Processing Grief After Betrayal

Summary

The Grounded Union Podcast

Episode: Processing Grief After Betrayal

Hosts: Brandon and Caitlyn Doerksen
Date: July 31, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this powerful and candid episode, Brandon and Caitlyn Doerksen share their personal journey through the devastation of betrayal in marriage, focusing specifically on processing grief after trust has been broken. Grounded in their own lived experience, they offer a comprehensive and honest conversation about the realities of grief for both the betrayed and the betrayer, the common pitfalls couples face, and actionable pathways toward healing and transformation. Their aim is not merely to survive betrayal but to use grief as a guide toward deeper connection, honesty, and the creation of something new and beautiful.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Reality of Grief from Betrayal

• Broken trust is described as a shock to both partners, but manifests differently: the betrayed is in acute pain while the betrayer is often emotionally numb.
• Grief is not just mental: “It’s the wringing out of our nervous system, our emotions, where we actually come to terms with and feel through something we’ve experienced.” – Brandon [01:15]
• Grief serves as a necessary process, not to be bypassed or minimized.

2. Pain is Multilayered and Nonlinear

• Category 1: The pain is compounded when the betrayer is emotionally numb, unable to comfort or validate, leaving the betrayed desperate for acknowledgment.
• Category 2: The shock is often followed by waves of disclosure, each bringing new pain. Trickle truth makes healing even harder.
  • “You feel like you’re treading water out in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm.” – Caitlyn [07:50]
• Category 3: The sense of losing one’s reality; feeling like the entire marriage was an illusion.
  • “I had no idea the person who I married.” – Caitlyn [14:58]

3. Manifestation of Grief – Physical and Emotional Symptoms

• Physical symptoms: lightheadedness, shortness of breath, insomnia, shaking, spasms—true trauma responses.
• Both hosts recount specific physical and emotional responses during the worst period of their marriage.
  • “I watched Caitlyn suffocate, like physically, like not be able to take a deep breath.… I just remember looking at her, be like, what do we do here?” – Brandon [12:08]

4. Getting Stuck in Cycles vs. Full Honesty

• Most couples never receive or offer full honesty; partial truths perpetuate pain and prevent true healing.
  • “Every time you only just share a glimpse of the truth, you’ll always relapse…I like to call it looping.” – Caitlyn [24:49]
• Incomplete disclosure keeps couples stuck in perpetual pain and re-traumatization.

5. Cultural and Societal Responses to Pain

• The common advice is to suppress, minimize, “get over” pain, but this does not actually heal it.
  • “If you push anything down or push anything aside, it's not healed. That's how your spouse ended up with the broken world in reality and coping with it, with their addiction.” – Caitlyn [19:24]
• Pain is often misinterpreted as something to avoid, but is actually a crucial signal for needed attention and mending.

6. The Two Paths of Pain (The Betrayed’s Choice)

• Path 1: Avoid, suppress, or cut off from the pain—leads to perpetual pain, disconnection, or perpetual cycles.
• Path 2: Face and process the pain—leads to transformation and the possibility of genuine intimacy.
  • “Why would I choose the path of perpetual pain when I could have momentary pain that I heal and lean into and don’t run from?” – Caitlyn [30:02]

7. Standards and Self-Advocacy for the Betrayed

• Caitlyn emphasizes the need for betrayed spouses, especially women, to set a clear boundary and speak up for their needs rather than passively enduring treatment.
  • “I won’t tolerate being treated like this.… Speak up for yourself. Because some of you are like, my husband’s not coming with me.” – Brandon [31:30]

8. Processing Grief Practically

• Pain must find expression and movement: writing, running, being outside, honest conversation, allowing emotions.
  • “I’m not scrolling on social media. I’m not binge-watching Netflix shows… Instead of choosing to cope … I’m going outside. … I’m actually releasing it, not onto anybody, … onto paper, … onto pavement through running.” – Caitlyn [34:43]

9. The Betrayer’s Grief and Responsibility

• True healing requires the betrayer to embrace their own pain and regret, not just seek quick forgiveness or for the spouse to move on.
  • “The grief process is where I look at my own actions and go, wow, that hurt. I have regret. I have sorrow. I mourn what I lost through the choices I made.” – Brandon [21:00]
• Without self-grief and facing the full weight of their actions, the betrayer remains emotionally unavailable.

10. The Importance of Radical Honesty

• Holding back “for her sake” is ultimately about self-protection, not love.
• Radical honesty, though painful, is the only route to genuine healing and lasting freedom.
  • “Keeping secrets never protects anyone; it only causes more pain. Bringing honesty to the light, yes, will cause pain, but so does keeping the secrets.” – Caitlyn [43:09]
  • “Don't ever shrink back from sharing the truth because you think that that might make her upset. No, she's going to stay upset for as long as you keep hiding.” – Brandon [43:00]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Caitlyn on the illusion of “getting over” betrayal:
  “You’ll never get over it. I would never use that languaging to describe what I experienced.… I’m healing through this. Brandon’s healing through this. And we’re creating something new.” [19:07]

• On the necessity of pain for true transformation:
  “Every moment that I endured pain was a moment that I had the opportunity… to take a path where I said, the pain is way too loud… or, I’m not running, I’m not hiding… So then in this path, I’m actually making it to the other side, where there’s bliss and beauty and connection in our union.” – Caitlyn [24:49]

• On being radically honest:
  “You get digital, vigilant—diligent about what have I done to create pain? How have I been dishonest? … Begin your healing process with that so that you’re not three months down the road saying, by the way, I… did do this too.” – Brandon [41:15]

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–02:00: Introduction to episode & context; setting up the core topic of grief after betrayal.
• 03:50: The emotional numbness of the betrayer contrasted with the raw pain of the betrayed.
• 06:30–10:22: The three main categories of pain associated with betrayal.
• 12:07–14:58: Physical symptoms and the “shock” stage of grief.
• 19:07–21:00: Reframing “getting over” versus healing through the pain; societal pressure to move on.
• 24:49–30:41: Radical honesty as a prerequisite for healing; discussion of emotional looping.
• 30:02–32:26: The two paths of pain and the necessity of self-advocacy for the betrayed.
• 34:43: Practical, grounding ways to process and move through grief.
• 41:12–44:37: The logic of full disclosure; being honest for true liberation and marital restoration.
• 48:05–49:28: Summary and closing thoughts; encouragement to embrace, feel, and express pain as part of the healing journey.

