Did I Marry the Wrong Person?
Welcome back to the Grounded Union Podcast. Thank you for joining us every week. We are talking about, we're in season five episode six. We're talking about, did I marry the wrong person? Is this person across the couch for me? Did I marry the right one or the wrong one?
Brandon:I'm actually going share the kind of embarrassing thought patterns I was stuck in for a lot of the beginning of our marriage on how I thought about, did I marry the right person or not? And we're going to dive into all of that and more, as well as how you can get a new wife without actually having to leave the one you have. And, I think this will be a really empowering and enlightening episode because it's one of those thought patterns that is. I don't, we don't, we're not super proud of it.
Brandon:Like telling Caitlyn that I had to have these thoughts about what it would be like if I was with somebody else wasn't necessarily doesn't make the person you're with feel very good. Doesn't make them feel very excited. And so we're going to talk about a topic that I think is the mental escape for a lot of people is should I have married somebody else? Should I, should I leave the person I'm with now? Like, would it be better elsewhere? And we have these escape hatches in our, in our thinking. They basically try to release the pressure of, of what we're experiencing right now. So we're going to dive into that.
Brandon:If you weren't aware, I wrote a book called sevensteps to save your marriage. And it's about rebuilding trust after addiction and sexual betrayal.
Brandon:I've been writing it for two years and you can pre order at sevenstepsbook.com. So super excited to share this book with you guys. Pre order will be open for just a little bit longer. If you pre order, you're going to get a, the audio book that I read as well as the digital workbook that goes along with the book. So that's at sevenstepsbook.com.
Brandon:Now side note, I was so excited when I found the URL sevenstepsbook. So sevenstepsbook.com.
Brandon:Did I marry the wrong person? Well, it depends on how you look at it. I think that for me as a young lad, we got married at, I was 21. Caitlyn was 19.
Brandon:And one of the biggest, motivators that led to me wanting to get married young was to be able to have sex. Growing up as a, as a Christian man. I was pursuing God and his path for my life. And I was doing missions and nonprofit work.
Brandon:I was like, man, I want to be a holy man. And I also want to have sex. Like from everything I read and hear about, like, I need to get married to have sex or I'm outside of God's will for my life. I'm in sin. I'm doing all these bad things.
Brandon:And I think that sex within marriage is where it belongs. So to clarify that. And I was miserable because I thought that this like monster in me, this desire to have an orgasm with another woman, which I had found an outlet through pornography and masturbation. I thought that that would be complete once I got married. So I was like trying to race to the finish line.
Brandon:So any girl I was like interested in, it was like, I'm going to marry her. I'm going marry her. I'm going to marry her. And Caitlyn's even said this. We don't usually share this on the show.
Brandon:She's like, was I just another one of those girls that you wanted to marry by? Just said yes. And I actually like reciprocated the desire. I was like, well, shoot, when you put it that way, like my commitment to Caitlyn at the beginning of our relationship was what she could add to me. It's like I'm suffering.
Brandon:You provide an outlet. I'm lonely. You provide comfort. I'm a part of a social circle. You make me look better.
Brandon:I have a desire for approval. You tell me I do good at things. You're into me. You being into me makes me feel good about myself. So if I look at the, we'll call them the surface level reasons that I pursued, Caitlyn proposed to her, married her initially at 21.
Brandon:Again, my prefrontal cortex wasn't quite done. I would say I was very, in some ways I was very mature and in some ways I was far less mature than I believe our children will be at that age as far as what motivated my actions and behaviors. And so I didn't marry Caitlyn because I had a long term vision of the man I wanted to be. I said those things, but really I, I married Caitlyn to relieve the pressure I felt to be able to have sex, to be able to have checked the boxes like, okay, God, I got married now. Keep using me.
Brandon:And the opposite happened. Marriage introduced a lot of pain. It brought up a lot of conflict. It brought up a lot of ways that I was failing or felt inadequate. A lot of insecurities.
Brandon:I had a lot of dishonesty. I didn't realize I lived with a lot of unmet expectations, a lot of communication, a lot of figuring things out right away. We jumped right into ministry. We were working full time together. We were traveling.
Brandon:We were speaking at churches. We were doing all this stuff. I was like, man, this isn't very much fun. And Caitlyn would, would share about her pain and I'd be like, girl, what's wrong with you? Like, did you not read the fine print on the contract?
Brandon:Like you were supposed to make my life better and you're making me miserable. And so I started doing what I'd always do is I just scroll social media, look at girls I'd gone to school with, or I'd met along the way. Look at their pictures. Think about, well, what if I would have married this girl? Like she was softer spoken.
Brandon:Was more less what Caitlyn is and she was more of this, or maybe she would, yeah, she was kind of promiscuous, but maybe she would have been less hard on me. And this wasn't like a once or twice thing. This is like a constant place. Went back to of like, what would it have been like if I were to have been with somebody else? And there was very specific people and Caitlyn didn't know that's what I was doing.
