#281 - Mindset Monday: The Cost of Becoming Better

(upbeat music) - Welcome back into another segment of Mindset Monday with me, Matt, where I share with you wisdom that I've gained over the last nearly 13 years and getting sober and staying that way and rebuilding my marriage, becoming a better father, a present father, getting better in my career and really building a business and becoming a better man. These are the lessons. This is the stuff that really matters underneath just like getting sober. Like that's how a lot of you probably found us, but in that journey, if you're doing it the right way, there's gonna be so many nuggets of wisdom that can help other people. And this isn't just for guys like me who are trying to rebuild their lives. This is for anyone who's interested in growing. So this is like the real meat and potatoes of what growth looks like. I wanna talk through some inspirational quotes today, something that I never really do, but I was on Instagram looking through a carousel recently and I found some really awesome quotes that I'll hit and journal through some of them and I think that there's some value and some wisdom in each of them. And I'm also gonna answer a listener question. We've got a free Facebook community. If you go to our website tofo.com, you can find things like merch. Like we've got these recovery rocks. These are awesome. Let me block my face out so it picks up the rock. There it goes. It's got our logo on the front and on the back it says, thank you for being my rock. These are a really cool way to acknowledge the journey of your spouse or partner. We've also got hoodies. For another, we're almost out of red ones and about to restock those. We've got black hoodies, we've got shirts, few different colors and sizes and whatnot. If you guys wanna support the show and rock the merch, you can do that there. But you can also find our free Facebook community, which is for listeners only. All you have to do is answer the questions that we ask you when you enter. And the most important one is, how do we greet listeners the beginning of each show? And if you listen to our Wednesday episodes, it's welcome back, welcome back. If you listen to the page, it's hey y'all and these, I don't know, does anyone listen to these? You would just say welcome to mindset Monday, whatever. But we just wanna know that you're a listener to keep that space safe and to make sure that people are in there are really engaged with the content and didn't just see a 30 second TikTok clip and come in without understanding what we're about because we do have a unique brand of how we go about this. We want those people together so that they can communicate and grow and challenge each other. And sometimes just be there for one another. But you can do that in our free Facebook community once you guys in there. If you're someone who's recovering from addiction, you gotta have a year. And we'll talk about why that is here and just a bit. But let's hear to these quotes. I think these are gonna be cool. Yeah, we still do have sponsors. Stick around, I will work that in. (laughs) I'm really trying to get you guys engaged and hook you into these episodes so that you don't just fast forward through our sponsors because they're important. And like what they offer is important. And for a lot of you, you could really benefit from some of these things. Silver link is our sponsor. But I'm gonna work it in so that you can't just skip through it. You don't know when it's coming, but it's coming. All right, quote one. Becoming the best version of yourself comes with a lot of goodbyes. And I think that this is absolutely true. When I read this, I was like, oh, damn, that is true. That has been my experience. That is the experience of anyone who's ever decided to walk a path that is less traveled. Little Robert Frost there, but it's true, right? Let's say that for simplicity, let's say that you are wanting to get sober. A lot of people fear getting sober because of everything that has to change in order to make that possible. It's often said we have to change our people, places, and things, our environment, our friends, the places that we hang out, maybe our job, if it's too much. A lot of stuff has to change and that comes with a lot of goodbyes. Goodbyes to people, places that maybe we once loved, sometimes versions of ourself as well, saying goodbye to an old version of ourself. Spouses go through the very same thing. For those of you that had to leave a relationship because there was no reconciliation possible, you know exactly what I mean. You become, when you get married, like everything kind of becomes joint, right? Like even your friends and sometimes, those relationships with old friends will never be the same. Family ties that you have through your in-laws. There's a lot of goodbyes there. Maybe the biggest goodby of all is the goodbyed to that old version of yourself who took far less than they deserved, who didn't put themselves first or the children first. And yeah, we say goodbye, like that's why it's so scary and that's why it's so hard and that's why it's so rare to find people who are trailblazers and people who are willing to go do something that no one around them's ever really done before. Something they never dreamed they could do themselves. You say goodbye to old habits. You say goodbye to old places. You say goodbye to old people. Your old identity, old coping skills, whatever that might be. And so yeah, like when I was first getting sober, I think everyone fears this, right? Like I'm never gonna be, I'm never gonna have fun again. Ever, I'm gonna have to say goodbye to like vacations. I'm gonna have to say goodbye to like good times and late nights and like just camaraderie with people. Like I'm never gonna have those groups of friends ever again. And these are the lies that we tell ourselves guys. They are, they sometimes are real, but when you get sober, you will find out who your friends are. Also, when you've gone through something really difficult that it's kind of taboo, like betrayal trauma, after betrayal, if you've been cheated on, or you've left a marriage or relationship like divorce, like you will now find out who your friends really are. There are a lot of people who are your friend, but they're not actually your friend. There's a sort of quote that I love and it's those that matter don't mind. And those that mind don't matter. The people on your life who truly love you will support you. They want what's best for you. They want what's healthy for you. Even if it means losing a bit of access to you, it's okay. But the people in your life who are there contingent on certain things, those aren't friends, those are not friends. You will figure this stuff out when you go through something really difficult. I think it's why so many of our listeners really connect with each other because that's the thing that binds them is the most difficult thing in their life that pushed everyone else away. And they feel accepted and heard for the first time. This is why it's so important to have a community of people whenever you do get sober. It's important. That's why meetings exist, for instance, because you need to be around other people who are walking that same path. If you're an entrepreneur, this is why business development groups exist. I was part of one for many years. And no one quite understands the struggle like people who are going through that. No one. No one knows what it's like to be scared to death that payroll is not going to be made other than people who have been there before. And you have things that you can share and emotions that you can share and experience, you can share that no one else gets. But in doing that, you say goodbye to everyone who's not doing that kind of stuff. And that's kind of scary, man, it's scary. But it's an exciting thing. I don't want you to think of it as a bad thing. It's a really exciting thing. If nothing in your life required a goodbye, you probably didn't change. That's my guess, is that whatever it is you did that didn't require you to say goodbye to old versions of yourself or people or anything else probably didn't actually change. I know especially with sobriety, again, you will, when you quit drinking or quit using, you will, you have to change the people you're hanging out with more than likely because that's just what they do. And that's what those relationships are based on. Those are not friends, those are drinking buddies. And there's a difference. Those are acquaintances and they can be replaced like old socks. These people in your life are there for you contingent on you consuming alcohol with them at a bar. Those aren't really your friends. They're not. And if they are actually your friends, they will support you even after you leave the bar scene. They will love you and support you. It was my experience that when I first got sober, I lost relationships that were really surface level and didn't matter or they were exploitative. We used each other for one reason or another. They were transactional relationships, but the relationships that mattered, I still have today. I've been friends with the same group of guys since like kindergarten first grade. I think the latest that any of these guys came into my life was sixth grade, talking 11, 12 years old. And we're like 40 now and we're still friends. And so we grew up together. We discovered substances together at one time. Like those are the friends that you smoke pot with. And those are the friends that you get drunk with for the first time and you party with through college and everything else and then even after that. And then I'm the one that developed the problem. I'm