Brandon: Welcome back to season four, episode three of the Grounded Union Podcast. We're going to be talking about why counseling can be dangerous for your relationship. Now I want to say something real quick. If you are one of those people that don't listen to the end of the podcast, you may be missed that we are actually hosting an in person event in August fourteenth and fifteenth.
So if you haven't looked at the show notes and you want to join us in person to work on your relationship for two days, you can do that in San Diego this August. Why can counseling be dangerous? Let's dive in.
As we were preparing for this episode, we had several conversations looking at the different experiences we had in counseling. Now, if you watch season one, you probably listened to our episode where we talked about getting kicked out of our counselor's office.
So we'll talk about some of the things we learned along that journey. And we're not anti counseling. We're not anti coaching. We're actually going to reveal to you guys what we currently do to continue to work on our relationship, how we invest in mentorship and all of that. We're very much pro seeking support, seeking knowledge from somebody else who is walking in that wisdom.
What we want to do is help you guys avoid the pitfalls of being in a marriage crisis and going to counseling, hoping for one result and then getting maybe getting some devastating news. Maybe you get a label put on you that you're this or you're that. Maybe you feel empowered to actually just put pull further away from your wife and that she's she's just being crazy. So you don't actually have to do the work to heal. We have heard so many stories and we have our own to share.
And what we want to do is, is give you a strategy. For how you seek help. And first and foremost, when we talk about what we do with our friends or people we meet, we actually don't say that we help couples. We talk about empowering couples, even as we present ourselves through our content or events. We are not here to save you.
We are not your saviors. We are here to remind you and empower you how capable you really are.
Caitlyn: Through sharing our authentic story. Yeah. So we're not actually just here sharing like, oh, by the way, we read these certain books, we went to school for these certain amount of years, we had these titles, these degrees, these accolades. People are always like, oh, what do you share on your podcast or in your community or at your event? And it's like, our story, our marriage story.
Every season of the podcast, I love it when people leave a review, they're just saying the same thing. It's like, yeah, you guys, I'm not making things up or trying to I'm not trying to show off or prove something to anybody. We're sharing our true authentic story. Many people need to hear the same things over and over and over again. So they realize like, oh shoot, when they say stop lying, they mean I should share those secrets I've been lying about, Sometimes you have to hear the same freaking episode 15 times.
So we're sharing our true authentic story, our lived experiences, what we saw transform our marriage, and that's why we believe that it can empower others.
Brandon: Yeah. If you are looking for like the academia and the accolades, we don't have that. We've never tried to present that to you. So if that's what you're you've been trying to find my credentials, I don't have any except for a wife that loves me.
Caitlyn: Zero credentials except for exactly. Except for fruit on the tree, right? Which we're gonna talk about that as you as you seek help from others, counselors, masters, mentors.
Brandon: Bloating, like, we got it all together and now you should listen to
Caitlyn: Right. But we've lived through what we share and we came out the other side and we have the fruit to show for it, which is a connected marriage full of love and life and intimacy, full of vibrancy. Like even today, right before we're recording this, we're out with our family and this woman comes up because she just wants to take pictures of our family. Because she's like, woah, look at this family. Like you guys are incredible.
You're beautiful. Like I told her like my kids won't smile for you because you're a stranger, so I don't need a photo, but thank you so much. And she's even like, are you sure? Because you're so, like, this is such a beautiful moment. We're just having a normal moment out together as a family.
And you might think like, well, that's funny. It must be a rare occurrence. No. Almost every single day, multiple times a day, truthfully, people will stop us and go, your family is beautiful. Like, you all look so vibrant, so happy, so alive.
Multiple times a week, people will ask if they can take our photo because they're seeing the life and the love between all of us. And they're like, do you want this documented? Like, this is incredible. Right? So when you create something that beautiful, it literally is reflected everywhere you go.
Brandon: And it's not because physically we are more attractive than others. I've got enough back hair to to keep a whole army to keep my whole to keep my whole family warm in the winter. So it's an energetic thing and it's not like, oh, we've got it. Others don't. It's actually just like When people see life in others, they want to celebrate it.
And we celebrate that in other people and we receive it when others celebrate that in us. Also, something that's really fun, we run into people that do listen to the podcast or have seen a video. And what's really nice is when we're out in public, we aren't pretending. Don't have to be like, Oh shoot, what if Caitlyn and I are caught arguing in front of somebody that watches the show? We're good.
What if somebody catches me flirting with another woman? Not a concern. What if somebody sees it's like, we want you to live a life where you feel completely congruent in alignment, where, where, what you speak is how you live. And that's what you believe. And so when it comes to counseling, it comes to seeking help, we're again, we're not saying we have it all together.
So you should just listen to us, nobody else. What we are trying to say is what you see is what you get with us. I'm confident that our close friends that we have could come on the show. I'm not going to bring them on the show because that'd be weird, but they could talk to you about how we interact with them, how we are as a couple, how we are as a family. So we're not, we aren't doing a show for you guys and saying, hey, this is the happy marriage show.
Go have a happy marriage. Obviously, most of what we say is not the easy happy stuff. It's like, do the real work and then you can get the fruit of it. So we want you to take this is why people listen to what we have to say because we aren't trying to sugarcoat anything and we're not trying to pretend. And so we want you to take that same lens because sometimes when we go into the real, like real world and we're looking for support, we're looking for growth. We just go to whoever's willing to offer it.
