How We Handle Conflict
Welcome back to the grounded union podcast. We're going to be talking about how we handle conflict, and we're kind going to go through two different areas that we see conflict stemming from. So we can have our everyday conflict, and then we have the conflict that's stemming from pain. I think most couples are confused that the disconnect and the conflict you're facing is not because you can't decide where to go to dinner. This is because there's an underlying pain from maybe you just had a recent disclosure.
Brandon:Maybe there was a form of betrayal, broken trust, a big event that caused a rupture, or you've been living in a constant phase of stage of disconnection for a long time. So no, any type of communication is not going to be pleasant. So we believe that arguing stems from a disconnect in your relationship. Or an imbalance in your relationship. So you could have, for example, you might be more on edge with each other because you've been working, you're at your busy season at work and you haven't had time together.
Brandon:Or if there's a disconnection event, like I just said, you're arguing because you don't trust each other. You're in pain. The pain hasn't been addressed. So when there hasn't been a repair, no, your communication is not gonna be good.
Caitlyn:Most marriage work, whether that's through counseling or books or podcasts, actually, a lot of times I had noted in the first five years when we were searching for answers, I had realized that so much of the content information out there is essentially how to fight fair, argue better, and navigate conflict in a healthy way. And I think that all of those topics are really beneficial and really beautiful. And at the same time, it led me to wonder, why are we all arguing all the time? Like, yes, of course, two people with two sets of opinions, two sets of way of doing things coming together can maybe, you know, cause a little bit of tension. Yet I was like, you know, if we love each other, if we're unified, if we are best friends and experiencing intimacy and connection, why are we arguing and bickering all the time?
Caitlyn:Why is there so much disconnection in our communication if the end goal is being on the same team, being committed to each other, being in love, being intimate? And so as I began to ponder, I came to the same realization that I come when I pondered every marital issue is, woah, there's gotta be something below the roots here. It's just it's the same things that we see in nature. If something isn't doing well above the ground, we take a look at the roots. We take a look at how is the soil?
Caitlyn:How are the the roots underneath? What's going on underneath? You know, we might prune a couple branches, but if it's still not producing any fruit, there's a reason why. And it's not a surface level pruning. It's a deeper looking at the soil and the root system that needs to be tended to.
Caitlyn:And so as I kept searching for these tools and kept finding communication styles, we tried them. And it's like, we still are arguing all the time no matter how much we try these communication styles. Because at the deeper levels, at the deeper roots, we were so far disconnected that it didn't matter what tool or approach we tried, nothing was gonna bring us back to connection until we looked underneath the surface.
Brandon:Which is a common statement that you're feeling triggered. And I think that's about as far as sometimes the internet help takes us is we can communicate to our spouse, hey, I'm feeling triggered right now, but we're not able to create any form of connection from that place of activation where your emotions are heightened. So I think what happens so often is when you don't address the underlying issues, every conversation triggers you. Your spouse walking in the room triggers you. If they look at you, it triggers you.
Brandon:So we have a similar approach. Like Caitlyn said, going to the roots, because this is what we talk about when it comes to healing from sexual brokenness. If you still live with a level of fantasy attraction, objectification towards other people online and out in person, you're still going to have a level of disconnection. You're the level of tolerance you have there will dictate your level of connection sexually for your relationship and safety. So when you tolerate this poor communication and you allow yourselves to constantly be triggered with each other instead of getting to the root, then eventually you're just going to resent being around each other at all.
Brandon:And as we've already told you, we're huge proponents of spending quality time together. The time's only quality if you're enjoying each other. And so we're gonna, we're gonna talk about how I perceived Caitlyn's pain, which is very different now than it was before. And what happened when we would go in these cycles where Caitlyn would catch me in line and I would see the magnitude of the impact of my actions. I actually didn't see them as my actions.
Brandon:I just felt like I was a victim to society. I felt like this is something every, every guy struggled with and that Caitlyn's reactions were the primary focus. This is why I tell guys, if you want to heal your relationship, take your focus off your wife. They're like, well, I thought I was supposed to focus on my wife. Primarily what ends up happening is you take 90% of your focus on the words she's saying to you and how hurtful they are to you, how emotionally volatile she is and not wanting to step on her toes, but that's not getting you any closer to healing.
Brandon:You're actually not putting any energy or focus on your healing because you're just trying to keep her at bay. Well, what? Trying to keep her at bay is not going to keep her at bay. It's not going to keep her calm. Your wife has pain and she's going to share it.
Brandon:You have pain and want to find constructive ways to share it. So when I, when we talk about the ways I had broke trust previously, I would shut it down. I was like, how can we get this conversation to stop as quickly as possible? Your pain felt it all felt irrational to me. It all felt too big to me.
Brandon:And that was simply because I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know how to handle it. So instead of saying, this, this is valid. Your pain is valid. I was saying, woah, this is big.
Brandon:All I could hear is the, the sirens going off in my head. Mayday, mayday, she's in pain. How do we get this fire to slow down? And the reality was I had done things that did cause pain. And I thought that the way to navigate that was to minimize the behavior was to say, you know what, it wasn't about you.
Brandon:I wasn't trying to hurt you. You know, this is what a lot of guys struggle with. Are you sure you're, you know, are you sure you don't, you know, you're, this isn't part of your insecurities. There's all these things until I stepped into the reality of, oh my gosh, there's a wounded woman in front of me with valid pain. And I got the tools to be able to, we're going share with you.
