← The Grounded Union Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Grounded Union podcast. We are on season five, episode two and this is your final call. If there is space left at our event in San Diego, this is your one week notice. Next week's episode when it airs, the event will have already been underway. So if you are like, we need to fly to San Diego and be with you guys for two days for our two day workshop. It's the 14th and the 15th. We'll be in Liberty Station. All the details are right below this show. You can also join us virtually. You get the full live stream, we have three camera angles. We the audio is incredible and you get lifetime access to the recording. If you're there in person, you also get access to the recording. So we put a ton of time and energy into making this event a powerful two day experience. Day one is me just with the men and I don't do that so that I can just berate them in. It's actually create a safe place where you guys don't have to prove yourself to your wife, any other woman in the room. You literally just get to be there to focus on you. We don't call anybody up or call anybody out and make them feel uncomfortable. Public sharing or public questions is completely voluntary. We've heard lots of stories from people. We just got an email yesterday from a couple from last year. They had, that was the turning point for them and they had, they've had tremendous changes and intimacy and connection that they never thought possible after years of therapy. And we're just so excited to hear the stories of what you guys go and create after these events and after even listening to the podcast. So thank you so much for being here. We're talking about the hidden motives, the hidden motivators behind addiction and affairs. We often talk about post discovery, what to do, how to heal. And we won't talk about in this episode what got you there to begin with, what led to the coping behaviors, what led to flirting with a coworker, what led to sleeping with somebody else that wasn't your spouse? How did you get into that place? And I think one of the primary drivers of addiction is this need to alleviate the pain. And not this pain, but basically believing that what I need, I cannot get inside of my relationship. I cannot get in my reality that I've committed that's in alignment with my morals and my values. I must step outside of this beautiful thing. I have to seek it elsewhere for my survival. Otherwise we don't consciously choose, you know what, I'm gonna go rob a bank. I'M gonna go do something that could put me in jail. I'm gonna go do something that would jeopardize the health of my marriage. We don't consciously choose that. So we believe at a subconscious level I'm dying. This is my only chance for survival is to get on my phone late at night and look at porn. Or my wife and I are upset and have this desperate need for approval. She's not giving me the approval I need. And I feel like I'm going to get rejected and die. So I seek the approval from other women at my office and it just, it snowballs from there. So I think at the, at its core level, addiction affairs, all the stuff we talk about in this podcast begins with believing we have to go outside of our commitments, outside of healthy decisions to get our needs met. And then we make a choice or make a decision to take a step in that direction. And then we feel ashamed. And then we cover it up and then what happens? It festers. So then we do more of it. We feel ashamed. It's a cycle that repeats itself until we find ourselves in a full blown affair, find ourselves in a ten year porn addiction. It's too late to turn around now because I feel horrible on myself. I need the addiction to stay alive, but here I am. I don't believe that. What? What? I. I don'. Know how to get out of the pit I've dug. And so we're going to explore those, those motivators that led to that so that you can make sense of how did I get in this pit that I created?
- [03:29]
B
This conversation. We actually were talking about a lot today because we made a post about how we know that our four children, about to be five children, will not actually grow up with a pornography addiction. And I had no idea that it was a somewhat triggering conversation until I read many of the comments. And I think we'll actually even potentially do a whole episode on that topic for this season as well. But it had me thinking as I was getting ready for this podcast, because a lot of the comments were kind of like, oh, your kids will get exposed. And it's almost this connotation of exposure equals addiction. And also that addiction is random. Like you just randomly will become addicted, right? And of course, nobody's just necessarily commenting those things. It's just kind of the gist of what is being shared. And as I'm getting ready, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Addiction is never random. It's never something you just accidentally fall into, Right? It's not something you just see, oh, I saw one thing, and so now I'm an addict. You know, it always has a root, it always has a story. It always has a link. And the more we remove this, like, oh, addiction is just at random. It just hits people randomly. Some people were born to suffer this way. Some people are born and gonna live with this forever. You know, whatever the story in the narrative is, whenever we remove that, we can actually see clearly, like, oh, no, no, no, this is not random. This was created, this was cultivated, this was grown. And how was it grown, right? So I'm like sitting there thinking, like, how do people find themselves in addiction? Oftentimes, if not always for mo. For the most part, with the thousands of people we've been working with over the years, it almost always starts in childhood, right? And I remember reading in a book, I think I said this in a different podcast, the man was linking that. That