Becoming a Man Your Wife Feels Secure With
Welcome back to the Grounded Union Podcast. We are on season five episode eight, and we are talking about becoming a man your wife feels secure with. Now I want you guys to know how much we love you. If you are listening to the podcast or watching the podcast on video and you see that we're wearing a sweater, long sleeve.
Caitlyn:Oh my gosh. I know.
Brandon:Now you can't tell through the video, but it's like 80 degrees inside of our room right now.
Caitlyn:I think we have never seen
Brandon:We do have the fan we have the fan blowing here in Maui that's quite warm. There's no air conditioning in this room. And so
Caitlyn:We just ran out of short sleeve shirts to wear.
Brandon:Yeah. If you ever see
Caitlyn:You gotta find nine shirts. It's actually kinda hard.
Brandon:A beadlet of sweat. That's because we are here pouring out our hearts in sweaters to let you know what's going on. So just just a little behind the scenes. I know we we talk about how, we talk about really serious topics on this podcast because they are serious, and I just want you guys to know, like, life is so good. Some of you guys say, whenever Caitlyn talks about the betrayal, I see the pain in her eyes.
Brandon:You guys are in pain right now, and that's okay. Like, know the pain you're in. When we talk about the pain, we're not, like, suffering on a daily basis. I want you guys to know, like, we freaking love our life. I don't use the word sobriety because it it's kinda like this, like, little gold star men try to give themselves after addiction.
Brandon:I have been in sobriety. I have we have been in a healed marriage, a thriving marriage for seven years. And we're grateful for the opportunity to talk about the pain and validate the pain because the pain is real. Right. And we do not live in a constant state of pain.
Brandon:So, we live we live a very joyous, vibrant life. We are willing to talk about it and to go deep into it because we know how valuable it is to share our story to spark inspiration in your story. So I just want you guys to know that, like, after the shows get done, we don't go cry in in the in the bedroom and and have a really hard night. Like, after this, we're gonna get our kids, put them on a bike, and we're gonna go ride bikes, and we're gonna eat dinner together. And it's beautiful, and we love our
Caitlyn:Essentially going back in time to revisit what we went through so that we can share a story of healing and redemption and to share like, okay, as we reflect, this is what we did to heal, right?
Brandon:Although we could do a lighthearted marriage podcast where we just talk about funny things. You guys are in the thick of it.
Caitlyn:Right.
Brandon:And I didn't know a couple of years ago that I was going to start, we were going to start a podcast that was going to be helping couples healing from betrayal, addiction, broken trust, like, and we didn't set out to serve you. We set out to tell our story and the story has resonated with those of you that resonate with it. And so we continue to tell our story for your benefit. And we are so honored to have you here on the podcast. So we're talking about this concept of a wife feeling secure with her husband.
Brandon:We've had several episodes where we talked about rebuilding trust and Caitlyn's referenced the inner workings of me changing, like how I operated in the world. And we want to touch on some of those in this episode to be able to share like, okay, what were the changes that took place secondarily outside of just no longer being in the addiction? What changed about me that made the relationship enjoyable, that made trusting, that made feeling safe possible? And I want I want to give you guys a vision for that because I think if you haven't known I've said this many times, I'm going say it again because we love repetition creates a mastery.
Brandon:If you don't like how your wife treats you right now, if you don't like how you guys are connected and you're just coming out of addiction, she hasn't known a sober you.
Brandon:Your relationship hasn't been able to experience life without addiction, without the affair, life without the double life. So you actually have never had a marriage on a clean slate. She doesn't know you with a clear mind, with no secrets, with no baggage. You don't know you. And so we're really wanting to drive that home is that when you look at like creating safety and her feeling secure and you being a man that she respects and there's peace in the marriage, when I ask guys like what they want in their marriage, it's like, want peace.
Brandon:And I'm like, woah. And I had a false definition of peace several years ago, which was if nothing is going on, there is peace. If nothing's happening. So for me, peace meant laying down on the couch with my phone in my face, watching mindless videos, playing video games, peace and your marriage. I love this definition of peace.
Brandon:I just recently came up with, I'll submit it to Webster's dictionary. You guys can quote it and then please tag me, but peace is being fully alert, fully awake, fully in the moment and completely at ease. That's peace in your marriage. When everything about you, who you are, who your wife is, all the details of your past, your sexual history, everything you've ever done, all that has shaped you, all that you want to do. Is held and known in reality in plain language, in plain sight, there's no plain sight, there's no hiddenness.
Brandon:And with everything on the table, both of you are at ease. That's peace in a relationship. When I'm not on edge because I don't know what I'm gonna what version of Caitlyn I'm gonna get, when I'm tiptoeing around the living room because I'm going to go sneak on my phone to look at porn. Like, that's not peace. Trying to remove tension by sneaking around or dealing with all this conflict all the time because you guys don't know each other is miserable.
Brandon:So instead of trying to create a false sense of safety in your relationship by managing your wife's perception of you, you actually have to become the man that she respects. The man that creates peace. Alert reality with ease, with real peace baked in the middle.
