Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons

104. The Questions We’re Too Scared to Ask, Part 1

Jason and Lauren Vallotton

Description:
Some questions feel too big, too scary, or too painful to ask out loud—especially in marriage. But avoiding them doesn’t make them disappear. In this episode, the Vallotton's tackle the hardest, unspoken questions that can haunt relationships.

Jason and Lauren dive into topics like:
Have we fallen out of love or are we just stuck in a rut?
What if I’m not attracted to my partner anymore?
Is it normal to feel lonely in my marriage?
Can we ever repair the damage from past betrayals?

If you've ever felt afraid to voice your deepest relationship doubts, you’re not alone. These conversations could lead to real healing and change.

💡 Next Steps: True transformation takes intentional action. If you're ready to reconnect, heal, and build a resilient marriage, join our Restore & Renew 6-Week Intensive—a guided journey to help you and your partner rediscover joy and connection.

👉 Click here to sign up!

🎧 Listen now, then come back here week for Part 2!

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For information on the Marriage Intensive and other resources, go to jasonandlaurenvallotton.com !

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Speaker 2:

We're the valetins and we are passionate about people.

Speaker 1:

Every human was created for fulfilling relational connection.

Speaker 2:

But that's not always what comes easiest.

Speaker 1:

We know this because of our wide range of personal experience, as well as our years of working with people.

Speaker 2:

So we're going to crack open topics like dating, marriage, family and parenting to encourage, entertain and equip you for a deeply fulfilling life of relational health. Hey there, everybody, welcome back to Dates, mates and Babies with the Valetins. We are Lauren and Jay and we love being with you. Today's episode is going to be a tough but necessary one. We're actually diving into the questions, the deep questions that actually haunt marriages, those difficult questions that often people avoid because they're either just too painful or a little too scary to say out loud.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, these questions are the ones that keep married people up at night right. We're wondering are we the only ones struggling with these doubts or these challenges? Well, we are here to tell you you are not alone, guys. So we've collected over 150 questions submitted anonymously from listeners just like you in our live Q and A that we did last night, and we're about to dive into the top ones. So we are going to pull back the layers and talk about love, intimacy, parenting and what to do when things feel tough or out of sync.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this is a two-part series, so the first half today we'll dig into some of the biggest challenges that couples face, those kind of questions that you rarely hear spoken out loud, but they're the questions we all need to answer if we want to move forward. So we're going to discuss four of the seven haunting questions that married people often avoid discussing openly, because they either touch on deeply personal fears or painful realities. Are you ready, babe, to dive right in?

Speaker 1:

I'm ready. Yeah, all right, let's go the first one. Um, have we fallen out of love or are we just stuck in a rut? So the fear of losing the romantic and emotional spark can be overwhelming. But, um, this is a question that many hesitate to ask because the answers might feel final or scary to confront so I think it's really important that we answer it.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely that question have we fallen out of love? You know, ultimately, that question is a commentary on how you're feeling at the moment. You don't quote feel in love with your spouse, which identifies, you know. First and foremost, it identifies the need to actually speak some truth to the lie that that says love is a feeling and it can come and go.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you know when. When we start out in in marriage, everyone gets married, because you have this beautiful picture of what you guys are going to be. And then, as marriage goes on and we don't have great tools, we end up really disconnected and a lot of pain, and that pain adds up and it builds, doesn't it?

Speaker 1:

Over time, my lack of good communication skills, my lack of knowing how to turn towards one another, my inability to manage my own triggers, becomes this really painful place. And then, most importantly, us avoiding the hard conversations, not having the tools to do that. So, eventually, none of that feels like a loving, caring marriage, and so the assumption is oh man, I don't feel like I'm in love with him. And, to be honest with you, I worked with a lot of couples, even this week, who said I think we want a divorce, literally. This week I worked with a couple like that.

Speaker 1:

And when I started to hear what they're saying and talking about, it's oh, you don't want a divorce, you don't have a marriage problem, you actually have a problem learning how to process pain.

Speaker 2:

You don't know how to process, pain.

Speaker 1:

You don't know how to have healthy conversations. So it doesn't matter what marriage you go into, it's going to feel the same. And so what we have to do is people don't fall out of love, they fall out of connection. Is people don't fall out of love, they fall out of connection. Right, and connection is built upon our ability to do very specific things. For a woman, it's to feel safe, seen and known.

