Brandon: 00:28

Welcome back to the Grounded Union podcast. We're on episode four. If you found it just now, go back to episode one where we talked about Our Marriage Breakdown, How We Got Kicked Out of our Counselor's Office in episode two. And then episode three, we talked about why You Didn't Marry Your Mom and a lot of great questions to ask your spouse about childhood. So in this episode, we're gonna be talking about how Spiritual Bypassing is Destroying your Marriage.

Brandon: 00:50

So the primary audience that we have is Christian. We come from a Christian background. If you're not from a Christian background, you don't need to turn this off right now. Our goal is not to define or give you exact beliefs you need to have around your faith or spiritual life. What we're gonna do is share our story.

Brandon: 01:06

Again, this is our story. You might find some nuggets in here that will help you. We're gonna share our experience of how we tried to use a Christian church paradigm to heal from addiction and ultimately try to heal our relationship, what worked, what didn't. And we're gonna give you some perspectives. We're not gonna have you throw away Jesus, have have you throw away your faith.

Brandon: 01:27

If anything, this will empower you to think critically and to have some really powerful conversations within your marriage union. For those of you who have been following along, you know we're doing some in person workshops this year. In just a couple weeks, like a week and a half from when this airs, we'll be in Phoenix, Arizona. So that event is almost full. So if you live in Phoenix, check out the show notes for how to sign up.

Brandon: 01:49

We'll also be in Portland, Oregon in June, San Diego, California in August, and we're hosting a three day marriage intensive in Maui, Hawaii. All the details on those are in the show notes. Mhmm. Spiritual bypassing.

Caitlyn: 01:59

Yes. Well, I'm gonna kick this off with a story from our story. And this was a story, like Brandon said, we grew up both of us grew up Christian. We grew up growing to the Christian church. We specifically grew up in the Nazarene denomination.

Caitlyn: 02:17

And when we got married, we actually met on the mission field. And we met in Ecuador. We were both doing missions. Brandon had already been there for almost two years, and I was going for forty days straight out of high school. So we met very young.

Caitlyn: 02:31

And we then adventured into missions. We were stateside missionaries, spoke at churches, did all the things. And then also were a part of a small little church plant that then actually grew to quite a big beautiful blossoming church. And that was a larger non denominational church. And so I found myself one Sunday at church oh, it's Easter Sunday.

Caitlyn: 02:57

It was Easter Sunday. I was not with you because

Brandon: 03:00

I have just stepped out of ministry because I had imploded our marriage. So I wasn't at church that Sunday.

Caitlyn: 03:06

Brandon wasn't at church. I can't remember the exact reasons, I just know that we were in the deepest pits of our marriage breakdown, and Brandon was at home, we had two daughters at that time, I was completely by myself. And I remember they were doing some testimonials for Sunday because it was Easter, and it was supposed to be these resurrection testimonies. Right? So it's supposed to be like the most powerful testimonies you could think of.

Caitlyn: 03:32

Right? And there was this man who had gotten up, and he was an older gentleman, and he had had an affair. I don't remember the details of his affair or his specific story. I just know that he had had a physical affair on his wife years previous. And he was getting up to share his grandiose testimony, which is that he's no longer acting out through physical affair.

Caitlyn: 03:54

Praise God.

Brandon: 03:54

Hallelujah.

Caitlyn: 03:55

And he now his whole big story was that he's been freed from acting out physically. And when he feels tempted to act out sexually with another woman, he now knows he can pray and, know, a Christian phrase, rebuke those thoughts. And a lot of you might be listening to that story and be like, yeah, amen brother, like, that's incredible.

Caitlyn: 04:22

Right? Well, for me, that hit, jaw to the floor, like, woah. This is such a subtle, yet powerful message that we are communicating to men and women to marriages, that essentially the highest form of purity that you can achieve as a man, or even if you wanna input as a woman, is that all we have to do is not act out physically. The mind doesn't matter as much as because we can take those thoughts captive or we can rebuke them or replace them or pray to get them away. And for me, I realized I had an epiphany of like, woah, woah, woah.

Caitlyn: 05:01

That is not the end for our marriage. That is not I'm not climbing the ladder and that's not the last rung there. Like, sure, that's a great step. Like, thank goodness you're not acting out anymore physically. Yeah.

Caitlyn: 05:12

And also, there's so much more room to grow because we, through this epiphany, realized that we can actually completely remove the aspect of feeling tempted, lured, drawn to another woman, to another man in our marriage because at the end, at the foundation, it's just you and I. Yeah. It's me and you. It's us together. It's our union.

Caitlyn: 05:39

It's our love. It's our creation, and it's nobody else.

Brandon: 05:43

Yeah.

Caitlyn: 05:44

And that is where I realized I differ from a lot of the messaging in the church.

Brandon: 05:50

And for those of you listening right now that wanna know what does the term spiritual bypassing mean? It's when you take a spiritual belief and basically use that as the excuse for your behavior. So that's what we're talking about in this episode. And what happened when we're talking about temptation is and there's a lot of stories we're gonna go into in this episode. When we're talking about temptation and this idea that something outside of you is pulling you to do something.

Brandon: 06:17

So in this situation, for a lot of couples, this is your sexual brokenness as though the fantasies you have, the lust or the thorn in your side is this spiritual battle that you are in with the devil on one shoulder, Jesus on the other shoulder, and you're in this constant fight. And the devil's trying to win the tug of war with you. And if you pray hard, maybe you fast, maybe you confess to the men's group. And if you do the right things, the temptation will be less, but it's never gonna go away.

Caitlyn: 06:46

Mhmm.

Brandon: 06:47

And I had lived with that paradigm, and I had achieved a similar outcome where I was like, I wasn't gonna have a physical affair. I didn't think. Although we look at the, the fruit of the, my actions and where my mind was. And when you run that out years, most people that in ministry that have physical affairs or emotional affairs or rampant sexual fantasies that they can't get rid of thought it wasn't a big deal.

Caitlyn: 07:13

Mhmm.