the only one of our group that had a problem that had to be dealt with. And I was scared to death that I was gonna lose my friends. I wasn't sure how deep these relationships really were because I didn't know anything else. It's all I'd ever known. So I didn't know like what a real quality relationship was when I first got sober and clean. Just like you won't know what one is. If you're leaving a relationship or leaving a family unit or divorcing or whatever else or walking your own path in the business or something, you're not gonna know what that looks like and it's really scary thing to do. It's a really brave thing to do. But my friends supported me. Like from day one, they told me and they were so proud of me. So proud of me and they would make sure that if I needed anything, they would be there for me. And then for a little bit, we didn't see each other too much. Like we stayed in touch through texts and stuff like that and phone calls, but I didn't see him for a little while because I needed to get my bearings and I needed to learn how to operate in the world sober. Being around people who drank like normal people because the last thing I wanted to do was control anyone else. I didn't want anyone else to have to change themselves because I was around. I, it was up to me to learn how to operate in the world, not the world's job to learn how to operate around me, if that makes sense. And so I remember like the first time I went on like we did have a guys trip every year and I went and like my friends would collectively kick the shit out of me if I tried to have a beer on one of those trips. They would, they would never let me do it. They support my recovery and my sobriety and I love each and every one of them for that. And there's nothing better than having people around you that are supportive of the things that really benefit you and that are best for your life. It's awesome, but it wasn't right away that I did that again. Like I skipped one of my best friends bachelor parties because I just wasn't quite ready. That was a lot. I'd been to like gatherings and things like that, but a bachelor party, not so much. That was, that was a lot and I wasn't ready for that. He has never brought it up, held it against me, nothing. I think they totally understood why I wasn't there and they supported that decision. So yeah, I think that sometimes you say goodbye to comfort in your old lifestyle. Sometimes you say goodbye to people as you move on. Sometimes you say goodbye to careers or jobs or your old lifestyle, whatever it might be. But if you're gonna grow, get ready to start saying some goodbyes and it should be an exciting thing because the greatest years of your life lie ahead, not behind you. They haven't even happened yet. You just have to give it a chance and be willing to say those goodbyes. I loved that quote. Next one, you cannot heal in the same environment that got you sick. I think this is true. I think that we teach people this in a roundabout way and this is very intuitive. We all understand this, but here we are trying to heal in the same environment that we got sick in. This is a tough one to hear for a lot of spouses and partners, but if you want to have a happy and healthy relationship, it is unlikely if not impossible that you're going to be able to achieve that in an environment with someone who is unhappy and unhealthy and addicted. Very, very unlikely. There are ways to do this. We've talked about the inner citadel. We've talked about dropping our expectations. We've talked about acceptance as the answer. We've talked about a lot of these things, but what that really is is a form of self-gas lighting where you're teaching yourself to want what you can get instead of just going for what you truly want in life, which is a healthy life. But there are some real practical reasons that people do this. I've done this in my career for a freaking decade. So I'm not judging. I'm not judging. I just know that if I ever really want to do what I want in life, I'm going to have to leave that career. That's true. I'm not going to be able to really excel there because it keeps me small. And for a lot of you in your relationships, you're going to have to get out of that environment before you can truly discover what peace is. For a lot of you kind of back to the first quote, you struggle with the substance like you're not going to be able to continue, you're not going to be able to get healthy around people who want you small, who want you unhealthy, who are better served by you, not standing up for yourself and having no boundaries and getting high and getting drunk. Like that's, you're not going to be able to get well there. Quick plug for our course, reclaiming you. You can find out more going to reclaiming-u.com. The reason I just brought that up is because the course is based on like the clinical piece of the course is based on social learning theory, which is truly the philosophy, the idea, the thesis, like the theory that your environment plays a great deal into your ability to change. Dr. Christopher Taylor, the clinical architect of our course, my best friend, Dr. Taylor. His PhD thesis was based on this very thing. His work is what really revolutionized the way that drug courts work here in the state of Texas. They used to be sort of a punishment idea that we would punish people who struggled with drugs and alcohol and we would lock them up and then we would send them back home. And then what happened is that they would come right back, the recidivism rate was incredibly high. So how do we lower that rate of recidivism? How do we keep these people from calming back? It has to do with their environment. If we send them back to the same neighborhoods around the same people and the same social structure, they're likely going to repeat the same behavior. But what would happen if we put these people in other places? What would happen if we gave them the support needed to get out of those environments? What would happen if we picked them up and supported them on this new very difficult path? They found that recidivism dropped dramatically. And so that is the new model for drug courts in the state of Texas. That's also the model that is underlying our course. And it's not like a, it's not just leave your relationship, but it is understand that your environment plays a great deal, has a great deal of influence on your ability to heal. We do teach people how to reclaim themselves. So it is not a, here's how to leave a relationship course. Some people have that outcome, others don't. Others understand that it is the way that they show up in that environment that can actually change that environment. This can be through boundaries or assertiveness or living by your values or creating distance or space from the person that's causing you harm. It can be a lot of different things, but it does have to do with the environment. You are not going to get well in that exact same environment. This was true for me when I came home from treatment, things had to change, things had to change in my life. I had to stop going to some of those places. I had to create new habits and routines and structure in my life and guardrails and bumpers to keep myself on the straight and narrow. That is a fact is that you're not going to be able to recreate something amazing without changing other things too. You're just not going to be able to. There are some ways that you can manage in chaos, but you are never going to be truly fulfilled in chaos. So, yeah, if you've done this, I guarantee you, if you've been able to heal, I bet you anything that it's got, there's a ceiling there, a cap on what you're able to truly do. And really what you've done is you've just lowered your expectations of the point where you can't be let down. That's my guess anyway. All right, next one, the longer you stay on the wrong train, the more expensive it is to get home. This comes from an old, it's a Japanese proverb that talks about this. I think the quote is something along the lines of this, but the idea is the same. This is the sunk cost fallacy of action, right? It's pride in the sunk cost trap that keeps people stuck in relationships and in careers and in things that we don't belong in. We think that because we have time invested into something, it is worth it, but that's not true. Time is the most valuable resource that we all have. It is time, second health, those are the most valuable resources that we have. And we think that since we've invested time, we should continue investing. But this is like throwing good money after bad. Just because you've invested time does not mean it is worth investing in any longer. Sometimes knowing when to quit is what winning looks like. Here's what sucks is once you've been in something for a very long time, it gets harder and harder to get out. Much harder, that ticket home, it's much more expensive and it takes much longer to get back to where you want to be, the longer that you stay in that something. That's a fact. In the beginning though, it feels really expensive to get off that train because you're like, "Man, it'll work itself out. I'll find a way to be happy. This will all work itself out, but it doesn't and it won't, and prove me wrong on that, but it won't. Getting off early, it's the old's expensive, but it ends up costing you something far more. It ends up costing you your life, your happiness, your sanity, the things that you truly want in life, and what kind of life is that? We do this with addiction. And you know, I can stop whenever I want to. This is working for me. No, it's not, you think that there's going to be this day that you just grow out of it. I always thought