Brandon:She didn't know I was going to their profiles and looking them up and having these thoughts and playing this out in my mind. I remember it got so nasty. The thought pattern. Because of our Christian upbringing, I realized like, well, I can't divorce Caitlyn. I can't leave her because then I'd be like ostracized by the, the, the community I'm a part of.
Brandon:So like the only way I could remarry somebody else is if Caitlyn were to die. And I remember thinking, like, the only way I can escape the pain I'm in is if she were to die, like, if something happened to her. And I had no thoughts of doing anything to her, but I'm like, if she got in a car accident or if this happened, like, that would be my only escape. And it wasn't like I wanted her to die, but like, that's how, like desperate I was to escape the pain. And I know this is all like very morbid and like, maybe some of you have had similar thoughts and it's, it's, it is very dark.
Brandon:It is very morbid morbid and that I feel, I don't feel ashamed. I feel responsible for those thoughts. I think it's, it's shocking to even re re talk through it, realizing like when your soul is in turmoil, you do anything to get out of it. When you are suffering, you will follow any path to get out of pain. When you're hungry, you'll do anything you can to find food.
Brandon:Like when, if you've, if you've never seen it, we grew up in Oregon, we've seen a lot of houseless people, people without homes that are hungry and on the streets. I've seen a lot of people look for food in traffickings. That's what you look like when you're in a marriage. Like it's miserably, like, I'll do anything to get out of pain. I'll think about being married to somebody else.
Brandon:I'll question the woman I married. I'll even consider like, well, if she died, at least I could start over. It's like, lower the value of everybody else. The biggest thing you miss in the equation is all of what you're considering is if I escaped the situation I was in and escape dissociation, distraction, detachment is what got you into the situation you're in. Asking yourself, did I marry the wrong woman is never going to satisfy the pain or alleviate the problems that you're in.
Brandon:It's my marriage is a mess. What do I want to do about that? And I think for so many though, it's like, Oh, I made a poor decision. What do I do about it? I guess I'll think about being married to somebody else for the rest of my life.
Brandon:I'll jerk off to porn for the rest of my life. I'll I'll go to strip clubs. I'll have an emotional affair. I'll do enough things so that maybe because I'm too passive to do it. Maybe she'll file for a divorce or maybe she'll leave.
Brandon:Maybe she'll cheat on me so I can finally have a reason to end this suffering that I'm in. And so instead of trying to end your suffering by ending the marriage, saying she was the wrong choice, what if you started making new choices about how you engage your healing? Mhmm. Welcome to the podcast.
Caitlyn:This is also a really normalized thought to have. I think if we've shared this story before, but I remember Brandon went to this, you know, we had one kid at the time. He went to this men's retreat through the church up into the cabins for a couple nights. And, I mean, I didn't hear about this story till years later when he actually decided he was gonna get completely honest. So this story never even made it home to me, which is we...
Brandon:I forgot about that. I remember the story.
Caitlyn:Yeah.
Brandon:I, in my mind was thinking that like, because when we talk about being honest now, Yeah. It's with each other.
Caitlyn:Right.
Brandon:So when I think about that story, think, Oh, well, this was the precipice of me coming home and telling you that. Like, no, I just told the group of men.
Caitlyn:Right.
Brandon:Continue.
Caitlyn:Which goes back to the accountability episode that we did together, which is he was accountable to his group of men, but then the truth and honesty never actually came home to me. And so therefore, do you think any changes were made? Absolutely not.
Caitlyn:So he had gone to this, you know, men's retreat hoorah gathering, and I have nothing against men's retreats, I just have a lot of things against accountability, men's retreats that don't produce any true change in healing. And don't actually promote that you go home and tell your wife the things you've been keeping from her. So he, Brandon is, you know, taking this vulnerable moment in front of all of these men to say, yeah, I think about what it would be like to be married to another woman. Like, sometimes when it's hard, like, this is where I escape in my mind.
Brandon:The part about if the only way to go out would be if something happened to her.
Caitlyn:Yeah. Exactly. He shares that, all the depth of that. And the the man leading the the retreat goes, okay, if any other men in this room have had the same thoughts, felt the same way, raise their hand. And nearly the whole room of men raised their hands. And that wasn't his moment to then teach on, okay men, now let me tell you how you can take this and transform it and not have to live in that reality anymore.
Caitlyn:No, it just stopped there. It was like, Brandon, welcome home to a good place of men who mentally escape, thinking about being married to someone else. And just make sure you pray and read your bible, and maybe do a little fast, go get yourself baptized in the river, and next time when you do it again, just go through the same charade. And it's like, woah, woah, woah, did you guys know? Piggybacking off of last week's episode.
Caitlyn:It's much better than that. It's much better than, hey, just so you know, sweetie, I'm thinking about being married to someone else again, but I went to the counseling session. I called my buddies. Like, I did the things, you know? It's like, again, this was so normalized that the leader of the retreat didn't even go Brandon and every other man who just raised your hand, go home and tell your wife now.
