Why You Keep Getting Defensive — And How Shame Is Killing Your Marriage | The 'NEW' Marriage | Ep450

Cass Morrow, Author of Disrupting Divorce: The NEW Man. Saving Struggling, Sexless, and Toxic Marriages.

Kathryn Morrow, Author of Behind The White Picket Fence.

Shame, guilt, and embarrassment are quietly destroying your marriage.

You know you've made mistakes. You carry them around. And every time your partner brings them up, you go defensive—because feeling like you're not good enough is unbearable. That defensiveness? That's shame in action.

It’s not because your mistakes were too big. It's because shame—when you live in it rather than move through it—makes you blame your partner instead of taking responsibility. And blame strips out everything: respect, empathy, love, care, and gratitude.

In Ep450 of The 'NEW' Marriage, Cass and Kathryn Morrow break down what shame, guilt, and embarrassment are actually doing to your relationship—and what it looks like to fail forward instead.

Key Takeaways:

• Defensiveness is shame in action: Why feeling "not good enough" ruins communication.
• Shame as a motivator, not a prison: How to feel the guilt, learn from it, and move on.
• "You don't get to decide what betrayed your partner": Understanding her hurt, whether it's porn, social media, or affairs.
• Overcoming the embarrassment of asking for help: Real growth only happens when you stop hiding.
• Lessons from a $1M investment: Inside insights from the Alex Hormozi event.

🔗 Explore more resources and our story: https://www.morrowmarriage.com/

Join Cass Morrow and Kathryn Morrow, the resilient couple behind Morrow Marriage. Together, we share our unscripted, raw, and against-the-grain journey of saving our marriage from the depths of Hell. We battle narcissism, emotional abuse, reactive abuse, and physical and sexual assault, offering lessons, actionable steps, and real-life examples to inspire couples worldwide.

Our journey is a testament to overcoming adversity, with challenges including Cass’ restraining order, seven separations, and two divorce lawyers. If we can survive and thrive in toxic, abusive, and sexless marriages, what’s your excuse?

Both books are searchable on Amazon and often purchased together:

Disrupting Divorce: The NEW Man by Cass Morrow: https://a.co/d/31vm4bV 

Behind The White Picket Fence by Kathryn Morrow: https://a.co/d/f0diMvp

Discover our story, challenge societal norms, and help disrupt the 78% divorce rate. Subscribe, comment, and share if you find value as we strive to save marriages.

What to Watch Next:

Explore our journey through our podcast playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzgMDD_noj4rUVhb9v9alyZe5ws_Su0I4

Access courses, training, tools, and books at https://www.morrowmarriage.com/

Connect on Social Media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cassfostermorrow
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cassfostermorrow
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@cassfostermorrow

Learn More About Kathryn:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KMorrowMarriage

Help us disrupt divorce.

— Cass

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MorrowMarriage.com | Disrupting Divorce With The “New” Marriage

Cass and Kathryn came back from the depths of hell to save their marriage and keep their family together.  Battling narcissism, abuse, reactive abuse, emotional, physical and sexual assault. Listen as they share their lessons, actionable steps and real life examples from even the worst of their story. 

Unscripted, real, raw and against the grain from society’s example of marriage - currently leading to the demise of nearly 78% of all marriages today.

Inspiring couples around the world...

If they can save their marriage from toxicity, abuse and a sexless marriage - not only survive it all... but THRIVE... what’s your excuse?

Join Cass & Kathryn as they flip divorce statistics and fulfill their purpose in life.

Have your own questions or topics you would like us to cover? 