there'd be this day that I just grew out of addiction. I thought that getting, our graduate from college would do that and I thought that getting married would do that and I thought that having kids would do that and every single one of these events came and went and I couldn't get off the train. I couldn't and that ticket back was expensive and it was long because I'd stayed in it for so long. You've been in this deal for 30 years. That ticket to get out is really, really tough to come by. Very, very expensive. We do this in marriages and relationships that aren't serving us. We do this in careers. We do this stuff with our health thinking that, you know, it's like staying unhealthy just because change feels hard or staying in a relationship just because it's convenient. Oh man, that's this recipe for disaster. Just remember that the longer you stay on the train, the more expensive it is to get home. Next one. Sometimes your value isn't seen until your absence is felt. This one kind of feels good in some kind of a sick way. If you've ever left a job that didn't appreciate you and then the next Monday they are calling and begging for you to come back. Ooh, doesn't that feel good? Yeah, I was a lot more important than you ever gave me credit for. We also find this in relationships. I know if some of you have probably discovered this with your ex, the person who needs to hear this message probably isn't listening to this episode. That's my guess. Maybe some of you are, but a very small minority of you are and you realize how much your spouse was over functioning just to keep things together now, don't you? That the sink is full, that the laundry is blown up, that the houses and shambles, your finances are a mess, that there's no groceries. All these things they were doing in addition to taking care of themselves and probably working their own career just to keep things afloat, now you recognize their value because they are no longer there because they are absent and now you feel how much they were truly doing. In everyday life, the fixer becomes invisible and the reliable one gets taken for granted and the person carrying the emotional labor just kind of becomes normal. But if your absence causes chaos, I think it meant that you were holding too much, far too much. Equitable balance of duties is what we're after in relationships. We talked about equal partnerships and the equals are a bit different for everyone, but an equitable distribution is what we are after. I think this is true at work as well. In a simplistic way, if we all probably have some form of job we've worked and so for careers, I was running a business and I was doing far too much and I sucked at delegating because I felt like if I were to let go of control, it would all fall apart. You have to delegate to get your sanity back. You're holding far too much and that's what management really is, right? It's when you're not there, the place doesn't fall apart. That's what you want to do, but in some ways, I felt like then I would lose my value and like what's my purpose? I think anyone's ever run a business or go through something like that, but spouses and partners will go through something like this too where they leave and nothing changes for them because they were already doing everything. But the other person who didn't want to grow or change is now completely overwhelmed with the stuff that they weren't doing and didn't recognize the value of. And it's like kind of gratifying in some ways to realize how much value you have. It's validating in some sense, but it's usually what it takes before someone will recognize your value, unfortunately. Next one, I love this one. Any lesson you refuse to learn will repeat itself until you do. Life repeats pattern until behavior changes. If something keeps happening, it is not bad luck. It's an unlearned skill. It will repeat itself over and over and over and over. If you're having the same fight in your relationship, week after week, different decade, that is a sign that there is a lesson there that you are not learning. This may be for the instigator. This may be for the person that suffers from the instigator's actions. There's a lesson there that you guys have not learned yet. So if you're in a relationship with someone who struggles with addiction and you keep showing up to like the community with the same vent over and over and over and over. Life is trying to teach you something. You have to be willing to learn that lesson. And for a lot of you, I have to get out of the situation. For some others, I have to learn how to respond differently to this new relationship where someone's recently gotten sober. If you struggle with addiction and life keeps shitting on you, it's not shitting on you. Those are just the results of your actions. It's a lesson that life's trying to teach you that you are at this point unwilling to learn. Repetition like this, it's curriculum. It's life trying to teach you curriculum. I don't know how many times. Maybe you're like me and it takes a decade of being stubborn and getting your ass kicked with the same lesson over and over to learn a lesson. But at some point, we've got to learn it or nothing will change. At some point, do we lose our ability to complain? Arguably, maybe, yeah, with my career, I have complained about this more times than I can probably count. And I just stop bringing it up to people because I know that they're sick of hearing it. And I'm sick of talking about it. I journal about this just recently. Like I don't even want to talk about it anymore because I know the lesson I need to learn. I'm just not ready to freaking do it yet. I'm just, I'm chicken shit. I don't, I'm scared. All right, I said it. I'm just scared and I'm not ready to do it yet. But I know the lesson that life is trying to teach me because it keeps coming up. Nothing will change until I change something. It's happens with parenting. Like, change the way that you approach your kids and talk to your kids or respond to your kids. Which can be difficult if you've been in a relationship that's really reactive and very triggering. Heightened emotions and you speak in a way that is not conducive to respect towards your children. You're likely not going to get respect back. And you want to complain about the way your kids are acting but like they model your behavior. So, life's trying to teach you a lesson there. And until you respond differently, you're unlikely to get anything different from life or from your children. So, yeah, same reactivity, different kids stage. You're in our life, same fear, new excuse. Yeah, health, you're the same restart cycle, just a different Monday, you know? Like, you're gonna learn this one way or another, hard way or the easy way. I'm pretty stubborn and it took me a long time. Some people it takes a long time. There have been people in our community where it took a freaking long time. Next one, you are what you do, not what you say you do. Actions have far more value than words do. Kind of back to that previous one. Like, we are a makeup of our patterns, after all. We are what we do. If we could just be judged on our intentions, wouldn't that be the greatest thing ever? Like, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Okay, well, if that were what mattered then I wouldn't be feeling like crap right now because you've been texting other women, right? Like, come on. Yeah, but I think many people, especially emotionally immature people would love to be, and I was one of them. It's why I can speak to this. I would love to have been judged on my intentions. My intentions were everything I thought anyway. The words that I use were more important than the actions that showed up in our day to day. I did this crap forever. Like, apologies don't rebuild trust. Patterns do. Action does. Sorry, without change is in some ways manipulation. At the very least it's gonna water down the meaning of anything. A lot of guys are guilty of saying like, I'm trying to change like, or I have been changing. Like, no, dude, you've been thinking about changing. And I know exactly what you mean. There is a mental weight associated with rumination. Well, that is not the same as changing. Starting to take notice when this stuff pops up is not the same as stopping the thing that is harming people in your life. If you're deflecting or you've got a bad habit of not taking accountability or admitting when you were wrong or you lack humility or honesty. Like, acknowledging those things is not the same thing is changing them, right? Sober links to sponsor of our show. And I think this is a perfect place to plug sober link because sober link is the world's greatest device for rebuilding trust when there's alcoholism. When there's a problem with alcohol, your words have lost meaning. You can say, you're sorry. You can say that you'll be better. But what does that actually mean if you're not doing better? And can you blame your loved one for the way that they're responding and that they're reacting to you after all of these years of broken promises? And if you're at the point now where you're really ready to like arrest this thing and take this seriously in rebuild trust, sober links a device that can actually help you do that. You set up a network of people. Hopefully your spouse is one of them. They get notified every time you use this thing. So it's not just words, it's actual actions and data that they can trust. And they can trust it because it is tamperproof. It has military grade facial recognition technology as well. So you can trust the person that's supposed to be using the device is the person actually using the device. It's an amazing tool for rebuilding