Ep 291 Infidelity & Recovery with Dr. Monique Thompson

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Hey everybody, welcome and thank you for listening to this episode of Marriage Therapy Radio. My name is Zach Brittle. I'm here with Laura Heck. We're here today with Dr. Monique Thompson. Dr. Thompson, or Aunt Mo as you might come to know her, is doing really thought-provoking work around infidelity and recovery and the trauma that's associated with that and how to process it and how to make sense of it. We love talking to her. We couldn't get enough. We want to have her back, not just because of her wisdom into how relationships work, but also she is apparently a very, very good cook. I think I talked her into making something for my daughter Abby. who is in school right near where Dr. Thompson works and lives in the Dallas area. I really loved her thoughts on infidelity and in particular recovery from infidelity and how that process works. This is a very cool conversation. Stick around.

If you stick around to the end, Dr. Monique is going to give you her secret recipe. And we'll clip it and we'll put that at the end of the podcast so that we have them hanging to the very last minute. Does that sound good? Jason, our producer, is like, yes.

We'll see what he can figure out. But ladies and gentlemen, we are talking to Dr. Monique Thompson, who is, uh, out of Dallas. The reason we started talking about cake is because, uh, my daughter, as I said, is at SMU, and, uh, Dr. Monique Thompson is going to bake her Bundt cake for my kid and deliver it to— she's at Meadows. She's at the Meadows School.

Okay, cool, cool.

Yeah, I really will do this.

I have college students all over the country.

I believe you.

And they come home— when they come home, I bake cakes for them. They let me know when they're coming home and what kind of cake they want.

Yeah, I'm going to believe everything that comes out of your mouth for the next half an hour because you clearly have thought, thought it through. And but your area of expertise, your area of specialty is around infidelity.

Yeah, one of our areas.

Adult survivors of sexual trauma, infidelity. Those are the top 2. I do a lot of bipolar disorder, major depression. I don't do so much kids anymore because I have kids now.

Yeah, right.

But before I did, 90% of my practice was kids. And I did a lot of forensic work. So I worked with adult male sex offenders. I did a lot of drug and alcohol work. But, you know, as your life changes, you adjust yourself around the life you want. And so then you're living every day the life you want to live. So that's what's happened. I love it.

It's interesting. I have— I mean, we go through waves. Well, actually, hold on. I have quite a few in my practice right now that are on the other side of infidelity. And so we're working on recovery. And that was one of the reasons where I was like, bring it, Dr. Thompson. I need to know all there is to know.

And you're gonna call her Dr. Thompson? I'm just gonna call her the whole time.

He is nailing down this cake.

I know.

He wants I want it so bad.

And during the cake delivery.

So, I don't have to worry about how you ever felt.

That cake is a done deal.

You just tell me what flavor, she gets that cake. She gets the cake.

You don't have to worry about it. You don't have to suck up anymore, Zach. It's a done deal.

It's a done deal. I don't— I don't go on campus much anymore. I'm a consultant with Perkins School of Theology. I've been there for 21 years. So, I don't go on campus much anymore because after COVID, we went virtual. And I never went back to campus. I do have good reason to be on campus every once in a while. And now I will add that to my good reason to be on campus every once in a while. She gets a cake. What's her name? Oh, you don't want to say that?

Oh, no. He's—

yes.

Her name's Abby.

We talk about her all the time.

Okay. What's her name?

Her name's Abby. And she's a junior at the Meadow Schools.

Yeah.

And she's— I should point you toward— they're doing— she's assistant directing a show right now. So if you're inclined to go see a show, you can, whatever. But we'll connect about that offline. Yeah.

Yes.

Okay.

We'll connect though.

Because we want to hear about the stuff that you know about, not just the stuff that I know about.

Okay.

Okay.

So I'm gonna— first and foremost, I— one of the questions that I thought was really interesting, um, is kind of like this common misconceptions, uh, or myths. And is it myths around infidelity? Is it myths about couples? Just, I'm curious about what these common misconceptions are.

Well, it's probably both.

Yeah.

And I would say some of it, a lot of it, is before people even get married in the first place. So we just have assumptions about what it means to love somebody. We have assumptions about, like, that bad things won't happen to you if you're a good person.

