Brandon: Welcome back to the Grounded Union Podcast. We are in season four episode two, and we are talking about if trust can be rebuilt after betrayal. Trust, trust, trust. This is the thing that a lot of men say, like, when will she trust me again? Women are asking, when can I trust him again?
And we talk a lot about the behaviors and the actions around trust. And what I want to talk about was we're going to really break down these three layers of what trust really means and what, what you can, where you can place your focus. I think for a lot of people we're looking at surface level reasons. Like if she trusts me again, I can have unrestricted access to my phone and it's not actually rebuilding trust for the purpose of the relationship. It's actually maybe so you don't talk to me about the the betrayal anymore and we can move on and we can go back to life as it was before.
News flash. If there's been betrayal, you actually have to burn down the old relationship and completely rebuild it. If your goal is to rebuild trust and connection, you will never go back to how the relationship was before. And so for a lot guys, I'm be like, well, shoot. Does that mean she's gonna be bringing this up for decades?
You're still asking the wrong question. I've said this. This is the core premise. You guys could stop the episode after two minutes. I know you won't because you want to get to the end of it.
If trust is about a timeline, meaning when will she trust me again? Guess what? You're nowhere near creating trust and connection and safety in your relationship. Trust the moment you try to make an end date to when she trusts me again, and we can check the box. You've missed the conversation entirely.
So that's what we're diving into. Cause we're talking about big betrayals that have taken place in your relationship. This isn't something we just gloss over so we can go back to life as it was. You actually need to learn a new way of inter interacting with each other, which we're gonna talk about that transformation in this episode.
Caitlyn: Mhmm. And in the beginning of Our Marriage, for those of you who have listened to the previous seasons of the episode, you heard Our Marriage Story. I think that's the first two episodes of season one. So the first five years of our marriage leading up to 2019 where we kind of hit our, what I call the breaking point, which then led to recreating our entire relationship for the better. Those first five years were what Brandon's talking about rebuilding trust, rebuilding trust.
If you're not watching this or you can't see me, I'm using air quotes. Pretending like we're rebuilding trust essentially so that you could just get your privileges back. Right? So we played the whole game where it's like, okay, Brandon was a bad boy. So now Brandon can't get on these certain websites and can't have these certain privileges.
It's it's essentially like a toddler that goes to time out. Right? That's like the parenting tactic. That is the parenting tactic we're taking when our marriage hits this crisis is, okay. If we just remove these privileges for a little bit, give him a little spanking, then he'll learn his lesson and he'll quickly get his privileges back and then he'll quickly hopefully have transformed.
Yet, the funny aspect about this is we think that just the removal of these certain aspects, mainly like removing apps, removing privileges to like look at certain things, have unlimited access. It's like, that is what transforms our relationship. Just removing those things like that creates the healing, that creates the change, that would therefore enable me to trust my spouse again. And it's like, woah, just removing things doesn't automatically make you a changed healed person. Like it literally doesn't renew your mind, doesn't change your belief systems, doesn't change your patterns, it doesn't do anything.
It just was a little spanking, a little tap on the hand. So Brandon would always, you know, be like, okay, I'll give up social media for this amount of time and I'll read these books and I'll dedicate this. And eventually, he started to notice the pattern, I started to notice the pattern. It all became about, okay, how can I quickly just have access to these things again? Like, okay, I've been a good boy for long enough.
I haven't actually really done any deep heart change. I haven't done any deep work. I just stopped binge watching YouTube videos for a couple days. And then he would try to check all these boxes by just removing things and be like, okay, now mommy, can I have my privileges back? Like, do you trust me now?
Because I've been going on three weeks without binge watching YouTube videos. Like, am I a good boy?
Brandon: I mean, it sounds so funny, like, when you say it, but it's it's basically what's at play here is we have a lot of shame when there's sexual brokenness. I say we. I represent all of humanity that has had sexual brokenness. We've all come into it with certain degrees, but where it gets messy is when I brought my sexual brokenness into the marriage and my coping behaviors now impact us. And there's things that were kept that you found out about.
And it creates a dilemma because when Caitlyn discovers I've been lying to her, when you discover that your, your husband, your wife have been lying to you, it's this shame event for the, the, the person that's been in addiction. It's like, oh, I got caught. I was so bad. Like we talk about denial all the time. We talked about in the last episode, but they're in denial of like, was I really that bad?
Like, I, I kind of just, I got a little out of hand or I just need to use a little more self control. And so we primarily see this rebuilding trust thing as me using more self control more often. I'll put the accountability software on my phone. I'll tell you when I'm getting on social media, but can I, can I keep everything I've had is the primary focus of rebuilding trust? I want you to think about this in, in The United States Of America, at least when somebody has multiple DUIs, they lose their driver's license.
They can even go to jail. We don't give people that get DUIs the free pass to drive a car 60 miles an hour down a highway because it kills people. And so practically speaking, are you, you know, we're kind saying like, so should he keep his phone? Should he not? If you've been acting out in a porn addiction, a social media addiction, you're looking at raunchy content, there is the absolute 100% you lost your license to drive.
And this isn't actually in please, please do not make your spouse be the one that say, can I take your license? Think about the, the, the elderly couples we know. Some grandparents where it's like, the grandma's like, can you please turn in your license? Like it's embarrassing to need to have somebody ask you to turn your license in. So if if you got caught lying and you're still trying to say, I keep my my freedoms?
Mhmm. You're missing the point entirely. That's not rebuilding trust. That's you trying to continue living as though nothing has happened. That's denial.
And so I think if you've broken trust in a major way, and you're not open to changing the ways in which you interact with the internet, the appropriate social boundaries, you're not going to set up the types or the people that you had been inappropriate with. If you're not willing to be uncomfortable and sit in the silence of the mess you've made, then I don't think you're really wanting to heal and rebuild trust to begin with. You're just wanting mommy to get off your back so you can keep having your escape. So if you've caused the pain, gladly hand over that and don't have it be the wife having to say, you know what? I don't feel comfortable with you scrolling social media because you've just told me you had a porn addiction.
