Did I Marry the Wrong Person?

0:00Welcome back to the Grounded Union podcast. Thank you for joining us every week. We are talking about where it sees five episode six. We're talking about, did I marry the wrong person? Is this person across the couch for me? Did I marry the right one or the wrong one? I'm actually going to share the kind of embarrassing thought patterns I was stuck in for a lot of the beginning of our marriage on how I thought about did I marry the right person or not? We're going to dive into all of that and more as well as how you can get a new wife thought actually having to leave the one you have. And I think this will be a really empowering and enlightening episode because it's one of those thought patterns that is, we don't. We're not super proud of it like telling Caitlin that I had to have these thoughts about what it would be like if I was with somebody else. Wasn't necessarily this and make the person you're with feel very good. Doesn't make them feel very excited. And so we're going to talk about a topic that I think is the mental escape for a lot of people is should I have married somebody else? Should I should I leave the person I'm with now? Like would it be better elsewhere? And we have these escape hatches in our thinking they basically try to release the pressure of what we're experiencing right now.

1:02So we're going to dive into that. If you weren't aware, I wrote a book called Seven Steps to Save Your Marriage. And it's about rebuilding trust after addiction and sexual betrayal. I've been writing it for two years and you can pre-order at seven steps book.com. So super excited to share this book with you guys. Pre-order will be open for this a little bit longer. If you pre-order, you're going to get a the audiobook that I read as well as the digital workbook that goes along with the book. So that's at seven steps book.com. Now side note, I was so excited when I found the URL seven steps book. So seven steps book.com. Did I marry the wrong person? Well, depends on how you look at it. I think that for me as a young lad, we got married at I was 21, Kitten was 19 and one of the biggest motivators that led to me wanting to get married young was to be able to have sex. Growing up as a Christian man and I was pursuing God and his path for my life and I was doing missions and profit work was like, man, I want to be a holy man.

2:06And I also want to have sex. So like from everything I read and hear about, like, I need to get married to have sex or I'm outside of God's will for my life. I'm in sin. I'm doing all these bad things. And I think that sex within marriages where it belongs. So to clarify that and I was miserable because I thought that this like monster in me, this desire to have an orgasm with another woman, which I had found an outlet through pornography and masturbation. I thought that that would be complete once I got married. So I was like trying to race to the finish line. So when you grow, I was like interested in it was like, I'm going to marry her. I'm going to marry her. I'm going to marry her. And Kitten was even said this. We didn't usually show it. I was on the show. She was like, was I just another one of those girls that you wanted to marry by? I just said yes. And I actually like reciprocated the desire. And I was like, well, shoot when you put that way like my commitment to Kalen at the beginning of our relationship was what she could add to me. So like I'm suffering. You provide an outlet. I'm lonely. You provide comfort.

3:06I'm a part of a social circle. You make me look better. I have a desire for approval. You tell me I do good things. You're into me. You being into me makes me feel good about myself. So if I look at the, we'll call them the surface level reasons that I pursued Kalen. Proposed to her, married her initially at 21. Again, my prefrontal cortex wasn't quite done. I would say I was very, in some ways, I was very mature. And in some ways, I was far less mature than I believe our children will be at that age. As far as what motivated my actions and behaviors. And so I didn't marry Kalen because I had a long term vision of the man I wanted to be. I said those things, but really I married Kalen to relieve the pressure I felt to be able to have sex, to be able to have checked the boxes like, okay, God, I got married now. Keep using me. And the opposite happened marriage introduced a lot of pain. It brought up a lot of conflict. It brought up a lot of ways that I was failing or felt inadequate. A lot of insecurities I had. A lot of dishonesty I didn't realize I lived with.

4:07A lot of unmet expectations, a lot of communication, a lot of figuring things out. Right away, we jumped right into ministry. We were working full time together. We were traveling. We were speaking at churches. We were doing all this stuff. And I was like, man, this isn't very much fun. And Kalen would, would share about her pain and I'd be like, girl, what's wrong with you? Like, did you not read the fine print on the contract? Like you were supposed to make my life better and you're making me miserable. And so I started doing what I'd always do is I just scroll social media, looking at girls I'd gone to school with or I'd meddle along the way, look at their pictures, think about, well, what if I would have married this girl? Like she was softer spoken. She was more less what Kalen is and she was more this or maybe she would, yeah, she was kind of promiscuous, but maybe she would have been less hard on me. And this wasn't like a once or twice thing. It's like a constant place I went back to of like, what would have been like if I were to be with somebody else? And there was very specific people and Kalen didn't know that's what I was doing. She didn't know I was going to their profiles and looking them up and, and having these thoughts and, and playing this out in my mind. I remember it got so nasty, the thought pattern,

