It was physical affairs. I traveled a lot and there were some one night stands with strangers and there was one while we were engaged before we even got married. It was, one that I stayed with for over two years, but, the rest were strangers.

I wanna welcome you guys back to season three of the grounded union podcast, where we're talking with couples working through the healing process, going through the details, going through sometimes the valleys to get up onto the mountain, to get back to a connected state. Today, we're talking with Russell and Kim on the Zoom call. You cannot see them. We get the privilege of talking with them, but you just get to hear the audio from our conversation as we go back and forth. I hope you glean something from our conversation today with Russell and Kim.

Russell and Kim, thank you guys for joining us. Could you give us a quick snapshot of where you are right now and what healing looks like for your relationship?

Well, where we are, just north of Atlanta, Georgia. It's noon here. But, we just met and started dating. We're thinking about getting married. Actually, were high school sweethearts before you were born.

We've been together thirty eight years. We've been married since '93. I'd like to say it's all been great, but kids came and I got to focus in on my career. And I don't know, it just seemed we, we drifted, and now the kids are gone and trying to reconnect.

Is there anything else you'd wanna add to that before we we have Kim Kim share a little bit with us?

I think you know from me being in the in the weekly every week Mhmm. That I've shared before that I haven't been faithful. That's been very damaging to our relationship.

Thank you for for sharing that with us, Russell. Kim, where is the where is the pain, and and where are you currently in the relationship?

Hopeful but guarded. It's just been a long road. I mean, yeah, we've been married for thirty two years, and together, six more than that. But I never drifted. I was steadfast.

I homeschooled our kids. You know, I was there always trying to bring him back to where he should be priorities and whatnot, but, it's just been a vicious cycle.

So when you say cycle, has there been multiple instances of the infidelity and maybe give us a little more detail so we understand what that, what that looks like.

Yeah, no less than eight times that I'm aware of in the last, say 23.

And then Russell, one of the things that I, I really like to hone in on is this is not going to be about shame. I can tell that because of the way you tell your story that you're, you are ashamed of of the details. And one of the biggest encouragements that we wanna give you in this hour is to help you and Kim heal. Not that you wanna be proud of what you've done, but taking full ownership and saying that is what I've done. It looks like Kim, your shoulders are touching.

Kim's still here. She's not super. I mean, she's probably surprised by the frequency and the duration, but she's still here. So even though your soul might be crying out saying, I'm not worthy of love. I'm not capable of loving my wife.

I'm a failure. Just look to your side and it's like, woah, she's still here. What in the world? Why is she still here? Something about you she's willing to fight for.

She's willing to look at you and say, yep, you've done all that. And I'm still wanting to heal. So Russell, have you allowed that to sink in that she's still here?

Yeah, I don't deserve her. And I remind myself every morning that I'm lucky that she's still here. I'm blessed to have a good wife despite how I've treated her.

Yeah. So the infidelity, was that porn, emotional affairs, physical affairs? What what was that?

It was physical affairs. I traveled a lot. There were some one night stands with strangers. And there was one while we were engaged before we even got married. There was one that I stayed with for over two years, but, the rest were strangers.

Can you describe to us a little bit more about your we could call it an addiction or describe a little bit more about your sexual story. We'll keep it I'll I'll take us back further, but just so I can understand the fuller picture, your sexual story within the thirty two years of your marriage. So you've had eight affairs. Some of them have been ongoing for a couple years, and then, like you said, some of them are strangers. And then intertwined in this, is there other aspects of your addiction, like, let's say, pornography or social media, anything else that kinda goes hand in hand with these affairs?

I've never had an issue, I guess, with pornography.

And by issue, do you mean you've never looked at pornography in thirty two years?

When I was five years, six years old, I spent the night with a friend and he showed me his dad's and I thought it was gross and just never really wanted to look at it after that. But when I was in college, I enjoyed looking at swimsuit magazines, as I guess you could call soft porn. I've never really been addicted to porn. I have drank. I have smoked cigars.

I can say no, apparently, to smoking. Somebody's offered me a cigar. I I can say no. Somebody offered me a drink. I can say no.

But meet some stranger that wants to have sex with me, I have a hard time saying no. And personally, I'm trying to find out why. I wanna know where is that coming from. I don't understand that. It's not the way I was raised.

You know? I could I could tell you how my father was an alcoholic and came home and beat us, but, I mean, I could tell you that, but it wouldn't be true. My truth is my father is a Southern Baptist preacher, and I was raised in the church. I taught Sunday school and I sang in the choir and I led Bible studies and was Boy Scout leader. So this is not the way I was raised.

And I'm ashamed that I have done things that go completely against the way I was taught. And I don't understand why. I don't know where it's coming from. I've been seeing a counselor for a few weeks now, and we've talked about how I was molested as a teenager by our youth pastor for about two years and the struggles that came from that and trying to hide it and blaming myself until I was in college and my father found out about it and explained to me that it wasn't my fault. But I'm trying to figure out if that has anything to do with it.

I'm not looking for an excuse. I wanna own this. I know what I did was wrong. I just I wanna stop. I wanna know why, what caused it, and what have I gotta do to stop it?

When was the last time you had sex with another woman outside of your marriage?

New Year's Eve. Two years ago?

You would know. You would know better than her because you were the one who had sex.

Two years ago. New Year's Eve, two years ago.

