🔥 From Shame to Freedom: Nate Larkin’s Journey Out of S*x Addiction

In this powerful episode of the Covenant Eyes Podcast, hosts Karen Potter and Sam Black sit down with Nate Larkin—founder of the Samson Society and author of Samson and the Pirate Monks. Nate shares his raw, redemptive journey from secret struggles with porn and sex addiction to freedom, healing, and authentic brotherhood.

Discover how early exposure, emotional pain, and ministry stress fueled Nate’s addiction, and how community, honesty, and spiritual growth led him to lasting transformation. Learn how the Samson Society creates spaces for real connection and why it’s never too late to seek help.

Whether you're in the middle of your own battle or walking alongside someone who is, this conversation is full of truth, grace, and hope.

👉 Don't miss: Nate’s advice on rebuilding trust in marriage, the impact of betrayal trauma on spouses, and how technology can both hurt and heal.

🔗 Explore:
Samson Society: https://samsonsociety.com/
Sarah Society: https://sarahsociety.com/
Victory App & Courses: https://cvnteyes.co/41YU8Od

Chapters:
00:00 – Welcome & Introductions
01:10 – Who is Nate Larkin?
02:10 – Nate’s Early Exposure & Hidden Struggle
05:20 – Addiction in Ministry & the Breaking Point
08:30 – The Turning Point: “I’m Done.”
10:00 – Birth of the Samson Society
11:20 – Why Brotherhood & Connection Matter
13:30 – Shame, Grandiosity & the Performance Trap
17:00 – The Power of Authentic Community
20:00 – Technology: A Double-Edged Sword
21:15 – In-Person Retreats & Deep Relationships
23:00 – From Disconnection to Emotional Intimacy
25:00 – Redeeming Church Community
28:00 – Betrayal Trauma & the Spouse’s Journey
30:00 – The Sarah Society: Healing for Wives
32:00 – Marriages Can Heal – But Recovery Is Personal
34:00 – Practical Advice for Men & Spouses
37:00 – Hope, Freedom & Where to Get Help
39:00 – Final Encouragements & Resources

#CovenantEyes #NateLarkin #SamsonSociety #SarahSociety #AddictionRecovery #PornAddiction #SexAddiction

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Transcript

0:06

Hey, everybody, welcome back to The Covenant Eyes Podcast. It's Karen, and I'm so glad that you are here. Joining us for this episode. We have a longtime friend joining us, actually two longtime friends. One works at Covenant Eyes and Sam. We go way back. I feel like we're. Yeah. Oh, geez. Nowadays, right. There's a whole new generation to cover the eyes. But we've been here quite a while, and you've been here a lot longer than me. But welcome to the podcast. It's so good to be co-hosting with you today. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation. We get to talk to one of our longtime friends. So we've got, we've gone on hikes together and a lot of other fun stuff. So Nate Larkin, founder of the Sans, the Society, welcome. Glad you're here. Oh, thanks so much for having me. This is a joy. Listen, I'm going to just introduce a little bit, read a little bit of your bio about who you are just to help our listeners know what, know a little more about you. Nate Larkin is the founder of the Samson Society and the author of Samson and the Pirate Monks. This is a great book. I highly, highly recommend it. He is a graduate of Saint Lawrence University and Princeton Theological Seminary. He's also a recovering porn and sex addict. In 1998, Nate finally found help for his sex addiction in the safety of a 12 step group. As of 2024, more than 600 local society groups have started, and thousands of men from around the world are attending daily online meetings at Samson Society. Dot org need is a popular speaker at conferences. Love to hear you speak man. You are the greatest storyteller. I love to hear your stories. He speaks at colleges and retreats and is the co-host of two podcasts, The Pirate Monk Podcast and the Positive Sobriety Podcast. He and his wife, Ali recently celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary. Congratulations. And they live in Mount Pleasant, Tennessee. Thanks, Sam. What a what a nice introduction for me. For the listeners out there, obviously your bio speaks volumes to the amount of work that you do. I mean, you are everywhere and you are helping so many men, but let's kind of go back in time a little bit. For the listeners that maybe aren't familiar with your story, can you share a little bit of your journey and what led you to actually start the Samson Society, which has helped so many men? Yeah. Well, I was raised in church. My dad was a preacher, and I was destined for the ministry from a very early age. And I was a good kid. Except when I wasn't and when I wasn't, the penalties were severe, so I learned early on to hide, and to perform. We never talked about sex at home. That was a taboo subject. Never heard about it in church. Nobody warned me that porn even existed until I ran into it around the age of ten, shortly after my mother had died. This is a long time ago. This is back when in Playboy era. But the Playboy was more than enough and the fire was lit. So I wrestled with, I felt a lot of guilt and shame, you know, quit a thousand times, wrestled all through adolescence. When I got to college, I decided