Brandon: Welcome back to the Grounded Union Podcast. This is the season finale of season four. We're going to be talking about the hardest stages of healing your relationship. Actually just got off a coaching call with our community app and I've been crying for like thirty minutes and we have childcare. So I am like already like deep in this, this message.
What we're going to be sharing on tonight, today, wherever you're listening from is about the different stages of healing. I actually wrote the marriage crisis ebook. It's in the show notes. It's a free download, which covers this. And I'll give you the, I'll give you the shortcut of what we're going to talk about today, which is pre discovery.
So pre discovery of the pain, post discovery. So now we know that the addiction, affair, it's out in the open and then arriving at thriving. So, have these stages to healing. Some of you have been stuck in those stages for a very long time. You've been stuck in this pre discovery, like, When is he going to come clean?
When are we going to actually face this? We have all these stories. And then we get to the post discovery. It's like the betrayal is here. Now, now what do we do?
And everybody wants to arrive at thriving, but we have like these, we'll call it journey of the soul that we have to make it through first to get to thriving. We have to go through pre discovery post discovery. If we're ever going to arrive at this place of a harmonious fulfilling relationship. And the reason I've been crying before we got on the podcast is the pre discovery phase is excruciating to the soul. I spent the first five years of our marriage completely detached and denial and blaming Caitlyn, blaming other women, like a victim, powerless to my life, my future, powerless to the devil.
And it put us in this place of pain and suffering and disconnection, but we hadn't been able to identify why, why, why were we so disconnected? Why, why was I so passive and anxious? We couldn't talk about it because I didn't want to talk about it. So this, this prediscovery phase is where denials running rampant, where there's dissatisfaction in the marriage. And what I talked about, and I know Caitlyn's going have a lot to share on this or what I want to share with you is there's multiple ways that you begin to enter into change.
When you're in prediscovery, it's the pain gets to a point where you can't ignore that something's off in the relationship. So you have to face it. When you get to that place, it's like, she's going to leave, but you haven't even told her about the addiction yet, but she's already done. Cause she feels disconnected to you and she has for years. So you begin to live like roommates or you're fighting and screaming at each other.
The relationship is in chaos and you haven't even figured out why yet. That's why we talk about that so much is like, we think it's a communication problem when there's an elephant that you're hiding in the back closet that we haven't even addressed yet until you talk about the elephant. You can't get to thriving. If you add a couple tools to your belt, You gotta look at all the pain, all of the mess, of the addiction, at the affair, until you can make any progress in your relationship.
Caitlyn: I always think of, I said this in the couple seasons ago, of the of a magnet illustration, right? So in this phase of your marriage, you know, your two magnets trying to come together, you know, if you put the magnets facing the right side, they connect perfectly, right? And I know if any of you have kids anywhere in the age range of ours, you have tons of magnetiles at your house. And so I think of I picture literally those magnetiles and they perfectly connect together. If you flip them on the other side of each other, I can't turn my podcast mic that way, then they they can't they can get really, really close, but they can't ever fully connect.
And so that's why a lot of people, even before they know about the addiction or the full addiction or all of the secrets, that's why they already feel disconnected. It's because that little middle space where your your magnets cannot fully connect no matter how hard you literally try to force them to, that little middle space is all that needs to be discovered. Discovered. So like uncovered, told the truth that needs to be brought out. Right?
So as hard as you try to connect, you're not. And Brandon was even even saying, you know, you hit this pain threshold where you're like, well, I can't take this any longer. As he was saying that, was realizing most marriages actually wait way too long. Most people are hitting what we call, you know, as a society, a midlife crisis before they go, well, I can't take this anymore. The kids are out of the house.
We've been doing this charade game for twenty, thirty years, and I can't handle it anymore. Right? For me, I topped out at five years. Like, I'm done doing this. And some of you honestly just need permission to say, if you've been in that endless cycle where you're united, your soul is united, you got married, you've unified yourself to someone, yet there's this middle space where your magnets can't connect, you maybe don't even understand the full picture of why, it's time to go, woah, the pain is too much from the disconnect.
We need to figure this out right now. We're not waiting till the kids are out the house. We're not waiting for a perfect time. We're not waiting for somebody to tell us to do it. We're not waiting till I catch you.
We're not waiting any longer. Disconnect in your marriage, there's something going on and you can't heal to the point, like, there's no disconnect in our marriage. You might be like, oh, so you never argue or you never have, like, things you don't agree on. It's like, actually to be honest, there's not really much we argue about and nearly nothing we don't agree on. Like we see eye to eye on so much because our values are the same, because we cleared out everything in the middle that didn't actually belong, and because we genuinely love each other, have deep connection, no more secrets or hiddenness from each other.
Like when you remove all these things, you remove 90% of what you argue about. So if you're disconnected, there's something deeper underneath the surface, like the root system of a plant, a tree, anything that grows, there's something deeper underneath there that needs to be addressed so that your connection can be restored.
Brandon: And if you want to ignore the pain long enough, you probably will get caught, which is another way you move from pre discovery to post discovery. But the pre discovery phase is often it often requires a reckoning of some form. So you you you have to face yourself. And the reason we stay in prediscovery for so long, which is a, is an excruciating phase, because it's basically the slow death of each of you. And the way we do that is the stories we tell ourselves about the world around us.