Caitlyn:Go home and tell her. Right? And of course the response would be, well that will hurt her. Yes, it's hurting her. It's always gonna hurt her.
Caitlyn:So why do we keep normalizing and condoning things that are hurting our spouses and trashing our marriages? Why do we not actually stop and go, I wonder if there's a way to actually create wholeness and freedom in my mind, in my body, in my spirit, in my life to where this isn't my everyday reality because thinking about being married to someone other than your spouse, which we'll go into how this actually came up for me too in a very different way and I think this comes up for women in betrayal. Thinking about being married to someone else is a mental escape from your reality. It's the same thing as going to porn. It's the same thing as having an affair.
Caitlyn:That's why I don't really like the clinical terms of big uglies, little uglies. I don't even like classifying something as worse than the other, you know? People are like, oh, what did Brandon even do? Is it even as bad as what my husband did? And it's like, you guys, at the root, it's all the same.
Caitlyn:Thinking about having sex with somebody and having sex with someone, sure, very, very different, it took different, you know, it's like, there's gonna be different levels of pain, yet it was the same steps it took to get there. At one point, your spouse thought about it, what it would be look like to be married to someone else, thought about what it would look like to have sex with someone else, and then they just went and actually did it.
Brandon:Your pain will always be bigger than my pain.
Caitlyn:Mhmm.
Brandon:Meaning, those of you listening, your story is your story. So I will never be able to feel the pain that you are going through. And we actually intentionally share our story the way we do, because I don't, I don't care how big or how small you consider your pain to be. That's why we get messages like, Hey, somebody finally validated me. So many of you come up to us at the events, right?
Brandon:All these places say, your story is exactly like mine. I'm like, well, shoot, if my story is exactly like yours, that means I've had sex with everybody in the world.
Caitlyn:Right.
Brandon:I've done some hard, like, we want you to know that your pain is worth being heard. And that was what Caitlyn asked for and is what I would not give her for so long. In fact, that's why that's why I thought about being married to someone else.
Caitlyn:Thinking about being married to someone else is a mental escape from a reality that you don't like. So what could have been said at the men's retreat and what we'll say now and what our belief system is, is that when that comes up for you, that's your moment in time to go, oh, I don't like my wife. I don't like my reality. You know what it really is actually bringing up, which Brandon could speak to this more? I don't like my own actions and what that's producing in my wife, what that's creating in my life.
Caitlyn:Because most of the time when you've been living in addiction, it's not only your wife you don't like, you probably hate your job. Yeah. You probably hate the community you're in. You probably don't really like anything that you do as your hobbies. You might not even freaking know if you have hobbies.
Caitlyn:You might not even like things. Like, you just don't really like anything because ultimately, you don't like yourself. You don't like what you've created. You don't like the mess you've made. You don't like what's going on.
Caitlyn:And so you project that primarily onto your wife and then onto all the other categories. So when you are in these moments, you're like, oh, I wish I was married to someone else. And that that looks like a lot of different thoughts, like Brandon said. That looks like scrolling and thinking, oh, this ex girlfriend, I wonder what it would have been like. I wonder how she's doing.
Caitlyn:You know, all these different thoughts and trails you can run yourself through. That's when you get to go, okay, this is my time and opportunity to take a look at my mess that I've created, my addiction that I've gotten myself into, the lies and the hiddenness that I've kept from my spouse, how that's making her act, how that's making my life feel like it's suffering. And this is my opportunity to actually share that openly and honestly.
Caitlyn:We do not condone you just go to your men's retreat on the mountain and share that with the men and never bring that to your wife. Obviously, you know that we 100% believe in radical honesty.
Caitlyn:That means that every time you're having these escapist thoughts, you tell your spouse, and you don't just dump it on them. You tell your spouse and you run it through the four r's so that you can rewire your mind and replace that. Like, oh, right now, I was angry and upset. I was anxious. I was depressed.
Caitlyn:So I escaped in my mind through thinking about what it would be like to be with someone else. Yeah. Because that sounded really exciting. That made me, in my mind, in my dream reality, like a movie, feel like I could create something better than this, better than what I'm going through. Right?
Caitlyn:Yeah. I could escape the pain. I could escape her looking at me and arguing with me and expecting something of me. Right? And I could go into this fantasy world where everything is blissful.
Caitlyn:Right? And it's like, yeah, you can create a blissful reality, not through escaping, but through facing the current one you have, through rewiring it, replacing it with what you do want to have in your life, which is, oh, when I'm anxious, depressed, when I'm sad, when I'm upset with my wife, this is what I'm gonna do instead. I'm gonna go for a walk. I'm gonna say, woah, where's the mess? How can I clean it up?
Caitlyn:And that's the reality you're gonna create. You don't have to live a life where when it's hard, you think about being married to someone else. That was Brandon's weekly reality, if not multiple times a week reality, and that has not been a part of our marriage for seven years now. Neither of us are escaping into worlds where we're like, oh shoot, this was hard. I wish I would have married someone else.