Two years

in in a few weeks.

And so what is the the struggle now is you're saying that it hasn't it's been two years since you've had an affair, right? And then you were just saying you want you wanna be able to stop. What feels like what part of it feels like you can't stop it now? Like, you feel like you still want to act out in that way?

Yeah. Right now, I feel like I could say no. Yeah. No problem. But then when I'm faced with it, when I'm in the situation, I wanna say no, but I don't.

And, you know, right now, it's easy to say no. I wouldn't do it again. But I'm scared I might. She's scared I might.

How do you find yourself in those situations all of a sudden where women are asking you to have sex with them?

Traveling a lot with my work, especially before this current job, traveled a lot and would find myself in the hotel bar, having a drink, talking to people, making acquaintances, where you from, that kind of thing. And I know it just seems like things happen. I don't understand why because that's not the way I was raised.

We're gonna help you understand why. I just like to gain a little more information. And, I think Brandon's got something great to say. I think I want to affirm that the story, we're gonna go, we'll go back and we'll trace some more stories here. The story that you're sharing of being molested as a teenager, 100% impacts every decision you make moving forward until, which sounds like it's only been a recent awareness, until you become awareness of that or aware of that situation, of that story, choose to recognize it and and heal from that, then it's like, it's almost like this puzzle piece.

Right? Like, picture a puzzle that's like, have you ever done a puzzle and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm just missing this one piece and you can't finish the entire puzzle and it just bothers you and bothers you and bothers you. Right? These are pieces of your story that are like floating missing puzzle pieces. Pieces.

So it's like the core of who you are doesn't really feel complete because you've left all these puzzle pieces roaming around. This is why we talk so much about exploring your story. You have to be able to grab that puzzle piece and look at it and put it into the puzzle of your entire life because when it gets in there, you see the full picture. Right? Then you're like, oh, because I've heard you say a lot.

I don't understand why. I don't this wasn't how I was raised. If you listen to your languaging a lot too, like you used, you know, the phrase, I don't deserve her. I'm ashamed. It almost I'm I'm sensing a lot of shame here, maybe even a lot of shame and guilt about how your parents could have perceived you as as you had described them, you know, being pastors and religious leaders, you kinda growing up into that that culture.

And then now paired with a wife who stayed by your side, who's loving and understanding, you're kind of in this this little mix of feeling ashamed, feeling guilt. And so as we navigate the rest of the podcast, become aware of the word. This is a lot of what you're you're hearing us teach inside the app. Become aware of the language and the words that you're using of like, okay, you know, how can I be fully responsible for all of my life and all of my story, which means that I'm fully responsible for all of the healing that I will then create in my marriage? And that's gonna completely transform the way that you approach all of this and even speak.

Because as I'm asking questions, which obviously some of this maybe feels slightly less natural, and Kim can maybe affirm if this is always how you answer questions or if this is just on this format. Sometimes when asking questions, it almost feels like we're going like this. Kim, do you feel like when you're trying to understand his story, do you feel like you're kinda trying to like, pull it out of him?

He can be very manipulative with his words. I don't know if that's intentional. Mhmm. Unfortunately, I perceive him as a deceit a deceitful person at this point. I can't trust anything he says or does because I've spent so many years not knowing something's right and not understanding until much later why it wasn't right.

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I think that gives a lot of context and understanding because I'm noticing that in, you know, twenty ish minutes here, however many minutes we've been we've been chatting together. So I can only imagine what thirty two years of that feels like. So, you know, as we explore some more, you know, we can kind of even get into some practicing of how can we get into an emotional posture, a position where Russell, you're like, I wanna see why.

Instead of saying, I don't understand why. I don't understand why I did this. I wanna see why I did this. Does this make sense? We talked about this a lot on the last episode.

If you just keep saying, I don't know why. I don't know why I did this. I just don't understand. Then your denial structure, your brain is gonna be like, oh, he doesn't know why, that's fine, I don't need to tell him. Where if you go, I wanna see why.

Yeah. Your brain's gonna go, alright Russell, let me dump it on you. Here's why, here's the memories, here's the stories, here's the situations. And then Kim's gonna look and go, woah. That was my husband who I thought was deceitful, who was deceitful for thirty two years.

And look at him, he actually wants to explore his story with eagerness. He wants to see clearly because there's only one person who can see Russell's story clearly and that's you Russell. And if you want to then see that story clearly and bring that to Kim in union as you've united your souls together for three decades and known each other for almost four decades, that's more than my lifetime. That's absolutely incredible. And yet at the same time, that's worthy of being like, woah, I wanna advance into a whole new level of intimacy for the next forty plus years that you're gonna be together because up until now, you haven't even experienced intimacy together because she hasn't been able to see into you.

So as we're as we're talking through this, it's like Russell, you're deciding, do actually wanna see for myself who I am, who I've been, the decisions I've made, and do I wanna heal that and bring that into my marriage to be seen, to experience intimacy?

Russell, so you were taken advantage of by your youth pastor for a long stint of time. Yeah. Two years. An unfathomable thing that has sadly happened to many people. And I was curious, what was your first, so that would be an unwanted, call that an unwanted sexual experience, something that was done to you.

When was the first time you had sex when we'll call it a positive experience? So you had sex and it was your choice.