Let us know here: https://forms.gle/7R8GBAdmQRkuZ3NFA

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Shame, guilt, and embarrassment destroying your marriage. Labeling your partner, and I'm gonna go with narcissist. Committing to your husband triggers versus cognitive distortions, guys. Ooh, this might trigger you and put you into your own distortion. 90% of marriages fail. Shame, guilt, and embarrassment destroying your marriage. Welcome to the Moral Marriage Podcast, guys. I want to talk about this from a few different angles. All right. The very first one is let's talk about the destroying your marriage part. Okay. You can't actually move your marriage forward at all if you live in shame, guilt, and embarrassment. Because the truth is, what happens is no matter what, you will deteriorate inside. You will literally start to fade away inside. The candle dims. You lose your light, your authenticity, because you can't move anything forward in truth that is hurting you. You'll ultimately, if you've ever wondered why you defend yourself, it's because you don't like feeling like you're not good enough. I mean, when you truly love your partner, and and I I know some of you think that, you do, but like as we figured our shit out, the less defensive we get, the more curious we are for one another, the more empathetic we are to one another. Uh, well, empathy is still tough for me, but like what happens is you you ask more questions because you don't assume your partner is hurting you, okay? And your shame and your guilt, your embarrassment from the day before, or the compound, or when they say something they bring up from the past and you don't like feeling it, then listen, you're either doing the things that support the mistake from the past or you're not. I realize you can't fix yesterday today, okay, especially if it compounds with all these other things. But the reason why it destroys your marriage is you will ultimately have to defend yourself, and ultimately that leads to blaming someone else, and you inherently enable yourself to be a person with no respect, no love, no empathy, no care, no giving, no gratitude, all of these things that you can't possibly do because you're blaming them because you don't want to hurt inside. See what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 2:11

I the way that I talk about shame and guilt is put a positive spin on it. Shame and guilt, just like fear, can motivate you into action. So go ahead, feel it and then move. Allow that shame and guilt to make you do something different. If you don't do something different, then you're gonna keep going back into the same behaviors and then you're going to live in that place of shame and guilt because it's going to be every time that you make that same mistake, it's gonna keep happening and you're gonna feel worse and worse. The worse you feel, the more shame and guilt. So this has been something that's been lifelong, which for some of you you have felt shame and guilt your entire life. Some of you really, really struggle with shame and guilt.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Some of you were hurt by your parents and you're ashamed, or or if somebody hurts you as a child and you carry that shame, and that's that's impossible. That could have been your choice. That was a choice you would remove from you.

SPEAKER_01 2:58

And then you you so then it compounds, it snowballs, and then now you're an adult, and shame and guilt, you're just you're riddled with shame and guilt, and it's not actually driving action. So you need to be able to deal with it so that you can then move away from it because it's not a good place to be. So I always say look at it in a positive way. If you can feel the shame and guilt and identify what it is that's causing you to feel that and address it, get out of there.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

It's actually wonderful because if you understand like the whole reason people succeed in anything, okay. Let's just remove your spells for a second. Just think of something that you achieved on your own. Uh, maybe you used to be an athlete, maybe you hit some some personal records like PRs, like maybe you hit a milestone with your savings and this is all you, okay? Whatever it is, just think of something that you've overcome or you achieved. Overcome would be examples like maybe you had to quit alcohol, uh, quit alcohol, became sober. Uh, maybe you left the streets. Um, maybe you um had to make a choice to say this is bad for me, like a person in your life, and remove them. Okay. Thank you. See, what what you have to understand is I under I I I I believe, I get it. The shame and the guilt and the embarrassment is real, okay? But the only way you ever succeeded in those times, you didn't, when you actually made it, with any of the things you just figured out that you wanted to use as an example for yourself, without your spouse, just you, okay, you failed and then you failed forward. Meaning you learned from the failure, the mistake, the thing that didn't work out, and then you tried again, and then eventually you got to the goal that you were just patting yourself on the back for. If we know that, it can be the same thing with your partner. It doesn't matter how they treat you. Here's why this is so important to understand what Catherine was just saying and what I'm saying right now, okay? If you can do this with your partner, they can't hold the past. Let me give you an example. Catherine could start screaming at me about the past, and I'm not that guy anymore. Okay?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

I could, but I'm not going to.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Yes. So think about somebody, betrayal is a big one you guys get come to us for. So let's just say um your partner's bringing up the betrayal, the affair. Well, I didn't, I didn't cheat. I didn't cheat. I didn't cheat. I I was it was just Instagram, it was just porn. Let's fucking betrayal regardless. Okay? It still hurts the same way. Okay?

