Your Marriage Is Falling Apart…And It’s Not Her
In this 12‑minute segment of his "Marriage Retreat" series, Cody Butler tackles the pervasive issue of alcohol and substance abuse within a marriage. He begins by describing how society normalizes drinking, making it the only drug people feel they must justify not using. He argues that any level of alcohol use in a relationship is a red flag, and that the core problem is not the spouse but the unacknowledged, mislabeled behavior. Butler stresses that honesty and labeling the behavior accurately are the first steps toward change. He explains how self‑deception—calling harmful drinking "moderate" or "social"—reinforces a false narrative that erodes emotional security, mutual admiration, and shared vision in a marriage. He then moves to the relational dynamics: partners who drink become emotionally unstable, creating a "lottery" for the spouse and damaging trust. He shares a client story where a husband’s drunken volatility threatened the marriage’s emotional safety. Butler emphasizes the need for a judgment‑free emotional safety net that allows the drinking partner to be open about their habit without being forced underground. The bulk of the talk focuses on identity transformation. Butler contends that lasting change comes not from willpower or gradual tapering, but from shifting one’s self‑identity from "drinker" or "alcoholic" to "non‑drinker" and from "bad husband" to "great husband." He illustrates this with analogies (ethanol in fuel, Zig Ziglar’s weight‑loss story) and personal anecdotes about re‑programming his own temperament. He argues that willpower is ineffective because behavior follows identity; once the identity changes, the behavior follows effortlessly. Finally, Butler promotes his year‑long Marriage Recovery Program, which he says is designed to rebuild the three relationship fundamentals—emotional security, mutual admiration, and shared vision—through identity work, habit formation, and skill development. He invites viewers to ask questions and consider enrolling, stressing that without a new identity, therapy and short‑term fixes will only reinforce the old, destructive self‑story.
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Hey, hey, how's everybody doing? Welcome back, Cody here, and welcome to day 5 of our marriage retreat where I'm going to be talking today about alcohol and substance abuse within the relationship. What's going on? What to do if it's going on? How to support your partner through it and how to deal with it if that's going on in your life as well. So this is a much more prevalent problem than I think any of us really want to acknowledge and deal with, right? Because alcohol is something that, it's the most dangerous drug out there, yet it's the only drug that you have to justify not taking, right? It's not a case of you just don't take it. It's like if you don't take it, you have to justify not taking it, which is a very, very bizarre thing. And that's because there are a lot of powers working against you here. Society is set up to encourage you to drink. You can't watch a TV show without watching them drink whiskey or beer or the mainstream, or you're going to see it all the time, right? Everywhere you go, you're going to see it. You're going to see it in movies, you're going to see it in TV shows, you're going to see it in magazines, you're going to see it everywhere. And it's expected of you, it's really expected of you to drink because it is highly addictive, it's very expensive, and it's highly profitable for for the people that sell alcohol. So from a very young age, we're encouraged to drink and we're told all kinds of nonsense around, given all kinds of stories around alcohol. I mean, you don't see health studies on how Coca-Cola enhances the taste of food. You don't see studies around how Coca-Cola reduces heart disease if you have one drink a day. There's tons and tons and tons of studies that they do to counteract all of the bad studies, right? All of the bad effects of alcohol, all of the problems that alcohol causes. That's all documented. We all know it, right? But they have to do studies reversing that and saying, "Oh, well, if you drink a glass of wine every day, it reduces heart attacks. If you do this, it's advantageous. It lowers blood pressure." And this is the tiny percentage of what alcohol does, if that's even true, to counteract all of the other materials. You don't see people, it doesn't go viral on social media when there's a study that shows that alcohol kills you. That doesn't go viral. When there's a study that shows that a glass of wine a day is beneficial to your health, that goes viral, right? Because this stuff is dangerous, it's addictive, and we want to justify our behavior. We want to justify continuing to take it. Now, at what point does alcohol become a problem? Now, this is a really big thing, right? So I would say if you're drinking there's a good chance that alcohol is already a problem. I was talking to somebody last night and they were saying, "Well, alcohol's not really a problem for me. I could stop drinking at any time." I'm like, "Well, how do you know? You're drinking." The only time that you know that you can't stop is when you can't stop. It's too late. The only time that you understand that it's now a problem is when it's too late. All these studies about alcoholism is genetic and stuff like that, it's a disease, it's passed on. It's nonsense, and I'll tell you why it's nonsense. I can prove to you that it's nonsense. Nonsense. Those who don't drink don't get it. Alcoholism is caused by alcohol, and those who don't drink don't get it. It's pretty simple, right? So any level of alcohol use in your relationship, I would say, is problematic. I would say it's problematic. But we're not really going to be looking at that today. We're looking more at the aspects of where it's now noticeably problematic, right? Maybe there's going to be two people on this call, or two kinds of people on this call. You're going to be the one with the problem, and you know, God bless you if that's you because you're here and you're listening, or you're going to be the spouse of somebody with the problem. Now, the reason I've said all this stuff to start with is because the solution to this is honesty. The solution to this is truth. Nothing happens until you start to be truthful with yourself, and as long as you're telling yourself everything's fine, there's not a problem here, then That's nothing's going to change, right? So like, my diet is pretty reasonable for the most part, as an example. But every now and again, I