Speaker 1:

For a man, it's to feel respected, believed in and cared for right, and so, when I fail to, make my wife feel safe, seen and known, and when my wife fails to make me feel respected and believed in and and cared for, then we get to this place in our marriage where we know there's no Velcro, there's actually no place to stick to, and so we have to go through the process of learning a new skillset, of getting tools that maybe we didn't have before and use them in a way that we haven't used them before, and so you know, that's what I love to do in marriage counseling.

Speaker 1:

It's why we love our marriage. Intensive is because if you don't have a framework for how to do marriage really, really well, then the alternative is you're suffering. You're doing a professional level, um, you're doing life at a professional level with amateur skills, and you just can't do it longterm without going oh my gosh, I don't think we're in love anymore. So, very, very clearly, the love isn't the problem. Love is a commitment, love is a choice. Love is the covenant. The problem is you don't love anything that you're not really great at.

Speaker 1:

In order to be really great at marriage, you have to level up.

Speaker 2:

That's so good. So, in short, you know, for people that are asking that really scary question, have we fallen out of love or are we just stuck in a rut? The answer every time is you're stuck in a rut. The answer every time. So I mean, that's, that's um a message that I wish I could shout from the rooftop. Like every time, the answer is you have really bad patterns, it's true, really bad habits inside of marriage. You are in a rut. You have not fallen out of love, that's not a thing.

Speaker 1:

It's real and our bad habits create the pain inside of marriage.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, Okay, all right. Second question what if I'm not attracted to my spouse anymore?

Speaker 1:

Man, this one's real and it is scary.

Speaker 2:

It is scary.

Speaker 1:

It is one of those dark, deep dark ones that we don't like to talk about because we don't want to disappoint our spouse, we don't want to admit that. Wow, I'm really struggling with feeling the attraction and I'll start, and then you can add some stuff. Attraction's built upon a lot of things, yeah. So, for instance, um, there's lots of times when I was single, uh, where I felt attracted to a woman. I mean physically right, like wow, she's got everything, she's really beautiful yeah.

Speaker 1:

But then you start to see her personality, you don't feel reciprocation. Maybe see how she talks to her friends and you go oh, it's no longer attractive, right. And so attraction is built on a lot of things, and we talked about it a second ago. But when the connection breaks down in a relationship, it's very hard to feel attracted to somebody, because I am actually often in fight or flight. So when arc, when we are really disconnected, I feel like I have to self-protect if I'm not careful, especially if I don't have a lot of tools, that hammers the attraction, it's a hammer to it. The other piece is, you know, like we've talked about a lot of times, is we don't, we're not going to keep our physical appearance the same as life goes on.

Speaker 2:

So you've had babies, I've gotten older and I haven't gotten older, but you have just getting yeah, and as that happens, right, your body changes your body doesn't look like when we first got married.

Speaker 1:

No we were newer. What?

Speaker 2:

I have rock solid abs now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you do you actually do, which is amazing. But as that changes, we don't always look the same.

Speaker 1:

Okay don't always look the same, okay, I actually think for most men and most women, it's not the fact that your body changed, right, it's the fact that you're not caring for your body that becomes attractive or really unattractive when we don't care for our body, our soul, our spirit. When we let our spirit go. Think about that, like when I just let these major parts of my body go and myself go and I don't actually have a plan and work on them. It's not impressive when I don't take care of my emotional health, right, it's no longer attractive or impressive when I don't take care, when we don't take care of our physical health. It's not inspiring or attractive, and so it's not that the end outcome isn't oh, you have to be X amount of pounds and be able to bench X amount of things, and you know, a man has to be able to crush everything. To me, it's, it's really unattractive when you're not taking personal responsibility.

Speaker 2:

Totally.

Speaker 1:

So you and I have done quite a bit of things to actually press into those areas. I was overweight for a long time in our marriage because I came out of a nervous breakdown and we kind of inspired each other to go, hey, what do we really want to be in our physical, emotional, spiritual health, even as parents? Like, what are we aspiring to? And we look at the main areas of our life and that was the conversation. So you know you didn't have a conversation with me that said I don't know that I'm super physically attracted to you.

Speaker 1:

Um which is not an impossible conversation to have, by the way. But the conversation is hey, I really want us to thrive in these areas. I would love if we would prioritize some of these areas, and I know that you know there's been some fear in this, or I know that we've maybe tried a few things here. But what if, over the next year, we really took some initiative and we just grew a little bit in each of these areas? It's what you and I have done over the years. I watched it.

