Half-In, Half-Out Recovery: He Says He’s Changing but Keeps the “Addiction Door” Cracked Open

In this PBSE episode (#332), we explore what it means when an addict says he is changing but continues to keep the “addiction door” cracked open. A betrayed partner may see signs that look like recovery—porn blockers, monitoring software, more honesty, fewer obvious acting-out behaviors—but still discover that her partner is seeking sexualized content through social media thirst traps, scanning, fantasy, or other loopholes. We make clear that this is not simply a “lesser version” of the original problem. If the addict is still using sexualized material for arousal, escape, objectification, secrecy, dopamine, or emotional regulation, then he is still engaging the addiction system.

The article distinguishes between technical sobriety and real recovery. Technical sobriety asks, “Did this technically count as porn?” Real recovery asks, “Why am I still seeking sexualized escape outside my relationship?” Half-in, half-out recovery often happens when an addict wants the benefits of recovery—less shame, fewer consequences, a calmer partner, restored trust—without fully surrendering the addiction itself. He may comply with outward recovery tasks while still protecting hidden outlets, loopholes, or emotional escape routes. We challenge addicts to ask hard questions: What am I still protecting? What do I get from these behaviors? What emotions am I trying not to feel? Am I more committed to technical innocence or true relational safety?

For betrayed partners, the article offers strong validation: you are not overreacting when these “edging” behaviors still feel like betrayal. Continued sexualized attention outside the relationship can communicate comparison, rejection, humiliation, and abandonment, even when the addict insists it is “not as bad” as before. Partners cannot force addicts into integrity, but they can find their voice, define what safety requires, and refuse to call half-surrender full recovery. Ultimately, the article teaches that there is no “door number three” where an addict can keep the perks of addiction while enjoying the trust and intimacy of a healed relationship. Real hope begins when the addict closes the door fully and chooses transformation over loopholes.

For a full transcript of this podcast in article format, go to:  Half-In, Half-Out Recovery: He Says He’s Changing but Keeps the “Addiction Door” Cracked Open

Learn more about Mark and Steve's revolutionary online porn/sexual addiction recovery and betrayal trauma healing program at—daretoconnectnow.com

Find out more about Steve Moore at:  Ascension Counseling

Learn more about Mark Kastleman at:  Reclaim Counseling Services

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Hey everybody, PBSC Podcast hosts Mark and Steve here with a special message about our revolutionary online recovery program for addict spouses and couples called Dare to Connect. Multiple times every week, we get messages from subscribers in the program. They're people just like you. They're trying to heal from the devastation of sex and porn addiction and betrayal trauma. And here's a few of our most recent submissions. Here's one from an addict in recovery. It says D2C has principles that everyone should utilize regardless of their circumstances. It doesn't matter your coping mechanisms, it matters that you want to work towards genuine connection with your partner.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

That's awesome. Another testimony from an addict continues on My wife is just starting out in training as a licensed therapist. Dare to Connect has been far more useful to her than her degree. Wow. The way Mark and Steve apply what they've learned is always so redemptive. D2C has opened doors for my relationship that I thought would be shut forever. Mark and Steve are an incredible resource of information on the subject of sex addiction and betrayal trauma. We could not do this journey without their help.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Here's one from a partner who's been with us for nearly a year. I want you both to know that it is because of you guys and D2C that I'm able to be in the place that I am today. I will always be grateful to you both for your feedback and prompt replies to my questions. I can't even come close to putting it into words how valuable my time spent with y'all this past year has been to my life. Thank you for everything you taught me about betrayal trauma and boundaries and thinking errors and loving myself and making myself a priority and standing up for myself.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Love that, love that submission. And then as we close out here today, guys, one more account from another addict in recovery. I wish I had a platform like this 14 years ago where I could have learned and done the hard work of recovery before I had done all this damage to myself and to my spouse. And to be candid with all of you, that's exactly why we created Dare to Connect. You know, Mark and I found ourselves in that place. You know, messages like these and the others like them, they're what Dare to Connect really is all about, guys, and why Mark and I do what we do. Whether you're an addict or a partner of an addict, and no matter where you find yourself in the recovery process, Dare to Connect can take you to the next level. Don't wait another day to catapult your recovery forward. Today is your day for change. Visit us at DareToconnectNow.com to pick up your free two-week trial of Dare to Connect today.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Hey everybody, I'm Steve Moore. And I'm Mark Castleman. We know the pain and heartbreak of porn and sex addiction. And we know the triumph of breaking completely free. Every day we help our clients find hope and healing. Join us in the fight to take back your life, your marriage, and be stronger than ever. This is the PBSE Squared Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Steve Moore and Mark Castleman here, and we are coming to you with episode 332. Half in, half out, and recovery. He says he's changing, but keeps the addiction door cracked open. Metaphorically speaking.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Neither of us were ever half in or half out recovery, were we?