to become sophisticated. It was time to stop feeling guilty. Time to join the modern world. I needed sex education desperately. And I thought, what better place to get it? The porn. I didn't know any better. I actually rationalized my porn use during my college years as preparation for marriage, unaware that I was already poisoning my marriage. But I was certain that when I met the right girl and got married, that naturally my interest in porn would disappear. What I didn't understand was that by then, porn had already become porn and masturbation. My default distress management strategy. So whenever I was in distress, that's what I went to for comfort. Emotional regulation. Well, I did meet the perfect girl. We got married the day I graduated. I was deeply in love. But as it turns out, marriage is stressful. So it wasn't too long after the honeymoon that that the problem reappeared, which was very discouraging. But what I told myself then was, you know, Nate, porn is probably your best defense against infidelity. No way you're ever going to cheat on your wife. You meant it. Every promise you made at the altar. So come to think of it, you're probably being considerate, not burdening Ali with all your sexual needs. She just doesn't need to know how considerate you're being. But already that porn use was coming between Ali and me. Even though she didn't know what I was doing, she could see me drifting away emotionally as I am bonding daily with phantoms, and and brightness. So by this point now, porn is programing me, grooming me, setting me up for the next stage. It was a process that accelerated. Ironically, during seminary, I went on a seminary sponsored trip into New York City, into the sex shops of Time Square. I got my first look at hardcore porn. I did not realize at that point how much more powerful those moving images are than the still images I'd been using up until that point. Because film is immersive, it reaches a part of the brain, that can't distinguish between real experience and virtual experience. So now it's as though I'm sitting in a simulator every day and it takes a few years. But fast forward about six years. We're now in South Florida, in in a period of white knuckling abstinence that I thought was recovery and victory, I'd started a church. I was a church planter. Somehow the pastor, and I don't know if you know this, Karen, but church can be stressful. So not too long after we planted the church, the problem, you know, reared its head again. So I was very careful. I was never caught, but I was using porn on a regular basis. And this is before the internet. So it's it's adult bookstores back in the day. And then about three and a half years in, four years into the ministry, it got worse. And on a very fateful Christmas Eve, I pulled over to offer a woman a ride out of the rain, not knowing what she was doing until she was in the car and propositioning me. And that is when the programing kicked in, because I'd seen some version of that scenario countless times and I went full automatic. That was awful. Just off. I couldn't believe I'd done it. The guilt, the shame, just crushing, but I also believed I couldn't tell anybody. You know, my ministry would be finished if I did. I had to figure it out myself. I worked really hard to try to figure it out. And about a year and a half later, I finally gave up in despair because I could not stop the behavior. So I quit. The ministry at the ripe old age of 30, went into business where I had the great misfortune to succeed. So now I've got money and no accountability. And that's when it really what got dark. Although I never missed church, I loved church and church. I could be Saint Nate and serve you church. I could be the guy I wanted to be on. The guy who I thought God loves. I just couldn't be that guy for very long. Outside the building. And that was just horrible. But, I have a praying wife. She was so it was not easy. I was not an easy guy to be married to. Running to lives. All that stress, all that deception, all those unexplained absences, all the money that was going out the door. In 1998, we made the move from South Florida to Middle Tennessee. And it was shortly after that move that Ali caught me, first with porn. And then not long after that, she found a condom on the floor in the bathroom that I couldn't quite explain. And that's when my wife sat me down on the edge of our bed and said the words that saved my life. She said, I'm done. She said, I still love you, but I don't like you. I don't trust you, I don't respect you, and I don't think you can ever change. Those were the words that gave me the gift of desperation. It was in a desperate attempt to salvage the only real friendship I'd known in adulthood, that I. That I finally went for help. And I'm so grateful that I found help first in a 12 step group. And then, you know, it took about six years to finally, you know, learn the fundamentals of recovery and get some stability in my sobriety. By then, I'd lost my shame. I actually told my pastor and gave him my phone number and permission to pass it along to anybody. He thought I might be able to help. And right away, my phone started to ring