Why Do I Keep Lying to My Partner About the Stupidest Little Things?!

PBSE, Episode 342—Lying in addiction can take many forms, including outright denial, omission, minimization, exaggeration, deflection, gaslighting, and carefully constructed half-truths. Even when the subject of the lie appears trivial, the impact on a betrayed partner can be enormous because each new deception reinforces the message that reality is still being hidden and that she must remain vigilant to discover the truth. Repeated dishonesty is not merely a bad habit; it can become a form of integrity abuse that undermines a partner’s safety, informed choices, and ability to trust her own perceptions.

For many people, lying developed early as a protective response to punishment, instability, humiliation, rejection, or abandonment. Understanding these origins can help us approach the wounded and frightened parts of ourselves with compassion, but it cannot become an excuse for continuing to harm others. Habitual lying also reflects emotional immaturity because it attempts to avoid the normal discomfort of adulthood—disappointment, accountability, difficult conversations, consequences, and being seen accurately. Recovery begins when we honestly acknowledge that protecting our comfort, reputation, or immediate gratification has often taken priority over the safety of the person we say we love.

Real integrity is built through repeated action rather than promises. We must practice moving toward discomfort, tell the truth before being discovered, and immediately correct any lie, omission, or distortion once we recognize it. This may require therapy, trauma work, accountability, recovery support, and clear relational boundaries, but no one else can make the central choice for us. Lasting change occurs when honesty becomes part of who we are—not simply a strategy to preserve the relationship—and when our partner can increasingly see that our words, actions, values, and priorities finally match.

For a full transcript of this podcast in article format, go to:   Why Do I Keep Lying to My Partner About the Stupidest Little Things?!

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_00 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. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

Another testimony from an addict continues on. 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_00 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_03 2:46

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. I'm Steve Moore.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

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.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Join us in the fight to take back your life, your marriage, and stronger than ever.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

This is the TBSC Squared Podcast.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

I'm Mark Castleman. I'm with Steve Moore. This is episode 342. Why do I keep lying to my betrayed partner about even the stupidest little things?

SPEAKER_03 4:49

A title for the ages, right?

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Yeah, those are his words on the submission that we got. So I'm just, we're just going to read real quick uh what we received from a guy in recovery. Hey, Mark and Steve, my wife and I have been listening to your podcast for a couple of years now, and thank you for everything you guys share. Where do I start? Quick rundown of my past. I grew up as the oldest of six kids. And from the time I was 11, I was babysitting my younger siblings. There was drug, alcohol, and physical abuse in our home, which I witnessed on many occasions. I have no good memories of my childhood. I really remember just feeling alone growing up. Between the ages of 15 or 16, I found porn, became a part of my life to escape reality. Fast forward, I took the addiction into my marriage, hoping that I would get over it, but I didn't. I never confessed my porn use to my wife, and she would always find out. And then I would cowered down, he calls it, uh, make excuses and deny it like a little kid. I did a lot of damage to my wife. I've been porn free uh since 2019. Then things got worse, and I I wound up having an affair. And while no affair is good, there's no good timing on any affair. It happened at the worst possible time in our lives, especially my wife's life. After that, I started seeing a therapist, grew closer to my higher power. I've gotten rid of all social media after my wife found a suggestive video I watched. Uh since then, uh she's he says I started Googling movies or shows. Not sure why he mentioned that. Uh but he says, four years after the affair, we're doing good.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

But he says then we were doing good.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

