Brandon: We want to welcome you guys back to the Grounded Union Podcast. We're in season four. This is episode seven of season four. We're going be talking about how to protect your kids from your marriage crisis.
So a lot of you guys have children that are in the home with you. Some of them are, some of you guys are pregnant. A lot of you guys are sure with us you're about to give birth. Some of you guys have kids that are grown up out of the house. Some have teenagers, some have toddlers, school age children. It's really difficult to navigate betrayal in and of itself, within your relationship.
Now you've got your kids, whether they're adults or in the house. We'll talk about several different dynamics that you could be facing. And let's just say you're wanting to clean up your mess. Let's just say you're a man that caused the betrayal. And you're like, I want to regain the respect of my family.
As we always say, and as we say in short form videos, long form, you don't get respect back from people by asking for it. So having one conversation with your kids saying, "I did some things that hurt your mom. I'm sorry. We're going back to how things were."
Your kids will respect you when you change. Even when we talk about our parenting things that like, if there's something I want to improve on and how I'm, I'm interacting with my children today, Caitlyn always reminds me, they will trust you based off of how you interact with them.
So if you've betrayed your wife, your kids, depending on age may know more detail than, than, than less. They will lose respect for you, whether it's mom or dad. Your opportunity is not to tell them or demand respect for them. Rather it's to take the actions that reestablish the whole entire family system, which we're going to talk about the, the family rhythms we implemented prior to betrayal really fine tuned during our recovery season and have carried out through this day, which makes our lives very enjoyable to live.
And let me just tell you, there is no convenient time to heal. We had two young daughters at the time when we were in our marriage crisis. We now have four, we may, may have some more on the way and hint hint.
Parenting is a full time job. And you might work a full time job. You might feel like your relationship is a full time job. Healing, betrayal, healing from betrayal is a full time job. Guys, there's not going to be a convenient time to heal.
That's why we're going to share some perspectives that allow you to prioritize really all there is so that you have the space to rebuild the love in your marriage and to protect your children's souls, bodies, emotions from a very tumultuous season that you two are walking through.
Caitlyn: Yeah. It's like the classic cliche saying there's no better time than now. And really that's so true because, we're you gonna talk a lot about protecting your children, protecting your family from the marriage crisis. And one point we always like to bring up is, like Brandon said, we had two young girls at the time. I believe they were one and three. Could have been transitioning to two and four. So really we had baby and toddler. And many of you have older kids, if not kids out of the house. And there actually is a fair amount of you listening to this who have kids in that similar demographic. Right?
And one beautiful thing to me that I look back and always reflect on is we took it serious to heal our marriage at that time when we had those two little kids. It was absolutely inconvenient. We were not even sleeping at night because we had two babies with us. One fully nursing still through the night. So it's like we would stay up late having conversations with a lot of emotions, a lot of tears.
We had just put our kids to bed and then we're waking up. We're going to sleep so tired and exhausted because emotional work is really, really deep and exhausting. Right? You just want to hit your pillow and like get a sound night's sleep, and then we're waking up to nurse our I'm waking up to nurse our baby. Brandon was there to help change diapers, help whatever capacity he could.
So, it would have been easy for us to be like, wow, this is a really inconvenient time. Let's wait. Let's wait till the kids are older, till we can sleep better, till there's not so much high demands. Like, when we woke up in the morning, it's not like we sat on the porch and sipped on our coffee and had a really nice chill conversation. No.
Brandon: We don't drink coffee.
Caitlyn: We don't even drink coffee, sip our tea, read our newspapers like, we woke up to children who needed fed, diapers changed, needed played with, needed like consulting. When so many people are like, how do you heal from betrayal, Caitlyn? It's like, I dragged my blanket outside and I laid on it desperately tired. Probably had bags underneath my eyes and I went outside so my children could play and we had a play structure thankfully in the backyard, a big patch of grass and I would just lay there and try to be as present and engaged as I could. I didn't have my phone, I damaged screens, I'm not numbing out, I'm not coping, I'm there with them. Right?
Like, so many excuses I could have ran with, that we could have ran with, that that was not a time to heal. Yet that was actually the most beautiful time to heal because look at our family now. We have two beautiful boys now. The fruit of our healing in our union.
If we would have not made that our priority, we weren't gonna stay married. And the beautiful children that we have birthed and grown together since that phase is the picture and beauty of redemption in life and actually taking it serious to make it to the other side.
Brandon: So if you're sitting there like, well, you guys don't understand all that we have going on at home and we don't. I want you to know that your circumstances are not going to stop.
Caitlyn: Nope.
Brandon: Even if you went away for a three day marriage intensive, you're still going to have reality to come back home to. You're still going to have your job, your neighbors, the cat, the dog, the kids, the responsibilities.
And I want you to consider this, that the real transformation you need for your relationship, for your sexual healing is one that takes place in reality. You don't need your kids to stop needing you. You don't need the bills to stop piling up. You need to shift in perspective where you are today. And this is how you protect your kids is you don't pull away from reality. That's what got us an addiction.
Speaking of our kids not sleeping before the two years leading up to Caitlyn catching me lying to her. From ten to midnight, I knew that our, our, she's now seven, but she was a year old.
Caitlyn: She was a baby.
Brandon: She was a baby. Yeah. And she would wake up all the time, but I knew that she's going to wake up at like midnight and I was exhausted. So I told myself, I'll just stay awake from ten to midnight. Logically, logically, I'm so tired. I'm going to deprive myself of some more sleep.