And so as a society, we want to talk to this first piece of why counseling can be dangerous for your relationship is outsourcing. It's a common term we use in our sphere, but to start, if you are a counselor or a relationship coach, we actually have a form below this podcast for you to get in touch with us. Cause we're actually not anti counselors or anti coaches. We actually would love to partner with you at some point in some capacity.
So fill out that form. If you are a counselor or coach or got this sent to you, we're not against you. Actually want to work with you. The first thing though, this outsourcing component, when I have a need, I immediately feel powerless. So if we have a that's, that's a, as a society, that's something we do is we're like, well, life's not going as I want.
I'm overweight. My relationship sucks. I got to find somebody else to help me. Now, the reason that that immediate focus outward, let's go to counseling because our relationship's not going well, is you haven't looked inward to know why do you want to go to counseling? What are you hoping to achieve?
What's the end result? What is the actual problem between you two? Because if you just say, they're going to tell me what's wrong, they're going to tell me what to do, and they're going to give me the solutions. Wow. Well, do you know if you want their Did you know that if you go to a doctor and you ask them to treat you for your illness, they're going to prescribe you medication.
If you go to a functional nutritionist, they're going to prescribe you a diet. If you go to a gym and you get a personal trainer, they're going to prescribe you a workout. Do you know what you're looking for to begin with? Cause a lot of times we just go. Somebody else is powerful.
They'll take care of me. And how many people have been subject to medical malpractice? We're going to talk about the things that you've learned. And again, I'm not anti doctor or anti psychologist. We're gonna talk about some of the toxic things you have been taught when you just chose to trust somebody without thinking for yourself in the process.
Caitlyn: Exactly. And again, this is all rooted in our story because I had a vision and a belief for what we could create in our marriage. I shared that with Brandon, and although he was shaking in his boots at the thought of it, speaking lightly of it, of course, there was many tears and lots of deep conversations. At the core, he was like, woah, yeah, that's exactly what we're gonna create in our marriage, right? So then of course, we are like, I don't even know how old we are, something.
We're very, very young. Of course, we go, okay, so we're in crisis. We must go to a counselor to get help. It's a very reasonable thought. It's how most of us grew up, right?
You need help, you go to the counselor. So, of course, we seek we seek the counsel of our pastors to get the very, very best counselor that we could find in our area. We get the highest recommendation. We go to him and then we realize, oh, when we brought our vision for the marriage, he did not agree with it. Okay, we go to these other people.
They don't agree with it. We go to these other people. They don't agree with it. Okay?
Brandon: What was that vision?
Caitlyn: And the vision was that we would have full complete honesty in our marriage. Like if I'm going to boil it down to some bullet points, full complete honesty in our marriage, that's actually why I got kicked out of the counseling office, is because I wanted full complete honesty in the marriage, you guys. Why is that so radical? I have no idea. But that's why we do this podcast, because it needs to become way less radical as a society that we are honest and truthful with the one we have united our souls with.
You guys, it's not that profound. It's actually just really basic and simple. Okay. I wanted full complete honesty in my union, and I believed that all of the sexual brokenness in our marriage could be completely healed, redeemed, and rewired. Meaning that Brandon was not gonna walk around automatically noticing anyone's chest, anyone's waist, feeling attracted or drawn, lured, whatever words you wanna put in there.
I believed all of that could be rewired. I knew that because that was my lived experience through being an honest person. People like, oh, you know, why is Brandon why is it always about Brandon, not about Caitlyn? And it's like, well, again, we got married very young. I'm 19.
I actually did not have a past of sexual brokenness. We both actually had only having sex for the first time together on our wedding night. We did get married very young, so pat ourselves on the back, but whatever, we we got married fast. And I had so I had not had any other sexual relationships outside of that. I had not been introduced or exposed to pornography, which is huge and very, very rare, I think.
Even as a girl, there are many girls who are exposed to pornography. I had seen sexual scenes in movies, of course. And when we got married, I'm getting married with not a lot of sexual brokenness and baggage, thankfully. And I'm already getting married with the belief system, whether naive or childlike or whether intuitive at my core, that we are gonna be honest together.
Brandon: Or sincere.
Caitlyn: Or sincere. Like, okay, he loves me, I love him. Right? And I remember there was times in the beginning of our marriage where I'd have dreams of maybe past relationships or even they could have been made up things of that were very sexual. There would be even times when we were going to have sex together, which this still happens to other people in their marriage that they've been lying about for years, if not decades.
We would go to have sex together and I would have scenes play in my mind. Again, I've never seen pornography. I'd seen sexual movies, of course. And so maybe it was the influence of those. Whatever it may have been, those things played in my head.
I remember telling Brandon. I remember feeling so, like, ashamed to tell him. And at the same time, I'm like, woah. I've gotta tell him this. Like, I need to be honest with him.
This definitely can't be the design that I would go to have sex with my husband, have other sexual thoughts that have nothing to do with him come up. What did Brandon do? Always met me with kindness and compassion. We would pray together, we would talk together, and of course, is that something that I still struggle with? Absolutely not.
Do you think I would still struggle with that if I never told Brandon eleven years ago when we got married? Absolutely. And it actually would have snowballed and gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, worse and worse and worse. Right? And so I didn't have this vision because I was living in secrecy and hiddenness.
I had this vision because I knew that it was authentic to how I was already living. I had already experimented with how good and free it felt to be when I was honest about all the little things. And I'm just talking about honesty with sexual brokenness, but there are many other categories, of course. So what happens here is when you go, okay, I don't actually have a vision for my marriage, so I'm just gonna go to my counselor and hope that they can give me a vision for my marriage, right? Well, that's what outsourcing is.
