Are You Really Okay With This? What Staying as the Side Chick Is Doing to Your Future

Sherley’s Show  |  Relationships & Self-Worth

We already had the talk.

If you read our original post — ‘Say Goodbye to Being the Side Chick’ — you know we covered the five questions every woman in that situation needs to honestly ask herself. Why am I cheating myself? What am I gaining? Who am I hurting? Those questions matter. But asking them is only the beginning.

This post is the follow-up your spirit needed. Because once you have sat with those questions, the next layer is understanding why you ended up here in the first place — and what it is actually going to take to walk out. Not just walk away from him. Walk toward yourself.

This is for the woman who read that first post and felt every word. Who nodded. Who maybe cried a little. And who is still sitting in the situation wondering if her case is somehow different. It is not. But she is not broken for being there. She is human. And she is more ready than she thinks.

Read Blog Post: Saying Goodbye to Being the Side Chick

Companion Post This is a spin-off of our original post: ‘Say Goodbye to Being the Side Chick.’ Read that first if you have not, then come back here for the deeper conversation. Link: sherleysshow.com/saying-goodbye-to-being-the-side-chick

The Hidden Cost Nobody Talks About

When people talk about being the side chick, they focus on the obvious losses — the missed holidays, the secrets, the never being someone’s first call. And yes, all of that is real and it hurts. But there is a cost that goes even deeper, and it is the one that follows you long after this particular man is gone.

It is the cost to your internal compass.

Every time you accept treatment that does not match your actual value, your internal sense of what you deserve quietly recalibrates downward. You start to believe that halfway is the most love has to offer. That wanting 100% of someone is either naive or needy. That the terms and conditions attached to your relationship are just how love works.

None of that is true. But the longer you live inside a story, the more it starts to feel like fact.

This is not just emotional. Women who consistently engage in one-sided or hidden relationships report lower relationship satisfaction in the partnerships that follow, a diminished sense of self-efficacy when it comes to love, and a harder time trusting their own instincts about who is safe to let in. You are not just losing time in this situation. You are slowly allowing someone else’s limitations to define your expectations.

That is the cost worth talking about.

Takeaway Being in a hidden relationship does not just hurt in the moment — it slowly rewires what you believe you deserve. Rebuilding that internal standard is the real work, and it starts the moment you name what has been happening.

Why Settling Can Feel Safer Than Being Fully Seen

Here is the part that does not get said enough: for a lot of women, the side chick dynamic is not really about the man. It is about the protection that comes with keeping things partial.

Think about it. If you are the side chick, there is always a ready-made reason for why things are not all the way there. It is not you — it is the situation. It is his circumstances. It is the timing. And as painful as that explanation is, it is also a buffer. Because if you never fully step into the light and demand what you actually want, you never have to face the risk of being fully rejected.

Partial availability from someone else can feel like it matches something inside of you that does not yet believe it deserves the full thing. And that match — that familiar feeling of almost — is what keeps a lot of women in situations their minds know they should leave.

The original post asked the question: why am I cheating myself? For many women, this is the honest answer — one that takes real courage to say out loud. We settle for less not because we do not want more, but because wanting more and not getting it feels more terrifying than accepting less and calling it enough.

That is not a character flaw. That is a wound. And wounds heal.

Takeaway Choosing a partial relationship is sometimes a way of protecting yourself from the full risk of being truly known and possibly rejected. Naming that pattern — without shame — is where the real shift begins.

The Pattern That Started Long Before Him

Let us go a layer deeper. The situation with this particular man is almost never where the pattern began. For most women navigating this, there is a longer story underneath.

A parent who was emotionally present only sometimes. A first love who made you feel chosen and then pulled away. A lifetime of being told — directly or through experience — that your needs were too much, or that love was something you had to earn by being easy, agreeable, and low-maintenance. So you learned to take less. To be grateful for a fraction and call it love. To be the one who gives more and asks for less, and to frame that as strength.

It is not weakness. But it is also not the whole story.

The man in front of you is often not the real problem. He is the latest chapter in a story that was written long before he arrived. And until you go back and read the earlier chapters — really read them, ideally with a therapist or a trusted guide alongside you — you will keep arriving at the same place with different people.

This is one of the topics we go deep on in our Conversations episodes on Sherley’s Show. Episodes like .Healing from Infidelity: A Raw Conversation on Repeated Hurt. and .Understanding Patterns of Infidelity in Relationships. get into exactly this — why certain dynamics keep repeating and what it takes to finally interrupt them. These are conversations between Sherley and Kira where we sit in the hard stuff together, without sugarcoating it.

