The First Steps of Recovery (Love, Lies and Betrayal • Part 3) Episode 36

Brent and Janis discuss the first two critical steps for full recovery to begin to happen in the midst of the betrayal.

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The Life & Love Nuggets podcast will help you learn valuable insights into relationships, life, and love. Brent and Janis have been empowering couples through pre-marriage and marriage therapy in their private practice, Life Connection Counseling, since 1982. They recently retired after forty years of pastoral ministry and are continuing to help individuals, marriages and families in their private practice.

The podcast is produced by Clayton Creative in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The content should not be considered or used for counseling but for educational purposes only.

Transcript:

[Brent]: Good morning, friends. Welcome back to our podcast. We've been looking at this very critical issue that we see in our culture. We're calling this Love, lies and betrayal. We've specifically been looking at marital affairs because we just see those are just off the charts in the last couple of decades. But there's also other circumstances in relationships that these principles can be applied to. Certainly, we see people struggling with pornography. Well, their partner is going to feel like they had an affair. It's like with a whole bunch of people, it's going to feel the same kind of betrayal, secret spending, gambling, that they didn't tell the other person about. I've seen some people make business decisions, if they have a family business or even if he's the main one to manage it, or vice, and they've made some business decisions that haven't included the other partner and that have impacted the family.

[Brent]: So, there's all kinds of things that can cause trust to be lost and to feel like betrayal and so, in the last 40 years we've seen people break trust on every imaginable level.

[Janis]: Yes, astounding.

[Brent]: I mean, it's been amazing to see how people can ruin their lives and we find that there are four main stages of healing that are necessary and all these stages are important, and we're going to kind of start talking about those. We've been leading up to that in the last couple of podcasts. Last time we talked about kind of the prerequisites before this can even start.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: And so, the first step that we find, we call this the blank check. It really requires the betrayer to offer the betrayed a blank check. Now, not a financial check. Although I've had some betrayed go “well, that'd be nice”.

[Janis]: Yeah. I think I've actually had one or two that did that.

[Brent]: Okay. So, not a financial check, but a check that says “you can ask me any question as long as you need to ask me, until you don't need to ask me any longer”. The brain of the betrayed is traumatized and is going to crave to be seen, to feel safe, to feel soothed and secure. Because just like any other trauma, they're going to need those things to be able to heal. They need desperately, they need information “what am I dealing with here?”. Once again, oftentimes because the first information that comes out after they've been found out and most people get found out, they don't just come and offer this. It usually is not the whole story.

[Janis]: Right

[Brent]: And so, they've been told just little pieces, kind of the damage control thing that the betrayer is trying to do and so, their brain is just “I need to know what I'm dealing with”. Because oftentimes the betrayed feels like “well, if I had never found out, they would have never told me or I would have never found this out and yet, it impacted our relationship in so many significant ways”.

[Janis]: And they all have this fear of “am I a fool? Am I really stupid to be staying in this relationship?”. That idea of “are we just going to slap a Band-Aid on this and say ‘oh, we're much better’ and then things go back to the way that they were before and they end up doing the same behavior’”. There's a lot of fear that comes with this. So, many people say “am I stupid to even stay with this person?” or “am I stupid because I didn't see this?”, and I tell them “no, you're not stupid to stay with them. If you guys are continuing to work on this, there's a great possibility that your marriage can be healed and restored and you weren't stupid to not see it, because you believed in your spouse and you believed in marriage, and you're not a paranoid person and so, you weren't running around looking for it”. But the betrayer needs to know “your spouse needs information”. They have to have that in order to heal.

[Brent]: Yeah. So, I always have a Kleenex box. We ought to have stock in Kleenex in our business. I always have one sitting on the coffee table in the office, and I'll pick it up and I'll say “the betrayed's brain needs to know what's happened here. It's like everything that happened is inside this Kleenex box. I need to know the back of the box. I need the corners, what's the upper left-hand corner? What's the bottom? I just need to know what I'm dealing with” and so, the brain becomes pretty hyperactive, and I think it's supposed to, because I think the brain needs to be-- Needs to feel safe and secure and so, again, that great fear that they have is that “well, we'll slap a band Aid on it and it's all going to go back to the same old way and I'm going to be a fool”. So, I tell the betrayer “get ready, because they may ask what seems like the same question for the 7th time”.