Caitlyn:Oh shoot, this was a difficult day. He said something mean, she said something mean. I could have married someone else who would have been a lot nicer. That's not part of our life anymore. Yeah.
Caitlyn:You don't have to be in a group where everyone raises their hand and says, yeah, that's what we do. No, you can be in a life where you actually get to live without that being a part of your mind, your mental space anymore.
Brandon:You have to ask yourself what's behind the thoughts. Cause you say, you know, if I was with her, ask what would that solve? And because these are fantasy thoughts, it's not reality thoughts. And some of you have even take a step towards your fantasy, which is I messaged the person or some of you, your emotional affairs are long distance communication with an ex that's respectful apparently, or you're having these emotional escapes with other people or these mental ascents into these different realms. And it's basically like, what do you believe that will solve?
Brandon:For most of you, it's actually just a strategy to alleviate the anxiety, the pain, the upsetness you feel right now. It's like, it instantly relieves the pressure for the moment. If this is, this is the pattern we had is Caitlyn and I would get in a fight. I'd be upset with how she responded. She'd be like really hurt by something and say, I, know, she's like, I regret marrying you.
Brandon:This was like so painful. And that was actually true. Like Caitlyn told me she regretted marrying me and she said it to my face. And I said, oh, okay. You go to sleep.
Brandon:I'm going to go look at half naked women and I'll go think about what it would be like to be married to somebody else. When she brought in her pain, she's like, here's how I feel right now. Like, I'm regretting this decision because of, of how you're treating me. And I took that and did did it in secret and, and did it in hiding and did it with real actions instead of actually saying, you know what? I'm questioning my decision too.
Brandon:Like, this is really painful. Cause when both people are radically honest, you can actually face what's there. And you know, Caitlyn was saying those things? Because deep down I was hiding stuff from her and she could feel it. Like, just summons off.
Brandon:I don't feel it. I don't feel right. And I would make it about all these other things. And it was told me I'm pulling away. We don't have those conversations anymore.
Brandon:So it must've not been that we figured out what it was. So you have to think about...
Caitlyn:It's not that we married, we married the wrong people.
Brandon:Right. And so you have to say like, you know, what does this solve? And I think for most of you, especially if you're pairing it with masturbation is it's you have this mental incentive, oh, I could have married her. Like she'd be into me. You pep yourself up and like, yeah, she's a she's she's posting music.
Brandon:Like she wants my attention and she's got this. And you look at her pictures when you go to, when you're looking at videos and it's this little merry-go-round you go on to get yourself into this, out of the state you're in into a different one, except it has a really high cost. And the cost is the moment things get hard. Listen to this note takers. The moment things get hard, you write your wife out of the picture.
Brandon:You erase her as your means of healing or as your means of not healing as your means of regulating your emotions. She's gone. Okay. It's like, what? Like, we got to get a better strategy than making our wife disappear when we get upset with each other.
Brandon:What if she gets upset? I'm up for the challenge. I'm up for facing this. The moment you shift that, like everything changes. And we're going to talk about that, but I think that man to man, if you blame others for why your life is hard, if you blame your wife for why things are so difficult right now.
Brandon:And it's just simply because she's expressing her emotions for her desire for connection, oh, why is she like this? It's like, when you blame everybody else, you have to consider like, is that the way you wanna play your cards? Is that actually the way you wanna go down in history? It's like, everybody else is in control of my life, and I am not responsible.
Caitlyn:From the moment we got married to the moment we hit our our kind of breaking point, I had actually never had any sort of mental escapes of, oh, I wonder what it would be like to be married to someone else. And of course, you know, people are always like, oh Caitlyn never has anything wrong with her, it's like, we've hinted at it all before. Again, I was 19 when we got married, so in a lot of ways, entered in with a lot of childlikeness, a lot of innocence, and I I hadn't been exposed to pornography. I hadn't been exposed to a lot of negative sexual content. Of course, I had seen people have sex in movies, like the, you know, whatever the edited version.
Caitlyn:So I had things in my mind, of course. And there was many times in the first couple years of our marriage where we'd actually go to have sex, and I would have some of those probably like movie scenes and different things come up. These very, very interesting
Brandon:Erotic.
Caitlyn:Scenes, erotic scenes would kind of play in my mind. I remember I used to feel so ashamed and terrified. I hadn't had nobody gave me any advice of like, oh, you need to share this. I just I'm 19 and I'm like, why would I hide this from you? Like, I'm shaking thinking about telling you because, like, you could be so upset with me, and I would tell Brandon.
Caitlyn:And this is simultaneously, I had no idea. I could kinda sense it, but Brandon's hiding a whole world of things from me. And he actually still met with me with a lot of love and compassion. We would talk through it at that time, you know, we prayed through it. I was like committed to being fully honest.
Caitlyn:And then when I was met with the safety, was like, okay, I'm safe to actually share these things. Sexual dreams at times. There was memories I had had with, you know, boyfriends I had had at the in the past. Because right before I had met Brandon, I had actually been in a very long committed relationship with someone else I actually thought that I was gonna marry. So I had memories that came up from that person, right?
