love being able to work with clients and help them shift their life into something that they are proud of.

WORK WITH ASHLEE:

Connect with Ashlee on Instagram: @ashlee.tegen

WORK WITH MICHELLE: 

Join The Connected Woman EXPERIENCE, a year-long mentorship for the woman who wants to play in the frequency of big love, epic sex and mind-blowing relationships with men…and herself: https://michellepanning.com/the-connected-woman-experience

CONNECT WITH MICHELLE:

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/michellepanning

Website: http://www.michellepanning.com