You sit down for after this podcast. Listen to this. You go sit down and say, what, what things would I benefit from removing right now that would create immediate safety for me and my partner? After what I've done, after the betrayal, you just go look and you're like, okay, well, don't do anything productive on social media. That's where I looked at the majority of my content or that led me to then go to porn or this app is where I messaged other women one to one where I had the emotional affair.
Connect the dots for yourself and say, you know what? I'm going to step away from this. I'm gonna step away from this. Oh, but I need LinkedIn for my work. Find another way or figure out a way to use it and communicate about it in a healthy way.
So I would say hand over the driver's license. If you, if you actually want to rebuild trust, it's not the facade of rebuilding trust. It's saying, I want to take that first step of removing all these things that I misused like alcohol. If you drink and drive, you lose your license. If you're gonna drink and drive on the Internet, hand over your license for a season so that you can actually find out what's inside of you.
Caitlyn: Mhmm. It's not just about the removal. It's about what you're now filling into your life. Right? Because people that find themselves in this place where they're just trying to remove a couple things here and there for a certain amount of time till they can check the boxes and get back into the good boy spot or the good girl spot so they can have their privileges back, they just end up on a relapse cycle.
That's like most of everybody that's endured any sort of addiction or any sort of betrayal finds themselves on the relapse roller coaster. And that's because you're just trying to remove a bunch of things and not actually figuring out now what am I filling that with. Right? And so it's not about like removing privileges because you've been a naughty child. It's about realizing like Brandon said, woah, I've gotten out of control here.
I'm no longer in control of my body or my mind in these areas. That's why we say in our community, in every podcast episode it comes up at some point, is like remove yourself from entertainment and consumption and screens. Remove yourself. Not from this perspective of, oh, I'm so naughty, so now I just lose these privilege privileges. It's like, no, I'm out of control, and now I'm gonna gain my life back.
Right? And you don't just stop there. Like we always say, like, okay. So when Brandon made that switch of for five years, he's just trying to get back all of his privileges as fast as he can and make it look like he'd become a trustworthy person without actually doing any of the deep work, tricking himself, tricking me, tricking everybody. The whole charade which most people find themselves in, eventually in 2019, he goes, okay, woah, I have been out of control.
This is not pretty. Like, this is ugly. Like, I need to take serious care of myself, which looks like getting off all screens, like getting off all entertainment, getting outside way more, getting into my body way more, going for way more walks as a family, journaling, actually spending time thinking about like, woah, where have I lost it and where am I gonna regain back my mind, my soul, like every part of me to win back my marriage, to recreate my marriage? That's when we started to gain traction. Not when it was like, oh, when can I be a good boy enough that I can have all my privileges back?
It's like, woah, then you're just gonna keep living in that cycle. How do I know? Because we lived in it for five years. Like, it doesn't matter if you go to a couple counseling sessions, read a couple books. If your main focus is just getting back to your normal life, then sure, you'll get back to your normal life, but your normal life sucked.
You need to recreate your life. So you're not just a naughty boy, a naughty girl that needs to smack the wrist, take away a couple things, like what is it? Grounding. You're not grounding yourself for three weeks and then getting all your privileges back. No, you are removing areas where you've been out of control.
You are gaining your life back and recreating something new. So you're gonna show up in every area of your life
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: Completely differently.
Brandon: I think one thing that people don't understand, and I think as a society, we're waking up to it. We have the analog world, which is much more mechanical, where we pick up something and do something, or we, we pen and paper versus writing or typing on a computer. In the digital world, everything just gets expanded and blown up and maximized. So if you haven't figured out how to use the technology in front of you to improve your life and it's actually sucked life away from you, the quickest way to rebuild trust with yourself is to go back to the beginning is to actually say like, you know what? I don't know how to yield this weapon.
I always tell the guys at our events, your phone and your access to the Internet and entertainment is literally like a loaded gun with your finger on the trigger. I would be so intentional with how you use that because it's so powerful. That's why we're having this conversation. You guys watching this through a digital device, and we're having this very powerful experience from some of you are in India, some of you are all across the world, some of you are weeping, this is your last chance to get healing. And some of you are gonna go watch porn tonight, or you you just got done binge watching porn, and that's why you're here.
Our access to technology is so potent that we need to go back to pen and paper. If you don't know yourself, you don't know why you picked up your phone, if you don't know why you're scrolling, if you don't know why the affair happened, if you don't know why the addiction is there, you have no right to be driving in the car. You have no right to be in the driver's seat of open ended use of the internet of social media, because you don't even know what you're using it for or what you're seeking. So that's first and foremost, if you're, if we're talking about rebuilding trust after betrayal, it's going back to black and white, to analog living, the, to the pen, to the paper where you write out what you're thinking, what you're feeling. And you're like, well, feels slow.
I want to use AI to help me. AI is not going to help you rebuild your marriage. You're going to have to sit in the reality of where you are. And it's as simple as pen to paper. It's as simple as walking outside.
So if you want to start that first step is do not make your wife. If you betrayed your wife, do not make her beg for the boundaries that need to be set on your technology device. The boundaries that need to be set. Some of these guys I've, I love you guys. I love like men.
I love you. I love what you're capable of recreating in your marriage, but if you had an affair or an emotional affair, and I've heard stories that you're like unwilling to create proper social boundaries at work or in the place in the place that you're at. Like, you might lose your job. Like nobody cares if your income goes down a little bit this year because you got to find a new job because you were this close to sleeping with your secretary. She knows it got inappropriate, you know, or you actually slept with somebody at your company and you're like, well, I moved to apartments and I only see her at lunch every week.
