Brandon: 00:28

Welcome back to the Grounded Union Podcast. This is episode six. Fun fact. We record these after we put our four children to sleep. I think I shared this already.

Brandon: 00:37

So sometimes they wake up, we put them back to sleep and we're back at it. So we love you guys. We're here to keep sharing our story, keep encouraging you. We had so much fun talking about Navigating Your Sexual Brokenness in the previous episode that we want to do a part two to further demystify your sexuality and how to not for not to be a weakness, but all but to be this the glue that actually brings your marriage together and not this handicap that you have, this this thing. It's like, this do I trust him?

Brandon: 01:08

Is he looking at other women? Does he want other women? We're going to talk about the reality of these concepts and these constructs we've made the addictions. They're not actually rooted in reality. They're not actually rooted in something that you ultimately desire.

Brandon: 01:19

We're going to break down a lot of things we discovered when I stopped dragging my feet and dove into this process headfirst back in 2019 and 2020. Before we dive into that, when this episode airs, we will be the night before our first workshop of the year in Phoenix, Arizona. We do have a couple more workshops happening. If you missed Phoenix, we'll be in Portland in June, San Diego in August, and then we are hosting a three day marriage intensive here in Maui, Hawaii. So if you are interested in

Caitlyn: 01:48

October,

Brandon: 01:50

if you're interested in any of those events, just click the link in the show notes to get more details. Mhmm. Let's jump in.

Caitlyn: 01:55

Yeah. So this is part two, because after we did part one, we're like, wait, there's so much

Brandon: 02:00

There's more

Caitlyn: 02:02

Yeah,I think that we love talking about this topic because we believe that the messages that we share around sexual wholeness are not messages that you really hear broadcasted everywhere. And we have experienced with all of these things that we shared in the last episode and the ones that we're gonna share, the tools that we're gonna share in this episode. And we've tapped into a type of connection and freedom within our sexuality. And we've sat with it for many years. Like we said, since 2019, we've just been sitting with this message, and we've continually been testing it, and experiencing it, and walking in it, and then we came to the point where we're like, wow, this needs to reach other people, because there are other marriages that are falling apart.

Caitlyn: 02:50

Navigating this topic, like how many messages do we receive every single day because there has been porn addictions, sexual addictions, affairs, emotional affairs, husband looking at swimsuit models, husband looking at friends, husband looking at every single woman that's walking around. It's just, it's sadly a chronic issue that is almost wreaking havoc in probably like ninety percent of marriages, honestly. It's probably one of the main causes of divorce in marriages. And we realized we're sitting on such a potent, beautiful, powerful message of freedom and hope that will resonate with so many people, that it was, there was no better time than now to share this message with people.

Brandon: 03:34

So what we really wanna drive in in this episode is that your sexuality is not meant to destroy you. It's meant to bring your marriage closer together. And I think like Caitlyn alluded to already, there are so few marriages where they say, yeah. Outside of we say, when we have sex, we feel close or whatever. Most people don't view their sexuality as a means for genuine long term connection with their spouse.

Brandon: 03:58

It maybe was the hot and heavy feelings you felt when you were engaged or dating, or you think back to when you had different sexual partners before you met your spouse, or you think about the, how sex is represented in movies and shows and pornography on social media. And you have this idea that sex is actually detached from connection. We see it as this exchange, this transaction, this place we go to when we're in pain or we want to escape our reality. It's not actually the place that most people go to when they want to feel deeply connected and seen and known. And so

Caitlyn: 04:31

Very vulnerable, actually.

Brandon: 04:32

Incredibly vulnerable. The wife's body, the female body is opening up to receive the male parts. That's, that's an incredibly vulnerable process that when you don't feel connected in that, it feels very wrong. And so a lot of people, instead of facing the pain of the disconnection, they try to outlet that desire for connection through these counterfeit. When I say counterfeit, we're gonna use that word a lot, not real, but they appear real types of connection or sexual outlets.

Brandon: 04:59

And what's happened over time is men and women feel that there's a fantasy world or there's a draw to these, you could call them temptations to these ways of viewing people around you and your environment or on the internet or in shows where you idolize or objectify people that are not your spouse because you don't know how to experience the sexual wholeness that you ultimately desire and crave the most. And so we're going talk about some of the moments I had in exploring my sexual history and realizing that I could heal from becoming more sexual in the sense of when you try to stuff anybody, this is anybody who has been in the Christian church or maybe another, I don't know of other world facing and how they operate, but if you've tried to heal from an addictive actions in your sexuality by suppressing desire, you know it doesn't work. You have to shut down all of you and then your connection doesn't flow and you still have this part of you that feels dirty and you haven't addressed it. So the the whole idea of healing your sexuality is actually to become more sexual, a connoisseur of desire and connection because you know what will happen?

Brandon: 06:02

Becoming more sexual, more tapped into your sexuality will not lead you anywhere else, but to your spouse. So that's my good news for you listening right now. Just we jumped right in. That's how we are. You becoming a healed sexual spouse will not lead you deeper back into the paths of your addiction.

Brandon: 06:19

It will not lead you into a fantasy world that you're afraid of. Your authentic sexual connection and desires will lead you to your spouse. So that means everything else is a counterfeit to the real desire that you ultimately have, even if it feels like, Oh, but pornography is so, so luring and it's just this whole thing. And I can't stop doing it. It's because you don't know why you're going to it to begin with, and ultimately the emotions and the feelings you're trying to create.

Caitlyn: 06:43

Mhmm. This is a big moment for you in our story because so often we grow up or men grow up, piggybacking off of what you're saying. And it's just, it's almost like this big narrative that your sexuality is this all consuming thing that's eating you alive. And you hear a little bit about, yes, you'll have sex with your wife and that will be really incredible. And then there's this, all of this dark, looming, evil, gray, black energy around you that's trying to eat you alive of all this temptation and lure and sin like we've talked about in the past episodes.

Caitlyn: 07:19

And it's like, all this attraction, all of this energy that I'm trying to run away from. And so it's like, there's this part of us that knows like, okay, yeah, sex with my wife is good, but then this big part of us that maybe we don't even realize, you didn't realize, that when we think about sex and intimacy and that vulnerable connection, we think, oh my gosh, this is bad. Yep. Oh my gosh, this is scary. Oh my gosh, I need to run from all this.