5:09because of our Christian upbringing, I realized like, well, I can't divorce Kalen. I can't leave her because then I'd be like ostracized by the, the community I'm a part of. So like the only way I could re-marry somebody else is if Kalen were to die. And I remember thinking like the only way I can escape the pain I'm in is if you were to die. Like if something happened to her. And I had no thoughts of doing anything to her, but I'm like, if you got an accident or if this happened, like that would be my only escape. And it wasn't like I wanted her to die. But like that's how like desperate I was to escape the pain. And it was all like very morbid. And like maybe some of you have had similar thoughts and it's, it is very dark. It is very morbid morbid. And that I feel, I don't feel ashamed. I feel responsible for those thoughts. I think it's, it's shocking to even re talk through it, realizing like, when your soul is in turmoil, you do anything to get out of it. When you are suffering, you will follow any path to get out of pain. When you're hungry, you'll do anything you can to find food. Like if you've, if you've never seen a, we grew up in Oregon. So we've seen a lot of houseless people, people without homes. They're hungry in on the streets.

6:10I've seen a lot of people look for food and trash cans. That's what you look like when you're in a marriage. Like it's miserably like, I'll do anything to go out of pain. I'll think about being married to somebody else. I'll question the woman I married. I'll even consider like, well, if she died, at least I could start over. It's like you lower the value of everybody else. The biggest thing you miss in the equation is all of what you're considering is if I escaped the situation I was in and escaped dissociation, distraction, detachment is what got you into the situation you're in. So asking yourself, did I marry the wrong woman? Is never going to satisfy the pain or alleviate the problems that you're in. It's my marriage as a mess. What do I want to do about that? And I think for so many though, it's like, oh, I'm in the poor decision. What do I do about it? I guess I'll think about being married to somebody else for the rest of my life. I'll jerk off the porn for the rest of my life. I'll go to strip clubs. I'll have an emotional affair. I'll do enough things so that maybe because I'm too passive to do it, maybe she'll file for divorce or maybe she'll leave.

7:11Maybe she'll cheat on me so I can finally have a reason to end this suffering that I'm in. And so instead of trying to end your suffering by ending the marriage, by saying she was the wrong choice, what if you started making new choices? But how you engaged your healing? Welcome to the podcast. This is also a really normalized thought to have. I think if we've shared this story before, but I remember Brandon went to this, you know, he had one kid at the time. He went to this men's retreat through the church up into the cabins for a couple nights. And I mean, I didn't hear about this story till years later when he actually decided he was going to get completely honest. So this story never even made it home to me, which is we talked about this. I forgot about that. I remember the story. Yeah. And my mind was thinking that like, because when we talk about being honest now, it's with each other. So when I think about that story, I think, oh, well, this was the precipice of me coming home and telling you that, like, no, I just tell the group of men. Right. Continuous. Which goes back to the accountability episode that we did together, which is he was

8:11accountable to his group of men, but then the truth in honesty never actually came home to me. And so therefore, do you think any changes were made? Absolutely not. So he had gone to the Sino Men's Retreat Hurrah gathering. And I have the thing against men's retreats. I just have a lot of things against accountability. Men's retreats that don't produce any true change in healing. And don't actually promote that you go home and tell your wife the things you've been keeping from her. So he, Brandon, has taken this vulnerable moment in front of all of these men to say, yeah, I think about what it would be like to be married to another woman. Like, sometimes when it's hard, like, this is where I escape in my mind. And the part about it, feeling way to go out would be if something happened to her. Exactly. He shares that all the depths of that and the man leading the retreat goes, okay, if any other men in this room have had the same thoughts, felt the same way, raise your hand, and nearly the whole room of men raise their hands. And that wasn't his moment to then teach on, okay, men, now let me tell you, how

9:15you can take this and transform it and not have to live in that reality. I know it just stopped there. It was like Brandon, welcome home to a good place of men, mentally escape. Thinking about being married to someone else and just make sure you pray and read your Bible and maybe do a little fast. Go get yourself baptized in the river. And next time when you do it again, just go through the same straight. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you guys know piggybacking off of last week's episode? It's much better than that. It's much better than hey, just so you know, sweetie. Think about being married to someone else again, but I went to the counseling session. I called my buddies, like it did the things, you know, and it's like, again, this was so normalized that the leader of the retreat didn't even go Brandon and every other man who just raised your hand, go home and tell your wife now. Go home and tell her, right? And of course, the response would be pulled, pulled that will hurt her. Yes, it's hurting her. It's always going to hurt her. So why do we keep normalizing and condoning things that are hurting our spouses and