Next time I had sex was with Kim and it was, I thought it was an enjoyable experience. I, there was a lot of anticipation and kind of unknown excitement, a lot of emotions. I wouldn't say it was very romantic, but it was, you know, for teenagers. It was what I had looked forward to for so long.

So your first, your first sexual experience was with Kim. So these, we'll call them the sex with strangers. You hadn't had any sexual experience in-

After we got married, yeah.

And you said before when you were engaged.

And then the engaged story.

While we're engaged, with, one of my really good friends, but most were strangers. And I would say most of the time I had been drinking, but I can't say that was the cause because there were sometimes I was completely sober. So I can't blame it on drinking. I do want to find out why, and I've been asking my counselor to help me figure out why. I talked to my dad, trying to find out more about his history.

And he told me some stories about when they first got married that I was not aware of. I didn't know my parents were separated for a while, but I'm just trying to find out why, because I want to know why.

I like the shift in the way you're asking that question that I can feel that even feels different. Languaging. Kim, question for you before I go back to exploring with Russell a more. Why have you chosen to stay through all of this?

Mostly commitment, mostly faith, but I've definitely had my fill.

You've had you've had your what? Could you say it, Omar? Fill. Your fill. Like, this has been an

Like, I'm done.

Yeah. Okay.

This is kinda your final straw.

Never. He was never expressed being unhappy or me not being what he wanted. It was always behind my back. Like there was never an issue he brought to the table that needed to be addressed. And so even though I didn't know at the time what was wrong, I sought out help for what I knew such as alcohol or whatever and so Celebrate Recovery you know that was a point in time where I thought okay now he'll figure it out but it just it always circles back.

I want to piece together a little bit of this puzzle that doesn't make sense. Because what I think I'm discovering here is that there's actually major missing pieces to this puzzle. And Russell, you're saying, I want to, I wanna see, and I wanna understand why. Right? And a lot of your answers are actually gonna be in these major missing puzzle pieces.

And so here's a couple things where I go, I bet you Kim has had these same red flags, where I kinda go, oh, this is a little bit of a red flag for me. Because the story I'm hearing is there's, your languaging around is actually hard to fully understand. The story I'm hearing though is that there's been, you saw pornography when you were five, you didn't like it, and you've never viewed pornography since. Is that right? You said you'd never viewed pornography since the time someone showed you pornography.

I saw a video twenty five years ago that would be considered pornography, but nothing since.

Okay. So that that's some of the puzzle there. And then you're saying that so most people when they were exposed to pornography, then their story is then they have an addiction to pornography, right? So then there's this missing phase where you're exposed to pornography, and then you have an unwanted sexual experience all the way into your teenage years. So then we have this kind of gap of time where there's no there's no sexual history.

Right? The teenage years happen, you have an unwanted sexual experience, then simultaneously, you guys are having sex together as high school sweethearts. I can't remember if you said that off air or on air, that Russell and Kim are high school sweethearts. They have been together for pretty much their entire lives. And so then you have this sexual experience, and then from there on out, it's just been eight.

So we're gonna say eight in thirty two years, eight one night stands total. I don't know if it's is it eight affair partners or eight one night stands?

A combination. There was one that lasted a couple years, and there was one that I got with twice, but I would say six of them were strangers.

Strangers meaning it was just a one time we had sex and we never saw each other again. And then the other two, those are kind of could be sex more often than just once. Is that right?

There was one that I was with twice, and then there was one I was with for over two years.

How often for those two years that you were together?

Like, week when I was supposed to be at work.

Okay. Every week. And then all of these times have been while you're on a work trip. Is that right? Or while you're supposed to be working?

When I was traveling. Yeah.

Okay. So while you're traveling.

The future affair wasn't while he was traveling. That was he couldn't hold the job because he was preoccupied with that relationship. Meanwhile, I'm at home raising my kids, and he's worried about raising her kids.

Okay. So that job, it wasn't necessarily when you were at work. That was just in the day to day of life.

Yeah. He would say, good morning. I love you. Leave and resume the relationship with her.

Okay. And you would go to her house, wrestle? Yeah. Okay. Did you refer to this woman as your good friend?

No. That was the That was the one when I was in college before we got married.

Okay. And so this woman wasn't this woman wasn't a good friend necessarily, it was just someone How'd you meet this woman?

Her kid was in my boy scout troop, Pep Scout troop, I was a scout leader, and we met through boy scouts.

Okay. So what I wanted to piece together here while I was playing it all out is there's this exposure to pornography at five, and then we go from five to the teenage years of the unwanted sexual experience, then we go into having sex together, and then we go into eight is what you're calling it, eight people that you've now had sex with in thirty two years. So that would be pretty sporadic over the course of thirty two years. And then you're saying there's no other unwanted sexual behavior. And what I wanna propose here is that that feels like, maybe Brandon will say something with this too, that to me feels like an incomplete story, which I'm not wanting to sit over here across the computer and say, Russell, you're lying.

Because that's not really I know I can assume what I think is going on here, which is that you haven't hit this pivotal moment where you're like, I wanna see it all. So right now, you can see the top of the iceberg. We say this all the time. The top of the iceberg is these these affairs that are really clear in your conscious mind right now. The bottom of the iceberg, you're not choosing to see yet.

And I can hear it in your languaging. Kim can feel it in your demeanor. Oh, here's the other piece of the puzzle that's a little confusing. Is someone You're saying that it's been two years without having acted out an affair, and then you're saying you have no other sexual addictions. Right?