love Kentucky Fried Chicken. That's kind of my guilty pleasure these days, though. That's what I do if I want to give myself a treat. And I'll order, I'll order KFC and bring it home. And I'll sit there with a big bucket of chicken. And I'll say to myself out loud, this is filth. This is pure "Filth, this is really disgusting behavior." My wife goes, "Well, it's alright, Cody, as long as it's only every now and again." And that's a problem, right? Because you're starting to label bad behavior as good behavior. It's giving it the wrong behavior. Now, you're going to behave badly. We're all going to behave badly. We're human beings. But the problem comes when we start taking that bad behavior and we start giving it the wrong labels. We start labeling it as good behavior. So if I'm sitting there and I'm eating a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and I'm saying, "This is okay, this is all right because it's just once every now and again," now I've taken something that's really bad and I've labeled it as something that's good. And if I do that enough times, we're gonna start to believe it. I'm gonna start to believe my own propaganda. I'm gonna start to believe my own lies. And then I've got a real problem because— All right, we're back here. Let's see. Sorry about that. There's a power cut in my house there, it seemed like. I don't know what was going on. Let's see here. Let's get the— let's get resituated here. The power just went out all of a sudden. And yeah, that was not— that was not expected. But hey, here we are. We're back again. So sorry about that. So we was talking about, I believe, labeling behaviors properly. So if you're doing something that's bad, call it bad. Like, we'll eat cake, we'll eat dessert. And again, you can't say it's okay every now and again, it's all right in moderation. It isn't okay every now and again, and it's not all right in moderation, right? This is bad behavior. This is negative behavior. And the problem is when we start to take things that are bad, we label them as good, we start to believe it, and then we start to have problems. Things popping up on my screen here. Let me close this quickly so I can focus on you guys. Completely. Sorry about that. And that's when we really start to have problems because what we tell ourselves repeatedly becomes true. And this is one of the problems in relationships as well. This is why like traditional talk therapy doesn't really work as well, like just to go off on a little bit of a tangent here, because the things that we tell ourselves repeatedly become true to us, we start to believe them. And we're telling ourselves a story. When we go back into the past, we're telling ourselves a story, repeating the story, we're repeating the story because Very little of our memory actually exists and we make the story up to fill in the blanks, and if we tell ourselves enough times, then it becomes true and you will not convince somebody otherwise. You won't convince them that that didn't happen because they've told themselves enough times that it did happen and what one partner is telling themselves, their story, and the other partner is telling themselves their story, and both people now have a distorted view of reality. The mind distorts, deletes, and generalizes. When storing information, and we don't see things as they are. We see things as the stories that we've told ourselves. So the first stage here, if this is you, if you're in a situation where at the back of your mind or even at the front of your mind you're starting to think alcohol might be a problem, it might be an issue in my relationship, it might be an issue in my life, then the first thing to do really is going to be to start labeling it for what it is. Start calling it what it is and start acknowledging what it is, because as long as you're telling yourself, it's okay, it's in moderation, it's under control, it has some health benefits, I'm only doing this socially, all of these things, you're digging your hole deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper. And I encourage you just to— if you— I understand if you're in a situation right now, I was in a position where I couldn't stop drinking, I couldn't get out of the hole, but I couldn't allow myself to label it something other than what it was as well. So if you're going to keep doing it, keep doing it, I get that. I'm not saying that you have to stop at this very moment, but start calling it what it actually is. Start letting yourself know that this is not good behavior and stop justifying it, because that's going to really start to give you the honesty that you need to see the changes need to happen. Because the next thing we need to do here really is going to be to start relating the behavior back to the core fundamentals of the relationship, right? If you remember in Day 1, we talked about the core fundamentals of the relationship, which If you recall, her emotional security, they were mutual admiration and shared visions and goals. And if you're drinking, you've got to look at how these elements start to destroy the relationship. Now, I had a session last night with somebody, a one-to-one session with a client, and her husband was— he'd get drunk and he'd become emotionally unstable. He'd get drunk and he could be he could start a fight or he could be really nice or he could start a fight. He'd become emotionally unstable. When he was drinking, he became emotionally unstable and he became like a lottery, right? She didn't know what she was going to get. It was like a lucky dip. And the question then becomes, well, what is that doing for emotional security? If when you drink, you become a little bit unstable, which whether you know that's happening or not, that is exactly what's happening. Nobody— alcohol has the same effect on everybody. When you're drinking, you're becoming irrational, you're becoming unstable. And if you do it enough, you become completely delusional. We think we get smarter when we drink, which actually we get dumber, right? We're actually getting dumber, but we think we're becoming smarter at the same time. And if that's you, you're causing emotional— you're causing that emotional security to be damaged. You're causing that emotional security to be ruptured. And the other person might stay with you, they might put up with that, but the relationship is not going to go to the next level. Now, they know whether you have a problem or not. They're not listening to your story because it's your story that you're telling yourself, right? They're not listening to your story. They're watching your behavior