He says, Oh, we were doing oh yeah, oh okay. Four years after the affair, we were doing good. And then this little this stuff started popping up again, apparently. Uh he calls it rinse and repeat. Um so he says, I still struggle with honesty. I have a hard time saying hard things, and I make excuses. I recently hit a hidden prescription that I took. Uh my wife found out when and the evidence was right in front of me, and I denied it and then later confessed it. I'm getting back into therapy. I know I'm a codependent, I've got ADHD, and I do not like confrontation. I'd like to hear what you guys would suggest to help me overcome my fears of arguments and why I try to hide the stupidest little things from my wife. I want nothing more in this life than my wife to feel safe and loved by me. This last thing that's happened has really hurt her, and now she doesn't believe that I love her at all, and says, If if you really love me, you would have changed already. I love my wife, and there's nobody I would rather grow old with. Oh boy. Mick and definitely relate to this guy's submission. I know for me, uh, from the time I was very young, I had a I had a similar upbringing to what he's describing. Uh, pretty rough childhood, you know, a lot a lot of abuse and different things. Lying became a way of life for me, as far back as I can remember. And I'll talk, I'll talk in a few minutes about why that was. Um, one of the things that really hit me, Steve, I I can his betrayed, what he says his betrayed partner's position is right now is so understandable and frankly heartbreaking. Right. He said, This last thing has really hurt my wife, and now she doesn't believe that I love her at all, and says, if you really love me, you would have changed already. Right? She's she's she's worn out, she's exhausted, she's she's been waiting for him to match his actions to his words and and and for things to change for so long. And if we're really if we're really going to to call this lying to our partners what it really is, it's it's it Dr. Menwala calls it integrity integrity abuse. Integrity abuse. It is an absolute form of abuse, make no mistake. And so, you know, we we need to call that out straight up.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

Well, and and and there's a lot to say about this, right? Uh there are one point that I wanted to touch on, because we're gonna bounce around a little bit here, probably even from some of our production notes, because there's there's just a lot to hit on. Um, you know, lying can take many forms, right? I that's the first thing that I think we ought to talk about. So we're all on the same page here, right? And and it can not just be with other people, it can be with oneself. So, for example, lying by omission. I mean, I I used to be the king of lying by omission. I used to pride myself on, you know, there was a pastor that I used to do confession with, right, around some of my addiction behaviors. And I can't tell you how many times I'd see him coming down the hall at church or something, and I would exit stage left, leave the building, walk down the block because I knew he was gonna ask me how I was doing, and I knew that's what that meant, and I didn't want to be accountable, but I wasn't gonna actually lie, right? So what am I doing? I'm technically not lying, but I'm avoiding the truth at all costs. But then there are other forms of that too. Minimization, for example, is a form of lying, right? If I confess to my partner or or own take ownership of a relapse, but I downplay it in such a way that it doesn't accurately portray what actually occurred in various ways, that's deception. Right? Also, exaggeration, right? If I'm trying to paint myself in a positive light and talk about something from recovery and I'm sharing with my wife, and I'm putting in a bunch of detail or paint painting painting in such a light that I'm looking looked at, you know, unrealistically favorably, or whatever the case is, also the same kind of a thing. Furthermore, there are other forms of lying as well uh or deception that occur in a relationship as well. Deflection, gaslighting, right? Where we're are we technically lying? No, if I'm gaslighting my partner, am I technically lying? Maybe not. Possibly, but what am I doing? Hey, I don't have the problem, you've got the problem. Let's look at you, let's look at why you're broken, let's look at why something's off with you. Don't look at my side of it, don't look at don't look at my fire. Let's look at yours, whether it's real or not, right? So there are one I used to do a lot.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

This deflection, you can sense that somebody was getting close to you being exposed, right? Or to me being exposed. And so I would deflect, I would bring up another topic and start the conversation headed down that path, so that we can totally avoid that path over there, right? The master of deflection, the master of getting people, you know, off the trail, uh, you know, so so they couldn't quote, sniff me out. There's just, there's just so and and and there's the obvious, like blatant parts of lying. Uh, Dr. Omar Winwallet calls it the secret sexual basement, right? We as we as addicts live in this secret sexual basement where we've got this whole uh alternate life going on secretly while our family's living in the upstairs completely unaware. Right. So there's there's the more blatant sides of that. So yeah, lying takes on good grief. We could I could come up with 20 different versions or strategies or whatever you want to call it that that I that I used in my life with regard to this. There's so many ways. Embellishment, that was another one that I would often use. Embellishing stories or embellishing what happened in order to to look good or to to be more impressive or to right to get the sale or to gain the advantage, right? The list just goes on and on and on. Yeah, there's there's a ton of those things.