Yet, there's still so much of a rift between the two of you guys. It's clear that you'd have a history of being together, and then it's also clear that there's not a lot of love, connection, and intimacy in the union. So for someone who hasn't acted out in two years, yet is also feeling you don't feel free like you said, you're kinda like, I don't know if I would choose that, if I wouldn't choose that. There's major missing pieces to the puzzle here. So there's there's a lot of what I would call red flags, a lot of what I would call under the iceberg situations, a lot of what I would call missing pieces to the puzzle.

So you'll always actually be unsure of why you did what you did until you see the whole puzzle. Right? And you can trick yourself. That's actually a strategy. It is a complete strategy to not want to see everything so that the puzzle piece stays all disconnected.

At your core, you do wanna see who you are. At your core, you do wanna heal your marriage. I can tell. I can tell that at the core that you wanna see the truth. And so what I'm revealing to you, not because I'm saying, you're not telling the truth.

What I'm helping, I'm almost piercing through the ice right there and going, woah. Just so you know, there's a lot more that you can see. There's a lot more that your subconscious mind can bring up for you Yeah. To fill in all these gaps and to fill in these puzzle pieces, and then you won't be asking why anymore. You won't be asking how.

You'll be like, oh, here's why. Here's what's been going on. Here's why I don't feel free. Here's the stories. Here's all this world of things I've done that I haven't wanted to see.

It's all in there. It can all be accessed and it can all be seen. You have to want it and allow it. And I can tell to your core that you want to be free. Yeah.

And potentially, there hasn't been anyone that said, hey, the path to your freedom is seeing everything clearly. And the number one thing, I say this every time, I'll say it in every episode, everywhere, The the number one thing that keeps you from seeing clearly is your denial structure. And the number one way to break down your denial structure is by saying, I am safe to see all of this clearly. I am safe for every memory to surface, for everything to come out so that I can be aware myself. Because when we live in denial, we lie to ourselves first.

How do I know all this? I watched this happen. I was also married to an extremely deceitful man who told me, I don't look at anything online. I don't objectify women outside. I don't scroll on social media and see all these images that are provocative.

And I don't do this and I don't do that. And then years into our marriage, what do I catch him doing? All the exact things he told me he'd never done. And then, even then, I catch him doing some of these things and it's like, oh, don't worry though, I still don't do any of these things over here, right? Then three days later, I find out, oh, one of those things he's still telling me he never does, he still does.

We'll go a little bit more, oh, he's telling me another thing he told me he would never do or never had done that he does. Well, how was he able to do that? Because he had lied and told himself a certain story. He we could even we don't even have to call it lying. He had taken these situations and filtered it through a certain narrative.

Yeah. So that it when I would ask a certain question or when he would think about being honest, it's like, oh, none of those situations fit into this category. Right? That can't be what they're talking about. That can't be what they're describing.

Because even if you saw I asked you two times if you had seen pornography, if I kept asking you a couple different times in a couple different ways, I could get some more stories out of you. I know it. Because I asked you a certain way and there was only the story at five. I asked you a slightly different way and I got one more story, you know, you said twenty five years ago. So what that shows me there is if I'm if I wanna interrogate you, which I don't, that I could crack open a little bit of your ice berg.

Kim doesn't wanna interrogate you either because that is not fulfilling to the union. What happens here is when Russell says, I wanna see it all, the iceberg thaws out. That's what the embodiment is. That big ice tower you've built, it thaws out. Everything underneath there can surface.

And inside that might feel terrifying. And that's okay that that feels terrifying. It is Brandon used to say this all the time, maybe you can speak to it. He used to be like, I had no idea I was even lying to myself about all of these things. You know?

And when you wake up to that reality, you experience a little bit of shock like, woah, there was this whole world I'd been keeping from myself to keep myself safe. Now I'm realizing that doesn't keep me safe. Kim's saying, she's had her fill. She's fed up. She's done.

Right? So lying and hiding and keeping these things at bay isn't gonna keep you safe. It's kept you safe up the appearance of safety for thirty two years. Now you've come to this pivotal, incredible moment where you get to say, woah, I'm not choosing to hide this from myself anymore.

Yeah.

I'm choosing to open myself up and tell myself I'm safe to thaw out the ice so that I can see everything clearly.

Well, he answered your question, but he admittedly and knowingly left out other parts, even because it didn't specifically answer your question. For instance, he knows and has admitted that even this year, this is how he came to this point. On his birthday, I saw text messages for him inviting a woman to come over or go out to dinner with him. Now we had celebrated his birthday all weekend. The kids took him out to eat.

I made a special meal, all the things, but he's out of town inviting a woman to go out to dinner with him, putting himself in the same situation that's led him down the path before. And he can say, well, I don't know how I can't say no. I don't know how I get myself in this situation. Well, yes, he does. He knows exactly how he gets himself in this situation.

He wasn't in the hotel room calling his wife kids to talk. Was out in places he shouldn't have been doing things he shouldn't have been doing. That's how he gets in the situations he supposedly doesn't want to be in. Even five months unemployment and he goes back to work and he's messaged through LinkedIn by a woman who wants to be helpful and he falls for it again. It just it's never ending.

It doesn't matter what he says he wants, he can't achieve that.