10:16trashing our marriages? Why do we not actually stop and go, huh? I wonder if there's a way to actually create wholeness and freedom in my mind, in my body, in my spirit, in my life, to where this isn't my everyday reality. Because thinking about being married to someone other than your spouse, which will go into how this actually came up for me too in a very different way. And I think this comes up for women in betrayal. Thinking about being married to someone else is a mental escape from your reality. It's the same thing as going to porn. It's the same thing as having an affair. That's why I don't really like the clinical terms of big ugly little uglys. I don't even like classifying something as worse than the other. You know, people are like, oh, what did Brandon even do? Is it even as bad as what my husband did? And it's like, you guys at the root, it's all the same. Thinking about having sex with somebody and having sex with someone, sure, very, very different. It took different. Like, there's going to be different levels of pain. Yet it was the same steps that took to get there. At one point, your spouse thought about it, what it would be like to be married to someone

11:18else, thought about what it would look like to have sex with someone else. And then they just went and actually did it. Your pain will always be bigger than my pain. Meaning, those of you listening, your story is your story. So I will never be able to feel the pain that you are going through. And we actually intentionally share our story the way we do. Because I don't care how big or how small you consider your pain to be. That's why we get messages like, hey, somebody finally validated me. So many of you come up to us at the events or all these places say, your story is exactly like mine. I'm like, well, shoot. If my story is exactly like yours, that means I've had sex with everybody in the world. I've done some heart. Like we want you to know that your pain is worth being heard. And that was what Caitlin asked for and is what I would not give her for so long. In fact, that's why that's why I thought about being married to me. Thinking about being married to someone else is a mental escape from a reality that you don't like. So what could have been said of the men's retreat and what we'll say now and what our

12:19belief system is is that when that comes up for you, that's your moment in time to go, oh, I don't like my wife. I don't like my reality. You know what it really is actually bringing up which brand it could speak to this more? I don't like my own actions and what that's producing in my wife, what that's creating in my life. Because most of the time when you've been living in addiction, it's not only your wife, you don't like, you probably hit your job. You probably hate the community you're in. You probably don't really like anything that you do as your hobbies. You might not even freaking know if you have hobbies. You might not even like things. Like you just don't really like anything because ultimately you don't like yourself. You don't like what you've created. You don't like the mess you've made. You don't like what's going on. And so you project that primarily onto your wife and then onto all the other categories. So when you are in these moments, you're like, oh, I wish I was married to someone else. And that looks like a lot of different thoughts like Brandon said. That looks like scrolling and thinking, oh, this ex girlfriend, I wonder what it would

13:23have been like. I wonder how she's doing. You know, all these different thoughts and trails you can run yourself through. That's when you get to go, okay. This is my time and opportunity to take a look at my mess that I've created, my addiction that I've gotten myself into, the lies and the hiddenness that I've kept from my spouse, how that's making her act, how that's making my life feel like it's suffering. And this is my opportunity to actually share that openly. And honestly, we do not condone. You just go to your men's retreat on the mountain and share that with the men and never bring that to your wife. Obviously, you know that we 100% believe in radical honesty. That means that every time you're having these escapists thoughts, you tell your spouse. And you don't just dump it on them. You tell your spouse and you run it through the four hours so that you can rewire your mind and replace that like, oh, right now I was angry and upset. I was anxious. I was depressed. So I escaped in my mind through thinking about what it would be like to be with someone else. Because that sounded really exciting.

14:23That made me in my mind and my dream reality like a movie feel like I could create something better than this, the better than what I'm going through, right? Yeah. I could escape the pain. I could escape her looking at me and arguing with me and expecting something of me, right? And I could go into this fantasy world where everything is blissful, right? And it's like, yeah, you can create a blissful reality, not through escaping, but through facing the current one you have, through rewiring it, replacing it with what you do want to have in your life, which is, oh, when I'm anxious to press, when I'm sad, when I'm upset with my wife, this is what I'm going to do instead. I'm going to go for a walk. I'm going to say, whoa, where's the mess? How can I clean it up? And that's the reality you're going to create. You don't have to live a life for when it's hard. You think about being married to someone else. That was Brandon's weekly reality, if not multiple times a week reality. And that has not been a part of our marriage for seven years now. Neither of us are escaping into worlds where we're like, oh, shoot, this was hard. I wish I would have married someone else. Oh, shoot, this was a difficult day. He said something mean she said something mean.