trust. So if you're serious as you say you are, get one of these things. It is a gift that you give your loved ones. It is the transparency and the visibility that they have asked for for years. And if you want something to back up your inner world where you truly are wanting to be better, this is a great way to do it. This is an actionable way that shows them how serious you actually are. I'm really serious. I got this thing to prove it. I got skin in the game now. Yeah, it's not free there, but sober link is an awesome sponsor of our show. And so they're gonna help you with that. They'll send you 100 bucks, not cash in the mail, but in the form of a gift card that you can use on anything. If you want to use it toward the purchase of a program or two faux merch or your bills, Amazon, groceries, whatever, or maybe the monthly plan costs for sober link, it can help offset that. They will do that for you. Go to soberlink.com/weals, sign up today. Check out the plans and get into one of these things if you're serious guys. Get into one of these things. It can help. It's a great tool for spouses and partners to really see through the smoke screen. Again, go to soberlink.com/weals and also used to have to buy these things. It's never been easier and cheaper to get into a device. You can just rent them for as little as 19 bucks a month. Sign up for a one year plan. One year I think is a minimum amount of time it takes to start to rebuild some semblance of trust. Do it. 19 bucks a month. You can swing that. And then the monthly plan cost can be offset by the $100 they will send you. You have no more excuses. So yeah, again, you are what you do, not what you will say you will do. You are what shows up, what you repeat, what your patterns are, not what you announce. Next one, ships that wait for perfect winds never sail. Back's man, there are no such things. There's no such thing as perfect conditions, only imperfect action. If you sit around waiting for perfect conditions to leave a relationship, to stop drinking, to leave that career, whatever it might be, the day will never come. Life has got a really fascinating way of presenting you reasons that is not the right time yet. And you've probably already achieved a lot of the things that at one time you swore would be ideal conditions and you still didn't do anything. Just take imperfect action. You are never gonna have guarantees. Motivation comes from action, not the other way around. You cannot get confident and motivated enough to act usually. I know for me, when I decided I was gonna get sober and like rebuild my marriage and take this seriously and grow the hell up, there was a day that I just said, "Eff it, I'm not lying anymore. I'm not telling another lie. I'm so sick of my own crap." And at the time, I could have kept this going for a while. And it was an awful time to do this in a lot of ways. Like, when is that a good time though? When is that ever a good time? Is there ever a good time to have that tough conversation? Is there ever a good time to just put your job? I mean, maybe you need some savings, but is there ever a good time to end a relationship? Not really, not really. You could always argue that this or that stands in the way. So at the end of the day, once you have some knowledge about it, some kind of a plan maybe, just take action, imperfect action at that and then build from that. Future you is a badass and you don't give them enough credit. And if you just take action, you will figure out the next right thing to do. You will figure out the thing after that and the thing after that. And life kind of presents the way. The universe will conspire to get you what you need and what you want. That's kind of a busted quote from the alchemist, one of my favorite books of all time. But the universe will conspire. I promise you, this is the way that it works. When you set these events into motion, but there is no such thing as perfect wins, that ship will never sail. You will never walk, you will never fulfill your dreams, you will never be who you wanted to be. And is that where we want to be in life? Before we get to this next one, I've read this book, it's haunted me, man. I don't think I finished the whole thing. I kind of got bored with it, which is okay to do. If a book is not hitting, it is okay to put it down and move on to something else. But I loved the regrets that are listed here. This book is called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. It was written by someone, I think who works in hospice care in Australia maybe? Could have that wrong, it's been a long time. But anyway, the top five regrets of the dying, they are as follows. I'd wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. Two, I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Three, I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. Or I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. And five, this is the one that haunted me. I wish I had let myself be happier. Not I wish I'd been happier. Outers to supply to our next quote, which is, beer doesn't stop death, it stops life. Beer stands in the way of us doing so much. And it is the thing that prevents us from accomplishing the things that on our deathbed, we will regret that we did not do. I don't know about you, but I don't wanna die without any scars or stories. I don't wanna have any lack of mistakes that I can share with my children and my grandchildren to help them on their way. Fear is the very thing that prevents that. And if you let fear dictate your life, you will end up miserable. You will end up without what the worst thing at the end, which is knowing that you reach the end no matter what. Like you couldn't prevent it. You couldn't prevent all this bad stuff from happening. It was a lack of action that got us there. Me and my son were at the barbershop, like, I don't know. We could go close to that. And he's my kid, like, to a fault maybe. And we were talking about death. And he was like, it's just crazy. Like, no one actually knows what happens when you die. I was telling him about this book I read on near death experiences and like, how that's interesting. But at the end of the day, like, no one actually knows. And it's like, is it just nothing? Is it like before we were born? Is it just all just end or do we like go somewhere? Is there some sort of other dimension? Do we go to heaven? Do we go to hell? Like, what happened? Like, no one actually knows. And I was like, and it's crazy, right? How we spend so much of our life worried and ruminating over things that need to happen tomorrow or next week or things that we wish we would have said or things that we need to do, like the ever producing list in our head of chores that we have to do or like tasks we have to complete and how much of our present moment is taken away from a life that we may not-- we're not even guaranteed to tomorrow. There is no guarantee that either of us are here tomorrow. But we're acting as if we will be. And like, how arrogant, you know? But what we do have is right now. We do have the present moment. I like to think of the Charles Dickens Christmas story. And I think back to the ghosts of Christmas past and the ghosts of Christmas future. I'm like, if I could actually-- if I could sit on my deathbed right now at 90 years old and what that would feel like, and the life I would have lived and all the regrets that I would probably have, what if I could be transported right back into my four-year-old body, like how much different perspective I would have on the present, like what I would do differently? You can run this thought experiment right now. You can do that right now. You don't have to wait until the end to be mortified by the decisions you didn't make. All the fears that you had that stood in the way of doing the things you truly wanted to do. But the longest time we didn't start this show because I was just scared to do it. It's like, I'm scared. It's corny. People are going to make fun of me. It's insane. We would actually put themselves out on the internet and do all this stuff and come at the time to it. But we're so glad that we did that. And then we're going on year four now, year four later. Like it's one of the highlights of my life that this project is out there. And it's there for posterity. And my kids can see it. I'm so glad that we spent our time in the present doing this. And like, so what are you holding yourself back from? There's this Mark Twain quote that kind of goes with this too. And it's, I've lived through 1,000 tragedies in my life. Some of them actually happened. If that isn't sum up me and a nutshell, I don't know what does, man. I've, I can tell myself a million stories about what will go wrong. And rarely, if ever, do those things actually happen. It is fear that keeps me from living the life that I truly want to live. Fear does not stop death or the next thing from happening. In fact, it is just punishing yourself twice, as it said, sometimes fear is punishing yourself twice. Once before the thing happens in the second time, if it actually does happen, like worry. What did you prevent? Nothing, right? It's not a hedge against anything other than guaranteeing that you will not live a life that you truly want to live right now. It's, it's insane. The Stoics have a lot to say about this too. We were talking about death. We were talking about Stoic philosophy, which probably knows more about than the average 11 or 12-year-old. Seneca said this, you know, he said, we suffer more in imagination than in reality. And I think that is absolutely true. Epiteed has kind of hinted at something like this about the perception that we live in. And you know, the