Brandon:I got the tools to look her in her pain and say, I see you. I see that you're in pain. I'm okay with you not being okay. And I'm okay sitting with this in this as long as we need to. When I stopped perceiving Caitlyn's pain as a threat to my well-being as an emotional threat that I had to dodge and avoid and minimize.
Brandon:And I stepped into wow, buying to you. I wasn't nice. That wasn't kind. It was cruel. And for you to have a very deep emotional experience because of that is valid.
Brandon:And I don't have to run away from that. I don't have to make excuses for that. I can face you fully in your pain. And that's when the repair happens. And that's the intent behind all of our messages on social media is an angry wife is a committed wife, because if your wife is hurt from something you did and she's still bringing it to your attention and she's doing it in very direct ways, may even be calling you names.
Brandon:She might even be feeling just completely at a loss. The moment she stops doing that is when she's on her way out. She's like, you know what? I don't even have energy to care anymore to tell you that I I'm not going to get the risk. I'm not going to get your attention.
Brandon:I'm not going to get the validation I'm seeking for. So I'm actually just going to stop bringing it up. I'm gonna start making plans for our permanent separation. So when your wife is still in the willingness to expose her pain to you, to share her pain with you, that's a gift. And that's the heart of why we approach it that way.
Brandon:Because once you approach your wife's pain as a gift, not threatening to you anymore. It's insight into her heart where the healing can take place.
Caitlyn:Most often in conflict, we project onto our spouse what we're actually feeling. So, oh, I'm overwhelmed. Well, means Brandon's overwhelming. You know? Oh, I'm hurting.
Caitlyn:That means Brandon's hurting me. And so, oftentimes we see in our spaces, you know, there's sometimes this group of it, it normally happens to be men because they don't enjoy that we speak pointedly from our story and our experience. They're like, why not give both sides? It's like we say this all the time, we're not necessarily giving both sides because that's not our story. How many of you go and have received marriage advice from people who have never tried what they're teaching you, have never experienced what you're going through, have no idea if it'll even work what they're recommending to you?
Caitlyn:We're not one of those people online. We're not recommending or suggesting or teaching anything that is not true and complete to our story. We do always give a disclaimer that if you are a wife that has been lying and hiding and acting out in addiction, most every couple that comes to our event, we share our story from our experiences with the same disclaimers that we give on this podcast that we give on our social media platforms. And many of the couples, both during the breaks, go and share things that they've been hiding understand that this is not only men that are lying and hiding. We just aren't going to make up our story to make it sound better so it slides down good for everybody.
Caitlyn:Everyone's sick and tired of information that slides down good and does nothing for you. We're sharing our story because we want it to impact and touch and reach those that it connects with, those that resonate with our story. And so oftentimes, because our story is involving Brandon lying and hiding and betraying all of our boundaries and me saying, hey, I'm not gonna do this anymore. Yeah. I'm hurting.
Caitlyn:I'm not okay with this. We find that there's a group of men that will say, you guys are a bunch of men haters, men shamers, like, why do you always focus so much on the men needing to change? Why is this
Brandon:You're publicly humiliating Brandon.
Caitlyn:I'm I'm too hard on Brandon. I'm publicly humiliating.
Brandon:On my own face on my own Instagram page.
Caitlyn:On his own post that he's choosing to post, it's like, bling if you need help, Brandon. It's like, as if I think there's even these graphic ones, like, I'm forcing him to post these things from his account, and it's like, it's all silly to us. And at the same time, it reveals the heart of people when they're in pain. When they're in pain, they just want to point the finger and blame it at everybody else. And Brandon also loved this.
Caitlyn:It's like, oh, my wife is hurting and upset and overwhelmed because I've been lying and hiding to her. And I'm also he didn't have words for this and most men don't at the time. It's like, as the man that's been lying and hiding, I'm also overwhelmed by this realization that I've been doing this. I'm also overwhelmed with being confronted with the fact that I now need to share this or I'm now getting caught for most of the time. So instead of sitting with this overwhelm, instead of sitting with the discomfort of what I feel based off of my actions, I'm just gonna say, well, you didn't handle that right.
Caitlyn:Like, I know I told you I've been lying and hiding, but it's definitely not okay for you to say that you wanna leave the marriage, that you wanna end the marriage. It's definitely not okay for you to tell me that you're super upset with me. You can't call me names. You can't say you're such an asshole for sleeping with so and so. It's like, we just wanna go, it's your fault.
Caitlyn:It's your fault. It's your fault. You're angry. You're this. You're this.
Caitlyn:You're this. That's why
Brandon:I'm You're unforgiving.
Caitlyn:You're unforgiving. That's why I'm that's why I did all of this in the first place. That's why I act out in addiction is because, you know, you have your stuff that you need to work on. It's like, yeah, that's easy. That's a super easy approach.
Caitlyn:Instead of sitting with your own with your own stuff, with your own baggage, you can just keep pointing the finger at everybody else. It's everybody else's fault, and I don't have to take a look at myself. And oftentimes, what I either do respond back or feel like responding back is let me guess, you're upset because you've betrayed your wife or your spouse and you've crossed all the boundaries Yeah. And you don't like that she's sad. You don't like that she keeps bringing it up your face.
Caitlyn:You don't like that she keeps reminding you. And you don't like that because you actually haven't chosen to do the deeper work to sit with yourself and heal. You have two options. You can recognize what you did and run away and point fingers. Or you can recognize what you did.
Caitlyn:You can take an honest look at it with compassion and curiosity. You can get out all of the darkness, all of the lying, all of the hiddenness, put it out all onto the table, take full responsibility, step into your power, and literally remove the worlds that have separating the two of you.