I don't have within me what I believe or what I know or what I'm moving into, what I'm setting my sights on, so I'm gonna go to somebody else who should know that for me. Well, what? How do we know that that doesn't end well? Well, first of all, it didn't end well for us, and second of all, of the many, many people who come into our space or community or events, we've heard the stories. If you go to a counselor with no vision, they'll give you a vision, and we can't guarantee that it's actually a wholesome vision that's going to get you to a fruitful, whole intimacy, intimate connected marriage, right?
So thank goodness we had a vision when we were going to the counselors because that's how we knew, oh, woah, red flag. They don't support our vision, we're leaving. Oh, they don't support our vision, we're getting kicked out. Oh, they don't support our vision, we'll look elsewhere, right? If you go for someone to give you different vision or to give you a vision at all, they will.
And it might not actually be the vision that you want for your marriage.
Brandon: Before we dive into how you can go into that with aligned values as a couple, even if you're in crisis, one of the things that's gonna make counseling dangerous for your relationship is going simply to appease your spouse. So you may be like, I don't know, thinking about which counselor we go to. My wife's been begging me to call a counselor. She's been begging that I go. Fine.
I'll go. Well, the attitude you're going to seek support with is actually not to get support. It's actually just to check the box and say, I tried it.
Caitlyn: That
Brandon: didn't change us. What do you want from me now? I did what you wanted. So we see that happening a lot where it's like, you're going to appease your spouse. You're not actually going to change or to grow.
Anything we go to without the desire to actually be enlightened or to be inspired towards growth is not going to produce any change. The first and foremost, even if you guys are in a crisis right now, actually, I encourage you do this. If you are in crisis and you're listening to this together, I want you to ask like, why do we want to heal? What are our shared values? What is the hope for what our relationship would be in the future?
Not even like what the, you talk about what the pain is, but like, what type of relationship are you hoping to create? Why is that important to you? What does that feel like? Cause once you know that as your anchor, then everything else, like Caitlyn said, when you get advice that doesn't go through that filter, then you can filter it out. Then you can, you can part ways.
You can go another direction because when we went to our first council, the one that our pastor had encouraged us to go to, we walked in and I'm coming in. I had a vision. I want to be free from addiction. I had lied to Caitlyn and this is really early on in our marriage and I had lied about sexualized content I was looking at. And I wanted to stop doing it.
The beginning session was him saying that Caitlyn's attracted to other men, trying to convince her of that and tell us that some men will struggle with sexual addiction for the rest of their marriage, for rest of their life. And I was like, thank you for showing me your cards at the first session, paid them a $125. And then was like, I don't need to know that Caitlyn should do the same things I do. Right. And I don't need the, that's not a thing.
How is that helpful for me to hear that I should be addicted the rest of my life?
Caitlyn: This is a Christian counselor who believes in the freedom of Christ.
Brandon: Give me the crowd. So we moved on. Some people would listen to that and sit there and go, well, I wonder what he'll help me with next session. So I just want you to think, like, keep your filter on even if you're in crisis because that filter will guide you. And I want you to also look at it this way.
This could sound a little woo woo, but when you have a value or an intention or a goal or an outcome you want to create in your relationship, I want you to picture that you guys are like a radio and that radio has a frequency. When you know what you're seeking, it will present itself to you often. Or when you see it finally, you'll be like, that's it. That's why a lot of you are here. You heard of a thirty second video on Instagram, like, they're talking about this the way that I see this.
Have you guys been in my house? We've gone through many phases of of development and growth, and we'll share that with you. Along the journey, like, here's what we're wanting to grow in as a couple. Here's the things we're wanting to learn. Oh, so and so popped in.
It's and it's it's fascinating. Like, I I was wanting to grow in some different characteristics of of of masculinity and character. I didn't even have the words for it, but I knew that's what we were wanting. Mhmm. A friend of mine, we weren't even like super close friends after we had coffee, gave me a book he had bought two copies of.
I ended up reading the book. It greatly impacted me. Did a little bit of coaching with the author of that book for my own personal development. And it was exactly what we needed in that in that season of our relationship. So give the world around you something to feed you.
Meaning like, know what you want so that when you see it, you can reach out and receive it or be ready for it. Cause oftentimes if you, if don't know what you're going after, you're just going to be aimlessly, I'll just go to this counselor. I didn't work. Let's go to this counselor. Let's go to this counselor.
For us, we felt discouraged at times Yeah. But it wasn't like one counselor not working out wasn't our crux. It was like, oh, this is our last chance. Was like, thank you. Now, let's keep searching.
Mhmm. And it wasn't even like a desperation. Was like, we're gonna keep going. We gotta heal. We gotta keep going.
This isn't, this isn't what we signed up for. We wanna, we wanna go further.
Caitlyn: Yeah. And counseling, why we titled it, you know, why counseling can be dangerous at times. It's not necessarily that the counselor could be or that counseling as a whole is dangerous. It's the mentality that people take on when they go to see the counselor. Right?
Like Brandon's talking about, it's like, oh, we're in marriage crisis. We have some family in this situation where it's like, oh, we're in marriage crisis. We'll go to the counselor. And they just go to the counselor every single week. They don't read any of the recommended readings.
They don't implement anything the counselor says. They don't actually talk about anything after the counseling session. It's just, oh, if I just go sit into the room with the counselor once a week, then my marriage will get better. Right? It's like, what?
Absolutely not. Like I said this on the last couple episodes, even if you listen to these podcasts, just listening to these podcasts does not heal your marriage. Like, you have to do the freaking things that the people that you're seeking wise advice from are telling you to do. So you might have a phenomenal counselor. You might go to a phenomenal counseling office.