Brandon:So I want you to, you know, think about it. It's like, well, my wife doesn't respect me. Don't get how hard she is on me. Do you respect you? Do you respect the man that you are? Are you at peace with yourself? And when I was faced with these questions, when I was thinking about like, oh, I don't like how Caitlyn talks to me or why doesn't she do this or why doesn't she do that?
Brandon:I'm like, do I want her to do that? Like, I was consulting from the outside, like, does the man that I am today, does he deserve respect? Does he is he a trustworthy man? Is he a man that creates safety for his family? And and most of those questions were getting a no.
Brandon:No. No. So either I'm not capable of change or I've been approaching my relationship dishonestly from a lens of trying to get her to think a certain way about me instead of becoming a man. I was gonna say something that didn't make sense. I was gonna say becoming a man that demands respect.
Brandon:I don't ever demand respect from Caitlyn, but I tell you what, when I'm taking care of myself, like physically, if I'm like exercising, if I'm getting sleep, if I have a vision for my day, if I have purpose for my life, if I communicate how I feel towards her and the kids, she's crazy about me.
Caitlyn:It creates respect.
Brandon:When I'm passive, when I was anxious and stuck swirling in my thoughts, not engaging our life, not engaging our family, leaving all big decisions up to her. She was desperate for me to step up and do something. She was having to poke the bear and see if she could get me to wake up. And I didn't like that version of her. I didn't like how she treated me.
Brandon:She didn't feel safe. She's like, man, if if you're not gonna play your role in the partnership, like, I'm gonna have to do your role in my role. That doesn't make me feel very safe. I'm gonna have to do play the this masculine feminine balance of both both parties, and that's where a lot of this toxic, swirly stuff that goes on in the relationship is when you left part of you turned off. You're you're you're not there, and so your wife doesn't have something to orient around.
Brandon:She doesn't know the real you. So how could she respect the man that you are? How could she admire the qualities that you exude? Because at a core level, you probably don't admire those things either. So we're not going to just leave you hopeless like, well, shoot.
Brandon:Yeah. This is why my wife doesn't like me. This is why I don't like me. It's like, we've got hope for this in this episode, but that's that's kind of the foundation. If if you don't respect you, why would you think your wife would?
Caitlyn:Yeah. Because if, like Brandon's saying, if you're in a position where you're essentially not really at home with yourself, then your wife, your spouse does have to come in and take over those roles, right? And that was the first couple years of our marriage, which then I remember when we even went to marriage counseling, know, they described it as this like marriage dance, and it's like, you know, now you both have these like toxic patterns, and it's like, sure, we could put all these labels on it, but it's really just quite simple. When someone in the relationship takes no ownership or part or, you know, tenacity to heal, then the other person has to take over all that. Okay, now I have to help you remind you to do this.
Caitlyn:Okay, now I gotta step up and do this. Now I gotta be the one to initiate the conversations. Now I gotta be the one to check-in with you. When it's like, yeah, sure, that is a toxic dance. Or we could just remove all the labels and just go, okay, woah, this is a sign that it's time to heal, right?
Caitlyn:Because the second Brandon went, okay, I'm not gonna wait for my wife to initiate the change. I'm not gonna wait for her to drag all of the answers out of me. I'm not even gonna wait for her to ask me the questions. Like, I'm gonna initiate. I'm gonna take back ownership of my life.
Caitlyn:I'm gonna step back into my power. I'm gonna literally decide to be the one to bring up the conversations, to bring up the healing. Like, that's when attraction like, people are always like, how did Brandon decide? Like, how did he actually heal and change? Like, like, because they just want their husbands to wake up.
Caitlyn:And it's like, when he stopped waiting for me to be the driver of everything, and when he went, woah, if we're gonna get anywhere in life, I'm gonna need to actually get into the driver's seat and drive my own car.
Brandon:That's important. The biggest safety alarms that go off in your wife's head, I'm gonna I'm gonna list some of these. If you want your wife to feel secure and to like trust you into like all these qualities we're talking about, we got to kind of address what things make her feel the opposite. So if, if you do these things, it communicates to your wife that she is not safe and that you are not trustworthy. And so the first one is, is passivity.
Brandon:A man that is passive communicates that he believes he's funded. There's fundamentally something flawed about him. And he's, he's almost hiding. He's hiding his himself to the world, to his responsibilities. He's abdicating that sense of leadership and responsibility to somebody else.
Brandon:And so your wife knows that she can kind of pick up your slack. And that was often what Caitlyn had to do is make the decisions and move everything forward. And it also, it also says that you're easily persuaded by others around you. So if you're passive, that means at work, if the guys are passing around nudes, if somebody's hitting on you, if you're being asked to do something that you don't believe in, your wife, if she sees that you're passive with her, you're going be passive elsewhere, that you're not going to speak up for yourself that you don't have a voice. And so she's saying, may they may they like.