15:24I could have married someone else who would have been a lot nicer. That's not part of our life anymore. You don't have to be in a group where everyone raises their hand and says, yeah, that's what we do. No, you can be in a life where you actually get to live without that being a part of your mind, your mental space anymore. You have to ask yourself, what's behind the thoughts? Because you say, you know, if I was with her, ask, what would that solve? And because these are fantasy thoughts, it's not reality thoughts. And some of you have even taken a step towards your fantasy, which is, I message the person or some of you, your emotional affairs are long distance communication with an ex that's respectful apparently or that you're having these emotional escapes with other people or these mental ascents into these different realms. And it's basically like, what do you believe that will solve? And for most of you, it's actually just a strategy to alleviate the anxiety, the pain, the upsetness you feel right now. It's like it instantly relieves the pressure for the moment. This is the pattern we had is Caitlin and I were getting a fight.

16:25I'd be upset with how she responded and she'd be like, really hurt by something and say, you know, she like I regret marrying you. This was like so painful. And that was actually true. Like Caitlin told me she regretted marrying me and she said it to my face. And I said, oh, okay. You go to sleep. I'm going to go look a half naked woman and I'll go think about what it would be like to be married to somebody else. When she brought in her pain, she's like, here's all I feel right now. Like I'm regretting this decision because of how you're treating me. And I took that and did it in secret and did it in hiding and did it with real actions instead of actually saying, you know what? I'm questioning my decision too. Like this is really painful because when both people are radically honest, you can actually face what's there. And you know the white cat was saying those things? Because deep down I was hiding stuff from her and she could feel it's like, I just summons off. I don't feel it. I don't feel right. And I would make it all these other things. It was ultimately, I'm pulling away. We don't have those conversations anymore. So I must have not been that we figured out what it was. And so you have to take up that. That's not when we married. We married the wrong people. Right.

17:25And so you have to say like, you know, what does this solve? And I think for most of you, especially if you're pairing it with masturbation, is it's, you have this mentalist and I could have married her like she'd be into me. You pet yourself. I'd be like, Oh yeah, she's, she's, she's posting these like she wants my attention. She's got this and you look at the pictures and then you go to the new looking at videos. And it's just this little merry around you go on to get yourself into this out of the state you're in into a different one. Except it has a really high cost. And the cost is the moment things get hard, listen to this note takers, the moment things get hard, you write your wife out of the picture. You erase her as your means of healing or as your means of not healing as your means of regulating your emotions. She's gone. Okay. It's like what? Like we got to get a better strategy than making our wife disappear when we get upset with each other. What if she gets upset? Hmm. I'm up for the challenge. I'm up for facing this. The moment you shift that like everything changes and we're going to talk about that. But I think that man to man, if you blame others for why your life is hard, if you blame

18:26your wife for why things are so difficult right now. And it's just simply because she's expressing her emotion for her desire for connection. Like, Oh, why is she like this? It's like when you blame everybody else, you have to consider like, is that the way you want to play your cards? Is that actually the way you want to go down to history? Is like everybody else is in control of my life. And I am not responsible. From the moment we got married to the moment we hit our kind of breaking point, I had actually never had any sort of mental escapes of, Oh, I wonder what it would be like to be married to someone else. And of course, you know, people are like, Oh, okay, I never have anything wrong with her. And it's like, we've hinted at it all before. Again, I was 19 when we got married. So in a lot of ways, I entered in with a lot of child likeness, a lot of innocence. And I hadn't been exposed to pornography. I hadn't been exposed to a lot of negative sexual content. Of course, I had seen people who have sex in movies, like the, you know, whatever the edited version. So I had things in my mind, of course. And there was many times in the first couple of years of our marriage where we'd actually go to have sex. And I would have some of those probably like movie scenes and different things come up.

19:29These very, very interesting scenes, erotic scenes would kind of play in my mind. I remember I used to feel so ashamed and terrified. I hadn't had nobody gave me any advice of like, Oh, you need to share this. I just, I'm 19 and I'm like, why would I hide this from you? Like I'm shaking thinking you're telling you because like, you could be so upset with me. And I would tell Brandon. And this is simultaneously, I had no idea I could kind of sense it, but Brandon's hiding a whole world of things from me. And he actually still met with me with a lot of love and compassion. We would talk through it at that time. You know, we prayed through it. I was like committed to being fully honest. And then when I was met with the safety, I was like, Okay, I'm safe to actually share these things. I had said cool dreams at times. There was memories I had had with, you know, boyfriends I had had at the, in the past. Because right before I had met Brandon, I had actually been in a very long committed relationship with someone else. I actually thought that I was going to marry. So I had memories that came up from that person, right? And we would talk through those and we would go through those.

