And I asked him point blank, is this going on? Is this what is keeping us stuck?

Yeah.

And up until that point in my life for over 30 years, the answer to that question, whoever asked it, whoever poked around at it, there's always absolutely not.

Right.

And I had learned to keep that part of my life completely separate, hidden away from everything.

I had been struggling with pornography, which I was exposed to at a very young age and, you know, kind of rampant.

addiction that just wouldn't stop.

Totally.

But there's that tiny rupture now in the relationship that's creating a little less safety, a little less connection.

And we've learned from researchers like the Gottmans that couples' experiences of their relationships matter, right? And so the Gottmans note, you have to have five positive experiences in the relationship for every one negative experience.

So if you've got five of these pain cycles every day that you're not addressing, that means you've got to have 25 positive experiences daily.

every day just to feel okay about the relationship, right? Just to hold the status quo.

And so what the reason couples end up in counseling offices is that they have these pain cycles kind of over and over and over.

They don't notice them.

They don't notice the disconnection, the kind of erosion.

We learned how to use the tool, right? And it was once we learned how to utilize it that we really then felt empowered to dramatically change the way our relationship went.

And I

think moving into a gratitude.

And I think because they're what can happen with some people is that they will be driven by shame and guilt rather than gratitude.

And shame and guilt will kind of get you started.

But gratitude will keep you doing the hard work longer.

And so gratitude.

There is a sense of coming to a place of thankfulness.

Level

I don't know if that makes sense.

Yes.

Well, and what's really interesting is what the way we tend to see this, you know, Joanna, we're talking about there's these three things.

You've got a betrayed spouse.

You've got a betraying spouse.

You've got the relationship.

Early on, the work is highly individualized.

there, can I ask you for people who are like, ooh, what does that mean? Can you give an example of the...

We're not an us anymore.

Yeah, and it's one of those where I think what we see a lot of times is compromise is still that kind of conflict avoidance.

It's that I'm trying to avoid the striving together in hopes that we can just kind of keep the peace and move things forward.

And so it's compromise when we're talking about it.

It's not necessarily are we working together or striving.

That's more that cooperation, that collaboration.

But it is that transactional.

I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit more like what does that process look like? If we tell people you're not supposed to be doing compromise per se, what does it look like then? How do they navigate these situations?

Um, what, what was it in you that decided that risk was worth it?

I do think there was a sense...

I, I don't know that I had thought about the risk.

I think I was, I was exhausted.

I'd really...

You know, in, in recovery circles they have this phrase, you come to the end of yourself, and I think that's really had where I had been, where, you know, I had been trying to stop for so many years.

This wasn't something that I was doing and I was like, had no kind of concerns about or... 'Cause if it was, I would've been honest with her.

And they don't, they're scared to actually let go of their anxiety because they think that's the only reason they're performing well, right? And so slowing them down and helping them take an honest look at those coping behaviors, whether it's anxiety, whether it's sex addiction, whether it's control, right? And going, "But how's it actually working for you?" And so often we're able to, right, the Bible says, "Do you choose life or choose death on this day?" And we get to actually track, does this coping, is it creating life for you and the people around you, or is it creating death? And they're, they're usually pretty quick then to look honestly then and say, "No, this is not serving me well." And so it's at that point we get to say, "Okay, are you ready to change that?"

That's me.

And so we have these biological guards that say, "Hey, if something feels dangerous, problematic, threatening," right, "uncomfortable," we, we wanna move away from it, right? And that's the way that the brain is designed, to protect us in that way.

The problem is, is the brain tends to categorize things in big kind of chunks, and it says, "Hey, any discomfort, any problem, I'm gonna move away from.

I'm gonna move away because it feels like a threat to me." And that threat can be physical or it can be emotional.

And what's really interesting is the brain doesn't really distinguish between the two.

Mm-hmm

...

but it's also really powerful in community.

Mm-hmm.

And so, and then through our own journey of my addiction to pornography and to sexual addiction and betrayal in our relationship, we were really forced to reckon with, is it even possible to have a great marriage again? We really liked each other.

We were, we were good friends, and we, we really loved who we were.

And, and on the outside, most people would see us as, like, the perfect couple or they had it all together, but, but really the, the damage that had been done because of my betrayal really left us kind of grasping at, like, is this even possible? And it was that journey back that really prompted us to want to describe what that process looked like, what it really entailed, and how other couples can kind of follow that same framework, betrayal or not, to really build the kind of connection that they're looking for.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And knowing that these are normal things that can happen at little levels and at, at deep levels.

And, and we have emotional attachments to all of those things.