SPEAKER_02 4:58

No, I my dedication to recovery has been absolute from the beginning. Uh never wavered, and definitely was never definitely was never half in in terms of in terms of either mentality or behavior. Uh, we're gonna read this submission because it's actually quite short. It's one of the shortest submissions we've gone, but still very good. It comes from a partner. She says, Hi, I'm a big fan of the podcast. It's been so helpful in my own recovery uh from betrayal trauma and and also from my partners. My partner, my addict partner, has the right attitude towards honesty and transparency, she says. He has porn blocking and monitoring programs on his devices, but still ends up giving in, evading the programs and watching social media quote unquote thirst traps regularly, even if he's given up uh uh on full porn. So these would be videos or media files that don't contain nudity per se, but other sexually triggering material. Uh so he says continues engaging the thirst traps despite knowing the damages of this and what it leads to. Um, and we're inferring from that eventual relapse, loss of safety with her, right? It's continuing to damage her regardless of whether it's quote unquote true pornography, whatever the hell that means, because we've talked about that before in other podcasts, you know, in other venues. She goes on to say this is obviously upsetting for me. I've heard you mentioned about being quote unquote half in and half out of recovery, and was wondering if you could expand on this as I worry this is what's happening with us. There you go. That's the submission. Which is a great, it's a great topic. Um because you know, uh, this half-in, half out concept, you know, everybody's addiction and recovery story for both the addict as well as a betrayed partner, it they all look a little different, right? We were talking actually in our addict session this morning on Dare Connect in our D2C program for addict spouses and couples, and we talked about this very thing like for addicts, for example. Every addiction story looks dramatically different, right? The origins behind it. Marx, uh, for example, you know, his background stems from early childhood examples of abuse and neglect. Um, mine has roots in kind of colossal traumatic events, like several of them kind of happening in rap rapid succession. Um and, you know, if we were to look at other stories, the list goes on, just like for partners as well. But the longer we work in this business, the more we the more the more things change, the more things stay to stay the same, to borrow the popular phrase. And that's definitely the case because when we work, for example, with addicts or with partners, even though those origin stories may vary a great deal, where it inevitably kind of finds itself coalescing for both partners in the relationship as well as the coupleship and the challenges they face, they oftentimes kind of coalesce in a very actually fairly small amount of common problems or issues or obstacles. And this half-in, half out piece is very common. And so this is a good topic to uh to tackle today, and we've got a lot to say about it.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Yeah, and we, you know, we want to validate uh this betrayed partner that wrote in to us. Um it looks like he he says he wants recovery, he's got some blockers, he's got monitoring software. She says he's being more honest than he was before. But the key here is that he's still finding ways around all of that and keeps turning to sexualized content. And that is we can't we can't overstate how unsettling this is for a betrayed partner. Right? She's not overreacting. Uh these this whole social media thirst trap, suggestive reels, scanning, fantasy feeding, you know, the whole sexually charged content. Um it's it's still it's he's still engaging in it. He's still inside his addiction system. Because those things, I guarantee that those things he's accessing, he's accessing for reasons connected to the to the attic brain. These things are still being used for arousal, they're still being used for escape, for escape, objectification, secrecy, dopamine hits, pleasure hits. This is still he's still in the system, even though he's he wants to appear that he's in real recovery. Right? So we need to we need to everyone needs to be aware that recovery is not measured only by whether somebody, quote, technically stopped watching porn. Recovery, real recovery, is measured by whether he's surrendering the whole addictive system that made the pornography possible in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 9:59