Your wife's dying. So that first layer of rebuilding trust is, is this idea of I want to get my freedom of privileges back. And it ties right to the second one, which is can we stop talking about the betrayal? So that first layer you guys just get off your phone, get off the internet, stop seeing the people that, that you were betraying your spouse with. Put your big boy pants on and make those decisions.
And it's not out of like Caitlyn said, it's not out of lack. It's out of being able to see clearly the second thing rebuilding trust does not mean that Caitlyn can no longer bring it up, that the pain has been dealt with, that now we can move on. When we make the focus of, can we stop back? Can you stop asking questions about the details? Your heart is not to rebuild trust.
That's to create further isolation and distance from the betrayed spouse. Trust is, please, I want to talk more about it too. Like, I I wanted let's dive into it. Mhmm. I want to talk more.
Like, I want to I want to explore, yeah, during our third anniversary, like, you did you get on your phone that at that night when we were at the hotel after I went to sleep? Yeah, I did. And we like, I feel like our whole marriage was a lie. And you have those conversations as often as possible. It goes a long way when she doesn't have to bring it to you.
You're like, I want to talk through that. Hey, I just remembered that I was checked out here that I was associating here that I was, I was worlds apart from you. We were on this date because this was going on inside of me. I need you to know that because I want to heal. When your focus is truly on rebuilding trust, it is not on trying to get the subject matter to change.
I'll say that again. If you want to rebuild trust, you don't care how, how much, how long this is the conversation because you know that for trust and connection and safety to be rebuilt, it will be talked about forever, but it will change form. It won't always be this thing where it's like, I can't believe you did that to me. And then it's so heated. If you're willing to validate you might, some of you have been in that heated state for decades and I don't even know how you're still alive, but that's because you tried to get the heat to turn down, turn the heat up.
Sit in the heat, show your betrayed spouse. Like I want to get in the fire with you. And what you might be surprised by if she's like, that's all I was looking for to begin with for you to understand what that really, how, how your actions impacted me.
Caitlyn: Yeah. Amount of people that come into our space that have had a massive amount of affairs that are trying to just get the conversation over with is very, very profound. Like, if you have betrayed your spouse in any sort of way and you think that that was a one time conversation, like, woah, your emphasis is not on rebuilding trust. Right? Like trust cannot be rebuilt if that is your mentality.
It can't because trust is rebuilt over time. So if you're trying to rush the amount of time that it takes, then you are rushing the process of actually rebuilding trust. And the truth is, we'll get way it will go layers beneath the trust. If you're rushing this process, guarantee, like guarantee you are still hiding things. People always like, Caitlyn, how do you do always know people are lying?
It's like, because there are red flags to people who are lying and hiding things. And trying to rush the conversation is a big giant freaking red flag.
Brandon: I I can I mean, I've I was firsthand the beneficiary of this because I tried to rush through things? I tried to close the chapter, but I've also watched Caitlyn at our events. People will come up and say, my husband's lying to me about this. I have proof. Like, we have so I I have so many stories.
Caitlyn: Conversations like
Brandon: And Caitlyn looks at the husband and she's like, sounds pretty convincing that you're lying. And they'll be like, yeah, I am lying. Or they'll come back the next day and say, yeah, I told my wife you were right. I was lying. So it was like, this is a caveat.
If you are planning to join us at our in person events, please please only
Caitlyn: Don't have the
Brandon: don't be careful how how close you get to Caitlyn. And she does it with love because
Caitlyn: A natural light detector.
Brandon: Yeah. Just just so you know, if you step into the same room with Caitlyn, she sees right through things and it's I used to hate that about you. Because I was like, why can't I do the the facade game that I do with the rest of the world? And you're like, well, we're married. And why do you want the facade?
And I'm like, I just kicked and screamed and I would close the conversation so fast because I'm like I'd cry, say, I'm sorry, read the book, whatever the book was I had found, and say we're good, we'll move on. You're like, I got some more questions. I'm like, no. And then I got everybody to agree with me that Caitlyn needs to stop asking questions, and that got us five years of hell. Mhmm.
Caitlyn: Yeah. If you're living a life of secrecy, hiddenness, lying, addiction, any sort, we say this all the time, you first started lying to yourself. Right? And so there are massive flags or markers that I can see your spouse most likely can see, is most likely trying to bring it up, and then you normally probably use denial tactics like blame, minimizing, shutting down, whatever, pushing things under their rug to try to get the conversation over with. But if you are trying to get out of your season quickly, most likely you have not actually even began to face your season.
That's why you're trying to run and hide. It's like, oh shoot, we flipped over one rock and that was really ugly. Like she knows about one betrayal, but dear God, don't tell her about the other seven.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: Don't tell her about the ten year porn addiction. Don't tell her about the time I almost slept with the secretary. Like don't tell her about all these like little secret walks I was doing with the neighbor. Like isn't it enough that she just knows about the one thing? Like isn't enough if she just knows the one biggest ugliest thing?
Like can't we just shut the conversation down? So when you make your focus shutting the conversation down, your spouse knows, now you know because I'm telling you. That's because there's something inside of you that's actually nervous, scared, afraid to face the full story, to face the full truth, to actually get everything out. That's why we talk about this in the beginning formation episodes of our seven steps is where we talk and hit home on huge inside our community at our event. It's really the same conversation everywhere because most people live their life with so many secrets.
Like I already knew that before we started this work and the more we've gotten deeper and deeper into this work with all of you, I'm like, holy moly. I would use other words if I were not on camera in front of a lot of people. Holy moly, I am so in shock at how many people live their life with an absorbent amount of massive secrets. Yeah. And they think it has absolutely no impact on their life, and yet it's poisoning them.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: And poisoning everybody around them. So we're talking about trust right now. If you're trying to expedite this process, shut down all the questions, say I'm sorry, say why do you have to keep bringing this up? You're running away from something else. You have other things I like to say that you need to bring to the light.