20:31We didn't have the four hours at that time. We just, I was honest. So it's like when I decided to be honest, none of that built up any sort of, any sort of snowball, right? If I would have not decided to share any of those things, I most likely would have snowballed into the same fact, right? And so I actually had had no thoughts of, I wonder what it would be like to be married to someone else. And it's possible that you're sitting here listening to this and you both had that thought. And great. You both get to take a look at what it looks like to heal that. You both get to address that with each other. I did begin having that thought in a slightly different variation when I found out how Brandon had been treating me. So when we hit 2019 and he's telling me for the first time ever or being caught in a lot of ways and I'm dragging it out of him, when he's telling me all of the reality at which I'd actually been living through, essentially when my reality got blown up, I had this thought and I know and I think that many women feel it when they hit this place, when their reality gets blown up and it's like, whoa, should I marry someone else?

21:32You know, like what is there someone else out there who essentially wouldn't be this messy, right? And I want to first start off by saying that's completely valid that you would feel that way and that also is completely valid to be shared out loud. Like Brandon said, like I told him, I wish I never married you. And of course, there are so many people here that's all the time in our community where men that have done things that are really quite terrible, really quite sad. I'll say terrible is kind of a root word, shame, a shame filled word. They've done things that are not kind to their spouse, right? And their spouse, rightfully so says, I wish I never married you. And they're offended. They even want to use the word abuse. She uses abusive language and I'm like, tell me what that means to you. They're like, she told me that she wished she never married me. I'm like, you slapped with like four other people and I've been looking at pornography for 10 years. Like, what? Of course she thinks I wish I never married you. You've been cheating on her. Talk about abuse. Talk about emotional abuse.

22:33That's completely valid that she's thinking that. You could be grateful that she's sharing that out loud with you. Because when you've been sleeping with everyone else, looking at pornography, like what Brandon was saying, you've been thinking that in secret and keeping that from her. She's not keeping how she feels to me. She's telling you, this is a moment to look at her and go, of course, you feel that way. I betrayed you in giant ways. Of course, you feel like, how could I have married you? How could you have done this to me? Why did I marry you? Right? And I came to this point, though, where I'd play this, play this out in my head. I would journal this out my 400 journal entries. Like, none of this was kept secret from Brandon, but it's like, okay, if I were to leave you right now and I were to go with someone else, like, is it actually true that there's someone else out there that just magically healed and embodying all of this? They're not lusting after anybody. They're completely radically honest. Like, is there maybe, like, maybe 0.000?

23:350.001% of men have decided to do that without having entered into relationship to mere that to them without having had kids to mere that to them? Like, but I came to terms with the reality of like, well, whatever relationship I'm in, and I'm sharing this because I think it frees people up from that escape, that mental escape you get into, like, whatever relationship you choose into. Like, there is no right person for you. Like, the person you married is the right person for you. You can keep divorcing and remarrying, and guess what? You're going to keep finding you still got to do the deep healing work with whatever person you committed your life to. And guess what? When you choose to dive in and go deep, deep, deep, deep, deep to heal, you do come out the other side. Brandon and I aren't doing these deep three hour long healing session conversations with each other anymore. No, no, no, no. We did our deep season in 2019 created and laid the most incredible foundation for our marriage, and we're just building upon that now, right? If you keep escaping through this mental facade of, oh, maybe there's another man out there

24:40that has healed more, you know, maybe there's another woman out that is nicer to me, then what's happening is you're stalling your own process of being able to heal. And I want to clarify that if your husband is not committed to healing and not committing to changing and not committed to growing, it is completely valid that you would wonder if it would be better for you to leave the marriage. And if it would be more beneficial to find someone else, there's not a perfect person out there, but there's most definitely is someone out there who will commit to healing and changing. So I'm only referring to if you're in a committed relationship where you are both committed to healing and growing. If your spouse is cheating on you and hiding things from you and will not choose to heal and grow, yeah, you either choose to stay stuck in that marriage or to create another family life with someone else who is committed to healing and growing, right? But this is the time and place where you get to come back to reality and go, okay, I am committed to healing. And I'm looking for my husband, my wife, to give that same commitment.