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Tone & Language

The episode is intensely personal, affirming, and unvarnished—speaking to those in the midst of deep pain with empathy, conviction, and practical insight. The hosts share not just theory or polished advice but candidly invite listeners into their lived reality, using authentic language that honors the complexity of marital betrayal.

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Resources & Next Steps

• For deeper engagement and guided support, listeners are invited to join the Grounded Union workshop and community.
• Further details, sign-ups, and book pre-orders are available as referenced at the end of the episode.

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If you are navigating the aftermath of betrayal or supporting someone who is—this episode is a compassionate, practical guide to transforming grief into a catalyst for real, lasting change.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome back to the Grounded Union podcast. We're going to be talking about processing grief after betrayal. We are only two weeks away from our two day workshop happening in San Diego August 14th and 15th. You can sign up below if you would like to join us in person or virtually from anywhere in the world and we would love to have you there. It's two days to go all in. We'll give you some just practic. Everything we talk about is practical, but it's going to be action based, give you clarity, give you the, the time and the focus to jump in for two days and really put into practice what we've been talking about in this podcast here. As we jump into the top of grief after betrayal, I think it kind of goes without saying that broken trust doesn't feel good. That addiction, that affairs, that having a relationship you thought was one thing and then waking up to a reality to find out that you had been lied to, you had been misled, you had been manipulated, gaslit, all the things. It's a process of grief and many of you have probably gone through different stages of grief. Maybe you've studied grief. Really, grief is not something we, it's not like a mental ascent. It's actually the wringing out of like a towel. It's the wringing out of our nervous system, our emotions, where we actually come to terms with and feel through something we've experienced. And so for the subject of our podcast here, we're talking about betrayal and broken trust and what happens, what people go through from the betrayed side and from the betrayer, and how we can use grief as our friend that informs us of where we're at on the healing journey. And so I think a lot of people know that it's painful and we want to give context to your pain so that you don't feel like you're hurting in vain. And for those of you that were the one that caused the pain, like I was, I'm going to give you some tools at the second half of the episode to feel your own pain. Because if your wife's in pain and you just kind of are sitting on the sidelines like, oh my gosh, she's hurting. This is so big and I'm numbing. It doesn't really work. And so we are going to explore first, what's it like waking up to a new reality when you realize that betrayal has been your story and it wasn't what you thought it was?

[B]

I think there's actually a lot of the grief from the betrayal is very multifaceted Like Brandon saying, I remember some of the biggest pain and grief that I experienced in the onset of learning about the broken trust is actually the pain of having a husband who was numb. Right. And I know that a lot of women will really relate to that. And honestly, if you're a man who's been betrayed in your marriage, you probably can relate to this as well. When you're just discovering the magnitude of the brokenness that you've just found in your marriage, and you look at the person who caused that, and they're completely numb, like, they're not there emotionally, like, it's not like you're met with, of course I did this, and I'm ready to clean up my mess. Like, most people, sadly, are getting caught. They're just not emotionally present. They're not there to actually receive your pain, to comfort you and to validate you. Right. We talked in previous seasons about validating your spouse, validating the betrayed spouse. And sadly, most of the time, when you're met with that initial set of pain and grief, you. Your spouse, the one who's caused all the turmoil, does not have the embodiment and the tools to immediately offer you that validation that you need, which makes the pain that much louder and that much intense. Because it's like you cause all this pain. Don't you care about me? Don't you care that you did this? Don't you care that I'm sad? And you kind of just are left spiraling like, oh, my gosh, the person who wounded me doesn't even. It feels like they don't care enough. It's not necessarily that they don't. It's is that they don't have the tools. But the feeling that you feel as a spouse is, you must not care about me. You must not love me. Right?

[A]

Anybody that was able to live a double life that could cause the pain of betrayal, they went offline emotionally. They shut down their capacity and faculty to feel emotion and empathy and nurture and care, because that's what they had to do. That's what they were required to do, that to live the double life. Otherwise, they. They would have been in too much pain, and that would have prevented them from continuing the addiction. The addiction numbs them and dumbs them down. Yet if you chose as the betrayed spouse, which in our situation, Caitlin, I had broken her trust in a significant way, she wasn't numb when she was realizing what had happened. So this is a very common concoction where one spouse is numb, detached, and checked out the Other spouse has been labeled as maybe angry, critical, overbearing. All these things because they're swimming upstream trying to figure out, like, what's off, what's wrong. And then, boom, reality's broken. You find, oh, oh, so there was another woman. Oh, so you've been. That's what you've been doing on your phone when. When I'm asleep, Like, oh, whoa. Like, boom. I knew I was angry about something, but I didn't know it was this. I didn't know that you stepped outside of our relationship. I thought you were just tired and stressed out from work. I thought you were being a little passive, or Caitlin was told I was just immature and I'd grow out of it. When she realized, oh, no, this was you lying to me, breaking the commitment of our relationship, your entire reality is shattered, and the person you wish could hold you and put the pieces back together is the very person that broke it all. And so what I wanted to begin talking about is some of those initial physical sensations that a betrayed person may feel. As we've said, like those first few weeks and even months in 2019, when we had hit the cycle again of Caitlyn catching me lying to her, I felt nothing. And we'll talk at the second half about how I begin to feel again. But I just remember Caitlin weeping, uncontrollably angry, distraught, but just weeping. And a lot of whys, like, why did you do this? Like, what else is there? Like, and me being like, I want to be open, but I am a blank wall right now. Not a. Not a. Not a blank slate. I'm literally just. I'm not clean. I'm not innocent. I'm literally just completely numb and detached. And the more upset Caitlyn got, the more I felt myself. Basically, my internal processes, my program saying, mayday, Mayday. Just detach. Detach from your body. Detach from this moment. And no matter how hard I tried, I could not get myself to feel anything because I'd spent the previous two years trying to escape feeling altogether. So I just felt anxiety and angry. That was really all I felt. And now Caitlin's feeling this heightened emotion, these physical sensations that I had no capacity to be around or to interact with.