Oh, yeah.

If you're a certain kind of spouse, bad things won't happen to you. We have expectations, inhuman expectations, About forgiveness and what that means. And then too, sometimes we come into lots of human experiences with these either overconfidence or lacking confidence entirely. And so we don't approach it with a reasonable expectation of self or the other person.

Mm.

And then when trouble comes, trouble's going to come. So when trouble comes, we kind of flatline there. Like, you're embarrassed that you're having trouble. You don't know what to do. You don't want to talk to anybody. And I often say, you know, the information highway is beautiful. It's a gorgeous place. It's the scenic route to gathering information. But expertise is still at a premium.

Mm-hmm.

So while you could go through Instagram and YouTube and you know, check out all these resources, you still don't know, like, which voice to listen to.

Right.

What's the— you know, what's the trustworthy, credible source? And for my work, people, when they're going through infidelity, it's like timeout for the wrong information. You cannot—

Yeah.

—live off of Twinkies when you're going through infidelity. You need vegetables, you know, all your vitamins and minerals, because it is no time for playing games with a person's life like that. It can get dangerous. I mean, all of us have watched all the movies. The TV shows. I mean, it genuinely gets that down. You probably had that experience. My husband works in mental health, and we sometimes jokingly say, like, how many murders did we keep from happening? Yeah, like, I don't know. But you know, you hear people—

You're talking about like the— you're talking about like the boiling the rabbits, that kind of dangerous thing?

Yes. Or when people just get so enraged. So it's not anger, and it's not just mad, it's enrage. When people get so enraged And they come up with something to do. And, you know, figuring out how to manage it because you're in that role as a therapist, you become sort of a first responder. You're in session and you're realizing— one, I always take everybody seriously. Everybody.

Yeah.

22 years, I've not lost anybody. And most of that has to do with I take everybody seriously. So because of that, I— I mean, one of my colleagues was like, how do you get people to just tell you? I said, I have no idea. And I still to this day, I don't know how I get people to just tell me.

Right.

Tell me what they're gonna do and fess up. Or I have— I don't— I haven't called CPS myself in over 20 years. I get people to call on their— on themselves. I get them to pick up the phone and call and tell CPS what you did. Um, true, true stories. But The bigger picture of like, between, you know, what people don't know or don't believe in, the myths they believe about infidelity, and about being a couple, those things that you think are true that are not true make your healing process excruciating.

Hmm.

Excruciating, because you're thinking something is true that's not true. And maybe the source of that you believe. I'll give you a quick example when it comes— because I do a lot of faith-based work. People will believe if they pray for their marriage, then God's gonna save their marriage, or they're just not praying hard enough. And I— okay, so there's no scripture says if you pray hard enough for your marriage, that it's gonna be okay. There's nowhere in there but just this belief. That if you just pray hard enough for something, it's going to happen. And that is— that has caused a lot of pain. So then, now, the person is troubled with their faith. They're troubled with themselves. They think something's wrong with their prayer life. I mean, none of that is true, but it causes this, like, domino effect. And now, a source that could be helpful to you, like, your spiritual life could be helpful to you.

Right.

Except now, you don't believe that you even have access Like, you don't even believe you have access to God. So now it's, God doesn't love me, my spouse doesn't love me, I must be unlovable. It's all my fault, you know. So now it just— so that's what I mean by some of this is before they even get married, right? That you're believing certain things. And then you have an event that needs you to be thinking clearly. And the thoughts you're having were— they were never true in the first place.

Yeah.

I have a misconception that has come up a couple of times. Actually, I have 2. One is before people ever get married, they, in their mind, they have an idea and they haven't communicated it with their partner. So there's an expectation that I will not stay in a marriage if these certain things are true, or if these certain things happen, infidelity being one of them. And so when infidelity happens, There's this moment of the marriage is done, there's no salvaging it. And I already decided inside of myself 15 years prior that I wouldn't stick around for a relationship if there was infidelity. So that's one misconception, is that they have decided that just sort of before they ever got married that that was going to happen. I think a lot of people also think that you can't survive infidelity.

Yeah.