because they can see the state that you're in. They can see what's going on with you, and again, you've got to look back and you've got to relate that to how is this impacting the second element, the mutual admiration and respect. Now, for me, for the longest time, that, that I couldn't talk about that. I was unable to talk about the problems that I was having with alcohol. And I was just, all my wife could see was the problems that the alcohol was causing, which she was just seeing a very, very obnoxious person. Let's put it that way, right? Someone you don't really want to be around. And all she could see was that she didn't even know I was really drinking. She knew I was drinking a little bit, but she just thought it was like everybody else, right? Just social drinking. So all she could see was me behaving very obnoxiously in every aspect of life, which again, what is that doing to the mutual admiration within the relationship? It's utterly destroying it. It can't be there. If she's looking at me going, "This guy's throwing plates in restaurants," how much admiration and respect do you think she has for me? That behavior that I was getting involved with because of the alcohol was utterly destroying that. And then of course, how can you have a shared vision of the future when really my only vision at this point is drinking. She can't be a part of that. She didn't really drink at all. She had a drink every now and again, but she couldn't be a part of my drinking culture. And of course, I would be attracted to my friends that drank. Like attracts like. I would have friends that also wanted to drink all the time, and I'd want to go over their house every night, and I'd want to go down the pub every night, and I'd want to be drinking with my friends. And of course, that was causing alienation as well. So the behavior that was going on as an indirect result of the drinking was causing problems as well. So it's utterly destroying all aspects of the relationship. And until I could actually label that, until I could label that and go, okay, this is really bad and this is destroying that aspect of the relationship and that aspect of the relationship and that aspect of the relationship. Then I could really start to see where I was. Now, the thing that really changed for me when I was able to really get a grip on the drinking was when I actually understood the full cost of what was going on. And I understood what it was going to cost me to continue to drink, because a lot of times when we're drinking right now, we've told ourselves these stories, we've created these stories that we tell ourselves, to where we're just obfuscating the cost from ourselves. We don't know what the true cost is. And I went to a— I ended up— I told this story in Day 1, you can go back and check that out if you didn't see that. But I went to a mentor, a second, another coach, marriage coach, and he just told me, "I'm not even going to waste my time with you. I'm not even going to waste my time. I'm not going to take your money because there's no hope for your marriage." And what he did there was for the first time ever, I actually saw the true cost of what I was doing. For the first time, I actually realized and understood that this behavior is going to cost me my marriage. Now, on an intellectual level, I kind of, I kind of knew that, right? I kind of knew that, but I was in denial. My mind was deleting, distorting, and generalizing that information to where it wasn't put front and center. And when I finally went to somebody who I was trying to hand money over to, I was trying to give them money and pay them to help me, and they said, no, I'm not helping you because there's no hope. There's no hope for you. You've known this has been a problem for a long time. You've done nothing about it. I can't help you. It forced me to face the reality that this behavior was going to cost me my marriage, and then I truly understood the cost. Now, I had a conversation last night with a client, and the question she asked me was, well, how long do most people that you work with in this situation, do they stop drinking immediately, or do they slowly taper it off over a period of time? And my answer to that question is, if you understand what the true cost is, you'll stop drinking immediately. People that taper it off over a period of time, this is them generalizing, deleting, and distorting the information in order to allow them to stay in their habit, allow them to continue to do it while gaining your support and buying themselves some time, is what I would say in that situation. Now again, this is harsh, but this is the truth. Somebody that says, I'm going to cut back on my, my drinking, or in this case, They said, I'm going to cut back, I'm going to stop drinking hard liquor and I'm going to go to beer. I'm going to stop drinking whatever it is, vodka or gin or rum or whiskey, whatever it is, the hard liquor, the 80-proof stuff, and I'm going to drink beer instead. Basically, they're trying to make a deal with you. They're trying to negotiate a way to where they can have their cake and eat it. They're trying to figure out a way to where they can keep drinking and they can buy themselves more time with you. Now, I did this myself. Like, once, once the issue starts to show up and it starts to surface in the marriage, and obviously some action is going to have to be taken, the subconscious mind is going to try and negotiate a deal to where you can feel good without being good, to where you can keep engaging in the behavior without having to modify the behavior. So somebody that is saying, I'm going to cut back on my drinking, All they're doing is saying, "I'm just going to tell you that I'm going to cut back on my drinking so I can buy myself some more time," right? Because at the end of the day, are you still putting alcohol into your body? That's the question. Whether you're doing it through whiskey, whether you're doing it through beer, whether you're doing it through wine, alcohol is still being consumed. It's still going into your body. You have not made a decision to change. You've not cut everything off. You've not cut every other avenue off. If you want to stop, that's what you've got to do. There can be no back doors. There can be no way out of this. You've got to understand what this is costing you. You've got to understand what it's going to cost you. And then you've got to cut off all retreats. There can't be, I'm only going to drink on weekends. I'm only going to drink with friends. I'm only going to drink beer and not whiskey. I'm only going to drink wine with meals. It's