because, as it turns out, I'm far from unique. All those years, I thought I was the only guy. So before I know it, I'm walking with a dozen guys. All of us Christians. And really, as we began to experience the fruit of recovery and what happens when we walk together in the light, we really wanted to be able to integrate our Christian faith, vocabulary and heritage with this amazing recovery walk. And that's when I met my wife. Suggestion, actually, we started the Samson Society. That was in 2004, on Valentine's Day 2004. So we're two days away from the 21 year anniversary of the founding, and the fact that a dozen of us were free on Valentine's Day kind of shows where we, where we were, Ali was more than willing to let me go be with the guys because she'd seen the fruit of recovery. And some of those guys, the wife didn't want to see him anyway, or they weren't. At any rate, but it grew very quickly. We got excited. We got so excited. In 2007, we put out the book that Sam referenced, Samson and the Pirate Monks, hoping to inspire other guys to do something like what we were doing. And it's been a rocket ride ever since. Wow. Your testimony each time I hear it is just so powerful. And the way that God has used your brokenness to bring about an organization that has helped so many guys find freedom and connection and community. And I think we don't, I don't, and I think we do it at Covenant Eyes. But in general, we don't talk about the need and the absolute biblical mandate to be in community and connection with one another in the body. There's something so powerful about believers being together on the journey. Talk to us a little bit about why it's so important, and why that's kind of the secret sauce of the Samson Society, the brotherhood that's created there. Yeah, it all boils down to attachment. I am more and more convinced that character change does not come, biological means through the left hemisphere of the brain. That slow thinking, logical part character change happens, on the limbic level. It happens in the right hemisphere of the brain, and it happens through attachment. We have to be connected. It's absolutely true. The opposite of addiction is connection. Recovery requires relationship. That's not the message I wanted to hear. When I walked into my first 12 step meeting. I was not looking for friends and I did not want to join a group. I was there for research purposes. My goal was to set the land speed record for recovery, and I was going to do do so by independent, you know, study. I'm a smart guy. I'm going to master the material. I will admit, I was selling recovery long before I owned it, because I'd learned the lingo. But I did not begin, actually, to experience true sexual sobriety until finally, after enough failure, enough phase plans when willpower just wouldn't do it. When my best when I when I was acting out of out and acting out. I'm acting outside my own moral guidelines and my own moral convictions. And doing that enough times, I finally surrendered and said, okay, it's time to join the human race. I'm not unique. I need to learn to be just another bozo on the bus. I need to be as willing to take advice as I am to give advice, is willing to ask for help as I am to give help, to become a man among men, a member of the body, and at I am now more and more aware of the reality of the body of Christ. I was always willing to trust Christ. Right. This man Jesus thing, never willing to trust the body of Christ. In fact, I didn't even believe in the body of Christ. I thought that was just a metaphor. I did not believe that Jesus is present on this planet in the lives of broken people. But I want to tell you, I believe it today. And the greatest act of surrender that I make every day is to tell the truth to another member of the body of Christ. And that's what Samson does there a lot. You know, Samson doesn't do everything. You know, we're not therapists, although we interview therapists all the time. And some therapists are members of Samson Society. We don't do curriculum. You guys do great curriculum. I'm part of a Pure Desire group. They have created great curriculum. Samson doesn't do that. But the one thing we do is we do connection. It's a safe place where you can bring your real self, say the real truth, and make real, authentic connection with other people, come out of hiding. And then as we start to experience mutual mind with one another and mutual mind with the indwelling Christ, mysteriously, mystically, sometimes just in baffling ways, character change starts to happen, old desires fade and new desires start to rise. It's a it's a healing process. It's a growing process. It's a learning process. And, by the way, the key word in all three phrases is process. None of this is instantaneous. It takes time. We have to stay engaged. You know, Nate, I love what you're saying. As as you tell your the whole story and up into the present, it is not unique to you or to me, to others who are listening. The story is is so common, right. It's the early exposure. Yeah, yeah. The repetitious use of pornography and some unsettled wounds that we've just never dealt with. Well. Right. And, and so we're just become