So I scrolled on social media at whatever came up from ten to midnight, because I knew I was going have to go get her And Caitlyn didn't know anything about that. She's asleep trying to get the sleep she needs. And so just right off the bat, I'm, I'm actually self deprecating and you're going to find that your children aren't the problem. Your secretary is not the problem.
Social media is not the problem. The woman across the street is not the problem. It's actually how we chose to engage our life. It was me facing difficulty, anxiety, overwhelm, and I chose to isolate and I'm out point finger at everybody else. Say everybody needs so much from me.
I don't get what I need. So I'm going to take in secret and build this double life. If you're listening to this podcast and you have young children, you have children at all. I want you to change how you see them. They are not a burden to you.
They are the greatest opportunity. They are the mirror that shows you how you're doing, how you're parenting them. They're just running the pattern and program that you gave them. So this is your opportunity to reinstall a completely new way of living life. You're like, well, how do we do that?
Because my kids there's, I feel so disconnected from them. I already, they don't trust me. They're just buried in their screens. We're going to give you guys that practical things you can do to unplug. To plug in.
I'll tell you what that is. Just hold your, hold your horses there.
Before we dive into the practicals of the family rhythms, I want you to consider that one of the main reasons you guys may be in a marriage crisis right now is the dynamic you had with your parents when they were in their struggle. And you might've said, I don't think my parents had many issues. Let me give you some examples.
Did your mom or dad confide in you or complain to you about husband or wife? Did they complain about your mom? Did your dad come to you and complain to your mom about your mom? Did your mom come to you for comfort and complain about your dad? They call this enmeshment triangulation.
There's so many psychological terms you can, you can explore, but if your parents needed you to be their stability in their marriage crisis, whether or not you had the words to describe it like that, you felt responsible for taking care of them. And that's an incredibly isolating feeling and experience to have as a child. What we're going do is we're not going to repeat that with your children and your marriage crisis, because you don't need your kids to be your band aid, to coddle you, to comfort you. They need to know that mom and dad are still a safe place even in the mess.
Caitlyn: One of the couples that came to our in person three day marriage intensive in in Maui this last year. They had, you know, many many decades of sexual brokenness and infidelity. They belonged to a church, a very very small church. It was actually primarily a family church where the children were on the pastoral staff team. Right?
And so the the married couple, the parents who are experiencing their marriage crisis felt that it was necessary to go to their church to confess. This is a very common belief, of course, in in lots of different religions. The church leaders happen to be the children. Right? So he's at the event carrying immense shame because he just had he felt he had to go confess the most graphic gory details of his sexual brokenness to the pastor who's actually his daughter.
And while I'm sitting there, I'm like, you guys. Most of the advice you're given when you go to seek advice if you're in a marriage crisis is tell everyone but your spouse about your issues. Right? And I'm exaggerating a little bit, but it's kinda like, tell your accountability group. Tell the pastors, tell the counselors, tell the mentors, tell everybody else, but God forbid you tell your wife, you tell your spouse, the one you've betrayed, the one you've united your soul with.
God forbid you tell her the exact details. Absolutely don't do that. You need to tell everyone else. Someone actually just recently emailed us that joined our community that's wanting to come to our event in in August, and they were saying that they potentially do not wanna come to our event because they do not believe that our values and what we teach align with their biblical beliefs. And the term biblical beliefs, obviously, we could all, you know, we could narrow that down to your meaning beliefs that are shared in the Bible.
Right? And so Brandon goes, please tell me what what we teach and what we share that does not align with your biblical beliefs. And he said, literally quoting what I just talked about, he does not believe it is biblical to need to share all of these nuanced things with his wife, the betrayed spouse. He's meant to share that with his accountability partner.
Brandon: First to God, these are spiritual texts.
Caitlyn: First to God, then to his accountability partner, not to his wife. And I hate to be the one that always bursts the bubbles, guys. And I also secretly love it. There's nowhere in the Bible where it says, do not be honest with your spouse. Go to an accountability partner.
There's nowhere in the Bible where it says that. If you wanna throw out some verses you take out of context, we could just start having an out of context Bible verse throwing party.
Brandon: Man, I mean, you want to get scary with it, which again, I'm going to have a different platform. Brand talks Jesus where I'm going talk more about faith. So this isn't meant to be a faith podcast for those of you that are from a different faith tradition. But if we want to share a verse that would be scary, Jesus said, Jesus, the guy that the Christian faith is built on that if you look at somebody with lust in your heart, so many translations, you've already committed adultery with her in your heart. I mean, that's the scary stuff.
Already, I told Kate on that after we were talking to this, like I, as a kid, I was like, like in middle school, I was like, what would it be like if I could rip my eyes out so I wouldn't lust after anybody? I think we, we get these thoughts and I'm not saying that's viewed as heart is to limit and condemn moving on from, from that concept. It's more of we create patterns of thought that create bondage. That's what all that's, that is our like core mission with Grounded Union, our events, our podcasts, the app is to end unnecessary suffering in relationships. We are suffering as a society because one, we don't know what we want.
We believe something, but we're once we evaluate, does that belief hold up to what I want? And if the answer is no, then it's like you either keep getting the same result or you shift your belief. And again, the belief is not taking away all the good core of what you believe. I'm not just talking like religious beliefs, but like how you see yourself. Because if you get this a slight shift in how you see yourself, everything unlocks.