[B]

Yeah, I think there's two really large areas. I mean, the. The pain of betrayal is really hard to categorize into just a couple areas, but the three areas I felt were most painful is the one that I touched on, which is when you're in the pain, and the person who caused the pain is so numb that Adds more, you know, gas to the fire. It's like, whoa, the flames just got way bigger. Because now how am I supposed to feel seen? How am I supposed to feel loved? How are we supposed to even reconnect? Right? So it's a huge cause of pain. The second one is, I know that a lot of people experience this, we see this in our community all the time, is there's the initial pain of the discovery of what's happening, and then oftentimes it goes along with that. That spouse being numb because they're numb. They just got caught. Most of the time, sadly, they're just getting caught. Maybe that person did decide they had a brave mom and they're like, I'm gonna come clean on something. Right? Most of the time, though, because there has been so much that they've turn off that they've numbed out from, that they've become desensitized to all of this lifelong living pattern. There's a lot more underneath. And most people, sadly, have not been given the right tools through counseling, book, social media, whatever it is to understand that, oh, when you get caught or when you decide to come clean about one thing, this is your opportunity to be utmost honest about everything. Like, this is the, like, halt everything in your life, stop everything else, and get radically honest for the first time ever. Because this is your gift and your opportunity, your moment in time to go, whoa, I'm caught. Or I decided to disclose one thing and now I'm going to disclose everything. And what happens, sadly, is the opposite of that. You get caught for one thing, you decide to share one thing, and you leave all the rest out. It's like, oh, yeah. I mean, I've looked at porn a couple times. I'm not going to tell you I've been looking at porn for 20 years. I'm also not going to tell you about the 13 women I've been kind of texting on the side, having flirtatious conversations with. I'm not going to tell you about the 13, three people I've slept with. I'm not going to tell you about all the fantasies I have running through my head. I'm not going to tell you that when I'm mad at you, I think about sleeping with someone else or what it would be like to have married my high school sweetheart. You know, it's like, I'm just going to leave all of that out. Then what happens? Truth always comes to the light. So then the betrayed spouse had the initial of finding out what's going on. They're riding that pain. Sometimes what feels even tumultuous is you feel like you're like kind of getting your head above the water for the first time through that paint. And then you feel like, oh, you just got smacked again with another wave because you catch your spouse doing something else. Or you read one of those text messages or you feel like you have to interrogate them enough to see if anything comes out. And that pain makes you feel like you're treading water out in the middle of the ocean in the middle of a storm. Right? It's like I don't actually know if I'm gonna be able to catch another breath before the next giant set of waves rolls in. And that sends panic throughout the entire body, right? You live in a state of panic. Like, is this it? Is this all I'm gonna find out? Is there more? Are you hiding more? Are you done? Are you gonna keep going? Are we gonna keep going through this spiral where I think you've come clean on everything, I think I've caught you on everything, but here we are again. Or you told me you're done, but then you're still breaking our trust in this way. Like, that is a massive, massive expansion experience of continual pain and grief. And I've heard, I felt this, and I've heard it from many other women. Oftentimes the aftermath of the. You could call them disclosures. I don't like that word because it normally has a connotation that it went with a polygraph and like a one time disclosure letter. But the aftermath of the coming clean or bringing things to the light is oftentimes way more painful than the initial disclosure or the initial catching of your spouse.

[A]

Because you might have known that something was off.

[B]

Exactly. You already maybe knew something was off. That just felt like painful. Of course. Excruciating, of course. And also felt like, of course, like, I knew you were going to tell me something. I knew I was going to catch you. You've been distant, we've been arguing, we've been disconnected, we haven't had sex in a decade, whatever the story is. And then the, the residual stories that come up feel kind of like, again, why can't you choose into this marriage? Why can't you choose into being honest? You must not really love me. You must not really want to heal. Right? Here's all the stories of the pain. And then you start getting into these, these processes of like, how long should I stay with someone who's continually hiding things from me? How long should I stay with someone who's continually going back to their old patterns that they told me they're never going to do. Right. And this is where the pain gets even louder. You start to feel actually crazy. It's like, oh my gosh, am I supposed to stay with someone who says they love me yet? Their actions are communicating a very different story.

[A]

Yeah. I think that feeling of panic and suffocation and, and feeling very trapped. We can speak to what you had felt in those months. I think a lot of women feel like, because like you said, the mind is racing and basically trying to understand the situation. It's like, okay, be one thing if the spouse cheated on you, said, I'm actually leaving you, I'm gonna go be with my affair partner. And then you're like, oh, okay. Then you grieve and it's, it's, it's cut. True, they may, you may be co parenting, but you at least have this clarity of like, okay, you are choosing to leave the marriage. You are done. I will go grieve now. This experience that we went through, when they are half in, half out in the healing process and they're, they're not sorry for what they did, they're sorry they got caught.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And you can tell like, okay, either I'm gonna have to drag you along and maybe you'll change. And we've been trying this, we've tried a couple different routes, or I don't know if you'll change. And it's kind of like that's suffocating. Cause you have to decide, okay, do I have to go down in history as the woman that left my husband because he was not trying hard enough to heal? Like, are people gonna judge me that I left because of his porn addiction? It wasn't a full affair or because it was an emotional affair. And now I'm the divorced wife at 46 with three adult children who's going to remarry me, who's going to want me? So you're stuck in this place of, do I subject myself to further pain or do I end it now? And I think that's a very suffocating reality to be in. Which of us would say, I'm going to subject myself to an unknown path, Length of time of torture that may result in healing and may result in more torture that's very anxiety inducing. For Caitlyn, I, There was a lot of nights where she would see a glimpse of me opening up and then even the next night, or she'd find out I was closing back up. I didn't Want to explore the details of my sexual history, the, the things I've been lying about. And I watched Caitlyn suffocate, like physically, like not be able to take a deep breath. I watched her gasp for air, like trying to take a breath and not be able to get a full breath. This would go on for hours. And I would watch Caitlin get dizzy, get lightheaded because she's just trying to grasp what is our reality. So I know we're sitting here, we are in a regulated state right now, although we, we do have four kids and a fifth on the way. And they, they, they help max, max out our capacity in a good way. We're calm now, but it, I remember the, the look in Caitlin's eyes losing sleep. She would go to bed with her legs shaking and kicking and trembling and be spasms and she couldn't breathe. And I felt nothing. And I just remember looking at her be like, what do we do here? And this is, I think one of the stages of grief is a shock. It's this utter shock. The body's in shock. Like you're telling me we're in ice cold water. Like how, when do I get out? When do I get a breath? When do I get oxygen? And that's the cruelty of betrayal, is. It's one thing to say, hey, I'm not going to have eyes for only you. I'm not going to be faithful to you. Do you want to stay? It's another thing to say, I've chosen you. I've made you my person. Just kidding. We weren't meant to live in two realities. That's why when we dissociate and distract ourselves, life's not very good. We weren't meant to commit to a woman and then betray that our bodies weren't designed for our emotions weren't designed for it. And so when you do that, just know there is grief that your wife will go through from betrayal. Because we weren't designed to be broken that way. The alarm systems are going off and that's okay. It's actually okay, is what we're saying is the alarm should go off because it isn't how we were designed to interact with one another.