SPEAKER_03 13:05

Well, and yeah. Well, and and we you and when we look at this, right? There's I mean, there are there are these different forms in which this can show up. I mean, let's just uh we're gonna just be as authentic as we can, right? Even if I was to go into the submission that Mark just read, right? Part of why I wanted him to read it was because we didn't want to summarize it. Um he talks about, you know, I didn't have any more access to porn and no more porn. But then I started Googling movies or shows that were off base, right? Or things that were triggering, may not have had outright nudity. We have done more than one podcast. Now, everyone's definition of this might be a little bit different, but from if if you're wanting our opinion, which I'm assuming you are if you're listening to this podcast, you're talking to two addicts who have well over two decades of uh each, and one of us with even more than that, time in addiction, uh 20 years plus of of of helping other guys with this. This is how we would pornography is something that it has the definition of pornography has very little to do with what you're seeing or hearing or experiencing, and a lot more to do with the with the impact that it's having on you. Right? I can be I can be reading movie movie descriptions, which I used to do, and that can actually be pornographic. I remember I used to go to my grandma's house, get on the c get on the cable menu, and read provocative titles and descriptions of shows. Wouldn't access them, we just sit there and read and fantasize. Well, that's I may as well have just been watching the show. I mean, it was having the exact same impact.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Here's where it gets really insidious. There's actually services out there that are designed to allow parents to go read detailed movie reviews as to what's in the movie so that they know whether it's safe for their kids to go watch those movies or not. Sure. And I and others used to go to those those uh those parents' review sites to read the descriptions of all the stuff in the movie, to have that be a pornified experience. Yeah, crazy stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 15:10

Absolutely. And so if we look now, again, that's definitions can shift, but that's what we found to be true and accurate when we're working with guys. And so if you even look at this this submission, has he really been porn-free all that time? In our experience, it's it's pretty rare for a guy to go completely hardcore off porn, be sober for years and years, and then just go have an affair one day. I highly doubt that that is exactly how the chain of events happened. And based on what he's writing here, I think that if we adopt that definition, that there definitely is more going on. And the reason why I bring that up is not to slam on this guy at all, it's because deception does not just exist or occur with the other person. It happens with ourselves. We addicts have an incredible ability to alter and shift the truth to fit our narrative, and not just with other people. Sometimes we start buying into our own bullshit, for lack of a better term. We start to engage with and and even uh mitigate, minimize, exaggerate in ways that that make those situations less uncomfortable for us. It helps us to dodge accountability, we paint it in a more favorable light, sometimes with ourselves. In many ways, that can be a survival mechanism. But but this is I and I just point that out again to everybody listening because for those those who are listening to this, for you or your spouse, the those tendencies of of a lack of transparency and the presence of deception go way deeper than a guy just looking at his wife, bald face lying, and saying, Yeah, I I didn't relapse. I don't you walking in on me masturbating, I wasn't actually masturbating, I was cleaning myself. That is a form of lying, but there are many different grades of that. Yeah, and it can and it can infiltrate a relationship or the individual on many levels.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

Well, we we talk about we talk about edging behaviors, right? Just coming up to the edge, but not crossing the edge. And all the various forms that that takes. I when I used to work with uh you and I used to do a lot of groups, in-person groups, and we we often talk to guys about so you've you've purchased a new house in Recoveryville, but you have that little that little studio apartment key in your pocket to your little studio apartment in in Porntown.

SPEAKER_03 17:25

It's over in the red light district.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

Yeah. You saw the key, don't you?

SPEAKER_03 17:30

Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

So there's just, yeah, there's there's so many ways that we engage in in dishonesty or integrity abuse inside ourselves and and and with our partners. I thought I thought I one of the things I thought we would do, and I I always hesitate to do this because it's it's very especially for betrayed partners listening. We never want what I'm about to say to ever, ever be interpreted as excuses, because there are none. There's no excuses for lying. Now there because we're always fully responsible, right, responsible and accountable, responsible and accountable, absolutely that's up to us. That said, getting to the core roots of why we lie and where that came from can be an important part of the journey forward. So as I I look at myself, for example, I learned at a really young age that I I in my little brain I needed to lie to to what to stay safe, to be protected. And we're we're just uh we've been we've just been doing a deep dive in our Dare to Connect program, dare to connectnow.com. Uh, you know, we have we have five live sessions every week with with uh me and Steve, and and we also have a a female therapist that does our our Sunday support group with our with the women. We've just been focusing on what's called IFS, internal family systems, where our our little wounded inner children, protectors develop inside of us to protect that wounded child, to keep us safe from childhood experiences, teenage experiences, young adult. One of my protectors that absolutely came forward early in my life to protect me from further home harm was the liar. And what why did that liar come forward to protect? Well, to avoid consequences and the pain of punishment, which was often overly severe. So I lied to avoid the avoid pain and consequences. I I lied to protect my outward image so that I would be liked and accepted by others. I lied uh to tell people what they wanted to hear so that I could people please for the same reasons. Um I lied because I wanted to selfishly get what I wanted. I didn't want delayed gratification or have to go work for something or earn something or face the hard. It was an incredibly immature way of approaching life. And I'm gonna say that when when we have when we have problems with habitual lying, it's many things, but what is one of the things it absolutely is? It's immaturity. Mature people, people who are adults, true adults, and face life on life's terms, are not liars. Lying is image is immaturity. We haven't grown up. We're still trying to use that as a strategy to do all the things I've just mentioned. That's just a that's just a small, a small um exploration of why of why we lie.

