What did you want to be instead, Brandon?

I wanted to be a business guy, an entrepreneur type guy.

And I am now still, but I just, it's almost like God was just like, look, you might not think about this as a career.

You might be resistant.

Even if you start thinking about it, you're going to stick to this.

You're going to stay in it because we need you in the battle.

And that's how it was for me.

My other brother was

Beautiful.

We really, the trick, Jeremy, and this is the tricky part, is for like, we invite them to unburden their ego and then step into these experiences.

And so like, Tyler's talking about some of them and the ones he's talking about actually sometimes don't feel small.

They're like, whoa, that's really, really, really hard.

But we go pretty far with this.

Like we'll do things like holotropic breath work, Well, I mean, we'll even like repel and like really, really get out in nature and stuff.

And so but but it's that like they really get to know their protective, their protective parts, learn how to unburden them, learn how to take the ego, just just notice it and set it aside and then drop into these experiences again.

And I'm like, man, if this guy was sitting in front of you, like, how could you help them?

Mm-hmm

...

but with, with betrayal, um, if I'm a betrayed partner, even if you start doing the work and becoming that, I still might be like, "Yeah, but I've been hurt by you, and I don't wanna go get vulnerable with you." Like, I...

And, and this is, this is one part that's really difficult, is the way that you...

Like, like, that person's doing that work, but the way that you, you know that you can trust again is you have to go trust.

Uh, you have to go test it.

You have to...

I'll give you one, Brannon.

How about you, Brannon?

Mine, mine was both personal and professional.

I, the, uh, the...

You, you have to understand the dynamics a little bit of that time when I was trying to figure out my career.

I really did wanna...

I, I got a job that I hated and didn't feel any purpose in, and at the time, the internet had been out for less than 10 years, and, uh, just porn on the internet was everywhere.

And the, our, the religion around here is pretty, pretty high demand.

What would you like to say to those humans coming out with so much pain where some doctrine might have been used to abuse?

there.

Yeah, I think underneath all of it is it's fear of rejection or abandonment.

It's that exile part that's like, don't see me or else you'll reject me or you won't choose me or love me.

And so I don't think every time somebody cheats or falls into temptation or whatever it may be is just shame driven.

But usually after that, it leads to some secrecy.

And shame's best friend is secrecy.

And then it starts to deteriorate like sense of self.

So I'm wondering what you're describing, the individual work for both partners and the relational dynamics, when there is a betrayal and the shattering and the kind of revealing of that or however that comes to be, do you see that as something that needs a particular... support or is what you're talking about now go ahead Brandon

Okay

... because [laughs] it's very apparent.

You know it because you feel it from them.

And so it, it's hard to describe.

I can give you some things that you can look for and really identify when that is happening.

But it's hard to describe because, and here's the reason why.

Let's say that my wife is doing her own healing work, so her showing up authentic and honest is unique to her.

Is there a common relational pattern you see in couples dealing with addiction and infidelity that surprises people?

Tell me the psychology in the, the, the common, the common themes are, of what's going on with the man who instead of confronting their relationship at home and, you know, and I guess communicating or being open or what's going on.

There's several reasons that men end up having extramarital affairs, and I'll just hit a couple of them, but hit maybe the main one that I'm thinking about too.

So one of them is, is that we know with extramarital affairs, the, one of the differences between men and women is, is that women will tend to start having a sexual affair when they've already started to hedge their bets and they're looking to get out of the relationship.

Whereas men often are still looking to keep their relationship, but they're looking for something else, some kind of fire, some kind of, uh, passion, some kind of fantasy, some kind of novelty in their lives.

In a sense, their, their lives and their hearts are kind of numbed out and dead, and they're looking for something to kind of help bring them alive again.

That's one reason.

The other bigger reason that men often have affairs goes back to the first question that you asked, which is they are struggling inside of their own relationships, and part of the reason for that is because they don't have the emotional literacy to be able to speak, and they've been trained to be a certain way to not get left or abandoned.

Weak.