Listen: Conversations on Sherley’s Show Our Conversations episodes go deep on the patterns that keep women stuck — infidelity, healing, repeated hurt, and the work of breaking cycles. Find them at: sherleysshow.com/category/podcast/conversation

What You Are Actually Looking For

Here is something worth sitting with: women who find themselves in side chick situations are not usually looking for drama. They are not seeking out the pain. They are looking for something that felt real — connection that felt safe, passion that felt alive, and presence that felt steady.

And at some point, this person gave them a glimpse of all three. Just not consistently. And not completely.

That glimpse is powerful. It is what keeps hope alive long after logic has made its case for leaving. You are not chasing him. You are chasing the feeling he briefly made you believe was possible. And here is the thing — that feeling is possible. It is absolutely real and attainable. It just cannot live inside this arrangement. What you are looking for requires a relationship with no asterisks. One where you do not have to share, wonder, or wait.

You do not need to lower the vision. You need to stop offering it to someone who is not in a position to hold it.

Takeaway You are not chasing the wrong thing — you are chasing it in a space that cannot hold it. The love you are looking for is real. It just requires a relationship that is fully, freely available to receive it.

The Comparison You Need to Make

The original post asked what you are gaining from this relationship. Let us get specific and put it side by side — not to shame, but to create clarity on paper that feelings alone tend to blur.

What this arrangement actually offers	What you actually deserve
Availability only on his schedule	A partner whose schedule includes you by default
Secrecy — no public recognition	A relationship that is proudly and openly claimed
Connection with a ceiling it cannot break through	A love that is free to deepen without limits
Hope that things will eventually change	A present that already reflects your worth
Time shared with someone else’s commitment	A commitment that belongs entirely to you

Save this table. Screenshot it. Put it somewhere you will see it on the days when the feeling of him temporarily outweighs the reality of the situation. Because feelings are real, but so are facts. And both deserve a seat at the table.

Both Sides of This Conversation Matter

One of the things that makes Sherley’s Show different is that we do not just talk to women about their relationships in isolation. In the Real Talk Series, my husband and I have these conversations together — from both the male and female perspective — so that you get a fuller picture of what is actually happening on both sides of a dynamic like this.

Because understanding why someone creates a side chick situation in the first place changes the way you see yourself in it. It stops feeling like a reflection of your worth and starts feeling like what it actually is: someone else’s unresolved story that you happened to walk into.

And when you see it clearly for what it is, you stop carrying the weight of it as if it belongs to you.

Listen: Real Talk Series on Sherley’s Show My husband and I talk candidly about relationship dynamics, emotional availability, and what real commitment actually looks like — from both sides. These are the conversations couples need and single women deserve to hear. Find the Real Talk Series at: sherleysshow.com/category/podcast/realtalkseries

What the Experts Say — And Why It Matters Here

We have also had some remarkable guests on the Interviews side of Sherley’s Show who speak directly to what it takes to heal from betrayal, rebuild your sense of worth, and move forward with intention.

Dr. Debi Silber joined us to talk about healing from betrayal — the kind of deep, identity-level healing that happens when trust has been broken in a significant way. Darlene Hawley came on specifically to talk about knowing your worth — what that phrase actually means in practice and how women build it back after it has been diminished.

These conversations are not theory. They are practical, grounded wisdom from people who have done this work professionally and personally. If you are in a season of trying to understand your patterns and rebuild your standard, these episodes are a resource worth returning to.

Listen: Interviews on Sherley’s Show Guest experts — including Dr. Debi Silber on healing from betrayal and Darlene Hawley on knowing your worth — bring research, lived experience, and real tools to help you move forward. Find our Interviews at: sherleysshow.com/category/podcast/interviews-podcast

Choosing Yourself Is Not a Slogan — It Is a Practice

We hear ‘choose yourself’ so often now that it has started to feel like a bumper sticker. So let us make it concrete, because the women who actually do it are not the ones who found a quote that inspired them. They are the ones who made a different choice on a random Tuesday when it would have been so easy not to.

Choosing yourself looks like not responding to that 11pm text even though part of you really wants to. It looks like booking the therapy session you have been putting off because you keep telling yourself you are fine. It looks like telling one trusted person the actual truth about your situation so you stop carrying it completely alone. It looks like sitting in a quiet weekend with no distraction and no reaching out — and surviving it. And it looks like grieving this, honestly, because leaving something that gave you even a fraction of what you wanted is a real loss. You are allowed to feel that.

The women who come out of these situations and build extraordinary lives are not the ones who felt less. They are the ones who felt it fully and moved through it anyway.

Takeaway Choosing yourself is not one dramatic decision. It is a hundred small, unglamorous choices made consistently over time. Each one compounds. Each one builds the version of you that is ready for what comes next.

The Space After This Is Not Empty — It Is the Foundation

The biggest mistake women make when leaving a situation like this is immediately reaching for the next person to fill the quiet. The absence is loud, and silence can feel like loss. But that space is not emptiness. That space is where you get built.