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Yeah. Well, and and and if we're gonna talk about solutions, because we I mean there are you you know, you could do whole retreats on just lying and the reasoning behind it. But if we're gonna explore real solutions and be and be authentic here, then there the first thing that has to happen is we have to start that honesty begins internally, right? We have to start self-assessing and saying, okay, where again is this, how deep does this run? And what am I what am I looking at or acknowledging with myself? I mean, I'll give you an example, and again, this is not to slam on this guy, but we're just trying to give an example here. He says something specific in here at at towards the end, one a quote from his submission. I want nothing more in this life than my wife to feel safe and loved by me. Really? Is he sure? If you're listening, sir, are are you sure?

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Because actions are more telling nothing more. Nothing comes before those things.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

Because actions are more telling than words. And what you're describing here is a long-standing pattern over the course of years where even despite really severe consequences, you are pursuing various other things, or I should say your pri the term I would use is you're prioritizing the following more so than than than wanting her to feel safe or loved. Avoidance of consequences would be one, right? Uh you're dodging just the discomfort of having to look inward and see what's really going on. And as well as being being able to sit in the heart of her being disappointed or let down or hurt or whatever the case is. Um, there's an there's a a clear demonstration of a resistance uh and wanting to put off true change. A lot of symptoms you can see it in in the pattern that he shared in in the in the submission that we just read, everybody, that there's this a lot of symptom management going on, right? Well, I quit porn, but then I started looking at movie reviews. Or this happened, but then before I knew it, somehow I ended up in an affair, right? And again, this is not a down or this isn't a denigrating or attacking, but we're trying to point At the reality of what's going on, right? Controlling how others see you. These are all, and I could go on, but these are all things that are clearly being prioritized over his wife's safety. And again, that's not about being good or bad, nor is it about him shaming himself. But if he's going to really elicit change and he really wants to fix this, like he wrote into us, and we're going to take him at his word there, then he has to take ownership of that. I I do love you, but I'm not loving you in the way that that is reflective of what I've been saying. I haven't been making you a priority. I haven't made your safety a priority. It is secondary to these other things. And it's and it's evidenced by what my actions are showing. Because if you're not willing to actually embrace reality it is, as it is, then change is impossible. Unless you're willing to look in the mirror and get uncomfortable and say, yeah, these things are going on, and yes, this has what this has looked like. If we can't be honest about where we are, you can't map a journey to the destination if you're if your starting point is wrong.

SPEAKER_00 24:01

So I I love what I love what you're saying, Steve. If I want to grow into being an honest man, a truly honest man, where does the honesty begin? The honesty begins with the fact that I am not honest. The honesty begins with the fact that there are things that I put above my wife's safety, above my above, above loving my wife. People pleasing, wanting to protect my reputation, wanting to have my little pleasure hits.

SPEAKER_03 24:52

Not wanting to get uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 24:53

Not wanting to get uncomfortable, not wanting to go through a maturing process, not wanting to grow up in some ways, wanting to continue to control how others see me, wanting to avoid constant. There's lots of things I put before my wife. Getting honest is getting honest about that. That's where you start. And that's how we often we often skip that, right? So I guess as as as we kind of finish up here, I wanted to Steve and I wanted to talk a little bit about what exactly do you start doing if you want to start being honest? What does the doing look like? Because he says, I want to place my wife's safety above all other things. I want her to feel loved by me above all other things. So where do you start? Where does honesty begin?