[B]

I mentioned the two categories that I think are excruciatingly painful through betrayal. And then the third category that I had alluded to is exactly what Brandon's talking about is when you discover what's been going on in your marriage, your whole reality is birthed. Right. I remember feeling like I had no idea the person who I married. Right. And so in 2019, we had been married for five years at that point and we had actually had many cycles of this already, yet we had been through, if you guys have been following along with the story, you know this, we'd been through a two year phase where Brandon, there was a lot of spiritual aspects to this, right. Where he had committed to me, we had signed this I covenant that we made. We went with our pastor. It was all of these commitments that he was making to me. Right. He wasn't living that way at the time, but he was making a commitment to me, our pastor and before the Lord. And for two years from that I covenant on every conversation, every time we would have what we would call like a check in. Like, how's it going? Like, how's your eye covenant going? Like, what is, what's going on in your world? I'm clean, I'm doing great. Right. So for two years I believed and it wasn't like I naively believed. Like I'm, we're literally having tons of conversations about this all the time and I'm like, okay, yeah, like so things are going good. Of course there was other areas in our marriage. Now looking back, I'm like, huh, yeah. You know, you're still randomly scrolling on social media, randomly watching car videos. Video games is a huge part of arguments we would get on all the time. Huge red flags, right. That I just, when I would bring them up, Brandon would shut it down. Oh, that has nothing to do with anything else. Right. My eye covenant's good. Everything's good. So in 2019, after discovering which it actually came about because you're watching car videos like in the living room which is again feels like you see is now calm and regulated and it's literally this is what I tell people which will probably lube about got around to and even finish the episode on is the grief and the pain actually doesn't last forever. Like the, the scenes I'm describing to you of my life feel like a movie that I watched. Like that feels like a lifetime ago that Brandon and Caitlyn and sure that was, you know, we're getting closer to like what, seven years ago now that that was which is a long time ago. And also that's a blip in time in most people's life.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

For that to feel like so long ago. But Brandon's sitting there in the living room, he's watching random car videos. We have two kids at the time and both fairly young. And I'm like sitting there and I'M kind of getting hit with this. Like, I'm sure I had had this conversation a lot, but I'm like, how do you know that it's gonna be appropriate? I ask him, like, how do you know that the car video, like, cars and girls always go together. Like, picture the Fast and the Furious movie, right? So I'm like, how do you know that this is always gonna be appropriate? That you're just, like, kind of aimlessly dissociatively scrolling on there? And I don't even remember his response. It was something dismissive. It was not instantly open or I

[A]

think I was like, what do you mean? I got defense. Yeah.

[B]

Kind of just got defensive, Right? And so why do you think I always say in all of our videos, like, if someone gets defensive, it's a sign they're defending something they're hiding, right? So Brandon, of course, got defensive, and I'm like, ooh, that's not a good sign. You're defensive. So I asked the same question another way. Like, so you just never see anything inappropriate, right? And he had this moment where he's like, well, I'm not. I'm not going to make it through this one. Like, there's like. Like, he could see it in my eyes. Like, oh, she knows. Like, she knows something's going on, right? And that's that moment where your whole reality gets burst, right? And that's that third area of pain, the pain of betrayal, which leaves you feeling like you're suffocating, which leaves you feeling like you're crazy. And I know a lot of women express that pain in our community. It's like, how am I supposed. What am I supposed to do with this immense amount of pain? Actually, the. The number one question, the wording is normally, when will I get over this? Right? And I think this is so crucial to address because you'll never get over it. I would never use that languaging to describe what I experienced. Yeah, that's very, very low, Right. I'm not getting over this. I am healing through this.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Brandon's healing through this. And we're creating something new, right? Do you see the difference there of, like, if I'm getting over it, I'm getting over the betrayal, I'm getting over the pain. That almost means I'm kind of dismissing and stuffing it down, which is, I think, what most society does do, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's even what's encouraged to do. Like, even if you were to go to a therapist, a lot of times it's like, how can we push that aside and move along. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. If you push anything down or push anything aside, it's not healed. That's how your spouse ended up with the broken world in reality and coping with it, with their addiction. Right. You cannot just get over something, push something aside and push something down. No, let it come up all the way. You heal it together. You integrate it, which means you're literally combining it, right. And you're moving into creating something completely new. That's what I did. I never just got over it, Meaning I could have just pushed it aside and like, oh, when's the day I'll just stop crying about this? When's the day I don't have to think about this? Right? Which. It's almost the same result. It's almost exactly the same result. You could say, I could say I'm over it. I don't cry about it. But that's very dismissive. I would actually say I've healed from that. We've healed from that, and we've transformed and created something new. So now, no, I don't have nights where I weep anymore as I reflect on my story. Not because I've dismissed our story, but because we've created such a beautiful life together. And I look back at my story, all of the pain, the nights where I couldn't breathe, the nights where my legs are shaking, the nights where my whole reality feels fake and blown up by a grenade, and I actually experience gratitude. Because to get to where we are right now, I needed that experience of healing with you.