Caitlyn: 07:43

I need to just pretty much just keep sprinting and sprinting through life away from all of this sexual temptation. And you realized, oh my gosh, wait, sex with my wife is good. Sex with my wife is amazing. Sex with my wife is everything. And so I don't actually need to shut down all of my sexual desire.

Caitlyn: 08:04

I need to actually learn to harness that and flow it into my marriage, into our union, into our intimacy. You're not actually shutting down because that's exactly it. Everyone goes, oh, men are wired for sex. Yeah. Of course.

Caitlyn: 08:21

Actually, we're both wired for sex. Men and women are wired for sex. That narrative is is 100% true. Now people then try to tag that with, and so that's why men are always looking and objectifying other women, always needing porn, always needing affairs, always this, that, and the other. It's like, uh-uh.

Caitlyn: 08:38

Men are wired for sex, and now harness that into your union Yeah. And let it flow through there. Yes, you realize that you are wired for sex and sexual intimacy, and that vulnerable connection, which only came from us already having the established foundation of we fully see each other. We got all the lies out, all the secrets out, everything's on the table. We know each other.

Caitlyn: 09:01

We're looking at the narratives and the patterns of our belief systems around our childhood, our spirituality. That establishes the vulnerability, the intimacy. So then now, you're realizing, I don't need to suppress any of that sexual energy. I actually can let it flow freely, and let it overflow, and let it overtake us into our marriage connection.

Brandon: 09:23

Yep. We're going to explore some of the practicals of what that is like in everyday experience for me and for us. We want to highlight a few experiences and stories we had back when we were sifting through my sexual history and then dive into some things is what that looks like in the pre in my present day experience. In 2019, '20 '20, as we began to explore these parts of me that were undeveloped or unhealed in regards to my sexuality, there was this time where we're doing some emotional exercises with each other to try to connect that, that my counselor had given me. And when we would go to do them, I could not express an emotion of vulnerability or intimacy to Caitlyn, of affection without having a, just an assortment of sexualized images of things I had seen on the internet, in person.

Brandon: 10:11

All these memories would flood my mind. And it was a very bizarre experience because ultimately I had never opened up this intimate side of me because I had put just all of those memories and experiences were where I thought that part of me lived. This is where I get comfort. This is where I experienced connection is just seeing a scene on this on this screen or searching on this profile. And that's where I had associated what intimacy felt like, what that closeness felt like, because many times in my past, I was angry, lonely, or tired, that's when I went to a sexualized image.

Brandon: 10:41

And so what I, what I had done is realized, oh my gosh, like, I can't even open up to Caitlyn because I was so afraid of feeling affectionate. Cause I thought that random women I don't know is what affection is. And so what we did is we worked through those four R's that we talked about in the previous episode, and I just began to recognize, receive, release, and replace those thoughts.

Caitlyn: 11:02

And you said it out loud and we did that together.

Brandon: 11:04

Yeah. I told him what the thoughts were, and I know that's very uncomfortable, but it was so healing for us because I wasn't going to try to shut it down. I was gonna say, woah, I'm not even able to connect with you on this capacity because I never even let you in, which is what a true marriage is, is letting you in all the way. And that began to sink in. Oh my gosh.

Brandon: 11:22

The authentic sexuality that we're experiencing is it's real. It's it's the, this is the real part of me. All the other stuff doesn't matter right now. All this stuff isn't, isn't exciting to me. It's not a temptation.

Brandon: 11:34

It was literally just taking up this space in me. It was occupying this part of me that I actually was ready to use with Caitlyn to feel emotional and to feel connected. In that same timeframe, my counselor giving me an exercise to mime out what feeling sexual felt like. Picture that you're playing charades. Wouldn't recommend doing this one.

Caitlyn: 11:53

In a group party.

Brandon: 11:54

In a group party. But just if you were alone in your room, you can practice this. To act out, like if you were to act out with your whole body, what it would look like to act out the feeling or the emotion of feeling sexual. And I did that for like fifteen seconds. And I was like, what?

Brandon: 12:10

Like, it freaked me out because I realized this feeling of feeling sexual did not connect with all of the, all of the inappropriate content I had viewed. All of the fantasy world I had created was so far removed from that authentic, innocent expression of what feeling sexual in my body feels like. And that's when I was like, oh my gosh, I had created this sexualized world, which was actually not sexual at all. Sexuality. What feeling sexual in my body feels like I have only experienced that with Caitlyn.

Brandon: 12:40

It wasn't the same category when I saw somebody I thought I found attractive at that time. It was literally just a passing experience to try to stimulate a feeling in my body, but it wasn't the same thing. And that began to really shake me to my core to realize I can become more sexual in feeling that in my body. And that's not going to lead me to want to be sexual with random people or a friend. It's actually going to lead me to feeling safe and intimate with Caitlyn.

Brandon: 13:06

And that was a huge breakthrough for us because before I was trying to suppress, suppress, suppress shame and shame and shame, and feeling sexual will not take you away from yourself.

Caitlyn: 13:16

Yeah. It's the difference between fantasy and authentic sexuality. And really, in our culture and day and age, we've kinda tried to merge the two, and they're completely different. Because a fantasy world where you are fantasizing about other women outside of your marriage or other men outside of your marriage is completely different than authentically tapping into your sexuality in your marriage and harness ing that. And I remember even I forget.

Caitlyn: 13:44

It was like an email that came in from a man who was reading a book, and in the book, it was talking about kind of essentially a similar type of concept of tapping into your sexuality within your marriage. And the man was like freaking out. He's like, well if I start to do that, then I'm gonna have all of this other sexual desire just kind of bombard me and come at me, and I'm gonna be I'm scared. I'm scared to do that. And you felt that too.

Caitlyn: 14:09

You felt scared to mime your sexuality, to actually believe that your sexuality was good. It was pure. It's innocent. It's true. It's authentic.