Brandon:And if you're, we'll just do for the, our example, if you're a man listening to this podcast and you were the one that caused the pain through the breach in trust, you're like, okay, I want to do this. I don't know how to do this. That's why I shut down. That's why I point the finger because I actually don't know what to do. We're going get into that in just a second.
Brandon:I think something that really impacted me, one of our counselors early on that was helpful until he kicked us out of his office. So which we've shared in previous episodes. There's one titled getting kicked out of our counselor's office. If you want to hear the full story. But he said to me, because he didn't know my background and I was so used to everybody, you know, thinking Brandon's such a great guy.
Brandon:So whenever Caitlyn shared with a mentor, another pastor, they were well meaning, but they knew me as the engaged husband, father, ministry person that I was. And so everybody saw how good I was. So then it seems when I showed that we were in a lot of pain and we weren't doing well and I wasn't sure how we're gonna make it, they're like, that seems like a imbalanced response from Caitlyn that she's so up here when you're such a great guy. But this counselor didn't have all the background of all my ministry accolades and all my good good boy, behavior trophies. And so he told me, I said, you know what?
Brandon:I just don't know what to do when she calls me an asshole. I just it's so it's unbiblical. It's unbelievable that she would talk to me like that. And I just wouldn't I couldn't tolerate it. And he said, well, is lying to your wife keeping these secrets?
Brandon:Are you are you being an asshole? It was the first time where I stopped and I was like, oh my gosh. Like, I know at my core, and we're not trying to disempower your spouse to say shameful things to you to shame you. But I just stopped for a second. Wow.
Brandon:If I just give Caitlyn permission to share how she was her raw feelings about being lied to, that's not something a good man does a kind man does. Those actions are not wholesome and uplifting to the relationship. So I sat there with her like, oh, you know what? I've made that, like we've been talking about, I've made that such a big deal and such a cardinal offense that if she said that, then it basically balances out both pains. So she's going to say mean things to me.
Brandon:She's going to say she hates me, wish she never married me. All of what I've done doesn't matter because she already crossed the line with her words. It was a response to the pain she was in. And so sit with that. I don't encourage just calling your spouse names to call them names.
Brandon:We're not pro verbal abuse, but there's this I mean, you guys can make up whatever definitions you want for things. We call it reactive abuse, whatever words you wanna put. We're not pro any type of abuse. We're pro healing. So if you two are lying to each other, that's a form of abuse.
Brandon:If you're calling each other names, it's a form of abuse. If you whatever textbook you wanna follow, you guys are both not treating each other right. What we wanna do is get back to repair. So on the journey back to repair, if raw emotion is being shared, don't shut it down and say, okay, well, I didn't do anything wrong because she did something wrong. Two wrongs to make it right.
Brandon:Focus on where the pain is. And you actually, the moment I stopped being like, how dare you speak to me with such frustration? The name calling stopped. The loud voices went away because she could, she could whisper to me and say, I'm really hurting. And I took her seriously.
Brandon:You can get to that point in twenty four hours, but when you defend yourself and you say, when you try to like, Hey, woman, stop it. She's not going to stop. So that doesn't work. When you try to justify your behavior based off of, okay. And I did this one all the time.
Brandon:We'd get in a big argument because I was already disconnect because I'd already been lying and hiding, but I didn't get in and know it. I was just pushing her away, pushing her away, really causing a lot of emotional pain. She would say things like, I, I, regret marrying you. Like, this is not what I signed up for. And I'd be like, how dare she?
Brandon:So now I would justify that night after she went to sleep. I go look at half naked women on my phone and I felt justified because she said, I wish I would have never married you. I regret this decision because of how you're treating me. And I justified the behavior that was after that because of what she had said. So you're gonna create a nasty cycle for yourself to act out in destructive behaviors because your spouse said something to you that you didn't enjoy.
Brandon:And if you have a spouse, it's just I wanna empower you to you don't necessarily just have to say things to try to hurt your That doesn't work either. I would share the raw emotion behind what you're feeling, knowing that your spouse is listening to this podcast with the tools to be able to validate that in response.
Caitlyn:Yeah. Like Brandon's saying, we're not condoning that wives necessarily when we say calling names, it's like, we're not condoning that a wife say, hey, you're an asshole for doing that. You know? We're not condoning the wives say, hey, I hate you. We're not condoning that anybody says that.
Caitlyn:And at the same time, I always like to say this in our events, like, if you just discovered your spouse has been sleeping with someone else, that has been acting out in an emotional affair, that has been looking at porn for years, maybe decades, the initial response is never gonna be polite, or kind, or calm. That is literally earth shattering, mass devastation information to be hearing. It's as if you just got shot, stabbed, something graphic and gory. Nobody gets stabbed and goes, that really hurts. That's so rude of you.
Caitlyn:That's so no. You're in a state of panic. You're in a state of fight or flight. You're in a state of trauma.
Brandon:Yep.
Caitlyn:Hearing that information. Do we condone that? Absolutely not. We're here to offer our story, which is that Brandon tried the typical response of, well, how dare you say that to me? Now, therefore, I'm justified.
Caitlyn:And guess what that got us? Five years of spinning in the same cycle. And then Brandon tried, you know what? Wow. Of course you feel that way.
