#126: I’m Miserably Safe In My Marriage. Help!

00:01I'm miserably safe in my marriage. Help welcome to the Real Talk Recovery podcast with the Therapy Brothers. We're brothers. We're therapists and we know recovery. Bring your stories, your questions, your or successes with Real Recovery.00:32Good. This is a good topic today, Brandon. I think we're seeing a lot of this just from what we're dealing with in the day to day. So this will be a fun one to try to discuss today, no question. So how you been, Tyler? Been great, man.00:49Great weekend. This last weekend, my daughter Maddie came back from College, so I got to see her and she spent some time with the family and got her wisdom teeth out. So that's always fun. It's always funny when you can record your kids when they're still on the anesthesia. It's pretty entertaining. So when I got my wisdom teeth out, I don't know if you remember. I think you were on your mission. I think you were gone. But I swelled up huge. I think I had some impacted.01:18And mom flew down to her sisters that night in Dallas, and she calls and she's like, oh, my gosh, I put like, your pain meds in my purse. Yeah. And I was so just swollen. And anyways, yeah, I'm fine now, but thank goodness, years later and didn't you just get a wisdom tooth removed or something?01:50Yeah. So I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I actually had a really weird experience with my wisdom teeth where I actually think I might have been sexually assaulted. But that's a story for another. That's a whole other story. But yeah, the audience curious. I had my wisdom teeth taken out when I was like 1817 years old, but apparently they missed one because it was like two months ago. My dentist was like, hey, you got this wisdom tooth that's going to start pushing all your teeth around.02:20We need to go in and take that thing out. And I said, oh, all right. So I went as a grown adult and got one of them taken out. That sucks. Yeah. I guess it's the year of wisdom teeth for us because Lexie, my other daughter, just had hers done a couple of months ago. Anyway, there's some parallels to recovery. There having a wisdom tooth down in there wreaking havoc and pushing everything around. You got to step into the pain face that it's there and go root that thing out or continue to cause some problems.02:51I love that you tried to segue that back into our subject today because I think there is actually some truth to that. But I don't know how we were going to bring that in, but I'm glad you did. Well, all right, Tyler, let's go to the topic at hand. I tell people this. I say there's different types of relationships. There's relationships that end in healthy divorce.03:20So the couple navigates that. They remain friends, they work together with the custody and the kids and everything goes well. Right. That's onerelationship, another relationship. And I think this is the worst case scenario is when it ends in bad divorce, the couple hates each other and they don't navigate parenting very well. Right. So that happens.03:48Then there's this unhealthy stay together marriage where it's like we're scared of divorce. So we stay together and we don't change anything. We stay unhealthy, but we stay unhealthy in our relationship. Okay. And then there's actual healthy relationships. Right. Where I'm happy, I feel intimacy.04:16I love being in this relationship. We know how to communicate with each other. We can manage conflict. Okay. We're committed. We know we're both still all the way in on this thing, and we want it to be good. Right. So there's this continuum. Right. And to me, miserable divorce is hell is horrible, but also miserable marriage is hell and horrible. Right.04:43And from what I see, so many people fall into that category of I'm really not satisfied in my marriage, I'm not happy things aren't. Okay. But I've learned how to survive in this relationship. I've learned how to make it through and avoid divorce. But this is not what I want.05:09And I know so many people, so many of my clients, friends, people who live that way day in and day out in their marriage. Yeah. I agree with you, Brandon. And I think if you were to kind of like rank those things in terms of what you wouldn't want in terms of outcome, it would be miserable divorce at the bottom, and then the next level would be the one we're talking about here, which is what do we call it, a comfortable miserable marriage, meaning we're not going anywhere, but we're also not likely to get better.05:42So what you're saying, Tyler, is that would be worse, and I believe it'd be worse for the children and for the individuals in the marriage than a healthy divorce. Yeah. Well, statistically speaking, it actually shows that if you had to take your pick between those that a healthy divorce is better than either of the other two options we just mentioned for the children. The best option for the children is for people to actually work through their stuff and figure out how to save their marriage. Right? Right.06:09And that's the best outcome for most people, too, if there's a way to make that happen. But it takes two for that. So, Tyler, why do you think it is that people stay stuck in this hell, in this maybe Hell's a little strong, but in this