SPEAKER_03 25:47

Well, I think the first thing that comes to mind for me is that is that you have to, and this is just true for recovery as a whole, right? But if we're gonna make a true recovery journey, if it we're really going to do that, if the goal truly is to change and not just to symptom manage, then the very first thing that every addict has to do is he has to become progressively acclimated to uncomfortable things.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_03 26:13

It's it it's addiction is many things, but one of those key elements is it's avoidance of anything uncomfortable. That's why we do the things we do in the first place, right? We pursue, we're on this endless journey of pursuing pleasure and preventing pain. And we have to recognize that living life on life terms means doing hard things sometimes, means doing uncomfortable things. I used to have a phrase that hung up in my office. I really shouldn't hang it up again that says, you know, in here we do hard things. If you are if you are serious about recovery and you are struggling with addiction to the degree that all of us do, you should be getting uncomfortable every day. If this journey is easy for you, either Mark and I are doing it drastically wrong, and you should hit us up so we can write a book together and find out the real secret, or or you're not doing it. Because it it the the recovery journey stretches us. And when it comes to this accountability process, it does mean looking inward. It doesn't mean just owning stuff with other people, like we were talking about a minute ago. It means owning stuff with myself, right? I I am selfish in X, Y, and Z ways. That doesn't mean that I can't become unso, but unless I'm willing to acknowledge that right out the gate and take ownership again, how am I going to change that? Right? I I have to I have to be willing to do that and then put and then take that accountability and that honesty and then start uh and start practicing it with the people in my life that I value, like my partner, right? Like these other people. So it's and there are lots of ways to do that to get acclimated, acclimated to the uncomfortable. One thing that I'm starting, ironically, I'm actually starting it tonight. Do you know what one thing I'm doing? I'm doing some of my own work still. My work's Steve's work is still ongoing. I'm cold plunging tonight. I have two bags of ice from a gas station sitting in my freezer right now, and I'm going to be sitting in a 40-degree tub tonight for three minutes minimum. Now, there are lots of reasons why we cold plunge in recovery because it's a part of many people's recovery, and there are lots of healthy side benefits we won't get into here. But you know, one of them is using practicing using my self-will to do something that is going to be uncomfortable. That is going to be a really sucky three minutes, I guarantee you. Now, is it going to feel better afterwards? Yes. And is it going to help me in other ways? Yes. And like I said, that's another podcast for another day. But one of the things that I need as part of my recovery is I need to practice using my agency to lead into discomfort. We were we've been talking about self-leadership, like Mark said, in as part of integrated family in internal family systems work that we're doing in D2C right now. Get your butts over here, daredoconnect now.com. Two-week free trial, people. Grab it. Anyway. And that's one of the things that I'm doing right now to practice that. So I would say that's first and foremost is getting acclimated with the uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Well, I'll give a really practical, practical entrance, you know, doorway into living, living as an honest man. My lying was so habitual and so much an automatic part of my my daily interaction with people in life that I would do it and not even realize I was doing it. It was just total autopilot. And as I really, really started to develop a really strong, strong feeling inside of me that I wanted to learn to be honest. I felt that my higher, authentic, true self that was deep in me somewhere was a was a man of integrity. Right? What does integrity mean? Integrity means integrated. We're integrated inside. We we match up our words and our actions with what we claim to be our value system. I want it to be integrated with my value system. So here's here's here was the you want to talk about hard? When I would, for example, be on a telephone conversation, and I would inevitably do some form of lying, withholding certain information, exaggerating, embellishing, uh what all the many forms of not being totally honest. And I would get off of that phone call, and then it would come to me. Oh crap. I did it again in that phone call, didn't I? And then what would I do to truly match up the claim that I wanted to learn to be honest? What did I then have to do? Pick up that 50-pound phone and hit the redial button and call that person back and then own and be transparent with my dishonesty. Hey, we just had a conversation a few minutes ago. I am really striving in my life to be a completely honest person. I wasn't entirely accurate when I described such and such to you. And I just wanted to own that. That's what I would do every time that I realized that I had not been perfectly honest. I would call them back. I would go, I would walk down the hall and pop in and and and tell that person. You think that was easy? Oh, I'm just gonna say it. Hell no. There was all sorts of alarms going off on my head. You can't call them back. What are they gonna think of you? Oh my gosh, your reputation's gonna be ruined forever. You can't do that, right? You can't tell your wife that you just masturbated. Well, I got to decide whether I was going to match my actions to my words. Like my wife started to tell me, words are cheap. Show me. And I needed to develop that within myself. Yeah, I said I want to be an honest man. Do you? Okay. Then you call them back and you own it and you correct it. Now here's the interesting thing. My brain, that that that part of my brain that had learned to quote, lie to be safe, it started to learn. And what did it say? Crap, if I tell a lie right now to to please this person or to make them like me or to avoid this consequence, Mark's just gonna call them back. And so that part of me started to tell the truth in the moment because it was harder to call them back, and it was easier to just tell the truth. But that took months and months and months of practice. Practice, practice, practice. And there were some embarrassing situations, some humiliating situations. But I had to decide if I was going to match match my actions to my to my to my claims, to my words about what I really wanted.