Caitlyn: 14:19

It's for the benefit of our union. And I think a lot of men, probably even a lot of men women find themselves in this place because, again, you have to start back where we started, which is what was your childhood narrative around all these topics? What was your spiritual narrative around all these topics? Yeah. What are all the secrets you've been hiding around all of these topics?

Caitlyn: 14:42

Okay. Get all of that out, and then everything's clean and clear and freshened up. And now you can begin to look at, wow, this is good. This is so good for me. And I I want you to share a little bit more about kind of how you how you begin to have epiphanies around, you know, okay, if I actually acted on everything in this fantasy world, what what does that actually even mean for me?

Brandon: 15:07

Yeah. I recently said shared this with my with the grounded community for contemplation is we think that there's this fantasy world that is so tempting.

Caitlyn: 15:14

Mhmm.

Brandon: 15:15

And let's just say for exam for, for a thought exercise that your wife is okay with you acting out on your fantasies. And you have permission to go act out on anything you want. So you see a random, random woman that you find attractive on the street. You approach her. You ask if she would like to have sex and she says, yes.

Brandon: 15:31

So you have sex with her. I'm not saying to do these things. I'm saying literally just do the thought exercise. Okay. You did that.

Brandon: 15:35

Now what? Okay. Five minutes later, you leave from having sex with her and you see another woman. Do wanna have sex with her? Okay.

Brandon: 15:42

You can be in a threesome. You can have an orgy. You can do whatever you want and you can do it as often as you want. Does that sound satisfying to your soul? I have not met a single person that says, Hey, I just, I'm addicted to, I watch porn every day and I feel really good.

Caitlyn: 15:55

I love it.

Brandon: 15:55

I love it. Or I hook up with tons of people and it feels great. Or I cheat on my wife because she said I can, and she doesn't care. And I feel really content. I feel really fulfilled.

Brandon: 16:07

And so I find it so fascinating that most men live and women live decades of their life in secrecy for this fantasy world where they act out possibly with prostitutes, strip clubs, pornography, emotional affairs in something that they don't actually want to fulfill or want to satisfy further. Because if you want to do it a little bit, why not do it a lot? It's because you don't actually agree with that. You don't actually want that. It doesn't actually satisfy your soul.

Brandon: 16:33

And that let's just talk specifically about pornography. This was a huge realization I had back in 2020 was as we begin to demystify my behaviors and the patterns, this idea of like, I don't actually want anything you would see in pornography. If you put yourself in the room with the actors, actresses, whatever, would you feel comfortable? No. If you were in the room with the sex scene in the movie that you're watching, would you feel like you want to be there?

Brandon: 17:02

No. And so what you have to think about is if it's not true in reality, then what reality are you living in? It's dissociation. It's it's actually, so this is what we're, this is why we're so big on limiting or removing consumption of media,

Caitlyn: 17:18

which is coming up in a,

Brandon: 17:19

which is going be coming up in another, yeah, another episode, because a lot people say we live in such a sexualized world. Well, nobody is forcing you to consume any of the content you're consuming. It is all by your choice.

Caitlyn: 17:30

True. World do you live in?

Brandon: 17:31

Yep. And even though, you know, social media apps are not designed for your mental health and well-being, you still get to choose how you want to engage with them. With that being said, the sexualized world is not, it's not actually, it's not actually scary when you stop consuming and creating this dissociative world that you live in. That is so liberating because it means that you can actually stop the intake of information that distorts your view of your sexuality of attraction in its entirety, which we'll dive into more. And you can actually turn the noise down to zero and you can feel clean.

Brandon: 18:06

And then you can actually look back and explore everything you've done, everything you've looked at, everything you see and say, what do I want to keep? What actually is my soul searching for? And it's the person sitting across the couch from you. It's your wife. It's your husband.

Brandon: 18:19

And that is, that's the truth. If you're missing out on something from pornography, go go, or from just having sex with whoever, whenever, if you were, if, if the fantasies were ultimately your soul's way of trying to lead you to what you would desire, then go ahead. You're not listening to this podcast because you're listening to it because you're confused why you want one thing and can't have it. And you're not, you're not being honest with yourself, it's because you're still consuming stuff that distorts your reality, and you haven't explored your past yet.

Caitlyn: 18:46

And you're most likely scared to have true intimacy, connection, and vulnerability because to live in a fantasy world where you think about being with another woman or being with another man, or where you even look at something and then masturbate to that or have an orgasm to that, whatever it is, you're just thinking about doing that. There's no vulnerability in that. There's no connection to the actors and the pornography. There's no connection to the hot girl you saw across the way. There's no connection to the Instagram videos on the explore page that you're scrolling.

Caitlyn: 19:21

Nobody on that screen is holding you accountable. Nobody on that screen is saying, hey, I wanna connect. I wanna know you. I wanna look in your eyes. I wanna hold your hand.

Caitlyn: 19:31

I wanna snuggle tonight. Nobody's doing any of that. Nobody's also on that screen is saying, hey, you know what? It really hurts my feelings when we do that. So that's really easy.

Caitlyn: 19:39

Right? It's really easy to have that false sense of sexual relief, if you wanna call it I'm sexually relieving myself in this way that does not require anything of me. And that's why when you are done with that act, you feel awful. Yep. You feel full of guilt.

Caitlyn: 19:59

You feel full of shame. You feel full of darkness. If you don't feel those things anymore, it's because you did feel them and you've suppressed so far deep down into this dark hole that you probably don't even know what you feel anymore. And that doesn't mean that you don't wanna feel connected. It just means you've dug your way so far down.

Caitlyn: 20:18

You've got a little bit more to dig up before you can realize and see some of the light of where you're actually wanting to go. But all of us were made for union, for connection. When you get this right, I know this because we experience it. When you get a union that is full of connection and love and intimacy and vulnerability, yes. Did that take some effort to get to that?

Caitlyn: 20:43

Yes. But when you have that, your soul is satisfied. There's so much. We were even talking about this tonight, we were watching the sunset. Were like, wow, like, when your marriage is on the rocks, it feels like everything's on the rocks.