Caitlyn:And we would talk through those, and we would go through those. We didn't have the four r's at that time. We just I was honest. So it's like, when I decided to be honest, none of that built up any sort of any sort of snowball. Right?
Caitlyn:If I would have not decided to share any of those things, I most likely would could have snowballed into the same effect. Right? And so I actually had had no thoughts of I wonder what it would be like to be married to someone else, and it's possible that you're sitting here listening to this, and you've both had that thought and great. You both get to take a look at what it looks like to heal that. You both get to address that with each other.
Caitlyn:I did begin having that thought in a slightly different variation when I found out how Brandon had been treating me. So when we hit twenty nineteen and he's telling me for the first time ever or being caught in a lot of ways and I'm dragging it out of it. When he's telling me all of the reality at which I'd actually been living through, essentially when my reality got blown up, I had this thought and I I know and I think that many women feel it when they hit this place when their reality gets blown up and it's like, woah, should I marry someone else? You know, like, what is there someone else out there who essentially wouldn't be this messy, right? And I wanna first start off by saying that's completely valid that you would feel that way.
Caitlyn:And that also is completely valid to be shared out loud. Like Brandon said, like, I told him, I wish I never married you. And of course, there are so many people, we hear this all the time in our community, where men that have done things that are really quite terrible, really quite sad I'll say, and terrible is kind of a rude word, a shame, a shame filled word. They've done things that are not kind to their spouse, right? And their spouse rightfully so says, I wish I never married you, and they're offended.
Caitlyn:They even wanna use the word abuse. She uses abusive language, and I'm like, tell me what that means to you. They're like, she told me she wished she never married me. I'm like, you slept with like four other people and have been looking at pornography for ten years. Like, what?
Caitlyn:Of course she thinks, I wish I never married you. You've been cheating on her. Talk about abuse. Talk about emotional abuse. That's completely valid that she's thinking that.
Caitlyn:And you could be grateful that she's sharing that out loud with you, because when you've been sleeping with everyone else, looking at pornography, like what Brandon was saying, you've been thinking that in secret and keeping that from her. She's not keeping how she feels from you. She's telling you, this is a moment to look at her and go, of course you feel that way. Right. I betrayed you in giant ways.
Caitlyn:Of course you feel like, how could I have married you? How could you have done this to me? Why did I marry you? Right? And I came to this point though, where I'd play this play this out in my head.
Caitlyn:I would journal this out in my 400 journal entries. Like none of this was kept secret from Brandon, but it's like, okay. If I were to leave you right now, and I were to go with someone else, like, is it actually true that there's someone else out there that just magically healed and embodying all of this? They're not lusting after anybody. They're completely radically honest.
Caitlyn:Like, is there? Maybe. Like, maybe point zero zero zero zero one percent of men have decided to do that without having entered into relationship to mirror that to them, without having had kids to mirror that to them. Like, but I came to terms with the reality of like, woah, whatever relationship I'm in, and I I'm sharing this because I think it frees people up from that escape, that mental escape you get into, like, whatever relationship you choose into, like, there is no right person for you. Like, the person you married is the right person for you.
Caitlyn:Yeah. You can keep divorcing and remarrying, and guess what you're gonna keep finding? You still gotta do the deep healing work with whatever person you committed your life to. And guess what? When you choose to dive in and go deep, deep, deep, deep to heal, you do come out the other side.
Caitlyn:Brandon and I aren't doing these deep three hour long healing session conversations with each other anymore. No. No. No. We did our deep season in 2019, created and laid the most incredible foundation for our marriage, and we're just building upon that now.
Caitlyn:Right? If you keep escaping through this mental facade of, oh, maybe there's another man out there that has healed more, you know, maybe there's another woman out there that's nicer to me, then what's happening is you're stalling your own process of being able to heal. And I want to clarify that if your husband is not committed to healing, and not committing to changing, and not committed to growing, it is completely valid that you would wonder if it would be better for you to leave the marriage, and if it would be more beneficial to find someone else. There's not a perfect person out there, but there's most definitely is someone out there who will commit to healing and changing. So I'm only referring to if you're in a committed relationship where you are both committed to healing and growing.
Caitlyn:If your spouse is is cheating on you and hiding things from you and will not choose to heal and grow, yeah, you either choose to stay stuck in that marriage or to create another life with someone else who is committed to healing and growing, right? But this is this is the the time and place where you get to come back to reality and go, okay, I am committed to healing, and I'm looking for my husband, my wife, to give that same commitment. And if we do, we don't have to escape in these realities of what it would be like to be with someone else. We can actually create the exact reality we want, which is a marriage we don't run from, a marriage that we love.
Brandon:The kicker to all of this is that I had seen Caitlyn through this lens of that she's critical. She's overbearing. She's controlling. She's a lot to manage. And I had this perception of her for quite some time.