SPEAKER_03 32:56

We all have very distorted fears around that that guide actions like this, right? We want to make it clear that in a podcast like this, this is not a simple case of every addict is like some evil, nefarious guy, and they need to become unevil. We tend to be fear-driven. We tend to, I mean, the the thought of rejection, you know, and and and the drive to avoid it along with accountability is is huge, and everybody has their own individual reasons for that. But answer this guy and to try to give him a starting point, frankly, that one of the most important pieces to stopping this habit is to stop this habit. Meaning, I mean, there's not a more and and that again, that doesn't mean that you just do it overnight, but you have to start practicing what we're talking about in small, simple ways. Maybe for this guy, it is a cold plunge tonight before it's honesty with his partner tomorrow. Maybe it's practicing that with somebody in his recovery circle uh before taking ownership with his wife. Maybe it's sitting down and journaling authentically for the first time in months instead of writing a bunch of glorified bullshit in his journal. Maybe it means actually getting really honest about where he's at and what he's doing. Not saying he was bullshitting, but I'm just throwing that as an example. Whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

I used to journal for posterity so that when people are reading years from now, they'd be really impressed. Of course.

SPEAKER_03 34:18

Yeah, right. So making it off why whatever that is, but it's taking some sort of small step into that area of accountability. There's no magic wand, there's no magic formula, there's no we we we I like what Mark said before, and it's true. Many of us are are handicapped by emotional immaturity. So and and what created that maturity for others that we don't have facing hard situations. So logic would dictate that the same holds true for growth in this area now. You have to quit running and you have to start facing. There isn't, again, there's not a magic elixir. I I you can hear the passion in my voice because I hear that this kind of thing from clients all the time. It's like they're looking for some other way to do it. There's got to be some sort of sorcery way to to do this without doing it. Nope, there's not. It's doing it. Get your ass over to PBS or or over to Dare to Connect so we can help you do it.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

So if you as we close up, if you want, if you want one hard, fast rule, I'm gonna give it to you right now. And this is this is this is it's so hard, but you've got to practice your way into this. As soon as I recognize that I have been untruthful in any way, small or big, I immediately go to who whatever person that is, and I own it transparently and straight up. As soon as I'm aware, I act to go make it right. Right now. There's there's your there's there's your your principle to to become an honest person. There it is.

SPEAKER_03 35:59

Yeah, 100%, guys. 100%. Well, we we appreciate you allowing us to get bold with you. We appreciate you at uh always patron patroning the podcast. If you like what you hear here again, guys, if you like the wit, occasional swearing from Steve, the passion, and the forthrightness, you'll love Derek Connect. Come join us, Derrick Connectnow.com. Come grab a free two-week trial and uh come come join the hundreds who are with us already. Um, if you would like to send in uh submissions to the podcast, you are welcome to do so. I believe we're about eight-ish weeks out on those right now. We'd love to do those backlog. So um if you for some insane reason don't want immediate help through a Dare to Connect free trial and program, then you can go to that same website, dare to connectnow.com, make the less right choice, click on the PBSC podcast logo up at the top, and there is a contact form, and you can send those in. But we hope to uh see you guys soon and take this thing to the next level. Quit screwing around with this. Let's beat this thing. Get your butts into Dare to Connect, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:01

Well, thanks for being with us. Uh we're we we appreciate it and uh just really um cheering and hoping and pulling for all of you out there.

unknown 37:12

100%.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

This is incredibly hard, um, but we're in this together and we're just gonna keep going forward.

SPEAKER_03 37:20

All right, guys.

SPEAKER_02 37:21

Have a great day. Everything expressed on the PBSC 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 a desire to harm others, please dial 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.