That is great context, and that's exactly what I'm talking about is I don't even need to hear those stories. I know there's hundreds of stories more like that that are happening because like I said, I already painted all these gaps.

He lives in a different world. He lives in a different reality, and I'm not there. Nothing that anybody can tell him to say or do is going to fix it it for him.

Russell, what's going through your mind right now as we're talking about you? What's going through your head?

If there's anything else, want to get it out. I just, I think back to my childhood, I was always trying not to get caught. It's not like I wasn't trying to be a good kid. I was trying to see what I could get away with without getting caught. And now in my marriage, it seems like sometimes I'm trying to say, well, how much can I get away with without getting caught?

And I don't know where that, where that comes from.

You could say, I want, you could, I know you're, we're doing a lot with language. You could say, I want to know where that comes from.

Yeah. I want to know where that comes from. Cause I think that's one of the keys to stopping this is knowing where that's coming from.

So you said you, you weren't trying this to be a good boy or did your parents think you were a good boy?

Well, I wanted them to think I was a good boy, but, I was trying to get away with so much without getting caught. I think now they probably knew more than I thought they did.

Did you get caught very often or no?

And I know I know there are things I've done that they don't know. I think I spent most of my life trying to see what I can get away with.

And was that because the the way your, like what the rules were for your home growing up, you said your dad was a, a Baptist pastor, like w was your home life pretty rigid?

Very, very strict. He was, in the military before he was a pastor and he was abused by his father and he was very strict. I don't know. I want to put myself in these situations to try to see what I can get away with. Cause I don't understand where that's coming from, but I want to know.

We're not going to make it a positive, but let's make it a positive about what you do feel in these situations of, we'll call it acting out or trying to get away with something. When you sit down at the bar, we'll just use it as one example. This is again, not the only time you've, how you've acted out. You've, you know, we're messaging somebody just for your birthday, but when you sit down at the bar, order a drink and notice there's another, there's other women there. Like what does that feeling elicit for you?

What what's going on there in a positive sense? Like what are you, what are you hoping to feel?

It's innocent. I would say in the beginning, because I love making friends. We traveled a lot growing up. Moved like every year and a half, two years. So I was constantly making friends.

By the time I make friends, we have to move. So I like traveling and meeting new people, making new friends, especially if there's something I can gain from them through networking, whatever. But it starts off me just trying to get to know people, find something that I have in common with. People, but then, you know, maybe a couple of drinks into it, get a little too friendly, you know? So I don't know the real reason.

I'm just looking for a cause here.

So when you sit down to have that experience, I want to give you, I want to ask you to stop saying, I don't know why. Cause if I told you I was going to go to the bar and sit down and drink and you were to help me identify what I'm doing, I, it wouldn't be a random thing. You, you, do know why. You're hoping to escape.

You're really good at pointing out why other people do things they do, but it's never inter reflective.

Even if it's just a group of guys at the bar, I wanna get to know each one of them. If there's nobody at the bar, I'll still sit down and order a drink.

So it's not like I'm looking When you're alone, but not with me. Basically, that kind of behavior that I would go along with.

How many guys do you have friends with that you text that you met at the bar?

The only guy I text with is a guy I met at work. A friend from work. That's really my only

And you didn't meet him at the bar?

No. I didn't meet him at the bar.

That was a leading question because the narrative you're trying to paint to us, which I'm not falling for it, is that you like to go to the bar to make friends with all genders. What I just made you aware of, which you can make yourself aware of if you want to, which is what we're always gonna come back to, is you don't go to the bar to make friends with guys. First of all, stop going to the bar. Second of all, stop drinking. Third of all, you don't need any female friends.

I'm gonna point out these things that are probably obvious to every listener, and I know they're obvious to both of you at your core. I'll say them again to pierce through the denial structures. Stop going to the bar, stop drinking, and stop having female friends. Right? Now, everyone that's wise is gonna go, well, of course, we have to get to the core of why you're doing those things.

I know why you're doing those things. I'm gonna tell you the answer right now. I'm gonna give you your answer to why. Because you have a baggage, bags full of things that you haven't been willing to come clean about yet. That's why.

And it's simple, yet as difficult as you wanna make it to get to the other side of healing because it's simple. All it is is seeing clearly and bringing that to Kim, the one you've united your soul to. Right? Now that's difficult because you have to want that for yourself. Kim even said, she doesn't feel like you're ever gonna be able to be fully honest.

I understand how you would feel that way. I guarantee Russell, guarantee you can see clearly, you can create an entirely new marriage. You have to want to see that clearly though. So when you say, well, I just go to the bars because I wanna make friends, I wanna make connections. That's not true, and you know that.

You go to the bar because you're wanting to sleep with another woman, to have that excitement, to have that arousal, to have that experience.

And feel like it happened to you.

And feel like it happened to you. See, because if you go to the bar and go, I'm just trying to make friends here. And this woman just came up, started hitting on me, and it's all her fault. I don't know how my penis got inside of her vagina. All of this was forced upon me, which we could.

We everything links back. That's why you have to look at the beginning of your sexual experience. I can't get much from you though, because from five to, let's say, fifteen, ten years, there's ten year gap. There's not a ten year gap. There's sexual encounters or things you sought out or saw in that time.