Yeah. I mean, to to kind of expand on that, we we often say on the podcast, you know, recovery is not a behavior change, it's a lifestyle change. Right. And to and to extend off of that, that that's an obvious extension of a phrase we hardly ever say, but it applies here. Addiction living is a lifestyle. Yeah. It is simply not just a behavior that all that operates in isolation or a series of behaviors, right? As Mark indicated, the term system is very accurate because it's actual addiction and its symptomology, like like we talk about often, is just that. It's symptomology of other stuff. But the time addiction becomes measurable and reaches a threshold where it's causing safety issues and and other various problems, both for the addict and for a partner or for both, that that system has been growing for a long time. And it's the symptomology that's obviously that's oftentimes causing the problem. While the other things that have been going on underneath, whether it's escape or avoidance or numbing out or compensating or whatever, have been going on for a long, long time.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Well, and I can relate to this half in, half out. You know, if we want to uh I invite anybody who any anybody in in recovery or thinking about recovery who finds themselves here, it's what it was for me and and guys I've worked with forever, it's where we want the benefits of recovery without fully surrendering the addiction itself. Right? We want less shame, we want less conflict, we want our partners, our betrayed partners to trust us more, we want fewer consequences, but we still continue to protect certain outlets, certain loopholes, certain secret comforts, secret self-medicating means. Right? And so we're we're we're half in, we're half out. Yeah. Um and so we we'll do things like described here. We'll we'll do some of the more obvious outward things like installing blockers or accountability software. Um we we start to engage in honesty, but often and not until we're caught. Uh we we start getting to into technicalities with regard to a recovery. Well, I'm not looking at porn, right? It it wasn't porn. I didn't masturbate, I only looked for a little bit, or or this shouldn't count. You can see how I'm trying to hold on to my system while giving the outward appearance that I'm letting it go.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Well, and and as you can see, there's lots that makes this up, but that but so much of this is it's all about intention. Right? And and what's what's the actually going on underneath the behaviors as opposed to just what's observable itself. Some time ago, I believe it was actually in an addict session a few weeks back, uh, a question came up, and this is one of the best parts of being in the Dare to Connect program for our subscribers is that they can do live interactive chat with us in real time. And somebody during the session actually brought up this idea of you know, what is the difference between quote unquote edging behaviors versus slips? I remember this came up and we ended up having a really good discussion about it. And we obviously won't repeat that here, and we'd love for you to come join us and grab a two-week trial at Dare to Connect at DarareToconnectNow.com so that you can come and participate in these kinds of discussions. But the the sum total of what came out of that is that it the difference between those those behaviors is two things. One, edging behaviors are a distinct pattern uh versus slips, genuine slips, which are uh just what they imply, right? They're stumbles in recovery that are not intentional that we work to correct and then obtain a progressive victory over. But the other piece, kind of tied to that, as you can see, is the intention piece. Edging behavior, which is exactly what's being described here, right? I'm I'm gonna not look at porn, but I'm going to get my needs met, quote unquote, right, through other means that aren't technically skirting the line. That approach is akin to the truck driver that you know drives the semi next to the cliff that just says, okay, as long as that right tire isn't all the way off the edge, we're good. Right? Uh I didn't drive the truck off the cliff. It's good, it's fine. And that would be uh the approach that's being described here, right? I'm I how close to the line can I skirt? Whereas slip behaviors, or or again, a person who is in authentic, true, full-on recovery is going to be doing everything possible they can to stay away from the line, recognizing that the human factor and the progressive knowledge base and everything that entails addiction recovery means that there might be a slip on occasion, with again a progressive victory and absence of those things as time goes on.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Well, and and I would, you know, anybody who's engaging in this edging behavior, I would, uh a very important question is why? Why are you continuing to go to those outlets? You really need to look at that, right? Because a lot of, and we know how this works. Um, Steve and I were this way. Most of the guys who first show up in our programs, we get into recovery because the pain, the exposure, the consequences finally force the issue. We get caught, things start to fall apart, or our betrayed partner is no longer willing to put up with it. And we might want to sincerely stop, but that's not the same as really fully being ready to transform. We want our partner to calm down, we want the shame to decrease, we want our relationship to stabilize. But we want all that, but we at the same time we want to control what recovery, what are the parameters of recovery, what gets disclosed? What am I allowed to keep? That's a great one, right? What am I allowed to hold on to? And you would ask, why is this happening? Well, I know for me and and and guys I've worked with a lot of this is driven by fear, uh, continuing sexual entitlement, trying to manage our shame. This one's a hard one to hear. Emotional immaturity. I'm still acting like I'm 14 years old when this whole thing started. Um I was afraid of losing my escape system, if we're just gonna be blunt. Sure. I mean, all these kinds of outlets had functioned as my my way of emotionally regulating myself, as my way of coping with hard life, my way to numb stress or loneliness or inadequacy or boredom. How am I gonna live life if I have to if I fully give up all of this?