like, these are all ways your mind is just finding to continue in the habit, and to not actually change anything, while at the same time deluding yourself that you are changing. So, this is the key here, what we're talking about, the behavior has to be labeled appropriately. You can't say, "I've cut back," as the first step. No, no, no, no, no, you're still engaged in the behavior, you have not stopped the behavior. So, in all honesty, when I work with people, it's not a case of My goal is to simply hold the mirror upright. It's not to get them to stop or it's not to get them to slow down. The goal is to hold the mirror up and show them what the true cost of what they're doing is. This is what it's going to cost you in terms of your relationship with your husband or wife. This is what it's going to cost you in terms of your job, your finances. This is what it's going to cost you in terms of your relationship with your children. This is what it's going to cost you in terms of your health. Let's count the cost and then make a decision based on the true cost. Because right now you're making these decisions not really understanding what it's costing. And I think a lot of people, if they actually knew what it truly was costing them, then it would be a very, very different decision. So really my goal always is to hold the mirror up and to help you count the cost. And then once you actually have a true cost of what it's going to cost you to keep doing this, and you understand what the loss is going to be, then you're making an adult decision, then you're making an informed decision, and then you own it. You own that decision, and you're basically making that decision either to change, or you're making that decision to stay in the behavior based on reality, based on truth, and then you have the ability to own that decision. So once you know the cost, once you know the consequences, and once your excuses have been dissolved and taken away from you, you make that decision, you own that decision, you own the consequences, and down the road you can't say, "I didn't know, I didn't know what was going on, I didn't know the damage that this was having, I didn't know the pain that this was going to cause people." That can no longer be said. You knew it, you did it, you have to own it now, and that's something you're going to have to own for the rest of your life. Now, speaking to partners more here than the people that are actually engaged in this, but to speaking to people that are engaged in this as well. If your partner right now is engaged in this behavior, it's very, very difficult. It could be very, very difficult for them to talk about this. I know for me, for the longest time, I really wanted to talk about this. I really wanted to discuss this. I really wanted to speak about this openly because I knew it was a problem, and I knew it had me beat, and I knew I wanted help. But for some reason I just couldn't talk about it. There was the element of my ego and pride did not want to acknowledge that I'd got into this situation. I didn't want to admit that I had created a situation that I no longer had control of. I didn't want to admit to anybody that I had a drinking problem, that I couldn't stop drinking. I didn't want to admit that to people. My ego was bruised. I felt like I should be in control. I felt like I should be able to control this, and the fact that I couldn't was an inadequacy in me as a human being, was an inadequacy in me as a man. I felt like the fact that I couldn't control it diminished my manhood, it diminished who I was, and by revealing that to the world, by asking for help, it kind of made me less, is what it felt like. And I just couldn't do it. I just could not bring myself to say, "I have a drinking problem." I just could not bring myself to do it, although I wanted to for a very, very long time. Now, the second thing here to understand if you're a spouse is your partner's not making a choice here. You can say to them, "You choose me or the alcohol." That's not the thing to say because they're not in control and they don't have the ability to make that choice at this time. If you tell them, it's like saying, "Hey, I need you to jump off that building over there, flap your arms and fly, and if you don't do it, you don't love me." You need to make the choice between flapping your arms and flying or loving me. You have to prove to me you love me by doing that. It's a silly thing to say because you have to understand that a partner that's in this situation, they're not in control of this. They're not drinking because they want to at this point. They're not making the choice to do this. They're doing it because they're in prison. They're doing it because they're chained down. They're doing it because they're enslaved and they do not have the ability to break those chains at this point. They don't have the ability to do that, so putting them in a situation where you say, "You have to make a choice. You have to choose me or the alcohol," at this point, they're going to choose the alcohol because they don't have a choice. And all you're going to do in that situation is you're going to push them underground. You're going to force them to do it secretively. And this was one of the things that, after I brought it out into the open with my wife, that was one of the emotional securities, emotional safeties that we created was, if you do drink, Cody, I want you to do it openly. If you do drink, I want you to be honest with me, and that's going to be judgment-free. That's going to be all of that stuff, right? There's emotional safety around doing this because I don't want to push you underground. I don't want you to be going up in the roof again or going out to the garage and basically becoming absent within the relationship. I don't want you leaving me for alcohol and sneaking around, because that's all that will happen if you, if you tell somebody they can't do this or they have to stop this. All you're going to do at this point is push them underground. The thing to do here is you've got to create the emotional safety and security for them to be able to open up and talk to you about this. They've got to know that they can open up and talk to you about this and you're going to receive them and you're going to love them anyway, and you're going to support them through this, and you're not going to be judgmental. Because that's a big fear, right? When somebody comes out and says, I have a drinking problem, or I have a drug substance abuse problem, or I'm addicted to whatever, Vicodin or whatever it is, you know, pain medication, prescription