children that grow up in a lonely home have. I think it's like a 70% more. I don't remember the percentage, but they have a much more higher statistic of being addicted to masturbation. This has nothing even to do with pornography. This is just masturbation in itself, right? Because that became their coping mechanism. Their dopamine release, their sense of joy and pleasure in life to cope with the fact that they grew up in a lonely home. Most addiction started in childhood. That's why that's a key element and a framework of what we teach is you have to go backwards in time to explore when you first remember being exposed, what happened then when you first remember, maybe there was abuse, maybe you were exposed by a friend, by your family, maybe you had unwanted touch, an unwanted sexual experience, Maybe you created a sexual experience, Maybe you sought out sexual exposure through online, like, whatever the story is, that's where you start. And you don't stop there. You keep going, you keep looking, and you keep exploring. And you look at, how did I end up there? Did I grow up in a lonely home? Did I experience neglect? And that might not mean that your parents are terrible. We talked about this in season one, right? This doesn't mean you have to go, my parents are terrible. They left me lonely. They neglected me. Like, this is just how you heal. You see all really clearly with reality, right? You don't have to disown your family of origin. You don't have to disown your parents. Yet you can still look at it and go, wow. Yeah, I guess my family was on their computer a lot. My family was watching movies a lot. My siblings were all in their separate rooms. We all had our own devices that we went to. There wasn't really a lot of joy and laughter in the home. We didn't go out and adventure very often. Like, I remember, I played sports. Sports. I went to church. I did these things. But for the most part, I didn't really feel like my family was there. You know, these are the things you begin to explore, because this is when you realize my addiction isn't random. My addiction isn't a curse that stays forever. My addiction started somewhere, it has a storyline, and I can track it all
- [07:25]
A
the way back with childhood. It often is, I'd say the overarching thing that most of us could point to is a desensitization to our sexuality and to life itself. And so if your childhood was. Was laced with experiences that stole the innocence of your sexuality, it feels like you could never go back to that. So now you're in this marriage union where the container is that it's a. It's like a clean slate where it's like what we are together is what we are together. And if you are desensitized to the intimacy and the. The closeness of what that represents, then you. You will sabotage it back to what you're familiar to. It's like, well, I've never actually known a safety and a love like this. Like, I actually saw a bunch of pornography when I was a kid. And this is so foreign from what. What I experienced then. I don't know how to exist on this plane. I'm going to go back to what was. Or those red flags or those hazard lights that would go off before we would do something that could harm us are gone. Because through childhood and through your adolescence, you were desensitized to. Whether that was having sex at an early age or being exposed to pornography or having violence against you. If you didn't have the innocence coming into your marriage, you didn't know any different. And so you're trying to recreate, you're trying to create a healthy marriage without having addressed the fact that what was supposed to have been preserved for you wasn't. And that's. That's a really humbling process to go through. We say this all the time. And again, you might have. This might not be the case for you. And please send us an email if. If this is not true, I apologize. Most people here didn't get what they needed from their parents, otherwise you wouldn't be listening to two. Two strangers sharing on a podcast. You're here because there's something about like, okay, I want to heal. Beyond what was offered to me here was the sexual imprint given to me from my family, of lineage, of origin, and it left me broken. If you have healthy parents that are alive, that have a healthy sexuality, healthy relationships, you know who you're getting advice from them. And your marriage is probably thriving, and you're probably not listening to this podcast because they instilled into you an innocence, a wholeness that's now thriving in your relationship. We don't tell you to be powerless or a victim to your life, but this is the one moment I really want you just to open up and realize, were there things done to me? Was there things I was exposed to in my childhood that did not set me up for success right now in my marriage? And I'd say for most of you, that is the case. And so instead of pretending that those things weren't a big deal, it's actually time to look at those things from childhood and say, wow, yeah, that first exposure was a big deal. That led to multiple exposures that led to me having my own stash of magazines, that led to me frequenting this porn site, or me going to my friend's house and we watch these movies when no parents were around, or this led to me having sex when I was 15. Whatever your story is, instead of pretending that didn't happen, recognize, wow, like, things went off the rails. And in order to create the safety and connection you want in your relationship, you're going to have to acknowledge how far you drifted away from that and own that it's. And now. Now it's. You know, we say things were done to you. It's. It's nobody else's responsibility now to heal. It's your option. Like, how much healing do you want to do? You gotta acknowledge, wow, this is what was broken. This is where the pain was. And I'm ready to see how that impacts me today.