comfortable misery of marriage, why do people stay stuck there? Why don't they make changes in order to be happy? That's a good question, Brandon.06:38I think there's so many layers to this that we're probably going to miss some of it when we talk about it. We'll try to outline some things today. I think the first thing is that when I look at why people stay together. You could look at it from an attachment perspective, and there's fear in the loss of whatever attachment I already have, even if it's not a very healthy attachment. So the fear of what it might mean to be alone is scary.07:04The fear of what it might mean to be divorced and what it says about me in terms of failure is scary. The fear about my spiritual beliefs. A lot of people we work with are highly religious, and there's a lot of belief around divorce and about marriage and not needing to stick it out and make it work, which I actually agree with. But that's fear, too, of, well, then I can't make certain choices.07:32There's another layer to this, which I believe is right down at the root, is that I don't believe in myself enough. I don't know who I am enough. I'm not in touch with my own values enough to have the courage to stand up and protect those values in a relationship.07:50And so it becomes easier to sort of kick it along down the road and pass it along to, well, I'm just sticking this out because I'm doing it for my religious beliefs or I'm doing it for the kids, or I'm doing it for almost like playing the martyr, instead of having to do what it takes to actually facilitate change, hopefully in the upward direction towards a good marriage. And then the last thing, Brandon, is that if I have to do those things to facilitate change, then I also am taking the risk that I could move things off of the comfortable spot that I'm in.08:25So I might not actually end up with what I really want. If I really want a really nice, good, supportive, interdependent relationship, the mode to get there is going to include discomfort and risk. When I set boundaries that I haven't set before, when I start stepping into places that I need to in order to invite a new relationship, my partner might choose other things.08:55Tyler, I like where you're going with this, and I want to keep going down this road. But could I say that if I don't love myself and if I'm not healthy, then I'll be able to stay in and tolerate an unhealthy relationship much better? Right. And so my unhealthiness actually preserves the relationship.09:23Yeah. Brenda, I actually think that this is something that I don't know. You can speak to this a little bit too. But in my work with my clients, I frequently run into situations where it's almost more hell to gain more education because you start to get these ideas in your head of, oh, I need to actually be my own person, and I need to actually set my own boundaries. I need to actually be transparent and honest. So they're getting that from their therapist or their group or whatever.09:51But every time they go back and then they test the waters on these new principles in their old relationship. It's like slammed down or it causes drama or there's like it doesn't feel comfortable. And so now they're stuck between this rock and a hard spot where they kind of know rationally. There's got to be a new way. But emotionally, it's so scary to put those things into practice because it could shift everything. And so, yeah, some people will subconsciously not get better in order to stay in a bad relationship.10:25It's interesting what we're talking about. I've kind of gotten obsessive over this Ukraine thing with Russia. I like history. And I like so I've been watching it really closely, and I was watching this one new segment where they were interviewing Russians in Russia and they had pictures and some videos of what was happening in Ukraine, and they were trying to show these Russian citizens what was happening in Ukraine.10:50And it was really fascinating what the response was. Many of them would just turn their head, literally turn their head and say, no, I'm not looking at that. I'm not going to pay attention. I'm not going to look at that. That's fake. That's not real. I'm not looking at that. I don't want to talk about that. And it's this dilemma of reality.11:17It's safer for me to not look at the reality here. And it's better for me to not look at the reality than to deal with it, because if I have to look at that, thenthere are repercussions and there's repercussions that I don't know if I can handle, and I don't know if I want to take on. So this is just classic denial. How does this relate to what we're talking about?11:47It's the same thing. If I really get honest with myself about my marriage, I really get honest with myself about where we're at as a couple and where I'm at my own individual recovery. And that is too hard. That's too scary. And so you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to act like everything's fine to my kids, to my Church leaders, and I'm going to eat it away.12:15I'm going to look at porn, I'm going to play video games, I'm going to watch TV. I'm going to become a workaholic. I'm going to numb away this pain and avoid this because I got to be in denial about that, even though the pain is