And that's a misconception. What was the other one? The other one that I've seen often is, if my partner is to cheat on me, then I've been made a fool and I need to leave. I can't stick around and go through the process of healing because I'm the fool and I can't be played the fool again. And I've seen that over and over and over. It's like if you are the one that is the betrayed partner, that there's a lockstep way to deal with it. And if you don't, you're showing other people— it's about kind of like other people, what others see in the relationship.

Mhm.

So I kind of want to break those myths down, particularly maybe number 2.

I want to survive.

Yeah, the thing about what you said, the first one there, Laura, is like, I have people come in all the time and they're like, oh yeah, there's been an affair. And I'll say, well, didn't you say that you would never stick around for an affair? And then they found out that they would. They found out that, oh, this isn't actually a deal breaker. This is actually a thing that I'm interested in. Like working on. So that's a new identity for them. And I guess I'm— I share that, like, kind of misconception question, which is, what do people do with this sort of new identity piece that has come in when they find out either that they're capable of an affair or that they're capable of sticking around after affair, that they didn't— they're not the person they thought they were a year ago or 2 years ago or 5 years ago? I don't know, that, that's kind of what I've been playing with as you were talking.

Yeah, the I won't survive. So I, I like for us to allow for conflicting, coexisting truths. So it's kind of true that you, as you were, won't survive. There's a part of you that's just— that's gone.

Mm-hmm.

The part of you that believed in the fairy tale, all of that, that's actually gone. Like, genuinely, that's gone, you know? Um, and, and you are clearly alive and can make choices to heal. That's also true. You could make— use the power of your choice to heal. But it's also true that healing is not guaranteed. As the— I mean, time is the most gangster thing of all.

Yeah.

Time cares nothing about anybody. It just goes right on by for everybody, no matter how much money you have, poverty. It is the, you know, unto every life measure of faith is given. Time was that one thing that everybody is given, and it is taken away evenly too. So, you're going to live, but will you live in a healed way, in a way that you enjoy? Will you have quality of life? Those are choices.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

And so you do need to make an active choice. And maybe you didn't know about needing to make an active choice in your former self. You were also living in some fairy tales about life, too. So that's over. You won't be able to ever again say, I don't think that people who cheat should— I think that they're the worst in the world. Well, now you're looking at somebody—

Mm-hmm.

And you feel love for them. You do not think they're the scum of the earth. And you do.

Mm-hmm.

At the same time. So you have these conflicting, coexisting truths. And, you know, kind of, you know, with meditative breath, acknowledging and allowing them to sit outside of you. You're not those things. You're a human being. You're ever-evolving. You can choose to observe this experience and choose the life you're going to live in this moment.

Mm-hmm.

You don't get to choose that a moment is going to happen. You get to choose how I want to experience this moment. But that requires a pause, a conscious breath. And so you may believe some things that are not true for a long time. And then find with infidelity— and I would say not just the event of infidelity, but the unfolding of events from infidelity. Like, you now are discovering things. Discovery takes years. I encourage— when people come in to see me, one, I'm a kid person. So if there are children, I will not do the therapy unless people are willing to commit to minimally a year of just working through things, not promising an outcome at all, just saying we're working. You know, we're not promising to stay. We're not threatening to leave. We're just rescuing everybody from this fire, getting everybody, everything precious out of the house, making sure people are OK, getting people to the hospital. I mean, that one year is just making sure we're all safe and healthy.

I always have people that say—

If they're kids, there's no way.

—how long, right? Like, they want to know, how long is this going to take? I'm in pain. And I don't want— I want to know, how long do we need to work with you, Laura, in order to get over this? And you're saying, we're just doing like the rescue phase.

First year. The first year. Well, and then in 5 years. Yeah. And 5 years of knowing that you will be on some level working with somebody, if not me, for the next— you'll be going to retreats or reading books or going to conferences or an individual, you'll be doing something. For at least the next 5 years, because discovery is going to continue to happen. You're going to continue to re-experience. You're going to continue to need to work on trauma-informed communication skills. I mean, it's— or you don't do any of that. Your risk of mental illness shoots through the roof because you're not sleeping well. There's no way. You're not sleeping well. And if you are, you're using a probably non-regulated sleep aid. You're doing—

I'm too bent to love you.