SPEAKER_01 5:05

And so you don't get to decide what betrays the other person.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

No, and so if that hurts them and you feel the shame and they're still bringing it up, even though you don't watch porn, okay, hopefully you're doing all the right things, for example, not bringing your phone to the bathroom. But like, you don't have to feel embarrassed if you're not doing it. But see, if you keep away from the shame and the guilt about what you used to do wrong, even if they're upset, you won't need to defend yourself. You can be there for your partner. It's the same thing with insecurity. Why we can use it as a bridge to connect you guys instead of using it as a curse over you guys, a cliff that you've fallen off of nonstop. Okay? Now, once you do that, then you can allow your partner to heal. You can now be there for them, right? Because you've learned to accept it. You've done things on your own. You failed forward, good. Fail forward in your marriage, good. Now you can continue to grow and be a new person. Okay? Anything you want to add to that? Okay. The other angle I want you to look at this from is completely different. This is important. We know that you can't move a relationship forward on your own. Okay, we know that.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

You just caught a fly in the middle of the air.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Thank you. Reflexes. I don't think it was a real fly. It was like some sort of floating bug, but I mean it was flying. But it's not like a fly that was fast.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

It was a coasting bug. It was floating.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

Go watch the other episode fly. That's why I caught you. When you coast. See what happens? Dead. Imminent death. Okay, excuse me. Excuse me. Okay. So you have to get help. We know this because uh by the way, just when you if you ever see anybody say they made it on their own, like a lot of successful people say that. I made it on my own, I did this. That's impossible. It's impossible. Somebody guided them, a person, a mentor.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

They read books, which means people forget about how their wife took care of the kids while they built their business.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Oh my gosh, man.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

So many men say they did it on their own. What about the person that took care of the house and the kids while you were doing that?

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Building your business up. We deal with this all about it for these women. Yeah. Um, in fact, um I remember a client last year that was that, speaking of the episode that we just talked about with providing, um, I remember a client who was like, he didn't, he didn't even remember how he would come home and he she would work with him till like 2 a.m., 3 a.m. bouncing ideas off, just letting his vision fly so he could just he could just grow grow the the vision in his mind. So you're saying that she's not involved in the start of a company? Are you kidding me? Like what an asshole. Anyways, okay, so you everybody, a lot of people will just read books. That's why I bring this up. Because a lot of people just read books, so they think they do it on their own, but if they're taking someone else's knowledge, they didn't do it on their own. Unless you literally tried everything by yourself, one person, you never talk to anybody, which is pretty fucking hard, man, because every one of you that starts to learn something, you have a vision for where you want to go. You're your own visionary, you're your own goal setter, whatever. So you need help. So let's just say you need help, you talk to the right people, and then oh my gosh, let's like we have this happen in our program all the time. It's like, guys, uh, one of the expressions that everybody uses is like, close mouths don't get fed. I'll say, Oh, nobody's got a question today, because it'll be quiet for a minute. I'll be like, awesome, I'm my fucking work here is done, I'm good. See you guys. And then hands just start coming up. But then a lot of times, people will come on, I had a guy come on seven months. He's been in the program. And I was like, dude, welcome to Lord's, welcome to the program. He's like, I've been here seven months. I said, What? If you don't put your hand up, man, I'll never get to know you. And he's like, Yes, I started to figure that out. I've been embarrassed. Have you heard our story?

SPEAKER_01 8:41

How could anyone be embarrassed?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

There is nothing around us. There is nothing that you could have said or done that could ever produce judgment. Okay. I I I will judge you if you don't want to move forward. Like if you'd rather just sit in your pain and victimize yourself. If you want to keep repeating your same mistakes and not fail forward, just keep failing.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Then we're not the people for you. But if we don't care what mistakes you made as long as you want to grow from them.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Oh my gosh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

We'll judge you for not growing, not for wanting to grow. That's people don't need to be scared to talk to us.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

But the thing is, this happens like on initial calls when people are learning about the program. This happens uh all the time when a person is in the program, they did not want to tell everybody. And by the way, when you are, if you're one of our clients and you're you're listening to this, when you are the one that shares some pretty big stuff, like somebody in your program recently, she's doing really well in the program, and then for what I understand, and then she had an affair or something, right? Yes, what it does is the truth releases some of the shame and the guilt. It at least starts the process. Then when you start to learn from it and move forward, and you actually teach what you've learned from your mistakes, how you've done something different, how you're making different choices, you instill accountability and discipline in yourself to not make the same mistakes. And the thing about that is that's so powerful is that you invite others without even asking them to share where they have messed up. And when that happens, they start to release some of their shame, and everybody's cycle starts to follow the same path. If you don't believe me, just think about how we started to share our story online, now helping like 8,000 people in four years, okay? And not only do I not feel ashamed about who I used to be, I feel sometimes we, you know, something comes up and we're like, I'm sorry, baby, you know, and it's kind of this cute little thing between us, you know. But like, but it's it's not shame though.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