Brandon: 07:14

Thought that they were just being tempted. And so we wanna have this episode be a wake up call to those of you who call yourself Christians, to those of you who are interested in spirituality, that you cannot live with the devil on one shoulder and Jesus on the other, and have your whole being be divided into, I'm spiritual and I'm physical, and I'm I'm confused. I'm tempted or I'm not. You will act out, and you will find a way to justify it because the devil is tempting you. What happened for us was during 2019, we had stepped out of ministry and it had been a couple months.

Brandon: 07:46

We were I wasn't in ministry anymore for the first time in my adult life. I just had to come face to face with me. There was no, like, Brandon as pastor speaking to my wife. There was no need to be perfect for anybody else. My life was a mess.

Brandon: 07:58

I had no money. I had no ministry, and it was just me face to face with Caitlyn. And we hadn't been to church because COVID was going on. And and up until then, had used every ounce of energy, which we'll talk about, through my spiritual paradigms to try to heal and grow.

Caitlyn: 08:12

Mhmm.

Brandon: 08:12

And I remember waking up one day when we'd been really going through the deep work of rewiring my thoughts, of looking at the patterns of my behavior. And I woke up one day and realized I forgot I was supposed to be tempted. Let me say it again. I woke up and forgot that temptation was a thing because I hadn't been to church. I hadn't been consuming any media, so I hadn't been listening to any spiritual podcast, reading any spiritual books.

Brandon: 08:36

I actually had stopped reading my bible. I know that's triggering. But I was actually so accustomed to reading my bible for an hour to two hours a day that I wouldn't even look at my childhood. I wouldn't look at our sexual brokenness.

Brandon: 08:48

I just needed to read my bible and pray, and that was the pathway to healing. So I'd taken a step back from how I had framed up my entire world, and I forgot that the devil was supposed to have power over me. And I realized, oh my gosh. This whole concept is a man made construct in our mind to keep us broken and stuck. Ultimately, it will give you a thorn in your flesh, whatever Paul's thorn in his flesh was from scripture.

Brandon: 09:11

If you want to have a devil that tempts you, you can have it.

Caitlyn: 09:15

You can have it.

Brandon: 09:16

If you want to heal your sexual brokenness to the root, you can have it.

Caitlyn: 09:21

Mhmm.

Brandon: 09:21

And this was the first time in my life where I realized I didn't feel something outside of me leading me to do something because I had taken ownership and taken responsibility for the thoughts I had wired in because I understood that I had the power to choose. And that was one of the biggest insights we received in that time was if you want to have temptation be a part of your life, if you want to have your sin nature be your best friend, you can, and you will reap the benefits of that.

Caitlyn: 09:49

And we'll dive deeper into specifically temptation around sexuality in our next episode. Actually, we're gonna break down our thoughts on sexuality, on temptation, on that whole big picture. We're gonna speak specifically here to spiritual paradigms. This is a giant spiritual paradigm that runs rampant in the church, probably any church, probably most denominations, and maybe even into all different types of belief systems. It's kind of this this concept that men are always tempted.

Caitlyn: 10:21

They're always gonna be tempted and attracted to other women, and we actually we made a reel on this that went viral because it was really triggering to people. It's really triggering to people when you tell them that it's possible to actually not be attracted to anybody else. And we found this to be I personally found this to be true when I when we were in the midst of our breakdown, and I would try to go to pastors, mentors, counselors. We talked about a lot of these stories in the second episode. And almost every male leader was extremely triggered by what I had to say.

Caitlyn: 10:49

And again, we're speaking now, you know, five, six years later past these experiences. But when I was in the midst of these experiences, I didn't know that six years from now that this is what we were gonna look like. I didn't know, you know, that a couple years down the road, we were gonna be walking out everything that I was dreaming of in my head. I didn't know if it was possible. I'm just an innocent, very young woman who's been married and betrayed going to these male spiritual leaders thinking, surely, when I tell them that I want to be fully attracted to my husband, I want him to be fully attracted to me, and I want nobody else in the picture.

Caitlyn: 11:25

We're not tempted, lured, attracted, whatever, to anybody else. Surely, they'll be like, of course, and here's how you get there. And I did not find that answer from anybody. I actually, like we said, was kicked out of my counselor's office. Brandon was told by a pastor, well, good thing what you're talking about isn't about pornography, because pornography's worse than what you're talking about.

Caitlyn: 11:47

And you know, then we were called controlling. We were called I was called controlling codependent. All of these things when you go to the male leaders, and I'm not saying this about every male leader, about every pastor, because I'm sure some of you listening are gonna be like, well, I'm a male pastor and I completely agree with what you have to say. And that's incredible. And also at the same time, anybody who's been a Christian for a long time is very aware, probably has even had experiences where their own church pastor has had an affair, has, you know, betrayed their spouse in some way, has done something sexual, something that's not full of integrity, and has had to either step down, come clean.

Caitlyn: 12:25

Somebody on your personal church staff has probably been through that. I know that was the case for me. And also, at a larger scale, how many massive male pastors do we know of that have had to step down because they've had severe breaks in their integrity, in their boundaries, in their covenants, in their relationships. Yeah. It's clear that as a church culture, we're missing something when it comes to sexuality, when it comes to marriage, when it comes to union, when it comes to wholeness, purity, and marriage.

Caitlyn: 13:00

And that kinda started, the more I started going and meeting with people, and trying to get help for us, the more there was a lot of red flags for me. There was a lot of sirens of like, this doesn't feel right. This doesn't feel like Jesus to me. Wow. Like, this doesn't feel like the love of God, the vision he would have for my marriage.

Caitlyn: 13:19

I remember I used to think all the time like, okay God, so you want me to get married and be fully committed in love with this person, and he's gonna go outside and always be somewhat attracted to somebody else's waist and breasts. Sure, he's not gonna act on it. He's not gonna kiss that girl. He's not gonna, you know, come home and visualize her and think about her. But he's always gonna be attracted to other women.