[Janis]: Or the 77th time, because they need to ask it over and over and it's crucial that the betrayer answers the question every time, as hard as it is, with patience. I mean, it's going to get frustrating and it's going to get irritating. But if you don't do that, if you don't have the patience with them, then what your partner is hearing is “Get over it. It wasn't that big a deal. Wow, let's move on” and that sets the healing back. Every time something happens like that, it sets the healing back. But also remember that every time you respond in a loving way, you're bringing some healing to the relationship.

[Brent]: Absolutely. Absolutely.

[Janis]: And when they ask a question over and over again, it's not the same question. It's actually a different question because they've gotten more information now and they've had time to really think it over and try to fit all the pieces together and so, sometimes they'll be going “gosh, when my wife went on that business trip, was she meeting up with somebody there?”

[Brent]: Right, right.

[Janis]: Or “oh, my son's birthday when he had the business emergency and he left early, did he really have an emergency or was he meeting with her?” and so, oftentimes they have to go back and look at some of those past things and find out what was happening then and so, they have to ask questions in order to heal.

[Brent]: Yeah, and so, a week later, it's a different question. Ten days later, it's a different question, because even though it's going to sound like the same question, and that's why I say to the betrayers “Just... You got to lean into this. This is going to be necessary. It's not going to be comfortable, but it's going to be critical that this happens” and so, once again, we always tell the betrayer “if you haven't told everything, say the whole story. But even if you tell the whole story, they're still going to ask for some nuance about that story and that's helping them feel safe and secure” and so, again, the betrayer needs to be completely honest with their response and respond in a non-defensive way. I can't tell you how critical that is and sometimes they go “I don't remember”. Okay, if you don't remember, you don't remember, but you might remember a little bit later, you know?

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: And then “okay, I thought of another thing that you asked the question the other day and I didn't remember, but now I remember”. Again, just know that the sooner you're helping them with this, the easier it's going to be for healing to actually engage and begin to-- I always say if the Betrayer can envision “every time that they're asking you a question, they're extending a wounded hand to you. If you answer that question in a non-defensive way, we put a little bit of antibiotic ointment on that wound”. Now, we all know you don't put ointment on a wound and it heals instantly, but it keeps the poison out and it helps it slowly start healing. If the betrayer gets defensive “I've already told you that. How many times are you going to ask this? You got to stop doing this. Are you ever going to forgive me?”, all that kind of stuff, it's literally like, the wound is hit again, it breaks it open, it literally goes back to zero and so, I always tell the betrayer “you're actually hurting yourself here, because even though this is uncomfortable, you want this to get over with as soon as possible”. Certainly, the betrayed wants to get this over. Nobody wants to ask these questions or to feel insecure. I mean, if they could push a button and feel secure immediately, they would. But it's recognizing that this is a critical stage, because if defensiveness will cause them to go “well, why won't they answer that? Why are they defensive about that what are they hiding now?”

[Janis]: Or “what else are they hiding?”

[Brent]: Or “what else are they hiding?”. Absolutely.

[Janis]: Yeah. It's hard for both people.

[Brent]: Yeah, it is.

[Janis]: Like you said, nobody wants to be the questioner. Nobody wants to be that insecure to go “well, what about this? What about that?” and nobody wants to be questioned about everything. It's painful and it's difficult. That's why we generally need to instruct the couple in counseling, in how to do this, because it's not natural. It's counterintuitive in so many ways, and yet, it's critical. Just like we talked about last time, it's like washing out the wound. You don't want to put a Band-Aid over it when you still have dirt and gravel in the wound.

[Brent]: That’s right.

[Janis]: It's very important and there's power in confession.

[Brent]: Yes

[Janis]: You know, sometimes I'll have people that are the betrayer go “well, I've told them I'm sorry so many times and I feel terrible about it”. Well, when you don't say you're sorry, they don't know you feel terrible and the goal is not for you to feel terrible. Confession is good for all of us. You know, Scripture says “confess your sins one to another, that you may be healed”.

[Brent]: That’s right.

[Janis]: That's healing for the confessor, but it's also healing for the person that is confessed too, because it's good for them to know “oh, they didn't forget it, they are still thinking about this” and it brings healing to both of them.