I tell the community a lot in our app that growth is not about grunting and striving. That's why you don't need your kids to go away. You don't need your job to go away. It's actually about removing blocks. And so for a lot of you, you're like, well, I'm scared to see reality.
Then you will have a hard time changing. If you're willing to face reality, which means your kids don't trust you. Your wife doesn't trust you, but if you're just willing to face it, all the water can flow and you can begin to move.
A lot of times we're thinking about damage control after betrayal. Like how do we just not make it?
I don't want my kids like hate me. They need to see you take radical ownership. And that radical ownership isn't telling them how hard it is with your mom right now. I'm doing my best. Let me tell you this.
If you have like a 12 year old son and you're going to him saying, let's just pray that mom would find it in her heart to forgive what I've done to her. Don't do that. Your kids, they want to see you wake up, do your embodiment work where you're doing some breath work, some mindfulness, you're getting into your body where they're like, woah, dad's changing. We know dad's been checked out. We know dad's been playing video games, staying up late, able to be present during bedtime.
He's always on his phone. Like, we knew something was wrong with dad. Dad is now just turning into somebody we don't recognize and we're finally starting to like him. Mhmm. Give them that experience where they're like, woah.
Dad's not complaining about mom anymore. Dad's not trying to confide in me for comfort. Dad is present. Mom is present. So you protect your kids from the marriage crisis by not using them as an escape or a crux of a belief where it's like, wait, I can't now's a hard time.
Got kids or I've got kids. Maybe they'll side with me. Maybe I can comfort that maybe I'll get some comfort from them. That's even hard to say, if you've been the betrayed spouse, it is not appropriate for you to seek comfort from your children, even your adult children. They were not meant to fill that role in your life.
And honestly, you'll be grateful that you didn't put them there over the long term, and that they'll be grateful for it too.
Caitlyn: Mhmm. Yeah. So back to the guy, because we always go on like I always interrupt my own stories with many, many side tangents. But I do remember the story I which is about the man who came to our event, right? And the point I was making is most people's marriage advice is tell everyone except for the betrayed spouse, right?
And obviously you already know our marriage advice is like if you wanna tell one or two other trusted safe people that believe in your vision, go ahead. The primary person you're telling about your brokenness is your spouse. The one you united your soul with. The one you became one with. You guys, that's 100% logical.
I don't know why we're creating this whole like, oh, we tell everyone but not our spouse. Like, what the heck? What? You became one with them. That's the one person that matters that needs to know everything.
Right? That's intimacy. Intimacy, you see. So I'm looking at this man, I'm like, I wouldn't have ever even recommended that you went to your daughter and shared all of these gory details. Your daughter did not need to know that, right?
And I want to take a second to talk about age appropriate conversations. We at that time didn't have teenagers, right? We didn't have kids that were out of the house and yet there's a wisdom within how we approach this situation that can be passed to each family that has all different kinds of aged children, right? With our children at that age being that young, we didn't tell them any details. If you have young children that are like, honestly, like eight and younger, maybe even reaching into 10, they don't need to know like, by the way, daddy was sleeping with three other people.
Like, what? They don't need to know that. That just bursts their innocent bubble. You might be like, Caitlyn, I thought you believed in honesty. Yeah.
When they're 18 and their brains are formed and they can comprehend the life story and the transformation and see the fruit, that's when honesty comes into the picture. When they're a child, they're looking to you for love, connection, and safety. Don't burst their bubble with inappropriate conversations that are way over their head and their brain development. Right? I remember we used to say things to our oldest, who was still only three, she's now nine at the time.
We might have said things like, daddy feels like his heart is kind of hard. He's softening his heart. He's choosing into love. Right? Age appropriate conversations.
If you've got four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 year old kids, it's like, wow. Right now, mommy and daddy are having a transformation of the heart. We're choosing into more love right now. Like how beautiful for your kids to hear that. They don't even know you were looking at pornography.
Like what? What's pornography? Like if they're four years old, they don't need to have that bubble bursted. Daddy was looking at inappropriate things. Daddy's been gone doing this.
Like that's not appropriate. There is an age appropriate, brain level appropriate way of communicating with your children, and you might be like, well we're crying all the time in front of them. Amazing. Cry in front of them, and then also let them know, because my heart's transforming.
Brandon: And with that, I would encourage we we did our best to not have heated dialogue in front of them. Mhmm. There were times where obviously like me bringing certain things or resisting or lying to Caitlyn did bring Caitlyn to tears and the kids saw Caitlyn crying. I've heard some of you that you're screaming and swearing and loo like losing composure in front of the kids. We, as adults have to make the hard decision that if you are too unstable as a couple, you need to have a separation of the, of you two together so that one of you can fully be with the kids and whether that's you taking turns.
We were stable enough where it was like, we could parent and be present.
Caitlyn: Yep.
Brandon: And. Well, when did you guys work on your relationship then? When the kids went to bed. This is why we don't do any entertainment. This is why you turn the entertainment off.
Caitlyn: You've got a lot of time.
Brandon: Yeah. If your kids go to bed at eight and if you've taken them off screens, which we'll talk about some more, you then get this time from eight to ten was like, once we've been in it and flowing, was probably like eight to ten, there was times eight to midnight, eight to 2AM. Like there was some really hard nights, but two hours is a long quality time where you can work through some of things we talked about with the four hours. You can work through a couples program or a book, or you can go through the, the, the healing work. And then you can just spend quality time together, rebuilding intimacy and trust and actually enjoying each other.