Brandon:I can't give my allegiance and my trust to a man that doesn't have an operating system. It doesn't have values. So with that, that's a red flag. That's an alarm system to her nervous system alarm to her nervous system. Another one is anxiety.
Brandon:I was plagued with anxiety when I was living in addiction. Guys, I've shared the story, but like I had a panic attack in the Portland International Airport because when you're living a double life, you have such minimal capacity for intensity. So when, when your family requires you to show up present and strong and you can't. Your wife doesn't feel safe. Caitlyn didn't feel safe.
Brandon:The Portland Airport one like, guys, I w I had been fasting, doing my spiritual work, which was in the last episode last week. If you haven't listened to it, go listen to it. I've been praying and fasting, and I've been getting more and more miserable. I had not actually chosen to engage my emotions or my reality or my wife or or everything that was in front of me. Kept trying to escape it.
Brandon:Well, when you're trying to do this dance to avoid tension at all costs and you're you're constantly scanning the horizon for threats, when I'm constantly trying to not objectify women, still doing it when I'm scrolling on my phone and I'm just trying to escape my life. There's nothing about that that creates security for your wife. And so leading up to my panic attack, the only time, like I said earlier on podcast, the only time I felt safe, felt peace in my body was laying on the couch with the phone on my face. And so we're running late to the airport has already like feeling anxious. It's super hot.
Brandon:We were on a shuttle bus trying to get to the airport and I'm like, dude, we're not gonna. The plane is already boarding and we hadn't even gotten into the airport. I'm like, this is horrible. Right before that, daughter had pooped in her car seat. There was ash falling from the sky.
Brandon:It's like 95 degrees trying to clean it up while getting onto this bus. I'm like, babe, we're not going to make it. And she's like, put your big boy pants on everything. She's always, it's so funny. I mean, even to this day, Caitlyn was like, everything's going to work out fine.
Brandon:Let's just keep going. This is trust in life. And I'm like, no. So I'm freaking out, freaking out. And I step into the airport and Caitlyn's laughing now.
Brandon:Wasn't funny. I step into the airport and the walls just start closing in around me. I can hardly breathe. My head just gets like, it feels like it weighs 50 pounds and I just collapsed on the floor. And I tell Caitlyn, we're not going, we're not getting on the flight.
Brandon:We can't, I can't do it. And I'm just like on this, I'm like in the fetal position. We have a doc, we have our eight year, like, eight month old at this time. And Caitlyn's like, can you watch the bags? I'm going to go talk to the Southwest airlines.
Brandon:And they said, you know what? We can put you on another flight. Unfortunately, cause your husband's kicking and screaming over there. You are going to miss this next flight. We could have put you on.
Brandon:And we had to wait like five hours. And I, I, yeah, had a full blown panic attack, had a horrible time on that whole trip. And I was plagued with anxiety for years. And you know what it was from was I was trying to manage everybody else's expectation and actually, instead of actually living from truth and reality. And that was exhausting to my nervous system.
Brandon:I was worn out. Everybody else around me was worn out. And what that also led to was this other alarm that told Caitlyn she wasn't safe, which was I didn't follow through on things. Didn't, I could commit to things verbally and then not take care of them in my actions. And all of those things.
Brandon:Put together creates in a relationship. Talk about the addiction, but like these are the byproducts of addiction, the passivity of the anxiety, the lack of follow through our relationship, our communication, our connection was miserable. Because how are you supposed to connect to the passive, anxious man who doesn't follow through on this word? Like, he's not very much fun to be around. And I didn't like the version of Caitlyn that I got.
Brandon:And so this is the byproduct of living your life. I was gonna say not to the fullest, but it's, it's actually like when you are not home in your body, these are the things and the characteristics that begin to come out and to put the cherry on top. Caitlyn sharing her frustration with this experience of me, the lack of safety she felt, the lack of connection. I just was intimidated by it. I was like, I don't know what to I don't tell you this is who I am.
Brandon:I'm doing my best. I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying. And when you get into that state where it feels like you're, you're playing from behind where you're just like, I'm losing, I'm losing.
Brandon:How can I, how can I pick up traction? And that's why facing reality is such a powerful decision because the reason you're anxious passive, and don't follow through and you're intimidated by your wife and she doesn't trust you is because there's probably a lot under the surface. And a lot of the symptoms of our relation of our relationship were stemming from Caitlyn feeling like something was off. And then all of these secondary syndromes that were taking place was really just because I wasn't living an honest life. And I think Caitlyn could feel that.
Brandon:And that's exhausting to be married to somebody that you don't know. I just remember Caitlyn continuing always saying like, I just, I want to know each other. I want to be intimate. I want to, I want to share in this life. I've I just kept pushing and pushing her away because that's all I knew to do.
Brandon:And meanwhile, she feels less and less safe, and there's more and more history of me not choosing to to lean in into my own strength, into my own voice because at my core, that person was completely shut down.