So we justify the behavior, the reality, the addiction, the affair, of the story and the way we frame the world up for ourselves. And it's until we get caught, we're going to keep playing the game until we, we get so sick and tired of being sick and tired. We're going to keep playing the game. And what commonly happens at this stage is people, they place their focus on the secondary impacts of the addiction, the financial crisis, the job crisis, the health crisis, the chaos that is happening all around your life. It's like my life isn't bad because of my addiction.
It's because of all this other stuff going on. It's because I'm, I'm, I'm chronically ill. It's my wife doesn't respect me. It's because my boss doesn't give me a raise anymore. It's because it's hot.
It's because it's cold. It's because we don't have this. We don't have that. It's not my life doesn't suck because I'm living a double life. It's because of everything else out there.
And so we live in that story for such a long time that you begin to believe it. When we were newly married and then through several cycles of lying and betraying Caitlyn's trust, I'd tell her I wasn't lying to her. I'd get on my phone, spend two hours scrolling on sexually suggestive content. While she went to bed, I would tell her that I was going to go listen to a sermon on YouTube and I'd find myself on social media looking at half naked women. I did that for two full years and much more.
And I told myself a story about why I needed that time. I needed my time to decompress. I needed my time to escape. I was in so much pain. I was so anxious.
It was the only time I felt sort of okay, but my eyes were burning and I couldn't think straight. And I kept myself numb So I didn't have to face reality, which is what prediscovery is. It's the unknowing of reality. It's living in the sense of delusion to keep the show going. And you can only do that for so long before your wife taps out before you tap out.
Sadly, this is, this is in the phase where physical abuse can take place where suicidal tendencies, where depression, severe anxiety, panic attacks, where life becomes so unmanageable that you're forced to begin to, you can't ignore the squeaky brakes for months longer because the brakes are going to go out when the brakes go out and you're down going down the highway 60 miles an hour. You you've got to start figuring something out. So this pre discovery phase, the betrayed spouse might have some inklings about what's going on. You might know something's off, but you haven't accepted it yet. It's not a place of acceptance.
It's a place of shifting focus often enough so they don't have to look at the real thing. And Caitlyn will be able to speak to this. And those of you listening, when you think, how good does it feel to clean up a space in your home to had junk sitting around or to get rid of something that's no longer serving you. That's what your addiction is. That feeling of satisfaction of peace of relief.
When you finally deal with the junk in your closet that is molding and gross and destroying your life. Once you're willing to unpack that. That's when the relief comes. That's when your suffering ends. It's not when the economy changes.
It's not when your life changes. It's when you stop allowing yourself to live with the addiction and the impacts of the addiction as a secret from your wife and you face it. And when you face it, you get to experience the relief you were meant to live with from the beginning.
Caitlyn: Yeah, we say this often. Most people stay in their addiction or stay in their secrecy, stay in this prediscovery phase because they don't actually believe or know or see the way out to the other side. So they are like Brandon said this, I think, on the last episode. They just have a learn to deal with mentality. Right?
Learn to cope with. This is how I'll always be. So therefore, I just need to figure out how to live my life and how to kind of manage it. Right? How do I manage this way of living, this way of thinking, this way of being, this way of interacting with my spouse, with my kids, with others?
And you get really stuck there. Right? It's like literally like your tires are stuck in mud because you're like, I don't know of any better way. I don't know of any way out. Might have even sought a lot of counsel and wise people, and they might have told you there was no way out.
They might have told you you were stuck. They might have told you you had some sort of a a label put on you to where you can't actually fully heal. And so oftentimes, I say this also all the time, like healing is really really simple and we are the ones who complicate it for ourselves. So the moment you find a tool like this podcast, a voice, a story like ours, something that go it's like a a flashing sign in the road that's like, woah, like your tires are stuck. You feel like you can go nowhere.
You're just trying to you have this live with manage approach. And then you see this flashing sign going by. Right? And it's like, no, no, no. There is freedom.
There is a way out. You can actually live a life that you love. Like that's why we get so emotional. Like I literally cry every single time we do our events because I just want people to get it. Like, this is so much bigger than your addiction.
Like, we start with the addiction because that's where it kind of pierces and hits home for people because that's the pain point. Right? The addiction, the lies, the cycles, the years of being on describe a roller coaster ride where you think you're getting off and you're just re going through the same thing. And here we go. Like, it's just like, oh, we're just going around over and over and over again.
It's like, so you start with the addiction, you start with the lying, but this is way bigger than this. You have an addiction because you hate yourself and because you hate your life. You can love yourself, love your spouse, love your kids, and love your life. Like, this is literally what this comes down to. Coming back to life and loving your life.
Brandon: To be able to love your life, you have to face the fear, which comes from the pit you've dug yourself from the from the addiction, from the behavior, from the affair. If if you continue to stay in this place of I'm gonna try to not lose things, I'm gonna try to keep the storyline going. For as long as you hold that mentality. It's going to be impossible to create connection, to create that freedom in your relationship. So I want to spend a big chunk talking about this post discovery phase, which is ultimately once the truth is out, what do you do?
So for some of you, if you're still in pre discovery, it's like, it's not time to pull the band aid off. I tell guys like, you need to share with dignity and honor and courage the reality of the places you've broken your commitments to your wife. She needs to know. So you're not dumping it on her and then telling her to go figure it out on her own, and you go figure it out on your own. It's like, I need you to know where I've been breaking our commitments.