That's two hours. The kids are in bed. They're not listening to you. You might even be crying. It might be really difficult.
It might be really raw, the material you're talking through. Your children are sound asleep that you wake up in the morning because you went to bed. You can get up at 6AM and you slept eight hours and your kids might be waking up. We went through that and you give them your best. And that means you are creating stability from the instability that the addiction or the betrayal created.
So it's not, let's keep the mess going. It's time to clean up the mess. Talking to the one that created the mess by creating structure around when you have these conversations so that your kids aren't just watching you yell at each other. That that's that's gotta stop. Yep.
Like today.
Caitlyn: Or your children also are not, even if you're not yelling, if you're if you're having deep conversations about your sexual brokenness, those are not appropriate conversations for your children to be hearing of any age. Right? And so you might be thinking, oh, well, my kids are they're older than 10. You know, they're in their teenage years or maybe my kids are outside of the house, so shouldn't I tell them everything? And it's like, I'm not really here to say yes or no to that because like I said, I wasn't in that predicament or in that season.
What I do wanna offer is a thought provoking prompt, which is
Brandon: that guys. I don't know what she's gonna say, but it's gonna be good. Listen up.
Caitlyn: Which is that if your children are past those those formational years of, you know, eight, nine, 10, they're they're past those years, they're in their teenage years or they're out of the house. Right? They might even have their own children. A lot of you in our our community, you've got grandkids. Right?
So if your children are older, you might think, well, I want to go and confess all these things to them so they know that like now I'm working on it, right? The truth of the matter is, is they've already put up with your dysfunction for a long time. Like Brandon said, they've already seen it. They've already witnessed it. They're potentially already seeing counselors themselves, and this isn't to guilt or shame.
This is just to see reality clearly, right? They have their own stuff they're working through because most likely, if you've been an addict for a lot of their life, if not their whole life, you were checked out, you were dissociating, you were numb, you weren't ever fully present. Okay. Now you're taking back your life. What do you think they would appreciate more?
Kind of this messy dumping confession or you keep quiet, Right? It's not that you don't talk to them anymore. It's that you're not doing this messy dumping confession where you're you're kind of almost like, love me, see me, like, look at what I look at my mess, but I'm gonna now I'm gonna try. Right? I'm gonna take responsibility.
It's kind of convincing. It's a little bit of, you know, lacking power. Instead, you you're going to your spouse. They know full honesty, right? And you're doing the things that we talk about.
You're removing consumption. You're getting in your body. You're understanding your emotions. You're rewiring your brain. You're working through your sexual story, you're reconnecting with your spouse.
Your children are gonna see that immediately. They aren't gonna need convinced. They aren't gonna need any sort of messy conversation. And then let's look at six months to a year later, you're a fully transformed new human with a fully transformed new union.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: And you go to your kids and you say, woah, that was my old life, my old way of being. You saw it, you were impacted by it. You were in the mess of all of that. And now look at what I've created. That's a testimony.
That's a story of transformation. That's a story of healing, and that goes a long way with kids. Just doing a messy dump confession without actually having transformed. Your children are kinda like, yep, all I've ever seen is the messy form of you that's on your phone that's checked out, that's a workaholic, always Empty on promises There's so much there. Your children don't really care.
Honestly, young kids, even, like, even if you have kids that are our age, the last thing we want is empty promises and just dumping. What we wanna see, if your kids are our age or even in the teenage years, you know, the Gen Z or even before that, we wanna see action. Yeah. Why do you think we talk about that? Because that's important to us.
That's important to the younger generations. Your kids want to see that you took action and you changed and you transformed. That's what builds deeper connection with your kids. You didn't have to bring them in in this triangulation and mesh way. You didn't need comfort from them.
You didn't need for them to hear your story. Mhmm. You didn't need that. That's not your kid's role. They're your kids, your most prized possession, right?
They are not there to be your, what are those called, your crutches. They're not your crutches. They're not your counselor. Your children are not your counselor They're to confide not your accountability partners. That's not their role.
They're there for you to love, for you to protect, for you to provide safety, for you to provide for if they're in your house. They're for you to lead and direct, to pour wisdom into. If you can't do those things, transform your life and then show up in that way. That's how you rebuild connection if you've broken connection with your relationship with your kids.
Brandon: That's so good. And if, like Caitlyn was saying, once you get to that place of stability and both you and your spouse are like, I want the kids to know what we've walked through and they're older. They're of, I'll say like 16 plus, but I'll let you guys make that ultimate decision. They're adult children. You can, you could talk to them and say, Hey, maybe Saad, mom and I were going through a lot.
We spent the last year reworking our marriage. I had an affair. This is what happened. And they get the high level. And I want you to know that that we've chosen to stay together and do this work.
I don't need anything from you. I just want you to know as my child, that that was a decision I made. And I ruptured trust and connection in our relationship. And you might have already known there's stuff going on, but I wanted to just like, I want it's a place of ownership and responsibility, not from a place of putting that onto them to be able to to clear that for you.
Caitlyn: I have many memories of when I was in my teenage years. My parents were going through different difficult hard seasons. As you guys heard in an early episode, you know, my family lost my brother, their son. There's many other hard seasons. I remember my parents coming.