SPEAKER_02 16:31

So we hold on. I watched a nature show years ago, and and there was it was about sloths. You guys all know what a sloth is. They are funny creatures, right? They kind of look like monkeys, they've got really funny claws, but they move crazy slow. Honestly, it's a mirror-I don't know how they're not extinct. You'd think they'd just be instant targets for anything, but but it was showing the scene in the in the show, and and it was showing a sloth moving from one tree to another, right? So these trees were close together and it's hanging onto the one branch, and then it's like ever so slowly reaching its claw up, grabbing the other branch, and then forever it's kind of like hanging between the two. And that is a really that's kind of what comes to mind when we think about this this half in, half out recovery, right? There is a there, it is part of the quest, and we're gonna talk about the solutions to this in just a second, but Mark and I know what it's like to be that sloth hanging between two branches, and that is what's going on here, right? It's this idea that I've got one foot in this recovery world, right? Or one sloth claw hang hung on to it. Uh but and and I and I'm sincere in that, but what's the problem? I haven't let go of the other freaking tree.

SPEAKER_01 17:52

Yeah, I I used to I uh I used to now had an analogy with my groups years ago. We talked about, yeah, I'm I'm in I'm in Recoveryville now, but I kept my little studio apartment in attic town.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Yes, yeah, my summer home.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Just in case I still have a key, and if I need to cross the railroad tracks and go over to that little place, I can. Right? Because you can see a major distinction here. There's compliance. What do I have to do to get people off my back? What do I have to do to stop my partner from getting upset with me? Whereas transformation asks, what do I need to become? What kind of man do I need to become so that I never have to go back to that double life again?

SPEAKER_02 18:36

In other words, moving from being compliant in recovery to converting to a recovery lifestyle. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 18:43

Yeah, compliance versus conversion.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

And so we have to make that full move, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Hey everybody, PBSC podcast hosts Mark and Steve here with a special message about our revolutionary online recovery program for addict spouses and couples called Dare to Connect. Multiple times every week, we get messages from subscribers in the program. Uh, they're people just like you. They're trying to heal from the devastation of sex and porn addiction and betrayal trauma. And here's a few of our most recent submissions. Here's one from an addict in recovery. It says D2C has principles that everyone should utilize regardless of their circumstances. It doesn't matter your coping mechanisms, it matters that you want to work towards genuine connection with your partner.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