If you're just going to appease your spouse and to check the boxes, it doesn't matter how phenomenal, how state of the art they are, doesn't matter how great their advice is, you're not doing anything. So you're not going to make any changes. So it's your mentality when you go to seek that help. Like we already stated, we had a vision for our marriage, so it was easy to go, okay, this doesn't fit, this doesn't fit, this doesn't fit. We'll find somebody that is a supportive fit, which we'll talk about at the end, how we ended up creating that.
Again, that didn't also halt us from healing. Yeah. Because we actually already knew what we were implementing. Remember? We knew we were implementing full honesty and we knew we were implementing rewiring all of our sexual brokenness.
Right? That is the core foundation of everything that we teach at our events and in our communities. We already knew that. We actually weren't looking for a counselor to necessarily give us a roadmap. We were looking for supportive, wise elders to say, woah, here's how I can cheer you on.
Here's how I can support you. Here's how when you hit this roadblock, here's different things to try, right? So when we went to someone who we thought would be a wise elder and they said, no, you'll actually just struggle with this for the rest of your life. It's like, oh, okay. That's easy.
That's easy to walk away from. And then that didn't mean we weren't gonna continue on healing. It still means we went home, we still weren't watching TV, still weren't binge scrolling social media, you're done playing video games, we're still getting outside, and we're still sitting down each night and having conversations. We did not need a counselor in our life to tell us, Hey, should have hard conversations. We knew if we were gonna get anywhere in life, we were gonna need to have hard conversations, and we were gonna need to make our healing season all about healing.
We weren't making it about taking our kids to their sports lessons or having 15 Bible studies to go to. We weren't making it about distracting. We were making it about healing because that was our outcome.
Brandon: Yeah. Now we did say that there are, there are some counselors that you could be careful with, and maybe we'll talk about character in a second, but we want to talk about some of you are, have actually received some very toxic advice. So we want talk about some of the really toxic things that go around when it comes to the betrayal and sexual addiction space. And one of those is that often when the betrayed spouse comes in, they're kind of treated like a hospital patient. And so here's an example that was sent to me.
A guy messaged me and he said that my wife had some more questions about my addiction. And the counselor shut her down and said, let's stop pain shopping. Meaning he said, don't need to ask any more questions. Like we kind of already discussed it. Let's, let's just close that chapter.
That's toxic because the husband needs the opportunity to actually face that pain. There's a lot of times that couples receive advice that I had, I didn't have words to describe Caitlyn as controlling or possibly codependent.
But when I reached out to certain counselors, certain people, pastors, leaders, those are the words I begin to be able to describe my wife as. So you might go into an office and be like, Yeah, my wife is a little, she's pressing a little too much about this. Like maybe she just hasn't had enough sex with me.
That was one thing that Caitlyn was asked after finding out that I've been lying to her, a male Christian leader, said, well, have you been having sex with him?
Caitlyn: He said, this is very normal for young men in the first year of marriage. So I'm weeping on the phone. This is actually the first time I ever found out that Brandon had been lying to me and doing inappropriate things online. And I'm calling the only person I know, he's actually our boss at the time, and we worked for a ministry, so he was a Christian leader. And he's like, yeah, Brandon's young, it's your first year of marriage, this is really normal.
And I'm just like, oh my gosh. Like that's the advice I'm gonna get in my most broken state is that, I should just move along essentially. This is really normal. And then the second follow-up was, are you guys having enough sex? Like, must appease this hungry bear because he's this young wild animal out there in the wilderness.
And as long as I put out enough, he might not go ravaging around for other women.
Brandon: Now, Caitlyn actually wanted to have sex more than I did because I was emotionally not able to engage, but that's a whole another story. That's one of the most common things that is told to women is, are you not giving them your body enough? As though she's like a sex slave. And so there's so many things, you guys probably have your own that have been, you can email them to us at supportgroundedunion dot com. Like what's what's been told to you that's been a toxic advice?
It's often around needing to let go. The betrayed spouse, this is partly your your fault because you weren't as available or you were really hard on him. And I'm just like, guys, we got to flush all that down the toilet. Like if you're getting toxic advice from somebody, I don't care if it's your pastor, it's, it's time to find a new church.
Caitlyn: Exactly.
Brandon: I think it's because the system is set up in a way that forces people who haven't experienced freedom in a certain arena to offer support to people that are struggling. You say really weird things. That's why our counselor who was a sex addiction counselor said we're bouncing around it. We've been to several. This was the one in 2020 who I went to when I was, were about to lose our marriage.
This is about five years into our marriage. Initially he helped me like take ownership for the lies. And then as soon as Caitlyn said, Hey, could we explore some of like his thoughts and his fantasies? He said, no, him, him and I will do that. Like, we're not going to do that altogether.
She's like, I just want to know, like, I want to understand like what's going on inside of him. Like, our work is done here. You can leave my office. And I was like, she poked the bear. Yep.
He was angry. He cut her off. He was rude after he had been supportive. And I was like, oh, this guy's he's hiding things. He's still he's still protecting this thought life he's got because his wife doesn't know about it.
Mhmm. He can't take me there. He's just gonna have me have a couple conversations. We're not really gonna dive into it. And now Caitlyn's evil because she wants to know my thoughts.
Caitlyn: Yep. Exactly.
Brandon: And so many couples didn't have the courage. And I and that's why we're really trying to be a voice for so many couples is you might not have had the courage to speak up for yourself or to speak up to your spouse after that. Cause you might not have been on the same page. I was miserably failing at it, but we were on the same page. We wanted freedom.