I I'm 16 plus in all of these stories. Coming to my sister and I, who would have been just a little under two years younger than me, and sitting us down very high level, having very age appropriate conversations, normally pretty short. And I always felt immense respect, and then I watched them transform. They never had any difficult screaming, yelling conversations in front of me. They actually had a designated bath time when we were winding down for the night.
Again, I'm a teenager, so I didn't get put to bed at this time. We put our kids to bed. We created a bedtime. I chose my bedtime. So when when they knew that everyone was winding down, you know, I'm finishing up homework, I'm showering, getting ready for bed, they go into their room and they had their bath talk time is what they called it.
Right? I don't know what they're talking about. I don't know the details. They're not confessing anything to me. They're not confiding in me.
They're not using me as an emotional crux or an emotional support. I knew high level what was going on, and then I saw them working on it, healing it, and I saw them coming to the other side through every hard and difficult time. And some of this even had to do with money, you know? Many many different difficult seasons where I remember yeah. There was like what was that like crash when everyone lost Yeah.
The o eight crash. Right? And my parents had a bunch of real estate some other businesses. And I remember I didn't know till I was way older how serious it was because they had protected me from that from age appropriate conversations. I remember my mom saying one time to me, she said, you know, we're going through a bit of a hard time with money right now.
And so we're not gonna be doing as much beginning of the year school shopping as we normally would. That was it. My life didn't change. I didn't hear I didn't see them weeping. I didn't hear the gory stories.
They lost a ton. They lost, like, a business. They lost tons of rental and now that I'm an adult, I was like, shoot, that must have been really freaking hard. And as a child, I felt safe. I felt secure.
I felt protected. I felt provided for. I felt taken care of. They had their hard conversations and their bath talk time. I knew what was going on, yet I'm not involved in this whirlwind.
Right? So this this surpasses even your sexual brokenness. This is a way of embodying a healthy family and healthy rhythms.
Brandon: I gotta add some humor. I did I have heard them there's an adjacent bathroom They're not at the house. I have heard them talking story. Talking through bath time. Yep.
And it was about their son-in-law, which
Caitlyn: is We reengaged.
Brandon: We reengaged. I had said something that wasn't very nice. So they're they're dialoguing through what I had said to
Caitlyn: But he could hear it when he was going to the bathroom.
Brandon: So I was like, we're talking about me. I didn't know I was the, I think I've been the conversation of many bathtimes guys. I wasn't, I was pretty passive in our engagement. They're like, are you sure that you want to marry this guy? So I was, I've been, I've been the topic of conversation many bouts.
If you're like, okay, I'm not going to use my kids as a, an escape. I'm going to take ownership for my journey. And if your kids are still in the home, we're going give you some really practicals now on what you can do to establish healthy family rhythms. We've talked about these in, in different capacities and different parts of the episodes and the different seasons. A lot of you need to hear things so many times until you actually go try it and do it.
And these are so elemental, elementary and elements, But they're elements of the if you skip these, it's going to be really hard. So before I go into these family rhythms, I want you to consider this. When we live in our digitized world, our technological world, we see these advances in communication technology. We're going to live longer. AI is going to save everybody and it's going to make everything free eventually.
Whatever we have limited bandwidth to exist in the digital world. Meaning if you can like fry out your, your process, your brain processor from scrolling on social media, binge watching TV shows where you get in that comatose state where you're numb and detached. Most of modern society has a bent towards imbalance in, in, in technology. And when your kids have that bent, they also have a hard time processing and being present in the moment. I want you to consider, especially right now when you are in a marriage crisis, when you wake up in the morning or when you're, when you're, when you are exhausted, I want you to picture, what do I need to plug into to regain my energy, regain my clarity, to regain my peace, to regain my power.
So I just want you to picture that you've got like a, an outlet that's a cable, an extension cable it's plugged into you. Where do I plug this in? And I want you to think about when you pick up your phone and just scroll, that's what you're plugging into. It's like, this should give me some life because this is hard right now. I need some peace.
And if you just plug into a phone every time you're trying to get life for your body, your nervous system, for your emotions to reboot, to change, to grow, to heal, you're going be disappointed every time. So this is why we're so adamant about you unplug from what you've been plugged into, and then you make it. Now you've got your cable out. You've got your, you've got your plug ready. Where are you going to put it?
And for us, there's, there's one thing that we've just beat. I think the beat like a dead horse is what they say, but I don't want any dead horses.
Caitlyn: It's a sad saying.
Brandon: It's a sad saying. Beat it like the drums. It's going to break your guys' bubble.
Outside of your house is nature. There are trees.
There is grass. Hopefully you're not allergic to grass. There's trees. There are streams. There are rivers.
There is oceans. There's the sky. There's the sun. There's the rain. There's the snow.
There's the heat. When you live your entire life in a climate controlled room with a blue artificial lit screen plugged into your face, you will become a zombie, a hollow shell of a person. When you got bright led lights, we have one on right here, so you guys can see us. We don't even use lights. When you live in that place, it feels impossible to change and grow and heal because the life is being sucked out of you.
You're like, well, I don't have the energy in my system to change. You're going to take that cable and you're going to step outside and you're going to picture what does my body need to come alive? I might go on a ten minute walk. Woah. I'm feeling I'm thinking a little clearer.
You might let's just say it's let's see when this is released that you guys are all probably warming up. It's summertime. Go sit on the front patio. Go lay a blanket out in the grass like Caitlyn said. We We we made it through a really dark winter and spring and as the spring came we just felt like the sun like brought us to life.