Brandon:She's like a, you know, a strong, a strong woman. And I thought that that was just kind of like something I was going to have to deal with and learn to navigate. And it wasn't until I met her with my own strength and capacity to be able to bring myself to the relationship. What happened when I did that? When I, when I actually had opinions and desires and a vision, and I was present in the moment almost overnight when I stopped hoping that she would turn into a different woman that was calmer and easier to deal with me, just actually being somebody me actually being home in my body, present with myself.
Brandon:I watched Caitlyn transform into the girl I started dating and got engaged to where she was light and open and able to be in her, her feminine essence where she's playful and having fun. And I'm like, what the heck? Like, did I, how did I get this new wife almost overnight? And this was even after we had healed from, from the addiction piece, it was me really being like, who am I at my core and developing some of these, these masculine traits that allowed me to create more structure in our home, more structure for myself, more discipline, more, more presence in who I am as a man. And when I brought that, when I brought something to the relationship, I brought myself fully alive, fully alert, Caitlyn is no longer like having to do both parts.
Brandon:Cause when your wife is having to pick up your slack, having to remind you of everything, it's kind of like she's having to do your role and her role. So it's not a very, the polarity is kind of gone in the relationship. It's not a super dynamic relationship when she's doing both sides. And if you are constantly passive or anxious around your wife and like pulling away and getting in and coward like cowering back from different hard conversations or any tension. She's not very impressed by that.
Brandon:She doesn't respect that. So when you become a man that your wife can respect, then you get a new wife. And think about this. If you've never been free from addiction in your relationship, she's never known how to interact with any man different than you. If you come sober level headed in present, she will have to be different because she's getting a different version of you.
Brandon:So if you want your wife to change, if you want a new wife while keeping the same one, as you change, she will change how she interacts with you because she has to, she won't be able to talk to you the same way because kinda like, well, you're a lot different now. Like you're actually present. I'm not having to get your attention. Woah, you follow through on your word. I'm not having to remind you of all these things like, well, you, you don't just say whatever you want, sweetie.
Brandon:You actually have an opinion. You actually have a desire. You you share your heart with me. It's like she has something she can orient around now. She's starting to see a real man that's present in the relationship.
Brandon:So I think that my focus was on trying to get Caitlyn to care less, to be less strong. I didn't honor who she was. I was intimidated by who she was because it meant that I would have to change. And once I was committed to the growth and the healing and being the highest version of myself, She no longer was intimidating. She was the opportunity to heal, to be with, to, to spend time with, to build something with.
Brandon:It was just like, she wasn't scary anymore. When I realized that I'm not hiding from her. I'm not trying to be a good little boy. I don't I'm not seeking her approval. I'm actually seeking to be a man in my body that's present in his emotions that takes ownership for his life.
Brandon:And Caitlyn responded with, yeah. I like that guy a lot.
Caitlyn:Yeah. Because let's be honest. If you're a spouse that's actively acting out an addiction, so you're hiding things, you're lying about things, you're shoving things under the rug, you're minimizing things, are you really, like, if you were to be honest with yourself, are you really that surprised that your wife or that your spouse is not that warm with you, doesn't wanna have sex with you, are you really actually, if you think about it, like, oh yeah, I guess she doesn't know, but I look at porn quite often, I think about what it would be like to be married to someone else, I fantasize about other women, I always am checking other girls breasts and butt out, you know, like, is it really that surprising to you that she doesn't actually feel like your best friend? That she kinda has a not nice face when you come into the room, like, not even to mention the fact that maybe you work a lot, maybe you watch a lot of TV and a lot of sports, maybe you're always on your phone. Is it really that surprising that it feels like she's nagging on you?
Caitlyn:Like, is she nagging on you, or is she asking for time with you? Like, is she nagging on you? Or is she asking you to put away your phone and turn off the sports to have dinner with her? Is she actually really that rude? Or is she just sensing that you're acting outside of your covenant, betraying all your boundaries, breaking all the trust.
Caitlyn:Is she maybe intuitively feeling all that? Like, it's like, if you get honest with yourself for a minute, you probably would go, wow. I guess this isn't actually about the fact that I have a wife I don't like. Again, this comes back to I've created a life I don't like. I've created patterns within myself I don't like.
Caitlyn:So then let's flip it. You decide to clean up your life. You're not living in hiddenness anymore. You're not living in addiction anymore. You like your life, which means you're not just numbing out on your phone.
Caitlyn:You're not just watching sports all day. You're not just overworking so you don't have to come home. How could you not have a different wife?
Brandon:Yeah.
Caitlyn:Also, not to mention your perspective of yourself, your reality, your life, your wife, that's what changes. Your wife might not even change as much as you think because your perspective of everything changes. When you stop making it about everybody else and you focus on yourself, you heal. Yes, of course your spouse is gonna change and your perspective is gonna change because your spouse doesn't have to sit there and go, can you put up your phone and look at me? Yeah.