[Brent]: Yeah. So, tell the betrayers “just get comfortable, that you're going to lose count on how many times you need to say you're sorry”. But there's no limit to it. I mean, it needs to happen until the other person feels secure. Now, there is one important exclusion to this. So, some people are maybe thinking “oh, my gosh, you tell every little detail?”. We don't recommend that the betrayed ask or the betrayer responds to intimate sexual details. Now, they certainly need to know what happened. “How far they went? How often? Where did this happen? Where was I? Did you guys talk about running away together? Did you tell him you loved him?”. I mean, there's going to be all kinds of questions that are appropriate, but exactly what did you enjoy about it? What sexually did you do that you enjoyed? Don't recommend that whatsoever.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: Remember, fantasy is always more powerful than reality, so we're not even dealing with apples and apples here and so, intimate details are too much information for the brain to ultimately release. It's hard not to just get those seared in our thinking and let go of those and it actually is the wrong battle.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: Because if we're trying to recover this and the person's trying to decide “well, which person did I enjoy an experience with more?”, we're going to lose the battle. Again, remember, fantasy is more powerful than reality and so, this new, different, secret, all those kinds of things add extra spice and power to this and so, if that's what you have in mind, “which is better? Curtain number one or curtain number two?”, well, we've lost this battle.

[Janis]: Right

[Brent]: And so, marriage is like 1000 times more than that. It's so nuanced, it's so important on so many different levels and so, certainly, it can't be fought on that battle on the betrayer side, but also for the betrayed to feel like “well, how am I ever going to match that?”. I mean, that's why pornography is so difficult. “How could I possibly match that experience and those people that are professionals and have been airbrushed and everything's fixed and modified and so forth?”. So, we just can't fight it on that level and it's absolutely the wrong battle and so, it's not helpful to get into and so, this first stage I,s again, allowing other than those details, allowing any question as long as it needs to happen and I tell the betrayer “if you can do this and deal with your own defensiveness and move through that, then these questions will stop sooner than they will if there's resistance”. I've seen this over and over. I mean, it really is a critical part of-- I can tell in these first few sessions whether this is actually going to-- How fast is it going to go or whether we're even going to get there.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: Because if there's resistance and defensiveness then it clogs it all up. It blocks healing and we hardly even get out of this first stage then and it's really hard to make progress.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: And so, we encourage couples to coordinate together. We don't have to do marathon sessions. I know in the first few weeks, days and weeks, it's kind of bloody and they're staying up all night asking questions and talking through this and crying and whatever, and I understand that that's going to probably happen in the very beginning, but coordinate on this. I mean, you don't have to do, again, five-hour sessions. I mean, it's okay even for the betrayer after an hour or so of this, to say “Can we take a bit of a break? Now, I'm willing and committed to answering these questions and if we could come back a little bit later or in the morning”. For the betrayed to come home and say “I've had a really hard day today. I've just been plagued with thoughts. I need some time tonight”. So, they actually coordinate and kind of set up a time to do this, that's fine and so, again, teamwork is the best healing that can possibly happen.

[Janis]: Yeah. You know, sometimes I even encourage my couples to have some time of planned denial and it's not always easy in the very beginning, but to just say “you know what? Let's take an afternoon and let's just go do something fun where we're not in all these heavy conversations. We can come back and at 06:00 or whenever, we can talk through some more things, but let's just go and try to get some emotional rest and do things that we enjoy with each other”. I’ve found that could be really helpful.

[Brent]: Yes, absolutely.

[Janis]: So, asking all these questions it's painful. I mean, we can't emphasize this enough, but it's really part of the consequences of damaging behavior in a marriage. You know, God forgives us. When we confess our sins, God forgives us and washes it clean and we don't have to pay penance. But with our spouse or with people, there is a cost involved. They may forgive you, but they have to learn to trust you again and so, in essence, you have to serve some kind of penance in order to rebuild that relationship again.

[Brent]: Yeah, we have “trust is earned”.

[Janis]: Yes.