- [10:36]
B
Yeah. I want to paint two different pictures of a childhood. And, you know, the one is a lot of what we're describing. So you grew up in a home. Let's just say, you know, if you grew up in a cha. Chaotic home where there was abuse, there was yelling, there was drinking, there was drugs, all of that. You're very well aware right now that you grew up in a chaotic home. You've probably actually begin to address a lot of that. Right? And then there's this. This kind of other layer of a lot of us who grew up in homes where the chaos was a lot more Subtle, right? And, you know, there's a lot of screens that were implemented really, really early on. Or maybe, you know, maybe you're older and you're like, wow. There wasn't screens, but. But there was magazines. There was things hidden in stashes up in the attics. There was dads who visited strip clubs or these parlors down the road, you know, and we're kind of showing you and telling you about that, teaching you the ropes of your sexuality, whatever it is, you know, let's just say you grew up in this home where your parents are working a lot. They're not really around. Or you grew up in a home where your parents are around, but they're always doing something else. You grew up in a home where your parents are present with their bodies, but their eyes are always looking at a screen, right? They're always doing something else. So then you have to. Then add into this, okay, now I am here, but I need to be finding something else to do, right? You feel lonely, you feel separated. Maybe you went through something at school and you want to talk to your parents about it, but they're busy. They're working. They're on their phones, they're on their computers, they're on their laptops. They're watching sports, they're playing video games. They're always doing something else, right? Like, okay, I don't have this safe place. Or you get in trouble, right? This happens all the time. You get in trouble. Your parents send you to your room, tell you to cry it out. You get spanked, you get punished. You had to go get a stick from a tree. Here's this whole narrative, right? It's like, you didn't grow up in a huge, chaotic. Like, home is literally screaming parents, maybe you. Yet you grew up in a home where there wasn't really a strong sense of safety and connection and vitality. So that's when you most likely were given whatever they had, screens, magazines, going down the street to the. To the parlor, whatever it was. You adopted what they had created. Therefore, you did not learn how to emotionally regulate in a healthy way. Your parents would have had to have known that, to have taught that. So you had any sort of sense of discomfort, any sort of sense of negative emotions, negative experiences, and what did you do? You did what your parents had taught you. We just stay busy. We just work a lot. We just cope through addiction. We just turn to a screen. We don't actually know what to do with our negative emotions, right? This is why it's crucial that you go back and look at it because you have to almost go back to when you were a child and reteach yourself, oh, this is what I do when I'm in pain. This is what I do when I'm anxious. This is what I do when I'm sad. I never learned any of these things in my home. That's why I'm looking at porn, that's why I'm sleeping with the neighbors. That's why I'm going to massage parlors, that's why I'm going to the strip club. Whatever the story is, it's like, oh, it all begins to make a lot more sense when you look back at your childhood and go, well, this is the concoction, the teacher, the lessons I learned. Of course, this is now what I'm creating. So I get to separate from that right where this other picture of childhood, which is probably going to be pretty foreign for a lot of people. And this is the childhood that we aspire and set intentions to create for our four, almost five children, which is that there is no TV on the walls in our home. Right, right now, as we're working, as we're doing this, we're, we're double recording podcasts. So it's going to be two hours of work time. Right now we have the most incredible tutu, which is teacher in Hawaiian, here on the island that all of my kids love with all of their heart. When I walk out from this room, they're all like, no, stop. I want to spend more time with her. My 2 year old, who is very little, obviously, when she comes to the door, runs to her arms and is so excited to spend time with her, right? There's not even a negativity to the work connotation because they know there's so much beauty and balance the time we have together. So let's paint this other picture of childhood, which is a child grows up in a home where there is no screen on the wall. Like I said, they're not given an iPhone, they're not given a tablet, they're not given an itouch, whatever. They're not given these magazines, these dissociative mechanisms. They're actually told, go outside, go climb a tree, go ride your bike. Let's go for a walk together as a family. Let's go explore that neighborhood lake, that neighborhood pond, that neighborhood waterfall. Let's go this weekend to the cabin in the woods and let's build fires and let's play games and let's read books together. Oh, it's snowing. Outside, that's fine. Let's bundle up and let's go build a snowman. Like, that's the childhood where you're together with your parents, right? Of course. Parents work. Parents work. And there's containers for that. And the rest of the time we're together, we're making dinner together, we're laughing, we're sharing stories, we're adventuring, we're experiencing life together. There really is no need to have all of these screens everywhere that we're all dissociated, dissociating from our life, from, Right? Like we're living outside in nature together. And then our kids fall down, they get hurt, somebody says something mean to them. And I'm not saying, go cry in your room, tough it out, scrape it off. That's not that big of a deal. I'm saying, whoa. Like today, even our daughter, the my 2 year old and her were battling over this tiny little rock that was really quite slippery. And she's about to slip into a giant waterfall and go rushing down it, which she actually did end up doing. Thankfully, she knows how to swim and she didn't get hurt. I'm not like, oh, good, you get hurt, sweetie, so just stop crying. She's crying. Like, that was a big experience. Like, are you okay? I checked in with her three times after to let her know, like, I see you, I saw you. That looks scary. How are you? I'm hugging her, I'm kissing her. By the end of it, she's like, I'm fine, mom, I'm good. You know, like, I'm okay, right? She's learning. She's getting to experience. Oh, this is what it's like to be seen, to be known, to be comforted. Okay. This is what I do when I have anxiety, pain, discomfort. This is how I regulate, how I move forward. Right. The drastic nature of these two realities is what creates and does not create addiction. Right?