susceptible to all these triggers and emotions and self-soothing and then, but we've got it all figured out, right? I just try harder if I, you know, and and there's something I'd like you to explore. Yeah. About me. And I was going to church. That's one thing I could do. Yeah. And that is that shame and grandiosity, that's all. On the. That's just the same emotion in different spheres. Tell me about how grandiosity could help you feel less of the shame in that the shame would lead you toward grandiosity. Right. Oh absolutely. And by the way that's a temptation that has not disappeared in recovery. I'm always being pulled back toward living a an honest, transparent and right sized life. You know what, Sam? Thank you for that. Nobody's ever made that connection for me. That that shame and grandiosity are on a spectrum. That's that's a fascinating and very valuable insight. So, yeah, if, I, I want to tell you, I had a wonderful reputation as a pastor and the the, the the deeper my shame, and the blacker and more hidden my sense of failure, the more I compensated by being, even more, present, patient and merciful. At least I was trying to do. And, tooting my own horn, producing my own press releases, really trying to be larger than life and trying to be everything to everybody. One of the caps on my ministry, I, my, my church peaked at about 150 people. One of the reasons it peaked was, I had to be everybody's best friend. Now, here's the here's the toughest thing. When, when, And of course, I wasn't, but I was working very hard at that. By the time I got into recovery, I really had to face the fact that, my problem was not a lack of information. My problem was a lack of a relationship. I was well known. I had a lot of people in my Rolodex. People knew me or thought they knew me and liked me. They named their kids after me. There were a lot of people who would call me their closest friend. I was well known, but nobody knew me. And even the affirmation that I got from all those people, well, it felt good in the in the moment. It was so fleeting, it really evaporated quickly. I because deep inside, I knew they weren't seeing the real me. And I deeply believed that if they or anybody ever saw the real me, they would run. So I had to perform. That was what was so fantastic and frightening about going down into the church basement for my first 12 step meeting, because there was a place where I didn't have to speak in code. I didn't have to pretty anything up. Nobody wanted to meet Saint Nate. I was welcome to to meet. I was welcome to bring the real me. And to begin, I did it cautiously and carefully at first, you know, saying, it was just so hard to say the words, I'm a porn addict or a sex addict, that I'm a recovering port addict. I mean, I claim that, right? And even that I could only say it as a whisper. So hard to begin to own my own. You know what the 12 steppers would call my character defects. The ways in which my personality has been warped by wounds and by my own behavior. But every time I ventured into the light, I was, I was met. I was met with grace. People didn't pull away. They pulled in. And now I find that actually the real me, the broken me, is more attractive than the bright and shiny me. And it can actually accomplish a whole lot more because the real me is capable of real relationship, where the artificial me is only capable of surface relationships. That is so beautiful and so true. I think about our society now. I mean, we really live in a digital age where everybody creates personas online. We craft our our lives and our social media feeds so that the world can admire our vacations and our families and whatever else we're really well connected. And I use that in quotation marks because we feel like we're being connected with people, but really we're not. And we're not letting people see the authentic, real us. And so I think there's a real danger, like technology provides great opportunity, like people use technology to join Samson Society groups. And, you know, we use technology at Covenant Eyes. Obviously, to help people overcome pornography addiction. But there's a danger that it gives us a false sense of connectivity. Really, we can't get away from that in person, being together with other people. Talk to me a little bit about how some Samson Society helps men specifically facilitate relationships, you know, in the real world because, yeah, they're connecting online. But I know you guys are driving them back to building out their inner circle in the real world, correct? Yeah, absolutely. Although I must tell you that I've been surprised and impressed by the degree to which the depth to which relationships can form through, electronic connection. We do our annual national retreat, in the fall, usually in November. And the favorite part, my favorite part of that retreat is watching guys hug their best friend for the first time. But I, by the way, Nate, I've done that time. Oh, yeah. Of course, you know, coming to the the conference in Tennessee. Yeah, yeah. Here's guys that I've been meeting with online since 3 or 4 years, and this is the first time we've actually because we started actually during Covid like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And these are some, some studies and, and we were meeting every week telling our stories to one another, building this deep connection and then got to meet. And Tennessee together was just so at the Samson retreat was just so you know, it, it's so exciting that, hey, you're a lot taller than I expected. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is, it's absolutely essential that we find a safe place to bring our real selves. And then the payoff is. Here's what. It's the reason why wives push their husbands out the door to go to Samson. They like what comes back. During the first 20 years of my marriage, I equated intimacy with sex. Now, when Ali discovered. When I finally disclosed the degree to which I had gone off the reservation, the many, many ways in which I had betrayed and gaslighted her. And, I mean, that was a huge blow. It was very traumatic. It took her time to come to terms with it and to heal from it. And during that time, I slept in a closet and sex was off the table. That lasted a couple of years now, but fortunately I was in meetings where I was having deep conversations in a nonsexual atmosphere. I was learning and practicing non-sexual intimacy, and then I was able to bring those skills home, and I was able to start to say the things at home. And, and, and Ali didn't run. She actually pulled closer. And then I started to find the courage to drop, down to a deeper level of transparency in daily conversations. A guy I'd bump into, you know, at Starbucks. And what I found was the more I was willing to be transparent, man, guys would follow me down that road. And before I know it, a guy saying, hey, can we talk? I've never told anybody this, but yeah. I did become the safest person they know. Right? I mean absolutely, yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Ali was afraid, you know, I eventually was invited. Teach a Sunday school class at our church. And, after disclosing my issue to my pastor and explaining why I couldn't possibly teach a Sunday school class because, you know, I'm a porn addict and a sex addict. I can't guarantee I'll never slip. And fortunately, I had a pastor who understands the gospel and trust the Holy Spirit. He encouraged me to teach the class, co-teach the class, and the the. The class went from 30 people to 300 fairly quickly. Because I was bringing it, I was talking recovery, because one of the great benefits of this recovery journey is I got a new lens through which to look at Scripture. I've been looking at Scripture through a shame based lens for a very long time. I've been looking at Scripture through a moralistic lens for a very long time. I got a hold the Bible change. God, that's. To me, that's a remarkable thing. Samson is a Christian group for Christian guys. I actually got started in recovery in a group that wasn't Christian. But even though we weren't reading the Bible, we weren't, except for the Lord's Prayer. We weren't praying, then the Serenity Prayer. We never mentioned the name of Jesus. We didn't sing. We didn't do all the church stuff. That experience not only saved my marriage and saved my life, it saved me spiritually. I met God in a whole new way in that grace filled room. He got a whole lot bigger. He got a whole lot closer. He got a whole lot kinder. And now to be able to bring so to to bring that perspective back into church. So I'm teaching Sunday school class. Ali promised me not to say not to call myself a porn addict. She made me promise that I wouldn't identify as a porn addict, a sex addict, because she was concerned that we would lose all our friends if I said the words. So for the first couple years I was I called myself an addict and didn't label myself beyond that. So I'm sure there was some speculation. And I'm good enough at misdirection that probably not too many people guessed that I was a porn addict, a sex addict, maybe a Scrabble addict or something, I don't know, but, when I finally. When we wrote the book and the book was going to be released and the story was going to be out, and I finally had to say it, you know. It scared Ali when I said it. It did, in the moment. But holy smokes, people didn't go. People didn't pull away. They pulled in, they got closer. The numbers of our friends multiplied. It didn't diminish the depth of our relationships, you know, it improved. So, now we probably are a little bit too reckless, and we've lost all our shame. And. I'll find a way to work it into a conversation when I don't even need to. So that's okay. You are proud of what Jesus has done in your life and how he has redeemed you and your marriage. And speaking of your marriage and your amazing wife that you keep mentioning. And I. I just adore the strength of character that she has throughout your journey, because it certainly was hard on her. And I want to talk a little bit about the spouse and how husbands can rebuild trust after betrayal, because that's that's a process in itself. And we often forget to talk about the spouse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the addict gets all the attention and, it most of us, we're self-centered enough that we don't