Caitlyn:Of course you are experiencing excruciating pain. I'm gonna choose to not focus on this name or this phrase or whatever this is, and I'm gonna choose to see past that into the heart of what you're feeling. So if you're a wife and you're listening to this, and your husband has hit you with mass devastation, you don't have to choose to call him names. You don't have to choose to say I hate you, I'm gonna leave you, all of these things. You can choose to express your raw emotion in a very overflowing way without calling names.
Caitlyn:We are totally a proponent of doing that. And at the same time, we're also a proponent of getting to the roots. So it's not about necessarily what anyone said and like we've said in other episodes, it's not even necessarily about what your spouse did. So many people wanna be like, oh, what did Brandon even do? Because I need to know exactly what he did to know if I can relate to this story.
Caitlyn:And it's like the same thing. It's like, oh, we're gonna focus on what the wife said that's rude, the name calling, and we're gonna focus on what the husband did that's rude and offensive, looking at porn. And it's like, no. Brandon and I are saying stop looking up here and start looking below the surface. Why is your wife calling you names?
Caitlyn:Because she's in deep devastating pain, so let's look at that. Let's see into that. Why is your husband acting out in an addiction? Let's look below that and let's see into that because when you look below the surface, you get to the other side.
Brandon:There's oftentimes when Caitlyn would say something that would have been really harsh, like, wish I wouldn't have married you, and the next day, take ownership for it. But by that time, I'd already acted out secretly. So it didn't even matter that Caitlyn was taking ownership for what she had said the day before because I was alleviating my frustration through numbing out on my phone.
Caitlyn:I said with my words, back in the season of the first five years of our marriage, we used we reflected back on this. I used to say with my words all the time, I'm so irritated, like, I cannot even believe that we're married. Why did we get married? I remember saying that all the time, like, why did we even get married? Like, we don't love each other, we don't know each other, like, the common age old, like, did I marry the wrong person?
Caitlyn:And then later that night, I didn't know Brandon, you know, was acting like a high and mighty person, would never stoop so low to say something like that out loud. But then later that night, he might think about what it would be like to be married to somebody else. He's essentially having the same thoughts. Instead of speaking them out loud, he's acting out in them in a deeper form of betrayal in the sense of thinking about if he would be married to those people, looking them up online to see how they're doing in their life, really fantasizing and creating this whole world and this whole narrative that he's playing out in his head, and all he probably needed to do was just, I would have rather, maybe you're different in your marriage, but I would have rather Brandon look at me in the face that day and say, you know what, I feel the same way. I feel like why did we get married?
Caitlyn:I would have way rather that spoken to my face, direct honest communication, than I would have rather I went to bed that night and we're sleeping in the same bed and he's dreaming up worlds of being with other women while looking at them, while fantasizing about them. I would have way rather honest communication, because like we share in our other episodes, it's like, most of the time what we're feeling, we just need two minutes of feeling it, processing it, getting it out, and moving through. Like, what would it have looked like if we would have both said, we don't wanna be married to each other right now? We probably would have been like, wow, we should probably take this really seriously. We should probably go get help right now.
Caitlyn:We should probably find a resource. We should probably do something. Yep. But instead, I'm the honest one, and he's the one that's like, well, I think everything's really good. I think we're really good and you just have issues and I'm just gonna go do my little secret thing back here.
Caitlyn:And then it's like, then we're not bringing it to the surface where we can actually see and look at it and heal.
Brandon:Some people could call that in the void and attachment, call it whatever you want. It's not, it's not healthy. And it you can't face the pain at hand. I look at our children when our, like, six and eight year old, when they argue with each other, they get, like, really frustrated. They, start screaming at each other.
Brandon:They say really intense things. I'm like, oh my gosh. This is gonna, like, never end. And then it's within thirty seconds, all they needed was to regulate and get redirected
Caitlyn:Exactly.
Brandon:And find a solution. And then it's like, you wanna go play out here? And I'm like, oh my god. I'm seeing best friends. And I'm not saying and we can't do the exact same things they do because sometimes they pull each other's hair out and they're, tackling each other and it's pretty aggressive that you can't do that husband and wife, but take it more like that.
Brandon:Like we're very upset with each other. Let yourself be honest. Find a solution, get a guide or a coach that can help you come to that solution and then continue playing together. Instead, when you, if, if our girls, when they were fighting, went to their, they, we have a special keep area closet where they put their special projects. And then when they fought with their sister, instead of saying, Hey, I'm so you're so stupid.
Brandon:They went to the closet and destroyed each other's stuff every time. They don't even have that concept. So that's what it looks like when you fight with your spouse. Instead of saying, hey, I'm really I'm really pissed off at you right now. I can't believe you're doing this, that you're talking to me this way.
Brandon:Instead, you go to the closet and you destroy all their most precious things. You destroy the the very nature of your relationship. That's what that's the pain of betrayal. That's the pain of going outside of So that's why conflict is coming up. Okay.
Brandon:So Brandon, are you just saying then that I just sit there and take it? If I betray my wife, that I should just sit there and take it, let her say whatever she wants, feel whatever she wants. And I'm just supposed to sit there and let her walk all over me. No, absolutely not. Actually that is one of the least validating things you can do to your wife is to say, yeah.
Brandon:Oh yeah, I did that. I'm so sorry. When you see a dog that ate cake or you're like snuck something and everybody's so upset at the dog and the dog goes from this like beautiful dog that has a personality to this dog that tucks their tail between the legs and runs away. Everybody's like, oh, that dog is gross. Like that dog can't, that dog's not taking ownership for its actions.
Brandon:And of course we don't expect that from a dog, but that's what you look like when you just say, I'm just going to sit there and take it. You tuck your tail between your legs and you whimper and you walk away. That's not what your wife's looking for either. Here's what it looks like. There's two different responses to your wife's pain.