You know, so you're— Your brain as an organ, right, is suffering during that time. And we know that the brain can recover on its own when you have little spurts here and there of sleep disturbance. But when we get into weeks, months, years, there's damage to certain structures in your brain. We know that your T-cell function starts to plummet. The HPA axis is taking a hit. Your breathwork— your breath is just right here in your face all day long. You're not doing any belly breathing that's really relaxing yourself. What's the—

You mentioned something.

Yeah. What's that? Yeah. So if you are under stress, so there's an axis that kind of connects your brain and your gut. And so your brain, your heart, and your gut kind of create this axis. So the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal gland axis. So this is a connection between your brain and your pituitary gland that helps you to manage stress.

Okay.

But when people are in their autonomic nervous system, that's that fight or flight, right? You just— it's like if you are driving a, you know, a car and you just never stop and check the brakes, you hear them squeaking.

Yeah.

And they stop squeaking, but that's because now you've worn through the brakes. When you finally, finally, finally, you know, are going downhill and can't stop because the brakes are gone. You don't have any brakes anymore. So similarly, over time, you wear out things that are happening biologically. OK, so you'll live. You'll live through the infidelity. You'll live through that time passing. But will you have quality of life?

Mm-hmm.

Quality of life is a— It's a choice, right? So we don't necessarily have to immediately make a decision about staying or going. And I encourage people to, to acknowledge that I might change my mind. Like, even if I say I'm done, I also want to say I might change my mind. Even if I say I'm staying, I want to—

Right.

I might change my mind because one, discovery still happens. You're discovering about yourself. And you may not like the self you have become in response to this situation. And you may say, you know what, I believe you'll never, you'll never cheat again. I don't believe I will ever love you, ever.

That's actually a helpful category for me as you talk, because when you said discovery takes forever, or takes a long time, it's not simply discovery about the details of the infidelity. Like, it's not strictly like discovery about, oh, it was this one night in Las Vegas, or, oh, It was this girl from high school or something. It's discovery about self, who you are, how you've changed, what, what's going on for you. Like, that's okay. That makes a lot more sense to me because I was like, geez Louise, it takes a year to get all the—

The discovery of each other. But you're talking about the discovery of self as well.

That seems like overkill. But you're talking about characterological discovery.

Yes. Yes. And even allowing yourself to have forethought. Like, I encourage people when they have children to consider This choice you are making, we could do a healthy divorce. It is not necessary in 2023 for us to have a nuclear disaster divorce. You can have a healthy divorce. You will have to slow down to do it.

Mm-hmm.

Right? You could possibly recover from this. There's plenty of resources out there. There's plenty of science on things that work and don't work. You could. Now, could doesn't mean you should. But you could. You could. Right now, if you choose one way or the other, you're making a choice for people who are not even here yet. You're making a choice for your kids' kids, for their kids. It goes on into generations. So what— so I encourage them, think about what kind of grandparent you want to be. You know, think about what kind of experience you want to have on your kids'— this little baby's 16th birthday. You know, what kind of relationship do you want to have with your spouse? If they should move on, do you feel like you're gonna be a good co-parent? You know, so start thinking about co-parenting. There is a book I asked them to read about co-parenting about 3 or 4 months in to explore that, the reality of co-parenting. So that's what I mean by the discovery of, wait, if we're not together and we have children, all that's over is this legal marriage.

Mm-hmm.

That's all that's really over.

Right. Yep.

Everything else is just in volume 2, part 1. Volume 2, part 1.

Yeah.

And now, I— you— so let's look— let's go ahead and take a peek into volume 2, part 1, where the first Halloween, you realize they're not going to trick-or-treat in your neighborhood. They're trick-or-treating in that person's partner's neighborhood. Kids, you don't know. You're not getting any pictures. You're not getting any video. And you're watching the Facebook Live with everybody else, just, you know, getting ready for those moments and choosing that I will choose to heal in that moment. It might not be as bad as I think it's going to be. But we're so far from it today that you're like, you know, I don't know if I want to do my Halloween like that when possibly this could work out.

Mm-hmm.