Caitlyn:Mhmm. Yeah. Because when you have a life where you're keeping a lot of secrets, which maybe you're like, why do they always freaking bring this up? And it's like, I'm actually I already knew before we started this podcast, even before we merged Brandon's men's app and made it a couple's app, I knew that people carried secrets just like from the we had began kind of sharing our story within our community, right? Like very small community, mainly family and a couple friends, because they had watched us go through this, and then we would hear feedback you know, other people that were in similar situations.
Caitlyn:And the more the message got louder, the more I'm like, oh my gosh. Like, it feels like 90% of America is walking around with a bag of lies. And there's a lot of reasons why, and we talk about a lot of them in the podcast, and you know, belief systems, how we were raised, all of that. And what's happening is when you're carrying around this bag of lies, a lot of people are, no matter if they're big lies, little lies, everywhere in between, you have to have little lies to get to the big lies, Your soul begins to shut down. So if we're just talking about, we're just keeping it to the topic of, you know, your wife not feeling secure with you, your spouse not feeling secure with you.
Caitlyn:It's like, how can you feel secure with someone who is keeping all these things with you? Like, think about a secure attachment. Think about literally, I always use the example of magnets because in my mind it just makes so much sense. Like, when we came into union together, we were two souls that united and became one. Right?
Caitlyn:So you take two magnets. My kids are always playing with magnet tiles. Right? So I just picture those little squares. You take the two of them together.
Caitlyn:When we got married, we're two separate magnets that connect as one. Right? Our magnets are supposed to perfectly connect. Like you hold it and you're like, oh this is one magnet right now, you know? Well, when you're keeping things from each other, whether it's one person or both of you, it's like we flip the magnets the opposite way and no matter how hard you try to connect, there's always this gap, this space that you can't fully connect the magnets, right?
Caitlyn:You can't create a secure attachment in your union, so your wife, your husband, if roles are reversed, is not going to feel secure and safe in the relationship when you have a bag of secrets. And you might go, well, they don't know that I have these secrets. Well, duh, they're secrets. Right? You don't have to share your secrets out loud for your spouse to know you're keeping secrets.
Caitlyn:I knew that Brandon was hiding things from me and of course, we try to bring it up. You guys have heard the stories, and there would be some, well, aren't you just insecure? And I'm just reading my bible, and this is the man's battle, and whatever the narratives are. Right? I would hear it all, and it's like, okay.
Caitlyn:I didn't know what the secrets were. I just knew that there was until 2019 and I'm like, I'm done. Like, I don't want there to be any secrets anymore. And for most of you in in in a married relationship because you have communicated, I'm uniting my soul with you, you know when there's something being hidden, right? And so it's impossible to create a relationship where there is security, where there is safety, where there is connection, where there is intimacy, when there's things being kept from you, right?
Caitlyn:That's why we focus so much on secrets. That's why we focus so much on being honest because that was what created a new marriage. That's the pivoting point when Brandon went from all those things he just described, passive, anxious, not following through on his word, committing to me one thing and then doing something different, lying and hiding. Like, when he radically shifted is when he went, okay, no more bags of secrets, no more lying, no more hiddenness. That's like his entire person changed.
Caitlyn:And you can't really like, you can try to do all the manly hoorah things all you want. You can keep trying and trying and trying. You can go to the men's camps, go to the men's intensives, do the men's things. And if you're not gonna get rid of your secrets, you can't create the security in your relationship.
Brandon:Yeah. Nice guys are nasty guys. I remember getting introduced in some of the nice guy work right at the beginning of our our healing phase, and I was like, what do you mean nice guys are nasty guys? I kept saying it's like, can you can't do all this stuff and have a bag of I keep thinking of the game bag of nouns, a bag of secrets. It's not nice.
Brandon:Living your life from dishonesty and from things that are not real is not nice. No matter how much you do for the family, how hard you work for your job, staying up late for the kids, taking out the trash. If at your core, there's a significant part of you you are keeping from your wife, there's no safety you're giving her. You bring home the bacon, you make a paycheck, you pay your bills because you're such a nice guy. You tell your wife what she wants to hear and she still doesn't feel safe.
Brandon:It's not working. They say a happy, happy wife, happy life. You trying to make your wife happy by telling her what she wants to hear, by saying whatever you want, sweetie, wherever you want to go, I don't care. It's up to you. She's miserable because at your core, the real you is hidden.
Brandon:It's hidden behind the lies. It's hidden behind deception. Nobody knows who you really are. You're not sincere. Being nice for the sake of approval from your wife, from a colleague, from somebody that isn't the real you is not nice.
Brandon:It's actually very perverted. It's very disgusting to act one way to get the approval of others if it's not truly who you are. And your wife can feel that. And that's why there's not the security that you long to create for her is because convincing her that you're a good guy is not what she wants. She doesn't want a good guy.
Brandon:Even if you just look at relationships in general, men often gravitate gravitate towards bad guys, guys that are more clear. Like, you know, I drink, I do this. And it's like, this is who I am. It's like, at least they know who he is.
Caitlyn:Women gravitate towards men.
Brandon:What did I say?
Caitlyn:You said men.