That's awesome. Another testimony from an addict continues on. Uh in training as a licensed therapist. Dare to Connect has been far more useful to her than her degree. Wow. The way Mark and Steve apply what they've learned is always so redemptive. D2C has opened doors for my relationship that I thought would be shut forever. Mark and Steve are an incredible resource of information on the subject of sex addiction and betrayal trauma. We could not do this journey without their help.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Here's one from a partner who's been with us for nearly a year. I want you both to know that it is because of you guys and D2C that I'm able to be in the place that I am today. I will always be grateful to you both for your feedback and prompt replies to my questions. I can't even come close to putting it into words how valuable my time spent with y'all this past year has been to my life. Thank you for everything you taught me about betrayal trauma and boundaries and thinking errors and loving myself and making myself a priority and standing up for myself.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Love that. Love that submission. And then as we close out here today, guys, one more account from another addict in recovery. I wish I had a platform like this 14 years ago where I could have learned and done the hard work of recovery before I had done all this damage to myself and to my spouse. And to be candid with all of you, that's exactly why we created Dare to Connect. You know, Mark and I found ourselves in that place. You know, messages like these and the others like them, they're what Dare to Connect really is all about, guys. And why Mark and I do what we do. Whether you're an addict or a partner of an addict, and no matter where you find yourself in the recovery process, Dare to Connect can take you to the next level. Don't wait another day to catapult your recovery forward. Today is your day for change. Visit us at DareToconnectNow.com to pick up your free two-week trial of Dare to Connect today. Now, obviously, it's important to talk about what this does to a betrayed partner because I think if a guy again, not that we do recovery exclusively for our partners, nor can we do it solely for them in any form, but that is a big part of why guys in a recover recovery. If we look at that, it's important to understand in on like total transparency, so you're not living in denial about the impact that this has on a partner. First of all, uh the age-old rule about trauma plays out here in real time. Rule number one about trauma is no one has the right to dictate the impact of trauma on anyone else. And part of where I think guys get off in the thinking around edging behaviors, and again, we're inferring a little bit, but we're applying this to most the majority who are listening. I know Mark and I did this, is we look at these edging behaviors and we say, well, these aren't as bad, right? They're not it's not full-on porn, or it's not this, or it's not prostitutes anymore, it's not whatever. So then this should therefore impact her less, right? This should this should harm my partner less. But the the minute we enter that line of thinking, again, we've already we've already violated the rule of trauma and how it impacts the brain, number one. Because what is still present, still deception, still a lack of transparency, still a lack, among other things, of choosing your partner and choosing connection and fidelity. You can frame it however you want. Month, right? But at the end of the day, simply because we sent one bomber in to bomb the country instead of twelve, we may have bombed less of an area. We still bombed it, right? And there's just no way to get around that.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

And what do we have what do we have betrayed partners uh say when they see these this situation happening, like it's being described? Partners will often say he still doesn't get it. He still doesn't get it. Right? After all the pain, after the disclosure, the trauma, the broken trust, the fractured reality, the integrity abuse, the gaslighting, he's still continuing to involve himself in his addiction system. He's still choosing his addiction over our safety, over his fidelity, over me as his partner. And so uh even if even if the addict says, yeah, but it's not full-on porn, the betrayed partner still experiences all of these behaviors as comparison, rejection, humiliation, abandonment.

unknown 24:05

Right?

SPEAKER_01 24:05

The addict can say, well, it doesn't that doesn't really mean anything. And the part, what does the partner say? You're still giving your attention, your arousal, your curiosity, your sexual energy to other women.

unknown 24:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

If we're gonna be blunt.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

100%. Yeah. Right. And and again, guys, we do not that's it's it's it's kind of one of the fundamental rules of intimacy. We're gonna talk here in a second about acceptance, so we may as well segue into it right now. Being in a relationship means on some level, and and embrace and recovery means that some of us either need to come to a place of acceptance for the first time or come to a place of reacceptance around what intimacy means. The more I open myself up to another person, the more I have to recognize and honor that the other person's agency, autonomy, and emotions and the impact uh that they that they carry from the things that happen around them, especially in an intimate relationship, are I am not I can't determine those outcomes for them. If I'm going to connect with another person, I have to operate authentically, obviously, in my world, but I have to figure out how that meshes and honors the authenticity of the other person if I'm wanting intimate connection. There's that that's how intimacy works. But but too often we we kind of we we look for, and again we're gonna talk about the acceptance of this, but we're we are we addicts are sometimes call it sexual or even emotional crusaders looking for what? We're looking for that metaphorical holy grail that doesn't exist of the door number three, is what I call it. Right. There's got to be this world where I can have all of the quote unquote perks of addiction, right? Where I'm escaping and numbing out and living in fantasy and whatever, and can still retain the depth and of intimacy, connection, growth, benefits of a relationship with a partner where trust is high and everything else is working. And there's got to be a world in which those two mesh. Mark and I have had many conversations off the air about this. We spent years like not consciously doing that, but looking for that in this half-in, half-out process. And where healing really starts to begin is when you start to embrace the reality that there is simply nothing at the end of that quest for that holy grail, because that holy grail is a myth. There is no door number three. You can have one world, as my wife so strategically put it, that world that involves me, or you can have this world of addiction, but they they just they are not compatible with one another.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