Our counselor eventually kicked us out. He actually gave a great analogy that of the iceberg. Right? When you're coming out of addiction, you're beginning to see you only actually see the tip of an iceberg because an iceberg only has like 10% above water and the rest of the 90% is underwater. And that's what it's like in your mind right now, in your subconscious mind.
90% of what you've done is is hidden underneath the water. You're only seeing 10% right now. You can see all a 100% of it. You have to be willing and able to see that. And if you try to speed up the conversation, you try to speed up this phase in time, you try to just get through this as fast as you can, hope your wife stops weeping, hope your wife stops asking any questions, hopefully she doesn't dig too much longer, hopefully she doesn't read these texts or open up this journal, then you miss the opportunity of seeing the 90%.
This isn't about confessing to your wife and getting a spanking. It isn't about confessing to your pastor. This isn't about confessing to a to an accountability group. This is about you understanding yourself. How many people are walking around with so many secrets they don't even know who they freaking are anymore?
They don't know what they feel. They don't know what they've even done with their life. Do you know how many people come into our space that and come into our events and realize that they were abused like forty years ago and they had no they had no idea because they had stuffed it down and shoved that into the deep deep 90% of their iceberg. They didn't even know that they had been abused. Like, that is why you don't rush this.
That is why you don't skip it. It's not to gain back privileges, to get your wife to stop crying. It's so that you can finally see your life, maybe for the first time ever, and understand who you are, and understand who you wanna create yourself to be, and what marriage you wanna finally begin creating. That's when trust gets restored because you're finally like, shoot, I'm gonna take this whole thing seriously now. That's when trust comes back onto the table because your spouse can tell, woah, this means something to them.
Like, they're serious about seeing this and getting to the bottom of this. Not because I'm crying, not because I'm asking questions, not because I'm exploding or making a big deal about this, but because they want it. That's when our marriage started to change. When Brandon goes, woah, this isn't about me, Caitlyn. This isn't about her.
This is about me, him, deciding, woah, I wanna actually see clearly. I wanna know myself. I myself, and I wanna heal myself.
Brandon: And that shift in focus, I think some people feel I think men tell themselves, well, that'd be selfish for me to focus on me. Like, I've hurt her so much. And the only way you can help her heal is if you're willing to embrace that attitude of curiosity we speak of so much. Because if you can't look and be like, why, like when you're regulated, when you are calm, when you are at peace, when you say, I want to understand why I did those things. Like, I, I actually, I need to know.
And it's not, I need to know because I just report to her and then she's happy now. It's like, I wanna know because I know that in the knowing, I unlock the ability to change. And that's what we have to remember is everything you see, you can change. The things you stuff down, the things you try to erase, you cannot change. So, well, like, Caitlyn was saying is if if you want to give her that 10% of the iceberg, you're right.
You found a couple of those text messages, but I never did anything else. Close it up. That closing up of that chapter means that the 90% of the things she still doesn't know about your past, they will still torment you. They will still run your life. And guess what?
You'll be back in a few months or in a couple of years, and it's gonna be bigger and uglier because she's gonna be more exhausted and you're gonna be more numb and checked out. That's why so many of you are like, it's been so long. It's because you haven't when you open up this a little bit, you gotta keep going. That's why we we say we're radical with the approach of how deep you go because do you guys wanna go through this again? Right.
Do you wanna relapse? Do you wanna go through the ringer again and again?
Caitlyn: You wanna actually exit the season. You literally just fully immerse yourself in it. Like people live a lifetime of addiction and relapse because they only ever stay at the tip of the iceberg. Like you literally gotta submerse yourself in if you wanna actually swim through and get to the other side.
Brandon: What happened to me is I got I got tired of having the conversation about my sexual history to the point where I wasn't shocked by it anymore too, though. Was like, wait, like I got to the point where I was like, I knew there was more I needed to understand. I also knew there wasn't going to be something else I was going to find that would surprise me or that I was scared about of you knowing about. I was just like, okay. I've like purged all that's within and what else remains.
And until you get to that place where you've actually like sat with yourself a day in and day out, and you're like, I want to see more. I want to see more. I want to have conversations. This is building something until you hit that momentum place. You're not going anywhere.
You're not rebuilding trust. You're just checking the boxes. You're just wanting to get your privileges back. You just want the questions to stop when you aren't worried about the questions, because you're not scared about what the answer could be. You're going in the right trajectory instead of saying, does this end?
You want to ask yourself, are we headed in the right trajectory where it's like, I want this as much as you do. And so like, like Caitlyn and I were just saying, I think with that, that immediate response that you can look for, if you've been the betrayed spouse is, is he open to having the conversation? Does he want to talk about this? Yep. And you can't fake that.
No. Like when you're asked or pressed about the the betrayal and you're like, why are we talking about this again? Like, you know, it's a red flag. Even if your wife can't put words, so it's like, well, that's not good.
Caitlyn: Why are you scared to talk about this? You're only scared to talk about things that you're hiding something from. Like, if you are not scared to talk about it, then you're not scared to talk about it. If you're trying to shut the conversation down, you're scared.
Brandon: And I'll give you the benefit of the day. Like, well, not worried about her finding out anything else. I just don't know how to handle her when she gets upset. I'll help you real quick. If you let this sink in, this can literally change how you do conflict around the betrayal.
When Caitlyn brings up that she's hurt, your spouse brings up that she's hurting from what you did. Consider that the pain she's sharing is her pain. Why are you afraid of the pain that she's in the disease that she's dying from? I'm not afraid of somebody else's like she's in pain. If it's ugly and it's coming out, why are you afraid of her hurting so much?
You're not, it's not because you're like, well, I just really care about her well-being. You're not afraid of that. That, that looks like care. When your wife brings her pain to you, make it about her. Meaning give her the time of day to talk about her pain.