Brandon:Men, sorry. Not men that I was meaning in the dating world, like, women are like, I like men that they might be bad, and it's like, why did why did she leave him the nice guy for the bad guy? It's like, well, because she knew what he was about. The world respects men that actually have a clear vision for their life. And if you're living a double life, a life full of secrets and deception, you don't have a clear vision because you're spending so much energy trying to manage everybody's perception of you.
Brandon:An addiction is a massive time commitment, a massive energy commitment. And you trying to just be nice and and dodge everything is it is exhausting. And so instead of trying to keep your wife in the dark about who you really are, if you want to make her feel safe, get radically honest. And I might start with right now listening to the podcast. You're like, oh shoot, I thought she sent me a good one about how to, like, could listen better.
Brandon:These guys are crazy. They're asking me to get on this. Like if you want to become a real man, tell your wife like, Hey, I've been looking at porn. You know what? It hasn't gotten physical yet, but I've been flirting with this gal from work and it's completely unacceptable.
Brandon:And you know what? Like I look at raunchy accounts on social media all the time and I've been masturbating. I don't tell you any about any of it. Like, the only reason you don't tell her is because you don't believe you can change. And if you haven't listened to this, go binge watch our podcast and we'll tell you, you can freaking change.
Brandon:If you're a guy and I have this here, I keep forgetting to mention it. If you're a guy that's like, well, need like the step by steps. I did write 7 steps to save your marriage. So we talked about in the podcast written in a book. You can get the audio book as well for free.
Brandon:If you go to sevenstepsbook.com, but like if you need the roadmap, we've created the roadmap. Really it's up to you. Are you going to be honest with yourself? Are you going to let her see the real you? That's when she's like, okay.
Brandon:At first, you're be like, I hate you. I never want, I don't want be married to you. You're disgusting. And if you stay true to true to course, to healing, to becoming a real man, she'll be like, woah, I respect that guy. I love this man.
Brandon:Because now the real man is here. Caitlyn has tremendous respect for me. She she loves who I am. She she wants to be close to me because when she gets close to me, you know what she finds out? This is who I am.
Brandon:There's not a a secondary person that's hiding out somewhere. I also don't have to pull away from her to keep a little bit of space because I feel uncomfortable being intimate because of everything else happening in my life. There isn't these closets I have to keep shut to try to manage her. And so that's when your relationship begins to take a really powerful turn is when you get honest. So if you're listening to the podcast, today's a good day to get honest.
Caitlyn:Yeah. The results of dishonesty are the list of things Brandon mentioned, like passivity, not following through on your word, anxiety. We could even add to this what I see often from men that are entering into our couples app is they carry a large amount of apathy, almost like this. I don't care about my life. I don't care about even trying to heal.
Caitlyn:I don't even care about the fact that my wife's crying. Like, might not even put it in that words, but it's just like, it's a low energy, low vitality, massive amounts of apathy. Like, it's just low care. Low care for anything. Low care for change because the weight of all of the dishonesty on your back makes you feel like, how could I like, you're looking at the hill, like the hike that you're about to set on.
Caitlyn:You're like, how could I possibly make it to the top of that? I can't, right? So it's like the healing journey looks so steep, and you don't realize like, oh, if I drop the dishonesty, the bag of secrets right here, I open it up and I let the truth out, I can make it to the top of the hill, right?
Brandon:Yeah.
Caitlyn:And you also like, I remember like Brandon used to think he'd be crippled with anxiety for forever, which I know that the conversation around anxiety and depression is a very, like, triggering one that has a lot of heightened emotions, and I won't get into all of our belief systems around it. I just fully believe that everyone is capable of healing from everything that they want to heal from, including anxiety and depression. And if you're someone, I don't think that the root cause of anxiety is secrets. And I do think that keeping secrets causes anxiety, right? So just because you have anxiety doesn't mean you have secrets.
Caitlyn:And if you do have secrets, you most likely do have anxiety because to live with secrets and then face someone every single day that you don't want to see your secrets, that's like literally definition of how you could cause anxiety. Like, I have these secrets. I don't want you to know them, but I'm gonna wake up and see you every single day.
Brandon:Yeah.
Caitlyn:Well, that's why you're gonna try to avoid seeing that person because then hopefully you'll reduce your anxiety a little bit. That's why you're gonna start working a lot more. That's why your screen time's gonna go up. That's why you're gonna say that you love sports even though you don't even really care about sports. It's like easier to love sports because then there's no threat to the bag of secrets with the sports game on.
Caitlyn:Yeah. But making dinner with my wife with no noise and sitting down, like, how many people like, I almost took a couple pictures the other day when we went out as a family because I was so shocked. I'm like, I know it's a thing and everyone knows about it, but still if you go out and look around, like, look at how many couples are on whatever they wanna call it. Maybe it's a date, maybe it's not. And they're just out running errands and getting coffee and getting food.
Caitlyn:And they're just both sitting there on their phones. And I'm like, Oh my gosh. I could almost guarantee, like, if I went and interviewed them, they have secrets they're keeping from each other.