- [17:03]
A
With that, those two words, dissociation and distraction. It's like Hill saying, the. The ability to regulate emotionally is that crucial building block we need so that we don't turn to. We'll call them vices, which I don't even love the word vices. Unhealthy addictions are basically means in which that could be alcohol, nicotine, pornography, an outside relationship. We don't know how to regulate or to come back to calm. So we do things that help us feel calm again, that help us escape the feeling that we've experienced. And so if childhood is all you knew is that you were given a screen you binge ate snack food. You witnessed your parents drinking alcohol constantly and they were drunk. That's how they work through pain. Or you witness everybody went to their own corner and nobody made a peep. You had this pattern given to you is, this is how we navigate life. And now you're married and you're like, shoot, she has a way of navigating life. I have mine. Mine creates secondary pain. It creates pain in those around me, but it's all I've ever known. You have to make that decision, though, to find out, like, okay, I believe there is a new way. I believe there is a better path than just destroying myself and everyone around me. And so that emotional regulation piece is huge. Identifying what was the emotional tone that was set in the home that will show you what was motivating the addiction and the affair to begin with. With that, as already alluded to approval seeking behavior, you could have been the golden child where you basically became what you thought everybody else wanted you to be. And the world's a very cruel place when it happens because you basically never feel like enough. And then when you look at your marriage, you're thinking, man, she's rejecting me. Or if I can't keep her happy, then I'm being rejected. And I fear rejection so much. I'm going to continue to seek the approval of others until I feel okay. For me, how that kind of showed up was if Caitlin was being mean to me or was expressing frustration or was upset, I knew that I'm not getting her smiling face at me, which I needed. I needed. I need her smiling at me, telling me I'm a good boy, tell me I'm. That she loves me. Otherwise I'm like, oh, no, I'm being rejected. Like, this is not good. So I knew from my childhood if I was ever feeling lonely, tired, sad, whatever, I could just go on the Internet and find a cute smiling face. Whether I was a bikini model, whatever it was somebody on social media that was smiling, a cute girl smiling back at me made me feel a sense of approval, of affirmation that I wasn't getting in my relationship. So that was motivating me. Like Caitlyn, I got in a fight. How dare she say she regrets marrying me. I'm going to go on social media and see somebody else smiling back at me. You might have a similar power. Like, oh my gosh, my wife doesn't give me the respect and all this I need. I'm going to. She's rejecting me. You might linger a little bit in a Conversation with somebody at your workplace, you might, instead of responding to an email, send a text to a co worker. Now you're getting lunch with a co worker once a week. Then your wife asks you, hey, who's so and so. You're like, oh, that's just a colleague. And like, you keeping things appropriate with it. Yeah, we're fine. And then you, okay, now you've lied to her. And so now you go to. Now you're lying about this woman, and you're going lunch with her twice a week. And now things have gotten physical. It's like, this is how we go down the path, is you don't realize what's motivating the pattern. So if you're desperate for approval, you have to address that. And the quickest way to address this need for approval is to recognize you will never get it looking outside of yourself. Your wife can't give you your need for approval. You're a fair partner. The woman on the screen will not make. Will not fill the void of what you're. What you're seeking. That's why it's led to a very destructive path. You must know that at your core, you are loved. And for you to experience more love and acceptance will be you bringing that to the world. So it'll be your decision to. To love and care for those around you is actually what will allow you to participate in that feeling for yourself. So you don't love to be loved, but instead of hoping that somebody else outside of you can fill the void, you actually show up with your own structure, your own energy in the world so the people know who you are, who the real you is. If you're always seeking the approval of others, it's going to lead you down a very, very destructive path, which is porn, affairs, and a broken marriage.