thoughts and beliefs that we ascribe to events. And you know, he says, it's not events themselves. It is our judgment of such events that cause pain or turmoil. I've lived by that one for a very long time. Stoic philosophy, something I've talked about on the show. And it was really beneficial to me, especially in early recovery, helped me understand that like, when I am disturbed, there's something wrong within me. I love that. This is kind of tangential here, but we'll get back to it. I just want you to know that fear won't vanish first. Movement has to come first. And courage, like being brave or having courage. You can only be brave or courageous if you have something to lose. If you're risking something, you have to have skin in the game. It's taking action while you're afraid. Kind of back to our previous point about the sales. It's true. That's what courage and bravery really are. While you're still afraid, you do this thing anyway. Fear should never be a stop sign. It's a toll booth. Maybe you slow down. You pay a toll there. You acknowledge it, but then you keep going anyway. All right. Hope that you enjoyed those. Remember the link to see all of these and there were a ton of them. And there was a great song playing in the background of this particular carousel as well. I've actually saved it to my favorites on Instagram. I can be found in this episode description. So just go down there and take a look. And while you're down there, you're in this area of the podcast app that you're in, where you can leave the show a review. And we would so much appreciate if you left us a review. It would mean everything. This is the greatest way that you could possibly pay it forward. There are ways to support the show, like we talked about merch and things like that. We have a buy me a coffee link inside of our link tree on any of our social media profiles. Click that link. You can donate to the show, but the best way that cost you nothing if you could leave us a review, that helps the show grow, that helps other people find the show. It shows up on, you know, recommended lists for people that could be helped by this. And the same way, maybe you found it was like a recommended through one of your favorite podcast apps. So we would appreciate that so much if you could leave us a review, um, truly. So we are now going to get into a fun part of the show where we answer a question. Maybe I'll start doing this. If you guys start sending me great questions, I will answer them. I like doing this. It's fun. I enjoy this. We've been doing this here more recently on TikTok live. We'll start doing those more often. We'll go live on TikTok and we'll answer all your questions that we possibly can. It's really fun for us. It's a great way to engage with you guys. Um, we want to be helpful. We want to be helpful to people. So if there's anything that I have that could be helpful, I'm more than happy to share that. Give you my perspective. Take it forward. It's worth. I'm just some dude, right? I'm not a therapist. I don't have credentials in any of this stuff. I just got a wealth of experience and I'm incredibly curious and fascinated and interested by it. I read a lot about it. I think about the stuff all day long. But take it for what is worth at the end of the day at your own risk. This question was really good. This was a question I think that is probably familiar to a lot of people. I will read this and do my best to generalize it so that no one feels called out here because they didn't ask me to share it on the show. But this is a listener. So I hope that you're hearing this and I hope that you get your answer here. Um, this person has a husband who's been sober for about 90 days. Like in that first 90 day period, but things are not peachy, things are not rosy. They mentioned that their husband is essentially like this sucks and like if this is the way that this is going to keep going. I don't want any part of this. I quit. This is not fun. He's just not happy. Um, he's saying he doing, he's doing everything he possibly can, but his wife is still quote unquote mean to him is very difficult, maybe very reactive. I don't know exactly what she meant, but she just said mean. So whatever that means, uh, he is essentially saying he doesn't receive any type of affection and doesn't want to keep going down this path. I've mentioned in a previous podcast that once I created stability and safety and trust that desire can return. And so she's asking for concrete examples of how I actually did this, like how did I actually accomplish this and both of them, maybe they're both listeners that they're both asking for concrete examples of how this can be accomplished. And yeah, I am, I'm happy to share that. I want to acknowledge on the beginning that I appreciate someone asking a question like this. This is a very, this is a very tough thing in the beginning. Three months of sobriety is a huge accomplishment. 90 days is a lot. That is like the first milestone that we come up on. Like there's a month that's kind of a big deal, but a lot of people can get a month. But 90 days is what we're starting to be like, yo, like 90 days is not nothing. Like that's quarter of a year, but at the same time, it is not that long in the grand scheme of things. And it's a really tough period of time for a lot of folks heartbreaking for both sides of this and a lot of way. And this is what you're experiencing at 90 days. 90 days is what a lot of times we refer to as a pink cloud period in early sobriety and early recovery because there's so much optimism and there's so much hope because you've stacked more than a few days on one another. And you've probably seen progress in some ways, right? Like you start to feel better physically for sure. Your emotional state is probably a little bit better. Your relationship is probably better in some ways because you don't have the substance which we've always said. It's the behaviors more than the substance that caused the problem. But for a lot of people, the substance is very triggering because it is at substance where they notice a lot of these problems more, more acutely and more aware of them. For some people, the substance is a massive problem because this is when the abuse occurs, physical abuse or whatever it might be. And so this is removed and this is a good thing, right? And so this is the pink cloud period. You start to feel really good, but it's about that 90 day period that the pink cloud kind of fades and it stops and it ends and this is where life starts to get real. This is where you start to see it's not all just peachy and it's not all just wonderful. And this is when like stuff kind of hits the fan. This is also when post acute withdrawal syndrome pause hits for a lot of people. And this is the point at which you will notice that you start to sleep poorly and you start to get triggered by a lot of things. You start to feel really tired and anxious and you're just a lot of stuff set you off quickly. Sometimes even some of the physical symptoms can return. It's a weird period. This is when your brain trying to heal and change. Looking for homeostasis with neurotransmitters and all the feel good chemicals and hormones that flow through your brain that kind of dictate the way that you feel. And it can be a very discouraging time because you think, oh man, like I was feeling great. And now I feel like crap and what the hell is this about? I went through this, everyone goes through it. Being aware of it's half the battle, knowing that it's normal is like literally half the battle and then it's getting through it. Maybe some of that is going on here, possibly with him could be, I don't know. I don't know the full story here of like Alice guy is getting sober like is he just, did he just stop and he's just kind of like committed to stopping or is he going through some kind of a process as this medication assisted. I don't know, but I think that all of us will go through this period of time where things kind of hit. And with the relationship dynamic stuff though, I'll tease my stance on this a little bit. Before and I will say it again, the onus is on the person that broke trust that caused the issues to repair this. Justice demands that the person that broke this stuff takes the lead in repairing it. You must take the lead and there is a long period of reconstruction. And when I say long, think in terms of years, not months, years, years, y'all 90 days while not being insignificant is not nearly enough time to create the kind of safety and stability that would make your wife, the person who asks this question, feel safe enough in that relationship. My guess is that this has been going on for a long time, like more than five years probably, that she's been in the state of being hyper vigilant and feeling like at any moment things could pop off that she's been seeking safety through rumination and worrying and trying to control her environment so that she can feel safe. This is a really difficult thing for a lot of spouses and it physically changes their brain. Much the same way that yours has been changed. If you're a substance user, their brain has been changed. We talked about the work of Dr. Jake Porter, he talks about parts of the brain like the hippocampus, which is like the alarm center of your brain. It becomes overreactive over time and it is trained to do that and so you will stay hyper vigilant and this is when spouses get called controlling or codependent or anxious, anxiously attached, all these things. This is a natural result of seeking safety in your environment, which every human tries to do in some way, shape or form and you cannot fault them for that. You have to