Speaker 1:

I'm thinking specifically of a friend of ours who, um, she had a conversation with her husband where she said I love you so much. You're the best man I know. Um, I'm have some concern over your physical health and the way that you eat, and it just makes me feel sad. I would love to go on this journey with you. The how you start that conversation will really decide how it ends. I think, women, if you're talking to your man, talk to the King. Don't talk to the fool. Talk to the King, inspire him, tell him what you love about him, how much you believe in him. Men, if you're talking to ladies, you know about whatever, about how you're feeling in this area. I think it's you have to really come from a place of inspiration, and so I really want us to feel as a couple in control of our physical health and emotional health and spiritual health, and would you partner with me this year and go on this journey, and we could do it together.

Speaker 2:

It's really good. I want to add some things. This question is particularly haunting, I think, because every person actually knows what it feels like to be really attracted to somebody.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And so you know by experience what you are or aren't missing out on. I experience what you are or aren't missing out on, because the truth is, is feeling really physically attracted to somebody is super fun? Oh, it's amazing. It feels great. Yeah, right. And so, whether it's like um lucky for you.

Speaker 1:

you get to feel that every day. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know the um, the experience right of having an incredible physical attraction towards somebody. That feeling of chemistry is so exciting, it's very novel. It feels there's a lot of like happy hormones associated with the feeling of being really physically attracted. And so the wild thing is that before marriage you can feel that with anybody there's nothing off limits. Before marriage I could walk down the street and just that I noticed somebody really attractive and I think about that for a minute and I consider that for a minute and I think about whether I want to go up and talk to him and flirt with him.

Speaker 2:

There's nothing wrong with doing that before marriage right, it feels good, it's exciting. It's nothing wrong with doing that before marriage right, it feels good, it's exciting. It's part of the like predating game. It's part of being a human being on planet earth is like we find ourselves in these moments with different people now directly on the other side of marriage. Or maybe we should say, once you're engaged or when you're in a committed relationship, it's no longer okay to walk down the street, notice somebody attractive and then spend a bunch of time thinking about whether or not you're gonna walk up to them, strike up a conversation, flirt with them a little bit.

Speaker 2:

Right, you can't do that anymore. And so right on the other side of marriage, if you don't have that with your spouse but you've had it before you know what you're missing out on and that feels like a loss to some degree. And I know people, I have close friends, who have found themselves in a very tricky situation in marriage because they are having a very hard time mustering up any sort of attraction for their spouse. And that is a haunting feeling because you feel bad. There's a lot of guilt associated, but also it feels sad to think to yourself I actually don't get to do that ever again in my life. If I don't figure this out with my spouse, I don't get to do it again, and that there's some sadness there. But so I just want to validate the feeling right, like I think that's part of what happens and I'll speak from a woman's perspective Like that's part of what happens for a woman when you find yourself in marriage not attracted to your spouses, there's this kind of like man, but that feeling is so fun. I wish I could have that again. So what I think we have to understand is that the way that God designed marriage, it's a very different sort of relationship.

Speaker 2:

You might have felt all kinds of things in your pre-dating life or in your single life, but God designed marriage that it would be a covenant decision that you make with somebody and the strings that are attached to a marriage covenant. There's not a lot of guarantees about life with your spouse. There's no guarantees about life in general right, like we all know, life can be bananas and things are up down all around. You don't really know what's coming around the corner. When you sign on that line and you commit yourself in a covenant marriage to somebody, it's not based on how we feel. It isn't based on the chemical feelings that we may or may not come by in a certain day or season. That's a relief. God actually designed that a covenant would be a choice, that love is a choice. It's not a feeling. That's a relief Because then, regardless of how I quote feel inside of my marriage at the moment, it doesn't make it wrong.

Speaker 2:

It actually is no indication of I made the wrong choice. It's no indication of I'm trapped. It's no indication of any of that. It's an indication that I made a powerful decision. This was my choice and now I get to steward my energy towards my spouse, where we get really powerful in that, I think, is when we realize, inside of marriage, where does chemistry come from?

Speaker 2:

And inside of marriage, where do my happy hormones kick in? And from experience I can say that when I invest in my connection with you and I know how to make us feel really connected, when I intentionally show you respect, when I intentionally show you care, when I dwell on the things about you that I respect and that I find, um, you know, admirable, the things that I, that things that you add to our family, the ways that you are with our children, the ways that you help me feel safe, like, when I dwell on who you are inside of our covenant, and when I make a lot of intention to pour into our emotional bank account. It is like a magic pill, it is like a, it is like a. An electrical switch turns on. Are you feeling attracted?