[A]

I think when we approach this healing process, like Caitlin was saying as a one time hard conversation, where I find out and then I now grapple with it forever, or I try to close it out and like, close the chapter instead of seeing it like. Like described as this process of bringing all the pieces together. The reason some of a spouse would act out an addiction or there would be betrayal to begin with is because they didn't actually understand their entire story from the start. They didn't understand how their. Their childhood impacted them into their adolescence, how the decisions they made in their adolescence impacted them into the adulthood, into the relationship. They didn't understand their first exposure to pornography and how that shaped their view of women and how they started checking out emotionally when they were anxious, through porn, through masturbation, and now they're married. So what we can't do is try to compartmentalize and then push away everything that happened. Because then we lose all the lessons and all the healing we needed from Those experiences so that we are aware of how we want to live going forward. And so as far as my perspective for the first five years of our marriage and the second five, we're just about to celebrate our 11th anniversary. The first five was me getting caught, saying, I'm sorry, I'll never do it again, and then saying, please don't ask anything about it. The second five was, I got caught. I'm going to look at this with you together as deep as humanly possible. I'm going to look at all my thoughts, memories, how I associate the things I think about women, the websites have been to. I'm going to lay it all out here until I understand how it impacted you, why it hurts. I don't even. I don't want you to stop talking. I don't want you to change the subject. I need to understand it. I need to see it. So for men that have caused pain, until I took an approach of. I don't want to just see enough of it so that I can get Caitlin to not be upset anymore. It's like, I got to find out what happened to me here. How did I get this deep in the darkness, in the addiction? How did I do this to myself outside of Caitlin? If she walks away, how did I get here? Because I'm going to do this again. If I don't find out. I'm going to carry with this, this with me for the rest of my life. And I don't want this anymore. And so if you actually want to heal, it's not just about closing the chapter, saying I'm sorry and not talking about the betraya anymore. The grief process is where I look at my own actions and go, wow, that hurt. I have regret. I have sorrow. I mourn what I lost through the choices I made. I mourn the impact that made on other people. I allow myself to feel the discomfort, the unpleasant feelings of what I did, inflicted pain upon myself and others. And when you first get caught, you're actually in denial that what you did was that big. Because that's what you've told yourself. My actions are not a big deal. The affair is not a big deal. The porn's not a big deal. The flirting with. With barista is not a big deal. Until you see your behavior as a big deal. Guess what? When your wife's crying, you're numb. You're just going to stare at her because she. You think, wow, in the back of your head, you have this denial structure that says, she's making this a bigger deal than it is. That's why you can't cry with her. That's why you just give her a blank stare because she's overreacting. If she had all the details, she wouldn't be overreacting. Instead, you take. Instead of taking that approach, you go, I gotta see this. I have to see this for what it is. And to be able to see it, you know what? You have to look at your story, and you don't ignore the story. You don't. You don't quiet down the street say, wow, this was costing me my life. This was taking me to the grave. This is a huge deal. I weep over what happened. I weep over my decisions. I feel the pain of the choices I made and did not make because of the addiction. So then when my wife's like, hey, I'm hurting today. When you're a month post disclosure, you're like, absolutely. What's going on for you? Let's dive in. Where's the pain? Because you see, wow, this was. Yeah, this was the disease that was killing me, killing us. You don't look at her and go, I can't relate. As though she was in a car crash that you weren't in. You were driving the car. And so if you don't stop and go, how did this kill. How is this killing me? You'll never be able to sit with her in her pain. And so you must grieve your own pain first before you'll be able to offer validation and empathy to your wife.

[B]

Yeah. And the pain you're experiencing as the betrayed spouse is valid. I think there's a lot of things we hear from women who have experienced betrayal, you know, who go to a therapist, a counselor, pastor, Go to somebody for help. Right. And they're oftentimes met with, oh, you're pain shopping. Oh, you're. You're kind of making too big of a deal of this. Oh, you keep bringing this up too much. Oh, you are controlling. You are codependent. Right. And I got called a lot of these things. And I think what I want to note here is what. What you're feeling is 100% valid. Everyone's feelings are always 100% valid. Like, what you're feeling is true. It's what you're feeling. It doesn't mean you have to stay feeling that way. It doesn't mean you can't change your emotional state. It doesn't mean you can't recreate a different emotional path like that. You want to take yourself on in your marriage on. Right. And so the. The key difference here, which I think we both wanted to talk about, is how our culture, our society views pain. Right? And people always ask, especially inside of our community, Caitlin, how did you grapple with, cope, manage the depth and the magnitude of the pain of the betrayal? Right? And a lot of people ask this question when they hit the point where they are trying to actually get out all of the full honesty. That's the only time in place that you really can heal. You're going to keep looping on how we did in our first five years of marriage. When you only just share a glimpse of the truth, you'll always relapse. I like to call it looping. I don't like using the same, like addiction languaging because it has a very specific connotation for people. But you're going to keep riding the same roller coaster, keep looping until you finally decide, fine, I'll be radically honest. I'm going to get it all on the table and I'm going to explore it and I'm going to heal. That part is excruciatingly painful for both parties, right? Because you're finally going to see clearly both the person who took all of those actions and. And the person now who's seeing it. So then rightfully so, the first question is, how am I supposed to handle that amount of pain from the truth? People go like this, Pain equals bad equals run, right? So it's like, oh, my spouse is now telling me the truth. Now I'm in a lot of pain. We must have done something wrong, right? And that's where society's kind of led us astray. Because pain doesn't equal bad, necessarily. Pain means this needs attention, this needs addressed, this needs my mending to. This needs healed, right? So as the betrayed spouse, as the one who walked through betrayal, now, as I look back, every moment that I endured pain was a moment that I had the opportunity. I call it the two. The two paths of pain. I had the opportunity to take a path this way or a path this way, right? I had two options. I could go down this path where I said, the pain is way too loud, the pain is way too intense. He's telling me finally all of what's true. I'm finally figuring out what's actually been going on in our life. Like, like I said, your whole world feels like it's blown up. I felt like I didn't even know who Brandon was. I felt like I had lived in a marriage that was fake, right? And a lot of that is Actually kind of true. I could have looked at all of that pain and gone. That's too much for me. I don't want to do this anymore. That could have looked like divorce. That could have looked like leaving. That could have just looked like, let's just go back to where you have a whole closet full of secrets. Like, thank you for telling me about the main areas of your addiction, but let's just keep the rest a secret, right? And what I like to tell people about that path is you entered into the path in pain already, okay? You journeyed into that path. You were already in pain. When you decide, oh, that pain is too big, I'm going to turn back and go this way. What's meeting you there? The pain you started with and you're not getting anywhere else, you're actually choosing to stay in perpetual pain because you cannot heal, because you cannot see it. What you need to heal. If you can't see it, you can't heal it. If you don't know about it, you don't have intimacy into me. You see? Right. The other path of pain, you're still starting in pain, right? They both start the same. You're in pain in both paths. The difference between this one, though, is I go pain, okay? I'm not running, I'm not hiding. I'm not coping. I'm not desensitizing myself. I'm in pain. That's the reality of where I am. My spouse is deciding to get fully honest, and that's excruciatingly painful. Yet we're gonna actually see everything, so we're gonna actually heal everything. Everything will get addressed and healed. So then in this path, I'm actually making it to the other side, where there's bliss and beauty and connection in our union, right? And the pain of the betrayal actually is complete. These are the two paths you get to decide. And I remember I used to remind myself all the time, this actually, like, I would visualize this, like, whoa, this is hard. I can't breathe. This is so intense. And I didn't even have anybody telling me that if Brandon were going to be radically honest, that it would. That it would prove anything. Well, in our lives, like, we're essentially risking being radically honest while everyone's telling us, don't be radically honest. That's stupid, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I'm literally telling myself, like, this has to be good, right? Like, the honesty and the pain that I'm experiencing right now, it has to produce something good on the other side, right? And if I back away, now, if I run and I hide and I dissociate myself, how will we ever make it to the other side where we heal? There will always be things that were left unaddressed, which means there'll always be pain in our marriage. Why would I choose the ma. The path of perpetual pain when I could have momentary pain that I heal and lean into and don't run from that leads to some of the best, most blissful connection in our union?