- [20:58]
B
Yeah. I think another huge thing that I see coming up that that leads to addiction, or even the ongoing of addiction. Because you might say, okay, well, I've looked at my childhood. I've explored it. I've looked at these moments where I was exposed. I've looked at how my family, you know, wasn't there, wasn't present. And yet I still keep turning back to my addiction. Right. And I always come back to which this always links to childhood, too. Yet I always come to life fulfillment, right. Life purpose, life vitality. And this came up so much. And I think it was season three when we interviewed couples. Every couple we interviewed, I'm asking them, like, do you feel alive right now? And it's like, no, I don't of course I don't. Addiction steals your soul, it steals your life, it steals your mind. Right. It takes everything you were here to do and create and to be, and it sucks it out of you. It literally sucks the life out of you. Right. And why does this link back to childhood is most likely whenever you were, you know, begin your addiction in childhood, it was because you didn't have that, that other picture of childhood that I described. It was really fulfilling. It was really full of purpose. You felt really vital, you felt really alive. You felt really connected to your creativity as a child. Like, screens automatically sabotage creativity. Of course. Do I believe you can be creative on a screen? Absolutely. That's what we're here doing. We have three cameras looking at us, a computer in the room, and you're all going, watch this on a screen later. Like, we are here creating. There can be beauty that you can create on a screen, and it has to be done with utmost intentionality. Right. Like, if you're getting on screens without intentionality, then you're automatically sabotaging your creativity. And so if you are now in this place where you're recognizing your childhood, you're recognizing your story, you maybe have approval seeking behaviors and you're like, I really just genuinely don't like my life. People that get on screens have screen addictions, have porn addictions, drinking addictions, food, gambling, whatever sort of addiction is, because deep down somewhere in there, they do not like the life that they're living. If you love your life and you feel really full and vibrant and abundant, you're not turning to addiction. How do I know that? Because I love my life. I love the marriage we've created. And Brandon and I are not turning to any of these, as he says, vices, or any of these outlets. As a word I would use, like, we're not turning to any of these counterfeit outlets to try to give us a boost of dopamine or energy or pleasure or fulfillment or joy, right? It's not even. I can't even use the word joy. It's counterfeit joy. We don't have to go to any of these outlets to receive from them because we have the real life, abundant outlets to receive from. So when you're at this roadblock, I remember telling a couple of people in our community this even because they're finally coming clean on the truth of their life. And they're just like, I don't like my life though, right? And I'm like, what do you love to do? You might not even know, right? Away, Right. What do you love in life? What do you love? Like creating? Is it baking? Is it drawing? Is it painting? Is it biking? Is it hiking? Is it fishing? What I like. There's a thousand of beautiful things you can go do in the world, like literally right now, and half of them are free. What do you love doing? What makes you come alive? A lot of this is not just cutting out the porn addiction. Yeah, that's why we don't. I don't believe in porn blockers. I don't believe in these, like, oh, just snap my wrist and like, whatever, you know, the rubber band myself, punish myself, cause pain. So I just stop looking at porn. It's not about just stopping doing the bad things that you're doing. It's about living a fulfilling life that you love. Because when you start implementing into your life the things that make you feel alive, guess what? You don't need anymore. You don't need the porn. You don't need the gambling. You don't need the drinking. You don't need the smoking. You don't need the drugs. It's really quite instant almost, because your body now is coming into alignment with your purpose here in the world. Of course, you have to match this with everything else we've said and all the other four seasons, which is, you can't keep living in darkness and hiddenness. You can't keep running around with all these lies. You have to actually go like, whoa, I'm ready to wake up and look at all this. And you need to begin implementing in the things that make you come alive. Like, this is what repairs your soul and your mind, what repairs your marriage and your connection. Because you're going to become you for maybe the first time ever.