Brandon:You can have a grounded response and an ungrounded response. I talk a lot about this in my men's community app, grounded nation. Body language is everything. When your wife is bringing pain to you, if you were sitting on your phone and she came in the room to share something and you're slouched in the corner, like a passive body language, and she starts sharing and you stay in that passive body language, you're communicating to her, meh, I'm not really going to listen to you. Or if you two are standing up and you're both feeling very activated by each other And it's feeling like you're in a boxing match.
Brandon:You say, you know what? Let's sit down together. I want to hear what you have to say. So you literally just change your physical posture. For me, I like leaning forward towards Caitlyn because what that communicates to my nervous system, it's as much as it is for me as it is for Caitlyn.
Brandon:When she's hearing her pain, if I'm leaning away and saying, woah, woah, woah, instead of saying, yes, yes. Tell me about that. The leaning toward is saying, can handle you. This is safe, safe for you, safe for me. Let's have a conversation.
Brandon:So you have your body language. One of the biggest grounded responses you can give is don't correct the facts when your wife's hearing and you've been lying to me for all these years. And I don't even know if you loved me when we were dating. You say, I loved you when we were dating. That doesn't matter.
Brandon:Or you say you looked at porn all the time. Even all throughout our honeymoon, you say, I only looked at porn once on our honeymoon. Boom. All of all of what she's trying, she's teeing you up when your wife's talking and if she's sharing a lot, you're like, man, this is going on for a while. That's okay.
Brandon:She's literally teeing you up for the opportunity to validate her heart. The moment she's talking and sharing, which she feels she's kind of like, this is a lot for her to get to that place, to be sharing this with you. And she's, she's going, she's sharing, she's sharing, she's sharing. And you go, wait, you didn't skip that. Right.
Brandon:That's not what happened. She's like, okay, I can start over from the beginning and I can add some extra detail because you are finding this one fact to correct. It doesn't produce connection. It just prolongs the conversation. So instead of correcting facts, listen for the emotion.
Brandon:Instead of correcting facts, listen for the emotion she's sharing. Where are the pain points? Where are the, what are the things that she's saying hurt in her soul? Where, where is the pain for her? An ungrounded response.
Brandon:Like I talked about being a victim. So it's basically like, oh, woe is me. This is so difficult. Oh, I can't live in this situation. Let go of all that right now.
Brandon:I don't like the word victim because we all say stop being a victim. Some of you guys are a victim to you you were abused as a child. You had a you you had difficult things. We all had things happen to us. What we we wanna really think about is don't be powerless.
Brandon:Choose to be powerful, even in the wake of your wife's pain. With that one of the most important attitudes and perspectives you can put on is one of curiosity. What is it like? What is my wife sharing? What is she experiencing?
Brandon:What is she going through? What is her experience like? And if you can make this about her when she's sharing, even if it's about you, even if she's talking about you, but you make it about her. This is her experience. This is her pain.
Brandon:You position yourself to begin to heal where the wound took place.
Caitlyn:Yeah. For us, Brandon tried this ungrounded approach where it's like, I'm gonna correct the flat facts. I'm gonna take a passive approach. I'm gonna take a I'm powerless to this. This is just how I was created.
Caitlyn:This is just how I am because I'm a man, and this is wired in. He took that approach. And that makes you feel so unseen as it's us. He's like, can we just get back to what really matters here? Can we just get back to what we're trying to move into, the freedom we're trying step into?
Caitlyn:Can we get back to the fact that I'm in pain because of your actions, and I wanna feel seen? Yeah. And so when he went from that to taking up an embodiment routine, getting back into his body, creating capacity for his emotions, We talk about this in in previous episodes. If you don't have capacity for your own emotions, you cannot have capacity for your spouse's emotions and You have to be able to do what you need to do to create more capacity within yourself to be able to sit with your own emotions and your spouse's emotions, or you'll keep minimizing, blaming, trying to shift the conversation, trying to shut it down, trying to take a passive approach. You won't be able to sit there and be like, yeah, I wanna hear.
Caitlyn:I wanna understand. I wanna see. You can't do that if you can't even see your own self. So you have to be able to get back into your body, create capacity within yourself to have that ability to see yourself and see your spouse.
Brandon:One of the most helpful mental pictures that I tell the guys in my men's community to focus on is Mr. Pain. I want you to pretend that you have a bodyguard. So for for the the, I'll say the guy, if you've caused the pain of betrayal, you actually got pretend like you have a bodyguard with you and this bodyguard, his name is Mr. Pain.
Brandon:And when your wife is speaking and she's saying very pointed things, very intense things, I want you to picture that you have a bodyguard that's going to stand in front of you while she's saying those things. And he's taking all those hits for you because what's happening is your wife is speaking from her pain. So she's going to say things in a way that are more cutting. They might be a little sloppy that might be a little more intense. Let your bodyguard Mr.
Brandon:Pain give you that clarity. Hey, this is her speaking from her pain. Don't absorb the things she's saying, oh, oh my gosh. Oh, she said this. Oh, oh, like I can't, I can't continue another step.
Brandon:She's speaking from her pain. You don't want to try to get it to just disappear. But did you know that you can actually, if you hold space, which we're going to jump right into. If you hold space for your wife's pain, did you know, you won't have very more many more conversations that are ugly, wild and out of control because her nervous system and your nervous system will know, oh, this is a moment for connection. When my wife brings up pain, it's oh my gosh, tell me about it.