And then I encourage people, like, when you decide which way you want to go, the healthy divorce after the year, the healthy divorce or the other way, now it's time to put your back into it. Now it's time to fully clock in and put your back into whichever way we decide we're going. But until then, there's just a lot of space for getting it out, you know, flushing the toilet, just getting everything out.

And I think if I'm summing— if I'm, if I'm, if I'm picking up what you're putting down, I don't know if that's the right way to say it. But it sounds like slow down is really at the heart of what you're— as what you're saying, like you get this crisis or this, you know, really acute pain or event, and you're sort of— you start with slow down. Yeah.

Slow down your decision-making, but possibly do an uptick on your seeking of help, on your help-seeking behavior, which I noticed when this—

But not Instagram and TikTok and YouTube.

Yeah. So like, maybe what I see that is unfortunate is people take a wait-and-see approach to actually seeking help.

Right.

And so in the meantime, unnecessary harm has unfolded. And so sometimes even some of the unnecessary harm can create barriers to treatment. Easy example, somebody just moves out, they go get an apartment, which increases household expense. and creates a barrier to treatment as far as the two of you coming together for a point. I mean, it just invites more chaos. You might need to—

Yeah.

You may need to, and I don't— I don't judge. I'm like, what do we need to do? What do we think we could do so that there's peace? Peace is what's more powerful than war, right? So what step can we make for peace? And it may be that you need to do that. But let's do this cleverly. You know, do you really need a whole apartment? Or do you just need an Airbnb for the weekend? Can we just get an Airbnb for the weekend? Can you just hotwire a hotel for 2 or 3 nights, like every other night for a couple of months? You just hotwire a hotel, which that was, you know, a couple hundred dollars and you're done, versus a lease, right? A few thousand dollars, you know. So I'm not saying that you don't need space. or that you shouldn't do something. But when you slow down, and now you're thinking with a different part of your brain, you know, the prefrontal cortex is back in the game.

Mm-hmm.

You can expect clever thoughts. You can be strategic. And now you're making a choice that is not sabotaging and creating chaos and harm, which you already have enough, you know. So now you're on the 9th floor of the burning building, and Somebody decides they're just going to jump out of the window. And you're like, well, but there's a fire escape in that window. But they're already— you're like, just, you know, so they could have still gone out a window, but there was another window with the fire escape. And you wonder, what's the first thing we would say in that? What would we say? Wait.

Mm-hmm.

Same thing here. Just slow down and wait because it is a crisis. But, kind of, one of your other questions I wanted to come back to is that I can't stay.

Right.

Like, people say, I'll never— if I ever find— I will never. I'm not staying. I saw my mother, or I saw my father, or I saw— and you know, when they do it once, they're going to do it again. You know? And I don't argue that. I'm like, they might do it again. Your mother's story may be a cautionary tale. It may be a predictive tale. I don't know. And I'm not here to write your life story. But if you slow down, you know, breath to calm to clear to clever—

Push through.

Figure out what you really, really want.

Say that again. Calm to clear to clever.

He loves alliteration so much. I knew. Breath to calm to clear.

Breath to calm to clear to clever. You know, when you're clever, you're calm. You know, when you're clever, you're calm. You may actually say, you know, I am not staying. But I want the most beautiful divorce ever. Gorgeous divorce. You know, or you may say, I'm not staying, but I, you know, I realized that I, I don't want a divorce until after Christmas.

Right.

And that sounds silly, but that may be your truth, you know. And so, you may have to have a conversation with your spouse and say, we need to go to an attorney. We need to get a financial stay. We need, you know, we may need to get some temporary custody in place. Um, this is, you know, and in a calm state, you can be clever.

Yeah.

You can say, really, I just want to make it through this Christmas. I don't want us staying in the same house. But let's figure out how we can do this without sending our expenses through the roof. I, you know, talk to your attorney. I encourage everybody, your state is where the person has to be licensed. You don't have to go downtown to find your attorney. They need to be licensed. in your state. Find someone clever that you can afford.

Mm-hmm.