If you've received toxic things from counselors, doesn't mean they're bad people doesn't mean they're evil. They just weren't properly equipped to support you. And you need to know that when you go to somebody that they may or may not be able to give you the support you're looking for, and you need to be okay with that. And even if you hold them on a pedestal, you have to know that no amount of schooling or a spiritual degree is necessarily gonna give you freedom when when push comes to shove. If they're telling you to do something that doesn't promote love Yep.
And connection, then you have to be willing to walk away from that advice and even even the influence of that person.
Caitlyn: Mhmm. Yeah. You have to be willing to be okay leaving, to be okay going, even if this person is a good friend, even if this person is family. I think we do a different episode on this concept, like, also potentially stop talking to so many people about your story Yeah. And really narrow in, like, who you're seeking advice from.
But understand you have permission when someone gives you bad advice to go, okay, and that was our last time. We're not coming back. And don't panic. It's not like your marriage sinks Yeah. Just because you need to find a new counselor.
You still have the resources to continue healing every single day. More advice that normally will come in is people enter into our space and they'll feel very aligned with the the belief system that all sexual brokenness can be rewired including attraction. Right? And that is a somewhat countercultural belief system. Although, I do think that as more people begin to embody it, that it'll actually spread because a lot of people, especially women, already feel that intuitively.
That's why they connect with us so deeply when they watch the podcast, listen to a video. They're like, oh, like, read the comments on the videos when we're talking about attraction. Most all the comments are women saying, I've always felt this way, yet I've been always told that I'm wrong. Right? And so I was doing a q and a at the end of one of our coaching calls inside of our community app, and one of the questions that came in, I only we I got so many of these, but this one was recent, so thankfully, it's right here in the forefront.
And it was that one of the couples in there is going to counseling, and the counselor told the husband because they're in our space, so they're taking our philosophy to their counselor and this happens a lot. You take this philosophy that we have to the counselor and the counselor will say something toxic or ridiculous or countering what we're recommending is possible, right? So this specific counselor says that belief system is doing a disservice to all of men because all of men are actually wired very sexually. Again, most of you have all heard this brainwashing. Men are wired sexually, they need to be able to be attracted to others, they need to be able to have this experience, right?
Brandon: Don't take that from them.
Caitlyn: If we take that from them, we are causing a huge disservice to men and to all of society, right? And I'm just like, woah, that's crazy because that person made that up. That's not like something that's like passed down as wise wisdom from generation to generation to generation. It's like, this is this toxic narrative and belief system that mainly circulates in male Christian leadership because it enables them to not have to fully take a look at their own sexual brokenness in the deepest, deepest ways. Right?
Why do yeah. That's a whole another topic. So what's happening is when you go with your new belief system, you might get met with pushback like that. Like people that come into our community and try to take that to their counselor. There are many who find great supportive counselors and most find counselors that go, your husband's never gonna be able to rewire his brain.
Your husband's never gonna be able to heal from that much addiction. Your husband most definitely is not gonna be able to not find other women attractive, and that's actually gonna be a disservice to him. He's gonna like
Brandon: go damage control. It's basically trying to say, you know what? This is as good as it's gonna get. Let's kinda try to get your wife some maybe get her on some psych meds, kinda calm her down a little bit, maybe get you talking with me a little bit, and we'll kinda we'll kinda hopefully get over this season and get you guys stable, and then, yeah, stop stop going to strip clubs. It's kinda like, is there more than just damage control?
Mhmm. We we want more than damage control. So that's why we are always like, if you're in this big of a crisis right now, you just you were cheated on, there's an addiction, everything's ripped open already. Why are we why are we trying to close-up and just pretend it never happened? We actually need to rip it open even further and say, how did we get here?
Are we wanting to do this again? Are we wanting to look at the foundation? Do we actually want to get free? Which leads to what you got to pay attention to, which is the fruit, the character of the person you're seeking support from. If you are going to a counselor who is divorced and does not share the same values as you, or does not live to the standard that you want to live to, they might not be able to support you.
Exactly. They might be able to support you in a very specific, they might be able give you a couple of tools you can use. And that's great. But when you're, when you're looking for somebody to support you at this current stage you're in, at their life. Is this something they embody?
Is this something they live, breathe, sleep? Is this something that they care about? Or is this just something they went to school for? Is this just something they do out of obligation, of a title? Or can you be like, so you go to a counselor, ask them, tell me about your marriage.
Have you ever struggled with addiction? Have you ever been free? And they don't need to have cheated on their spouse to be able to help you through your affair. They might have, they might have some formal training that's very helpful, but you need to ask them like, what's your relationship like? Do you have an intimate connection in your marriage?
Cause if they don't, how are they going to support you to get there? And that's a real sobering thing. That's, they may be like, well, what if nobody else is out there? It's like, there's a lot more people than you think. And again, until you know what you want to create, the world won't serve it up to you on the platter.
You have to actually know like, okay, this is what we're going after. You'll be shocked. The books, the people, the resources, the opportunities will fall into your lap when you least expect it, but you have to know what you want. Otherwise, you're just gonna go to people who don't have the character, who don't have the values you have. You're gonna be perplexed when they say, you know what?
Men need to be attracted to women because that's just their innate gift to think about screwing everybody. And, yeah, do you guys not, know, I'm I'm I'm not really that committed in my marriage. We actually have an open relationship. I know you guys are not wanting to do that. Like, seek support from somebody that has what you want and values what you value.