very real. Yeah, right. And then, Brandon, when you get stuck in that cycle, what are the fruits of that cycle? Like, what does it lead to personally and relationally, if that's where you find yourself?12:49Well, it's interesting. What I said earlier is your unhealthiness actually supports staying in an unhealthy relationship. And so if I'm in a lot of pain resentment, there's a lot of void in my life of things that I know deep down I need. And so I go and I numb them out and let's say I eat a bunch of food or look at a bunch of porn or whatever. How do I feel about myself?13:18I feel worse about myself. So why am I worthy of love? I'm not. I don't feel worthy of love. So my spouse can treat me as bad as they want to. And I'll take that on. And I'll think, well, I'm not getting out of this relationship because no one will love me as I am because I'm trapped in this cycle. Right. So shame ends up feeding more shame, which ends up leading to more stuckness in the relationship.13:42And if you get two partners who are both in that same cycle, it's like you got this figure eight of shame going on, where we bump up against each other just enough to know that we still really wish we could make it work, but we can't figure out how to be truly real or authentic or vulnerable. So then we dip back into our other places of escape and shame, and we just kind of cycle up. The relationship becomes a source of shame and rejection, not a source of self discovery and intimacy.14:16But even if it's a source of shame and rejection, the relationship still preserves itself in that way, which is very twisted, and it's a counterfeit way of trying to preserve connection by way of avoiding rejection. And yet it never actually yields real connection. And so it's just this weird no man's land to be in.14:45And I think another fruit that comes from that pattern, and this is one that I always see a lot is it seeds resentment and resentment sometimes towards self, but a lot of times towards my partner, because now I can be justified in being mad at them because they're not meeting the needs that I want or the expectations that I've had, even though I've never asked for them because I'm putting on a front.15:12And eventually, in terms of this long term undertone of resentment. I'm a big fan of Jordan Peterson, and he talks about this in his newest book. He talks about a couple who has this underlying resentment for 40 years of their marriage. And you can tell that it's there when let's say he is lying in his deathbed and his wife comes to him and he can't move and she comes to clip his fingernails and she just happens to cut just close enough to thequick to make them bleed.15:43But she's doing service for him. Right. But she's still just taking out, taking the tax, taking a little bit of aggression to say, hey, I'm paying you back for all the things that didn't happen inside of our marriage over these years, even though I'm here to care for you. And that's where I think couples go in these long term plays where they figure out how to stay comfortable and don't actually learn how to battle for the reason we get into relationships in the first place, which is deep connection.16:19Yeah. So I'd really like to talk about how you get out of this, but before we do, I do want to take it a step further. It leads to this resentment that you're talking about, but then it leads to contempt, and it leads to hatred, like some really nasty energies, some of the worst that are out there.16:44And a person who's not a hateful person can turn into a hateful person when they feel like their relationship and their partner is such a source of shame for them or hopelessness or just stuckness. And it's interesting because they're still locked in like, look, we can't get divorced. We can't get divorced, but we hate each other. That to me is hell on Earth. That to me is horrible.17:14And the funny thing is they justify and they say, well, but I'm still in this for the kids. So the kids go home from school and they go to this home that's full of hatred. How good is that for the children, right. There are other reasons, Tyler. There's other just financial security reasons. I don't want to split up the finances.17:42I don't know if I can make it on my own or we have a certain lifestyle that we've been living. So there's those reasons as well, on top of some of the other stuff you mentioned, like some religious reasons to stay, some cultural reasons to stay. There are all those things I don't think the answer to get out of this type of a relationship is always divorced. I agree with you, Brandon.18:11In most cases, everyone's a little bit different. But in most cases, the best option is not divorce. But the best option is also not to stay where you're at. The best option is the work and drive and desire for something new with the risk that it could end in divorce. Yes.18:32And the best option is for both partners to come to the table and say, here's my mess, and I'm willing to show up as a different partner now and step into the pain and the hard work that it's going to take in order to not have the outcomes that we're getting anymore in our relationship. I want to do that work, and I hope that you do that work as well. I hope so. But I'm going to move forward