Caitlyn: 20:56

Yeah. Because when this is broken, this is the foundation of really everything else in life that we build upon. Our kids come after an established union, after an established time of connection, obviously. And then the life that we build after that, the careers that we wanna take, what we wanna create and give to the world, that's all established on our foundation. So if our foundation is rocky, if it's got cracks in it, everything we go to build on that is gonna feel like it's wobbly, it's unstable.

Caitlyn: 21:24

So then all of life begins to feel unstable. So establishing this deep connection is what meets a major part of our soul need. So like Brandon's saying, nobody actually wants to go act out on all these fantasies. Maybe for a minute that sounds nice again because it doesn't come with any responsibility to have any connection or vulnerability. But at a soul need level, what we actually all want is a secure, safe, intimate union.

Brandon: 21:51

I love listening to my wife talk. She's a smart woman. Give her some light on the comments. There's no risk. I'll speak from the the male perspective.

Brandon: 22:00

Most men are desperate for approval. And the approval seeking behavior that sex represents. Oh, she's turned on by me. She approves of me. She's smiling at me.

Brandon: 22:12

They're so thirsty and hungry for that, that they lose track of reality. There is no risk to searching an image or a video. Something's going to come up. There is no risk in flirting with a coworker that's showing interest in you because they don't know the real you. I've heard from many people that have had affairs and affair partners.

Brandon: 22:30

The affair partner is always going to think you're at your best and that your poor wife was being rude to you and you've suffered so long with her and she's going to rescue you. Nobody is going to, when you act out in these reckless ways, it feels like you're avoiding risk. But then what's really interesting, The risk of being rejected, I should add. So you're, if you approach your wife, she might say, I don't feel connected with you. I don't want have sex with you.

Brandon: 22:52

Okay. I'll go to the internet when you go to sleep.

Caitlyn: 22:54

Right.

Brandon: 22:55

It feels like no risk, but you're actually taking great risks because you're so afraid of rejection. We're so afraid of feeling bad, feeling ashamed of who we are that we try to shortcut that release through a fantasy world, masturbation, where it's separate from the one we ultimately want it with the most. We've given up hope that that's possible. And so that is, that is the path back to your sexuality is not forgetting about your spouse. It's actually, this is the only con this is the only relationship if you've committed to a lifelong union with your spouse, that this is your.

Brandon: 23:27

There's so many logical reasons for why it doesn't make sense to have multiple sexual partners once you've made that commitment. Because one, in case you guys were unaware, you can get pregnant. And I know that this is going to be a hot button thing I'm going to say, but I just want it to be thought about is there's a lot of conversation about abortion and I have zero shame to cast on anybody who has had an abortion, but we talk so much about should somebody be able to have one or not. And I think what's a, what makes a lot more sense is how are we having so many unwanted pregnancies? It's because we don't actually understand our sexuality and the fact that when you put a penis in the vagina and you ejaculate, it can conceive a child.

Caitlyn: 24:03

Sex is creation.

Brandon: 24:04

Sex is creation. And instead of that being a sacred thing that we, as a society cultivate and cherish, we desire these orgasms Mhmm. But we do not understand why, and we do not understand how to have them fulfill our soul. Mhmm. And instead, we we live this life of risk, of compulsive behavior because we don't actually believe we're that lovable.

Brandon: 24:26

We don't actually believe we're that worthy of connection. So as much shame as you feel around exploring your sexual history and talking through that with your wife and rebuilding intimacy, as scary as that sounds, it is the only way to no longer feel dirty and gross Yep. And act in compulsive behavior.

Caitlyn: 24:43

Mhmm. And the fruit the fruit of this we'll share the fruit of what that looks like in our life now. And we talked about this in the the episode before, and we want to dive a little bit more into some of this. And the fruit of what exploring our sexuality looked like and what really tapping into the beauty of our sexuality looked like is that Brandon no longer was noticing women's waist

Brandon: 25:08

Body parts.

Caitlyn: 25:09

Hips, any body parts. And this, I think, is rather mind blowing for most people. And to be honest, when I presented this idea to Brandon, he was like, you crazy girl. Like, there's no way in the world that I would not notice a woman's body parts. Like, because what if she walks in front of me?

Caitlyn: 25:29

What if she has a really low cut shirt? What if she's in a bikini? What if all the things, all the different stuff that comes up, he's kinda like, you know, I'm gonna maybe notice or accidentally see something and I'm gonna look away really quick. And that's gonna be like really, really good. I'm gonna accidentally see something.

Caitlyn: 25:48

I'm gonna look away. I'm not gonna look back. I'm not gonna think about it. That is the top tier, you know? And I'm like, okay.

Caitlyn: 25:54

I hear you. And that for me, it still didn't sit right. I'm kinda like, there's gotta be more. There's gotta be something different for us. And so the fruit of doing everything that we're talking about, exploring all these things, harnessing your true sexuality, the fruit is that Brandon actually began to walk outside and see everyone's eyes.

Caitlyn: 26:17

I'll say men and women. Yeah. But he no longer was seeing accidentally or on purpose for a second, for a millisecond, for any little word or phrase you wanna add in there, any little thing that makes you can slip a little passive of, oh, you can do that, you know. That got removed. And I think it would be really powerful if you share from your perspective how and why you think that happened.

Brandon: 26:42

When Caitlyn presented to me, it she thought it didn't make sense that I looked at women's body parts when she didn't look at men's genitalia Mhmm. When she saw them. And I was like, well, that's because you're a woman. But then we had met other women Mhmm. That did look at men's body parts or privates and certain parts of the body that they had created an infatuation with.

Brandon: 27:00

And what happened is we began working through those four hours and in this thirty day window in 2020, where we were like, I was like, I had been, I'd been in denial that it was that bad until it kept coming at my subconscious kept saying, you're looking at her butt, and then it wasn't my wife. Or you're looking at that woman's chest or the magazine, you're like, everything started getting highlighted to me of realizing I thought this was like a rare occurrence. So I think for a lot of men, they go, I'm not as weird as Brandon or I'm not, I'm not, it's not that bad. Like, yeah, I look at an attractive woman every once in a while, but it's not like, it's all I do. Don't It's

Caitlyn: 27:30

her fault.

Brandon: 27:30

It's her fault.