realize. We know that we have been damaging ourselves. We're unaware of the damage that's rippling out from our self-centered behavior. I didn't know how deep I thought that because Ali didn't know it wasn't affecting her. But my emotional distance, my duplicity, my remote, the fact that I was, I was I was in a disassociated state most of the time. I wasn't connected to myself. I wasn't really connected to God, and I was not capable of connecting to her. But she was she was fed and we had some good times. She was always my favorite playmate and, you know, drinking buddy. Back in the day when we both were drinking, and she's a wonderful mother. And she stepped in and made up for my deficits in so many ways. It's a miracle that we have, great relationships with well adjusted kids who are raising great grandkids, but they're doing it. And all the credit goes to Ali. It was hard for her. She. Nowadays there are more, there's more support. Support available for spouses. One of the great developments in Samson world is that a few years ago, our wives finally got together and said, hey, we need to do something like this ourselves. So on their own initiative, they started the Sarah Society, which is modeled roughly after the Samson Society. They do basically what we do, but but curated toward a woman's perspective. Sarah, society's actually growing faster than Samson is right now. And about to have their third, national retreat and, yeah, they're doing great. Ali did not have that support. And she because she didn't want people to know I was a porn addict and sex addict. She didn't feel safe to tell anybody. It was a lonely road for her. For those first couple of years, she really pulled into her relationship with God. She was. She was never unkind or uncivil to me, but she was firm, and she reinforced her own boundaries. We had what amounted to an in-house separation for a while. And she watched me closely. I made the mistake of trying to push recovery on Allie early, which sent the message that I was blame shifting. That's how she interpreted it, that I was making my problem. Her problem. And and this was back in the days, really, before we really understood betrayal trauma and spouses were just identified as co addicts, and they're as sick as you are. It was not a good message for her to receive and she did not really take it in. She resisted it, thankfully. But I have more and more respect and empathy for spouses of addicts, whether they stay or whether they don't. I tell the new guys coming into Samson and we do a newcomer virtual newcomer meeting every day. So I get to hear the same story basically over and over and over again. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing to hear guys say it. I, I would say the majority of the guys who come to New Comer meetings are married. And their behavior has taken all kind of all forms. Right. But for many of us, porn has been a gateway to other behavior. I can tell those guys that, an awful lot of marriages not survive. And they don't just survive. They thrive. Our marriage is so much better now, that, as you know, Ali will say that is rotten. Is the first 20 years where she'd take him in a heartbeat to get what we have today. The fruit of recovery is so sweet that if the only way to it is through addiction, then the addiction is actually worth it. I tell the guys, look, I can't promise that your marriages survive. Will survive. I will tell you, you can't do recovery to save your marriage. You can't do it for her. She's going to. If you're playing to the audience, she'll know. And that's nothing but manipulation. You have to let her go. Emotionally. You have to do it for you. The odds are are decent that it will survive. Not. But not every marriage survives. And at this point, I'm not convinced that every marriage should. But every man does. And, And I have the privilege of walk now, you know, as the generations build, seeing guys now capable of, of a of a deep, respectful, fulfilling marriage relationship. And that first one didn't make it. They they really tried. They meant that, you know, they did everything they could do, but that was not their choice. And but now I have the privilege of, of watching him take it, you know, really taste marriage. It's a it's a it's a beautiful thing to watch. Nate. You know, you offer that, that little nugget of advice there, but you actually wrote a course for the victory app by Covenant Eyes. Oh, yeah, it says that. It says, hey, the one year when your spouse's first discovered your your porn use. These are the steps you should take. And by the way, you can download the the victory app for free and go through Nate's course. And there's also some courses as well. And therefore specifically for our wives who have experienced betrayal trauma, what are they experiencing? What does it feel like? Why is it so impactful on them, and how can they begin taking steps for their own healing? But you do some remarkable, maybe tease just a little bit about how that that advice says, listen, Guy, you need to you need to know the a couple of rules here that's going to help your spouse, right? Instead of instead of causing more torture, would you just. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Take some basic steps here that can really. Yeah. Create some, what the right steps and not the hurtful ones. Yeah. One of the best pieces of advice I got early on. Well, I was told not to push recovery on Ali, and I ignored that and really then delayed her entrance into recovery just because I was pushy. But I did. I did follow another piece of advice, and it was good advice. My sponsor said, Nate, your job right now is to allow Ali to be as angry as she needs to be for as long as she needs to be angry. Do not push her for quick forgiveness. She cannot forgive what she can't feel. You have to allow her to feel it. Even God himself, when we betrayed him and contravened his commands, did not just from heaven say, it's okay, I forgive you. He actually poured out his wrath on his son. That until she feels angry, if she tries, if you force her or if she feels obligated to just paper it over and forgive, unquote right away, that really is just a form of denial. That pain will be swept under the rug where it will fester and poison your relationship for years. You got to let her be angry and, and and that was it. That was a good thing to do. Now, some wives, at some point, they need gonna need some help from a trained therapist to actually work through that anger and get past to it. So get past it so that it doesn't hang around forever as resentment. But we can't skip the anger stage. That's really, really powerful advice. And I think, that's something that a lot of us forget that we do need that time and however much time that might be. Yeah. Well, with that, we are kind of coming to the end of today's show, but I definitely want to make sure that we offer our listeners, whether it's the men out there looking for a way to get connected to Samson Society, or maybe it's the spouses that are listening to this feeling like, wow, this might be something that's really helpful for my husband. How how can we get this in front of people? And what words of encouragement do you have for our listeners? Well, I do want to make sure everybody understands that it really doesn't matter how far down the scale you have gone. It is. Recovery is possible. You can find freedom and gain recovery from any unwanted compulsive behavior. As long as you don't try to do it alone. This is why, Covenant Eyes is such a helpful tool. Allowing somebody else in on a life that you've kept secret for so long. It's a guardrail. It's a helpful guardrail. And then, of course, I so appreciate that library of resources that you all continue to build that Covenant Eyes. It's really extraordinary. All those great tools, they're so, I call myself a hope dealer. We can get ourselves into a place. I remember being into a place of utter despair. Ali was there, too, thinking it's never going to get any better. It can't get any better. This is as good as it gets. And I've. I got to either resign myself to this awful life or do something drastic and leave no freedom. Healing. It's always possible, but you can't do it alone. That is so good. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been such a pleasure to hear from you. And where can people go to connect with Samson Society? I would imagine you have a website. We do that. We can point people to you. Yeah. SamsonSociety.com. We do have virtual meetings already. There are meetings in eight languages as Samson is going global. But you can't attend a virtual meeting until you've come to a new comer meeting. That's kind of a two way interview. We need to verify that you're a real person. We need to give you a full orientation. There are no dues or fees for membership in Samson. We do have expenses, and we are self-supporting through our own contributions. But you don't have to pay a subscription. You can find fellowship there. That's at SamsonSociety.com. And wives, now have an option at SarahSociety.com. Once again, you'll have to attend a new comer meeting. But you can now, find a community of other great women married to lovable idiots. And you can learn how to navigate the pain. Yeah. I love that. And I have to say that these new comer meetings. If that sounds scary to you, don't be frightened at all. It is one of the most welcoming, hopeful experiences that that are going to launch you toward a life of, of toward recovery. It really is. I, I, I got to host those for a number of years, and it was so fun to see guys light up and go, finally. Yeah, I have a place I can be real and authentic and and really get some help. It's a big deal. It is a big deal I love that. Well this brings today's episode to a close. We know you're going to want to check out Samson Society and Sarah Society. Now as well. Definitely check these organizations out. They are amazing. Nate Larkin, thanks for all you do. Sam Black, thanks for coming on the podcast today. It was so good. Yeah, it was a great pleasure to have both of you gentlemen on today. So to all of our listeners out there, make sure you like and subscribe to this podcast and share it far and wide so we can help lead more people to freedom from pornography. Take care. God bless. We'll see you next time on The Covenant Eyes Podcast.