Ask them for— ask them questions. You know, do you need to do anything that will protect you while you're figuring out what to do? You know, do you need to do a cease and desist on this person that the person was having an affair with that keeps bothering you? You can get a cease and desist letter from any attorney to manage some of that. You know, do I— what do I need to do to protect myself? Because I'm not saying a year of staying in the burning building. I'm saying, let's get out of the burning building.

Right.

And sometimes you have to legally address some things. And sometimes you're not going to stay. You say, I can't stay. It may be true in the end. I'm not staying. But I can't stay wasn't true. I'm not staying is the truth.

Yeah. That makes a big difference when you feel like a decision is something that you made, not because you were forced or because, you know, that's— the decision that you made 15 years ago, or that's the, you know, religion that you're in, or the expectations of your family. But it's a choice that— and I feel like it's a choice that 2 people— that's a glorious divorce to me, is a choice when 2 people come to a decision together. I do want to say—

And I've seen it.

Oh, I have too. Absolutely. But it does take time and resources. You mentioned a resource that I want to give our folks. You said, I will oftentimes give people month 3, month 4, a co-parenting resource to read. What is that?

So y'all gonna laugh. This book is as old as time itself. Co-Parenting After Divorce by Elizabeth Shulman. This is how old this book is. I promise you, you're gonna think you saw See Dick, See Jane Run somewhere. It is that old. But I can't replace this book. She was an attorney.

Gold foil. Yes.

Gold foil binding on the edge.

Yes, you know, it's stapled. You can't get an ebook version of it. It is not on Audible. But she was an attorney who then got into social work. And so her book is written with that rigor, you know, and it's bullet pointed. So I like it because when people are going through crisis, a bullet point little booklet that you can get through in an afternoon is helpful. You know, so it's broken down into age groups, like here's some things you need to do if they're toddlers, here's some things if they're preteens, That kind of thing. She breaks down holidays, visitation. And she talks about some of the emotional experience you're going to have. And she pushes people to take responsibility for their emotional response.

Mm-hmm.

And I love that book. I can't replace that book.

This is 1997. It is not that old. There is not C-dick and Jane run, C-spot.

She talks about faxing. She says, you can fax this. I'm like, nobody does that anymore. But she's wonderful with that book. The other one I use a lot for the healthy divorce, because there's a lot of resources out there for it. But what I like for a healthy divorce is for people to look at— there's a section in— oh, I have— why am I drawing a blank on the healthy divorce? It will come to me. But there's a section on it called Guns— called Is This a Gunfight? Right? And I ask people to read that. And I have repeatedly couples say, well, if we can do this, we can stay married. I'm like, well, Here's the news. To have a healthy divorce, you're gonna have to brush up on your communication skills anyway. Anyway.

So true.

And even if you're getting divorced, you're not gonna never have to speak to that person again. Yeah, that's— none of that's actually about to happen. You're gonna have to talk to them under more tense situations than you're in right now. The tenseness goes up, not down. And your control over things.

If you're sharing children.

If you're sharing children, if you're sharing children, well, or if you have a business together, because I've run into that as well. Especially now, I think the, the onset of internet business and virtual businesses has created more partner businesses. And so now people are like, well, can we be business partners? And I'm like, that's almost worse than having a child.

Right, Zach? Wink wink. Yes.

So that one is— that was tough. So if they're in business together, I asked for 3 to 6 months, like, let's pause 3 to 6 months. And during that time, if you could seek consult, and if you could seek consult on what this looks like, if the person has to buy you out, or what are you— are you dissolved? What are you doing? You know, if there is no kids, no kids at all, see, people listening might think this is awful. But if there are literally no kids at all, I asked them to come to the table in 4 weeks. Where are we going? Yeah. Where are we going? Come in. And if they're dating, if they're dating, then I ask them to think about, you are buying this car as is, no warranty.

Oh, I love the way you put things. Um, okay, I, I'm aware of time. Zach has a hard stop. Yes. But I'm gonna ask, would you be willing to come back on? Because you have some intervention, some tools, some resources for folks in the process. And I want Yes. But I don't think we have time for just one podcast. I think we need you to come back on. Would you—

Love to.

Would you join us again? I would love to.

Okay. Yes.