[A]

And I saw for Caitlin a very powerful, like, North Star that she had, which was the standard she had for herself and what that healing looked like. So she wasn't just saying, like, okay, I'll feel the pain. I'll go. I'll. I'll go through whatever he throws at me. I'll just. I'm just along for the ride. This was a very directed, like, I won't be treated this way. I'm not going to be lied to anymore. Here's what I need to know from you. Are you willing to play the game or not play the game? Are you willing to get in the game? And I'd be like, it just made the decision clear for me. She's in pain. It was clear the kitten was in pain, and it was clear that at her core, she said, I won't tolerate being treated like this. So we're not encouraging that a woman stay in a place of weakness where she just continues to be subject to pain.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

What Kaylin's speaking to is that you feel your pain.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So that you can clarify your vision. Speak. Speak up for yourself. Because some of you are like, my husband's not coming with me.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Then it's like, okay, then at least you know where you're going. And then you remove yourself from the relationship so that you can survive.

[B]

If your husband is not going to heal, like he has stated, I don't want to change. I don't want to heal. Or you've done 10 years of him saying he wants to change and heal, but he's actually not changing his actions. That's perpetual pain. You can't get out of that. The two paths of pain. Brain is only an analogy for a partnership, a marriage where you've both committed, you've linked arms, and you're now looking at the paths going, okay, we're gonna heal together. Right. Just know there's bumps along the road. That doesn't mean you're going the wrong way. If your spouse is uncommitted to linking arms with you to journey to healing, you're in perpetual Pain because they're literally saying they're not going to heal, which means your marriage stays the same. And you're literally, you're not even on a path, you're just stuck in the middle. You're trapped, essentially.

[A]

Well, the delineation I want to make is when we go through big things, our, our bodies experience a lot of sensation. And I've actually had the privilege of watching Caitlyn, my wife, give birth to our four children. And this is a completely separate topic, but I've watched Caitlin have four pain free births. Now, most women, the moment I said birth, there's a lot of sensation and sometimes trauma and experience around your, for the, for you listening what your births were like. I got to witness Caitlin experience the sensations of birth without the story behind what birth can be around what other people's experiences have been. She, she lived her experience, which was she opened up her body, she allowed herself to feel the sensations of what are often called contractions. And she felt at peace and at ease and delivered all four of our children and we have another one on the way. And I watched her basically let her body do its thing and not judge it. The result of that was beautiful. I also. So in the betrayal realm, we'll dive into. You can talk more about birth because there were your births, but I was there, I witnessed it. In the betrayal realm, I watched her do the same thing. Wow, that was a horrible conversation. It brings up a ton of pain, real pain. And I watched her go on a run.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Lay out in the, in the sun, stretch, exercise, go to sleep, journal her thoughts, share what she was feeling, ask a question. And so like, she allowed her body basically to ring out what it needed to so that it could move through the pain. So we do believe in processing your pain and not just letting it sit into bottle up. I just think that people need, specifically women need more permission to not just be like, does he, does he care about me? But to actually give yourself permission outside of what he's going to be able to offer you. Yeah. How will you allow yourself to feel like, what do you. Okay, I'm feeling this. How do I want to move through this feeling? And I just watched Caitlin do that time and time again. And in the most beautiful way that was. She actually even like removed pain from the equation when it came to birthing our children because of this willingness to just be in her body and say, body, what are you doing? Oh, I'm going to move my hips this way or oh, I'm upset. I'm going to move. I'm going to run and flow based off of your standards and your vision that you had.