You just haven't become aware of them through the iceberg yet. So you did have an experience that you did not want, that did happen to you. And so now, in these situations where you're almost posing them to recreate a situation that's very, very similar to that one. And if we even got into the detail, which I won't, this is something I would advise that you explore, is if we got into the detail of that story of abuse, it's possible that there's actually a lot of similarities to these affairs that you have then acted out in. Like one story we've shared on earlier episodes is a friend of ours, he was abused at his neighbor's house receiving what he thought was gonna be a massage.

He ended up getting more than a massage. Fast forward, he hadn't healed from that situation, goes into marriage and starts going to massage parlors and getting more than a massage. It wasn't until he had a conversation with Brandon that he realized the parallel there. Oh, I have this unhealed trauma of abuse where I got I thought I was going to get a massage as a child from a safe person, ended up getting abused. Now I'm recreating that situation in the same exact ways.

So your story, you're you're giving little bits of your story and we're seeing little glimpses here. And we could run with some of that, yet I wanna spend this hour making you aware of there's way more pieces to the story here. So I could take some of your story of like, okay, you grew up in a rigid child, a rigid home. Sounds like you had loving intentional parents. Yeah.

Rigid home, you wanted to try to get away from stuff. So, yep, you even know this. So now you're trying to do that. But I'm gonna say, there's way more here even. There's way deeper layers.

That's this if you're willing to tell me that and you're barely willing to tell us anything, then I know there's way more to be explored. So I don't wanna do you a disservice and focus on these things that you are revealing to me. Those are great. Those are amazing that you've brought those up and you've brought them out. And what I wanna tell you is that there's so much more.

And it's not a, okay, maybe there's more and I I know that you know right now more things. I know that they're sitting in there. I know that they're coming to mind. I know that things that can come up and out. Even these situations that Kim knows about that she's talking about recently.

I'm thinking here that there's this two year gap where you slept with someone and then now you guys have been all fine. And Kim's sharing though these couple of other stories. So there's there's more stuff like this that wants to come out and be surfaced. And the more you realize that's where my healing is, you don't even have to ask why. I told I told you how.

I told you why and how. Why you haven't been able to get free from acting out in this way is because there's pieces of the puzzle you haven't chosen to see. How can you never feel like you want to go to the bar, drink, and have female friends that you sleep with is through seeing your entire story clearly and bringing this to Kim so that you can heal together.

Russell, are you wanting to see things with that level of clarity?

Yes. I want to get to the point to the other side that y'all talk about where you get through it all and get to the other side where we have this into me, intimacy that y'all have accomplished. That's where I want to be. Okay.

Amazing.

What are you afraid to see on the path to that?

I think I've hidden things for myself. I think there's some things, some lies that I've told to myself and to others that I've forgotten about and pushed it down. I think once that gets started to come out, that there's going to be a lot more there than I remember. There's a lot of my childhood I don't remember, and I've forgotten most of my high school. So the older I get, the less I remember of growing up.

But when I sit down and think about it, like I was talking to my dad this morning, he told me a story of something happened when I was a child that I didn't even know, but it reminded me of something I had forgotten. And so I'm starting to remember a few things that happened when I was a child that I had forgotten about. So I think in this process of healing and talking about the things that I've done and said lies I've told, I think once I get started, I think there's going to be a lot more come out. I'm going to start remembering things that I had forgotten.

I love liking your language. I'm liking your language a lot. And what, what are you, I know you said you, I want to identify, like, what scares you about that? So you're going to, you're going to see things that you didn't know had happened to you or things that you've done and things in your relationship. When I tell you that, when you tell yourself that, what emotion does that bring up?

Is that fear or are you like, Hey, I'm ready to jump into this. What's, where are you at right now?

No, I'm ashamed. I'm, I'm scared of what's going to come out knowing that I'm going to be ashamed of whatever it is. And one point of clarity, the sexual abuse was when I was 13, 14, and 15. We moved, we were, in New Orleans for my dad going to seminary. We moved to Alabama and I met Kim.

I was what, 17. She So was 15. So there was a gap between the sexual abuse and when we started dating, but everything else we said was true.

So you're afraid of, what, what does the feeling of shame feel like in your body, Russell, when you have a memory or we're talking, I imagine you felt it a little bit even today as we're exploring this. What what do you feel in your body? Is it a pit in your stomach? What do you feel when you feel shame?

Just goes back to my childhood. I'm afraid my parents are gonna find out and they're gonna be disappointed. Kim's gonna find out. She's gonna be angry and leave me. I just there's a lot of fear.

And that feeling of like so it's this feeling of I'm gonna be rejected because of what I've done, that those that love you will think differently of you?

I don't wanna disappoint my family. I know Kim probably believes I'm hiding a bunch of stuff, and so she won't be surprised, but I think she'll be angry. And I know there'll be consequences, and it would just be easier if everybody would just stop talking about it and we could just we're feeling like it didn't happen, but I know to get to the other side, we've got to go through this.

Mhmm. Do you feel because you say it would be easier if everyone stopped talking about it. Do you feel really good in your body? Really good and vibrant in your life with your marriage and with your kids? Like, if everyone just left you alone and stopped talking about it, do you feel really alive right now?

No. No. No. I think about it all the time and I see my kids doing things that I disagree with, and I feel like that's partially my fault because I've done things I shouldn't have done. And so who am I to tell them not to do what they do and, you know, I've done worse.