Brandon:You soften. She softens. You rock up, you get hard, you put the wall up and she feels it. She's going to get louder, bigger, say nastier things. Cause she's like, oh, you don't take, you're not taking this seriously.
Brandon:Oh, you don't think this is a big deal. Let me tell you how big of a deal it is. Instead you say, you know what? Speak from your pain. I've got my bodyguard and he helps me see that this is her pain and it's not some mental escape.
Brandon:It's not like you're pretending her pain is not real. It's very real. It just doesn't need to be a threat to you. Her pain is the currency that we need to, or the subject matter we need to face so that you too can come to a place of repair. How we have found once you get the, your nervous system online, which I encourage every guy to have an embodiment routine so that you can handle your own emotions.
Brandon:You can handle your wife's emotions as we recommend going through the comfort flow, which for us is a tool we still use today. It's a conversation template where you have set clear structure for how it's going to flow. So how it goes like, is like this, where your spouse will speak. We'll give a couple of examples. Your wife will be sharing where her pain is.
Brandon:You will listen. The first step is just to listen. No interruptions, no correcting facts. Lean in with your body language. Listen, listen all the way through.
Brandon:The second step is to reflect back what you heard her sharing. And then you repeat that as much as necessary. So we're going to get into those examples right now. Caitlin's going share with what it looks like to share what, where her pain is.
Caitlyn:Yeah. And I think one thing that's worth noting here is that as you're the spouse, that's reflecting back the pain, you're not just repeating back verbatim what you heard. You're taking an approach where you can sit in and experience the heart of what your spouse is trying to share with you. What is the heart of what they're feeling? And of course, there are gradual elevations to this because as you leave the mass devastation, you'll be able to engage with each other in conflict without needing to have these really extreme, maybe somewhat tumultuous chaotic conversations.
Caitlyn:If you're in a season of chaos because you've just disclosed new information, it may feel a little tumultuous as you engage into this. And as Brandon's saying, it's like the more embodied you become, the more embodied both of you become, the more you can get to the end goal which is connection connection on the other side. And so this isn't about repeating what you heard. This is about trying to see your spouse's heart. This is about trying to understand, trying to connect, and wanting to make it through to the other side.
Caitlyn:It's not about staying stuck anymore. It's not about self protecting. Yeah. Self protecting keeps you stuck. It feels safer.
Caitlyn:It feels better in the moment, yet you stay stuck. And so then when you step out of that, the reality of self protecting, and you step into a true reality, you can see what they're feeling. You can feel that in your body. That's what empathy is, is actually feeling what that person felt so that you can experience it and reflect back to them what it is that you're healing feeling. And this is something that if you're the spouse that's been betrayed, you're gonna know based off of energy, body language, the facial expressions, their eyes, softness of their tone, and their heart, and their intention.
Caitlyn:You're gonna know right away if your spouse genuinely wants to see you. You cannot fake this comfort flow. You cannot fake this way of validating. You can't fake it. It's not a you know, so many of us grow up and it's like, we teach our kids, oh, you did something wrong.
Caitlyn:You did something to hurt that person. You did this that. You said something wrong. Just go say I'm sorry. And it's like so many children are just raised like robots.
Caitlyn:I'm so sorry. It's like, they don't know what that means. They don't know what that other child feels. They don't know anything. They just know I did something wrong.
Caitlyn:I say, I'm so sorry. And then we're in and here we are in our marriage relationships. And it's like, I've been looking at porn for ten years. I'm so sorry. All I know how to do is just say, I'm so sorry.
Caitlyn:That's all I did. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. And it's like, when you genuinely step into posture of empathy, I'm so sorry. Probably you won't even come out.
Caitlyn:Like, Brandon, I don't say, I'm so sorry. To me, that's so passive. It's so yeah. It's so powerless. It's so I'm a victim.
Caitlyn:I'm so sorry. I did not drink. It was so robotic. We're kind of all over.
Brandon:It's a new voice. I am so sorry.
Caitlyn:So sorry. We don't teach our kids to say, I'm so sorry.
Brandon:Appreciate it.
Caitlyn:We actually teach them to go through we call it the comfort flow for them. It's a little bit different than what we'll teach here. But I teach my kids to go if they if they said something to their sibling, like, you're so stupid, or they maybe they or swung they shoved them down because they broke their tower they were building. All of our kids are in the toddler years and a little bit older. So it's like, it's to be expected.
Caitlyn:I teach them to go their sibling, hey. How did it make you feel when I did that? And then the sibling will repeat back, you know what? That actually made me feel really sad or I experienced a lot of pain. And then the sibling that caused that feeling was to say, well, they'll reflect back.
Caitlyn:And obviously, this will advance as they get older, but they'll reflect back like, I'm hearing that you're feeling really, you know, whatever, insert whatever emotion they share. And then I have them share, how can we reconnect? They almost always all pick hugs
Brandon:that's What you need for comfort?
Caitlyn:Yeah. What do you need for comfort right now? And they pick hugs. And so then they have a moment of reconnecting reconnecting and and hugging. Hugging.
Caitlyn:My My children don't even know that it's like this standard thing where it's like, I knock you down. I'm so sorry, sissy. It's like, nope. That's not what they do. They're getting to the heart of the matter.
Caitlyn:And so I'm teaching my kids so that when they get into their marriage relationships, know how to look at their spouse and say, know what? I hurt you. How did that make you feel? What did that feel like in your body? And I wanna actually have a posture and energy of empathy.