I would love that because I think this is a teaser that's kind of like giving people the, okay, I get it. We're not gonna rush into making any major decisions. We need to slow down. We need to pause. But now I want to give them— you've teased it all up— the next part, which is now what do you do? What, what do you do when you're in that moment of discovery? Or what are you doing to heal and recover if you're in that moment? decided to stay together. That's what I'll circle back to. Okay. Yes, let's do that. Let's do it. And you also have a workbook. So I think we need to tell people— actually, would you mind telling people what is the name of your workbook?

The Infidelity and Recovery Workbook for Couples. It is available on Amazon. And the book is designed for both partners. So there's alternating chapters, For the person who was cheated on and the person who did the cheating. And there are combined chapters that are for both to complete. There's exercises throughout, and there's self-care guidance throughout as well.

Love that. Love that.

Yes.

Okay.

I dig it.

We're gonna have you back on. We gotta dig into the resources, into more of like the nuts and bolts of what folks can do in recovery. But we have to land the plane on this one, but we'll have you back on.

Thank you, Dr. Monique Thompson.

And, um— Maybe another secret recipe. I'll go through my archives. Maybe I'll give y'all one more recipe when I come back.

Oh, I love that.

I'm telling you, I make the best lemon bundt cake ever in the world.

Yum.

Yes. Red velvet, lemon bundt.

Why? Why do you make the best lemon bundt cake ever?

Because I wanted to not spend the money on Nothing Bundt Cakes. So— There you go. I perfected my own lemon bundt cake because I like theirs, but now everybody likes mine more. And mine does not cost near as much. And so I have a fresh lemon bundt cake.

What's the secret?

Oh, I can't tell you. I'll tell you—

What's the secret?

I'll tell you a tiny, tiny, tiny bit. OK. Use more than one flavor. So don't just use vanilla in your flavoring.

OK.

So use more than one flavoring. What's another trick that I'm willing to share?

I know. I love that you're being so coy. Well, I have tons of stuff.

Okay, here's one more, one more trick to the lemon bundt cake is to use white chocolate chips, and you put them in the blender until they're powdery, and you add that to the mixture.

What?

Yeah.

Okay.

White chocolate in your lemon bundt cake?

White chocolate chips, white chocolate chips into the lemon bundt cake. You know, so since I'm so glad to be on this podcast, because I've been listening to y'all, I'm going to share this with your listeners.

No.

Yes. This— because I have a— I have my grandmother's secret tea recipe. I have her pancake secret recipe. I have— I make the best hot wings in the world. That's a secret recipe. The dressing is a secret recipe.

Oh, you're not getting that.

Collard greens, you're not getting that. Yeah, like, I got a list of other ones you're not getting. The pecan pie. I mean, my mother-in-law loves my pecan pie the best in the world. Sweet potato pie is the best in the world. All right, so I will give you the lemon Bundt cake recipe because there's a whole list that you're not getting. How about that? Okay, so here's the lemon Bundt cake recipe. All right, you guys ready? No, we're getting the whole thing right now.

Yes, I'm gonna tell you the whole thing right now.

You need Duncan Hines cake mix. All right, and then, so you're gonna go online and you're gonna do the Google for copycat, um, nothing Bundt lemon cake, and you're gonna see that it tells you to use like cake mix. It's gonna tell you the eggs and all this stuff. But here's what's missing from that recipe. Here are my secrets. Definitely use the white chocolate chips, and some will give you that to do, some don't. Definitely do that. Definitely use a little package of lemon pudding mix. Lemon pudding mix.

Okay.

And then here are your 3 flavors. Butter. Yeah, butter flavor. You're going to use butter, the butter extract. You're going to use vanilla and lemon extract in the actual cake base.

There's a butter extract? I had no idea that was such a thing.

Yeah.

Why can't I just use butter, though? Yes, you can. Because you don't want the fat, you want the flavor.

You just want the butter flavor.

OK. All right.

You just want the— you don't want to add any more fat to the cake. You don't want to change the cake mixture. You just want to add some flavor. OK, so you're going to add butter flavor, vanilla extract, lemon flavor. And none of the recipes are telling you to put any flavors in there. I'm telling you, you want to add those 3 and be generous. Be generous with the lemon. Be generous with the lemon. You're not going to hurt the cake. Just be generous with it. If you have any of the real lemon, you know, that comes in the green bottle, put just a smidge, like 1/8 of a teaspoon of that in there too, because you want the lemon flavor and the lemon smell. All right. Now, here's the rest of this. Just a smidge. Just a smidge.