Otherwise, you're not gonna get what you're seeking to begin with.
Caitlyn: Mhmm. Which I've shared this story before when the counselor that we were seeing said, okay, yeah, I've been free from addiction for from sexual brokenness and addiction for ten years. And then later in the same session tells a story about how he was noticing that the woman at the restaurant that was their waitress had the large chest and he was just kinda able to laugh about that with his wife. I was like, oh, woah. That's not fruit I want.
In my marriage, when I'm 60 and my husband's been free for over ten years, like, I don't wanna be like, hey, the best I've got for you is you won't look at porn, you won't sleep with anybody, you won't go to strip clubs, but you're still gonna notice big boobies across the bar and we'll just at least, instead of crying about it, we'll laugh about it later. It's like, okay, woah, that wasn't a value for me. That wasn't a value for Brandon. So it's like, okay, this is no longer our person because he can't take us somewhere he hasn't been and that's why he also got offended because we were trying to go somewhere that was further than him. That's offensive.
So it's like, oh, woah, you guys can leave, right? So if someone hasn't gone where you want to go Yeah. They can't take you there. They have to it doesn't matter how many years of school they have. It doesn't matter how many years they've even been married.
None of it matters if they don't have already what you're looking for, then they can't take you there and you might go, wow, it feels like nobody has that. It can feel like that for a minute and yet you'll find the wise elders that have exactly what you're looking for. You'll find the the wise nuggets, the books, the podcast, the resources, the events. You'll find the right people that have exactly the fruit on their tree that you're like, yep. I want that in my marriage.
I want that in my life. You first have to let go of all the people you thought were gonna get you there that actually don't even have that on their own life or on their own fruit trees to show you. You have to let go of that first so that the pathway to where you're going can be opened up for you.
Brandon: You also might be surprised that you need a lot less external support than you thought. You're like, well, aren't you guys here to help couples? The ones that want support. Yeah. We're happy that we're happy to share the roadmap.
Even in our programs, like you guys go do it. So this all comes back to like you as a couple, knowing what you want to create together and then having the feedback between how am I showing up? How are you showing up? Where are we going? Where do we want to go?
And it's like, you have the answers within you. That's the whole point of like marriage. It's not like, what type of relationship can I happen? What type of relationship do you want? How free can I be?
How free do you want to be? Cause if somebody else wants something you don't want, it doesn't matter if they want it. Like I said, you're not going to do anything. Right. So you knowing what you want is going to take you much further than hoping somebody else will inform you on what you should want.
Know what you want. And then if you can't find somebody else that's teaching that, supporting that, start doing it yourself and you're gonna be okay. Like, don't wait for somebody else to be the answer. Be the answer for your own relationship. Keep running, go in the lane, go in the direction you know to go, and then you'll be surprised because you'll look around and be like, oh, here's a wise elder, here's a mentor, here's a book, here's a this, here's and I'm like, wow.
Like, I feel supported in the direction I'm headed.
Caitlyn: Yeah. Be careful with the labels that you're willing to pick up because if you remember from the previous episode, I was told or maybe the first episode, I don't remember, but I was told that Brandon was a pathological liar, right? Or high chance of being a pathological liar. I know that people that come to our events, you know, are like, the narcissist thing is really a a hot topic, especially right now, like, is my spouse a narcissist? These are the traits of a narcissist, and then there's this other coin of like, everyone's a narcissist, everyone is on the spectrum of narcissism, and how far is too far, and then you go and you get these attachment styles, I'm avoidant, I'm this, I don't even remember all of them.
Because at the core, I don't actually believe in any of these labels because none of these labels keep you stuck. They put a box around you. Okay, I'm avoidant, right? It's like it might be somewhat of a starting point. Like, if you really need the label or you really need the box to kinda get on the grid.
But most of the time these labels make you feel stuck. They're almost kind of enabling. Like, oh, I'm avoidant. You see? That's why I play video games.
That's why I hide in the garage. That's why I do this. And it's like, okay, everything is healable. So no matter what you've been told you are, no matter what you think you are, if you wanna heal, you can heal. It doesn't matter how far lost you feel, it doesn't matter how far how bad you think you did it, how just wrecked you've done with your life and your marriage, like, are healable.
Your marriage is healable. Everyone has 100% opportunity to heal, and it's 100% your choice. So if you're going to someone and they're giving you all of these labels and these boxes, you're most likely going to get stuck and trapped in these boxes. Drop the boxes, drop the labels. Thank God I didn't run with the fact that my husband was a pathological liar because I'm here to tell you he's not.
He's not a pathological Also,
Brandon: think about the person receiving it. Was being like, oh, yes. I am. I'll keep lying.
Caitlyn: Exactly.
Brandon: Like, I'm here to find out. I'm I'm here to find out how to stop lying.
Caitlyn: Yep.
Brandon: I'm here to how to face the mess. And, like, there was one night when our friends came over that were willing to fight for us and with us, and they were like, Brandon, do you see that Caitlyn's trying to love you? I'm like, even though you became a liar? And I'm like, I'm just I was still trying to convince her I hadn't lied to her yet. And she's like, Sweetie, I know you've lied to me, and you're still lying to me.
I'm still here. Like, are you willing to face that? And something broke at me like, Oh, gosh. She's loving the liar in me. Like, I'm ready to be done, but I haven't even stopped yet, she's still loving me.
So, like, anybody seeking help isn't hoping to find out, Oh, I'm stupid. Oh, I'm permanently like this. Thank you. How do I survive? Like, we're not trying to survive.