Caitlyn: 13:42

And if I play that out of my mind, that sounded torturous, absolutely miserable, that I would be so in love with someone who would be in love with me too, and also attracted and needing stimulation energy, you know, hits of dopamine from other women online or in person. It just didn't line up. And it didn't make sense to me that you were always gonna be tempted, lured, and pull pulled to do that.

Brandon: 14:10

For some of you, you're you're probably thinking, wow. This sounds too good to be true, or this is, like, maybe over your head in the sense of so you're suggesting and we'll talk about this in the next episode as well. But this is from the spiritual paradigm. So you're suggesting that we can live a life free from being attracted to somebody that is not our spouse.

Brandon: 14:27

And this is for husband and wife. This is for both genders, for attraction for anybody. And, yes, that is what we're proposing because here's how it plays out is the reason if if you still find yourself at a place of arousal or attraction to somebody else other than your spouse, it's ultimately a part of your story that hasn't been healed yet. Yep. Because if you play it out, you don't actually want to be attracted to anybody else.

Brandon: 14:52

A lot of you guys will get tripped up on the word attracted because it's it's this perfect word because people say, well, I can find somebody beautiful, but we're really using the word. Nobody is saying the word attracted because that means that there is something there's a pull. There is something there for you. And I wanna give you a thought process here. If you are designed to be attracted to somebody other than your spouse for the rest of your life, Like Caitlyn said, that is torturous.

Brandon: 15:14

And in in our day and age, we talk about, you know, people say, well, I won't act on it, but that's not true because what videos you choose to watch online on social media, which videos you choose to pause for a second and look at, you are acting on it. So we even even that statement that we're saying is you won't act on it. It's like, just because you didn't go sleep with somebody who wasn't your wife does not mean that you didn't act on it. Even if you saw the person and you were just like, I'm gonna look at her and you're not thinking crazy thoughts, you're just taking her in twice. That's acting on it.

Brandon: 15:46

And so what I want you to consider is that you don't actually want the attraction that you're saying that we protect. So in the church, we say, well, it's normal for men to be attracted to other women. The first look's from God. The second look is from a devil.

Caitlyn: 16:00

The three second rule

Brandon: 16:01

is Or the three second rule. If you look at a woman's body parts for three seconds and under, you're good. But if it's over three seconds

Caitlyn: 16:07

You've sinned.

Brandon: 16:08

You are lusting. So here's the here's what I want you to consider. What if you followed through on the attraction? Let's just say it's true that you are attracted to other women. What if you acted on it?

Brandon: 16:18

What if I gave you permission? Okay. Go go tell her you think she's hot. Oh, she responded. Go tell her you wanna sleep with her.

Brandon: 16:25

This isn't your wife. Go go go up and and and and have sex with her. Okay. Now what? The next woman you see a couple days later, you have sex with have full permit you have full permission.

Brandon: 16:33

I'm just telling you, go act out and do whatever you want. Would that satisfy your soul? If you could look at any web page on the Internet and your wife wouldn't be mad, you could have sex with whoever you want and nobody there's no rules. Is that what your soul desires? You and I both know that's not what you want.

Brandon: 16:48

So are you actually attracted to people that are not your spouse or are you have you created a mind game that you're letting yourself believe? So that is the that's the temptation is to believe that you would be in this middle ground, this gray area where you're gonna be constantly thinking somebody else could be the one, somebody else could have something for you, instead of addressing, wow. I'm pissed off at my wife. Mhmm. And when I see another smiling girl on the Internet, that makes me feel better than addressing the pain in my relationship.

Brandon: 17:18

That's the conversation you need to have. Man, every once in while, I click on my ex girlfriend's profile on social media. Yeah. Because you're dissociating from the relationship you're in instead of addressing the pain.

Brandon: 17:31

Man, the secretary at my work, she gives me a lot more affirmation and approval than my wife.

Brandon: 17:39

Man, maybe you should figure out what's going on in your marriage.

Brandon: 17:41

Do you see what I'm saying? You're not actually attracted to other women. You're attracted to the idea of liberating the pain that you're in instead of addressing the root in your marriage.

Brandon: 17:51

So do we wanna safeguard this idea that you're attracted to anybody else in the world, or do we wanna go after the pain and the reality of your relationship?

Caitlyn: 17:59

Yeah. Because attraction and temptation would then be just a never ending cycle and loop. And I remember Brandon in our story when I would present this idea to him. I would say, I believe that you could be fully satisfied by me and nobody else, and you wouldn't And to break that down practically, you know, that looks like not noticing any other woman's body parts, which again, we'll dive deeper into the framework and process on on how we got to there on our next episode, which we now share all of this because we did, to be clear, we did achieve what we set out to do. This is a life that we walk in where Brandon is not going outside wondering if he's gonna be tempted or lured or attracted to somebody or, oh my gosh, like we live here in Hawaii and there's swimsuits everywhere.

Caitlyn: 18:50

I'm not worried about that. Brandon's not he's not going, oh gosh, is this really attractive woman in a swimsuit gonna walk by? It's like, no. Because you can completely free yourself from that paradigm. And why we're talking about this in the spiritual podcast is because this is a paradigm you hear in the church.

Caitlyn: 19:09

If you didn't grow up in the church, you don't really have this like, oh, men are kind of born with this, know, temptation

Brandon: 19:16

Boys will be boys is pretty mainstream too.

Caitlyn: 19:18

Yeah, boys will be boys.

Brandon: 19:19

Boys will be boys.

Caitlyn: 19:20

Yeah, exactly. Maybe you did hear it even if you didn't grow up in the church. If you grew up in the church though, there's almost like this handicap, this enablement that we give to men like, sweetie, as long as you don't look at porn, as long as you don't sleep around with her, as long as you don't go to the strip clubs, like you are a good little Christian boy. Okay buddy? If you just look at her for three seconds, don't make it five, you are a good little Christian boy.