[Brent]: You know, when people say “well, you just need to trust me”. No, that's not even a thing. It's earned.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: Either you're a trustworthy person or you're not and you've either earned it or you've not and so, it's going to take time for this. Which leads us to the second stage. We call it the bathtub of trust. Now, if you've listened many of our podcasts, we did talk about this in a previous session when we talked about the difference between forgiveness and trust and talked about that forgiveness is a one way street, that we can forgive somebody even if they don't change and I tell people “even if they ran off with the other person and abandoned you, you're going to need to forgive them just so that you don't become bitter, resentful people”. Now, you would never trust them because trust require-- It's a two way street and requires change on the other person's part and change for a long enough period of time until I can feel secure and so, there are people that we can forgive but we may never trust because behavior is not changed. So, that's where it leads us into this idea of the bathtub of trust and so, couples find in the very beginning of this process, if they didn't know it before, they certainly know now, trust is one of the most important things in a marriage.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: If it's not there, it affects everything, it undergirds everything and so, most couples at this stage feel very insecure, very disoriented and we tell people the best example we can give of how trust is broken and how it is recovered is this idea of a bathtub of water. This model we find is true really in almost any trust when trust is broken in any kind of circumstance. Now, when couples first get together, if they-- I take them back to those first few months of courtship, well, they weren't thinking about trust. They were like “Wiii! This feels great!”. There was so much good behavior happening and hopefully-- You know, probably not a whole lot of bad behavior. This is why they usually thought about walking down the aisle with this person. So, in essence they have a full bathtub, they can splash around in it. It feels very secure, don't even think about it.

[Brent]: But when something happens, well, again, we call that the unoffendable zone.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: You know, even people that hurt each other, they just kind of overlook it because the bathtub is full. But when an untrustworthy thing happens, it's like the plug gets pulled and I always think about Grandma's plugs with a little rubber stopper and a little chain on them kind of plugs. The plug gets pulled. Now, if it is “I'll be home at 6” and I roll in at 7:30. Well, I just pulled the plug on your bathtub and now, if it only happened one time, if my cell phone died, I got caught behind a wreck, well, we'd get the plug, put it right back in, almost imperceptible. But if I'm late like, 50% of the time, like every time I say I'm going to be home, I'm like an hour and a half late. Well, pretty soon you're going to be thinking, when I say I'm going to be home, you're going to be like “well, we'll see”, because you just don't trust me in that area. Now, you may trust me in other areas, but you don't trust me when I'm going to be home.

[Brent]: If something happens, like an affair, that impacts this most important promise and commitment of fidelity that we have made, it's like the plug gets pulled, broken off the chain, thrown out in the backyard someplace. Most couples, when we see them, their bathtub is empty. They don't trust them at all. It is drained.

[Janis]: Dry

[Brent]: It is dry, yes and this, again, is devastating, so devastating to couples on so many different levels and to feel this such an important relationship and all of a sudden now “actually, I thought I could trust them, and I find I can't”. Oh, my gosh. Talk about a gut punch.

[Janis]: You question everything.

[Brent]: Absolutely and so, for the betrayed, their history is being rewritten. It's like “oh, that didn't happen here. This was happening here” and it is very destabilizing. This is where trauma happens. It's something that comes out outside of our control. Now, the first step of rebuilding trust is confession and repentance. Somebody's got to own it, which is confession. “Yes, I did this” and that's why, even responding to these questions “yes, I did that. Yes, I did that. I'm so sorry”, it's confession and repentance, which is “I've changed my mind. Instead of going this direction, I'm going to turn a corner and go a different direction. So, I've confessed that I've done it and I've committed to change”. Now, if we didn't have that in the beginning, we wouldn't even have a chance. There's no way for trust to start rebuilding. So, if somebody is looking at porn and their partner finds out about it and they're trying to convince them that “well, all guys do this, it's not that big a deal. I'm not actually with a person” or heaven forbid, they say, you know, even in a literal affair “guys just kind of do this. I don't love them”.

[Janis]: “It didn't mean anything to me. It was just sex”.

[Brent]: Yeah. There is no chance for trust to be rebuilt. Now, I tell people, I say if they're trying to sell you on that, first of all, I hope you wouldn't even be here, that you would have enough self-respect to go “No, no, no, I am not going to be treated this way. I do not deserve this and so, I'm out of here”, is what we would hope.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: Now, by the time they usually get to us, they are not doing that. But even some are still struggling with “am I committed to this?”.

[Janis]: Sure

[Brent]: Right. I mean, I've had people where they're just still thinking about running away with the other person. Well, there's no way trust can even start being rebuilt. They've got to sort that out first and so, I don't even meet with a couple together then. The person that's questioning and wondering, well, they got to sort that out. They've got to come to a place to decide “no, I'm going to commit myself to do everything I can as long as it takes to restore this”.