Another thing that's very common in this addiction space is that you're always an addict. And it's like, like if you've been an alcoholic or you've been a sex addict and it's like, should you live with intention around alcohol after having a life of alcoholism? Yeah, sure. Should you live? I would live with intention just around everything in my life.
Caitlyn: Intentional?
Brandon: I live with intention. Not because I'm handicapped or have something wrong with me that makes me have to do these things, But because I lived a life that got out of control in a certain area, there's pain, there's history. I'm going to live with intention, but doesn't mean I'm always going to be an addict. There are people in 12 steps programs that have helped a lot of people. And a lot of people are coming year after year.
They, they, they relapsed. We don't want anybody to sign up for a relapse program. We want a freedom for life program. And so if the titles are keeping you enabled in the unhealthy behavior, have to ask how bad do you want the title? Or do you want to get a new title, which is I'm going to grow up.
I'm going to mature. I'm going to face these things. Then guess what you do? You continue to grow up. So it's not this I'm going to do the work that an addict needs to do to get my wife back.
It's I'm going to mature in love for the rest of my life. Mhmm. That's what this boils down to.
Caitlyn: Yep. And I remember I looked at this I looked at this later eventually actually when the whole concept of narcissism really started circulating. And I looked and did a lot of researching into characteristics of a narcissist, right? And I was looking at it, was like, woah, Brandon checked every single box to a detail of a narcissist and then, you know, there's gonna be the whole rebuttal of, well, wasn't a true narcissist.
Brandon: Narcissistic traits.
Caitlyn: He has narcissistic traits. He wasn't actually a true narcissist because narcissist can't heal. And I was like, I would say, I'd be very careful if you're a spouse and you wanna really get on this camp. I think that women will sometimes get into this, this could be a touchy subject. We'll get into camp where we'll go, see my husband, he doesn't have narcissistic traits.
He's an actual narcissist. Because it almost helps us as a wife feel like we can somewhat cope with the the abuse or the trauma or the pain that we're in. But be careful if you're a wife that's actually receiving or even placing these labels on your spouse because to do that is to say, honey, you're actually unhealable. And you're just saying that to protect your own self or to cope with the pain that you're experiencing. It actually takes bravery and courage to go, woah, you look like a narcissist.
You check all the boxes. Maybe you are a narcissist. Yet I know that you're healable. I know that everyone's healable if he wants to. So this isn't narcissist or non narcissist.
This isn't characteristics or true to your core narcissist. No, no, no. All it comes down to is does the person want to heal or do they not? Take away every other label. Pathological liar, not a pathological liar, avoidant dismissive blah blah blah blah No.
It's do they want to heal or do they want to stay the same? Because if they want to heal, it doesn't matter if they check all the boxes. They can heal and transform. Brandon does not check any box now of a narcissist. Yeah.
He checked all of them. He checked all of the boxes of any toxic thing you could think of. I never believed or adopted that belief system, and that is a massive reason why we could both heal. Because if he believed that and I believed that, we'd still be stuck, we'd actually be divorced. So you cannot believe these labels if you actually want to heal.
You need to look within and go, woah, do I want to heal? Do I believe we can heal? What is my vision for healing?
Brandon: I just want to honor Caitlyn in that because like that was one of the most life giving things I received from Caitlyn in my addiction was her saying, and it wasn't for just her own well-being. I saw her look at me and say, there's more for us. There's more for you. Like, let's keep going. And I just remember thinking like, wow, she believes in me so much.
She's not just gonna kind of hand me off to the psych ward and hope I get the support I need and let me be numb and dumb the rest of my life. She's like, you're waking up, you're healing or I'm divorcing you. Because I know who's in there and this isn't you, this isn't who you are. So bada bing bada boom. We also, we talked about this before as well, is that when you look to counselors or an intensive as a quick fix, we had the opportunity when we were in our marriage crisis in 2019, I was looking at different intensives we could go to.
We were hearing from other people. There was like, there was one in Montana. There was one over here. I even called on the phone and got, got some information on one. One was really more of like spiritual liberation type one.
One was that some somebody else had recommended. And another one was like, I'm going to go to this guy. He really knows his stuff, like $7,500 for the, for like the three days. And we're broke. And we were broke, broke, broke, like broker than broke.
I was in ministry, so I was really broke. And it was supposed to be happy about it. And I remember thinking like, we can do this. Like I was, I was going to be able to like ask around to get the money to go do it. And everybody knew we were at the brink of divorce.
We actually ended up getting like a donation to the nonprofit we were working for that like made it possible. And we made, I made the decision together with Kate and it was like, you know what? I know I could go to an intensive and put a smile on my face, show up for the counselor, tell them I'm sorry. Tell them I want to do the work, but do you know what I needed to do? The daily work.
And so we actually signed up for a different counseling program through that same office. That meant I was meeting with a counselor once a week. I was a part of a weekly group call with some other men and I was making daily phone calls to these men that had addiction as well. And I was calling them daily. I was doing homework daily.
I was doing the workbook activities daily because I didn't need a three day thing. That was just going to be like, Hey, babe, we good. I'd already done that. I already read the book and say, babe, I read the addiction book. I've got it figured out.
No, you don't. I needed a life change that went beyond three days. I needed to I needed to be doing the same things thirty days from now, sixty days from now, ninety days from now. You're like, Brandon, can don't you guys host events? We absolutely do.
And you know, we tell people about the events. You're going have a lot of work to do after this. This is the start of the impact of the change that you're going to make. That's why we have our couples program that's ongoing because you need ongoing support if you're going to make a habit change, a lifestyle. And so for us, that was so humbling for me.