- [25:26]
A
If you are asking, okay, I'm starting to see how this, how I got to where I am, but I feel stuck in this person. And the shame, the shame loop is probably one of the biggest things of how the addiction stays and how it is continued to be motivate. The perpetual action is basically, you have adopted the identity of, this is who I am. This is a part of me now. It's like a. It's like a close friend that's like, this is, I don't know, life without this pattern of behavior. I don't know life without stepping outside of my relationship and imagery without numbing out on my phone for hours. I don't actually know a life outside of that. My identity is so wrapped up in always having this drop in the gut feeling of there's something wrong with me. And one of the key distinctions I have seen from men and women that choose to heal is this belief that healing is possible. Most people don't. Don't want to start a weight loss plan or a healing protocol if at the end of it, they're going to feel 10% better. Because if I'm coming clean to my wife, if I'm uprooting my whole world, I want to know that at the end of it, there's a transformation. That's why everybody's so obsessed with seeing transformation stories, seeing fat loss stories like, okay, if it'll work for them, it'll work for me. When you finally realize, like, okay, the boat I'm in is sinking. If you're in the ocean and your boat's sinking, you might be like, well, shoot, my boat's sinking, but you're not going to get outta the boat Unless you see a boat next to you that's actually floating. Unless you're like, okay, this boat is sinking. I'm. I got nothing else better to do because I'm in the middle of the ocean. Oh, there's a brand new boat that's. That's actually gonna take me to my destination. You have to ask yourself, why can't I change? And if you have an answer to that, keep asking, is that true? Yeah, is that true? Is that true? Is change actually impossible? I got to that point where I was like, okay, do I believe that this is how I'm going to always be, or is this as familiar? And I realized, wait, I don't believe that at my core, this is how I was meant to be. I don't believe that this is who I'm always supposed to be. But initially, we don't ask ourselves those deep questions. We just allow the shame to motivate us to do it again. I feel bad. I apologize. I do it again. I hide. The cycle continues. Ask yourself, do I believe I could change? Because when I see a man that says, well, Brian's sharing the freedom, the experience he's talked about, when we hear couples working through that in our program, they're like, that's what made me decide to go all in. Because you're like, I'm willing to get out of the boat if I know that it's possible to swim. If I don't know it's possible to swim, I'm going to keep drowning. I'm just going to stay where I'm at. Like, this is familiar. This is already painful, but that looks worse. I'm going to go off and drown. But if I actually know I could learn to swim and learn to enjoy life again, a life without addiction, I'm willing to pursue that. So ask yourself, where is shame? Controlling the story. That's motivating more of the addiction, more of the affairs. Instead of saying, if change is possible, am I willing to get out of this boat, this boat that is sinking?
- [28:09]
B
Yeah. Because shame actually really keeps you stuck. I like to say that curiosity keeps you open, it keeps you exploring, it keeps you healing, it keeps you moving forward. Right. If you stay in shame, that's like a dog with their tail in between their legs. Right. That's not actually the posture of I'm going to take responsibility, I'm going to heal, and I'm going to be victorious and move forward in life. I'm going to create a whole new marriage. So instead of carrying the shame of the actions and letting yourself become powerless to cleaning up any of it, you're choosing into curiosity, right? Which this is exactly what we're talking about. Curiosity of where it all began. Curiosity of how you got here in the first place. Curiosity of the things that have shaped you, the things that you were taught, the narratives you believed. Maybe it even came from your church, from your pastors, from your parents, from those closest to you. Like, curiosity keeps everything open so that you can continue to see and heal. Where shame closes the door and keeps you stuck and trapped in the closet, where you actually just begin to feel like you can't breathe. And you're definitely not healing because you're stuck and trapped in the closet. And so you're opening the door to curiosity to see, where did I come from? Where did it begin? What is the storyline? And you're not looking at it just to go like, okay, that's great, Brandon and Caitlin. I looked at my story, here's the key details. And we just stop there, right? You're looking at your story. I like to see it as a puzzle piece, or as a puzzle, sorry, a whole puzzle. And each of these elements of your story are the puzzle pieces. Right? And so when you don't look back at your childhood, at these experiences that you've even carried with you into adulthood, into your marriage, you're leaving out essential pieces to the puzzle. Like, have you ever sat down to do a thousand piece puzzle and you're missing three at the end? Like, that's so dissatisfying. Like, you want to see the whole puzzle put together and yet you can't. Like, you can see the glimpses of it. You get the Gist yet there's essential pieces missing to putting the whole puzzle piece together. So when you're going to heal, you're taking your entire life story as a puzzle and placing the pieces together. You have to be open and willing to go backwards in time to collect all the pieces of the puzzle so you can put it all together. And when you do, you go, oh, now I see it clearly. Now I know why I think the way I do, why I look at women the way I do, why I have these compulsive behaviors, why I act out an addiction, why I hate my life. Now I know why I'm dissatisfied in life, why I don't feel fulfilled in life, why I'm always seeking other people's approval. Whatever the stories, the narratives are, it's like here are the answers. It no longer feels like you're powerless to understanding yourself, like you're powerless to your addiction. So many people out there make people feel powerless to to their addiction, even well meaning people. You are never powerless to your addiction. There is always a story that tracks all the way through that will make complete sense to you. Every single one of you can make complete and utter sense of your entire life story, all of your addiction, every choice that you make. It will be so profoundly clear to you if you are willing to go collect every single puzzle piece, which is a very tedious job, yet how fulfilling when you put the puzzle piece together, when you put it all together, you're a thousand. You're probably gonna have like a 16,000piece puzzle, right? And you're looking at it going, wow, this makes sense. And then you get to go, now what do I want to create? Now what puzzle do I want to make? This is the puzzle of all of my life, all of my experiences. Now I see it, right? I always say this seeing clearly is healing clearly. Now I see everything clearly. So now I go, okay, I want to cut ties with this way of thinking, with this way of rewire and recreate a whole new puzzle, a whole new reality, a whole new life, a whole new marriage. So it's like the path to moving forward is collecting all the pieces, seeing it all clearly so that you know what you want to take into what you're creating and what you want to leave behind.