Caitlyn:Can you turn off the TV so we can talk? Your spouse doesn't have to go, are you keeping secrets from me? Your spouse doesn't have to say, when you're at dinner, did you just look at her? Did you just check her out? Your spouse doesn't have to say, why are you texting so many girls on your phone?
Caitlyn:Why are you staying late after work? Why is Susie in your car right? Like, you see what I mean? Like, you create a whole different life. When you stop at just, oh, yeah, I just think about what it's like to be married to someone else, but you know, whatever.
Caitlyn:You miss the opportunity to actually create a life that you love and a wife, a spouse that you have mutual respect and love for. Brandon doesn't look at me anymore and go, oh yeah, she's really difficult, she's really hard to deal with, She's so opinionated. She's always really needing me to change. That's exactly how he saw me before, but that was just actually because he was scared of what his own mess was, right? When he decided to clean up his own mess, his entire perspective of me changed.
Caitlyn:Oh, she's not actually controlling. Oh, she's not actually that rude. She just doesn't want me looking at bikini models online like, oh, seems like a pretty fair expectation and the marriage Doesn't really actually make her a mean girl, does it? You know, it's like, oh, she was telling me she's really upset with me because I told her I wouldn't play video games and I've been doing that when she's not looking. Like, yeah, I guess that's pretty valid.
Caitlyn:So if I just stop lying and stop telling her I'm gonna, you know, not do something and then do it, oh, she's actually kind of a nice gal, you know? So it's like, this comes back to being honest with yourself, being honest with your reality, cleaning up your reality, and then watching literally everything begin to shift.
Brandon:I think this is one of those things you could look at it as far as, like, shifting into a place of gratitude for your situation. I started seeing the beauty of Caitlyn's characteristics. Like Caitlyn was talking about, like, when I had this shift where I was like, woah, like, this is amazing. Like she is such a strong, woman. What a gift.
Brandon:And I started seeing these attributes about her, woah, like this one specifically, she speaks her mind. Caitlyn didn't use sarcasm. She literally just said like, I'm really upset with you. And I'm like, oh shoot. Like I lived a lot of my life, like trying to get like manage her perception of me and assume she was feeling things she wasn't saying.
Brandon:And I didn't even realize I was doing that. I knew I was doing it by I didn't take ownership for it, but I was oh, like you're not trying to be mean to me right now. Like, no, if I was upset with you, I'd tell you. I'm like, wait, wait, it took so many years for that to sink in. It took me healing to, for it to sink.
Brandon:It took twenty nineteen and another set of lies to be like, oh, like when you're upset, you tell me. And I started seeing that as what a great quality that my wife, I used to think, oh, why does my wife speak her mind? Thank goodness my wife speaks her mind because I don't have to guess if she's upset with me. I can assume that she is in love with me. She feels connected.
Brandon:She feels supported. If she doesn't, she's going to tell me. That's a gift. I used to be like, this is so annoying. Like, why is she doing this?
Brandon:Now I'm like, great. Now I know where she's at at all times. I also used to be frustrated at her strength. It was like, oh, she's so strong. She's so confident.
Brandon:She's so clear. I'm like, well, when it comes to raising kids with a woman, when it comes to making life decisions, when it comes to running a home, when it comes to eating while taking care of your body, I watched my wife do all of it. She's very strong and competent. She's not sitting around hoping somebody comes and saves her. She wasn't hoping for me to rescue her or push her to take care of herself.
Brandon:I'm watching her take care of herself, our kids, her future, and live with a tenacity and vision for her life. Like, that's great. You know what that doesn't mean though? It doesn't it does expose when I'm weak and passive and not following through. But once I'm following through and operating in my strength, it pairs great with a woman who's operating her strength.
Brandon:So most of the qualities about your spouse that are annoying to you right now are actually really good things. Like my wife's so intuitive. That's another one. Was so intuitive. A lot of like guys, I don't think I try to give myself credit for how much healing I did, but like I did choose into it.
Brandon:And a lot of our healing process was Caitlyn reading my mind because I was too afraid to listen to the thoughts. She's like, do you have these thoughts about this person? I'm like, yes. Have you gone to this person's social media? Yes.
Brandon:Because I couldn't even like, I was so scared to like, okay, I'll just read your mind. Mhmm. And so she was that intuitive that she would be like, you're lying to me again or this or that. I'm like, yeah, I guess if you can see me because we're intimate and Caitlyn had opened herself up to me and I've I'm opened up to her. I guess if if you can read me beyond a shadow of a doubt, like I might as well get honest with myself.
Brandon:So instead of saying, oh, my wife's intuitive. I can't get away with things like my wife's intuitive. I don't ever have to live in a lie. And my wife's so intuitive. She's gonna, she's got this inner knowing and a compass.
Brandon:It's going to be such a gift to our family. Do you see how all these characteristics about your spouse become a gift when you're no longer hiding and in deception? They're they're superpowers for your relations instead of being these things you're like, oh, I wish she was a little more dumbed down. And I tell you what, I tried taking Caitlyn to the counselors and getting them to side with me and be like, she's kind of crazy. See?