We were just soaking it up plugging into all that we could receive from the environment around us. And again, we live in Hawaii now. We didn't before we lived in Idaho, we were in Oregon, gets cold in both of those places. It gets rainy and dark. So anywhere you live at any season, into what you can do outside and make your rhythms around that.
And just that one change of seeing what can we do outside today as a family, as a couple, will give you a spark of change just by not sitting in the same couch, scrolling on the same phone, watching the same TV. Go outside and go walk for half an hour, go for a hike, go to a stream and listen to the sound of the water flowing. And you might just start crying because there's like, where have I been? I've been stuck in my head and now I'm immersed back into something that's real and tangible that I can feel and sense. And that's that's the experience you need to have.
And if your kids can have that alongside of you, it's gonna be all the better for both of you.
Caitlyn: Yeah. How do you protect your family from a marriage crisis? You literally bring your family back to life, right? And so these were family rhythms that we already had established, lots of new ones we created, and we still live by to this day. And people will ask us this all the time in our community and at our events, Tell us about these, like, healthy, natural things you do.
Right? And I'm like, oh, it's like, I forget that this is even a, quote, different way of living because to me, this is actually what living is. Right? Like, why is it like this healthy, natural, hippie thing that I walk outside without shoes on and I don't bring my phone with me and I go sit outside? It's like, woah, why is that a hippie thing?
Why is that like a natural healthy girl thing? Like you guys, this should just be what we are all doing. That's called living normal life.
Brandon: I could die if I don't.
Caitlyn: You most likely do feel like you're dying. You know, I think I've shared this story already with, there was this man in our community. He's, he actually he was on the last season of the podcast. Was one of the ones that we interviewed and went back and forth with. I won't use his name, but, you know, they joined our community.
They're in there. They're going through this stuff. And he's just like, kinda like, I feel like I'm dying. Right? He's like, I'm doing this stuff, but I feel barely alive.
And I'm like, okay, what makes you feel alive? Are you getting outside? What things do you need to go do outside? For a lot of you, like, I don't know what I love. I don't have hobbies.
I don't know what makes me feel alive. I've just been looking at porn and sleeping with other people and playing video games and watching sports and staring at my screen and shopping for thirteen hours and I don't even know what I love anymore. Like, okay. This literally is about gifting your marriage, yourself, your entire family, your children. I don't care what age they are.
I don't even care if they're out of your house. They'll see the health and the vibrancy. This is about gifting them a whole new way of living that literally brings everybody alive. I could have. I could have said my life is really hard.
Brandon's so mean back in 2019. Brandon's so mean. I barely slept at night. I could have had every single excuse under the sun to tell my kids, go play on the play structure. Mom's here laying on her phone.
I could have been scrolling Instagram. I could have said, kids, I had a rough night. We're watching TV today. I could have turned on
Brandon: could stayed in bed. I taken you could have stayed in bed.
Caitlyn: I could have stayed in bed crying.
Brandon: Which is okay if you need to cry in bed.
Caitlyn: That's I could have done that. I could have turned on the cartoon while I made breakfast. I could have played the zombie game. I could have lived the zombie life, and I wouldn't have the life I have now. My children wouldn't have the vibrancy that they have now.
We had no TV in that time. We had had no TV in that time. We still haven't had a TV. Eleven years, no TV, you guys. I'm not dying.
I'm actually living. You feel like you're gonna die when you rip the TV off your wall? That's a sign that you're addicted. I love this. We were talking about addiction, you know.
We always talk about these extreme addictions. If there's something in your life you can't literally cold turkey just get rid of right now, you're addicted to it. I don't care what it is. I don't care if it's coffee. I don't care if it's cocaine.
I don't care if it's a TV on your wall. I don't care if it's sports. Anyone who wants to argue, well, I need sports on Sundays. It's this time and this men's thing and blah blah blah blah. It's like, if you can't just for a season, like, not to mention your marriage is apart, your life is falling apart, you don't even feel alive, like, let's just leave out all that.
If you can't just for a season go, woah, I'm gonna reboot this, I'm gonna get rid of and pause these things, then you have an addiction. Like, if you can't remove the TV from your wall for thirty days, please do it for more. But if you can't even do it for thirty days, ding ding ding. You are addicted to your TV. I could have played that game.
I could have taken that role and I didn't because my children would have then adopted a lifestyle of numbing out when life is hard. Guess what? That's what we were healing from. Brandon had numbed out when life was hard. Wow.
He had become a numb human being, and we were entering into a marriage crisis to heal from that. I could have numbed myself out and numbed my children out, and then what would happen? Now we're all numb, all zombie, and we're not getting anywhere. Instead, we protected our family, protected our marriage, protected our kids by coming back home and coming back alive.
Brandon: That's why it's so much simpler than you needing more money. You needing your life to change. You need to change the way you're approaching life because instead of needing something you don't have so that your family can, and your marriage can heal, what if you removed things that are not serving you? So that you can actually just plug into things that are very accessible, stepping outside, walking, exercising, letting the weather be a part of your day, like where you 're in the rain or you're in the sun or you're in the snow or it's cold or whatever it is like, make that what you need instead of needing something that's so far out there. Like I need to work with this one special counselor in New York and that might give us a chance.