No, and you have to decide. And here's one of the things I really fear in this relationship and so many others is the messaging being sent. If he's fighting harder for the right to keep his little thirst traps or his little, you know, this little quote minor things that aren't full on porn, if he's fighting so hard to keep the hang on to those, then he's fighting harder for that than he's fighting to rebuild safety and trust and fidelity with his partner. That that sends a big message to a betrayed partner, doesn't it? Of course.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

And it should. Yeah. Right? Because at the and again, this isn't about labeling the addict as good or bad. This is not a moralistic judgment. We're talking about choice here. Does that make sense? We're not this is not a discussion about whether one of you is good, one of you is bad, one of you. It's it's about, are you going to choose me like you said you would when we said I do? Yes. You said you would once, maybe for a time you did, but you're not anymore. That's right. And that doesn't work for me. Yeah. Right? This isn't about you being addicts being wrong or broke. As the moralistic discussion doesn't apply here. It's about you are choosing something different than me. You are in, as we say on this prod program sometimes, you're in legal terms, you're in breach of contract, right? You signed up under one guy's and now you're operating under a different one, and you're putting me in a position where as long as I continue to attempt to connect on the same level, I expose myself to ongoing, non-stop, perpetual pain in various ways that are that that's not mine to have to carry.

SPEAKER_01 28:20

Yeah. And there's, you know, I one of the things that really concerns me, and I I remember this about myself in early recovery. I was so focused on, you know, I'm stopping the most most egregious, obvious behaviors, right? What's give me some credit for that, right? That that's just that's just basic sobriety, I guess you could call it, without ever really getting into the world of actual recovery, of actual change. And I would invite this guy, if he's not doing this, to really start to ask himself some really super honest questions. Right? What kinds of these behaviors am I still protecting because I believe they don't count? Why am I doing that? What and there's a huge one. What do I what do I get from these thirst traps, this scanning, this fantasy, this edging content, this sexual? What exactly is it doing for me? It's doing something, or he wouldn't keep going there based on everything on the line here with his relationship. So what emotions is he trying not to feel? What parts of life is he is he trying not to meet on life's terms? Um, is he more committed to technical innocence or sobriety or true relational safety and fidelity? Right? Where is he still trying to negotiate with his addiction? Yeah. These are critical questions that you've that you've got to look at if you're still keep if you're still going to these other behaviors.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Now we will say, and it is important to to to recognize this, because I mean many of you who've listened to the podcast for a long time know Mark and I's addiction recovery stories. I mean, change on this level can sometimes take a while. Yeah. Um, I mean, in my case, geez, how long did I have ass this process with my wife before I got serious? It was, I mean, I have asked it prior to my marriage for a good, I don't know, five or six years. And then it was at least another five, six, seven years where I did the same thing with my partner.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Right? Um, at least, and one could argue maybe even some emotional ways, even longer. So we we can definitely relate and connect to that, but this again is where, as an addict in a relationship, you have to recognize and reconcile the fact that where your addiction, your history, your addiction story, your coupleship story for a variety of factors may look more similar to that or more different. And it is, I just I mean, I I guess I'm saying what I'm gonna say next from a place of passion. Thank God my wife spoke up at at years of trying to quote unquote love me into this process. I the day that she told me that it was her, the addiction, kind of in very loving terms, it was a worst day of my life, but one could argue it was the best. Because now we were having an honest conversation because for too long she had been trying to kind of love me into this process, right? And avoiding the conflict of the full issues at play. And I am so glad as hard as I was that she did, because my my story could have easily ended up like too many others, where one day I just woke up and she was just gone. Yeah, you just left. It's just like, see ya. Yeah, and we know that many listening here might find you might be closer to that happening, depending on where you are in this process than you realize. And so the thing that I'm just trying to throw out here, and this is not in our notes for today, but just kind of uh if you don't take something from this podcast, please take this is that really dialing in and tuning in with where are we really at in this process is critical. Right now in Dare to Connect, we're doing a uh a module that we've never done before that's probably gonna last the next couple of weeks, if not maybe a month or two. And we're talking about the differences in survival versus thriving individually in recovery for addicts and partners, but also as a coupleship. And right now we're just at the beginnings of that where we're going through and we're talking about what does what does addiction and betrayal trauma, for example, look like internally and externally in terms of being in recovery versus not, being in survival versus being in thrival thriving. And those kinds of assessments are are critical because you may too many coupleships, I fear, that listen to this program may find themselves more than they realize in a state of we're a lot closer to kind of the brink, so to speak, than either one of us is wanting to acknowledge. And so the sooner we can get into that discussion, uh, we definitely should. And again, if you're listening to this, this when this comes out, isn't a better time to join. Daretokonnectnow.com, grab a two-week trial. We'd love to have that discussion with you.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Yeah. And I I like Steve that you brought up the the boundary that your wife set, and so did mine, right? Our any guys listening, arbitrate partners can't monitor us incessantly, they can't force us into real integrity, they can't force us to fully surrender our addiction system. They they could never explain their pain perfectly enough to make us finally care. All they can do is define what safety and and what them what is required for them to be willing to remain in this relationship, and that's through boundaries. And to thrive in it. What's gonna help them to thrive? And so her the the the language I'm hearing from this betrayed partner is she's not willing to call what he's doing full recovery if he's still seeking sexual stimulation through these you know, these social media and other edging loopholes. She's just not willing to to she has to come out and say, that's not recovery, that does not work for me. That's not gonna get it done. And she's not asking for perfection, she's asking for reality, for humility, for consistency, for safety. Right? And so he's got to get to the place where he he moves from saying, What can I still get away with? And start saying, What kind of man do I want to become? What are my partner's true wants and needs, and how to I transform into the guy that can deliver on that? So, what does this fall to?