Caitlyn: 19:42

You know, we have all these like really interesting gray areas, and that's what I started discovering. And it's like, okay, yep, I don't want any of this because like I was saying, it's just a never ending loop. I used to visualize it like, okay. So say I'm on a diet. Right?

Caitlyn: 19:59

I'm not on a diet. But say I was on a diet, and I'm not gonna be eating sugar. And I'm always going over to people's houses, and they've got, you know, donuts and cookies and all the things out on the table. And I just keep putting myself in these situations. Like, I'm always going to Sherry's every single night and there's like pies right there.

Caitlyn: 20:16

It's like, oh my goodness. Like, I'm going to eventually be so overwhelmed by the temptation to eat the sugar because I keep telling myself I can't have sugar. I can't have sugar, but I want sugar, but I want sugar, but I want you know? And it's like, well, I'm not eating the pie every single night. Right?

Caitlyn: 20:34

Just looking at it, thinking about it, but I'm not acting on it, right? Sounds terrible, you know? So now we flip that into being attracted to women. If we tell ourselves, I'm tempted and I can't act on it. Then we just live in this tumultuous cycle.

Caitlyn: 20:50

If I want that, but I can't have it. I want that, but I can't have it. And then why do so many male leaders in the church then just do something that all of us are like, woah, that was crazy. Didn't see that coming.

Brandon: 21:02

Right.

Caitlyn: 21:02

Well, we didn't see it coming because we have normalized this concept of being tempted but not acting on it. Wow. So all these men were tempted over and over and over again. Tempted. They chose.

Caitlyn: 21:13

They chose to live with that mentality that they could be tempted

Brandon: 21:17

Right.

Caitlyn: 21:17

And then might choose not to act on it. And then eventually, that was too tumultuous. It overcame them, and then they started acting on it.

Brandon: 21:26

Exactly.

Caitlyn: 21:27

All these people that we look up to, we've put on a pedestal, all these pastors, leaders, these Christian leaders, and it's like, oh, how could you have let us down? Well, there's all of these ways that we've enabled men and women, that we've enabled people to live continuously in this cycle. And I was saying, you used to say in the beginning, when I'd present this concept, you used to say, like, that sounds impossible.

Brandon: 21:52

Yeah.

Caitlyn: 21:52

How would I ever live that way? Because from the moment you entered youth group, from the moment you started going to small groups for men, this was the narrative of the male, of the boy. It's like, Sunny, just don't do these things. You'll be a good holy man if you just stick the path, know, to do the thing. Brandon's like, what you're saying to me is a foreign language, Caitlyn.

Caitlyn: 22:13

Like, that sounds really good. It sounds too good to be true. Sounds impossible that I would be able to live that way, walk that out, and have that. Like, how is that even going to be possible for us? And you thought this was impossible because there was nobody that we found, that we went to, sought advice from, could look to, that was telling us it was possible.

Caitlyn: 22:35

And That's why we share our story because we're here on the other side now having experimented with this concept, with this idea of, is there a way to live without needing to be tempted, without needing to buy into that messaging? And can we actually be completely free from that lure? And, yes, it is 100% possible. And we're here on the other side now, five years into that reality. And it's blissful.

Caitlyn: 23:04

It's beautiful. It's incredible. And it is when you think about the ultimate price that Jesus paid for. This is why I bring up the resurrection Sunday story is, this is the resurrection This is why he died and gave us life. This is abundant life.

Caitlyn: 23:22

That's not abundant life. That's a life of torture. Yep. Sure, it could be more mild than other forms of torture, but that's us continually seeking to put ourselves in bondage. To say, yep, cuff me up.

Caitlyn: 23:35

I'm always tempted. I'm always lured. Like, just cuff me up for the rest of my life. And Christ died, thank you Christ for the cuffs forever. Thank you for the thorn in the flesh for the rest of my life.

Caitlyn: 23:47

Know, it's like, no, no, no. That isn't the resurrection Sunday message. This is. And that's why we wanna share this message because it's a message of true freedom and hope for your marriage.

Brandon: 24:00

And I wanna make it very clear that we are against nobody. There isn't somebody that hurt us in the church. There isn't one person that we're pointing at with this episode and saying, look, they screwed it up. Mm-mm. You know the stories that have caused pain, and I think there's there's a lot of people that are engaged in a church right now, or there are people that are already trying to figure out, like, what does church mean for me right now?

Brandon: 24:22

Because I'm not actually finding the health for my family, my children, my body that I hear about Jesus offers, but I don't experience. And what we want this episode to be is permission to believe, not just think critically, but permission to remove the cuffs, to remove the shackles. And you will have to take an honest look at things that you've heard from your pastor Mhmm. From the church group that you have been involved with, from the lyrics and the worship songs you listen to, from the concepts that are presented and given to you from Christian counselors because nobody means bad. Mhmm.

Brandon: 24:57

We're all in this pursuit of healing experiencing freedom. We came into this experience, into this belief pattern because we were not going to make it. We didn't go through all of this stuff so that we could start a podcast about it. We went through this because we wanted to save our marriage. And now that we're on the other side, we're saying, look, it is cruel to try to follow a religious path Mhmm.

Brandon: 25:19

That keeps you in bondage, and that is not even the religion that you are part of if you are a follower of Christ. And so I want you to think about it in these terms if you wanna look at it from these theological standpoints. We try not to use big words because I don't care about big words. Theology is our belief about God. And so there's a very common thread throughout the Western Christian world, this idea of duality.

Brandon: 25:42

So, basically, the body's good or sorry. The body's bad. Naughty body. The body is bad. This we have this sinful nature living within us.

Brandon: 25:50

But our spirit body, our spiritual part of us is good, and that's where the spirit of God dwells within us. So we live most of our life thinking parts of us are good and redeemed, and parts of us are not yet redeemed and they're still bad and prone to sin. That's so confusing. And so again, we're not trying to say like, you're screwed, but you're screwed. Like, good luck figuring out where the the the line is.

Brandon: 26:16

If your flesh is this it it's easiest. Oh, it's the flesh. Mhmm. It's my sinful nature.