Caitlyn: 27:31

She was wearing a low cut shirt. It's not my fault.

Brandon: 27:33

And even the word, you know, we have these words, low cut skimpy swimsuit. It actually, it derives its value in the context of so much of the media that we've seen.

Caitlyn: 27:44

True.

Brandon: 27:44

Think about an action movie and the woman walks in and there's all this emotion, there's stuff blowing up and here she is and her breasts are are pouring out and you're like, oh, and as a young boy and then a young woman, see whatever you see, you see that. And then you also see the strong muscular guy that's rescuing and it's like, I want a man like that. You have this narrative. And so what happens is it begins to tell you that women and men are objects. They're shiny objects that have certain parts of them that are interesting.

Brandon: 28:15

All the bells and whistles, we need to look at them and and, like, admire the object itself and not actually see the person. Not see the human. I'm not saying, like, see the person, like, look them up and down and Right. And desire them or crave them. But really, like, when you're in addiction, you live in an object world.

Brandon: 28:27

So when I was in an addiction, using my phone and scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, I was seeing people as objects, as things to be had, as things to consume. When you come out of addiction, you move into a relational world. And what happened is I begin to say out loud, hey, I just noticed. And when I said notice, it was my eyes would lock in at a certain body part. And I started sharing that with Caitlyn.

Brandon: 28:47

I would pray through and talk through those four hours. And I thought it wasn't that often. And what hit me was it was constant to the point where I was like, couldn't ignore it. And I, I re recognize like, if I have a choice, which it felt like I did, but it felt like my choice had been taken from me. Felt like I had given that choice away.

Brandon: 29:04

It's like, I actually don't want to look at a random stranger's, but it's weird. It doesn't

Caitlyn: 29:11

When you say it out loud, when you actually want to take a look at it.

Brandon: 29:15

But not take a look at it.

Caitlyn: 29:16

Right. When you actually wanna take a look at what you're looking at.

Brandon: 29:19

Yeah. And for me, that was it was such a bizarre experience because we started having all these conversations where it's like, hey. It happened again. I looked at her and looked at her, and I'm obviously, like, not trying to, because I know I'm gonna talk to Caitlyn about it. And I know if I lie to Caitlyn, she can read my mind.

Brandon: 29:34

And so it wasn't worth lying about at that point.

Caitlyn: 29:36

You were automated. It was like automated glances.

Brandon: 29:39

Yeah. It's like, you know how, you know, to turn left to go towards work instead of turning right when you're at that certain stoplight. So it was like, I could tell I had it got to this point where I was like, this is really, like, chronic. And I was it hit me when I was like, I created this. I had this moment.

Brandon: 29:54

I was like, I created this. Mhmm. It's not her fault because we identified it wasn't just a woman in a thong that was tempting. It wasn't just a woman in yoga pants. It wasn't a woman with her breasts falling out.

Brandon: 30:07

It was somebody fully dressed

Caitlyn: 30:09

Right.

Brandon: 30:10

Wearing baggy clothes. In my mind, I had trained it to look for objects, to look for certain parts of the body look. Instead of seeing somebody in their eyes, which Caitlyn said would be the reasonable way to look at the human, is to notice their face, to see their countenance on their face. And you don't actually look first at somebody's genitalia. And in a sense, if you want to take that role, well, that sounds like how we're, we're wired.

Brandon: 30:31

If you want to be primal like a monkey, have you ever watched the monkeys at the zoo? It's flipping weird. And if you, you can, you can either. So then again, you can say you're just primal and that's just how you are. So go ahead and go squeeze and touch anything.

Brandon: 30:44

Don't actually want to do that. So either you're a monkey primal mate that just runs around and pokes and squeezes and does whatever they do weird stuff at the zoo. Had some weird encounters at the zoo.

Caitlyn: 30:54

Off each other.

Brandon: 30:55

Eat bugs off each other and lick each other. If that's what you are, great. But if you're looking to have evolved a little bit from that to an intimate, monogamous, heterosexual marriage, then you have to explore these things because it's actually killing you and it's killing society. All that to say, I realized I had created the way I looked at other women, and that was specific to me. I was not a victim to how women dressed or to the context I was in.

Caitlyn: 31:19

The invite. Yeah. Where you were, the environment, any of that.

Brandon: 31:22

Cause sure. Wouldn't matter. You just aimlessly, and this is why we like removing media. If you aimlessly scroll with a numb and dumb, like passive mentality, and there's some girl half naked dancing, you're gonna be like, oh, she she's smiling at me. She likes me.

Brandon: 31:36

Like, you're going to think like, this is what I want. But in, in a normal reality where you're at the grocery store, it's not sexual.

Caitlyn: 31:42

Nope.

Brandon: 31:43

That girl doesn't want your attention. And so that hit me so hard. And as we begin to like, go through this in a period of thirty days after sharing. And I mean sharing,

Caitlyn: 31:51

like, every

Brandon: 31:53

single time, even the times where it was uncomfortable and awkward, all of the automated subconscious looking at a girl's waist first or looking at her chest, looking at her nipples, whatever I could see through the shirt, like all of that ceased. And I had been running away from that for, I thought it was impossible. And that had been twenty six years of my life. I guess not counting my, my toddler hood, but up until being 26, 20 seven, that was my daily experience that I had written off as normal. And until we explored it, I thought it was permanent, but I had wired it in and I'd actually made myself powerless to that set of viewing women.

Brandon: 32:32

Now this same thing holds true for how women, your, how your wife could view men, or if you're struggling with same sex attraction, but you're wanting to live in a heterosexual monogamous relationship with your wife. It doesn't really matter what flavor it was. For me, it had a very specific type to it.

Caitlyn: 32:48

Yeah.

Brandon: 32:48

And we explored the patterns and there was patterns to the type of women I was noticing and and the type of situations.

Caitlyn: 32:54

And it all linked to your story. Because all of this is wired in, which we say we use that phrase, like, as a society, we say men are wired this way. Yes. Yes. They are.

Caitlyn: 33:06

They were wired by those exact phrases that we told They were wired by what their parents told them, what their parents didn't tell them, what their parents show what your parents showed you through the movies. What you had access to on your computers, on your iPhones, on your TV screen. Yep. What the kids showed you at school. What the kids told you at school.