25:44If we do, we don't have to escape in these realities of what it would be like to be with someone else. We can actually create the exact reality we want, which is a marriage we don't run from, a marriage that we love. The kicker at all of this is that I had seen Kate on through this lens of this, she's critical, she's overbearing, she's controlling, she's a lot to manage. And I had this perception of her for quite some time. She's like a strong, a strong woman. And I thought that that was just kind of like something I was going to have to deal with and learn to navigate. And it wasn't until I met her with my own strength and capacity to be able to bring myself to the relationship. What happened when I did that? When I actually had opinions and desires and a vision and I was present in the moment, almost overnight, when I stopped hoping that she would turn into a different woman that was calmer and easier to deal with, me just actually being somebody, me actually being

26:47home in my body, present with myself. I swatched Caitlin transform into the girl I started dating and got engaged to where she was light and open and able to be in her feminine essence where she's playful and having fun. And I'm like, what the heck? How did I get this new wife almost overnight? And this was even after we had healed from the addiction piece. It was me really being like, who am I at my core? And developing some of these masculine traits that allowed me to create more structure in our home, more structure for myself, more discipline, more presence in who I am as a man. And when I brought that, when I brought something to the relationship, when I brought myself fully alive, fully alert, Caitlin is no longer like having to do both parts because when your wife is having to pick up your slack, having to remind you of everything, it's kind of like she's having to do your role and her role. So it's not a very, the polarity's kind of gone in a relationship. It's not a super dynamic relationship when she's doing both sides. And if you are constantly passive or anxious around your wife and like pulling away and

27:50getting and cowardly, cowardly back from different hard conversations or any tension, she's not very impressed by that. She doesn't respect that. So when you become a man that your wife can respect, then you get a new wife. And think about this, if you've never been free from addiction in your relationship, she's never known how to interact with any man different than you. If you come sober, level headed and present, she will have to be different because she's getting a different version of you. So if you want your wife to change, if you want a new wife while keeping the same one, as you change, she will change how she interacts with you because she has to, she won't be able to talk to you the same way because kind of like, well, you're a lot different now. Like you're actually present. I'm not having to get your attention. Whoa, you follow through on your word. I'm not having to remind you of all these things like, well, you don't just say whatever you want. So you actually have an opinion. You actually have a desire. You share your heart with me. It's like, she has something she can orient around now. She's starting to see a real man that's present in the relationship. So I think that my focus was on trying to get Caitlin to care less, to be less strong.

28:55I didn't honor who she was. I was intimidated by who she was because I meant that I would have to change. And once I was committed to the growth and the healing and being the highest version of myself, she no longer was intimidating. She was the opportunity to heal, to be with, to spend time with, to build something with. And it was just like, she wasn't scary anymore when I realized, I'm not hiding from her. I'm not trying to be a good little boy. I don't, I'm not seeking her approval. I'm actually seeking to be a man in my body, this president is emotions that takes ownership for his life. And Caitlin responded with, yeah, I like that guy a lot. Yeah. Because let's be honest, if you're a spouse that's actively acting out in addiction, so you're hiding things, you're lying about things, you're shoving things under the rug, you're minimizing things, are you really like, if you were to be honest with yourself, are you really that surprised that your wife or that your spouse is not that warm with you? Doesn't want to have sex with you. Are you really actually, if you think about it, like, oh yeah, I guess she doesn't know,

29:55but I look at porn quite often. I think about what it would be like to me or to someone else. I fantasize about other women. I always am checking other girls' breasts and butt out, you know, like, is it really that surprising to you that she doesn't actually feel like your best friend, that she kind of has a not nice face when you come into the room, like not even to mention the fact that maybe you work a lot, maybe you watch a lot of TV and a lot of sports, maybe you're always on your phone. Is it really that surprising that it feels like she's nagging on you? Like is she nagging on you? Or is she asking for time with you? Like is she nagging on you? Or is she asking you to put away your phone and turn off the sports to have dinner with her? Is she actually really that rude? Or is she just sensing that you're acting outside of your covenant, betraying all your boundaries, breaking all the trust? Is she maybe intuitively feeling all that? Like it's like if you get honest with yourself for a minute, you probably would go, wow, I guess this isn't actually about the fact that I have a wife I don't like.

30:56Again, this comes back to, I've created a life I don't like. I've created patterns within myself I don't like. So then let's flip it. You decide to clean up your life. You're not living in hidden this anymore. You're not living in addiction anymore. You like your life, which means you're not just numbing out on your phone. You're not just watching sports all day. You're not just overworking so you don't have to come home. How could you not have a different wife? Also not to mention your perspective of yourself, your reality, your life, your wife, that's what changes. Your wife might not even change as much as you think because your perspective of everything changes when you start making it about everybody else and you focus on yourself, you heal. Yes, of course your spouse is going to change and your perspective is going to change because your spouse doesn't have to sit there and go, can you put up your phone and look at me? You turn off the TV so we can talk. Your spouse doesn't have to go, are you keeping secrets from me? Your spouse is not to say, when you're at dinner, does you just look at her?