You can tell, this is why I talk about embodiment being so important. I found that later on in our journey and it was massive. If you aren't afraid, like your body, your immediate reactions, if you're not afraid of her having her experience, then you can actually support her, validate her and be in the conversation like, well, she talks forever. She just keeps going on and on and on. She goes on and on and on because she hasn't gotten what she was looking for, which was validation, which was to be received.
I've shared the story and I'll share it again. When Caitlyn and I, we'd be laying in bed, having these heart deep, deep talks, I'd be like, just want to go to sleep, but we're still going twenty nineteen. And I'd be laying in bed and I'd be looking at her right in the eyes, but I was asleep, but she was feeling a lot. I remember I'd been hearing about miming emotions and like getting my body engaged. I was like, my gosh, I need to sit up.
I stood up on her side of the bed and I said, I got in like a fighting sense. I was like, tell me more. That's all you've got. What else? And she melts, and she starts crying.
And I'm like, you tell me. I just need to show with my body language that I care instead of you're not on the defense. When your wife's hurting from your betrayal, you don't even have to defend, hide. I gotta okay. I'll just get through this.
I'll just get berated. I'll just take it. I just sit I've heard some of you guys say, I just sit there and take it, and it's not what she wants. She doesn't want you to sit there and take it. She wants you to sit there, look her in the eyes, and say, wow.
This is big. What else? I've got questions about the bet about the betrayal. I don't feel like you love me. I totally see why you feel that way.
What are the thoughts that go through your head every day from that? What scares you? I don't have to recoil or shrink back because I'm not I have I'm safe. I'm not living a double life anymore. I'm not hiding anything else.
I've done some work so that I can now come towards her and be like, now I can finally make this about you. Caitlyn said this and it's still, it's hard to like real, to like sit with, but she, she told me, she's like, I know you'll be able to validate me at some point, but I was so numb when we, when we first were walking through this, she's like, I need you now. I know I'll get it later eventually, but I need you right now. And so this is why I'm so adamant about like, go take a cold shower. Start doing your embodiment routine two, three or four times a day because your wife is weeping today.
Don't wait until she gets numb. Wake up yourself so that you have something to offer her. That's what trust is. It's where it's like, we got in the fire together, and you built up the willingness to actually bring everything to her, so that you could then give her the gift of seeing her, and the impact that that truth has on her.
Caitlyn: Yeah. So can trust be rebuilt after betrayal? Yes. And not if you make it about regaining your privileges, because you're just rushing through the process, because you're scared of probably actually seeing all of what's there. And also not if you make it about getting the questions to stop, rushing through the process.
Because again, why are you doing that? Because you haven't fully seen the picture. So you cannot rebuild trust with someone who has not decided to fully get out the truth. That's like being like, sweetie, can you please trust me? Like I told you one lie, but not 90 other lies.
Like what? That is not a trustworthy person. Someone who is lying and hiding and keeping secrets is not a trustworthy person. Like I don't know why that is not a common thought thread, but but I'm going to make it a common thought thread. If you're still holding in lies, which is what you are doing, if you're trying to speed up the process or just regain back your privileges, that's what you're doing.
You're still withholding some parts of yourself from being brought to the light. If you're doing that, trust cannot be restored, okay? It doesn't doesn't matter how hard you quote try, if you're still withholding parts of yourself, you are living in you are living a double life. You are living in hidden hiddenness and secrecy. Therefore, you are not trustworthy.
So if you want to rebuild trust, you have to bring yourself fully into the light so that all of you can actually be seen by each other. We always say this intimacy is into me you see. When I can finally fully see into Brandon and when he can finally fully see into me, then we are talking about rebuilding trust because now we see each other. If you have any sort of rooms or cabinets or closets where you are closing things off and the doors are closed and they're locked, then I can't see. If he has parts of him that he's hidden, I can't see into him.
If I have parts of me that are hidden, he can't see into me. We don't have intimacy because we don't have into me you see. This isn't about creating intimacy with everyone in the world, I'm talking about in your union. The one who you said I unite my soul to, I will become one with for the rest of my life. If you are keeping parts of yourself from the one you have said I'll become one with, then you don't have intimacy.
And if you don't have intimacy into me, you see, then you cannot rebuild trust because you can't see each other.
Brandon: You might say, well, I wanna be I wanna be honest then. Like, I wanna get my I I just got caught We'll give you this as an example. I just got caught lying about porn. My wife just found it. She's asking what else?
And when I think about it, I go blank. There's nothing like, I'm like, I want to see more when Caitlyn had caught me lying about how I was using social media and all the raunchy content I've been looking at. I said, it's been two or three things. And that's it. That's it.
That's all I would, that's all I could see. And it was thousands of images and videos and profiles. It was thousands of things. And I told her that's it. It was all the other things I'd lied about throughout our marriage.
So how, if you're in this place of like, okay, just got caught. I personally cannot see my own story. We have people come to our events. They're like, I told my wife about these significant affairs, but I forgot about the time I kissed this woman. And I I had this this event.
And I'm like, woah, like the mind is so powerful. So this is what you do when you have this initial disclosure. You've got like a a we'll call it a seventy two hour window where it's like, she, she found that you were lying or you got this, this first thirty days. Make it your one focus. This is why I don't even know why people are still like watching TV in the middle of this, but like make it your one focus to remember.
And what you can do is, and I would have, don't I want to, I'm not going to retry doing this whole process, but I know how to do it now. So I'll tell, I'll tell all you guys how you can walk through it, but if you got caught lying, look at what the behaviors are. So you look, okay. How much time am I spending on my device? This cause you can look at things almost like trick yourself into seeing the truth.
It's like, okay. Okay. I spent this much time a day on, on my phone. Like you go check your screen time. You came and remember, you realize, okay, I spent five hours day on these apps.
Okay. How many work trips have you gone on? Okay. I went on 30 work trips this year. Was the woman that you had this fling with how many of the work trips Shionka?