Speaker 1:

to me right now. You're so attractive right now we're going to we're going to pause this. We'll be back in just a minute, folks.

Speaker 2:

I'm saying like it requires intention to pour into the emotional bank account of our relationship. The byproduct of doing that is like an electrical current is present that wasn't maybe present before, and I believe that God designed it that way because it is something that drives us back to each other, like our. I don't get to have a physical relationship or even an emotional, intimate relationship with any other man in my lifetime.

Speaker 2:

Not any other man that's going to live long yeah exactly, and so when I understand that, when I understand how to cultivate connection in my marriage and I do that with a lot of intention I get the bribe. The by-product of that is a chemical reaction that you don't get any other way, and and you know, the truth is is that we are all aging and and we're not going to be the same. But when we choose to grow old with each other, we just we choose to go on this, on this journey together.

Speaker 1:

It's build a marriage that's really attractive.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Right, build a life together that you really look at and you go. I love that. I'm proud of that.

Speaker 1:

Invest into your body, your soul, your spirit. Go on that journey as a couple and and and level up your marriage.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, all right, I mean, we really really hammered that one, okay, I mean we really really hammered that one, okay, I feel passionately about that one.

Speaker 1:

Okay, Um is it normal to feel lonely in my marriage?

Speaker 1:

The like admitting that you feel lonely in a committed relationship is so vulnerable, right, and, but it's all P. So many people feel this, right. So many people are struggling with this deep loneliness in marriage. And there's the theme here right, we're back on. This theme of marriage is supposed to be this journey in which I'm with someone who is constantly discovering me. When we get into a marriage and we assume that we know everything about the person, when we stop exploring, marriage becomes very lonely, creates a very connected relationship. The opposite of a lonely relationship is a connected relationship. Right, what creates a connected relationship is I feel safe, I feel seen, I feel known, I feel safe, right, there's safety in a relationship when. There's safety in a relationship when you know, babe, that you can tell me pretty much anything and I can handle it me pretty much anything and I can handle it.

Speaker 1:

It creates this space for you to not stay alone. Yeah, Because all of us experienced loneliness. I mean, I've experienced loneliness in our relationship. You experienced loneliness in our relationship. It comes. There's lots of times where it comes. Um, uh, when we had babies, we experienced loneliness in a different level when your mom died and and Edie was really dysregulated. Like, I experienced a lots of loneliness in taking care of Edie all by myself because she wouldn't let you right, and you experienced there's different places. The thing is there's a difference between being alone and being lonely.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

And so, when I'm able to actually have conversations with you, allow you to explore me when you want to explore me and and dive into you. Know my heart and see where I'm at. All of a sudden, that loneliness turns into a place of connection.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Couples stay desperately lonely because of their inability to be seen Absolutely. That comes from a bunch of different places. It comes from your partner's inability to ask really good questions. We want to avoid conflict, so that creates tons of loneliness, right? Because if I'm afraid of you being lonely, then I don't ask if it feels like my fault, right, if?

Speaker 1:

you say, wow, I'm afraid of you being lonely, then I don't ask If it feels like my fault, right? If you say, wow, I'm feeling really lonely and it triggers shame in me and I don't know how to deal with my shame, then we never have this conversation. So it's back to if you want to create massive amounts of deep connection in your relationship, we have to get really good at dealing with conflict, at expressing our, our emotions, our core emotions, and this is one thing that we hit massively in our six-week intensive yeah is how to connect on an emotional level because, we know we've talked about this so much on our podcast we don't connect through information not very deeply.

Speaker 1:

but human beings connect deeply through the exchange of emotions. Well, our emotions are one of our most vulnerable, scary places. They are also where all the gold lies. That's where it's like so wildly exhilarating.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

When you say man, I feel a lot of fear today If I press into that and I go oh, tell me about that, I become your safe landing place. So a lot of couples do marriage separate from each other, they do roommates and it's desperately lonely.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it is. You know, as I think about it. Like I mean, marriage is a wild thing just in general. It's wild that two very different people from very different backgrounds could come together and have to build a life together. Like that's. It's kind of wild. The design the truth is is that, um, we are two very different people, different needs, different desires, different ideas of what is good or normal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think for me, like I feel lonely in marriage when I feel like I can't be authentically me with you, like I can be me, I can sit with me all day long, I can go about my day and I've got my own internal world going on, my own needs, my own desires. But it feels lonely when I feel like I can't be that authentic with you. And it does go back to being seen. But I think my point would be our job in marriage is to cultivate a space of truly unconditional love, which which says you can be fully you here in this space. You can be fully you, and I'm going to learn about all of you and make sure you know you're welcome here, welcome in your yeah.