This is a line. Like we talked about the wife drawing a line in the sand, like draw a line in the sand for yourself and say, here's where I've been living on this side of this is where I've been living over here. I drew a line and I'm, I'm actually ready to join you over there. I've got a lot of work to do because this is all the stuff I've done.
Caitlyn: And there's no convenient time to have that conversation.
Brandon: There's no convenient time.
Caitlyn: You might be like, oh, I can't tell her today. It's like there's many people actually in our community that it was, I think, Christmas Eve. I don't know why. There was like five to maybe more people that decided on Christmas Eve, they were gonna finally disclose everything to their spouse.
Brandon: I think it's because that's a time when people actually soften. Take the time it's the most wonderful time of the year. It's like, when you finally soften your heart to the people that you love and care about, you're like, this is an empty home. Like I'm not, I'm not here. So once you find that you are ready to take that step, it's like, it's the courage to share the truth of the addiction, the affair, whatever it is.
And it's equally then your mission must become one of waking up. And the biggest problem you will face is the noise inside of you and the noise around you. And at the beginning, you will think that it's the noise that's coming from your wife. Why is she crying so much? Why is she asking so many questions?
Why am I getting so much advice? Why is all this happening? So you get yourself into this place of chaos and now you're in this new chaos where you're like, we don't know what to do. We don't know how to navigate this. My wife's feeling all these things.
I'm numb. That's why we keep telling you the one thing you must do is quiet the noise is to get outside, to get off your screens is to get moving. Cause if you don't feel something, she's going to go on suffering unnecessarily when all she needs right now is validation and empathy. And all you need is the courage to face your story with power. So if you don't have power, if you're numb and checked out, it is your one focus post discovery to wake yourself back up.
That's when we've told you, I sat outside and my underwear in the freezing cold to journal and I had, I was, I had panic attacks because I had no capacity to feel. So anything difficult, would just shut down. And when Caitlyn's crying, louder she got the quieter I caught. I couldn't feel, I didn't want to feel. I was scared to feel.
So I started doing anything I could to start feeling. I'd go on a run just to get my heart rate up and I tried eating a raw onion. I was just doing all these things to just activate me. Everything you try, don't, don't do anything that would hurt you or others. Took a cold shower and immediately have a panic attack.
And I came into the bedroom and Caitlyn's already having a panic attack from the things she's hearing from me. Her legs are kicking. She can't take a deep breath. She can barely breathe. I watched her gasp to fall asleep for months because she couldn't breathe from the panic and the anxiety and the trauma of what we were walking through.
I had to make it my mission to feel something. I didn't have a lot of the tools or awareness of where I was and what I needed at that time. That's why we are so explicit in our recommendations that whether or not you ever join one of our programs or come to an event, I hope you've gleaned enough from this podcast that you can start taking some action. Start doing some mindfulness, crack open a journal, go outside, activate your body. Begin to feel again.
Cause if you don't, your marriage is going to end. It's guaranteed. But if you are willing to quiet the noise around you, you give yourself a really, not a really positive chance. You actually open up the ability to change. This guaranteed you can change if you silence the noise from everything you've been using to keep yourself distracted, numb and dumb.
Your wife can be as loud or as detached as she needs to be. It's your opportunity to say, wow, I wasn't partnered to you this whole time. I actually have no expectation of how you'll respond. Or even if you'll stay with me, I got to find out if I'm capable of showing up. I got to find out for me if I'm willing to be the man I committed to you to be.
I want to know if I can wake up. Make that your sole focus as soon as you enter into this post discovery phase.
Caitlyn: Because post discovery is not you'll hear us say this all the time. It's not about trying to win back your wife's trust or your the betrayed spouse's trust. Just Sounds cheesy. If it's roles reversed. It's not about trying to get sex quicker.
It's not about trying to convince them, her that you are trustworthy. It's not about trying anything. It's about focusing on yourself. Like, if you are the one who's coming out of the facade, right, you've been living in this gray murky water, and you're clearing up the water now. You're clearing up your mind, your heart, your connection, your purpose.
You're clearing everything up. Stop making the focus on a timeline. Stop making it on rebuilding trust. Stop even trying to just fix your wife, appease your wife, take it. None of those things are the focus.
The focus is continued honesty because as you come into this discovery phase, this post discovery phase, you think you see everything right now and you most likely don't. You see the tip of the iceberg as you silence all the noise, as you get outside, as you journal and get into your body, as your wife even asks you questions, you'll begin to see even more. When you try to silence the questions to rebuild trust really quick, to get her to love you and to like you and to approve of you really quick, when you silence those questions, you're actually stalling the process of healing. When you invite her questions, you expedite the path to seeing clearer.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: Which is so contrary to anything you've probably heard and anything you ever will hear most likely. I'm sure this message will begin to get broader and broader. Most people say, stop pain shopping. Right? We've heard that and from people in our community that, you know, counselors will be like, oh, don't ask too many questions.
That's pain shopping. Don't ask too many details because it's unnecessary, right? Oh, know, husbands will say, well, I already answered that yesterday, I already told you that last week, right? It's like, woah, woah, woah, This phase of your life is about inviting her questions. And you're not getting defensive.
If you're getting defensive, it's because you're hiding more. You're not feeling guarded. You're not minimizing. All of those are signs. If you're getting angry, those are signs you still have more secrets.