The version of you who knows what she deserves, who can say what she needs without apology, who can receive real love without sabotaging it because she does not quite believe she is worth it yet — she does not appear in the next relationship. She is constructed in the in-between. In the therapy. In the honest conversations with people who know you and love you without conditions. In the podcast episodes you listen to that remind you who you are when no one is looking.

When you build her first, the next relationship does not have to carry the weight of your healing. It gets to be what relationships are actually supposed to be — a partnership between two people who choose each other clearly, freely, and without reservation.

That is what you were always looking for. Now you know where it actually gets built.

Takeaway The healing you need is not in the next relationship. It is in the time, work, and honest self-investment you make before it. That is not a delay. That is the foundation everything else gets built on.

Key Takeaways

• The real cost of a hidden relationship is not just pain — it is the slow erosion of your internal standard for what you deserve.
• Settling for partial love is often about protecting yourself from the full risk of being seen. That is worth understanding, not judging.
• The pattern likely started long before this man. He is a chapter in a longer story — and you can change the ending.
• You are not chasing the wrong kind of love. You are trying to grow it in soil that cannot hold it.
• Choosing yourself is built from small, consistent daily decisions — not one big moment.
• The time after this relationship is where the version of you who is ready for real love gets built. Do not rush past it.

Go Deeper With Sherley’s Show

If this post stirred something in you, you are not meant to sit with it alone. Sherley’s Show exists exactly for this — the real conversations women need, the ones that go past the surface and into the stuff that actually shapes how we love and how we see ourselves.

Here is where to go next on the podcast:

• Conversations — Episodes where Sherley and Kira sit down together and get into the hard topics: infidelity, healing, patterns, heartbreak, and what it takes to move forward. These are raw, real conversations for the woman in the thick of it. sherleysshow.com/category/podcast/conversation
• Real Talk Series — My husband and I discuss relationship dynamics from both sides, so you hear the full picture. Because understanding both perspectives changes everything. sherleysshow.com/category/podcast/realtalkseries
• Interviews — Guest experts like Dr. Debi Silber (healing from betrayal) and Darlene Hawley (knowing your worth) bring research-backed, experience-grounded wisdom to your ears. sherleysshow.com/category/podcast/interviews-podcast

Subscribe to Sherley’s Show wherever you stream podcasts. Leave a review — it helps more women find the conversations they need. We are on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more.

For the Woman Who Wants to Turn Her Story Into a Platform

Maybe you have been listening to conversations like this one and thinking: I have something to say too. I have been through it. I have learned from it. And there are women out there who need to hear my perspective.

If that is you — that thought is not random. That is a calling worth taking seriously.

At Sherley’s Show, we not only host conversations for women — we also teach women how to build their own. The podcast you have been thinking about launching, the one that has been living in your head as ‘someday’ — we have built an entire educational space to help you turn that into something real and profitable.

• Free Resource — The Podcast Bootcamp Launch Checklist: The no-fluff, step-by-step roadmap for women ready to finally launch. Download it at: sherleysshow.com/podcast-resource
• 1:1 Consultation with Sherley — Personalized guidance for women who are serious about building a podcast as an income stream. Limited spots available at: sherleysshow.com/consultation
• Upcoming eBook — A deeper guide to building a podcast-based platform and business. Get on the waitlist at sherleysshow.com/podcasting-ebook.
• Webinars — Live sessions walking you through the frameworks, strategy, and community you need to launch with confidence. Details at https://sherleysshow.com/free-webinar.

Your story has value. Your voice has reach. And your experience is someone else’s lifeline. Visit sherleysshow.com to learn how to build the platform that makes that possible.

Final Word

The side chick chapter does not define you. It is not the summary of who you are or evidence of your ceiling. It is a chapter — and every chapter has a purpose. The question is whether you will let this one be the chapter that finally woke you all the way up.

You deserve to be someone’s only. Their first call. Their clear, unqualified choice. Not because you are perfect — none of us are — but because you are whole. And whole women deserve whole love.

We are rooting for you. We always are.

— Sherley’s Show

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Sherley’s Show is learning and growing every single day. We aim to uplift all marginalized voices both on this podcast and in real life. Please note that we are always striving to change the problematic language that society has internalized in us. Thank you for your patience as we aim to strip certain phrases from our vocabulary.

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Sherley’s Show provides an atmosphere where every woman is comfortable growing into their best self. Sherley’s Show is a no judgment podcast where we discuss how to rise strong out of all types of obstacles that come with relationships. Through personal life experiences and discussions ranging from infidelity, trust, forgiveness, sex, heartbreak, self love, therapy and more, we offer words of empowerment as you strive to build and maintain all of the relationships in your life. You may be going through something that is unique and difficult. Sharing your story gives others comfort and could also be helping someone else. Let them know they are not alone. Everyone has a story, do not let fear hold you back.

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