drugs, whatever. It's like when they come out and actually confess that, they're at a point of extreme vulnerability. At that point. And this is why that emotional security is so, so, so, so important within the relationship, because if that is not there, they're not going to put themselves in that position of vulnerability, and they're going to stay in their prison, they're going to stay in their chains because they don't have that security to where they can actually talk about it and can become vulnerable and feel like they can talk about this with genuine openness and genuine vulnerability, right? So That's really, really important. So understanding what's going on with you, if you're drinking right now, it's not your fault, right? We've been conditioned in society to do this. As I said, if you caught the early part of the stream here, the session here, it's the only drug that we have to explain not using. It's the only drug that we have to justify not using, right? And you know, you're not cool if you don't drink in school. You're not cool if you don't party in college. You're not cool if you don't drink with the friends after work, you're not caught. It's like the odds are stacked against us. So if you find yourself in this prison, it's not your fault, right? It's not your fault. I fully understand how you got there. I got there myself. But at this point, the question becomes, what are you going to do about it? At this point, now you're aware of where you are, the next stage of your life, it does become your responsibility. You do have to own that. So that's kind of a little bit of a background there of what is going on in a relationship and what, what is needed from, from both partners really to, uh, to, to, uh, get through this. Let me just have a quick look at a comment here because I think this is an important conversation. But what if they have the security or don't stop is the question here. Well, I would ask myself, do they have the security, right? For one, like, the fact that you believe that you've provided that security does not mean that that security exists. Like, I talk to so many people all the time where I'm working with the couple, and I'm not saying you don't, by the way. I'm just playing devil's advocate here because I need more context around the statement there, the question, to understand it. But a lot of times I work with a couple, a man and a woman, and I'll talk with them separately, and the woman will say, "I have no emotional security in the relationship." And then I'll talk to the man and say, "Well, look, you know, here's what we need to do. We need to start really working on the emotional security." He's like, That's ridiculous. She's got all the emotional security in the world. She can say anything she wants. She can talk to me about anything. And it's like, well, she doesn't really feel that right now, my friend. And the man's like, that's absurd. What are you talking about? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. And I'm like, yeah, exactly, your response here, right? It's like the woman feels like there's absolutely no emotional security and the man feels like she has unlimited emotional security. And both ways as well. It's not just the man doing that and the woman feeling insecure. The woman is more likely— the reason I say that, the reason it comes to mind is because the woman is more likely to bring up that she doesn't feel emotionally secure because that's— women like to communicate, right? Women are more emotional. They're more aware of that than men. A man's not. Some men will bring that up, but most men won't say, "I feel emotionally— I don't feel like I have emotional security." Women will. So that would be the question that I would ask there is, do they feel like they have Do they have emotional security in their mind? Or— and you just think that they have it. You got it, you gotta uncover that, right? And the second part to that question is, what if, what if they have security but don't stop? Having security is not— it does not mean that they're going to stop. It's the first stage. If they don't have emotional security, then they're probably not going to stop, right? If they have emotional security, doesn't mean they are going to stop. It's not— that's not the only thing. That is— that's a part of something that you absolutely have to provide, is that emotional security. But that alone does not mean that they're going to stop. So if they're going to stop, here's what has to happen, right? The first thing is you have to change your identity, and I can't do this for you. So we're going to talk about what is required. I can help you through this process, and I can help you get to the point to where you can stop, but ultimately you're going to have to stop yourself. So the first thing that's going to have to stop is you've got to change your identity. So Your identity right now, whether you're a full-blown alcoholic, you've got a drinking habit/drinking problem that you're not willing yet to acknowledge that it's alcoholism or it's an addiction, it's just, it's a habit at this point. Like a lot of people say, oh, you know, I find it really, I have a glass of wine to unwind every night, and that, you know, it's not a drinking problem, I just have a glass of wine 'Every night to drink, to unwind.' 'Well, can you stop?' And the reality is they can't stop. They can't stop doing that every night. I'm like, 'Go a week, go for the next week and don't do that. Don't have a glass of wine to unwind for the whole week.' And I'll come back a week later and they've drank wine every night that week, and they go, 'I just, you know, it's just one glass. I just had the urge. I just needed to unwind.' It's like, 'Well, you can't stop. You couldn't stop.' So even though it's just one glass, you're not necessarily— that person is not necessarily willing to say that they've got a drinking problem, yet they've got a habit that's they've got a habit, they've got a drinking habit. They're like— so whether you're full-blown addiction and you know that, whether you have a habit that might, you know, be transitioning into a problem, or whether you don't think you have a problem at all, whether you're just drinking socially, whether you're just having a drink here and there, you have the identity of as a drinker at that point. You have the identity as a drinker. So whether if you're drinking socially, whether you're drinking glass of wine every night, whether you're an alcoholic. That is the identity, right? If you had the identity of a non-drinker, you wouldn't have any of those, you wouldn't