hold space for that. You have to be very and acutely aware of it and try to create space for that. I did not know this in the beginning, but I had an inkling, right? This is years of study and understanding how this really affects spouses that I came to understand what you just heard, but in the beginning, here's what I did know. My little ape brain had the idea. I caused a massive problem for us for a very long period of time and I wasn't like kissing ass or sucking up, but I was changing my behaviors drastically in the beginning. When I got home from treatment after 30 days and that first 90 day period when I was going through IOP and going to a ton of meetings and really, really working hard on this stuff, like using that first fuel source to get me off the launching pad and just rip myself off the launching pad, I was changing things drastically, drastically in our home and letting her know how serious that I was really taking this and not a single bit of what I was doing was contingent. No matter how she needed to feel or what was going on at work or with her, I was going to stay the path. I was certain that if I stayed the path over time, things would get better. They probably wouldn't get worse. They would probably get better. But remember, addiction and all of its effects are like a freight train. Just because we stop using doesn't mean the stuff stops happening. It carries on for some time. There are patterns that have resulted in your partner that are a direct result of you. And I took full responsibility for every bit of that. So when Paige would get reactive, when she would get angry, when she would get upset, when she would be anxious, rather than get annoyed or try to correct her or try to teach her or coach her, I would remind myself I am looking at the fallout of my behavior. I am looking at the product of me right now. Our response is, while technically still her responsibility, in a lot of ways were set up long before they just happened in front of me. They were set up by my behaviors for all those years as she tried to find safety and adjust. And I think that you have to acknowledge that. You absolutely have to acknowledge that. So when I say you have to take the lead and repair and there's a long road of reconstruction, that's what I'm talking about. In 90 days, you can start to create some safety, right? But I think in some ways you've already hinted at, this is somewhat conditional. Now also, having, I can look at this in two different ways. Like I always look at my part first. Spouses and partners, like yeah, when he says you're being mean, does that mean that you're being hateful? Does that mean that you're being sarcastic toward maybe some of his efforts? Does that mean that you're, there's contempt, you know, which Gottman says is like the relationship killer that is like the biggest single predictor of divorce, which is contempt for your spouse. And that's when you just roll your eyes and you were just fed up with them. And there is no attraction whatsoever. You were just sick of them, done with them over it, tired of it. If you're there, like, I don't know, is that, is that what's happening here? Because there is something to be said about that too. When you're getting sober, it's a really difficult thing to do, really difficult thing to do. And if you are mocking someone's efforts, if you are showing contempt, if you are making it more difficult on them, if you are withholding like even physical affection, like just like putting your hand on their back or like letting them know that you care for them with the hug or something like that. If you're withholding that stuff purposely to like get back at them, that makes it that much tougher for them. That's not necessarily your responsibility to make this easy on them. But after all, like, this is supposed to be your best friend. And I'm wondering what we're doing in a relationship before not trying to support one another. I don't talk about this too often because I never want this to come off as victim blame me, but I've always been straight with you guys. I'm just going to be straight with you. Page was incredibly kind and like loving when I was getting sober. We're best friends. And like, we support one another. And any time she's ever tried to do something like for herself, I've been there and I've supported her. Even if I didn't holy agree with it, even if I had been affected by some of it, like I support her and her for me too. She was supportive of me. But we also had not crossed that that invisible line of totaled yet, like where your relationship is totaled. And there is such a thing as a totaled relationship is this couple totaled. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe? Maybe not. Maybe it's just too early. There's no way to actually tell. But I hear this a lot from men that reach out to me and I always encourage them like you have to keep your side of the street clean before you get to bitch about what anyone else is doing. Okay. And even after it's clean, you have to understand that stuff that blows over there. Sometimes it's just garbage from your yard that blew over there beforehand. It's just your shit coming back to you. That's true. And the wash, all that stuff is taken care of. And what you're left with is a spouse or a partner who has their own journey to take. And like I was, it was four years before we figured out what this looked like for page. It was four or five years sober and I was doing the deal like really doing the deal, showing up every day, like working on my recovery, sharing openly with her, being honest, being forthright, being helpful, equitable distribution of duties around the house, being an active and involved father, you know, working my ass off in my career, like contributing any way I possibly could taking things off her plate and like what I got on the other side of that was like still this very anxious and like reserved person who was still reeling with the effects of this stuff. But at this point, I had cleared up the wreckage of all of it. And I had made it safe for her to come back to that relationship. She had her own work to do. And she took accountability for that and she walked through her own journey of like, you know, healing that you guys hear about every week that you so admire. And like, she never blamed me for it. You know, she never told me I was a P.O.S. that this is all my fault. She never did any of those things like she never had contempt for me. And so if you're, if you're like belittling your spouse or you're just like you're petty, like I could see how that's really difficult and I'm not sure how that's helpful. And if I really set you down, I bet that's not within your value set. I bet it's not. I bet you're responding to being hurt and you want to hurt back. And I don't think that's helpful. But this sounds more like it's about safety and stability in the relationship. And so they were asking, you know, what did I actually do to help reestablish safety in the relationship? And I actually wrote down a few things. I'm going to pull them up really quick because I kind of forgotten. It's been a little while. And anytime I've ever put on the spot, it's like, damn, it's been a while. What did I do? I've been this person for so long now. I forgot what it was like when I first started being this person in the beginning. It was about consistency. I think consistency above all things is what creates an environment where healing can happen. They have to know it's safe. Your spouse has to know that it's safe. And that is with consistency. The pattern is what is causing them to feel distant from you. To look at you, even sober and trying and still see that old version. It's consistency that did that. It's consistency that unwinds that. So it's consistency. Whatever that looks like, what are you trying to repair? Like in the beginning, it was like, I need her to trust that I can be sober. I did this through a 12 step program. There are other ways to skin that cat. I don't knock on any of them. This is just the one that was introduced to me, and I was like, I'm going to do that. I'm just going to run with it. Cool. Got it. That's what the Treatment Center had me try. And so I did it. And so I was going to meetings. And I wasn't just going to meetings. I was like really doing the deal. I had a sponsor that I worked through the program with diligently. And I wasn't just like working through this stuff privately and not sharing it at home. These conversations were so valuable about the stuff that I was learning because I could come home and bring them and kind of toss them up in the air in our bedroom. And we both talked about what that meant. And so if it was about honesty, like it was a really good opportunity for me to call myself out on being dishonest and like having clarity and really putting the stuff out in the open to take accountability for it. And like truly acknowledging how dishonest I had been and acknowledging, I understand now like what honesty looks like and how terrible that really was. And then it opens the floor for her to be able to give her take on that, you know, and like how it affected her and like I just got really curious and listened. And like I think if I did anything right early on, it was like I allowed her to feel how ever she needed to feel and I never got defensive and I always walked with humility. And I was going to be the first person to make fun of myself or to talk shit about myself. I wouldn't have to make you do it, you know, like I would, I was self-aware in so many ways. And I think that that helped. And this is behavior. I mean, this is consistency in my behaviors, but it's consistency in my recovery, it's