- [32:23]
A
For as long as you look at your situation and say, I don't know how, I'm here, I don't get it. This isn't fair. This doesn't make sense. This is all happening to me. You're not going to have the experience Caitlin just spoke about. The addiction is not random. There was a series of events that took place in your life. There was a series of decisions you made, of patterns you created, and that's why you're in the situation you're in. You're like, well, are you trying to say I'm responsible for my life? And yes. So although these motivators to the addiction affairs did precede your relationship, they started in your childhood. Until you're willing to look at them and say, oh, my gosh, like, this isn't. This isn't happening to me. All these things that perpetuated the addiction, the affair, the unhealthy, toxic patterns, they didn't happen to you. They were your chosen response to your life. And you might think, well, will I die if I acknowledge that this was my choice to respond this way? You have radical compassion on yourself. How are you going to have compassion on your wife that's hurting from an addiction or an affair if you don't have compassion and say, whoa, this was a big. These were big decisions I made to go down this path. This was monumental. I made that choice, though. And by. By acknowledging that the awareness and the clarity that comes when you realize nobody else is holding the keys to the prison I made for myself. You weren't born this way. Where you are. You are prone to addiction, prone to sleeping with other women. This was just what you chose. And since you chose it, you get to make a new decision only if you see yourself as fully responsible. So these are the motivators that got you here. These are the hidden things that led to the entree that you created. And there's a brand new decision sitting right in front of you. It's, am I willing to look at it and make sense of it? Am I willing to say, okay, that was what was going on in childhood. That was the decision I made when we were first married to numb out and dissociate. I don't know how to deal with my emotions. I'm going to learn that. These are all skills you learn. If you can learn how to regulate emotionally, if you can learn to see yourself differently, why wouldn't you, unless you want to live with addiction, continue on. But most people in addiction are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Your body cannot handle it. So you either. You need to keep increasing the intensity of the addiction until you eventually get put in prison or die or your marriage ends, or you can pump the brakes and say, whoa, I don't like the path I'm on, and acknowledge that like, this path was killing me. It was destroying us. And I'm ready for a new path that I choose, that I write. So all of your life story is not random. You have the power to choose how you want to proceed. At this point in time, I think
- [34:58]
B
people often will dismiss the. Let's just call it the collecting of the puzzle pieces, the looking back at the childhood or their story, or even trying to address where did this all begin. Let's get to the root here. They'll dismiss that and call it unimportant. Not because they actually believe that it's unimportant, but because at the root, they're actually terrified to see it clearly. They're terrified to remember what they have been hoping they could forget. Right. So many people, when they enter into recovery, they're like, oh, I just can't remember what I've done. And I'm like, we always say this inside our community. Well, that's not true. You can remember everything that you want to. It's not that you can't remember. It's that you're scared to remember because there's this lie that's believed that if I just kind of dismiss it, if I just say I don't remember it, if I kind of just tuck it back here, deep into my subconscious, into this, this hidden closet somewhere and I lock the door and I just throw the key away, that it will have no impact on my life. Right. Like, okay, it's just kind of like, forget it and move on. And what's happening is the addiction is the reality that it has a massive impact in your life.
- [36:03]
A
Yeah.