and do that work.19:00And I think, Tyler, what we see is if one partner really does that work and one partner doesn't, a lot of times that ends in divorce. Yes, usually it does. If neither partners do that work, they can stay miserably married. If both partners do that work, they can actually go from a miserable marriage to a happy, healthy relationship. So you said something that I want to make sure we emphasize here as we step into this place of what do you do then, if you find yourself in a marriage like this?19:34And the first step, I think, is to do exactly what you just said, where you go to your partner and you didn't say go to your partner and tell themeverything they need to change. You go to your partner and you own your stuff and say, here's where I'm at. Here's how I'm feeling, here's how I've been treating the situation and treating our relationship, and here's what I'm going to do about it. Everything that you just said, Brandon, the first principle here is full accountability.20:04But Tyler, this goes very counter to what this person has been doing for years and years. So let me give you an example. Let's say I'm a person who struggles with sexual anorexia, intimacy anorexia. Right. Meaning that I intentionally keep my partner at Bay. I don't want to get rejected. I don't want to get into it. So I control that. Right. So it leads to this kind of cycle that we've been talking about, a miserable marriage.20:34So for me to go to my partner, I could go to her and I could say, well, if you weren't so angry at me and if you could get over some things, then we'd be happy. I could do that. That's a waste of time. But for me to go to her and say, you know what? I struggle with my intimacy and I'm going to work on me and I'm going to look at the reasons why I do.21:04I've struggled to be really honest with you and boundaries in our relationship, and I've held a ton of resentment, and I've chose to do that. I'm going to work on that. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life holding that resentment toward you. And I'm going to figure myself out so that I can be strong enough to be a person that can be intimate, to get rejected, to be vulnerable. I'm going to figure that out.21:32And I hope that on the other side you can meet me there. Right. But whether you do or not now, you wouldn't say this. Right. But whether you do or not, I'm going to go do that. Right. So when I say it's counter to what you've been a person with intimacy anorexia or sexual anorexia, how likely are they, Tyler, to go, it's a vulnerability problem to begin with. Right.22:00So they're stuck because they don't want to go do that. But that is the pathway through that's, the pathway to personal freedom. And it's the invitation to relational freedom, which actually sounds like it does sound backwards, because when you look at relationships, especially traditionally, it's like, well, that other person's going to complete me and make my needs better, and I'll be a whole person. And what we're now sitting here saying is the answer is for two people to come to the table and say, here's my bag of mess, and here's what I'm going to do about it.22:33And I'm hoping that as I do that work, that you'll be on the other side with me and that we can do this together in the long term. And that's hard. And Brandon, as we're bringing this principle up, it's easy to look at that from one side. Let's say in the world we live in, we're talking about betrayal, trauma. We're talking about compulsive acting out, whatever it is for the person who's compulsively acted out or got an addiction or something. It should seem a little easier to be the person to come back to the table in the relationship and say, hey, I messed this thing up.23:04Like, I need to go to work on some things. I need to fix my behaviors, whatever. What I don't see happening a lot of the time is that what I see instead is shame. And they come to the back and like, yeah, I deserve to have any type of punishment or criticism I get for the rest of my life because I've ruined everything and it's all my fault. And really, what they have to do is they have to let go of the shame and they have to come backwith accountability and say, no, I have messed things up. I've made a big mess of things, and this is what I have control over to move forward with. I've got to fight to actually learn to love myself, and then I've got to figure out how to fight for my relationship.23:37On the flip side of that, Brandon, here's the hard one. What's it like to go to the partner who's been betrayed and to say to them, yeah, you kind of got to own your stuff. Explain that a little bit. You don't go as a no, I'm saying you're a therapist. You need to own your stuff. Right? Well, it depends on where they're at in the process.24:07Right. But it is absolutely essential. Like, if they want to stay stuck in resentment and playing the victim forever, then they're going to continue to be miserable. Right. And the alternative to that is come to the table and say, look, you broke my trust. You broke my heart. That was painful.24:34And I love myself enough to let you know that I need to be in a relationship with a trustworthy human. And so if I see you working toward that, I can hang in for a little