Of course you still have more secrets. Like I said, you only see the tip of the iceberg. So be happy that she's asking you questions because she's actually taking you into a deeper, into those deeper waters that were super murky. Yeah. She's helping you clear them up because she probably sees a lot more and she's seen a lot more than you even realize.
And as soon as Brandon was not throwing stones at me for asking questions, but actually like, woah, let's do this together. Like, we're a team. We're going to like I said all the time in other podcasts, we're gonna look at this like two detectives on a case right now. Yeah. Because this is my story, my life.
This is our story and our life. This is truth. Right? This is understanding and seeing clearly. So when I say, oh, like, is there more times that this happened?
Instead of him going, stop asking me that. I already said no. No. I said one time, like, never again did it happen and go, woah. Let me think about that.
Let me journal about that. I don't know right now, but I'm dedicated to finding out. I'm gonna go take a cold shower, see if I can clear my head. I'm gonna come back. We're gonna look at this.
Right? The difference there is literally setting the trajectory of where you're gonna be able to end up.
Brandon: The first betrayal is what you did that broke the commitment to your marriage. The second betrayal is denying the impact that it had on your wife. As Caitlyn's saying, when you resist the questioning, the exploration, the curiosity of understanding the impact, that's like the, the knife is already in and that's the twisting of the knife. She's already fighting for her life, understanding what happened. And when she sees you resistant to that process, it says to her, doesn't want to change.
He doesn't want to see this. He doesn't want to know what I've been through. He doesn't want to know what he's been through. He's not actually interested in healing. He's interested in protecting himself.
He's going to do it again. If you don't want to address the roots. You're going to grow the weed. You're going to repeat the behavior. It might be a year from now.
Caitlyn: Might look slightly different.
Brandon: Yeah. You might try another flavor of it. You might change from me. I just kept trying to change my behavior a little bit, add some more nuance to it. So I wouldn't have to address what was there.
So I'd cry. Tell Caitlyn I was sorry. Read a book. Say let's move on. If your spouse is telling you let's move on, they're not ready to move into thriving.
They're still stuck. They're still stuck in pre discovery. You've entered into post discovery and they need to jump into that with you by saying, yes, this is a big deal. This had an impact. And so what I want to give you guys is an impact letter, a templates that you can use to write an impact letter for yourself.
You can read it to your wife if you want, but this is primarily for you that has caused the betrayal. This is a very common thing in different recovery circles, but I want you to, I created this specifically for you. The impact letter you can write for yourself would start with saying, and I know that if you're a woman, you can write this too. If you were the betrayer, but you'd write, I am a man that has. And then it's blank.
What are the actions you have done? I want you just to get explicitly clear on what you did to break the commitment to your marriage. What have you what is the damage you've done? Tell me about it. Write it down.
Like, I cheated on my wife. I lied to her for this long. I stole. I was checked out. I didn't spend quality time.
Like, what are the things you did that are causing all the pain right now? But get, get clear. Don't like, make it 10 times bigger than you think. Like, don't be like, oh, you know, I lied to my wife and that's why we're here. It's like, give me the ex like, write down the explicit details.
How long had it been going on? What did you do? Make it nasty and descriptive. So when you read it, you actually you are impact. You're like, wait.
I did that? I did that? It needs to impact you. You need to be able to see it. Sometimes you write an impact letter understanding the impact for this the betrayed spouse is important.
I don't think you can even do that until you see the for yourself. So you're going to write down what I am a man that has, and those are the things you've done. And then the second thing you would write about is those actions have caused me to become what? And these are going be the characteristics and traits, the negative things. Do those addictions, affair?
What did that cause you to become? It made me become passive, overweight, anxious, angry, bitter, full of rage, full of deception, a manipulative man, a lying man. It made me become all of these things. This is who I became because of all that. This is the impact it had on me and my character.
And the third thing you'll write about is the impact those actions made on those that I love. My affair caused my wife to question her dignity, her beauty, our relationship. My kids don't respect me. My actions, but others at, at, in harm's way. My actions meant I wasn't a present father and my kids didn't get to experience me.
What was it? What, what, what was the impact on those you love? So that those three things are, what have you done? Who did that make you become? And how they impact those that you love.
And I would read that every day when you're in this post discovery phase, if it's fresh and you're trying to wake up and you're like, why is my wife so upset? Cause your, your mind is still trying to convince you this isn't a big deal. You're fine. Keep going. But you need to actually disrupt that pattern and read, oh, wait a second.
I'm a man that did this. This caused me to become this. That's right. Oh my gosh. And the impact to have on others.
You're not thinking about others when you're in your addiction. You're thinking about how to deceive others, how to get away with something. So this is the hard stop on that way of interacting with the world around you and say, woah, woah, woah, like shows over. Here's what I did. And you read it long enough until it has an impact on you.
So the next time your wife says, or she comes out and she's like, I hate you. And you go, absolutely. I read my impact letter. I was a man that did this. It caused me to become this.
Yeah. Of course you hate me. Let me sit with you. Right. No brainer.
And so this isn't like a shame inducing exercise. This is literally an exercise that where you go
Caitlyn: reality.
Brandon: This is a reality reentrance plan where you're like, all right, I'm going to get back into reality. And this is what allows you to actually heal is when you begin to see this is who I was. This is who I became. And this is the impact it had on others until you see it. It doesn't matter how much he sees it.
You've got to see it so that the healing can begin.