Caitlyn:If you don't have an energy of empathy, your spouse is gonna know right away and this won't work. Just call it off. If you don't wanna show up with empathy, don't go through this. This is just you're just playing a robot game. You actually have to be embodied to show up, to have empathy, to actually hear and reflect back what you're hearing.
Brandon:I think the the quickest the if you take away one thing from this right now is instead of saying I'm sorry, say, are you okay? Mhmm. Think about how much more validating that would be for somebody that caused you pain to say instead of saying I'm sorry, saying, are you okay? And beyond that, are you okay? How did what I do how did what I did impact you?
Brandon:How did that make you feel? That's what we are looking for when there's been a rupture of connection is, do you care about how what you did impacted me? So let's walk through that.
Caitlyn:Yeah. I was gonna add one more note too is that oftentimes when we're saying I'm sorry, it's that we just are hoping we can forgive and forget. We wanna move on. And I get countless messages multiple a week that are like, my husband wants to know or we're trying to figure out when am I supposed to forgive and move on is normally the phrasing now. Forgive and forget.
Caitlyn:And it's like, forgive and move on, that's not the point of this. That's not the point of anything. That won't get you to connection. First of all, you'll never forget this. I don't forget any like, here we are ten years into our marriage able to do a podcast on the exact details of what we went through.
Caitlyn:I'll never forget it. Do I have the same trauma response in my body? Absolutely not. The reason why I can cry on every episode is because I can't tap into what I felt back then if I wanted to. And our story is now a message of hope for other people.
Caitlyn:So thank goodness I didn't forget. Thank goodness I didn't forget what I went through because then nobody would ever be able to see the message of transformation from here to here. The point is not forgetting. The point is not to get your wife to just shut up and forgive you and forget. And that's what I'm sorry.
Caitlyn:That's the language of I'm sorry. That's the language of I'm a bad boy. I'm taking a passive response is how can we just get this over with as fast as possible? No. You'll never forget.
Caitlyn:Will you experience the same deep traumatic response that leads to tears and like a volcano eruption? Absolutely not. You'll be able to get back into your body and have a embodied experience of your situation if you feel seen. If you don't ever feel seen, you're just gonna keep looping there. Like I always say, you're looping on that Eddie or that roller coaster where you don't feel seen and validated, so you can't actually really heal.
Caitlyn:If you're gonna stay in that marriage relationship, you have to be able to be seen and validated to move through.
Brandon:When I took the focus off of Caitlin forgetting about where the pain was and I didn't need it to end, that became an integrating experience for me as well because not that I need to see the magnitude of what I've done as like, so that I don't do it again. Like we often say, don't forget to look on your wife's face. Remember her pain so that you don't do it again. That's not actually a good motivator, but it's a daily conscious awareness of your entire story together that it leads to the care and nurture. Somebody had just gotten back from a traumatic war experience.
Brandon:Would you walk in the room and start banging loud things? No. You treat them with care. You monitor their symptoms. You see how they're feeling.
Brandon:When your spouse has been in this traumatic situation with you, you don't need them to forget about it. You need to check and be like, how is it today? How is it five years from now today? What is it feeling like? When an anniversary comes up, you go to a familiar place and there's still pain, like, please bring that up so that we can continue to heal.
Brandon:And so in in some sense, you are committing to a lifelong process of healing, but that's what we all are doing. There's so much enjoyment wrapped into all of it. Let's go through the the flow. So you would you were gonna give that first example of what you would say?
Caitlyn:Yeah. So this is gonna be the, for this podcast, so we're gonna keep it to the the comfort flow through this mass devastation. You can, like we have even shared, you can apply this to, you know, if you're in the next phase where you've cleared out with most of you probably are not in the next phase yet. Let's just say you wanna adopt this tool for a lifetime though, and you've cleared out your foundation. Because like we said, my theory on arguments is that you have not gotten out all of your lies, all of your hiddenness, all of your baggage.
Caitlyn:You haven't looked below the foundation yet. So you gotta look below the foundation. You're gonna clear up a lot of the arguments that you have there. And so as you're in this this season of what I would call mass devastation, let's just say for the example, it's I'm just now finding out that Brandon has had a ten year addiction to sexualizing things online, to looking at pornography, to looking at some suit models, whatever it may be. I'm finding out he's had this ten year thing going on that I had no idea about.
Caitlyn:I'm in mass devastation and that's the frame at which we are gonna be going through this comfort flow together. So I might come to him and be like, how could you have done this to me? How could you have done this to me? Like, how is this even possible? What is wrong with you?
Caitlyn:I might even say.
Brandon:Yeah. Or she might say like, did you ever love me? I regret marrying you. This is horrible that you did this to us. And then there's two responses.
Brandon:I could respond with explaining why that could have happened, minimizing it. Well, it could have been worse. I chose not to act out with anybody. You got you remember that other couple, they actually got a divorce because he he had a he had an affair. I could check out emotionally.
Brandon:I could justify it. There's all these potential responses to Caitlyn coming in. Let's just say it's been a week since she found out that I had had a ten year porn addiction. If she comes in, she's like, I can't believe you did this to us. Like, you've never loved me.
Brandon:I could respond with, no. I've always loved you. This has nothing to do with you. Zero validation. So in the comfort flow, you aren't explaining yourself because an explanation you don't even know what you're saying.
Caitlyn:It's a justification. An explanation is a justification.
Brandon:It will not create connection. And so the empathetic posture you take is reflecting back what you're hearing your wife saying. So you go if he comes in and she says, how could you have done this to us? Why did you choose to this? Did you, do you even love me?