31:58Did you just check her out? Your spouse doesn't have to say, why are you texting so many girls on your phone? Why are you staying late after work? Why is Suzy in your car right? Like, you see what I mean? Like, you create a whole different life. When you stop at just, oh yeah, I just think about what it's like to be married to someone else, but you know, whatever, you miss the opportunity to actually create a life that you love and a wife, a spouse that you have mutual respect and love for. Brandon doesn't look at me anymore and go, oh yeah, she's really difficult. She's really hard to deal with. She's so opinionated. She's always really needing me to change. That's exactly how he saw me before, but that was just actually because he was scared of what his own mess was, right? He decided to clean up his own mess. His entire perspective of me changed. Oh, she's not actually controlling. Oh, she's not actually that rude. She just doesn't want me looking at bikini models online. Like, oh, seems like a pretty fair expectation in the marriage.

33:00Doesn't really actually make her a mean girl does it. You know, it's like, oh, she was telling me she's really upset with me because I told her I wouldn't play video games and I've been doing that when she's not looking. Like, yeah, I guess that's pretty valid. So if I just stop lying and stop telling her, I'm going to, you know, do something and then do it. Oh, she's actually kind of a nice gal. You know, it's like, this comes back to being honest with yourself, being honest with your reality, cleaning up your reality, and then watching literally everything begin to shift. I think this is one of those things you could look at it as far as like shifting into a place of gratitude for your situation. I started seeing the beauty of Caitlin's characteristics, like Caitlin was talking about. Like when I had this shift where I was like, whoa, like, this is amazing. Like, she is such a strong, capable woman. What a gift. And I started seeing these attributes about her like, whoa, like this one specifically. She speaks her mind. Caitlin didn't use sarcasm. She literally just said, like, I'm really upset with you. And I'm like, oh, shoot. Like, I lived a lot of my life like trying to like manage her perception of me and assume

34:05she was feeling things she wasn't saying. And I didn't realize I was doing that. I knew I was doing it, but I didn't take ownership of it. But I was like, oh, like, you're not trying to be mean to me right now. Like, no, if I was upset with you, I'd tell you. I'm like, wait, it took so many years for that to sink in. It took me healing to it for the sink. It took 2019 and another set of lies to be like, oh, like, when you're upset, you tell me. And I started seeing this. What a great quality that my wife. I used to think, oh, why does my wife speak her mind? Thank goodness my wife speaks her mind because I don't have to guess if she's upset with me. I'm gonna assume that she isn't in love with me. She feels connected. She feels supported. If she doesn't, she's gonna tell me. That's a gift. I used to be like, this is so annoying. Why is she doing this? Now I'm like, great. Now I know where she's at all times. I also used to be frustrated at her strength. I was like, oh, she's so strong. She's so confident. She's so clear and like, well, when it comes to raising kids with a woman, when it comes to making life decisions, when it comes to running a home, when it comes to eating, while taking care of your body, I watched my wife do all of it.

35:06She's very strong and competent. She's not sitting around, hoping somebody comes and saves her. She wasn't hoping for me to rescue her or push her to take care of herself. I'm watching her take care of herself. Our kids, her future, and live with a tenacity and vision for her life. That's great. If you know what that doesn't mean though, it doesn't, it does expose when I'm weak, impassive, and not following through. But once I'm following through and operating in my strength, it pairs great with a woman who's operating in her strength. And most of the qualities about your spouse that are annoying to you right now are actually really good things. Like my wife's so intuitive. That's another one. Caitlin was so intuitive. A lot of like guys, I don't think I'd try to give myself credit for how much healing I did, but like I did choose into it. And a lot of our healing process was Caitlin reading my mind because I was too afraid to listen to the thought of she's like, do you have these thoughts about this person? I'm like, yes. Have you gone to this person's social media? Yes. Because I couldn't even like, I was so scared. She's like, okay, all this reads your mind. So she was that intuitive that she would be like, you're lying to me again or this or that. I'm like, yeah, I guess if you can see me because we're intimate and Caitlin had opened

36:08her herself up to me and I'm opened up to her, I guess if you can read me beyond a shadow of a doubt, like I might as well get honest with myself. So instead of saying, oh, my wife's intuitive, I can't get away with things like my wife's intuitive. I don't ever have to live in a lie. And my wife's so intuitive, she's got this inner knowing and a compass. It's going to be such a gift to our family. Do you see how all these characteristics about your spouse become a gift when you're no longer hiding and in deception? Their superpowers for your relationship. Instead of being these things, you're like, oh, I wish she was a little more dumbed down. And I tell you what, I tried taking to the counselors and getting them to side with me and be like, she's kind of crazy. You see, and I even got them to say, yeah, she's actually in a really broken state. She's really hurting. Maybe she should get on some anxiety medication because she's in so much pain. I'm like, yes, maybe, maybe my debaling, I don't actually want her on medication, but like, you can put your spouse in the psych ward. You can get everybody to team up with you and say, oh, yeah, they're a little cuckoo.