have any of those, you wouldn't be doing any of those 3 things, right? You wouldn't be doing any of those things. So the first thing is to really change your identity. And again, if you don't want to change your identity to I'm a non-drinker, I don't drink, then you've got to ask yourself the question why. You've got to ask yourself the question why. We've got to be honest with ourselves here. I'm not prepared to change my identity to a non-drinker. Well, why not? Because I don't want to give up alcohol. Well, why not? That, I would suggest, right there at that point is a problem. Because here's the thing about alcohol, let me tell you something. When you go to the petrol station, if you're in England or Australia, or if you go to the gas station if you're in the US, there are cars that run on ethanol. You can put ethanol in your car and you can run your car on ethanol. Ethanol is alcohol. It is the exact same stuff, substance that you are drinking. The stuff that you put in your car to make it run is the exact same substance that you're drinking. Now, they put a few chemicals in there so it doesn't kill you, to make sure it doesn't kill you. And then they put some other additives and stuff like that to make it to where it's palatable, to where it tastes nice. Whether you're drinking whiskey, wine, beer, it doesn't matter. You're drinking the same substance that you pump into your car at the gas station to make your car run. It is literally poison. They have to put additives into the ethanol to turn it into the alcohol to where it doesn't kill you when you consume it, to where it doesn't kill you when you drink it. That's what you're consuming. To me, there's no difference, like picking up, you know, if this was a glass of whiskey or beer or something like that, there's no difference between me taking a glass of gasoline and drinking it and taking a glass of whiskey or or any kind of alcohol and drinking it. It's the same substance. It's exactly the same substance. Now, you might not believe me on that, but just do a little bit of research, you'll see that what I'm saying is true. It's the same stuff you run your car on. Now, the question then becomes, what would I have to believe to continue taking that? In light of that fact that I've just told you, if you care about yourself or love yourself in any way or care about yourself in any way and you're drinking alcohol, Go check that out and see what alcohol really is and see what they do to make sure that it doesn't kill you when you consume it. See what it is and then ask yourself the question, "What would I have to believe about myself in order to continue to consume that, to continue to consume something that they have to put additives in so it doesn't kill me?" Well, the answer to that question is I'd have to be suicidal. I'd have to hate myself to the point I'm trying to kill myself. Or you can't stop drinking. You can't stop drinking it. Those would be the only two possibilities at that point, right? That would be the only two reasonable explanations as to why you're consuming poison, why you're consuming poison on a regular basis. What would I have to believe to do that? And if you continue to consume it after that, then again, let's label it. Let's say, hey, this is a very unhealthy habit. Let's not go, I'm drinking socially, or I'm drinking with dinner. Let's start to label it for what it is. Let's say, okay, I'm doing something here that's very, very unhealthy, that's very damaging to my health. Let's no longer call this good. Let's no longer call this healthy. Let's say, okay, I'm going to do this, I'm going to continue doing this, but I'm going to label it. And then you got to shift your identity. So I'm not a drinker anymore. I don't drink. I'm not a drinker. It's like, it's why I don't go to, you know, I never went to alcoholics anonymous one time and I won't go back. And I'm not saying don't go if you've got a drinking problem. I'm not saying don't go. But there are some issues with Alcoholics Anonymous too, really. I've got two major issues with it. One is they espouse that once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. You have it for the rest of your life. It's a disease that can only be managed. It can never be eradicated. I disagree with that. I believe in Jesus Christ and I believe in miracles, and he who is set free by the Savior is truly set free indeed. I'm set free. I'm released. The chains are broken. I'm out of bondage. I'm out of slavery. I'm free, praise God. I am not an alcoholic that is in recovery. I am set free. I am over it. I'm done with it. I'm not an alcoholic in recovery. I'm not an alcoholic learning to manage my symptoms, and I do not have the identity of an alcoholic. So the second problem, which that kind of leads into, right, is when you go into the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, the first thing you say is, you know, for demonstration purposes only here, you know, my name's Cody and I'm an alcoholic. I can't say that. I'm not going to say that because that does away with the miracle that set me free. That does away with all of that stuff. That denies it. That denies the miracle-working power, and that takes credit away from the source of the miracle. I was set free. I'm not an alcoholic. And the second problem is that I don't have that identity, and I refuse to have that identity because ultimately We're always going to behave in a way that is consistent with our identity. We may be able to violate it in the short term, but in the long term, we're going to behave in a way that is consistent with our identity. And if you have an identity as a drinker, you can stop drinking for a little bit, but you will start drinking again. If you have the identity as an alcoholic, albeit an alcoholic in recovery, you may stop drinking for a little bit, but you have that identity and you will start drinking again. The real key here is shifting your identity. And this is the real key to everything, right? I mean, this is a big statement that I've just made here. You will ultimately behave in a way that's consistent with your identity. So I have an identity as somebody who's fit, healthy, trim, and in shape. Now, that's my deep belief. That's my core identity. That's not like me just making something up saying, I think it's true, I think it's true, I think it's true, you know, the make it till you fake it thing. That's not what I'm saying. That is my core belief. Now I might go, I might put on some weight and I frequently do, right? Like I'll get in the habits of eating potato chips in bed at night or something like that and