Brandon:Yeah.
Caitlyn:Because if you don't have secrets you're keeping from each other, you're really freaking excited to have your drink and your food sitting across from the person that you love the most to look in their eyes and talk. Like, why do we say that we love this person so much that we've committed our life to them to spend every day with them? And yet when we go out to have this time together, we love each other so much that we can't wait to get on our phones. Like what? No, you don't love each other if you're getting on your phones, you love your phone.
Caitlyn:You love escaping. You love dissociating. And guess what? When you don't have secrets anymore, you'll actually love each other. You'll actually love being together.
Caitlyn:You're not gonna carry around that anxiety because you're not scared of them finding anything out about you anymore. You're not gonna carry around that apathy, that low energy, like low drive for your life because you dropped all the weight of those secrets. And people just need to hear this over and over again because it's terrifying to rip open the bag of secrets. But yet, isn't it terrifying to live a life that you really just don't like that much? Isn't it terrifying to be married to someone you're actually scared of?
Caitlyn:Isn't it terrifying waking up every single day scared that your spouse is gonna find out something about you? Like, we all know that everyone gets caught. All secrets come to the light. Truth is gonna be found out at some point. Like, that's pretty freaking scary if you've got a bag of secrets, right?
Caitlyn:Like, is it actually really that scary to open up the bag of secrets and to embark on the healing journey? To love your wife, to love your husband, to love your legacy that you're creating, to love that time that you get together. And the benefit of that is you come home, you come alive. Yeah. So you don't carry around this passivity anymore.
Caitlyn:You don't carry around this apathy. You don't carry around all these negative attributes because you're able to be you, to see yourself, and to heal yourself.
Brandon:I remember when Caitlyn wanted quality time, it freaked me out. I remember going on so many dates where I was so anxious because like Caitlyn looking directly at me and they're not being like, I can't
Caitlyn:I wouldn't let us get on our phones. I never have and ever will.
Brandon:I couldn't like get on my phone to like check out and like, she's just staring at me and I just remember feeling the tension build of like, I can't stay in this moment. I can't, I don't know how to exist in this authentic plane. And that has shifted so dramatically when there was no longer this big part of me, was needing to, to keep back and just being able to like fully enjoy my wife. And that's when she feels safe. Like when, when, when there's a, when your wife is trying to like give herself to you and it's not being reciprocated, she's just, it's, it's exhausting for both of you.
Brandon:And I want to go over a few characteristics. I think men think, okay, so who am I supposed to be? Like, what is she, what does my wife want from me? Like at her core, like, what is she looking for? Like, just tell me so I can go do it.
Brandon:And it's not I wish I could tell you it was that simple where you just gotta go plug it in, but I want
Caitlyn:Get out of the secrets. Just start.
Brandon:Get out of the secrets. That's gonna help. Your wife, actually, she doesn't want you to be predictable in the sense of, like, this be this bump on a log where it's like, know what I'm going get. She wants, she doesn't want you to be dependable though. So I think we think about like men being, want to be her rock, but that doesn't mean you're like unavailable or inaccessible.
Brandon:It means that she can depend on you being present. So when you think about like, what is she looking for me? I want you to think about being present in the moment that creates tremendous safety. If your mind's always thinking about something in the past, something in the future, something that's not in present moment. She doesn't feel like she has you.
Brandon:And when she doesn't feel like she has you, she has to like ask things, do things to get your attention, voice concerns, and then you don't know how to deal with them. If you want to just focus on one thing, and this is assuming that you've gotten honest and you're rebuilding your relationship. Focus on being in the present moment with your wife and kids and those in front of you. And you'll be shocked at how good your life gets. Like, just focus on, I want my attention to be on the thing I'm doing instead of trying to distract or pull away.
Brandon:She will immediately feel like, woah, he's consciously aware of what's going on and what's happening in the, in the room, what needs to be done next. And it's not like this frantic. I want to make sure that everything's good for her. It's just, just relax Peace.
Caitlyn:Yep.
Brandon:Fully alert. Fully at ease. You and your wife are making dinner. Take a deep breath. There's nothing to be anxious about. Just lick at her and enjoy her. That unlocks her as well as stability.
Brandon:Men often, like pride themselves in trying to create stability for their lives, their their their families. Stability doesn't mean boring. It doesn't mean we like do the bare minimum to get by.
Brandon:It's like stable means I build a great foundation for my wife and kids for us to enjoy and connect from. So think about stability, from, not from a sense of being boring. And then if you really want to maximize and accelerate this healing process, needed to develop emotional mastery through embodiment work. That is step four of the 7 steps to save your marriage from my book is to develop emotional mastery. Most men weren't taught how to feel to feel anxiety, to generate the emotions you want to feel.
Brandon:And so you're like, are you telling me I need to become a weak emotional man? I actually think it's weak to not feel emotion. Cause
Caitlyn:there's no person that doesn't feel emotion. So if you're saying it's weak to feel emotions, that just means you've suppressed your emotions. It's not that you actually don't have emotions or you don't feel things, you've just shoved them down, which as we all know has very negative side effects.