Speaker 1:

Because there's a fine line and I'm not correcting you at all. Um, I was talking I. What I'm saying came from a marriage appointment, counseling appointment this week is there was a man who was saying I don't feel like I can be fully me. The the challenges is. Maturity means that, um, that I do temper things in my life that cause pain, cause harm, that aren't great. So I'm not fully me with the kids. I don't get down and wrestle as hard as I can go. I'm not fully me with you when it comes to my full personality. There's some things that are great for my guy group and some things that work really well for us. Yeah, so I think I just want to create, because there's a lot of pain. That's some things that are great for my guy group and some things that work really well for us. Yeah, so I think I just want to create, cause there's a lot of pain.

Speaker 1:

That's good, a good distinction in these areas and I just want to say like, yeah, I think I just want to make that distinction.

Speaker 2:

No, that's really good distinction. I think where I was going with it is, um, if I, even in our differences, if I'm able to communicate with you fully, like what my heart feels like it needs for connection, um, how I best enjoy us time together, um, what, what I dream about for our family, the things that like, uh, an exciting marriage entails these kinds of things for me. You know, I want to feel fully known. It's back to feeling seen and known.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't mean that I get what I want all the time, or that we do it my way all the time, or that, like you said, I don't temper myself to protect us. But even if I'm tempering myself to protect us, I want you to know what I'm tempering. I want you to know all the parts of me that I'm sacrificing. Even on a day-to-day basis I make sacrifices. I don't get to do things the way that I want to do them, because I love us more than I love my way. So I think that marriage feels lonely because it isn't actually about like what we do at the end, or like what is the resolution at the end of the argument, like where we actually land isn't as significant as me feeling like we fully get each other in the journey of like reaching the resolution. So I just think loneliness comes ultimately when we don't feel super seen and known.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, it really does. When I can't show up in a relationship, when I can't express my emotions, when I have to hide parts of me, it's a very lonely relationship.

Speaker 2:

This is a short bit just out of the very end. I also think loneliness comes when we haven't honed our team mate skills and on very practical levels. I think spouses can feel very lonely in marriage when, whatever portion of the load you're carrying, you feel like you're carrying by yourself and you're in different lanes.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we're going to cover this in part two.

Speaker 2:

Okay, great.

Speaker 1:

Great.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. These are fun, babe. Yeah, it's good, okay, uh, last question we're going to cover today. We these are deep and we don't want to like overburden anybody here with these thoughts, so we'll save some for next week.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, before we answer this last question, I do want to talk about our marriage intensive, and why I want to do that is because a lot of what we're talking about today has so much to do with people not having the tools and the skillset to really build a marriage that they're proud of that's true. And we launched our marriage intensive, so that we can equip people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, our restore and renew six week marriage intensive is coming up. It starts on February 10th, so it's coming right around the corner and ultimately we designed this program to walk you through these hard things, whether it's those feelings of disconnection or recurring conflict you know, you just kind of go around that mountain again and again or that the weight that sometimes we carry of unmet expectations and ultimately we want to help you build a marriage that feels really joyful and really connected and resilient. It's. It's not about just learning new skills. It is about creating a stronger foundation and turning your challenges into growth opportunities. We want to look at our marriages and be proud of what we're building together into growth opportunities. We wanna look at our marriages and be proud of what we're building together. So this intensive is truly we believe it is truly a beautiful next step to lasting change.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, our intensive starts February 10th and this is our gosh fifth time that we've ran this intensive over the last year and a half. Anyways, it's really awesome I've seen more breakthrough this last year in married couples than. I ever have in my entire life, and largely it's because I'm watching couples get tools that they've never had before.

Speaker 1:

You know I um this last year. I started to um ramp up marriage counseling and and what I've realized is I charged $250 for an appointment for a married couple, which is is great. You can get six sessions with me through the marriage intensive right. We have these six sessions that couples can go to, where you can ask us anything after the teaching portion teaching portion which is a like a $1,300 value.