consistency in my actions every day, like following up and doing what I said I would do. Like that alone, let her know that like this dude's safe again, okay, this is good. I also took charge over tasks that I had previously abandoned, like I graduated with a degree in finance. I was the finance guy and I did really well in school. And like I love, this is going to sound doorky, but like I love finance, like the numbers and the game of it all is like really interesting to me. It's like chess kind of, but with money. And it's interesting. I like reading about it. I still read about it to this day, but I was the world's worst financial keeper in our relationship. I had had to leave that task to her. One that like in our equitable distribution of task was one that was supposed to be mine. And I came back in and like slowly without smothering her, like took that back over, I became back involved in being an active parent and an active participant in our relationship. Like we had a nine month old, you know, like changing diapers, like bath time, spending time with her and like doing things with her, like giving page, the much needed breaks that a full time stay at home mom needs, like really being involved in our lives again and like being present in our lives and like planning stuff and like doing stuff and outings together as a family again and like just living again, man, I think that that was part of it. I think I think the conversations where everything though, like I know some people that recover in a vacuum and there are a lot of men that really struggle to talk about the things that are going on between their ears. I hear you if you say that you don't know how, but if you don't know how, that's not an excuse anymore. Now that you've acknowledged that you don't know how, what are you going to do about it? We have to have, we have to start having conversations and if you stumbled upon this episode and you just heard that, go back and listen to the other ones, man, that's what I do. I try to help guys open up and I try to help them see that like there is nothing that is like, should be like shameful about sharing the way you feel and like learning how to communicate the language of your emotions. But we talked endlessly about this stuff, man, and when you talk vulnerably and honestly about your emotional state and what's going on with you on any given day, and so like concrete examples, this could be like coming home after a really tough day and telling page like today was really effing tough, like I realize how much I struggle with anxiety now. And what I need to do to fix that and I struggle with control over everything. I try to control outcomes of other people around me. I try to control outcomes and worrying about them and it drives my anxiety and like I've made the connection today that like that's where a lot of my use came from was anxiety and like needing to feel okay, I have self worth issues and like I'm working through a lot of this stuff. And what that does is it opens the floor, like it's very disarming for people when you're vulnerable, when you're honest and whenever you call yourself out, because it allows them the floor to do the same and they you feel more approachable in a lot of ways. And so like a lot of our connection that reestablished like a lot of that intimacy, like like emotional intimacy and physical, I think is in that right, sharing your lives with one another, like really talking about stuff, like beginning to really open up. And if you're telling me that there's still distance, my guess is that these conversations are not happening at nearly the depth that they were in our house, they're just not. And maybe you're not as well versed in talking about this kind of stuff, talking to the guy right here. Okay, but like you have to try, you have to start somewhere, like there are no such thing as perfect wins, those ships never say all right, we just talked about this. You have to start somewhere like action, just take action, whatever that means for you. Another one was like having the humility and like the way with all and the honesty to admit when I was wrong, that was a big one, allowing her the space to also chime in on that and how it affected her. I think another thing is that I was really optimistic and positive and hopeful and caring. And I, I looked at it like I had to earn my place back in the relationship. And maybe to some degree, I sent a little bit in the early years. Maybe I, maybe I was like, I over functioned a bit, but maybe I was just correcting I looked at it as just like self-correcting and that's probably a natural part of self-correcting. You go to one extreme and then you kind of find balance in it, but like I was doing all those things. I was showing up as being involved. I was apologizing when I was wrong and I was being like optimistic and like hopeful. And like I was taking the charge and setting the tone in that dynamic between us. Not in a controlling way, not in a what I say goes kind of way. Like I'm the man, kind of bullshit. It wasn't any of that. It was just like, I acknowledge like I cause these problems and like I will take the lead in fixing them, right? And then the word desire was mentioned too. And desire a lot of times when I hear desire, anyway, for men, it usually means sex. And that's a tough one to talk about for a lot of people. For me, when all the stuff I just mentioned was taken care of, the sex part wasn't an issue. It just happened as a natural result of like being connected and like wanting to share that. It's like the, the ultimate way that people connect, right? And it is a pure show of trust and vulnerability and it's at its best, you know, at its worst, it's coercive or it's forced. And that's not, that's not the point who wants to do that. And that's where a lot of people are. A lot of spouses are. I think it's a very normal thing early on, a very normal thing. Like a lot of people are disgusted with their spouse after this and it takes time to recreate safety. And I will caveat some of this, like because I've heard from a lot of guys that we're like, well, how long does that take? Because it's been like a year and I'm like a year, like either you're not doing half the shit that I was or like you've really mucked this up. And maybe you're totaled. Maybe you guys are totaled. I don't, I don't know. But I think that there is also something to be said that once there is contempt, like, when you come back from that, how do you recreate desire, like desire for someone? We've talked about how to recreate, I think, emotional intimacy and sharing your lives and things like that. But like I've always said, these things are a byproduct of like your actions and behaviors. And if you want to be respected, be respectful and be respectable. And if you want to be admired, do admirable things. If you want to be desired, like do things that make you desirable, like take care of yourself, be well read, like do what it chicks into, like do that stuff, like it's not that complicated. It's really not. But there's a psychologist, her name is Esther Perrell and she explains why these actions lay the groundwork for some of the, like, emotional intimacy, but desire requires more than that. I think I agree with this take. I haven't set with this idea very long, but I kind of love it. She says, love wants closeness and knowing everything about each other. It thrives on security. But desire, it needs mystery, a bit of distance, otherness and surprise. As she puts it quote, love enjoys knowing everything about you. Desire needs mystery. It is less concerned with where it has already been than passionate about where it can still go. But too often as couples settle into the comforts of love, they cease to fan the flame of desire. They forget that fire needs air. And she's got these pretty cool ideas about how to recreate desire anyway. She talks about one of them is that it thrives on distance, like the paradox of closeness. Distance. Love shrinks the gap between partners, but desire is energized by it. So a bit of distance in some way, shape or form, create this any way you wish. This can be through changing your routines, maybe working out of the house instead of working at home all day, but whatever, create distance in some way. Awareness and mystery, this one is really cool. In long-term relationships, you sustain desire by seeing your partner as separate from you, like not yours, mysterious kind of person who's not fully yours and not predictable. And she often talks about moments when desire reignites. When your partner is quote unquote in their element, radiant, she says, doing something they're passionate about during absences, reunions, longing that creates wanting through surprises, like through novelty, vulnerability, or even through the eyes of another, like seeing them afresh via friends or context. And I think that these all go back to a point. The reason I brought this up is because something page has always said that she absolutely loves about me and like keeps her crazy about me is that I keep her on her toes. She's always like admitted that she kind of likes bad boys, and I'm not the bad boy in the sense that I once was, but I will still do things from time to time that are definitely not in the norm of what a 40-year-old guy of my age would do. And this can be like, I don't know, like there was the other day I freaking popped off on some guy on the internet, like who was a total piece of shit, by the way. This guy is ridiculous. He said that I went and read some of his other comments and he said, men don't want confrontational women. Men want submissive women that listen and like that you can dominate like he's