She was on 15 of the work trips. So I'm on 15 work trips with this woman. Okay. How many lunch breaks do you spend talking with this woman? How many messages or how many of these live porn chats have you gone to?
It's okay. I got message. I I go let's see. Probably okay. That's 20.
So you start getting this broad stroke. And then what you would do in that disclosure of the truth, it's like, hey. I want you to make it 10 times mess bigger, messier, disgusting, perverted. Because the whole point is you're gonna sugarcoat this in your mind. So you would bring it to her say, you know what?
Here's the truth of how I've been living. I've spent hours looking at raunchy content on social media. I've gone to porn multiple times a week over our whole marriage. There's a woman at work that I've gone on lunches with over a dozen times. Things haven't gotten physical yet, but I had thought about it.
You begin to actually just say what is instead of her having to rip it out of you. You go and look, you said, this is this is my reality. And if it doesn't scare you, it should. That's why, again, you have to get into your body. Cause this is not about preserving the double life, the fake life.
This is about preserving the potential for you two to come alive and for you to come alive for the first time. And so, like, one night early on after I was still numb and I just could not get myself to feel. I called like 6 I called a like six guys in one night. Of these were from a church. Couple of these were from a men's group I was a part of.
And I just kept calling and I kept, I think Caitlyn had left the house at night for something. And I was like, I don't get it. Not like Caitlyn's crazy, but like, I literally like, I don't get it. And I want to see. I want to understand the pain.
Like, I want to get this. And it was like after I called the first guy, it's like a fifteen minute call. Was like, I'm still numb. I don't get it. I want to wake up.
Like, will you pray for me? Will you will you talk with me? I want to get through this. I want to wake up after like the fifth call. I was able to cry and feel something.
So do whatever you need to do that doesn't harm you or others. They would allow you to hit that breaking point where it's like, I can feel I can feel something Cause that's where the clarity is going to come. As a spouse is looking like we talked about the predictors of change when divorcing an option in the previous episodes, is he putting himself in the environment where he's waking up and wants to see? That's what rebuilds trust. When Caitlyn sees me sitting outside naked journaling in the freezing cold, when she sees me calling other men, when she sees me journaling, when she sees me staying focused, it's the things that aren't spoken.
Mhmm. It's the things where she's like, he woke up different. He feels different. He's not as anxious. And that's what we, where we kind of want to round this out is it's when my core identity has changed, when there's been a transformation in my, when our values have become the same values where she's not having to be like, Hey, you want the same thing I do.
Right? It's like, Oh, look at this. Look at his schedule. Look at the way he's interacting with our children, his work, his body, his emotions with me and my pain and my questions. This is not a man that's numb and wants his life.
He wants to escape his life. When you see a spouse, it's no longer trying to leave reality. I'll get behind that. I can see the progress there. Somebody just said in our community, I thought it was so well said in our, in our grounded union couples out, they said I can do slow progress.
This was a spouse that had been betrayed. She said I can do slow progress, but I can't do avoidance. And I was like, woah, like there's, there's millions of spouses out there that have been betrayed. It's like, look, I've been patient as hell with you. I'll do a few more months of hell.
If I can actually see this become your primary focus.
Caitlyn: If you know the results.
Brandon: If you want to avoid the conversation, like we've been saying, you don't want to talk about this, there's more shit underneath, and we're not I'm not I'm done playing that game. Like, can't like, we're done. So if you want to rebuild trust, get in the fire.
Caitlyn: You know that trust can be rebuilt after betrayal, when connection is the end goal. So the end goal isn't rushing, getting the questions to stop, the end goal isn't getting your privileges back, the end goal isn't getting back into the good boy or good girl box. The end goal is a new marriage, one with intimacy, connection, becoming a new man, becoming a new woman, becoming a new marriage, right? That's when you know trust can be rebelled. I always say trust goes with transformation because it's the main question that every woman wants to ask in our space is, Caitlyn, how do I know when I can trust him again?
Caitlyn, how did you know when you could trust Brandon again? And I retraced my steps and was like, woah, how did I know? Because I remember I read through all of my I had like 400 journal entries on my phone actually, because I used to go for walks, go for a run, go sit outside, and I would just journal on my phone. Right? I would just write on a notepad.
So 400 notes open that I literally have a category called betrayal. And some of them I will never read out loud. They're just absolutely horrific because they're the real raw thoughts of mine at that time in the really deepest darkest season of my life. And I I reread through a lot of them because I read some of them out loud at our Maui event last year. And so many of them are, when can I trust him again?
When can I trust him again? Will I ever trust him again? Will he ever be a trustworthy man again? Of course, there's many more words all in there, but the heart cry for months and months and months and months and months is how in the world does someone know they can trust someone who's been lying our whole marriage, right? I say this all the time, but I went to a counselor that we went to together, and then I went to him separately one time.
I was about to get on the airplane with our kids to leave Brandon because I had had enough. I was like, I need a break. I'm gonna go to my family's house for a week. And I go to this counseling session before I'm about to get on the airplane, and I'm just like, he just keeps lying. Like he just keeps lying and lying and lying and lying and lying.
And I'm like, I'm willing to stay with you. Stop lying though. Like just get the freaking truth out. And the counselor's like, yeah, you know, he most likely is a pathological liar. And I'm just like, I don't even know.
I'm like 22 at the time. I'm like, what is a pathological liar? And he's like, a pathological liar is someone who's always going to lie. I'm like, okay, what do we do with him then? What do we do with this pathological liar?
And he's like, oh, pathological liars are unhealable. I forget his exact words, but essentially you cannot fix or heal a pathological liar. They're always gonna be a liar. I remember looking at him like, why would anybody be married to a pathological liar? He was like, that's just the decision you get to make, right?
So I'm literally thinking, oh my gosh, I'm married to a liar. He's always going to be a liar, right? So I'm literally like, how in the world do you trust somebody who is actually always been lying and potentially is always going to be lying? Right? That's the place that I'm coming from.