Caitlyn: 33:29

What you learned at youth group. All those things were wired into you. You weren't actually born wired this way. You were and when I say wired, it's like, you know, when we like we like we plug in all these cords to something, we're hardwiring something in. It's like, imagine our brains right here, we're born with the purpose of becoming connected and having union and intimacy.

Caitlyn: 33:53

And then, all these little narratives are like little wires that get plugged in, and we don't realize, oh, it's so simple. I'm just gonna unplug these wires, and then I'm free. Yeah. Literally free from all of those narratives. And you've probably never heard this in your entire life, because I had never heard this in my entire life.

Caitlyn: 34:16

Brandon had never heard this in his entire life. I still to this day have never heard anybody talk about this topic in-depth in this way. This is very new information. This is very new insight. And it is probably going to hit hit you in a very interesting way where you're like, wait.

Caitlyn: 34:35

These people are

Brandon: 34:37

We are crazy. We are crazy, and we're crazy happy about it. Because what happened in that process in 2020 when we really when I really dove into these present day experience of how I was viewing women, and I realized, wait a second, this automated way of seeing women stopped. Mhmm. The female body stopped being a sexual object to me because the only body, the only female body that is sexual, because I started feeling into my emotions, which we'll talk about in the next episode, emotional mastery.

Brandon: 35:02

I started feeling the desire to connect emotionally. We're doing emotional connection exercises in our relationship, and I was like, oh, this is a relational world. So when you when I think about my sexuality, the only breasts that I am drawn to and that I had wired my subconscious to see now

Caitlyn: 35:18

Right.

Brandon: 35:18

Are ones that I can touch, kiss, squeeze. The only breasts that meet that criteria are my wife's. Mhmm. I want to grab my wife's hips. I'll try not to get to to PV 13 with it, but I want to caress and be with my wife's body in a very sensual way.

Brandon: 35:34

There is no other body or set of hips or glutes that I want to touch, spank Right. Play with. Like, it's like, there's no body that fits that criteria. It's the same thing if you're a car guy and you like a certain if you're a Dodge guy and you don't care about Fords, you're gonna see Dodges on the road and not Fords

Caitlyn: 35:53

Right.

Brandon: 35:53

Because you don't care. And it's not just like this, okay, Brandon, I told my wife, I don't care about other women. You have to actually explore it because you have to have this experience where you're like, this got really weird.

Caitlyn: 36:02

Yeah. You have to actually literally unplug everything. You actually do have to take the wires out. You can't just be like, oh, yeah. I like what you guys are saying.

Caitlyn: 36:10

That's really cool. No. You have to actually do the effort to because you wired it in eventually, or someone wired it into you, and you actually do have to go unplug all those wires. Yeah. Which is exactly what we did.

Brandon: 36:22

And this is, you know, I'm not like a nudist. I'm not like pro nudity, but a naked body is not sexual. The body is not evil. Mhmm. And so if you are pursuing nude images to try to stimulate or arouse yourself, you're going to follow that, that suit.

Brandon: 36:37

But your wife is the only seductive woman in the room. It's not the stranger. It's not the friend. It's not the coworker that all meets. You're trying to meet your emotional needs through your sexuality.

Brandon: 36:48

And that can only happen in the confines of your marriage. And so after doing this process, it's been six years.

Caitlyn: 36:54

Yep.

Brandon: 36:55

And I have not relapsed. Mhmm. I haven't searched any naughty sites. Mhmm. I don't scroll on social media looking for swimsuit models, lingerie models.

Brandon: 37:03

I haven't gone back to it once. And in person, when we're at the beach here in Hawaii, I see women's faces. I'm not looking at their butt or their breasts, and I'm actually not afraid of being around women in swimsuits because Huge. Which is huge because for all of my life, when I was a young adult, it was like, oh my gosh, there's like a, there's a half naked girl next to me.

Caitlyn: 37:21

I'm in this tempting situation.

Brandon: 37:23

And then even me, like, back then it was like that I was, that I had an erection or even when I married, it wasn't like, have an erection. I need to like go masturbate. It was just like, there's a half naked girl over here and over here. And it's like, I shouldn't be around this. This isn't safe.

Brandon: 37:37

And it's like, why is it not safe? And I'm not saying that all of society and how we promote how we ought to dress is, like, dialed into a t because a lot of the ways men and women dress is to get attention, but that's because they want attention from a partner. It's not even because they want your attention. And so if you can really dial this in for me, what I experienced is when I see women, I see their face. I see the back of their head.

Brandon: 37:59

I'm not look I don't look at their waist to assess them.

Caitlyn: 38:02

Right.

Brandon: 38:02

I don't have an analyzing eye because I'm not curious about the contour of their body because my soul is satisfied in Caitlyn. I only found that out through realizing I had been assessing every single woman. And I was doing it at the subconscious level. It wasn't like I had all these thoughts. Like, I'm gonna look at her and rate her from one to 10.

Brandon: 38:19

It was literally just I thought that's how you saw women. And until we explored it and realized how painful it was, not just painful to Caitlyn, but to me, and it was like, I don't want to see women that way.

Caitlyn: 38:28

Great.

Brandon: 38:29

And it was so liberating to realize I had made myself powerless to that narrative. And six years in, and we've had many, many, many, like countless conversations together. I'm not shackled by that anymore. Right. And I'm not afraid.

Brandon: 38:41

And I think one of the biggest components is we did go so deep. And I don't consume any visual media. Exactly. Because it's not, to me, it's not worth it. And it's not because I'm afraid of a sexualized thing coming up in some random way.

Brandon: 38:56

It's when you create a pattern, it's when you create a habit of, I get on my phone long. Nothing yourself up. That's it. Cause when you, if you pick up your phone and scroll for thirty minutes on social media, every time you need to go poop, right. You're gonna have a you're creating a thought pattern.

Brandon: 39:10

Mhmm. You're creating a narrative and you're creating information that your brain's thinking to look for everywhere around you.

Caitlyn: 39:15

You're desensitizing yourself.