Caitlyn: Mhmm. This brings up a really good point. Have two two ways I wanna take this. We'll see if I even remember the second one after I start talking. But when you're in this phase of post discovery and your spouse who's been betrayed, who's, you know, so if you you're the the one who's caused betrayal, you're writing this impact lever letter.
Then there's the betrayed spouse who might say something like, I hate you. People always like argue, well, do you guys condone like women being super abusive with their words? And I love this topic because it's really comical to me. Because I'm always like, I wonder what people mean because they never really use examples. What was one of the examples that just came up recently?
And I was like, oh my gosh, that's literally an example of what people were calling like verbally abusive.
Brandon: Yeah. The comment was that a guy had his wife had said to him that he was being a coward and that was abusive and it makes it hard for him to wanna heal. Well, withholding the truth and being a coward
Caitlyn: Are synonymous.
Brandon: Are synonymous. So if you're if you're gonna be a coward, you either identify as the coward Mhmm. Or you start being like, that's exactly who I was, and I'm ready to become somebody new.
Caitlyn: Exactly. Again, it's not that we're saying, oh, take these labels and carry them. It's that we're saying, grow up a little bit. Honestly, like that's kind of the not very nice or sensitive way of saying it. But if you've been lying and hiding and cheating and your wife calls you a coward, you can realize like, of course she's calling me a coward.
I don't need to stay a coward. Yeah. I was a coward though. I was acting as a coward. I was acting as a liar.
I was acting as a cheater. I was acting as a betrayer. Okay, those things are abusive. Your wife looking at what you did and going, that's literally like, it's like seeing seeing an image of like a dog running and going, woah, a dog running. And somebody going oh That's so rude of you to like literally look at that image and call it what it is like your wife is looking at the image of the whole life that you just told her was a lie that you just told her about and going oh wow, you're a lying, cheating coward.
She's just literally reading and looking at what you just told her. That is actual literally what just happened. So to call that verbally abusive feels so feels so powerless. It's a stretch. It's so powerless.
Of course, your wife is in that place. So when she comes to you in this phase, when she's finally saying the truth for the very first time and she has upset emotions and she wants to talk about it, you can go into, well, that was so rude of you. Like, of course, now that's why I act out. I'm gonna act out more. The classic one is, this is why I haven't told you the truth and this is why I'm not going to tell you the truth anymore.
And you'll hear that from most every counselor. Well, is why we wouldn't recommend that you do that because see now she's in pain and she's going to cause you more pain. Well, if you rise up a little bit, that's nicer than saying grow up. If you rise up a little bit, you can handle it. That's why you're quieting the noise.
That's why you're getting outside. That's why you're doing your embodiment. That's why you're figuring out what you love and doing more of that because then you can rise up and go, you don't have to sit there and take it. That's still powerless. You go, oh.
Like Brandon said, of course you think I'm a coward. Of course you hate me. I hate those things that I did too. And I am committed to healing my life and healing our marriage. The caveat to this is that you can't just say that so that she goes, oh, baby, good.
I love you. She doesn't respond like that. If you've been sleeping with other women and looking at porn for ten years, even two years. Some of you just got married when you're looking at this podcast and you're just finding out about it, great timing. You got in a lot earlier than a lot of other people.
It doesn't really matter what it was, what's happening. There's been betrayal, there's been a severance. Just because you step up and go, hey, you're right and I'm gonna take responsibility. Tell me how you're feeling. I wanna hear how you're feeling.
I wanna validate you. We go through the validation flow inside of our app. We've done many podcasts on this. Talk about this at our events in further detail. You can say, I wanna hear what you're feeling.
Because don't stop at the coward, don't stop at the I hate you, don't stop at the I wish I never married you, those are all classics. Those are I guarantee you're gonna hear those things. No big deal. No big deal. Okay?
You're not stopping there, you're going, tell me how you feel. Yeah. I wanna see you. And this isn't to get a gold star. This isn't to win back trust overnight.
This isn't to get a high five. This isn't so she just instantly now wants to sleep with you. This is long term connection. Yeah. This is rebuilding a new life.
This is seeing clearly and healing clearly. This is the whole point, right? When you make it about shutting her up, when you make it about her being bad so that you don't have to keep telling the truth, you're gonna stay stuck. That's a strategy because you're uncomfortable and you don't wanna keep going. So you're just gonna go, oh, see, you called me a coward, so I'll make it all about you, but it has nothing to do with that.
If you actually are honest with yourself, you're scared to keep unraveling and finding out what's true. And if you keep making it about you, keep making it about your healing, your truth, your honesty, none of those other things are gonna matter or stop you or get in your way.
Brandon: And the way you'll know you've arrived at that place is when, when you're broken at your own behavior to where your wife doesn't have to press you to try to show it to you. She's calling you a coward because you don't see the impact of your behavior. She's screaming. I hate you because she's seeing that you don't see how big this is. You can see it in a man when he fully gets it because he's not making excuses.
He's not blaming his wife. He's not pushing back. He's literally saying, when's the next meeting? When's the next thing? When can we have the next conversation?
When can I be with you? When can I work on myself some more? When can I take care of myself? When can I take further ownership from my life? Tell me what's going on inside of you until you hit that breaking point.
You're like the man I was, was going towards the ground. He was, he was going to crash. He was crashed. He was already crashed out until you like face that man and you break and you weep and you're, you're distraught about the man you became. And now you're like, okay.