And I retrace my steps now that everyone asks me this question. I'm like, woah. How did I know I could trust him again? Even though he'd been lying to me for five years and my counselor thought he was a path by the way, he's not pathological liar and I don't even believe in a pathological liars. I just believe that nobody actually is talking loud enough about getting to the 90% of the iceberg.
Brandon: I mean, if you lie consistently for years Yes. They're gonna got you got some paths, programs Yes. And
Caitlyn: patterns Exactly. To keep it all together. Wired in, but you can wire out. You guys, it's like not rocket science. We're not like we're not even geniuses, you guys.
And I understand
Brandon: I mean, my wife's pretty smart.
Caitlyn: And we understand as non geniuses that the brain is completely multiple. Yeah. You get to choose the brain you have, you guys. You don't have to be a pathological liar. If you spent since early childhood into your thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, some people coming to our events in their eighties.
If you've spent that many years lying, you've got some stuff to rewire, yet your brain can be remolded. There's nobody that's gone too far. You chose to take it too far and you can choose to retract it all the way. The hardest part is literally facing yourself, facing that 90% that you've been running from and going, woah, I'm done running, I'm gonna see clearly. Back to the beginning, when I retraced my steps and looked at, okay, when did I begin to trust him again?
It's like, I began to trust him when he began to transform. This was nothing about words, you guys. If your spouse has been betraying you and then telling you over and over again, oh, sweetie, I'm working on it. Oh, honey, you know, I'm doing this. I'm going to the counselor.
I'm doing this, this, this. If you can't see the transformation, don't offer any trust back. Trust is not rebuilt with words. Trust isn't even necessarily rebuilt with only time.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: Trust is rebuilt with transformation. Yeah. Which takes time, but if they ain't transforming, that time don't matter. Time isn't gonna equate to change. You have to literally get up off the couch.
You saw this on the last episode. Get up off the couch and actually do something about it. When I saw my husband's entire schedule change, I knew, oh goodness, we're going to get somewhere. If your spouse has betrayed you and they wake up and do the same freaking thing every single day, they're not transforming. How?
How can they transform doing the same thing that they've always done? They're going to stay the same person. Okay? When your spouse wakes up, takes a cold shower, does an embodiment for ten minutes, gets in their journal, makes breakfast, goes for a walk with the family, goes to work, comes back instead of watching TV, instead of getting on their phone, they turn their phone on airplane mode. They stick it in the closet for the rest of the night.
They sit you down and they go, woah, I'm gonna begin to unpack my life. Look at my journal. Look what I look what I'm finally seeing clearly. Here, let's rewire it together through the four hours. Let's dig deep.
Let's do this again. Let's go watch the sunset. Let's play games with our kids. Sounds like a good idea. That's when you go, okay, shoot, they're taking this seriously.
They're embodying the predictors of change like we talked about in the last episode. That's when you know you can rebuild trust. Yeah. When they embody those four predictors of change, they will change. That's why we call them the predictors of change.
They will heal, they will transform because you can't fake those things. Yeah. And you're not gonna sign up to do those just to go through the motions because that's hard. You can't do the four predictors of change just trying to go through the motions because they're deep and heavy and they're only for people who are actually committed to changing. So you don't have to offer back any sort of trust or forgiveness is a very classic, you know, Christian track.
Like, oh, my husband oh, yeah. This is a whole different rabbit hole. But my husband, you know, he's He's repented. He said sorry. He's gone to the altar.
He's prayed. He's fasted. He's read his Bible. And so now I'm going to forgive him because Christ has forgiven him. And I get it you guys, like I get it.
We believe the whole same narrative. I believe that narrative for five years. Guess what? My husband who had repented, who I kept forgiving kept doing the same toxic crap over and over and over again.
Brandon: We got a problem.
Caitlyn: Because he wasn't actually changing or healing. Just saying a certain prayer isn't necessarily going to transform your entire life. You still got to get off your butt and do something. You still got to get up and do something.
Brandon: Not to everybody that just offended. We are not anti your connection to God. No. We want you to take real actions.
Caitlyn: Exactly.
Brandon: And if your faith inspires you to do that as it ideally should, then take the action that, that, that, elicits. If I was willing to get vulnerable at a men's group at man camp for the church put on, then it means I have the balls to get vulnerable with my wife. If I can pray in secret to God to forgive me for what I've done, the act of that asking for forgiveness for this heinous things I've done looks like a life transformed. It looks like pain validated. It doesn't look like the closure and the forgetting and the removal of that.
It looks like the power and capacity to face it without shame, without running away and without hiding from it. That's freedom. That's what we're after. And so use your faith. If you are a person of faith as the enablement to look at the ugly.
Caitlyn: Mhmm. And to do something about it. Yeah. Not using prayer as a cover up of, okay, I prayed. Again, that's just checking the boxes.
I prayed, I went to church, I did the things, so now therefore I'm good.
Brandon: Mhmm.
Caitlyn: It's like, okay, great. Pray, go to church, go to your small group and get off your phone.
Brandon: Talk to your wife.
Caitlyn: Get honest, see yourself clearly, rewire your brain and take back your life. Like, it's like both and it's not just, oh, I prayed. So now I'm a good boy. And now I don't actually have to take any responsibility to clean up my mess. It's like, woah, woah, woah, woah, woah.
Like, where did you start believing that narrative? And if it works, why is it not working?
Brandon: I fasted for forty days, like I told you guys, and I didn't eat food. I drink broth, juice and water. It was primarily so that I could rid myself of my evil things I was doing. I chose to not eat for forty days instead of actually just have the heartfelt conversations with
Caitlyn: Being honest.
Brandon: Instead of just being honest. Something like I'd rather fast for forty days and be honest. I tell you what, that forty day fast screwed up my metabolism for like three or four years. Yep. And I still had to get honest.