then the gut will start to show up. But I don't ever worry about it because I know that my identity is one of somebody who's fit, healthy, and trim. And once I reach a certain point, my subconscious will take over and I will stop eating the potato chips and I'll start exercising. And I'll lose the weight. It's a blueprint, right? We're running on a blueprint. Same with finances. Like, I have a certain blueprint that I'm running. I have an identity financially, and it's like sometimes it goes above that and then it comes down, and sometimes it goes below that and it comes back up. But there's a number that I believe that should be in my bank account, and it rarely goes below that, and it rarely goes above that, right? It's the identity. I behave in a way that is consistent with my identity. Same with being a husband or wife. What is your identity as a husband or wife? Telling yourself, "I'm a bad husband," telling yourself, "I'm a bad wife," over and over again, telling yourself you're a screw-up— here's the thing: you will make that true. You will fulfill that prophecy. You absolutely, positively will. So there's nothing virtuous in saying, "I'm a bad husband, I'm a bad husband." No, you need the identity that, "I'm a great husband," I just have some skills that I need to develop. You need to create the identity of I'm an amazing wife. You need to create the identity of we have an amazing marriage. I don't put up, I have a high standard. I have that identity of somebody who has high standards. Because ultimately, you will not behave in a way that violates your identity. One of two things will happen. You will change your behavior to match your identity or you will change your identity. These are the only two things that can possibly happen. Happen, right? These are the only two things that can possibly happen. So the real key to everything is changing your identity. And that's why our Marriage Recovery Program is a year long. Like, I can give you all of this information in a week, but it hasn't changed your identity, right? It hasn't changed your identity yet. It's changed your intellectual understanding. Hopefully it's given you some hope to show you that there is light and there is a path and there is a way out of whatever it is right now, whether it's a bad marriage or not a way out of a bad marriage, but a way to recover that, or whether it's substance abuse or whatever, this is the information here is designed to give you hope. It's designed to give you, um, the, the motivation to try. It's not designed, or it can't be, to change your identity because that takes time. It's not about just saying, I'm a good husband, I'm fake it till I make it, or I don't drink, fake it till I make it. It's like it has to become a part of you. And this, again, this is why, you know, to bring this back, you know, to, to Being God-centered and being Christ-centered, you have to be born again. You literally have to be born again. Now, that doesn't mean you have to go back into the womb and come out, but you have to be born again as a new person with a new identity. You can't have the identity as a bad husband or bad wife and improve your marriage. You're going to act in a way that's consistent with that identity. You can't have the identity of an alcoholic or someone with a drinking problem and stop drinking. You literally have to— that person has to die. That identity literally has to die, and it has to be replaced or reborn with a new identity. And then you're going to behave accordingly with that identity, and you never look back, right? You never look back at the old identity. You never think about that identity ever, ever again. It's why I say for demonstration purposes, because I'm not identifying with that. I'm not about to identify. I'm not about to shoot myself in the foot, right? I'm not about— it's like holding a loaded gun and saying, hey, you never want to take a loaded gun and hold it to your head like this, you know, showing you what not to do. It's like, I am never going, you know, for demonstration purposes only here, I'm never going to say I'm an alcoholic. I'm never going to say that. That's why I do that, so my subconscious mind knows this is for demonstration purposes only, because what I say I'm going to believe ultimately. What I say, I'm going to start to believe. And if I do enough of these sessions, and I say it enough times, and I work with enough clients, and I say, for demonstration purposes only, I'm an alcoholic, you know, for demonstration purposes, if I say, if I just keep saying those words over and over again, eventually I'm going to start to believe them. And then I'm going to, I'm reaching back to where I was, and I'm starting to bring back that identity that caused the problem. So you got it, you got to stop. You can't do that. The identity has to be changed, and you literally have to be born again. The old you has to pass away, and a new you has to be born. Now, how long does that take? How long does that take to happen? Well, that's why we do 12 months. That's why therapy doesn't work. That's why I don't advocate any of that stuff. I was in therapy for a long time, and it did nothing for me because it encouraged me to reiterate and talk about the problems that I was going through again, which was just reinforcing my identity. It was just making it stronger. It was just making that identity stronger and stronger. The therapist would ask me, well, what happened when you were 17? You know, and for demonstration purposes, it's like, I drank this and I drank that, and I went to these parties, and I did this and I did— it's like all I'm doing is bringing that identity back, and I'm reinstalling the software that I've just uninstalled And I'm bringing back and continuing to live in the slop that I used to live in. Can't do that. We've got to replace the identity and we've got to stick around and we've got to make sure that we have the support until that identity changes. Once it changes, that's you done. You don't have to worry about anything anymore. You don't— once you have the identity of a thin person, you don't ever have to worry about a diet again because your identity will make sure that you stay thin. Once you have the identity of somebody who doesn't drink, you don't have to worry about willpower and stuff like that because your identity will make sure. Willpower doesn't work. Willpower never works. And that's where, you know, if you're a spouse listening to this, don't, please don't put your love on the line and compare it to willpower, right? Say, hey, unless you do this, you don't love me, because willpower