I have no, no, there's nothing left in me that wants to protect that man. I just got to see who that man was. I have to understand that man. I have to understand what I did so that I can begin to repair my relationship for as long as you're trying to hold it together. So this is about holding it together.
It's not going anywhere. So you have to allow yourself to break where you hit that tipping point. And I had many tipping points. It was in the counseling office when he kicked Caitlyn out for asking questions. I'm like, my actions had an impact.
If this guy is so scared about Caitlyn knowing about my thoughts, he's willing to protect it. I want to see, I want to see what it's like to understand what I was doing. It's all these little things of seeing the fruit, the result of the behavior, but not, it's not somebody else's behavior. It's my own. When you begin to like start living like a grownup and you see like my behavior, my actions have an impact.
And I can't keep running from that anymore. If you have a long life of running away, you have a big reckoning and that probably is, there's probably some tears. There's some grief. And from that, that's how you unlock the compassion, the empathy, and the desire to sit with your wife. Wow, how are you alive?
Why, how are you still here? And it's not from this like ashamed, like, do you still love me? It's like, no, you're still here fighting for us. Right. Here's what I discovered about myself today.
What are you working through? That's the conversation that moves you into healing. It's here's what I discovered about my story today. Where's your pain? What's the impact of my actions?
What what are you processing? What are you feeling? What questions do have? I'm an open book because I I saw the mess. I agree with you.
This was huge. Yep. This destroyed us. Let's look at it together. Yep.
I wanna see it. So when she calls you out, when you're like going into an old pattern, you go, thank you so much for bringing that to my intention. I'm gonna take care of that right now. Yep. You're you're you're sound you're minimizing.
You're absolutely right. Let me do that again. Let me step outside. Let me go take a cold shower so I can come back in and be ready. I'm ready for the new.
So until you hit that phase, you're just, you're just in it. You're, you're trying to check the boxes and you might drag your wife along for a couple of years, but why You're not, you're not really making it to the other side. You're not, your relationship's never going to be enjoyable. So you're still going to hear about it, but you're never going to heal it because you never chose to break. So you got it.
You have to break.
Caitlyn: Yeah. And if you've caused any sort of betrayal and your spouse is still there, even if they're crying, even if they're upset, even if they're telling you to hate you and they don't know why you were married, if they're still there, that is profound. Okay? Think about that for a second. Think about, like Brandon said, the impact letter, think about what has been caused.
Think about the havoc that has been literally wrecked, the marriage that has been crumbled from all of these years of actions, and your spouse is still there. Maybe they're saying they might wanna get divorced, yet they're still right there. That is profound, right? That is something to be full of gratitude for and to literally wake up each day and go, woah, I'm gonna take this day seriously.
Brandon: Second chance at life.
Caitlyn: Because my spouse is still here. Yeah. And I'm literally gonna show with my actions, not my words, with my actions that I am ready to change, heal, and grow up. I do remember the second path that I wanted to take that. And this is gonna take it a slightly different way, and then you can bring it to the to the third section here.
And that is that I think this fits in really, really well here. That is that we do not believe that in the prediscovery or the post discovery that it is crucial or even I would use the word advantageous to solely rely on a polygraph or on a therapeutic disclosure. And if you're in the betrayal space, most of you know what these words are. A polygraph, obviously, I think all of us know that's a lie detector test. And then they're normally paired together and we were gonna do that track, right?
And the full therapeutic disclosure or therapeutic disclosure is essentially where you write down, I'm using air quotes if you're not watching, everything that you've done and then you read that to your wife. It's kind of like, I thought of it because it's it's kind of what a lot of therapists will call the impact letter is actually your disclosure letter. And the reason why we don't necessarily condone that or even think that it's advantageous is because how I've already said, in the beginning, you only see the tip of the iceberg. Right? Actually, same counselor who told us the tip of the iceberg analogy was the same counselor who was gonna have us do the therapeutic disclosure with the polygraph.
I remember sitting there, like, arguing with him over it, kindly. But, like, again, I'm 20 and I'm just like, make it make sense to me, please. Because if my husband's a liar and he's been lying for all these years, you're telling me that he's gonna write me a letter in the next three days about all the things he's been lying to me about for five years. And some of you, you're writing these letters and it's like ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years. Okay, so in three days, my numb dissociative husband who's changed nothing else about his life, who has been living in denial, still living in denial, is going to remember everything.
And I'm just like, okay, so he's gonna remember everything and write that down and then we get to the truth. Oh, no, no, no. I'm gonna help him remember the big uglies. Okay, well, what's the big uglies? The big uglies are when he went to the strip club, when he slept with somebody, when he looked at pornography, when he did this and this and this.
I'm like, okay, well I'm not here for any of the big uglies. Like, Brandon wasn't going to the strip clubs. Brandon wasn't sleeping with other people. I'm here because constantly getting on his phone looking at half naked women. He's objectifying everyone when he goes outside to talk to people.
He has bombarding sexual thoughts all day long. That's what I'm here for. Oh, sweetie. Those are little uglies. We don't cover those in the therapeutic disclosure.