So I blame myself a lot for the things that I've done and I don't want to come out, but I know that's the path to healing.

I want you to think about it this way, Russell. And this luckily you don't have to do this or it doesn't, it hasn't happened yet, but let's picture that Kim is out of the picture. Your kids have disowned you. We'll call it your spiritual community has also disowned you. There's nobody left.

And we'll just use God as a broad example, because everybody comes from a different faith background. Let's just picture that it's just you alone with God. Would you still want healing? Like, would you want to feel alive in your soul? If everybody else had left you, would you still want to be, would you still want to heal?

Yeah, of course. I mean, yeah, definitely.

Then I think what we start with is that place. We actually don't know if Kim will stay. She's already done a, she's already been through a lot. We don't know if your kids, if they, you don't have to go tell them everything, but we don't know what they'll think about you. If more comes out or if Kim leaves you, we don't know if, whatever may come.

So ultimately you're not going to do this for acceptance from your family or your wife. You would never choose to just try to heal from things that are, we'll call them very damaging. You don't do it to hope that they love you in return. Russell, your greatest act of love is for yourself to say, you know what? I've been dying a slow death for thirty, forty years where I've tolerated living in this way that's killing me and killing everyone around me.

So you're not going to do this for them. I want you to do this for Kim. I want you to do it for your kids. And at some point that will happen, but you gotta recognize like, you need this no matter who's around you. Yep.

So therefore this isn't for acceptance or rejection. This is because you want to get to the bottom of this virus that's been killing you your whole life. And your ability to heal is your ability to see it. And like you said, you when sit with it, you see it. So when you feel that vortex of shame of what if they leave me?

What if they catch me? I want you to really sit in that feeling. I want you to amplify that feeling and say, yes, they've already caught me. Kim's already caught you. She's a smart woman.

She's gonna keep catching you. That's not gonna change. She's done though. She doesn't feel like doing that anymore. You don't want to drag her along doing it anymore.

So instead of worrying about what if they catch me, look at yourself in the mirror and say, I've been caught. This is good. I don't have to live this way anymore. I just need to see it. So when you, when you're in that, that battle with yourself of like, I don't want to see it.

Say, yes, I do. The more I see, the more I can heal. Russell, everything you choose to see in this next few weeks, days and months, what you choose to see, what you choose to take ownership for, what you choose to heal from will no longer impact you in the future, but what you choose to suppress to stuff down and say, can we just move on? You're back at the bar. You're back in a hotel room.

You're back in LinkedIn messaging somebody. You're lying to yourself. You're not actively engaging in life from the way you want to be. So seeing is they say seeing is believing, seeing is healing. So Russell, everything that comes up, that's like, don't look at that.

Flip over the stone. Open it up the door. Say, I do want to see this. Kim already sees it. We already see it.

We hardly know you. And we can see that it's killing you. And we want you to live a long, prosperous, healthy life. And we want you and Kim to experience intimacy for the first time that's genuine and there's, there's no more secrets under the rug. So Russell, you're already a part of the app.

I want you to dive into the, the grounded intimacy program in the app. We'll send you an, a follow-up email off air. We'll send you the steps to to take. What you've gotta do is is do this for you because doing it for everybody else hasn't gotten you anywhere.

Right.

Think about that. Okay. I'll I'll answer a couple of questions. I'll go to a couple of counseling sessions. I'll I'll go to the altar and pray.

You're doing it for everybody else. If you do it for you, you can actually go the distance because you'll, you'll begin to see it and you'll be like, man, I'm ready to see it.

I want to bring up two final thoughts here. Cause you had said, circling back to this, you had said it would feel easier if everyone would just leave me alone and stop talking about it. And we already identified, right, that you actually don't feel great in your body right now. You don't feel alive. You don't feel vibrant.

Your marriage doesn't feel alive and vibrant, right? So I like making really simple truths stand out. So the truth is not actually that you that's not actually true. You don't actually want everyone to leave you alone because you don't wanna live life this way anymore. So to say that that would be easier is actually false.

It appears easier. Right? And you've been doing a lot of things that appear easier. And so a lot of this is coming back and thinking through that, like, does that actually feel easier for me to hold so many lies, to live feeling dead in my own body, to live feeling disconnected to my wife, to live feeling disconnected to my kids, the more I'm talking, we're all thinking, wow, that sounds terrible. That doesn't sound easy, right?

Now let me paint this picture for you. You get everything out. You see everything, everything, and you bring that to your wife. You don't even have to tell your kids about these things. You don't even need to tell your pastor.

All I recommend is telling the one who you united your soul with thirty two years ago. Guess what? When you clean that up, the ripple effect directly impacts your children. You don't even need to tell them I messed up and all the if you want to, you can. They'll see a different man because a man that no longer hides and lies from himself, a man who has a unified, intimate, connected marriage, people will see that from a distance.

How do I know this? Because this is what happens to us. People will see that from a distance and go, woah, they've got something incredible going on. Your children, they've watched you be married their entire life. Your kids are older, they're 28 to 25 plus.

Like twenty five years of their life, they've watched your marriage suffer. Do you think if they watch the next twenty five years, the next thirty years, forty years of your marriage thriving, you wouldn't even have to say anything. That has a major impact. So when you heal, you see everything clearly. You bring it up to your wife.