Brandon:Did you ever love me? And you just sit there and you say, you know what? I want to hear about how, how this news is impacting you. What are you feeling right now? So if you're not hearing any feelings, you're just hearing her saying, how could you have done this?
Brandon:You reflect back. You gotta find some feelings. So you say, how is this impacting you right now? What are the feelings? What are the thoughts?
Brandon:I wanna hear more of it. Do you hear the tone of my voice? It's just like, gives permission to her to say, okay. Wanna share more. I my whole reality doesn't feel real.
Brandon:I can't believe this happened. Like, how are we ever going to get through this? And you responded, I'm willing to sit with you for as long as it takes. I want to hear from you. So once you've kind of got some traction and she's beginning to share what she's feeling, you'd reflect back.
Brandon:I'm hearing that it feels like your whole world spinning, that you feel devastated, that you don't know what to process, how to process your new reality. You don't know what to believe. And you just reflect back what you heard her sharing. So the first thing is to listen. The second thing is to reflect what you heard her sharing.
Brandon:And then you say, what else? And if it's, if it's not quite as heightened, you say, did I miss anything? Or what would you add to it? If it's just this raw emotion, there's just going to be more. So just say, tell me more.
Brandon:Tell me more is a great phrase to use. If the situation isn't quite as intense, you could say, is there anything I'm missing? Or what would you add to that? So you listen, you reflect back the emotions you heard her sharing, and then you repeat that cycle. So you ask, is that what else would you add to that?
Brandon:And you just create the space because what happens in grief and healing is it's going to come into waves. Your wife's going to have a big wave. And when you help her, when you support her through that big wave of emotion, the waves will get less intense. It will get less chaotic, but if you ignore the wave, it's going to come back at the same intensity or greater because you're not willing to let it land somewhere. So when she comes with this big feeling, support her by saying, I'm here to listen.
Brandon:I'm here to support you. I don't have anything to defend. I'm hearing what you're sharing. I want you to know that I hear you and I'm receiving you. And that's how you begin to repair and provide comfort and validation to where the pain was.
Caitlyn:And ultimately, this leads to connection. It leads to actually being on the same team. So many times in arguments, it's like, who's right? Who's wrong? And it's like, that needs to go out the window.
Caitlyn:The heart of this is let's be on the same team. Let's end in connection. And connection is felt when both people feel fully seen and fully safe. And so this is a tool that we still to this day use. We're not in mass devastation anymore.
Caitlyn:And like I said, when you get when you relay your foundation without any secrets, there's so much connection that there's little to no arguments. Yeah. So when Brandon and I are having a disagreement, we can go through this process. And most of the time, because we're not in mass devastation where Brandon's acting out and I'm betrayed, we're gonna both share. We're gonna both share that situation happened, and this is how I'm feeling.
Caitlyn:And Brandon's gonna reflect, and he's gonna receive me. He's gonna ask me if there's anything else. I'm gonna feel complete. I'm gonna feel seen and connected. Then I'm gonna ask Brandon, like, how did that make you feel?
Caitlyn:I wanna see you. I'm gonna validate you. And we're gonna go through the whole flow together. And guess what? I always say this, because we've relayed our foundation, our conflicts can take our disagreements can take minutes to move through.
Caitlyn:Sometimes it's just like, we just have to look into each other's eyes and go, yeah. You know what? We're dropping that. We're on the same team. We're connected.
Caitlyn:Our foundation is already laid. There's not all this stuff below the cracks that's starting to seep up. That's why there's so much conflict is because everything from underneath is emerging and erupting out. Yep. So when you clean all of that out and there's nothing erupting, there's nothing else below the surface adding to the argument, it's like, oh, we can move through this really, really swiftly.
Caitlyn:We can end this in peace. We can end this in connection. And so, no matter what season you find yourself in, you can begin to apply this validation tool, this connection flow in your season of chaos and beyond.
Brandon:In summary, the conflict you experienced in your relationship stems from an underlying pain. It's not about where to go to dinner. It's because there's been a separation of the connection to begin with. So what we've watched other couples walk through is once you face the roots, you have a lot to enjoy. You recognize you're on the same team.
Brandon:Who do, who do people argue with? People that are their opponents. When we're on the same team and then we have each other's best interests in mind, we're able to make decisions very easily together about what we're going to do with our schedule, how we're going to treat the kids, what we're going do with our money, how we're going spend our time, what sex looks like. All these things become very simple when it's like, oh my gosh, you know, I have your best interests in mind. You have mine in mind.
Brandon:And we're able to both bring our opinions, thoughts, desires to the table and make collaborative decision. You can't do that until you face the pain and you continue to work through the pain. So I would say if you've been walking through the pain of betrayal, trust, make that really the only thing you talk about, where is this the pain that's coming up? Because if we can't work through the pain, then we're not going to be able to where to spend the vacation next, next week. So use the tools, use the comfort flow to reflect and validate your wife's pain.
Brandon:She's not as scary as you think. Your husband's not, it's just the pain is scary. Once you tell your nervous system and you communicate to your spouse, your pain, although it's real and raw, I will not back away from it. I will come towards it with my body language, with my approach, and I will say, tell me what it's like to be in your shoes. Tell me the impact of my actions so that I can understand, so that I can see you and so that we can heal.
Brandon:Thank you guys so much for joining us on this episode. If you need any additional support, there are links in the show notes for where to get started. And if you are listening to this, we do have our video show on YouTube and Spotify. We'll see you guys next week.