Brandon:And I even got them to say like, yeah, she's actually in a really broken state. Like she's really hurting. Maybe she should get on some anxiety medication because she's in so much pain. I'm like, yes, maybe, maybe. My deep down like, I don't actually want her on medication, but like you can put your spouse in the psych ward.
Brandon:You can get everybody to team up with you and say, oh yeah, they're a little cuckoo. They're a little off their rocker. They're a little much. Their pain's a little big around what you're going through. Instead, it's like, Caitlyn never stopped being hurt.
Brandon:And I'm so grateful she didn't because now I look at the relationship I'm in and my wife, I didn't I didn't marry anybody else. I'm in a completely different marriage Because I started showing up when, when two people are fully given into the marriage are fully choosing into intimacy. Our character flaws are not really, they're not really flaws. We just actually get to grow and mature together. And now let me tell you, Caitlyn and I do not think that we have nothing that we need to grow in.
Brandon:Right. We actually spend a lot of our waking hours talking about improvements we're going to make in parenting, health things we're going to try out ways that we can improve our community program, our events, the details of our offerings, the way we communicate the podcast. Like we are constantly looking for how we can improve and grow. We just have to stop looking at growth as a negative thing and stop trying to make our spouse to erase them. So I don't have to see, because my, my wife's a mirror.
Brandon:She shows me how I'm doing. And so instead of seeing that as a negative thing, she has the opportunity to step in and heal.
Caitlyn:Mhmm, yeah, so the question really isn't, did I marry the wrong person? It's actually, am I married to someone who is committed to healing with me? Who's committed to growing with me? Because if you both answer wholeheartedly yes, and it's not just answering with words, it's answering with actions. Because I know a lot of you are in a marriage where you your spouse says, yeah, I wanna heal, and then they literally don't do anything the next day.
Caitlyn:It's like, well, that's not healing. Like, it's really common sense, guys. If you don't wake up and make changes, you don't change. So you stay the same. Yeah.
Caitlyn:So you're not actually gonna be healing together. Have to wake up tomorrow and make changes, right? And so instead of asking, oh, did I marry the right person? It's, did I marry someone who's committed to lifelong healing and growth? And that's not torturous.
Caitlyn:I love the healing and growth we do because our life gets better and better and better. We literally sit in awe like, oh my gosh. If you would have told me in 2019 that I'd be sitting here in this beautiful home, in this beautiful place that we've created with four kids and a fifth one on the way. This beautiful marriage, this beautiful community and audience, I would have been like, oh my gosh. I had no idea it was gonna get that good, right?
Caitlyn:When you are focused on healing together and developing together, it's not because you're suffering, it's not because, oh, now I've got this burden of healing, right? I got this burden of growing and changing. It's like, no. Every time I develop and heal, life gets better and better and better and better. Healing is so worth it and healing is so beautiful that it's actually exciting.
Caitlyn:Like I get excited when we're like, oh yeah, let's tackle this new thing, right? And again, it normally has nothing to do with the foundation of our relationship anymore. It's something else new that we are developing and constantly developing. Parenting is a huge one, right? Because we're learning what it's like to raise kids that get older and older, and every phase with our oldest is a new phase, and we get to develop and we get to heal.
Caitlyn:So it's not, oh gosh, is Brandon the right person anymore? It's, are we committed to healing? We both already, in 2019, we committed that to each other. Yeah. Now we never question if we're married to the right person.
Brandon:Right.
Caitlyn:You're at the phase right now where you get to go, okay, I don't need to question if you're the right person. We just need to look at each other and go, hey, are we signed up to lifelong healing together? Which means lifelong bliss, connection, beauty, and abundance together. And if you're both agreeing with words and actions, then that is a beautiful union to be creating.
Brandon:And that's, the marriage advice that I've heard Caitlyn give many women is like, how do I know if this guy's like the right guy? And that's what you've told him is like, if it's somebody, obviously you obviously have something in common with, and you appreciate you enjoy being with this person. If they are committed to growth and healing and that's like their focus, like that's a person that's, that's a great person to look forward to being with. If they're actually not like from like a pretend way, but they're willing to face their shadows. That's a person that you can look forward to a bright future with, because that means that they're going to approach the relationship approach you from this lens of I'm going to heal on and I'm going to grow.
Brandon:So, guys, it's an honor to have you here with us each week. If you're enjoying season five, please leave a review of the podcast. Send a screenshot of your review on Apple. A written review would be incredible. Our team will send you send an email to support@groundedunion.com. If you send a screenshot of your review, they'll send you a free unreleased podcast called Intimacy After Betrayal. They'll send that straight to you as a thank you.
Brandon:If you haven't already, you can, pre order a copy of my book, sevenstepsbook.com. I love holding this book. This is like a pre release copy and I can't wait to share it with you.
Brandon:And then also if you are looking to get additional support from Caitlyn and I inside of our community app, can go to the show notes or go to groundedunion.com to apply for a spot inside the community. We'll see you next week.