a real, real, real piece of shit. He also went on to say like a bunch of misogynistic, terrible things, but he found one of our reels and like he set some shitty things. And it was one of Paige's reels and he was like, this woman's a problem. She doesn't take accountability. I have no women like her. And anyway, I popped off on the guy like straight, dunked on his fucking head. He didn't even reply to the comment. Like I'm pretty sure that he cried and closed his phone and she sent me a text and she was like, that's straight turned me on. And I was like, the hell like, okay, but I think this is what she's getting at, right? Like, I'm in my element when I'm debating people and like when I'm doing that kind of thing and like popped off on them and it's very out of character for me these days. Knowing that that still exists kind of tells her that I'm not predictable and there's something mysterious about that and that, I don't know, like desire is created through some of these things. So what this can mean for a couple who's an early recovery or early sobriety. Maybe the routines of the past are still very much present and maybe, maybe there is too much predictability. I don't know. Maybe there's something to be said about that. You know, rebuilding after crisis can be really, really tough. I think that there is something to be said about that. But I think the most important thing is that you create emotional safety before you're worried about how many times you're sleeping with each other on any given week. I think that that is the most important thing you have to do. And that is what often makes people feel like that's even a possibility. And I think after that, it's a lot of these other pieces that come together, right? Like for guys, I tell them all the time, like I don't know when you thought you had to stop earning your dinner. Like being in a relationship, I have always looked at it like every day I have to show up and like earn her affection. Like I've never feel like she's like, like it's a cemented deal. Like she could walk away at any moment. Like what am I doing today to keep her here? And like I love that challenge every single day with my wife. I really do. Like I enjoy doing new things, like novel things and like being spontaneous. Like, I don't know. I think that creates desire in a lot of ways for her. But that was also coupled with this emotional safety piece, right? And I will also say that Paige has always been like an incredibly supportive and like kind person. I think I've talked to a ton of couples where I think that they may be past the line. And they may just have contempt. Like I cannot imagine going through this with the wife or a partner that didn't display any kind of support. Keep like in that sense, like if we're really trying to rebuild a really like I'll get sober for me, right? That's for me. But like our relationship is for us and it's for our children and like I can't imagine going through that while also being like shit on every day. That wasn't my experience, Paige and I were still best friends in a lot of ways. And like she hyped me up and I hyped her up and we support each other. We always have like when I'm going through hard stuff, she picks me up. She gives me compliments like every day still. Like if I especially when I dress up for work, if I have meetings like that, she'll be she'll make a comment like, you know, she'll cat call me or like say something really sweet or like hit on me. And like I do the same stuff to her like we're so crazy about each other. It feels good to be to know that you're desired by your spouse and maybe not even in that way, but just in any way. She'll cut me off on my way to the trash can when I'm throwing something away and just give me a hug. You know, she'll be walking through the house and I'll grab her and just give her a kiss. Like we support one another like we let each other know that the other cares and not just through physical affection, which was mentioned here, but like emotional ways too, just a random text at times like I'm so proud of you. Like I love you and I'm so glad I'm doing life with you, just like reminding her of that. We're like each other's best friends and I think that there's like something to be said about that. So those are some of the concrete examples that were present in our relationship. That's what it looks like. I don't know what your relationship looks like or if this was even an applicable answer. I hope that you got something from this rant that's going on now for the last 10 minutes. But man, I think that you have to stay curious about your partner, your wife or this is for the guy here. Like you have to stay curious about them. You have to you have to take the lead and re-engaging. And like if I think in the beginning, a lot of their part in like what they're doing is like giving you the opportunity and now you got to go earn it. You got to go earn it. This is not a guarantee, like you, it's there are no handouts, it'd be the best to you that you can possibly be, like pretend that you had, there was a game show and you had to win their affection. How would you do it? And then my guess is that once you get positive feedback and the way of attention or affection or desire, it's going to make you want to do it that much more. But like you've got to earn it. This should is not a given. This is not owed to you. This is not her duty or any of that crap. This is a person. How would you win them over? And that's kind of the way I looked at it and I did everything I possibly could, like I wanted to be an A plus student. I am a people pleaser at heart and they can be unhealthy at times, but I think in this regard it really did serve as well. I wanted to pleaser. I wanted to reestablish trust. I wanted to be respected and admired and desired and appreciated and I wanted to do the same thing for her. I wanted to be the best husband on the face of the earth and the best person in recovery ever. I want to be the best father ever and I showed up with that kind of stuff and that was my mode of every single day. And I never once bitched her moaned about the things I wasn't getting because it wasn't always like rainbows and unicorns. It wasn't man. Like there were times where it was tough. There were times when there was still some massive rift between us and I just kept going. And I gave her reasons to keep being optimistic about it. I definitely wasn't bitching and I wasn't moaning and I wasn't crying about it and I don't care if that sounds dismissive like this shit's not gentle and for everyone that wants to think that like we can just like old people's hand through this like you are sorely mistaken like growth is not gentle. It is there's nothing gentle about it. It is brutal and it hurts and it is uncomfortable and that is what we embrace. It is not supposed to be gentle. If it were easy, it wouldn't have meaning. Our growth germinates from our lowest points and that is not a fun place to be. And I don't care that it hurts right now. I don't care that it's difficult right now. The point is if you keep going, it gets better. If you stop now or if you want to whine about it, your problems are going to persist or get worse. You have to suck it up and you have to have a little bit thicker skin to get through this kind of stuff, man. You have to. You got to quit crying and complain about the things you don't have. That's why most people quit is because it's hard. This goes back. I'll end with this. Alex Hormozzi. He's kind of a dude bro podcast pro, but I think he also has some really awesome points and some really great quotes. One of my favorite is he was, this is back in, I think he was in a fraternity in college. And during pledge week, the pledges at some point, like after they've been hazed enough, like all revolt and they come in there and they, you know, they kind of like form a union and they want to like confront management and like the elder brothers that like you can't treat us this way and you can't do this stuff. And like that's not how it works in fraternities. I was never in one, but this is the way I understand it. This is what the story he tells. He's like, you know, they all gathered us in this room and like we had to remind them of something really quick. He asked them all like, show a hands who thought that this would be easy pledging and not a single hand went up and he was like, good, that's good. So show of hands, honestly, who thought this would be hard in every single person's hand in the room went up. And so I'm asking you, did you think this would be easy? Did you honestly think it would be easy? Okay. It's fair to assume that you thought it would be hard, right? Okay. This is what hard feels like and this is why so many people quit because this is what hard actually feels like and it doesn't feel good. It sucks. Hard feels shitty, but you can do this. This is the point at which so many people quit. Don't quit. Keep going. You can do this. This is why most people can't do it, but you can. So when it gets hard, remind yourself, nothing's wrong. This is just what hard feels like and Paige and I repeat that to each other all the time, all the freaking time. We've done that in our relationships and after major events, the things that have happened, like huge milestones, we've done this in our lowest points, building the show and like going through tough time financially, anything, it's like, this is what hard feels like. It's okay. It's okay. It's just hard. This is what hard feels like. But being a bitch and act accordingly, that's my best advice. And with that, I will end it here. I appreciate you guys listening. Until next time, I'm Nat and I'll see you. [Music]