[B]

Yeah. I would have never stayed in a marriage, in our marriage, if Brandon had not shown with his actions that he was 100% ready to take ownership and responsibility for his life, for his story, to clean that up and to heal that. Right. I would have never chosen to go through the pain that I went through if that was not his posture of heart, because the pain, like I said, it would have only ended in more pain. We would have never gotten anywhere. And so I'm not saying that I think everybody who's enduring pain needs to get divorced. And this is also a great time to pause and go, whoa, am I just allowing myself to be on this manipulative roller coaster where my spouse says with their words, I'm going to heal, I'm going to change. Yes, I care about you. And then tomorrow they wake up and act exactly the same. Like, this is your chance right now to pause and go, whoa, I need to draw my line in the sand, speak up for myself and go, enough is enough. Like, I'm not going through this anymore. Like, the. The stories of all of this that we're talking about is really for those of you who have decided, we're gonna go through this together and we're gonna heal together. Right. If you're a wife listening to this and your husband is resistant to ever healing and changing, I'm not saying that he can't yet. I am saying that to heal and change, he actually does have to be willing and ready. Right. And I want to touch on a couple of the elements. We talk about this in depth inside of our couples app, our community, how to actually move through and process through the pain. And Brandon touched on some of the key elements, and if you want more in depth, you can join our community. But the key elements for me were getting outside. These are going to be so simple. I think I even shared these on Instagram and people like, okay, is there something else? Because this is not your typical, like, how to heal from betrayal. Like, if you read any how to heal from betrayal book, this was probably. None of these things are probably listed in there. And I have no degrees, I have no education. I'm just sharing with you how I healed from my betrayal. Right. I got outside all day long. At this time, we were in Oregon with this big grassy backyard. It wasn't even that big. It was just a normal sized grassy backyard. It did happen to have a very old, dilapidated play structure that was probably not safe at all that our children would climb around on. And it had this little pergola with a table underneath it. So we would eat our meals outside. Brandon would work from time to time. I'd lay out a blanket. I remember I had a couple books I was reading. I remember having just bloodshot eyes. They were swollen. I had barely slept. I'm nursing a child through the night at this time as well. I was exhaust. Like, I can remember being exhausted, exhausted. And I have, like, thoughts running through my head. I have. I have a journal section on my phone with 400 journal entries. Right. I had actual physical journals at the time, too. I'm just writing constantly. Like, I'm outside and I'm getting the. Like, the grief that I'm feeling, the pain that I'm feeling. I am putting it to paper. Most of those journal entries I'll never read out loud, but I do have a video where I read a couple of them that I actually. When I looked back, I'm like, whoa. You can see the progression of our healing here through my journal entries. But most of them are really raw. They're really graphic, and they're really intense because it's my pain that I'm getting out onto paper. We would go for multiple walks a day. That's when we'd have lots of conversations. That's just when we would, like, literally move through the pain that we're both experiencing. I would sometimes go for, like, short sprints. Like, there was this road. You could come. We were in a cul de sac. I could go out and run to this other, like, roundabout area and run back like it was probably a mile, and I just run as fast as I could and get back. And it's like I just needed to move through the pain that I was experiencing again. We have not had a TV in 11 years. At this time, we remained not owning a TV. There's actually one in the house we were living at. It remained off. I'm not scrolling on social media. I'm not binge watching Netflix shows. I'm not staying up late watching movies. I'm not waking up and turning the cartoons on for my kids. So I just don't have to deal with anything, right? Instead of choosing to cope or to push down my pain, to suppress my pain, I'm going outside and I'm. It's the opposite of suppressing it. I'm actually releasing it, not onto anybody. That's what happens when you get on social media and you start getting into these groups and start whining. And complaining and gossiping and asking questions and doing all this, that's throwing it up onto somebody else. I'm releasing it onto paper. I'm releasing it onto pavement through running. Right. I'm releasing it through crying. I'm not shoving it down. Right. That's what happens in society when we go, pain is bad. It's like, oh, this is a bad thing. So I need to get it away from me. It's like, no, no, no. Pain just is. It just is what you are feeling. Embrace it and then release it right through a healthy modality. Like being outside running, walking, journaling. What is that you need to do? If you like art, like, draw. If you like playing guitar, strum on your guitar. If you want to run around with your kids to experience light and laughter in the midst of the pain? You can, like, experience life in the midst of your pain as you're healing.

[A]

I think that one of the things that comes up. Switch. Switching gears slightly is a lot of men, if they were. If it was the man that caused the pain, I think, okay, I don't want to cause more pain. And it seems like when we talk about the betrayal, the pain comes up. So what's happening there? Am I causing pain by being honest? Because that's actually why we've. We connected the dots of, if I'm honest, this will cause pain. And you're like, now I'm honest, and it's causing pain. As Caitlin's already talked about, whether or not you share something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And it's actually already causing pain because it's creating separation. But now that you're close and you're like, when I share something, she responds with pain or questions or rage, and it's like, why would I continue to do that? And so if what you share creates pain, it means that what it needs to be able to heal from anything, you have to know what you're healing from.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So if your wife doesn't know that five years into your marriage, you made out with a gal from work twice. Like, does she really need to know that? It's like, yes. It's like, well, does she need to know? I have this app where I was texting this woman that deletes text messages. Is it really that important that she knows that? That. Yes. And so if your honesty is creating pain, it's actually just bringing you into reality.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

What really is.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So you're not. I know it seems like you're protecting her by saying, oh, I don't want to. I don't want to ever have too much more to process. It's like, well, that's why if you're wanting to heal, you get digital, vigilant, diligent. Diligence the word diligent about what have I done to create pain? How have I been dishonest? You can start to remember really fast. Unless you want to stuff it down. You start making lists. We have prompts in our program, but it's like, go through your history to the depth of your ability. Be like, okay, here's what I've been dishonest. Here's how. Here I've lied to you. Get everything, the biggest, most glaring blaring things out so that she can be like, okay, I understand this. We don't want surprises down the road. I know people talk about trickle truth. I want you to be able to tell your wife, like, here's, here's my reality. Here's how I've interacted online, here's how I've interacted in person. The details of it are still fuzzy because I told to not be aware of it, but I know I did these things. And it was way worse than I'm even communicating now. It was hours every night. So make it 10 times bigger in your mind. Start with that. Begin your healing process with that so that you're not three months down the road saying, by the way, I, yeah, I did do this too. She's like, what? Like, yes, that will bring up fresh pain. You then taking ownership for what that produced in your life is your opportunity to heal. If you're still like flinching at like, oh, here's what I did. You still identify as the man that does those things. The moment you shift from I'm the man that does these things to I'm the man that did these things. I'm going to own the impact of my actions. I'm going to own what that's like for my wife to wake up to that reality. I'm going to take ownership for that because I'm never going to fall on that path again. So I must know the pain it caused. I must get in the fire with her. So don't ever shrink back from sharing the truth because you think that that might make her upset. No, she's upset. She's going to stay upset for as long as you keep hiding. But the moment you choose to get honest with her and with yourself, that's when the healing accelerates even more.

