How Can I Trust That My Partner Isn’t Relapsing?

how can I trust that my partner isn't relapsing [Music] what's going on you guys before we get into that I just want you to take a minute and look at the backdrop behind me today is an amazing day even though it's like bitter cold that scenery behind me is just beautiful and incredible and I hope that you guys are able to soak it in through the camera the way that we're being able to soak it in out here while we're filming but I wanted to talk with you a little bit about something that came up just in a recent group that I was running and it's a question that I get all the time and I wanted to speak to it in a way that maybe you could look at that question differently at the heart of a spouse who's been betrayed one of their biggest concerns is how do I know that my partner is actually not continuing in their addiction or not continuing in their Affairs or whatever else it is and they often get sucked into trying to chase down and find out if that acting out is still happening and in doing so they use all of their energy they get resentful they feel shameful and they get burned out and tired trying to find out if their partner is still acting out or not and what I would submit to you is there's some other ways to go about this and some other things to consider that might be more helpful than chasing down and wondering about whether or not the acting out is continued so if we understand the addiction process and the way that acting out happens it's based off of a mismanagement of pain and that pain leads to what we call preoccupation and that's where the system turns on the brain turns on someone gets triggered and they start thinking about wanting to go and pursue their drug of choice or they're acting out or whatever else it is that preoccupation leads into rituals and then those rituals are all the things that I set up to make my acting out available and then I act out and then this cycle continues well in order to keep that cycle going someone who's formed some type of an addiction or has been involved in some level of Serial kind of Affairs they also have to develop what I call the secondary character flaws to protect that cycle so it can keep happening and so the secondary character flaws are things like all the different forms of denial minimizing blaming omitting manipulation all sorts of other different rationalizing all sorts of other different kinds of Nile that make the partner and everybody else around them feel a little bit crazy and feel like they can't quite put their finger on the honesty of things and so when you're wondering if your partner is actually being sober when they're saying that they're being sober instead of chasing down their sobriety start to gauge whether or not they're going to work on their secondary character flaws are they actually working on being a little bit more honest and transparent are they working on being less blaming and less defensive are they working on being humble are they trying to practice the skill of humility and empathy if you see your partner engaged in that kind of work it's easier to trust when they're saying that they're not acting out too but if you're getting all those secondary character flaws it doesn't matter if they're acting out anyway because the secondary character flaws are the things that are causing problems in your relationship anyway so address those issues trust minimizing Omission things like that more importantly in the relationship than even the acting out itself and and then it allows you to not feel so crazy when you're chasing things down and never despite finding what you're looking for and if you do find what you're looking for then you feel betrayed all over again you can set your boundaries around the way you're being treated inside of the relationship based off of those other factors hopefully that makes sense and hopefully that's helpful you guys have a great day thank you so much for being here with me if you found this to be valuable for you please hit the like And subscribe button if you're facing particular struggles that you need help with or roadblocks that you're running into please submit a question I'd be happy to answer it for you [Music]