SPEAKER_02 34:50

What where where do we end as we wrap up for today on this podcast? And we again appreciate all of you always participating and sending us questions. But what what does this mean? First of all, it means that there needs to be a recognition and a drawback to what parts of this are mine to own versus theirs to own. Right? For the addict, it it is up to him to to look at the evidence and to come to practice vulnerability and to ask himself, first of all, is this really impacting the people around me, specifically my partner, in the way that I think it is, or am I kind of up in the night with that? The second piece of that is can I be can I be real and honest about how this is actually impacting me? Because it is impacting my partner, but what is it really doing to me? And do I want to continue on this way in perpetuity? Right? And and asking those really important self-analysis questions for a partner, it means loving herself primarily, but secondarily loving the relationship enough to find her voice and to say, look, you you're gonna do what you're gonna do, but you need to know how this is impacting me and to what degree this doesn't work in a relationship with me. And and and the and and that voice partners is so important because as to every partner who's been married to a Steve or a Mark, where this is where that at that point that's where the defenses come up. Well, what about Jim down the road? Or what about this? Or it's not as bad as you think. You finding your authentic voice and simply sharing that is how you circumvent that discussion because it's not about comparison, it's about your truth. Maybe that does work for Heidi or Jeanette or whoever down the road, but it doesn't work for me. Right? This this does I can't speak to that. All I can speak to is my marriage and and my connection and and what I want in an intimate relationship and what I need. So let's have that discussion.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for being with us and and uh again, uh sitting through some hard. We hope we hope it's been helpful. We hope that it will spur some greatly needed change. Uh again, we'd love to have as many of you as as possible come on over and join us in Dare to Connect, where we delve very deeply into all of these things, you know, five different times a week. And uh hope you'll come over to DareToconnectnow.com to try that out. And as always, if you want to send in questions for the PBSE podcast, you can do that uh by going to the DareToconnectNow.com website, click on the PBSE banner at the top, and then you'll see a contact form. We're about we're about uh five, six weeks out uh with a backlog of questions. Uh you you can get those answered immediately in Dare to Connect. Right. On Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Sunday. Absolutely. But uh love and appreciate all of you. Uh and we will pick things up in our next episode. Have a great week, everybody.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

Everything expressed on the PVSC podcast are the opinions of the hosts and the participants and is for informational and educational purposes only. This podcast should not be considered mental health therapy or as a substitute thereof. It is strongly recommended that you seek out the clinical guidance of an individual qualified mental health professional. If you're experiencing thoughts of suicide, self harm, or desire to harm others, please dial 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.