Caitlyn: 26:20

It's enabling you.

Brandon: 26:22

It's enable whenever you don't figure out know what to do next, oh, it's the flesh. It's temptation. And so I want to kinda cut that off. You actually don't have permission to use that one anymore because you've heard, oh, that doesn't work. So if you've been telling yourself, oh, it's the sinful nature.

Brandon: 26:35

No. It's not. Christ crucified the flesh. It says, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Behold, the old is gone.

Brandon: 26:40

The new has come. And I think what's really fascinating to me is Christians with great faith accept what Adam and Eve did to create the fall of man. And I want you to consider this. How include we all believe that we were included in this act that created us to be broken. And in the same breath, it says that if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

Brandon: 27:03

So are you in Christ or not? Are you in Adam? Everybody's like, yeah, Adam Adam and Eve screwed it up. Well, Christ did the redeeming act. One act of righteousness that made all holy.

Brandon: 27:15

So which one is it? Do you either believe that Adam did it and Jesus redeemed it? If not, then why are we still having this conversation? So we need to actually step into a further belief of redemption, and that's the redemption in our marriage. The amount of analogies of Christ and the church being his bride, and he's the bridegroom.

Brandon: 27:32

He wants healthy marriages for every person on the planet, and that's with not using our spiritual beliefs to enable unhealthy behavior because it's not serving anybody. So with that, if there's a spiritual leader that you look up to or in relationship with, so a pastor, a mentor, and when you bring up your sexual brokenness and all they can do is say, well, have you tried praying about it? Have you tried fasting? But they don't have a story to share. Be very concerned.

Brandon: 28:03

What I mean by that is if they don't have a story of redemption around their own sexuality, that means it hasn't happened yet. Mhmm. Because we're in a day and age where there's been this sexual revolution, and there's been an outward expression of sexuality until we redeem that and harness it for the expression within our marriage. And let me tell you, we have great sex in our marriage. We're not antisexuality.

Brandon: 28:24

We are full expression in our sexuality within the confines of our marriage union. So we're not the shutdown desire people. We're let's rev it up, and let's have it be in the healthy confines. So if you are talking to a Christian leader, and they don't know what to say to you about your sexual brokenness, it means and it's not their fault, but they're stuck in their own story. So Mhmm.

Brandon: 28:45

Why are we seeking advice from people that aren't willing to give us the keys to leave the prism we're

Caitlyn: 28:50

in? Mhmm. And it's looking at the fruit. Where's the fruit? Where's the where are the healthy marriages in the church?

Caitlyn: 28:57

And not just the ones that look healthy on Sundays, and then you find out two years later that they're actually divorced because he's been sleeping with the secretary. Like, it's just the fact that I can give that as an example, because that is pretty much an example in most every single church, is it is startling. Right? So like, you might be listening to some of what we're sharing, and we're not going super theological with it for a reason. And you might think, oh, some of this is really triggering.

Caitlyn: 29:28

I don't really agree with all of this. And that's okay. That's okay that you don't fully agree. At the end of the day, well, we're at we're not asking you to leave your church. We're not asking you to not be a Christian anymore.

Caitlyn: 29:40

We're actually just inviting you, similar to what we did in the last episode. If you haven't listened to it, we highly recommend it. In the last episode with your family, you're taking a step back. You're almost like, you know, going above yourself and taking a bird's eye view. We're asking you to do the same thing with your relationship with God, with your relationship to church, with your relationship to your religion, whatever it is.

Caitlyn: 30:05

Take a bird's eye view for a second, and look at where's the fruit, like where are the healthy marriages? Where's the fruit of this messaging? Is this messaging of what Brandon's talking about, the my body is bad, but my spirit is good? Is that leading to a lot of really beautiful blossoming marriages? Is it?

Caitlyn: 30:23

I don't think so. When I took my bird's eye view of the church, I started seeing a lot of concerning messages. That doesn't mean that I don't love Jesus anymore. Yeah. I wholeheartedly love Jesus.

Caitlyn: 30:36

It actually led me on a journey to understanding a deeper connection with Christ. Because I'm taking a bird's eye view, looking at everything, and figuring out where am I outsourcing my responsibility to just in nature. Okay. Yeah. That's just body so bad.

Caitlyn: 30:59

I'm gonna slap my hand, you know, give myself a little flick in the mouth, and then I'm gonna go pray. I'm gonna go read my bible. I'm gonna go do something really holy, so I can like cleanse and purify my spirit nature, right? So it's just, we give ourselves all these little ways that we can just outsource. Oh, well my pastor told me that I can look at her for three seconds, so you're wrong, Caitlyn, because he said it's holy.

Caitlyn: 31:27

Well, where did he get that from? You know what I mean? It's just like, how many times, how many places are we just saying, well, my pastor told me that, my small group leader told me that, and he went to years of seminary. So he's definitely super an expert on this concept. And I was like, okay, well, show me his marriage.

Caitlyn: 31:46

Show me his relationship with his wife. Show me his relationship with his kids. Woo, if you wanna go a notch deeper. How are his kids doing? What do they look like?

Caitlyn: 31:56

Are they thriving? Are they healthy? Show me his relationship with money. Show me his relationship with his health, because this is a whole different topic. But if you wanna go with body bad, spirit good, how many people are overwhelmed?

Brandon: 32:08

How far are you gonna make it?

Caitlyn: 32:09

How many people are sick? How many people live off medication? How many people are not actually thriving mentally, emotionally, physically? Why? Because you believe this narrative.

Caitlyn: 32:20

You believe these specific paradigms. So what we're asking you is, don't just adopt our paradigms just because they sound good right now. Like, yeah, they're good. They're going great for us. It's beautiful, the life that we're creating.

Caitlyn: 32:31

Because if you wanna come into our house, and you wanna look at our marriage, you wanna sit here when we're not when we don't even know you're here, you'd be shocked. You'd be amazed. You'd say, wow, that looks beautiful. If you wanna observe us while we're at the beach playing with our kids, like everybody else who comes up and says, wow, your family is so beautiful. That's not to pat us on the back.