Caitlyn: It wasn't till like three years later that you decided to finally be honest.
Brandon: I'm not. Again, I I got a project coming out soon on a different work on Brandon Talks Jesus about spirituality and spiritual reformation. So we're we're very much pro Mhmm. Maturity if you're a Christian. This is the act of maturity.
Caitlyn: Mhmm. Exactly.
Brandon: Is that what I believe impacts my behavior. You don't believe something that doesn't change what you do today. So if you believe that God loves you and He's for you, let that move you to do the real work of rebuilding trust. All of that to say, can trust be rebuilt? Yes, it can.
And it's when you take your focus off of the surface level things that trust gives you back. It's not about getting your privileges. It's not about getting her questions to stop. It's because your values have aligned with hers to such a degree that I don't ever want to change the subject. Great.
We're on the same page now. We're not going to pretend that the betrayal didn't happen. We're actually so comfortable talking about it. To guess what? Exactly.
It might end in tears, but it ends in connection. Her pain is the opportunity for connection until that becomes the let's talk more about it until it becomes your knee jerk reaction. Trust isn't getting rebuilt.
Caitlyn: When you're rebuilding trust, you're not making it about getting the questions over. And I want to bring it full circle to where we are now in our marriage. We're not still sitting on the couch weeping from all the betrayal. I'm not sitting on the couch weeping from betrayal. I remember people came up to me at the event like because I'll cry at the event sometimes because I feel the emotions of the room.
I feel where people are because I have empathy for where they're at in their season because I've been there before. And people are like, oh my gosh, like here you are so many years after this. Like, are you still so like, I don't know if I could handle being devastated for years and years and years after cleaning up all the mess and it's like, woah, woah, woah. I do not live an everyday experience where anything that Brandon did to betray our marriage haunts me at Like I live a life completely free even as we talk about it, as Brandon's writing his book on it, as we teach on it in our workshops, as we do coaching calls weekly, it's like I feel like I'm talking a movie about a movie from a lifetime ago. Like it feels like another life I lived because of how connected and full and beautiful the life we've created is.
And I said this in a coaching call one time too, you know, when you if you set out to do a major hike, like we're gonna set out to hike Kilimanjaro, like, you know that the hike to get up there is excruciating, but you know it's 100% worth it because of the end destination. Right? I look at everything I went through, and I know this is so cliche and everyone says this, but it's so so true. I look at everything I went through. All of the tears and the pain and the nights I didn't sleep and the nights we were just going after it and it was excruciating.
Yeah. Right? I look at all of that and I go, woah, that was my hike to the top of Kilimanjaro. I would do that all over again, over and over and over and over and over because I know the fruit of the other side and I know that I have to take that path to get there. I have to take the path where we both finally see clearly, get fully honest, and create intimacy into me you see.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: And I know because I've been living it for years and years and years now. I know how good it is. It makes that pain that I went through feel like a blip in time. And when people begin to comment on it and share their stories, I'm like, oh, I know. I remember it.
I remember it. I remember feeling like I was suffocating. Like I I have journal entries where I'm like, I feel like I am drowning, gasping for air, literally gasping for air. And I would go back and do it over again because the life we've created is so beautiful. So if you're like, woah, like I wanna rebuild trust, but that sounds terrible.
Like we just have to cry every single day for the rest of our life. It's like, no. You're gonna go through your hike and there's gonna be difficulty, but you're gonna get to that end destination that's beautiful and connected and whole. And if you're like, Caitlyn, do you trust him? I have 100% trust in my husband.
I do not check his phone. I don't sit down and interrogate him and question him. I don't ask him, oh, did you notice her boobs? Did you notice her butt? I haven't done that in years.
I don't sneak in to read his journals. I don't look over his shoulder when he's texting. There's 100% trust and safety in our relationship. Not that I couldn't read his journal. Not that he would be offended.
Not that he would be offended if I picked up his phone and read it. I don't need to though. That's how deep your trust can get. People like have viral reels like, should you give your spouse access to your phone? And it's like, yeah, that's like elementary, right?
But if you feel like you have to have access to your spouse's phone, you have a disconnect in your trust because neither of us surveillance any of each other's things because we have such deep trust in each other. I went from thinking my husband was a pathological liar that would lie to me for the rest of my life to never worrying, never spending an ounce of my energy wondering if he's lying to me. Because that's how radical your trust can be restored when you take it seriously and you actually get up off the couch and take the steps to transform yourself.
Brandon: If you're a couple that's like, man, y'all are crazy but there's something here for us. We are doing our two day workshop in August 2026 in San Diego. You can join us in person and be there for two days. Day one is me with the men. I'm not there to shame you. I'm there to empower you. Day two, Caitlyn will be there with me. Wives are welcome to join for day two and we'll spend a day together as a big group and we'll be giving you tools, exercises, mindset shifts that will allow you to get back into your relationship. You can go to groundedunion.com or click the show notes below this to check out our in person event.
And if you need support, like I I can't wait till August or you're listening to this in the future and you missed that. You can go to the show notes or go to groundedunion.com. You can also apply to join our couples app where we'll give you our grounded intimacy program, walk you through the daily steps you can take to rebuild trust, to get back into your body. We do weekly coaching in there bring a new topic to you each week. I would love to have you in there and support you in that capacity if that if that would serve you.
And if you haven't downloaded, if you like, if you've been listening to this, like, haven't I I'm broke. I I I don't wanna invest in anything right now. That's fine. I wrote a marriage crisis roadmap. It's a free download. Go to groundedunion.com and you can download it and it's where find out which part of a marriage crisis you're in. We'd love to share that guide with you.
And hopefully when you're listening to this, I will be almost done with my book. So you can check the show notes for that or go to 7stepsbook.com. And, my book will be out very soon. We'll be talking about that more.
I look forward to sharing that with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next week for episode three.