[Janis]: And really, that's what we see. We see individual counseling or we do individual counseling with people who either “my spouse had an affair and they told me to just get over it, it's not that big a deal” and they need to come in for individual counseling to help them make a decision about what they're going to do. Or we see people that go “I'm in an affair, and I said I quit and I did, but I don't know that I want to leave”. So, there is a time for individual counseling until they're ready to come together to work on it.

[Brent]: Yeah, absolutely and so, we have to have that place of absolute confession and confession usually comes in little bits and pieces and they just keep confessing until the whole story is told and repentance. That's just the beginning. Now, again, if we didn't have that, we wouldn't even get started. But just having those, even though they're so important and so critical, they're limited. It's like it finds the plug under the bushes in the backyard and gets the plug back in. Well, that doesn't give us any trust. That just gives us a reservoir that will actually hold trust. So, the way we've seen this work is over and over and over again in all of these situations, is once that plug is back in, that every time there is a trustworthy behavior. Now, it could be “I'll be home at 6” and I roll in at 6. It could be I showed up at a counseling appointment. It could be I answered all of their questions last night without being defensive. It could be any of those things. Every time one of those happens, we get to take a teaspoon of water and throw it in the bathtub. But I always make sure that couples get this: teaspoon, bathtub. I have never seen anybody get a cup or a bucket or a garden hose. It's teaspoon after teaspoon after teaspoon.

[Brent]: Now, they're not limited. I tell them “Now, you're not limited to one teaspoon a day or one a week”. I try to help them become double fisted teaspoon throwers, okay? But that means this is going to be a marathon. Now, I tell couples “Now, I would not do this work if you couldn't fill up bathtubs with teaspoons”, because I like to feel successful in the work that I do. If this was impossible, I'd have found some other line of work. But I tell people “Betrayer, if you don't ever pull that plug again and you keep putting teaspoons in, one of these days that person will wake up and they'll be thinking, ‘You know what? I don't even think about that. I know I can trust them now’”. Now, I don't have any idea when that's going to be. I tell them “it's not going to be next Friday. This is months down the road, sometimes years”. But this leads to my encouragement for both of them, because I say “I don't say this to discourage either one of you, but I just want you to know what you're dealing with. This is not a slap a band-aid on, okay?”

[Brent]: And so, I say to the betrayer “my prayer for you is always don't get weary in well doing. Keep doing the next right thing. Again, if you don't ever pull that plug and you keep putting teaspoons in, one of these days it's going to get full. But you're going to need encouragement because you put a teaspoon in a bathtub, it doesn't feel like it does anything. I mean, you literally can't see it with the eye, okay? It's only if there's enough of those, you know? And so, you're going to have to just keep giving and it doesn't look like it does anything and you're going to feel like ‘This is impossible. She's never going to get over this or he's never going to get over this’. You're going to have to just keep doing it”. Don't get weary and well doing and I tell the betrayed, I say “I want you to think teaspoons, because if they're doing like everything just right for the next 60 or 90 days and you find yourself still nervous or insecure at times, I want you to think teaspoons. The best we could have in 60 or 90 days is maybe just the bottom of the tub is now covered. Maybe we've got a half inch in there or something and so, I don't want you to think ‘what's wrong with me? Why can't I get over this? They're doing so well’”. No, it's teaspoons and so, again, this is supposed to be painful. This is supposed to hurt. This is supposed to take a long time to recover so that we get it, so we realize don't ever do this kind of thing again and so, that's why God allows this a long time for healing to really happen, so we get how serious this is. It will be done when it's done and I tell the betrayed “it's like you have the measuring stick”.

[Janis]: Yes.

[Brent]: “You're just an observer. You're just going ‘well, I think it feels like I have a half inch or it feels like I have an inch or whatever’”. Again, you can't do anything about trust other than observe and let it slowly begin to happen and so, it's a very important, I think, principle for couples to understand that and again, I've just seen this happen in every one of these and it just takes time. But again, there is great hope in this.

[Janis]: Yeah. Well, we've gotten the benefit of seeing so many marriages healed and so many people saying “I'd never want to go through this again, but our marriage is so much better than it ever was before”. Because you have to build a new marriage.