Caitlyn: 32:53

It's because we let go of narratives that limited us and kept us bound. And it was gonna set us on a path of divorce, where my kids weren't gonna grow up in a home like this, where they were connected. Because these belief systems are keeping us bound as a culture. They're keeping us bound in the church, and there is a freer way. And so take a bird's eye view, take a step back and look at it.

Caitlyn: 33:19

What do you actually wanna keep? Yeah. What is actually true for you? What is producing good fruit in your life? And what do you wanna pull away from for a minute?

Caitlyn: 33:31

Reassess. Because we're all holding onto religion like this. You wanna question my God, my religion, my belief systems? Well, I'm gonna be so mad at you. You must not be a Christian.

Caitlyn: 33:41

You must be new age. You must be this. Okay. Goodness gracious. Take a deep breath, unclench for a second.

Caitlyn: 33:49

Yeah. Take a step back, and look at it all calmly. You can take a minute. You're not a sinner if you need to look at everything for a second, and figure out where you wanna move your little chess pieces. Okay.

Caitlyn: 34:03

I'm gonna move these ones over here because you know what? These aren't producing good fruit in me. And I'm gonna move these ones over here because I like this. This is good. This is what I wanna keep.

Caitlyn: 34:13

We're asking you to take a step back and actually look at these things for yourself.

Brandon: 34:18

Yeah. A lot of people think that seeing the face of God would come through fasting and hours of prayer and worship and readings of the scripture. If you wanna see the face of God, your wife the secrets you're keeping from her. Choose to believe that love could abound in your relationship through Christ to the degree that there would be no separation between the two of you. Religion or the acts that we try to do to attain holiness, to get to God, is rooted in this in this belief that we are separated from him.

Brandon: 34:53

If you consider yourself a Christ follower, the message you are adopting is actually one of union. It is one of connection, of constant presence, empowerment, divine connection, and that rolls over directly into your marriage relationship. In 2016, I fasted for forty days. I did not eat food. I drank liquids, broths, and juices to pray and to fast, to grow in spiritual gifts.

Brandon: 35:27

I had a little secret note card also to get rid of sexual temptation and to improve my marriage. During those forty days, my marriage got worse. I still looked at naughty things on the internet and I didn't tell Caitlyn about it. When you try to use these spiritual constructs, I'm not saying that prayer, meditation, even fasting, or the readings of sacred text is a negative thing. But when you spiritual bypass, meaning when you think, if I read my bible Mhmm.

Brandon: 35:57

Then my marriage will be better. Yep. Maybe.

Caitlyn: 36:00

You're taking out the responsibility part.

Brandon: 36:02

If you want to read your bible for the devotional reflective qualities that that brings into your life, fantastic. Mhmm. When you close the book Mhmm. And you look up and there's miles of distance between you and your wife, what would actually bring your heart and your soul and your entire being to life into experiencing the life of Christ more than actually addressing the elephant in the room, which is your disconnected marriage? And so what we're trying to tell you is that your religion, your belief system about God can and ought to empower every single facet of who you are, just your spirit being, which has been defined to you as something that you cannot grasp.

Brandon: 36:51

But I'm saying if you believe in this gospel that has brought you to life out of darkness into light, then that means that you're also believing that it it swallowed up all of your childhood trauma, your first exposure to pornography, your addiction that you've told nobody that you've not told your wife, the things that you are ashamed of. It swallowed up all of that and gives you the courage to look at it for what it is, have the deep conversations with your spouse, and then you experience love in the union that you create together. Praying and confessing to a men's small group and not telling your wife the truth and the reality of what is, of what's been done, of what needs to be covered, is saying that that unhealthy behavior is worth protecting more than your wife. And you and I both know that that's not the story and the narrative that you wanna live out.

Caitlyn: 37:39

Mhmm. Our counselor, the one that kicked us out of the office eventually, he gave us a really good understanding of how a lot of times in the church with Christian men, they actually come into his office with sexual brokenness, also having almost like multiple personalities. Because it's that duality piece again, where there's this part of them that was good, and this part of them that was bad. And from our story, to give a couple of practical examples here, when we got married, Brandon was like, okay, what can I do that fits into the good Christian boy box, right? But then still feeds this little piece of my temptation that is, you know, my little handicap on my shoulder that I'll always have for the rest of my life.

Caitlyn: 38:18

So, okay, Good Christian boys don't look at porn. Good Christian boys don't sleep with strippers. Good Christian boys don't have texting and dating apps. Right? So just go down all the list of here's all the big uglies.

Caitlyn: 38:31

Good Christian boys don't do those. Okay. So good Christian boy then could accidentally see a couple swimsuit images online. Oh my gosh. A good Christian boy could accidentally walk by the swimsuit aisle at Target.

Caitlyn: 38:48

Oh, no. A good Christian boy could accidentally fumble across an ad online. You see what I mean? It's like, here's all these areas where I still am gonna get my desires met. Desires that pull myself, I don't have the counterfeit desires.

Caitlyn: 39:06

These desires I told myself I need, I can have, I'm unable to have. I'm gonna get these met, but I'm gonna put them in my good Christian boy boxes. And Brandon did this for many years. The first couple years of our marriage, because like we shared our marriage breakdown was in 2019, when we got married in 2015. So that was many years of doing the cycle that a lot of you are on, which is why you find yourself here listening to this.

Caitlyn: 39:29

We did the cycle, we played the game, We did all the things. So Brandon said he fasted for forty days, but we were the Christian couple that woke up every single morning. We worked out for an hour, read our bible for an hour, and prayed for an hour. And that was the core. That was a part of the the missions organization we were part of, and that became a core of who we were at the time.

Caitlyn: 39:50

And like we said, we're not necessarily saying that all those things are bad and throw them out the window. Those things though, most people in the church would say, wow, you must have had an incredible marriage because we prayed together. We read our bible. We even worked out. We took care of ourselves.