Brandon: 39:17

Exactly.

Caitlyn: 39:17

To whatever may come at you. Because it's actually not that you don't consume anything. You're very intentional about what you would consume. Yeah. Like, if you want to if you were seeking to get a new car, for instance, you might research something.

Caitlyn: 39:30

And there's even been times let's just say, even in those six years where Brandon has completely rewired everything and completely sees women in a completely different way. And he's going to research cars and an ad pops up or something. This has happened or even on Spotify listening to music. They'll be like, well, you should listen to this song. It's like Britney Spears with her shirt off or something like that.

Caitlyn: 39:50

And you still don't actually see her breasts. Yeah. You can realize from this skewed view of the image. Okay. This is probably a sexual image.

Caitlyn: 39:59

But you're not noticing or looking at her breasts. And it has no power anymore.

Brandon: 40:04

That's the word.

Caitlyn: 40:05

Because when you take the wires out I used to use this as an example all the time because he'd be like, well, what if back in 2019, '20 '20. Well, what if we walk in a Target and there's all the ads of all the swimsuit models, all the girls in their underwear? Like, how am I not supposed to notice that? And I'm like, when we walk by all of the men in their jockey undies, I'm not like, what am I gonna do with the men in their jockey undies and their junk on the photos? It's because it had no power Yeah.

Caitlyn: 40:34

You don't see it. You don't notice it. Like, you might know it's there, but it has no lure, no attraction. It's not exciting. It's It's not exciting.

Caitlyn: 40:44

And you used to say this all the time too, like, the curiosity was gone. You used to have a curiosity of like, oh, I wonder what's there for me if I look over at that girl who has that revealing top, or if I look over there at the girls in the swimsuits. There was this curiosity to know what was there for you. Yeah. Because you thought you were missing something that you needed because there was a void inside of you.

Caitlyn: 41:07

You were trying to fill with these counterfeit sexual fantasies and you never filled the void because counterfeit sexual experiences will never fill the void. Yeah. So that's why you will endlessly always be seeking more, and therefore reinforce this narrative that you are born that way, wired that way, and have to live that way forever. No. If you actually want to take a step back and have experiences within your marriage, within your union that lead to sexual wholeness, you will be satisfied.

Caitlyn: 41:43

And that soul need, that void will be completely gone. And then guess what? You've completely eradicated that message that you need to constantly be seeking that. So as soon as you begin to look at this, you removed all of the power that that had on you. Yeah.

Caitlyn: 41:58

You removed all of the curiosity of what you were missing out on because you realized I'm not missing out on anything. Yeah. I'm fully satisfied. We said this in the last one. When you are full, you do not go get more food from the buffet.

Brandon: 42:11

Unless you wanna get sick.

Caitlyn: 42:12

If you wanna get sick. When you are full and satisfied in your union and in your sexuality, you will have no desire to notice or see anything else. So if it sounds impossible, it's because there's a void in you you're trying to fill with things that will always make it impossible to fill it.

Brandon: 42:31

And trust me, I do not I did not plan on having this be what I'd be known for, what we would be known for. And the only reason that I'm sharing this and we're sharing this is because it worked. And we watched it work for other people and we're watching it break off all these shackles because you can try harder. Yep. You can stuff.

Brandon: 42:47

You can ignore. But what we're telling you is as painful as it is to tell your spouse the intricacies of your sexualized world inside of you, your spouse dwells in that place with you. When you've entered into union, there is nothing hidden. So they feel you both feel the disconnection and the distortion, that you're, the message you're saying to the universe, the world around you, to your spouse is when you step into this idea of we can rewire this, is you're stepping into a greater experience of love and connection. This is what you signed up for.

Brandon: 43:14

So either here here's my challenge for you, this is gonna be very blunt. Get divorced. Mhmm. And don't pretend to be married.

Caitlyn: 43:20

Right.

Brandon: 43:20

If you don't think it's possible. Right. If you think that experiencing this liberation in your sexuality where it's only driven towards your spouse is possible and you're willing to step into it, stay married and give your whole self to this. There's really no two that's the two options is live like a bachelor, sleep with whoever you want, whenever you want.

Caitlyn: 43:37

Think about whatever you want.

Brandon: 43:38

Think about whatever you want. Get off my back, mom. I don't care. I'm going do whatever I want. Go ahead and do that and tell your kids you're doing it too.

Caitlyn: 43:44

Stop dragging your wife through that though.

Brandon: 43:46

And the kids.

Caitlyn: 43:46

Yeah.

Brandon: 43:47

Don't play games anymore. If that's not how you want to live, which I would have more respect for you for saying that's how I want to live and actually doing it than saying, no, I don't want to do that. And not believing that you could heal. It's one or the other. Can you heal?

Brandon: 43:59

Or are you meant to live in this reckless life that you're, that you will see how you're doing at 70. So what we're saying is you can heal. And we want to inspire you to explore your story with courage. If this was the first episode that you listened to about the sexuality, go back and start from the very beginning, but also you can reference the previous episode. This is this is the pathway to freedom.

Brandon: 44:19

It's harnessing your sexual energy. It's harnessing your sexual history, and it's it's all towards your spouse. And a few things that happened for us that was the fruit of that. One, the safety and the trust and the connection of how deep we went. We we our marriage, we enjoy it.

Brandon: 44:33

We also had two beautiful children. We were on the brink of divorce. We had two two girls, now we have two boys as well. So the fruit of healing brought more children into our life. It also allowed us to, we had started a business that began to flourish.

Brandon: 44:46

We were able to pursue our dreams, and we were able to have clarity because we were together in one heart and mind. And we didn't have that before because Caitlyn had been vulnerable, and she had shared times where she was feeling disconnected, all those pieces. And that's why I always he was like, why are you always focused on Brandon screwing things up? Why are always focused on the man? Caitlyn was taking the steps toward me.

Brandon: 45:06

She was vulnerable. She was sharing if she did feel shame, if she did feel these if she had a weird dream, she brought those things to me. She was working on things. And my response to that was, I'm gonna hide. I'm gonna lie, and I'm gonna separate.