while. And if I don't, then I got to move on with my life because that's not a compatible relationship with me. Right. And so that's somebody stepping into their power, into their strength. I want to back up a little bit.25:03Tyler, you're talking about how the person struggling with addiction oftentimes shows up in weakness to try to fix it, to try to create safety. We talk about this conundrum quite a bit, where, okay, I won't be honest with you. I won't have boundaries with you. I won't tell you who I am or show you who I really am because I don't want to hurt you again. Right.25:30And here's the conundrum is that person who's been acting out behind the scenes and full of resentment. What they need to do is actually show up in strength in order to rebuild trust in the relationship. But showing up in that honesty and this is the conundrum right here. The partner might hate that. They might reject it. It doesn't seem hard to deal with it.26:02Yeah. And I'll give you an example here in a minute. It doesn't seem fair, but deep down, their femininity and their natural attachment is going to like the strength that's coming out. So let me give you an example. If I'm miserable in my marriage and I'm miserable, but you know what? I've acted out and I continue to act out, and I've betrayed my spouse.26:32And so my spouse, let's say, has a lot of contempt and just treats me like dirt all the time. Just silent treatments, passive aggressiveness, those type of things. Okay. And if I go to her and I say all the stuff that we just said, I'm going to do my own work. But also I need to let you know that when you lob insults my way, I'm not going to stay in a conversation with you.27:03I can't. And so when you're calling me names and saying insults to me, I will not stay in that conversation. And if that's met with now, who knows how this made up person will respond? But if that's met with you did this, you need to be the one who shows empathy. You need to be the one who garbage and listens. And you need to hold space for me, all that stuff. Right. How dare you say that?27:32I can't say certain things to you with what you did to me. Right. Okay. So there's her pain, there's her frustration and her anger. You can still stay strong in your boundary, and now you can revert back to the old miserablerelationship, which is like, yeah, I'm a piece of garbage. Yeah, you're right. I'm horrible. That's reverting back and preserving the unhealthy relationship.28:01Or you can step in again and you can say, man, I can tell that you're mad at me and you have a right to be mad at me. And I'm not down with you insulting me. If you're going to insult me, I'm not going to stay in the conversation because I want to have healthy communication between the two of us. Right. So can you see this? Yes, absolutely. This struggle, Tyler.28:31I think that is the challenge, Brandon, is that even with what you're saying, that new boundary in the relationship can be brought across in an unhealthy way or a healthy way, that new boundary can be brought across and kind of like sounding like, oh, you're the one who's now hurting me, and I'm a victim now, so I'm not going to, like, listen and talk to you anymore. So until you can be an adult, then we won't talk about things. Right.29:00Or it could come across, like you said, from a place of strength, which is, hey, I see your pain. I actually want to lean in, but I also want something new. And I'm going to have to be in this scenario, which could be different each time, but I'm going to have to be the one to take a time out on this one, because the road that we're now currently on does not lead to new. It leads to older. But Tyler, I think healthy communication skills are very important here.29:31Right. But I guess what I want to say is how it comes across to the partner is less important than where the heart is of the person who's trying to communicate. I could say it perfectly. I could say it kindly and perfectly. But what I need to do is step into my honesty and trust myself in that confident way. Right.30:00So when I do that, my partner might feel completely insulted. Sure. Even if I do it in a very kind way, or they might be completely appreciative that I'm doing it that way one way or the other. Right. The important thing is that I consistently do that over and over again. And as I do, my partner has a chance to actually know the real me and who I actually am. And I'm a person that can build some foundations and trust.30:30Yeah. In that relationship makes sense. Brenda, I'm thinking of, like, all the life lessons we learned as kids. You remember all the times that we'd get fights or whatever, and we ended up sitting across each other on the couches, and we weren't allowed to move until we come up with a solution. That was a great one. I use that across from each other, and they'd be like, all right, as soon as you guys can work it out, then you can both get off the couch knowing that both of us didn't want to stay there. So it'd take, like, 30 seconds or a minute.31:01And then I think it ended up with like, hey, I won't do this if you don't do that. And like, good deal. Like, mom, we're down. She's like, okay, go ahead, do your thing. But mom used to come in, and she used to say something