[B]

The truth is you're not actually protecting her, nor is that probably your primary motivation. You're protecting yourself, and you're using the protection of her as almost a mask to keep yourself in denial, to keep yourself with your secrets. Secrets never protect or keep anybody safe. That's the reality. Right. We have to burst the bubble and kind of bring. Shed some light on that. Right. Like, keeping secrets from your spouse never protects them. Bringing honesty to the light, yes, will cause pain, but so does keeping the secrets. Right? It's literally the same track as the two paths. Bringing everything to the light will cause pain. And what does it then lead to? Beauty and bliss and connection in your union. Keeping everything a secret causes pain, and then what does that lead to? Perpetual pain. Because now you living a life of secrecy and addiction. And you actually, to be honest, you cannot heal from your addiction if you're holding back truth. You just can't. Why is most of the world addicted? Because we're not getting to the point where we're going, okay, yeah, I'm going to be radically honest, and I'm going to come clean. Right? So this narrative of, oh, I'm going to protect her. I already told her a lot, and she's crying and she's in pain, so I can't tell her more. It's like, that's not protecting her. And I know every woman listening to this is going to go, absolutely, yes. You going, whoa, I was caught for this one thing. I'm gonna take responsibility right now, honey.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I'm gonna go into that tree forest over there with my journal for three hours, and I'm not coming back until I've flipped over every stone because I want to be radically honest with you. And I might not remember everything in those three hours. And I'm committed to the next couple of days, in the next couple of weeks. As I remember this life I've lived that I've blacked out and kept from you, I'm gonna choose to be honest. I'm gonna choose to bring it to the light. I'm gonna choose to rewire that and recreate a whole new marriage with you. Like, whoa, that's a completely different response and a completely different path that your marriage will go on then. Okay, she caught me looking at porn, and she's crying and she's in a lot of pain, and I'm really uncomfortable now. So I'm definitely not gonna tell her about the 1400 other secrets I have over here. And I just hope she never finds them out. And I hope we just. Just die in peace one day having a somewhat good marriage right? It's like, no, that's terrible. Not to even mention that your entire soul is going to suffocate at the fact that you're keeping all these secrets. Like, we're talking about your marriage right now. But, like, think about yourself for a second. Like, do you even feel alive carrying around these bags of secrets? I remember when Brandon finally brought everything to the light. He was like, I didn't even know I could feel this free and this good. Like, he thought he had achieved freedom, right? Walking around with all these secrets he was keeping from me. And then you. He actually brought everything to the light and was like, oh, no, this is what freedom is. This is how good it feels. This is how abundant life really is. Right? This is about yourself. This is about your spouse. This is about your marriage, your kids, and the legacy that you live in life. And oftentimes the question that will come up is, you know, we had talked about, okay, well, if there's going to be a lot of pain on the betrayed spouse, there's going to be a lot of pain and there's going to be a lot of numb emotions, like lack of emotions coming from the spouse who's caused the betrayal. Shouldn't we both kind of like, work on regulating our emotions or understanding our emotions, growing in embodiment and capacity before we embark on this journey? It's a really valid question, and the answer is in a practical note, no. Because you cannot become an emotionally vibrant. Let's talk about the opposite. So if you're numb, you're desensitized, you're dissociative. What's the opposite of that? Right? You're emotionally aware, emotionally in tune, and emotionally vibrant. You cannot become an emotionally in tune, aware and vibrant human being with a bag of secrets. So it's actually just this process of, okay, I'm going to bring the secrets forward so that I can now open the floodgates to becoming an emotionally aware, in tune, present, vibrant, alive person. So, yes, it is painful for both parties because you can't just automatically snap your finger and be like, ta da, I have all my bags of secrets. But now I'm in a really emotionally present person. So now I'll bring the secrets out as an emotionally present person. And then it will be really, like, blissful from there. It's like, nope, it's going to be messy, yet it's going to be good on the other side when you actually fully commit to it, because you will see everything flip over every stone, heal everything in. The pain will feel like a glimpse in time, it will feel momentary. You might feel like you're suffocating right now. When you make it to the other side, it will feel something so momentary in comparison. Like that, that blip of time will feel so short in comparison to the life of connection and love that you get to live moving forward, your spouse

[A]

is going to be walking through the grief and pain of betrayal, and you're only able to empower them by going on your own journey of grief from your betrayal and the pain. And so to summarize this episode, pain is the byproduct of the disconnection. Pain is not a negative thing to feel. In fact, when you feel pain coming up, give it somewhere to go. Move your body, move your pen on the paper. Both for the betrayed and the betrayer, acknowledge the pain. Because the pain is just speaking to the life I thought I live was living wasn't true. The behaviors associated with the actions don't define the type of relationship we want. They don't define the type of man I want to be. So I'm going to address those things. Until you grieve. You're going to, you're going to protect the toxic behavior. Until you actually grieve what that toxic behavior did to you and recognize this is no longer serving me. It's no longer serving my relationship. So instead of trying to keep it alive, let it die. Let yourself feel the grief from having lost your best friend, your addiction, and then take that awareness into the pain that your wife's experiencing and actually exploring and sitting in her pain instead of running away from it. If you're a couple that's healing from broken trust right now and you want to go deeper on this topic, you can join us virtually or in person In San Diego two weeks from now, August 14th and 15th, we'll be in Liberty Station area. Would love to host you at the event. Or you can join us virtually from anywhere in the world. You can tap the show notes for more details. And if you'd like to get started today in our couples program, you can also click the link link below or go to groundedunion.com we look forward to seeing you guys next week for another episode.

[B]

Grab your book.

[A]

Oh, and by the time this is airing, you can go to 7Stepbook.com to join the waitlist or pre order a copy of my upcoming book.