We don't cover those in the polygraph. And there I am again, just like make it make sense to me. Those quotes little uglies are actually quite big uglies and these, if we wanna call them little uglies, are the only reason why anybody has a big ugly. So I can't condone doing a therapeutic disclosure because it's not gonna be a full therapeutic disclosure. It's gonna be the tip of the iceberg because they're only gonna see the tip of the iceberg and you can pass a polygraph test lying because if you have been lying for a long time, you are a master storyteller and if you can convince yourself of a story, you can pass a polygraph test.
You guys, polygraph tests don't hold up in court. Why? Because anyone can pass a polygraph test if you're a good liar. So stop relying on these. So many people come into our space like, well, we already did our polygraph test and our therapeutic disclosure.
And I'm like, no, no, no. Start over as if you know nothing. Okay? This is just essentially a male track created by male leaders to get out some of the truth. And essentially, that's like pulling out a little portion of the weed and then wondering why we keep relapsing, wondering why the addiction keeps coming up, wondering why the connection is never fully there in the marriage.
Like, I I can't I get really fired up about this because it's actually a disservice to call that the healing track. And then you end with a letter of how you're sorry, and then the wife shares a letter of how that And impacted then that's really it. Like, that's it, you guys, and that's not it. There's so much more there. You have to literally get to the full root, pull out the whole weed, and look at it, and it's much more detailed than that, and it's not extreme.
It's extreme to only get out some of it and live on the freaking roller coaster for decades. That's extreme. It's extreme to get divorced because you can never actually fully get it out and heal. It's really quite simple. It's literally just called truth and honesty about every area of your life.
Brandon: I'm thinking of one gentleman in particular that I know, and there's many more, but this is years ago. Then knew that he had a porn addiction that he went through the full counseling route disclosure, all these things. And a lot of these people I see come out of the addiction space when they've gone through the standard protocol is they, they dug a little bit into the, what, what the actions were. And now that they have like a chip on their shoulder, the community around them knows they were an addict. They typically share their story very openly with other men at men's groups.
Like, here's what I did. There's another guy coming to mind that he shared about his affair openly. They're very open with other men and it's kind of this crux, like I was this this addict. I hope you guys hear, like, I don't share my story, like, from my addiction as though I'm lots of shame, but these guys kind of share it with the shame and they want to try to help other men from going down that path. But what you don't see in these relationships often is their marriage thriving on the other side.
So they kind of do this, like, it's really not shame inducing, but kind of like, yep. I blew up my marriage through this and we half healed. And these are the men that relapse this man thinking up, he relapsed years of sobriety. He was still going to the men's groups from the counselor, the sex, they're reading the sex addiction material and he relapsed. And that couple is now divorced.
So he spent fifteen years post relapse or post the main, the big addiction. He's doing all the stuff, doing all the things, going to the meetings, going through the polygraph. Everybody knows about it, but their relationship didn't change. He didn't change at his core. He just stuffed down the bad behavior.
He needed to stop doing. We didn't know why he was doing it to begin with. He didn't understand his soul. They never fixed their relationship. She never actually had her pain.
She even shared that with us that her pain was still triggered. She was still triggered by somebody that sent an email one time that it was still tip of the, just everything was still tip of the iceberg. We got to see some of the big uglies, but he didn't get to his heart. He didn't get to his emotions. He didn't get to like where everything fell off the wheels and how it impacted her.
Caitlyn: If you have to stay in an accountability group and stay reading sexual brokenness education and stay going to your sexual addiction counselor for years, you didn't actually heal. We don't do any of that stuff anymore. We made it. When we when we say when you make it to the other side, it's like, I'm looking back at that going, woah, that was a different life. And now we've evolved and grown and changed.
We're not still reading sexual brokenness books. Brandon's not still a part of a men's accountability group to check-in on if he's lusting after other people, and if he's feeling the urge to act out sexually or look at something online, no, no, no, you guys, that means you didn't get deep enough. Like, you gotta go deep, and you don't have to live a life chained and in bondage to literally having to seek counsel over and over and over again. Like you can actually clear that up, clean it up and be done with that.
Brandon: And we still develop and mature and we still invest in mentorship and coaching. It just looks different now. And so the goal is that you don't just stay on the same trajectory of our marriage is miserable. And we're just going to kind of talk about the misery. We're actually going to own the misery, face the misery, become a man that you're proud of being, reinvent yourself and reinvent your marriage.
So that's what it's moving into. You have prediscovery, post discovery, and then thriving. Thriving happens when you're willing, when you're willing and able to connect the dots of your story and your pain. When somebody says, what have you guys been through? And you can, you can openly share, like, it's not about sharing your story.
That's not mean it's your relationship story. But it's like, you know, like, here's what happened. Here's how it impacted both of us. Here's how we sat with each other in that pain. Here's the, the sweet, intimate connection we created from that season.
And here's what our relationships like today. If you can't see the full picture and you've tried to compartmentalize your life, you're not thriving. You're, you're, you're distracted. You're still dissociating, which is what the root of all addiction is until you're willing to be like, I see the full picture now. If we've integrated all aspects of who we are.
And then what happens in that is the real you, the authentic you is calling the shots for your life. You're not holding the strings of a puppet, trying to appear that you're doing marriage. Well, that's what it is. It's the appearance of I'm committed to my marriage. Cause I go to the meetings.
I go to the accountability groups. We don't need the appearance that you're doing well. We don't need you keeping your wife's concerns at bay. We need your wife sharing her concerns. We need you becoming the man you are meant to be.