because it would always turn into this. Like, but he did this, but he did that. But Rex did this, or but Brandon did that. And what would mom say? She'd say, Two wrongs don't make a right. And in a certain sense, that's a hard thing to hear when you're the one who's been on the receiving end of a lot of terrible things.31:34But the truth is that when you look at things from the bigger, broader perspective, that it's absolutely true that two wrongs don't make a right. So I have to take ownership, even if I'm the one who's been hurt for my choices, for my behaviors, for my reactions. If I want what I'm saying, I actually want. But Tyler, it's interesting what you're saying, because in the way that mom said that, basically it was, if Tyler hurt you, it doesn't justify you hurting him back.32:08Right. But think what needs to be understood is if I hurt you, it doesn't justify you hurting me back. So that's important to understand. So if I hurt you, Tyler, Yes, I betrayed you. That hurts. That's painful inside of me. It's important for me to understand.32:36It's okay for me to say no abuse, no hurting me, insulting me back. I can actually stand up for myself. Do you see what I'm saying? So two wrongs don't make a right means it on the let me take a stab at it. What I think he's saying is that if you're the one who's hurt me and I come back to you and now I'm frustrated, I don't feel like justice has been served. Maybe I come back and I tell you you're a piece of trash or something, and I call you a name.33:07But then I tell you, we need to talk forever, even though I'm just going to tee off on you and how disgusting you are. It's on me to, number one, not do that because I'm not helping things go right and I need to see the bigger picture. But it's also on you to not allow that pattern to continue. Because at the end of the day, you'll feel worse about yourself. I'll feel worse about myself in a certain sense. What you're saying, Brandon, is you're not loving me.33:37By allowing me to follow through on calling you names, you're actually showing weakness. Yes. Because what you're now doing is being complicated in the old cycle that is now going to fuel more fear, more disconnection, more shame. And you'd be better off even though in the immediate run you're going to take more heat. You'd be better off saying, I love you enough and I love me enough.34:06And I want us to work enough to not do this right now. This doesn't work for us. Yes. Right. That's well put. We're going to run out of time. But I want to excellent, kind of give some specific steps about how to get out of a miserably safe marriage. Real quick story. My daughter, she's going to be nine next week.34:36She got a sliver on the bottom of her foot. It was pretty good one. We spent. She starts screaming, just she's a very dramatic one. She starts screaming, Tweezers out. And you can imagine what happened when I brought the tweezers out. And so she's moving her foot. She's like, no, I'm like, just hold still. My wife's up there by her head, like comforting her, and I barely get closer foot.35:06She screams again. But yeah, every time she took a step down, she could feel that sliver in her foot. And it's the same analogy we've been talking about in order for her to get better and not have that constant nagging pain in the bottom of her foot, what needs to happen. Okay. Yeah. Well, she basically is going to need to confront the tweezers confront the pain of having the sliver pulled out so that in the long term she can walk with freedom and less pain.35:41Yes. She's going to have to calm down some and get real with herself that that's in the bottom of her foot and know that the only way is for me to come in and to help her get that out. Right. So this is the same as a couple in this state. Every time they take a step down, they feel that sliver. Right.36:07This is both down. And you need to get curious. This is both sides. You need to get curious and confront the reality that the sliver is there. Confront the reality that you're in this type of a relationship. Okay. The next thing to do is to fiercely self reflect, to ask yourself, how have I played my part to get us in this space? Okay.36:35The next thing that I would recommend after you fiercely self reflected, you're aware of your part in doing this. I would really recommend get help, get an outsider's perspective, a really good therapist who can help you navigate out of this, but go into that therapy with a very open, humble heart and try extremely hard to stay out of war with your heart, with your partner as you go through this process.37:06So that therapist can notice every little tiny way that you're falling right back into that miserable marriage. Oh, do you see what you're lacking boundaries here? Or do you see how you communicate in that way or what's underneath all of this? And you're showing up so weak here. Right. Or notice all this resentment that's just over here that we can't get anywhere because it's just there. So all these little things going on, systems going on.37:33Get an outsider's perspective, a non biased outsiders perspective, and go do it with some humility. And then after that practice, your old patterns are ingrained and automatic. They just happen over and over and