Brandon:Yeah, picture this, picture a man that can see somebody in pain, go to them with compassion, and infuse strength and hope into that person's life. We've all met, maybe you've met somebody that has the details taken care of, or somebody, a man that, that makes you feel safe when you're around him, because you don't feel like they need anything from you. You don't feel like they're taking things from you. You, you like know what you're getting from them. You know, that they've come to add value to leave a positive, safe impact.
Brandon:And also I think like the emotional mastery is being able to feel the full spectrum of emotion, grief, sorrow, and joy. And you could feel those in the same day. And so I think for you to think about, like, what does it mean for me to have emotional capacity? It's to be able to feel and still choose the emotions I want to generate in my relationship and in my life. So instead of being dragged around by everything that's going on in the world, you decide when you wake up, you decide when you enter a room, you decide when you enter a conversation.
Brandon:How are you showing up? What emotions do you want to generate? Like, want to bring peace. I want to bring a sense of calm. I want to bring a sense of stability to this situation.
Brandon:I want to bring love, whatever the emotion is, bring that emotion and you will see your wife begin to feel, to feel safe with you. When you're clear on why you're here, when you have a vision as a man, you everybody benefits. When you're waiting for somebody else to define that for you and you're wavering in your commitment to yourself, to others, everybody loses. And so I think the best way to describe this process is self initiation. In some cultures around the world, they initiate young men in a tribal sense, and they tell them, like, rites of passage.
Brandon:And for a lot of adult men, we didn't have that experience. We didn't have the experience of being initiated into, you're the go to guy now. Like, take the reins. And we're kind of sitting around waiting, like, when do I get the baton passed me? When do I find out that I am mature and responsible?
Brandon:And I just want to say from one man to another today, nobody else is going to come save your marriage. Nobody else is going to come to you and say, Hey, it's time. It's time to become a man. And so I think that although, yes, you could go to a retreat in Norway with Wim Hof and do a men's initiation tour, I'm sure it'd be fun. And you can do, you can go to all these retreats and do all the things.
Brandon:You can even listen to this podcast. You can listen to me. You can read the books. At the end of the day, you are the one creating your own legacy. You are the one setting the emotional tone for your children and your wife.
Brandon:And the beauty in that is it can happen quickly. The shift can happen immediately. And so just write down how you want to show up in the world and begin taking daily actions towards that. And you'll be shocked at how people begin to respond to you. When I started creating a daily embodiment practice, which we talk about in our community app, a daily practice of embodiment, mindfulness, emotional exercises.
Brandon:People ask me if I got taller and I was like, no, because I'm an adult and I had already finished growing, but you will actually feel different to those around you when you are fully occupying your body and you are mindful and intentional about how you're showing up in the world. And your wife will be like, this guy, I I can feel you. You're not just existing in your mind. You actually are here in time and space.
Caitlyn:And when you develop emotional mastery, which you can only do when you're not carrying around any secrets because which we say every episode.
Brandon:Very important aspects.
Caitlyn:Very important. If you have a bunch of secrets, bunch of dishonesty, you can't have emotional mastery because you have to suppress emotions to keep all of the secrets at bay. Right? So you have to actually get rid of your secrets to develop emotional mastery, is exactly what I watched with Brandon. He he tried all the things for the first five years to be an an emotionally masterful person, yet it always came at a wash because he still has all these secrets.
Caitlyn:So it's like, you might be trying to develop emotionally, but then you have to suppress your emotions to live with your addiction, to live with your secrets. So you really have to start there, that's always the starting point. And, okay, then once you do that, when you develop emotional mastery, which what does that even mean? It's like, oh, I know what I'm feeling and I know what I'm gonna do with that feeling, right? So if a positive feeling, that's kind of, you know, normally pretty self explanatory for people.
Caitlyn:If it's a negative feeling, this started back in early childhood, which is why that's one of the 7 steps in our framework, in our book, in our podcast, in our community. You gotta look back at your childhood because most likely, you were not taught healthy outlets on what to do with your negative emotions. You were most likely taught to suppress them. You were most likely spanked. You were most likely put into your room.
Caitlyn:You most likely witnessed your parents endure something negative and have an unhealthy coping mechanism, right? So many of us grew up in that type of environment, so then we didn't grow up with the stability, with the security, with the tools to know what to do with our emotions. So now you're an adult and you get to learn emotional mastery, which means I feel something and this is what I'm going to do about it. Right? So like, I'm feeling negative, I'm going to go for a walk.
Caitlyn:I'm going to draw. I'm going to journal. I'm gonna go sit by the river. I'm just gonna go lay out in the grass. I'm gonna go lay out under the sun.
Caitlyn:Whatever it is, you develop your tools, your arsenal of this is how I handle negative situations, negative emotions. This is what I do with positive emotions. Even like, for instance, our nine year old when she gets really excited, she needs help harnessing that because unmastered excitement can actually turn to destruction. Right? Like, if you're feeling really excited about something, you might just go out and blow it.