Brandon: 45:20

And so for our story, Caitlyn did get angry. She did get frustrated, but it was always coming toward me. And so the pain of sharing something, that's what that's what you do in a healthy relationship. I pushed her away and I lied and I hid and and used the Internet to relieve myself. And so that's why we focus on me and these stories so much is because it was our story.

Brandon: 45:39

Your story may be different. Maybe both of you are off in other rooms, pleasing yourself and you're ready to make a change. So we just want to support you as best as we can through this podcast.

Caitlyn: 45:47

Yeah. And a lot of times women will say, well, how did you, how did you learn to trust again? This is how I learned to trust again, because I think if you go to most betrayal support groups, you know, you're gonna talk about trust and it's like, okay. Yeah. It's just gonna take time.

Caitlyn: 46:01

It's like, yeah, it does take time to trust. And also, it doesn't have to take that much time. If you start to see your husband, your spouse begin to say everything out loud, get all of the dirt out, you will trust again because you can now see everything on the table. How did I trust Brandon again? Because there wasn't anything they was keeping for me.

Caitlyn: 46:24

How did I know that? Because he was telling me things that I could see were painful to tell me.

Brandon: 46:30

Yeah.

Caitlyn: 46:31

He was telling me every sexualized image that went through his head, every sexualized thought. He was telling me every time he went out and objectified, he looked at someone's breasts, waist, whatever. Every single time, every sign single time he noticed a sign, a magazine, an ad that popped up, in those thirty days, which we didn't know was gonna be thirty days.

Brandon: 46:51

And we had been doing this for more than thirty days, I didn't commit fully to it.

Caitlyn: 46:55

True. True. We always make Brandon sound really good. Like, was like,

Brandon: 46:59

you know, I dragged my feet for a couple months, but once I said, look, I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for us. Mhmm. But I was doing it because I was like, I'm ready. Yep.

Brandon: 47:08

Once I was ready and went all in, it only took thirty days. We had been

Caitlyn: 47:12

If drag your feet, you can make this last for the rest of your life. If you wanna dive in, and what we mean by dive in is it means you don't keep anything anymore. You don't keep anything a secret. That's why we started that in episode one and two. Nothing is a secret anymore because if you wanna do that, you will accelerate your healing so much faster.

Caitlyn: 47:31

If you wanna keep some things a secret and you just wanna be like, oh, just not that one. That one was uncomfortable because that's my wife's best friend. So I can't tell her that I looked at her breasts. Well, you're gonna be dragging your feet, and you're gonna be looping on this for a long time. How did I trust Brandon?

Caitlyn: 47:45

Because he told me things are excruciatingly uncomfortable to tell me. He told me things that he knew were gonna make me weep. And again, we might make this sound simple, like it was so simple for us. Look at us, we're so happy and in love. We said this in the last one and I cry every single time at the end.

Caitlyn: 48:01

But when we embarked on this journey, we stayed at till two, three in the morning, just like this, on the bed. And he would say things to me that would make me weep, because it was so painful to hear that my husband was looking at other women's breasts. Okay, well it's also painful that my husband was doing that and I was never knowing. Yeah. You're not gonna get out of the pain.

Caitlyn: 48:22

The only way to get out of the pain is to face the pain, to face the exact situations that you're in. And I'm telling you that it's worth it because there is another side to it because your husband can come your husband and yourself if you find yourself in this scenario, you can completely free your mind up. You can completely free and rewire everything and that changes your whole life. It changes the way you view your spouse. It changes the way you view yourself.

Caitlyn: 48:49

It changes the way you view the world. Sex is creation energy. When you harness your sexuality, you create a beautiful life. Yeah. The reason why you might not see your marriage flourishing.

Caitlyn: 49:03

Why do you feel like your life sucks? Why are you depressed? Why are you anxious? Why does it feel like every day you wake up and you hate what's on on the docket? Because you're taking your sexual energy and you're not what you want.

Caitlyn: 49:17

You're actually creating a life you don't want. So clean it up, clear it up. Is it painful? Yes. Are you going to have to say some uncomfortable stuff?

Caitlyn: 49:26

Are you going to have to look at your wife while she weeps? Are you gonna have to go to bed feeling devastated? Yes. And then on the other side, there's connection that you've probably never even experienced before. And that is so worth it.

Brandon: 49:40

If this sounds like an overwhelming task to jump into or project, in the following episode, we're going to be talking about developing emotional mastery, which is how you navigate the feelings and the emotions that come up in your relationship. And specifically in this process of exploring your sexual history, we're going to share with you exercises you can do. It allow you to ground this experience, which I talk a lot about in the grounding community for, for my, for the men I'm working with is when your body gets involved in the process where it's not just, we're not just doing a mental intellectual project in sharing your story with your wife. Involving your emotions, your feelings. And if you've been numbed out and dumbed out, you're going to turn your, your emotions back on.

Brandon: 50:24

And that can be a scary process because you don't know what to expect. So we're going to give you some ideas and concepts that we use to accelerate and stabilize this process because it's a very emotional process. And if you don't involve the emotions, it will take a lot longer and it will be a lot harder to remember things and a lot harder to reestablish connection in your relationships. So on the following episode, we'll be talking about developing emotional mastery.

Caitlyn: 50:46

These two podcasts on sexuality have been extremely, extremely deep. And we actually have a course right now that is eight weeks long going through this exact process that we went through to rewire everything and recreate the beautiful connection and sexual wholeness that we experience now. And we're actually about to launch an eight week experience that will have all of these courses and videos along with weekly coaching and a group experience with Brandon and I so that you can have the accountability and the safety within that container to be able to walk step by step through this exact process. And so if you find yourself deeply resonating with this message and also feeling like you wanna embark on this journey and you know you want to be held in that space, then we invite you to stay tuned and join us in that We

Brandon: 51:40

should be launching that at the May. So we'll have more details in the show notes. I want to thank you so much for joining us for this episode of the Grounded Union podcast. If you're getting anything out of these, please let us know in the comments if you're watching on YouTube. Thanks for those of you are on Spotify or Apple.

Brandon: 51:57

Please share this with another couple you think would benefit from it, and we are grateful to spend this time with you. We'll see you the next episode.