over again and you'll unconsciously fall right back into them. So you're going to have to practice new patterns in a conscious way.38:00And it's going to be difficult at first and uncomfortable so that you can get different outcomes in your relationship. And as you do that, you're going to start to see some fruits that you can't even imagine that have been gone for so long out of your life that it's like, oh, my goodness. Love and trust and empathy and intimacy is so good. It's the best parts of life. And you're going to realize that work digging that sliver out, that pain of that beautiful brand is so worth it.38:34And I think that the last element of practice, practice, practice, practice, like giving permission for it to be a work in progress can be really powerful. I know that you and probably somewhere lessers get sick of the same old stories, but as you're talking, I'm just thinking about part of my own journey here, and I want to illustrate the points you just make, really, from the perspective of part of my wife's side of things. So when things really fell apart, it was brutal.39:03It led to all the same things that we talk about all the time fear, doubt, shame, lots of anger, lots of resentment. And I was the one who had really caused all the damage. And I remember one day my wife was really struggling because I had kind of come to my senses after DDay. And I had kind of gone all in on wanting to get better and trying to be better and still having a ton of shame and wrestling with it, but really having a broken heart and ready to change.39:35And it felt unfair to my wife because everything got dumped on her plate.And she saw me as the perpetrator in the villain, and she was wrestling with that, and her heart was hurting, and she was in a lot of pain. And it was, like coming out in lots of ways. And she was really struggling. One day, she was driving home, and she heard a talk on the radio about the Good Samaritan story.39:59And for some reason, this particular day, she heard it in a different way, where she saw herself as one of the passers by, and she saw me as the guy who had been beat up on the side of the road, which was a totally different perspective than what she had been hearing. I had been the villain. And all of a sudden, I was this person who was broken, and she was being invited into a space where she could be part of the solution.40:27And I remember she walked into the house when she got home, and she walked straight up to me, and she looked me straight in the face, and she said, Tyler, everything that you've done is not okay with me. I'm in a ton of pain, and I see you as a good person, and I want things to work. And that was like a massive turning point in our relationship, where all of a sudden she was saying, I am hurting, but I see you in a different way, and I want to go to work on this stuff.41:00And part of the work was then continued boundaries. Every time there was a little dip in trust or honesty, there was boundaries there. She didn't put up with the same old crap that I used to do, but she did it from a place of wanting to help things go right rather than just being angry and bitter and frustrated. And she had to confront the fact that she had a heart that was eating her alive, that even though I caused the damage I couldn't fix and she had to take ownership for that and she had to figure out a way to shift her energy and to be able to release that for herself.41:38And because of that it opens space inside of our relationship to do that practice that you were talking about well, I think to highlight probably the most important part here is something happened where she had some compassion for you and I think it's extremely hard when you're in a relationship where you have a lot of resentment you feel like your partner is crazy difficult, overly sensitive mean all these things to stop trying to fix it all but to actually take a step back and say I can see their pain yes, I'm going to see their pain and then I'm going to do my own work and so I'm not going to villainize them which also doesn't mean accountability which means I'm taking accountability for my choices, right?42:37Well, that's taking accountability for me. Yeah. My heart is going to be at peace with their pain and where they're at and why they're acting the way they do yet I'm going to be healthy and strong enough to be honest in that relationship. That's the beautiful space I think in a relationship where people come to the table in that space of Grace and forgiveness toward their partner but strength and honesty and love for themselves and when those things come together absolutely.43:16It really works significantly and beautifully when it's done properly and when both partners see it the same way and go to work on those things.43:32All right, you guys so if you're stuck and you're miserably safe and comfortable in your marriage then you shouldn't have listened to this whole episode because now you know too much and step over that threshold of pain have the courage to move forward and move out of thislife's too short not to love life's too short not43:56to have intentions no that the pathway through is accountability, Grace, forgiveness and boundaries awesome you guys please rate and review us46:38you.