What I

hear also, and I'm so sorry that all this is happening, as I was listening to the list of things you go through or are going through, it is overwhelming.

And I think it also made me wonder, given what all is happening, how isolated you've got to feel.

Can anybody even understand what you're experiencing right now? And who do you talk to in this sort of situation? And even though your wife is being very kind and very understanding, it's also understandable to me that that may not be that comforting because she may not feel safe given everything that's happened.

And in that sense, I get that it would be really hard for you to know where to start and what to do.

I would say no easy answers, but finding good community support of other people who understand where you're at so that you're not isolated.

So you have others to walk with you who understand, who don't judge you, but who also can be there for you.

And now you've tempered the children's perception of therapy going forward in adult life.

But I, you know, but I also wasn't particularly keen about getting justice for everything that I'd ever done to be hurtful to somebody else.

Forgiveness played out for me in the best sort of way, only in the sense that it didn't begin with Stephanie forgiving me, but it began with a profound incident where I felt God's forgiveness of me.

I mean, just practically a revelation of who I was, what I was doing, how depraved, how absolutely hideous I was.

And yet he showed me love and an incredible forgiveness.

And that broke me totally.

It was somebody else's forgiveness that made me understand the benefit of forgiveness.

It's not getting what you deserve that changes you.

He ruined everything and I will never forgive him.

And so we just have to start with, sometimes you have to go back to the basics and just start rebuilding.

One of the things that I've noticed, Jim, and I wonder how you counsel with this or talk to guys, but a lot of times after a betrayal, guys go, okay, I'm not going to do it again.

You can trust me.

That's it.

I'm done.

Never do it again.

And the wife is going, that doesn't help.

But the betrayed spouse has to build trust because there's a broken covenant there.

And how, how is it different than betrayed spouses?

What comes to mind is, I think back in my recovery process, um, one trigger was gray Audi Foxes, which was what my, uh, affair partner drove.

And so if I saw a gray Audi Fox, it didn't have to be that person, but just that vehicle, which by the way, there were a bunch of them all of a sudden now that that's what's a trigger.

But literally, uh, I would experience this fear.

And if Stephanie was in the car, I mean, it was just like, I would almost go into this, um, reliving this shame of the disclosure.

And it's like I jumped time zones and went all the way back to telling the story and what it was like in that moment.

So it was, it w- I hated gray Audi Foxes.

What does that mean? What does that look like? And, you know, that's why, that's why we exist as a, as a company is because of what you just said, Peter.

Um, how does that happen, especially when it comes to a sexual addiction, when somebody has, like, this physiological kinda dopamine need? How do they just stop? How does that occur?

Well, um, I wanna piggyback a bit on what Matt just said.

Um, I read a s-statistic once that, uh, 70 to 90% of sex addicts have an insecure attachment, which means they're avoidant or they are, uh, anxious or disorganized.

And so the problem with being married to somebody who's not in recovery, as Matt just said, is the depth of relationship you can have.

And so much of recovery is about learning not just how to be sober, but it's learning how to actually connect and do relationship and not avoid.

And that is absolutely...

That is, that is hard.

Um, and it's not going to help them get more sober or healthier or into recovery, whatever you call it.

Tell us about the impact of betrayal and how that impacts trust and how that impacts healthy connection.

Wow.

That's a whole podcast.

Yeah, for sure.

Right.

So when there is an attachment rupture, that is actually, we always say that's a pain like no other.

Attachment ruptures are internal.

How do we bring some semblance of balance, some centeredness, some healthy connection to this conversation?

It's under the surface," what would you say to them to help them understand exactly what is happening in their marriage and their relationship and their life?

Well, my first thought would be, um, get, uh, professional help around this one, only because developmental trauma as well as, um, I think if you're the, um, somebody who's been betrayed, it can look a lot like covert or overt narci- narcissism, but it's actually more of a trauma reaction or abuse reenactment.

So in that situation, if you don't have a professional, I think it's hard for you to diagnose just as, you know, to diagnose your mate.

Like it's never really over for any of us, but through the detachment, we can just not lose ourselves quite as much.

One other really frustrating piece of being with a narcissist, whether covert, overt, is that you may never get them to validate your reality.

They will hang on to their reality.

And so you're sitting there for the rest of your life trying to get them to admit to something that they never will.

And so you get to actually create your own story and you don't need them to validate that story.

That- that's about as g- bad as it gets.

Two things came to mind for me.

The first was, uh, what all he did, and what's strange about that, when people are in, um, that... 'Cause that, that almost feels addictive in the sense of what they're doing.

When people are in that state, man, they are not considering at all what they're doing.

They're just trying to continue to get that, um, supply of feeling like they're special, and so they'll do anything.

And it's like they don't think at all.

I mean, there's a total lack of empathy, complete entitlement, and people can come out of that.

But man, sorry, really sorry to hear that.

But you've gotta grieve everything that you feel like you've lost.

And maybe this is true for both parties, but for the betrayed spouse, I think oftentimes we're almost afraid to let ourselves truly feel it and to move through it because it feels like it's this dark...

It's so painful that if we go into it, we'll never come back out of it.

And so it's frightening, and I remember once when, it was when my mom died, um, I thought there's no way I could touch that pain, that it would, it would just destroy me.

And so I actually called two of my good friends, and I said, "You know how avoidant I am, so [laughs] don't let me, you know, call me if you see me avoiding." And that's the first time I really allowed myself to feel the pain.

But what was interesting about it was that, um, it wasn't what I thought.

It wasn't this black hole that is like falling down the rabbit hole, and there was no bottom, right? Actually, I figured out for me at least it was more like surf.

We don't just have to l-- We're, we're all sitting in these pieces, but we can do something with those pieces.