37:09They're a little off their rocker. They're a little much, huh? They're pains a little big around what you're going through. Instead, it's like, Kayla never stopped being hurt. And I'm so grateful she didn't because now I look at the relationship I'm in. And my wife, I didn't, I didn't marry anybody else. I mean, a completely different marriage. Because I started showing up when two people are fully given into the marriage, are fully choosing into intimacy. Our character flaws are not really, they're not really flaws. We just actually get to grow mature together. And now let me tell you, Kayla and I do not think that we have nothing that we need to grow in. We actually spend a lot of our waking hours talking about improvements. We're going to make him parenting health things. We're going to try out ways that we can improve our community program, our events, the details of our offerings, the way we communicate the podcast. Like, we are constantly looking for how we can improve and grow. We just have to stop looking at growth as a negative thing. And stop trying to make our spouse to erase them so I don't have to see. Because my wife's a mirror. She shows me how I'm doing. And so instead of seeing that as a negative thing, she has the opportunity to step in and heal.

38:09Yes. So the question really isn't, did I marry the wrong person? It's actually, am I married to someone who is committed to healing with me, who's committed to growing with me? Because if you both answer wholeheartedly, yes. And it's not just answering with words, it's answering with actions. Because I know a lot of you are in a marriage where your spouse says, yeah, I want to heal. And then they literally don't do anything the next day. It's like, well, that's not healing. Like, it's really common sense, guys. If you don't wake up and make changes, you don't change. So you see the same. So you're not actually going to be healing together. You have to wake up tomorrow and make changes, right? And so instead of asking, oh, did I marry the right person? Yes. Did I marry someone who is committed to lifelong healing and growth? And that's not torturous. I love the healing and growth we do because our life gets better and better and better. We literally sit in awe like, oh my gosh. If you would have told me in 2019, that I'd be sitting here in this beautiful home and

39:10this beautiful place that we've created with four kids in a fifth one on the way. This beautiful marriage. This beautiful community and audience. I would have been like, oh my gosh. I had no idea it was going to get that good, right? When you are focused on healing together and developing together, it's not because you're suffering. It's not because, oh, now I've got this burden of healing, right? I got this burden of growing and changing. It's like, no. Every time I develop and heal, life gets better and better and better and better. Healing is so worth it. And healing is so beautiful that it's actually exciting. I get excited when we're like, oh, yeah, let's tackle this new thing, right? And again, it's normally has nothing to do with the foundation of our relationship anymore. It's something else new that we are developing and constantly developing. Parenting is a huge one, right? We're learning what it's like to raise kids that get older and older and every phase with

40:11our oldest is a new phase. And we get to develop and we get to heal. So it's not, oh, gosh, it's bringing in the right person anymore. It's are we committed to healing? We both already, in 2019, we committed that to each other. Now we never question if we're married to the right person. You're at the phase right now where you get to go, okay, I don't need to question if you're the right person. We just need to look at each other and go, hey, are we signed up to lifelong healing together? Which means the lifelong bliss, connection, beauty and abundance together. And if you're both agreeing with words and actions, then that is a beautifully union to be creating. And that's the marriage advice I've heard Caitlin give many women is like, how do I know if this guy is like the right guy? And that's what you've told him is like, if it's somebody, obviously, you obviously have something in common with and you appreciate you enjoy being with this person. If they are committed to growth and healing and that's like their focus, like that's a person that's a great person to look forward to being with. If they're actually not like from like a pretend way, but they're willing to face their shadows.

41:12That's a person that you can look forward to a bright future with because that means that they're going to approach the relationship approach you from this lens of I'm going to heal on them grow. So guys, it's an honor to have you here with us each week. If you're enjoying season five, please leave a review of the podcast. Send a screenshot of your review on Apple. A written review would be incredible. Our team will send you send an email to support at grounded union.com. If you send a screenshot of your review, they'll send you a free unreleased podcast called intimacy after betrayal. They'll send that straight to you as a thank you. If you haven't already, you can pre-order or copy my book, 7Sepspook.com. I love holding this book. This is like a pre-release copy and I can't wait to share it with you. And then also if you are looking to get additional support from Caitlin and I inside of our community app, you can go to the show notes or go to grounded union.com to apply for a spot inside the community. We'll see you next week.