Caitlyn: 40:05

We went to all the marriage conferences at the church. We went to church every single Sunday. We led small groups at our church. We were the prayer team at the church. We were doing all the things.

Caitlyn: 40:16

We were climbing the spiritual ladder. Right? Yeah. And Brandon wasn't looking at porn. He wasn't sleeping with strippers.

Caitlyn: 40:22

He wasn't going to strip club. He wasn't on any dating was good.

Brandon: 40:25

Praise

Caitlyn: 40:25

God. He was a good sexual Christian boy. Right? All his if he would go and tell other men that, he'd be like, wow. Pat you on the shoulder, dude.

Caitlyn: 40:33

You are doing so good. But yet, he was still seeing and looking at swimsuit models online.

Brandon: 40:39

Yeah. I was still I had created a box, like Caitlyn has said. The of my behaviors got smaller, so I couldn't look at full nudity porn because then I knew I'd have to tell Caitlyn. But if I saw a reel that was suggested for me, I didn't have to search for it. Mhmm.

Brandon: 40:55

Then type in boobies. And there was this Mhmm. Provocative. A what? A provocative image.

Brandon: 41:02

And I saw it. It was like, oops. And these aren't thought these aren't like No. Deep thought process. And like, I'm going to figure out how to be Mhmm.

Brandon: 41:10

Devious or just, deceptive here. Mhmm. It's I'm going to be a victim to my sexualized world I live, which we will talk about more in the next episode. So I found myself scrolling on social media and being, allowing myself to be exposed to inappropriate images and feeling justified because it wasn't porn. Then guess what?

Brandon: 41:30

Well, I didn't masturbate and I didn't get an erection looking at other women.

Caitlyn: 41:34

So you're good.

Brandon: 41:35

So I'm good. I didn't, I didn't get an erection. Didn't masturbate. But I still was noticing women's waist and backside and chest. And that was the first thing.

Brandon: 41:44

And the last thing I noticed, and when Caitlyn really, when we, when I'd been caught lying again about how I use the Internet, it opened up this whole world into this realm where I was like, we're gonna go to the the root of this, which we alluded to in previous episodes. Yeah. What scared me and why we're talking about spiritual bypassing is I was doing better than 99% of men in the church, and I felt justified. And I was able to get men even in our season of me saying, hey. I lied to Caitlyn.

Brandon: 42:09

I was using my phone for two hours a night without her knowing about it. I still objectify every woman. I still have these fantasies, and she's hurting. And they I still got men to think Caitlyn was codependent Yep. Because I was doing 99% better than every other man because it wasn't hardcore pornography, wasn't strip clubs, and I wasn't texting.

Brandon: 42:25

I wasn't masturbation. I wasn't texting somebody else. You guys are like, man, Brian, you're freaking weird. Yeah. Stuff gets weird when you try to fit it into a religious paradigm to not be a bad boy instead of addressing the heart of the matter, which this guys, scrolling on social media, still thinking about your ex girlfriends from time to time, and objectifying other women, that's enough to create our marriage is going to end over that because at the root of it, I'm still lying.

Brandon: 42:50

Mhmm. I'm still choosing somebody else. And, ultimately, what I'm choosing is to protect this idea, this concept that, no, I cannot be fully given to you. I will not believe that. And that is cruel.

Brandon: 43:01

And that's the cruelty of religion that it's given you. It said, you cannot have full freedom.

Caitlyn: 43:06

Yep. Exactly.

Brandon: 43:07

And it wasn't until Caitlyn said, I can't go on any further. Mhmm. I'm leaving if you're not willing to come. And that was the line in the sand for us was, I either have to continue on the spiritual paradigm and I lose my marriage. Mhmm.

Brandon: 43:20

Again, I'm saying Jesus is so good that I actually had to say, no. Enough is enough. I'm not gonna try to stay in the box. I'm saying the box isn't real. And Caitlyn said, I believe you can be free.

Brandon: 43:31

And I said, I want to believe that. And at the beginning of our healing process, I would see glimpses of it, and then I would shrink back because it was terrifying to say, is there actually this much freedom available? That all I need to do is look at the patterns of my behaviors and what legitimate soul needs I'm trying to meet. Why am I numbing out on my phone? Why is so much of the church numbing out on their phone?

Brandon: 43:52

Right. Why do we not live lives that we're proud of? Why do we not have marriages that light our soul up? It's because we're hopeless. So many Christians are hopeless and think, man, I'll numb out and try to live vicariously through somebody else, and I'll just do what my pastor tells me.

Brandon: 44:04

Well, wake up call. People like Mike Bickel, Carl Linz leading massive churches, had affairs, abused underage women. Do you wanna put your faith in a system like that that's saying, just keep listening to me and keep ignoring the issue? Or are you ready for your marriage? Because, ultimately, this doesn't matter about a whole system.

Brandon: 44:23

We're talking to somebody listening right now. Husband and wife, we're talking to you tonight. Yeah. Are you willing for your marriage to be different from what the religious system is producing right now? The fruit of the religious system, that's what we're offering you tonight is, are you willing to say, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna create a box for my behavior to justify it anymore.

Brandon: 44:44

I'm willing to say there is freedom, and there is true liberty. There's true justice and actual holiness being set apart, being made free that's available to me. That's the message of the gospel is he didn't come to clean you up. He came to replace you and give you his life, his love, and his freedom, and for you to redeem every single part of your past, your present, and your future. And that includes your wife.

Brandon: 45:09

That includes your husband. That's freedom.

Caitlyn: 45:12

Yeah. And you might be thinking, okay, on a practical note, what does this look like though? And it's like we said, you know, we tried the spiritual route or the the the classic Christian route of we pray every day, we read our bible every day, we fast, we even pray together, we go to church, we attend all the things, we do all the things.

Brandon: 45:34

We volunteer.

Caitlyn: 45:34

We volunteer. And we were still stuck in the cycle. For years, we were stuck in the cycle. We could not get out of the cycle. And you'll hear this on every podcast episode.