You rewire your brain through the four r's, which we teach in the ground in intimacy. That's an easier path because you're alive now. Your marriage is alive. Your children are alive. If I just described which road, everyone would say, I would never pick that road where I'm falling apart, my marriage is falling apart, my kids are falling apart.

They would never pick that road and label that easier. Right? So reality is coming back to truth, back to awareness, to this is easier. The only thing making it difficult is myself, is my denial structure. The second thing I want to make as a a realized truth is that oftentimes people in this space will be worried about, okay, well, if I if I tell my wife all that I've been hiding, like, you know, Russell, that there's more things you need to share, even as we as we close out this call.

If I tell her she's gonna leave me, I already heard Kim say she's had her fill. She's done. Guess what? If you choose to never bring anything out to the open again, you just choose. I'm gonna tell you those couple things I've told you and that's it.

Next time Kim finds something out, the next time after that, do you think she's gonna hit a point where she's done? Absolutely, she's hitting a point when she's done. Like, choosing the path of keeping all your secrets does not guarantee that you get to stay in your marriage. That's actually a guarantee of divorce. That's a guarantee of the relationship actually crumbling.

I can guarantee that if you get out all your secrets, you get in your body and you come alive, your wife who's known you her whole life is gonna wanna be a part of that marriage. She doesn't wanna be in a marriage where she has to check your phone for LinkedIn messages of you trying to sleep with another woman when you've been telling her, well, wanna understand why. I don't know why. I don't know how. That's not a marriage she wants to be in.

She wants to be in a marriage where you sit down and go, here's thirty years of lies I've been keeping from you, and here's how I'm gonna wake up and get in my body. Here's how I'm gonna rewire my brain and replace this and create a whole new life for us. Yeah. That's a man that Kim wants to stay with. That's a life worth creating.

That's a life that's beautiful where you come alive. And when you come alive, Russell, everything that you touch comes alive. You know what I'm even thinking as I'm talking right now? You probably need a new job. You need to figure out something in there because your work is associated with a lot of sex.

It's associated with a lot of other women. And your life right now, as you come alive, everything else is gonna come alive. Your work included. Something there's gotta something there's gotta have a major change right now. You need to have a big old like interrupt to that.

Because right now, that path has been leading you into sex. And so I don't know what that looks like for you. It's just that's kinda coming in as you as you heal and come alive. Everything else around you is gonna heal and come alive. And that might look like a lot changes, and they're all gonna be so good.

I think I've said this in every episode, I'll say it every time, is if you choose into this healing, one year from now, looking back at this moment, you, I guarantee you, email me a year from now, I guarantee you, you will not regret having shared everything, cutting everything out, coming alive, recreating a whole new marriage. One year from now though, if you choose to live as you are, if you just choose to get out a couple things here and there, I'm gonna save some secrets for me, your marriage has probably ended in a divorce. Right? Which path would you rather take? The one of radical honesty and transparency to yourself and to your spouse, recreating a whole vibrant life?

Or the one where you barely share, you just share enough to not look too much like a bad boy, to not hurt your wife, not hurt your parents, to hurt your reputation, and then your entire life is still left crumbling. You don't feel alive. The answer is really obvious, and the path is actually really quite clear.

The final thing I wanna leave as we finish this podcast is, Russell, I wanna encourage you. Are you on any sort of TV, movies, social media right now?

No. We're trying to detox, this week. We're in step six of the seven steps, but I've removed all social media from my phone. I've been watching my phone actually tracks so much time I spend. And I've been watching just, this week, it's just gone down to just a couple of minutes of texting and emailing and that's it.

So I'm a movie buff and we have a home theater with surround sound, but I told her I'm willing to give up movies and TV to, if that's what it takes to make this work. And so we have been watching TV since. There's a TV in our bedroom. I know you're against that, but, tinnitus, and we play the sound of rain and thunderstorms on a blank screen with that TV. The TV in the living room plays Christmas music.

And it's next to the Christmas tree.

It's gonna be a big picture frame is what it's gonna be.

Yeah. We we listen to Pandora Christian music, and right now, we're listening to Christmas music. But, we're not watching TV or movies. We're gonna see the difference. Actually, I like going for walks.

If I can get home before dark, we can go for a walk, but

That'd fine. Good. Okay. I want you to continue that. That especially the situation you're in that that's like Mhmm.

That needs to continue for, like, at least the next year, like more than just another thirty days we're doing in the in the community, but I I still don't have any form of entertainment, but I'd cut out all consumption for years.

Three years.

Three years. I only and I don't consume now. Don't even like if I need to research something, it's a quick research, but I'm not I I want you to be you can become the architect of your life instead of just the, it feels like life's happening to you. And also with how much you're wanting to explore into your story. You don't have the opportunity to use those four hours of movie time in the, in the evenings.

It's time to like sit with yourself, to do the embodiment. You're going to have an abundance of energy and abundance of time and emotional, like mental space to do that. So Russell and Kim, this is like, this is a defining moment. This is the defining hour. I want an email a year from now of you being happily married or happily separated, meaning Kim's finally getting freedom and Russell, you chose not dive into this, but I'm guessing that you're not going to take that choice.

You're actually going to dive into this. Thank you for sharing your story with us. I want thank you guys for tuning into today's episode. We'll see you next week on the Grounded Union podcast.

Thanks for having us.