It's like, even like a diet, if you go on a diet, but it doesn't become like a lifestyle change, you're not actually going to look and feel the way you want to. If you go to a counselor hoping that they'll give you the one, two, three punch you need to just close this chapter and move on. You're going with the wrong mentality. If you go to a counselor and say, Hey, what are the daily actions I can take for the next ten years to improve my marriage? And then go do them.
Wow. That's, that's a marriage that changes. And I want to talk a little bit about when counseling makes sense. We've told you guys, so we had one counselor didn't go well. We had multiple that didn't go well.
One that we did found that did find that one. I was just mentioning the counseling group as a part of. He was consistent. And when we brought to him like, Hey, Caitlyn, I want to talk about like changing my thoughts and rewiring my memories and all these things. He's like, You know, I haven't heard people do it quite how you're wanting to do it.
Like really talking through.
Caitlyn: I've never heard of this before.
Brandon: And you know what he said to me? He said, but you definitely can. Yep. And here's how you could maybe go about it. And he said, you could try this.
You can absolutely rewire your memories. And he empowered it. He said, go for it. And then he was there to listen to me. He was consistent.
Yep. Worked with that counselor for about a year. And he always made it back about me taking responsibility and me, me doing the daily, the daily work. And I got what I needed there. And then after that we didn't have a counselor for a long time.
And then there were some other things I wanted to improve in our relationship. I ended up working at working with a coach to do some, some more stuff around masculinity for like four, four sessions together. That pushed us forward. We've been working with the same mentor for the last three years that we meet with weekly and she helps us basically think about our whole entire family, how we operate our business, how we live our life, how we operate as a couple and create together as a couple. She always brings it back to our relationship and how we are connected and in union.
Trust me guys, like we're, we're not telling you to go seek support or to go do the work. We're doing the work still. It's this changed form. And so we look for people and opportunities to be able to improve and grow our character always. So we're not anti seeking support from mentors and people that you pay money to.
We pay a lot of money to get support. We invest heavily in that. We just do it with a mentality of I'm not a weak, broken person. I'm somebody that has tremendous potential. My relationship is worth investing in.
We look for the people that can actually take us there.
Caitlyn: Exactly.
Brandon: And that have the knowledge and wisdom, wisdom meaning they're living it out that we would like to emulate in our life and relationships. So that's how we select people we we listen and learn from.
Caitlyn: Yeah. People that we can take our values and belief systems to and they go, yep, I can support that and get behind that. And I can even take you further because here's what I've created in my life. Look at the fruit on my tree and that's where I want to take you.
Brandon: As you say, this this mentor we're working with now, I mean, she's the only reason that my book is almost done that I'm writing about.
Caitlyn: And then we did our events.
Brandon: And then we did our events.
Caitlyn: She said, you guys need to be doing in person events.
Brandon: She thought you guys will thrive doing that. I'm like, yes. Just was encouraging. Could maybe do one, and we did four last year. And then then I was like, you know, let's see
Caitlyn: what We went back to
Brandon: one. We found that the reason we're only doing one event this year is not because we don't wanna do more. It's that the majority of you flew in for that event. So we're like, oh, we thought we had to ping around a little bit. You guys are flying because when you're in a marriage crisis and you wanna do the deep work quickly, you you show up.
So that's why we're only doing one this year, but we've received so many so much positive support. Now, I actually took all of her advice, the book would have been done a year and a half ago, but I wanted to drag my heels a little bit. So she was like, I think you could have it out by Christmas of twenty twenty four. Well, we're gonna have it out Hopefully by the time. Mid summer of, 2026, way before Christmas.
There's great fruit in working with people that they can champion you and speak into you. And even if you never joined one of our events or programs, I want you to know that we feel honored to have you listening. I know there's thousands of people listening to this. We believe in you. We champion you.
We believe in your vision for your relationship that you can create a beautiful union. If this is not the end for you, that there's no, like, like, we will never give you a limiting belief that this is as good as it gets. Now we're doing damage control. We will always say, please, please, please keep going. Keep, keep asking, keep searching.
And we do feel like you've invested with us, even if you've never invested a dime in our program, because you've invested with time. Some of you have shared these episodes with with your grandkids, with your pastors, like with your with your counselors, we're honored to have you invest your time listening to these episodes.
Caitlyn: And like Brandon said in the beginning, if you wanna join us for our in person event, we are gonna be in San Diego on August 14 and the fifteenth. You can join us in person. We love to have you guys in person, and of course, if you cannot fly, you're far away, you have conflict of dates, you can buy a virtual ticket. We'll actually have three cameras. The virtual ticket is phenomenal. Both tickets, you get the lifetime access to the recordings. So you can see the show notes for those.
And if you wanna join our community, you can get inside of there right away by joining through the show notes. You can apply. We have weekly coaching calls. Pretty much everything we talk about, the four r's, rewiring,
Brandon: Embodiment work.
Caitlyn: Sexual brokenness, embodiment, everything, getting fully honest, all of it. We have courses in there, and those are the topics that we dive deep into and support you guys with in the coaching calls. So we would love to have you guys join us. And and if you're ready to do the daily work, joining inside of our community is where to start.
Brandon: And if you haven't already, please leave a review of the podcast so that we can reach more couples on the platform you're listening on, whether that's Apple, Spotify, YouTube. We love hearing from you and seeing how the podcast has impacted you. Those are the conversations Caitlyn and I have at night and seeing how, our story has been able to support those. If you have a minute, leave a review so that we can reach more couples.
We'll see you the next episode.