Maybe you still got to go home. Everything has to go home. Everything has to go back to the home. So why not look at how your family operates now? And it's like, gosh, I do turn on the cartoons for the kids every day for an hour, for two hours so that I can just get a break.
What if you took them to a park? What if you went in the backyard and just threw a ball with them? What if you put a blanket out and you say you're at home with the kids, do some stretching, go on a family walk. There's so many options that actually benefit your soul and theirs. Because guess what?
They're still going to be tired, hungry, and need something from you while they're watching cartoons. Their mental cognition is just getting disrupted. And it's also feeding the pattern that led to the breakdown of your marriage, which is detaching from the present moment. This is just a very extreme example of it when there's addiction, sex addiction, infidelity. And so I want to encourage you guys to take this to heart that what you need is not something you don't have.
It's how you're engaging your environment around you. That, what that starts with is get outside as much as possible. Start walking, start moving your body. We go on a family walk almost every single night, even some nights when it's, I'm carrying one of the kids or pushing an empty wagon.
Caitlyn: It's raining.
Brandon: It's raining. It's hot or it's cold, whatever it is. We do it. Like we've literally gone on so many walks where it's like pitch black and it's pouring down rain on us. We have our raincoats on.
Here we go. Why not? And we feel great going to bed because we went on a walk or we'll trade going on walks. There's so much opportunity that, and it doesn't cost anything. It just like, well, what I do?
Do I need to listen to a podcast while I'm walking? No. Just be with yourself. Be with yourself. Enter into that silence.
When you are alone with you, that's where you have the opportunity to change. Cause like, okay, this is who I am. This is where I am. Your brain, your body, your emotions need that time to heal. Your kids, you know what they'll remember from this season where you're in crisis, they'll remember what the shifts you may be like, mom and dad, our life used to feel really dark.
I remember mom and dad having some conversations, but mostly what I remember is we started going outside more. We started playing more. We started moving more. I felt like I had them again. That's what your kids will remember.
If you just shove in front of a TV, they're not going to remember that, oh, I'm so grateful they gave me a screen. So grateful they gave me a phone, a tablet. They gave me a tablet. My mommy and daddy love me. Wow.
This is going to be, this is not what I'm, I wasn't planning on saying this. Wow. I want you to take this to heart. There are so many studies now that show that kids being given tablets and screens is destroying their brains. Yep.
Your kids will never express an ounce of gratitude that you fried their brains because you gave them a tablet for ten years of their life.
Caitlyn: Yep. You're only giving them a screen and a tablet because you're addicted to yours.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: Because our kids have never had a screen or a tablet. They don't have TVs. Why? I can only offer them what I have given myself. I removed that from my life before I had children.
We removed the TV from our life when we got married. We didn't have we we worked on a screen. Of course, we still work on a screen. Our screens are in designated areas. People are like I remember meeting this one mom.
She's like, oh, I couldn't do the Waldorf way because we can't have screens at home, we work from home. And I'm like, do you not have an office where you can stick your computer and then you can like, you communicate you're working and then you're done.
Like, it's like our children don't grow up on screens because we don't live on screens. So the second you remove screens, you give them the opportunity to not live on screens. Brandon was given screens from a young age because everyone in the home had a screen.
Everyone had a babysitter. So you literally are passing on to them the curse that you were given and the curse that you're embodying. You get to switch that all up right now.
Brandon: So there's no shame we're casting on you as the parent, but responsibility. Absolutely. You are responsible for the children that are within your care. And if you've given them a piece of technology to be their babysitter, you are not taking care of them. You are medicating them.
Just know that it's medication you're giving them, but it has a lot of side effects. The good news is that there's no negative withdrawal symptoms from removing the medication of entertainment you're giving them. Within three to four weeks, their dopamine levels can regulate. They can actually begin to slow down and think deeply. You might experience some pushback a little bit because they don't know what to do with themselves.
You're going to reteach your children to be creative, to be in the moment, which is what you're going to have to learn.
Caitlyn: So
Brandon: you might find that you're playing a family board game now. You might find that you're just spending time outside, then you're tired. The house might be clean now because you have something to do. You're cooking together. You're spending time together.
The home is present when your kids see you sitting over there on your screen and they're over here on their screen. They feel miles away from you, even though you're in the same house, regardless of how hard the relationship is now. Lose this opportunity to come to. If you're going to get to the other side, you might as well love the life you created, love the family, love the rhythms you've created, which looks like creating a new family system where entertainment and detaching and isolation and numbing out is not the new system. It's quality time together.
It's quality food together. It's quality activity together. Like why do you work a job, earn an income, invest in a marriage for what, for the health of the family, the enjoyment of being with each other. Otherwise go, go live as a hermit on a hill. Like, are we, why are, why are we sending our whole lives around trying to create a healthy family and then not getting what we want?
So identify what is it you want? What do you want for your children? What do you want for your marriage? What do want for yourself? And then start taking practical actions for us.
I think for many others, it looks like we're moving the TVs, getting out in nature, walking. One of the key things that we love doing, especially if you live in a cold climate is having a wood burning fireplace. We looked for rentals that had it. When we could just light a fire and just listen to it pop, watch the flames, we do that for hours. Guess what?
You know what the kids do when you light a fire? It's like Christmas morning. They bring their little toys out. They all gather around the fire. They read a book.
They might draw. Our kids are knitting right now. Like, and the fire's going. We don't have one here. We have an outdoor But fire the fire is this, we what gather around very primally.