And they need you thriving in your relationship. That's the whole point. We don't just suffer, suffer, suffer, check the boxes, check the boxes to thrive. You have to be the authentic you all the time. It means that there is no more escape to your life.
It means that you fully love who you are. You fully love the relationship you created. There's no stone left unturned. If there's still stuff at the root that you haven't addressed yet, it's going to creep back up and you're going to relapse. That's why we say go as deep as physically possible while the pain's out, while the doors are open, find what's in there.
Don't just say, yeah, I, I went to the three sessions. I wrote out my, my letters of what I did, and now we just kind of live with it. No, you, you lean into it, You dive into it. You talk about it. You explore it.
You take ownership for it. And you get to the point where it's like, wow, my wife knows that I, I feel her and I feel, I feel compassion and empathy. And I feel a drive to be the man that I was meant to be. That's when you know you're thriving.
Caitlyn: When you enter into your phase of thriving, it's when you become comfortable with the process. Right? So you're becoming comfortable at exploring your wife's pain. Brandon entered into this phase of thriving. We've many different stories here.
When he was no longer defensive, no longer dismissive, no longer blaming me or anybody else. When I shared my pain, he was comfortable. Instead of running away and fleeing, he's present. He's able to actually see me, hear me, hold space for me, validate me. That's when we begin to literally chip away at the journey at making it to the other side, right?
This thriving phase is also when there's an openness and an eagerness to see everything with radical honesty and radical transparency. I remember when we entered into our season of thriving, which I'll call it thriving. I I have journal entries. I know I share them in inside our community app where I think I started one of them. It's like, I know we're no I know that we're nowhere near the end of this, yet I can tell that we're gonna make it to the other side because, again, I didn't write any of my journal entries to read them out loud to other people.
I never had any idea that we would do any of these things that we were doing right now. I wrote them out of a place of raw real honesty, and as I reread them years later, it's literally like a perfect flow to a book. It's like, I start out as I hate Brandon. I wish I never married him, of course. And then it goes to, like, how could you have done this to me?
How is this my reality? Then it goes from like, oh my gosh, he's still lying. Oh my gosh, we're still here. Is this ever going to end? Am I ever going to make it out of this?
I don't know if I should get divorced or if I should have hope that there's something good. Like, I remember I have so many that's like, if I dedicate more time, like, am I literally just wasting my life away giving more time at believing that we could get somewhere? Like, or what if I throw in the towel and we could have got somewhere. Right? You're in this place where you're just like, woah, my whole world is spinning and I don't really know which way is up and down, which way is which way should I go, right?
And when I started then reading on and on, it's like, oh, we're getting somewhere. Oh, it's clicking. Oh, he's beginning to see clearer. Oh, he's beginning to open up and have honesty. Oh, he's beginning to see me and validate me.
Like, you'll move through these phases and when you get to the place where you finally notice, oh my gosh, my spouse who's betrayed me is now sitting here going, ask me anything. Let's explore any topic. Let's look deeper into this. I'm not hiding. I'm not running.
Brandon: Yeah. They're leaving with
Caitlyn: I don't care to be I don't care to be hiding. Like, I don't care if I'm fully seen by you. I wanna be fully seen by you. I wanna be fully known. I wanna flip over every single stone.
I wanna rewire every single thought. Like, Brandon was dragging his feet with that concept. We have a previous episode where we talk about the concept of attraction, objectifying women. That whole concept which most people would call little uglies or something you live with, something you have to have forever, right? Something that doesn't even need addressed.
When I saw him not dragging his feet anymore, I'm gonna actually share every time I look at someone's chest. I'm gonna share every sexual thought that comes up. I'm gonna share every memory that I have from the past. I'm gonna share everything that I've done. I'm gonna flip over every stone because I wanna recreate the foundation of our whole marriage.
I'm like, woah, we're getting somewhere.
Brandon: Yeah.
Caitlyn: And I said, even in that journal entry, it's like, I know I'm not at the end, but yet I was full of so much hope because I could see that he wanted it just as much as I did. He cared just as much as I did. Yeah. He had the belief for the other side just like I did. Instead of me dragging him along with my vision, we shared the vision together now.
It's like we are both holding the baton going, okay, we're gonna finish this race together. When you make it there, it's not perfection. It's not everything's erased and everything's better. You've made it to this place where you're holding the baton together. You're looking at the finish line, and you're like, wow.
We're actually gonna make it.
Brandon: There's stability. For those of you listening, there's so much courage that you have just being here. If you're in that prediscovery phase, post discovery, you're reach you're you're getting on the precipice of thriving. We're honored to have you being able to be here with us in the podcast. Thank you for joining us for the season finale.
If you're like, wait, wait, we want to spend more time with you. We will record more podcasts. If you want to join us in person and we have our San Diego event, it's probably just around the corner when this airs August fourteenth and fifteenth. If there is space left, reserve your tickets below here. You can join us virtually or in person.
If you need support today, you can join our, our Grounded Union App. We do weekly coaching. We have our Grounded Intimacy program. You can apply using the link below here and you can join the waitlist or reserve a copy of my book. If it's out sevenstepsbook.com would love to share that book with you and we'll do a whole podcast diving into the whole, probably a whole season just on the book.
So thank you guys for joining us in the season. If you got something out of this season, you could leave a review of the podcast that helps us reach more people and would love to hear from you guys. If you send an email to support@groundedunion.com, let us know how that podcast impacted you. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for being here.