Caitlyn: 45:46

Getting out of the cycle, getting unstuck is actually so much easier than the classic even Christian route. Because reading your bible every single day for an hour and praying every single day for an hour is somewhat daunting for most people. That's a pretty daunting thing to be like, the only way that you can have a really good close connected marriage is if you do those two things for two hours every single day. It's like, oh shoot. Well, sorry kids.

Caitlyn: 46:11

See you later. I don't have time to spend with you because I don't even have time to spend with you babe. Because I had to read my bible like an hour. I gotta clock it. I gotta clock in, check the boxes so I can be a good Christian, so we can have a good marriage.

Caitlyn: 46:24

And we tried that, and it didn't work. We were still stuck. We were still in that cycle, and we had to experience something different. We had to come out of that. And sometimes, it's so simple and so profound that it is so simple.

Caitlyn: 46:38

And really for us, what it was was, like I said, the practical aspect of this is sit down together and look at what it is that you believe. What do you believe about God? What do you believe about marriage? What do you believe about God and marriage? What is it that you don't wanna keep around anymore?

Caitlyn: 46:59

Yeah. And what is it that is a core of your the foundation of your marriage that is producing good fruit and will continue to produce good fruit that you do wanna keep around. What are those things? You're going to have to take your grip off, look at it, and have a we can't tell you We gave you some examples of things we would suggest you look at. Yep.

Caitlyn: 47:20

We can't tell you and every single one of you what you should believe. No. That's what religion has done to you. That's what religion has done. They have told you this is what you believe, this is what you do, and that's how you're a good Christian girl or boy.

Brandon: 47:32

And that's what makes you in or out.

Caitlyn: 47:34

You're either in or you're out. You either follow all of those rules, and you can be in, or you're not following those rules and you're out. Or you're half in and half out, and so then we have a name for you too. But you're not fully a Christian, you're definitely not on the prayer team, okay? You definitely don't have a good marriage.

Caitlyn: 47:48

And so it's actually being able to look at everything, giving yourself the freedom and permission to look at everything, and figure out where you find yourself. What do you believe? What is true for you?

Brandon: 48:02

Take a deep breath. We have covered a lot of ground this episode. What I wanna leave you with is in the unraveling process, which people throw around the word deconstruction. I like the word unraveling a lot, is what you'll find is if you actually if you're of the Christian faith, you won't actually lose God in your unraveling. You'll find that he's more deeply integrated into every aspect of your being, of your marriage, of your parenting journey, of your health journey than you ever thought possible.

Brandon: 48:29

So what we're telling you today in this podcast is increase the standard you have for what freedom means for your marriage. And if you came to us and asked us like, Hey, I'm struggling with this. Like, what do I do? I'm not going to tell you to fast for forty days. I'm not going to tell you, you need to pray for three hours or you're not there.

Brandon: 48:49

Everybody's situation is completely unique to them. And what your soul needs to heal is different than what I needed to to to hear and to heal from. What I will tell you is when you're willing to face reality, which is believing that God is with you in all things and through all things, That is how you heal. It's not ignoring any aspect of your story. It's not calling your wife controlling.

Brandon: 49:12

It's not blaming somebody else for posting something naughty online. It's taking personal responsibility. It's facing what you've done and what you actually wanna keep and how you wanna heal together. That's where healing happens.

Caitlyn: 49:24

And it's burden free. There is no burden. Religion places a burden on you to check all the boxes and do all the things, and then you become whatever it is that they say that you will become. And there's a huge burden, and that burden feels like pressure. And that pressure builds and builds and builds until you combust. And the way of Jesus is completely burden free, And that's what we're presenting here, is a way of love and connection and freedom. Freedom is burden free.

Caitlyn: 49:54

There is no burdens in the way that Brandon and I are living. There is no burden to walk outside and realize that there is no temptation or lure. And we're not just make we didn't just tell ourselves, oh, there's no temptation or lure or pool, and then we're actually are feeling tempted or attracted or anything. Now this is a real state of being because when you fully believe, believing leads to the outcome you're going for. So if you don't believe any of this, you're not going to achieve the same outcome.

Caitlyn: 50:21

You actually have to that's why we tell you to take a step back and look at it, and figure out what it is you believe. Because whatever you believe in, you can have. See, I believed in this. Everybody told me, no, you can't have that, Caitlyn. Get out of my counseling office actually, so much so that that's triggering.

Caitlyn: 50:36

But I believed it. I saw it. I saw what we were gonna have, and we are walking in that, and we are living in that, and it is completely burden free. Yeah. And our marriage is, it's truly full of love and connection and intimacy, because every single day I wake up and I know that Brandon loves me.

Caitlyn: 50:55

Yeah. And there's no other woman that Brandon loves, and there's no other woman that Brandon looks at. And that's because he was willing to take a look at his religious paradigms, get rid of the ones that were keeping him bound and full of burdens and pressure. He was willing to adopt the love of Christ that leads to a free life and a free connected marriage.

Brandon: 51:18

Wow. If you're looking to explore this topic deeper, by the time this podcast is aired, I am actually starting another social media page called Brandon Talks Jesus, if you would like to explore the topic of spirituality and, unraveling from some of the things that keep you bound.

Brandon: 51:36

Right now, there there might not be any videos posted on it, but if you find Brandon Talks Jesus, it might have, like, one follower. You can follow that page for more.

Brandon: 51:43

And what we're gonna be talking about in the next episode is what sexual healing looks like and what that freedom looks like.

Brandon: 51:50

We want you to feel empowered through each of these episodes. We wanna give you more value than anything you could have ever gotten anywhere else. So if you were impacted by tonight's episode or have any, have a desire to share this episode with somebody else, please do that. We also have these on YouTube and Spotify for the video. If you aren't watching the video, the video is there.

Brandon: 52:07

If you could leave us a review and share it with a friend, that helps us reach more people. And we will see you in the next episode. Thanks for joining us.