- [36:04]
B
The marriage that's crumbling is the reality that those things have a massive impact on your life. Your own soul feeling, lack of vibrancy, feeling like you hate your life, like you probably hate yourself deep down is the reality in the result of hiding and throwing away and dismissing all of those things as unimportant. Right. So when we come back to reality, we realize, oh, it's not that I don't think that that's important, it's that I'm actually terrified. Because if I start back at the beginning, at my early childhood, I'm going to have to come face to face with a lot of things that I'd rather not remember. Right. And the hope that we want to pass along in all of our podcasts and our entire messaging is that going back and remembering all of that is 100% worth it. Not only worth it, but 100% necessary to healing. And the momentary discomfort that you will Experience in gathering all your puzzle pieces is so profoundly worth it. When you put together your puzzle, see it, heal it, and recreate a new one, when you recreate your own self, your marriage, and your life, you look back with a. With gratitude at, wow. I'm so glad that I faced everything that I was scared of. Like Brandon said, like, you're not powerless. You're taking back those keys you tried to throw away, and you're going, whoa, I'm powerful. I can look at everything and I can face everything, and I can heal everything, and I can clean up my whole life. It doesn't even matter. All the things that got me here, like, they matter, and at the same time, they don't. I can kill them. I can clean them up. I can take responsibility for them. Everything in my life has a purpose, and once it's seen, it can be healed. Right? And once you realize that and you believe that, you're able to face it all with utmost clarity of like, oh, I see it. I see it clearly, and I'm ready to heal it. Because I'm no longer living in shame or living in fear. I'm living in curiosity and openness to actually go, whoa. This is all really valuable information. I'm glad I see it, because now I get to create a whole new
- [38:15]
A
life with that life you create. I think there's this gut feeling that people coming out of addiction, fear, that is. Is what I really long for. The vice, the addiction, or the affair. Like, deep down, am I. Am I designed? Am I wired to crave things I can't have? Like, is that the good life? And I think that's why we. We are so intentional about. We don't believe that you were designed, that you chose into a relationship with your spouse, and that for the rest of your life, you will feel tempted and tormented because you made that decision. So I actually think to break free from the addiction, from the toxic patterns, is it's actually saying, what do I really want? So slow down right now and look at your life and say, what do I really want? Is it a pack a day of cigarettes? Is it being addicted to prescription medication? Is it having multiple sex partners? Is it having unrestricted access to pornography that nobody cares about? Is that what you really want? Right. Because if you describe the life you really want, the experiences you're having, most likely it would sound something like this. I have a deeply connected marriage. We enjoy each other. We respect each other, we celebrate each other. I have a loving connection with my children. I do work in the world. That. That fills my soul. I'm physically thriving and emotionally full of gratitude and peace every day. I didn't hear anything. And yours might be slightly different.
- [39:40]
B
Right.
- [39:40]
A
But I don't hear anywhere in that equation that says what I really wanted was to live like a bachelor, that could go get drunk, have sex with whoever I want, and then after I'm done doing that, I can binge watch porn at night.
- [39:51]
B
Right.
- [39:52]
A
That's the life I really want. And so what I want you to consider is that you don't do the toxic things because they're so good. And it's like the good life, the drugs, all the things I can't have are calling my name. It's actually because you don't know what you really want. So define what you really want. Recite it to yourself. And you remind yourself, wait a second. This is the counterfeit. This is the lesser life. There's nothing luring about the website you haven't been to or your friend on social media that posts provocative content like there's nothing out there that would actually benefit you. Acknowledge that you went down that path because you were misinformed, because of the impact of your childhood, because of the shame that you carry. And once you see it all and go, yeah, I'm going to make a decision for a better life, a better relationship today. I'm the one powerful to make that decision. Not just because it's what's right and what I should do. It's actually because deep down, that's what you really want. And what was what's been available to you this whole time.
- [40:48]
B
Yeah, like Brandon said, we never. We never spent a day of our life going, wow, we're really missing out because we're not drinking, doing drugs, sleeping with a bunch of other people. Brandon's not objectifying everybody that he sees. I'm not fantasizing about being married to somebody else. Like, wow, like, life feels really restrictive. Life feels really extreme. Like, life feels really boring. We never once have any of those conversations. We're looking at our life going, whoa, look at this beautiful marriage we've created where we're satisfied with one another. Fully satisfied, fully in love, created intimacy. Look at these children. We've created this abundant life that we get to live. Like, life is so good on the other side when you go, I want to heal and transform and create something new for myself, for my marriage, for my kids, for my legacy. Right. So you get this moment in time where you go, whoa, if my life isn't good right now, it doesn't have to stay that way. I don't have to choose into apathy of this is just as good as it's going to get. No, you get to go, whoa. I want to see everything so I can heal everything and create a life where I go. I love, love every aspect of my life. It's so good.
- [41:56]
A
If you're a courageous man or woman or couple, that's like, I want to embody this. I want to break free from the addiction. We cannot save you. However, we can empower you with the mindset and tools to take that radical action. If if you're like, man, I'd love to meet you guys in San Diego and do that work for two days. This is your final notice. You will hear from us next week on the podcast, but it will be after the event. If you would like more information about how you can join us in person or virtually in San Diego, you can click on the Show Notes and you can also read more information about our couples program as well as get a copy of seven Steps to Save youe Marriage, my new book, which is@7stepsbook.com. You can pre order a copy today. We're humbled to have you with us each week and we look forward to seeing you next week.