Caitlyn:Right? So it's like we still develop tools for positive emotions too. Like, I'm like, if you're excited, you can jump up and down and say, I'm excited, instead of like running around screaming. Do you see the difference? Obviously, I'm showing you in a nine year old's body, but like she feels so much excitement that it gets pent up that she just starts like, you know, and I'm like, okay, what about if you were to be like, yay, I'm so excited, right?
Caitlyn:You're releasing the emotion. So this is negative and positive emotions developing mastery in just first off being aware of what you're feeling.
Caitlyn:And when I watched Brandon release his secrets and develop emotional mastery and step into his body through doing specific embodiment practices, I watched him become a secure, stable, confident, at home husband, right? This is all in the window of when our marriage began to transform, like it really goes hand in hand. Once you come out of the darkness with all of your hiddenness, you step into the light of fully seeing, fully understanding yourself.
Caitlyn:This is why people are scared to leave the the darkness of their secrets because they actually don't wanna feel because they've never felt. And honestly, there is this moment in time where it might be kind of daunting, but then it's actually so freeing. Because think about it, to suppress your emotions all the time, like Brene Brown says this, you can't really like just turn off some emotions. You eventually turn off all of them. That's why a lot of people in addiction have apathy.
Caitlyn:It's not like you just turned off all the negative emotions. You actually had to forgo all the positive ones too. So when you step out of the darkness into the light, you're gonna feel the negative emotions, but you're gonna know what to do with them. And then guess what? You get to feel all the positive, beautiful emotions and sensations of life.
Caitlyn:Like you get that is life. It's feeling the full spectrum of emotions, but yet having a full arsenal of what to do with those, right? So life isn't daunting and overwhelming anymore. It's actually really good. It's really wholesome.
Caitlyn:It's really alive and vibrant because you're coming back home to yourself, you're waking up. This is when your relationship comes back on. This is when you can go out to coffee sit with each other because you know how to feel. You can't, like Brandon's saying, being present, like, that's so crucial. Being present in the moment, I remember when Brandon was able to make that shift to actually be there, like, and I could tell, like, woah, he's here.
Caitlyn:His mind isn't wandering elsewhere. His eyes aren't wandering elsewhere. He's not in this dissociative realm. He's not anxious and like, Oh gosh, I don't have my phone. I don't have my thing.
Caitlyn:What do I do? Like, when he was actually there, it's like, you have to be able to be in your body, to be in your emotions, to create that presence. Isn't that the purpose of life? Like, to be present with those that we love most? To be present with our mission and purpose here in the world?
Brandon:So good.
Caitlyn:That's when we come alive, right?
Brandon:This coming alive is where I wanna I wanna, like, land this for you guys is I think most men are afraid to come alive. Specifically, and we talk about throughout the whole podcast, we haven't talked about as much this one. When it comes to our sexuality, I'd rather live numb than live my sexual brokenness louder. And the good news is when you choose to heal and get the secrets out, you coming alive does not mean that this sexual demon, this monster inside of you that you've created, gets stronger. That's actually the facade is like, if I fully felt, then I'd I'd have all this all these issues I couldn't manage.
Brandon:And the whole thing is when you come back alive, your life becomes very peaceful. It begins to make sense. There's nothing your sexual addiction. Is not a mystery with enough information. Any decision makes sense.
Brandon:It makes sense why you did what you did. You just haven't looked at the information. And so you're not actually like this walking erection that you can't control and you just need to numb out and try to isolate so that you don't do something really naughty. You're already doing you've already done all the naughty things. Now this emotional mastery piece is like, oh, running from pain, running from feeling this sense of connection and vulnerability.
Brandon:That's what fueled the addiction. And so, you can let go of this notion of like, if I begin to feel again, I don't know if I could stand it. No. When you begin to feel again, you unlock all of the capacity and all the power you need to change. And so that's what we're talking about here in the podcast.
Brandon:If you want to go deeper in that, I am so proud of this book. I love this. It took two years to write this. I wrote 7 steps to save your marriage. It's a guidebook for men rebuilding trust after addiction and sexual betrayal.
Brandon:If you're on the path to healing and you wanna pick up a copy, you can go to sevenstepsbook.com. If you preorder a copy, you also get the audiobook and the companion workbook as well, And I'm super stoked to share it with you. And if you were like, Hey, I want to go further. You can also join our couples program in the show notes below.
Brandon:And, next week will be our season finale. We're trying to just keep pumping these seasons out. And so we may have one right after that, but we're just going to keep trying to do a weekly release, but right now, next week is the season finale.
Brandon:We will be talking about how to protect your kids, not protect, but prevent your kids from having a porn addiction. So you might have older kids, you might have grandkids, you might have somebody that has, that has kids. And we're going to talk about our strategies next week on how we're going to give our kids a wholesome childhood and a wholesome sexuality without inducing fear.
Brandon:So we'll see you next week for our season finale.