It's not shame. It's actually you're just more recognizing that this happened and wow, that was shitty. But it's not, we don't we we actually laugh, yeah, joke about it.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

We make fun of Ryan all the time. It's good thing Ryan's not here.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

Yeah, all the time. Oh my god, Ryan would have blah blah blah blah blah. In fact, I was just in Vegas to see Alex Ramosy, uh, well, not him, his team. We did see Alex. But um, yeah, we were uh Dennis and I went down there, president of our company went and I went down there to uh go learn a bunch of ways how we can reach you guys faster, go there further. That puts us over a million dollars with growth and investing in whether it's coaches, whether it's uh uh seminars, whether it's everything.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

We've spent a million dollars.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

Yeah, we just crossed the bridge. I was recon when I recognized it, I was on the on the DMs messaging somebody saying about 900, and then I looked at Dennis, and Dennis and I both as I'm setting a voice note, it's over a million dollars now. Like, so it's so cool, and I probably won't even keep track anymore because that's just stupid, but it's really cool to get to that target. That's why we say you haven't tried everything. And what I need you to understand is literally there were even people in there. This is like people that are making millions of dollars, anywhere from like one and to uh the top that I knew that was in there were 70 million uh last year, all learning to grow more. And some of our questions would have seemed dumb, all different levels. Some like we did these roundtables, and people were embarrassed to to ask their question because they're in the company of these, say, better businesses, richer businesses, let's say that's how you become better.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

That's how you become better. The $1 million entrepreneur asks the question to the $70 million entrepreneur. That's how that works, you guys. Oh my gosh. Yes. You can't even believe that embarrassment. I like I can't wait to pick that person's brain if I'm sitting. I don't and the the thing is, successful people, really successful people, they don't look down on people that are following in their own. Oh my gosh, they never would.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

They love to help.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

In the same way that we like to help you guys, when you want to grow, ask all of the questions. We want to answer them. So people that don't ask questions, that don't actually want to grow, that's when we might look down our noses at you a little bit. Not because of what you've done, because of your lack of ambition to move forward.

SPEAKER_00 12:21

Well, we say it's it's the reality is we only have so much time in a day, and if we have people that want to help and are gonna learn, making mistakes along the way, of course, uh then we can pour our energy where it's required, right? That's a requirement. I'm obligated to do that. She feels obligated to do that. So we so we're not here to, we're not blasting love songs outside your house, the fucking ghetto blaster, trying to remind you why you're here. Listen, you should want to move forward. I'm gonna give you one more example before we let you go here, because this happens a lot. As a guy who's gone to the gym for many, many years, um, you get intimidated by somebody who is, let's say, this huge, you call them juice monkeys, okay? That guy wants to help you, but you feel overweight and you're embarrassed and you don't want to ask because you it makes you feel stupid. That's that's the exact opposite. Just another example. So now we've given you a relationship example, we've given you a business example, we've given you a health example. Everybody, everybody that is successful in an area wants to help somebody else so badly because we already know we're so we're good at it. We love to help, we want to see the change in you. Nobody ever looks down on anybody. In fact, if you ever had somebody snooty because they're rich and they don't want to talk to you and help you, that's that's because they they they use that to build themselves up and don't care. They only care about how they feel about themselves. Otherwise, everybody else, we want to help. We like we really, really, really do. Okay? And there is nothing you can say or do that would ever make us feel like, oh fuck, you're hopeless. Okay, just that's just that's that's crazy shit. Okay, so ditch those people. Yeah. Yeah. Ditch those people, find people in your life who have achieved and reached the goals. We're big fans of paying for it. Yeah. Right? We're big fans of paying. We're gonna we're gonna work with Alex now. He's gonna, he's gonna look at our business right down to the bottom so we can see how we can help you guys more, right? We're big fans of paying for the people who have done it better before. I strongly recommend that you do the same. All right, guys. We'll see you next time. Bye.