That's what we do. So if you're like, okay, don't have a fireplace, so I can't do it. Light a candle, turn the lights off, some candles. And then what do we do? You talk, you be with each other.
You're like, well, that's it. That's all there was to begin with. It's our ability to be present and connected with each other and our family should get the first fruits of that. Not just our workplace where we show up and give our best and we come home and we're, we're a dud. I come home and be a stud, be somebody that's like, oh man, this is my opportunity to build connection and memories.
Because they're gonna grow up one day, real fast. Gather around the fire. Gather around the candles. Gather around the story time. Sit with each other.
Be with each other. Because it's all you have.
Caitlyn: Yeah. You cannot change your life by keeping your life exactly the same. And people, their biggest argument is, wow, that sounds so extreme what you guys are talking about. Like, you guys are extremists. And I love this argument because I'm like, what in the world?
This is so telling. You think that it's extreme to propose this idea that removing everything and coming back to human connection with those that we love the most, our spouse and our children, our community is extreme. I think it's extreme to live a life you hate, be dead but barely alive. Your marriage is collapsing and falling apart and your children are suffocating in that mess. That sounds extreme to me.
You know a life that sounds extreme? A life where I hate so much, I have to live on my screen and make my kids do the same. A life where I'm so burnt out and overwhelmed that I have to turn on the TV to make it through the next day. I have to look at porn. I have to smoke a cigarette.
I have to drink until I feel better. I have to binge eat cookies. That sounds like a pretty extreme life. The life I'm living, the life I'm proposing that you can create where you feel alive, vibrant, connected to your spouse, to your children, where you're outside running, playing, having fun, where you're inside creating a fire, lighting a candle, laughing, talking, eye contact, connection. That's a life worth living.
Right? It only sounds extreme because it requires change. Yet people wanna sit and complain that they want all the benefits of having a fruitful connected loving life without changing. The change is only hard. It's like ripping a band aid off.
It's like it only hurts for a second because you're ripping off everything that doesn't even belong, everything that's not even serving you, everything that you don't even love. Again, you don't feel alive. Your marriage doesn't feel alive. You guys, you're headed towards divorce. That's extreme.
This is not extreme. It's the opposite. It's extremely good. It's extremely prosperous and beautiful and wonderful. There are so many benefits that go way beyond the topics of this podcast that we experience to this day because we made this our, quote, extreme priority.
But again, I'm like, why is it extreme that we live most of our life outside? Why is it extreme that we haven't had a TV in eleven years? Because people create these black and whites like, you're bad if you have a TV. And it's like, that's not what it is. It's about what makes you feel alive.
It's not about I'm a good girl or a bad girl. It's about do you feel alive right now? No. Okay. Then change your life which looks like literally changing how you do your life which looks like taking the TV off and going outside and talking to your kids and talking to your spouse and taking your healing seriously.
Brandon: Like, well, what if I get tired of people needing so much of me? That's why you go to bed. That's why you nourish your body with proper hydration and food. And so if you're like, if you're like worn out, then you change your approach to how you see them and you actually be like, wow, this is a full contact sport, like parenting, working the job at work. Like I got to be at my best.
Yes, you do. So instead of saying like, this is a lot. How can I suck more energy? Like I was doing, you say, wow, this is a, this is a big responsibility. I'm going to show up as the best version of myself.
I'm going to wake up ten minutes earlier. So I have that ten minutes to do my embodiment routine. Before we go to bed, we're going to, we're going to connect as a couple and do some emotional exercises so that we can be connected so that we are in sync with each other going into the next day. Raising kids is a real thing. It requires a lot of attention, a lot of focus.
And if you give it that, and then you give yourself attention and care and focus, you're going to, you're going to enjoy it and you're going to be proud of the children you're raising and the way you're showing up. And that's, that's what you signed up for. Like if you wanted to have sex and create a child or adopt a child or foster a child, you're choosing to care for this soul. And that comes with a great responsibility. And the greatest news is all you'll ever get from that is them mirroring what they see in you.
You protect your kids from your marriage crisis by examining every part of your family rhythm. If it doesn't give life and making those daily changes, you consider when and how you have the conversation with your children about your brokenness. I would recommend as you've climbed out of it, not for them to carry it. And you don't need be screaming in front of them. You have those conversations once they go to bed and at appropriate times, childcare is involved.
So you guys can go to a counseling session or go have a date to like dive into some things. Do that. Your children are not a nuisance. They're not a burden. They are the fruit of your relationship.
Nurture them. And you'll be so proud of how you're raising them. If they're already adult children, you can still rebuild their trust and respect by healing yourself so you can heal your relationship.
If you guys are like, man, this is awesome. We'd love to go a step further with you guys. We do have our event coming up pretty freaking soon in San Diego. It's August fourteenth and fifteenth. You can join us in person or you can join us virtually from anywhere in the world. You can see the tickets in the show notes below this episode.
You can also join our couples program. You can fill up the application, the intake form right below this video. If you need immediate support rebuilding trust, going through our grounded intimacy program, getting access to live, live coaching with us on a weekly basis, get your questions answered. We would love to support you there.
And my book, the page has definitely, definitely should be live by now. It's 7stepsbook.com. Really would love for you to get a copy of the book. We'll be sharing more on social media about the book and, how you can save your marriage and and what we've put together in that book.
Really grateful for your for you being here today. We'll see you guys next week.