Speaker 1:

So it's one of my favorite things to do is for $500,. You can get $1,300 of value of being able to meet with us, being able to dive into groups with other couples. So we do some breakout groups. We do weekly activations. You get cheat sheets so we don't just teach conflict resolution, but we actually give you a sheet. We don't just teach how to work through pain, but we actually give you five steps and a real process and you get a cheat sheet on how to do that. So we've created weekly activations. We've created these tools to make it easy for you to learn.

Speaker 2:

And digest the material. Yeah, to digest the material.

Speaker 1:

So if you're interested in that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. Ultimately, if you're ready to invest in this way, I mean don't wait. There's a link in the show notes today so you could go there right away and sign up, and we just want to see these six weeks be the start of something truly amazing and beautiful for you and your spouse, so we'd love to walk alongside of you.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. Last question, babe.

Speaker 2:

Okay, last question for the day and we'll come back and revisit for more in part two. But okay, can we ever repair the damage from past betrayal?

Speaker 1:

It's a great. Can we ever really?

Speaker 2:

get over past betrayal? That's a great question. Can we ever really get over past betrayal?

Speaker 1:

You know, when a betrayal happens, oftentimes one person the person who created the offense oftentimes does their best to clean it up. I've just seen this over and over and over again. So they go to counseling whatever I mean, whatever the problem was, and what happens a lot is the person who was wounded right. The victim often doesn't get the healing that they need, and so they get stuck in the past and they end up in this spot where, time and time again, they are bringing up what happened, whether it's looking at pornography, whether it's an affair, whether it's alcohol abuse.

Speaker 1:

You know the partner who was stuck in this pattern for so long and felt powerless to get their partner to change is now they're not over it, they're not healed. And it can be this really challenging thing, right? Because if you're, if you feel like you've apologized and moved on, but your partner keeps bringing it up Um, I see a lot of couples make the mistake of going. Am I just going to have to put up with this forever? Right. But the truth is, if you're not that same person anymore, if you really work through the issue, if you've healed what's going on inside of you, you can kind of team up. I had this happen with a married couple, this exact scenario. He had had an affair two years ago, he had worked through his pain and then, you know, a year later, in a really hard moment of insecurity, she said I just don't understand why you were sleeping with that woman in the hotel room and I'm having a hard time. And he was just like I'm done, I'm over it, I can't do this anymore.

Speaker 1:

And so I said to him hey, are you that same guy? Are you proud that you did that? Are you a different man? He goes yeah, I'm a different man. Like I don't like that guy that I was. I hate that guy. I was like well, why can't you and her hate that guy?

Speaker 2:

Why don't?

Speaker 1:

you team up with her and go oh my gosh, babe, because I was so selfish, because I was horrible to you, because I was insecure, because I didn't know how to take care of you, and instead of defending yourself, you go back with her and you partner up and go that guy. We both don't like that guy, totally. That's part of the healing process is I allow my partner to grieve where they're really at, and there's so many different ways to approach this, but I just want to talk to those people who feel stuck yeah the partner who feels stuck in the past is having a hard time getting over that thing.

Speaker 1:

How to build a marriage after a massive affair or pornography or emotional abuse is all, to me, is all about rebuilding trust, and you do that by sticking, having a great plan, sticking to it and learning how to really hear, how you affect that person. For a long time, and when we um did our podcast with um help me, babe. Uh, what's their names? Oh gosh, it was just recently.

Speaker 2:

Oh, what's her names.

Speaker 1:

Oh gosh, it was just recently. It was oh the yeah, yeah, yeah, the lenses, the lenses, yeah. One thing that he said is I bring evidence every single day to the table. I bring evidence that I am trustworthy every single day, by how I take care of her, by how I show up to the relationship, by my intentionality. Rebuilding a marriage is incredible. I see so many couples do it, and one of the things you have to remember is that you're not building the old marriage, you're building a brand new marriage.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 1:

So new tools, new effort and energy turning towards one another. I mean, I just can't even tell you how much. How much, um, we see couples completely rebuild their marriages to people that are willing to walk forward and be intentional. It's incredible.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely you guys. These are deeply vulnerable questions that often go unasked, but addressing them really, really, really can be so transformative for a marriage. So we appreciate you all, our faithful listeners. We're going to see you back here next week for part two. Till then, have a great week. Bye.