doesn't work. It never works. It might work for a day or two or for a week or maybe even for a year, right? But it takes too much effort. It takes too much energy, and it never works. We need, we need to change our identity so that the change becomes effortless. Whatever behavior it is that you want becomes effortless. It's like I was an aggressive person. I like to fight with people. I like conflict, and I liked aggravation and stuff like that. And that's because I had a lot of aggravation in me. I had an identity. I had that identity. It's like, well, I'm hot-headed, you know, for demonstration purposes only, I'm hot-headed. You know, people would go, Cody, man, you got a bit of a temper. I'm like, I'm just, I'm just hot-headed. My dad's hot-headed. It's just, it's a family thing. We come, it comes, and it's like, that's my identity, right? That was my identity. And I could, in situations, control that temper just through sheer muscle, just through sheer willpower. But I would sit there and I'd just be like, "Argh!" It'd be taking every fiber of my being not to fight. And I was in my living room the other night and my wife had a friend over and he was disagreeing with some stuff I was saying and I just let it go. I said, "Okay, well that's certainly a viewpoint, right? That's certainly an opinion. I can respect that, so let's talk about something else." And at the end of the night, my wife was like, "I'm really impressed with what you did there." She's like, "I could tell that he wasn't bothering you." She's like, "A few years ago, you would have blown up and you would have had a massive fight with him and he would have left and he wouldn't have been our friend anymore. And that family never would have come back to our house and that would have been the end of the relationship." And she's like, "But not only did you not do that, I could tell that it was effortless. I could tell that he wasn't bothering you. I could tell that it wasn't aggravating you and you were just using willpower to stop it." That was a great thing to hear because I'm like, that's the new person, right? That's the new identity. I love peace. I love tranquility. That's what I love. That's my identity now. I did a phone call last night with some prospects who are looking to work with me, and they said, like, I can just tell you have a very gentle soul. And I'm like, well, thank you for saying that. That's my new identity, right? That's the identity that I've chosen and that I've decided to install, because that wasn't my identity for a long time. I had a very aggressive soul, I had a very disturbed soul, I had a very troubled soul. And until I could get rid of that identity and install the new identity, that behavior was never going to change. So hopefully that helps, right? So that's the first thing that you've got to do is you've got to start to change your identity And when you do that, then everything else is going to change. There was this— there was a story that, uh, I can't remember. I can't remember the person's name right now, but he's a motivational speaker. Zig Ziglar, that's it. Zig Ziglar. He talks about a story about one of his clients where he was massive, massive. The guy was like 300 pounds, hugely overweight. And Zig Ziglar was talking about this and telling him how it's about the identity. It's about the identities. It's like once your identity changes, then your reality will change. And the guy said he was in a store one time, and there was a young kid, and the kid looked to his mother and goes, "Look at that fat man over there. Look at that fat man, Mommy." And the fat man, the guy that was 300 pounds, turned around to look for the fat person. And the guy that's 300 pounds, he goes, "That was the moment that I knew I was going to beat this, because when the kid said, 'Look over there at that fat man,'" he goes, "I didn't identify with that." He goes, "I turned around to look for the fat man because I no longer saw myself as a fat man, and I just didn't think that he was talking about me. He goes, that's when I realized that my identity had changed from being a fat man to being something else. And then the story continues, and he's like, a year later, I've lost 120 pounds, and yada yada yada. It's a brilliant, brilliant illustration of the situation. If you can change your identity, then you can absolutely change your reality. And that is really the key right there is the change of reality. So hopefully that helps. If you've got any questions here, let's take a few questions here. I don't usually take questions in these, but we've got a couple of people on here. Let's— if you've got any questions, jump on and stick it into the chat. I can't see your name, unfortunately. All I can see on my screen here is it says Facebook user. But if you've got any questions about any of this stuff, throw it out there, throw it in. And also, while I'm waiting for questions here, we've still got room for people in the Marriage Recovery Program. So if you're thinking about these things, if you want to see transformation in your life, then the Marriage Recovery Program, I would definitely encourage you to consider that because that is where we are going to do all of this stuff. That is where we're going to do all of this work. And we've covered a lot of stuff this week, we've covered a lot of information, but this is where we're really going to start to work on making those identity shifts. That's where we're really going to start to do the work that is going to make the transformation permanent and make it effortless and make it a part of your identity to where it's not willpower that's making things work. It's— you will become like a Zen monk. You decide basically what you want to be, and then we find a way to create that identity. So there's a lot of work around becoming a great husband, a great wife. We're looking at all of the skills and the habits to restoring your marriage, to how to make those permanent. Because here's the thing, right? If you want to save your marriage, you've got to do something different right now. You've got to make some changes. And I know it's uncomfortable to do this stuff, and I know it's inconvenient to do this stuff, but if you keep doing what you've always done, then you're always going to get the results you've got right now. So the question is, what changes are you going to make? Everybody is here because they want to see change in their life in some way, shape, or form. But the question is, what are you willing to do to get that change, right? What are you willing to do?
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