[Brent]: Yes, we talked about that, that it throws a grenade in the middle of everything and so, either they're going to lean into it and come out with a great marriage, which a huge percentage of those that we deal with do, or they're not going to make it. We just can't, again, slap a Band-Aid and these are some ways of understanding on how we do deep surgery that this, again, we just don't put a Band Aid on it. We have to do deep surgery and this is part of the process of this. So, this always leads to the first homework assignment I have for the couples and we'll unpack this a little bit more next time. But I have the betrayer. I say “I want you to make a list of all the feelings that you believe you have caused your partner to feel. Betrayed, hurt, not good enough, whatever those are, I want you to make a list of those things because one of the critical things for betrayers is that their empathy increases”. They have to understand the damage that they've caused to really be able to heal and to create security. The deep, deep surgery work that's necessary to create security for my partner and it starts with empathy. It starts with being able to validate their feelings, to recognize their feelings and we have them do several things and we'll explain that more with this list. But that's where they start.

[Janis]: And if they don't know the emotions, there are so many lists online that you can get, because sometimes people are limited in their emotions and they don't think about devastated or overwhelmed or financially insecure. I mean, there's so many things. So, they can always go online and find a list because sometimes they just go “sad…”

[Brent]: Right. Angry.

[Janis]: Yeah, exactly.

[Brent]: Remember, anger is a secondary emotion. So, we've got to find the primary emotions.

[Janis]: Yes, and there's a bunch of them. It's not just one or two emotions.

[Brent]: Hurt. Rejected. Yeah, absolutely.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: Very good. Yeah. So, if you struggle with feelings and don't have a very good vocabulary for feelings or understanding of those, then Mr. Google will help you.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: The other is for the betrayed. I have them make a list of things that make them nervous about this circumstance and trust and so, whatever that is and they're the only one that can tell us. Because I tell both of them, I say “we have to do everything humanly possible to try to address those needs”, and we'll talk about how we do that next time. So, it might be their cell phone because they found a text message or whatever. So, when they go in the other room with their cell phone or whatever, or when they're just texting somebody or email or unaccounted for time, whatever they come up with, you know? I use the example of-- Had one situation where a person was going off on their lunch hour with somebody in their office, and that's when this happened.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: Well, you can imagine, the spouse needed to know what in the world that person's doing on their lunch hour.

[Janis]: Sure.

[Brent]: That's when they're going to be so triggered each and every day the lunch hour is coming by and so, in this situation, the person committed that they would only have lunch with their spouse or there was another colleague in their office that knew the whole story that the betrayed person trusted. They would go to lunch and that person would text the spouse and say “they're with me, everything's okay”. They did that for like a year and a half. The person couldn't go up and sit in their office all day. But this is something that they could do. This is something that the betrayer could offer. So, we're going to talk about how do we do those things, everything we possibly can, humanly possible, to try to help the person feel safe, secure, soothed, comforted in all ways. So, a key is collaboration. The key is helping the couple begin to work on this together and they are giving space for the betrayed at times. Sometimes they need space, they don't really want to be real close to the other person right now. But the idea is, if the betrayer can say “I want to help, what can I do to help here?”

[Janis]: But let me also add, the betrayed doesn't have the right to use emotional blackmail or to harangue the other person. You ask questions that you need answers to, but you don't ask sarcastic questions like “So, I bet you never said no to sex with them, did you?”

[Brent]: Yeah, right.

[Janis]: Or “you probably had plenty of time for them. You could fit them in your schedule, couldn't you?”. Those are not healing questions. Those are zinger questions and we don't want to have those.

[Brent]: Yeah. So, no emotional blackmail here and no just harmful, critical lashing out. Now, we're going to talk about, what do you do when you feel that?

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: What do you do when I don't even want to see you. I don't even like you.

[Janis]: I don't like the way you breathe.

[Brent]: I don't like the way you breathe. I just assume you not wake up tomorrow. I mean, what do we do? That's a normal anger reaction and so, we're going to talk about what to do with that next time, just don’t--This blank check is not the freedom to just blast your partner with all of these things.

[Janis]: Right. It's for healing.

[Brent]: It's “when did this happen? What were you thinking there?” and those kinds of things.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: So very good clarification there and so, again, work together. There is a pathway to healing and so, for all of you that are listening today, again, whether this is you're right in the midst of this, whether you've been impacted by this or you have family members or friends, hopefully this is helping all of us know how to be helpers, know how to give support to those that are going through these matters and trusting that when we bring our real, honest, open, genuine selves to bear, to bringing them to the surface, presenting those to God there's always a way for healing. There's always a way to get through the most devastating of circumstances. So, for today, we'll pick up with step three and step four next time. But for today, blessings as you go. Go in peace.