That's my dog's name. I have a wiener dog named Smidge because it's just a smidge of a dog. Isn't that cute?

Yeah.

Just— okay.

That is lovely. Yeah. I love— okay. Okay, y'all ready for the other secrets? Yeah. Okay, so now, you've got to— You know how people typically grease and flour a cake pan, right?

Yes.

Not going to do it that way. You're going to use a little bit of cooking spray. So you're going to spray the inside of a Bundt cake. Then you're going to get your Crisco like you normally would. You know how you would oil the inside? But then you're going to get sugar—

Obviously.

Instead of flour.

Just normal, like, granulated white sugar?

Granulated white sugar. You're going to use that instead of flour. And so now you're going to have a nice crunchy sweet outing to the Bundt cake. All right. And, and you're going to put just a little bit of water in another pan.

Underneath it.

And you're going to slide that in underneath it while it's baking so that it stays super moist while it's baking. Yes.

And I did, by the way, look up the Easy Copycat recipe online.

Yes.

So I'm looking at that.

Yeah. And so it's telling you a lot, but it doesn't tell you the flavors. It doesn't tell you to use the— sugar instead of flour when you're coating the can— pan. And then when you take it out, you want it just cooled. And all those recipes, they tell you, like, stick it in the refrigerator. I like a fresh cake, same-day cake, right? So take it out, let it cool just enough to pop it out of the pan, which it should do easily if you were coating it well.

Yeah.

Pops right out of the pan. Okay. And then you're gonna put your icing that you prefer. I like a simple cream cheese—

Me too.

—icing on it. Just a plain cream cheese icing. But for it, add clear vanilla to the cream cheese icing.

That's a thing?

Yes, instead of the brown vanilla. Yeah. Yes, that's a thing. Clear vanilla is a thing.

You poor girl. Do you not bake? Did you not have a mother growing up? Where is your grandma?

It's like, what is all this going on in the baking aisle? Girl, they're wild over there in the baking aisle. It's a lot of wild stuff going on in baking now. They have clear vanilla. You're gonna use that. I don't ever use cheap vanilla. One year, I was short on vanilla and ran to like the corner store and bought some, and we were just doused in the vanilla. I'm like, this vanilla is not working. So never do that. Always get Watkins if you can. If you can find Watkins, that's the best. Okay. If you can't find Watkins, maybe you have like an actual like nice grocery store, go ahead and get a nice vanilla. The vanilla makes a difference. You can smell— you can smell good vanilla and good flavoring when you open the bottle. You should smell it.

Right.

Okay? And your kitchen should already smell good just from opening those bottles. Do not skimp on— do not skimp on the flavoring because you're just not— you're going to pay for it anyway because you're dumping flavoring and you're not tasting anything because it's just water or something. But those are the key ingredients.

I love it.

Then when you cool it, like, if you don't want to eat the whole cake, which we don't anymore because I I bake when I feel sad. When I miss my grandmother is when I bake cakes. And I now give them away. I either give away the whole cake, or I cut it up into slices.

Yep.

And me and my youngest daughter have— we went on Amazon and got those little pieces, like if you get the bakery, you put a cake piece in there. And we have these cute little bags that say Aunt Mo and Cousin Lele's Bakery. And we put them in the little bag, and we take them to our neighbors. When I don't want to give away like the whole cake to somebody.

That's adorable. Yeah. So that's— yeah, you know what, here's what I have an idea, Zach. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna tease this at the beginning. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Marriage Therapy Radio. Thank you to Dr. Monique Thompson for joining us. We're gonna have her back on because I feel like we just started to scratch the surface. But please check her out on her website. It's Dr.— it's spelled out D-O-C-T-O-R— Monique Thompson with a P dot com, and you can find her resources there. You can also check out her infidelity recovery workbook available on her website. Thanks for all of your time and attention, making your relationship better today than it was yesterday.

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