How to Heal After a Betrayal: Dr. Monique Thompson on Navigating Infidelity

Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Sex, Love, and Addiction. This show was created to provide accurate expert information and support for those seeking insight into the painful realities of cheating and infidelity, sex and porn addiction, as well as the relationship between chronic drug abuse and paired sexual behavior, commonly known as chemsex. I'm your host, Dr. Rob Weiss, a licensed therapist, addiction specialist, sexologist, clinical educator, and author of 10 books on intimacy, addiction, Sexuality and relationship health. This podcast is a forum for discussing sex, love, and addiction in frank, fact-based, informative ways. My primary goal is to bring you clear advice, opinions, and feedback from some of the world's most renowned experts in human sexuality, trauma, addiction, mental health, and relationship intimacy. This show is sponsored by Seeking Integrity Treatment Programs, which are also dedicated to providing expert-focused, highly specialized residential treatment for men struggling with sex, porn, and related addictions. You can learn more about Seeking Integrity and my work there at www.seekingintegrity.com. Now let's get started.

Hey folks, welcome to Sex, Love, and Addiction, which is sponsored by and supported by our treatment center, which is Seeking Integrity. We treat men with sex addiction and combined sex and drug addiction. As well as porn issues. I was gonna say I love to talk about infidelity. And what I mean by that is I don't take any joy in the unhappiness and pain and struggle that couples go through. But I'm very interested in the healing and what are the challenges it takes for couples to heal. And I have a gift today. I got a gift because there's been a new book written called Infidelity Recovery: A Workbook for Couples. Well, let me tell you, could that be more up our alley than anything else? An infidelity workbook. So I am fortunate enough to be here with Dr. Monique Thompson, who has written this book. And I think her world, her experience, her generosity, and really her knowledge of what love means in a relationship is, is going to give us little gold nuggets. So let me speak about Dr. Thompson. She completed her license in professional counseling over 20 years ago at the St. Paul Medical Center Psychiatric Department. She's worked with child survivors of sexual trauma. She's been an internist for adult male sexual offenders. She's a supervisor of clinical professionals. And she comes from a faith-based background, which is really helpful for us to talk about. She earned her Master of Arts in Counseling from Dallas Baptist. And she's been with Southern Methodist University Perkins School of Theology for 20 years. And she's an associate faculty member with the University of Phoenix, where she's been nominated for Faculty of the Year.

Thank you.

2021, and 2020. Boy, do I wish you were my teacher. Welcome, Dr. Thompson.

Yes, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here and honored for the opportunity to speak to your audience about this topic, and possibly give some insight into things that could help.

Well, maybe, you know, I'm not— my questions aren't always the best, but I'm going to start with, what did you see missing out there? And Lord knows there's enough books about infidelity. There are some workbooks about kind of Finding healthy sexuality after betrayal. But there's something that struck you that left you saying, there's a piece missing here that I want to talk about. And of course, it relates to what the book is about. So what did you see that wasn't being said that couples really need to look at or work on?

Well, one important part is no promise. So the book is not a promise for couples, like a Disney promise of a happily ever after. Instead, this book is about being able to talk authentically every step of the way. So allowing for that cognitive dissonance where there are 2 coexisting, competing, conflicting truths. I want to leave. I want to stay. I want to kill you. I want you to live forever with me. You know, I want to live happily ever after. I'm also contemplating divorce at the same time. And being able to communicate conflicting truths For both parties. So the book is written with one chapter for each person, because in the communication is where I saw in my practice the secondary trauma.

And what do you mean communication?

The communication of truths that are painful but need to be shared. So if you think of it this way, what's more powerful than war? Peace. So how do I bring peace into war? And each person is bringing to this experience weapons of war. And, you know, getting everybody to at the same time put your weapons down is quite difficult because sometimes people legitimately are ready to be on defense because they are not done being attacked. The other person, you know, has something. So they're not always wrong. Those are the competing truths. They're the— each partner is not always wrong that I— that this person is not yet trustworthy, or that you, even though you're not the person who cheated, that does not mean you are the trustworthy partner. And part of the book's intention is for even the person who was cheated on to not present themselves as the hapless victim who must be rescued by the other person stopping their behavior, which is in fact not the case.

Well, let me, let me ask you, let me say something. I— 2 things. Number one, I assume you mean weapons of rage, weapons of words, weapons of—

Making me make a promise that I'm not ready to make, making me promise to do something because it will make you feel better, making me say that, for example, I forgive you, I forgive everything, I will never bring it up again. So as it seems, you know, like on TV, like something you'd want someone to say. But in real time, it is not something— in fact, because it's not true. It is not true. So that is the challenge of the book, is to get people to be able to talk through very difficult truths and live to tell about it.

So the one thing I want to say about what you've said to this point is that many of the partners I work with absolutely have been victimized by someone's behavior that they knew nothing about. And we've been married 25 years, and I didn't know that you were doing this and that and the other thing. You know, when someone tells you or you find out that they've been doing incredibly hurtful, harmful things to you, you didn't know anything about, you know, you do feel a little victimized. And I think one of the challenges, my partners in specific, is they, you know, I could never be responsible. I could make you miserable and you go for a walk, you don't have to have an affair. So I'm not responsible for the way you act or the choices you made. So I feel victimized by the lying, the cheating, all of that. What part belongs to a partner that they can accept, that they can hear without feeling judged?

If I can do so, can I piece this apart a little bit?

You absolutely need to, and I'll shut up.

Well, I'm going to go— I'm going to go into something that happens often because sometimes people bring in— when someone brings in faith context, then I ask for an invitation for us to explore it from that perspective. One of those faith contexts is about, I, you know, I'm supposed to forgive. We're supposed to love, keep no record of wrongs. And I now have a different perspective about divorce when it comes to scripture specifically saying, in the case of adultery, you can divorce. After— so you're asking, like, what was the gap in the roadbook? No one can really describe to another person I don't think in language anyway, not in words, which, by the way, I use a lot of art therapy in my work.

Oh, now you're going to have to tell people what that is because they don't know what art therapy is.

So art therapy is when we use tools that do not require language, where we stop words, we use our, our paint, we use music, we just use a pen and a piece of paper and you allow yourself to create. Yes, to create what comes through you. Out into your creation, whatever tools you have. You could have construction paper, butcher paper, actual posters, easels, whatever you have. I've had people create sculptures just letting it come out, and whatever comes out, whatever it is, then we look at it for a long time, you know, and we try to figure out what, what meaning is there that we see. What do these colors represent? What does the structure represent? What themes do we see? I've had couples do this separately. And the phenomenon is beautiful, where we put the pictures together. And it was like a story, you could see the theme in this, in this marriage, there in the art. And so it made it easier to communicate, because it's not the metaphor that you create that always falls apart, like all metaphors fall apart. It is your creative art, your subconscious conversation. And it simply evolves over time. Like every time you revisit your creation, You see something different that you are trying to communicate to yourself and the world about your pain. Having said that, that's what I discovered is that this kind of pain— God was being kind to us all when he said, you can just leave. Because if you choose to stay, my thought now is you need to understand what you are walking back into. You need a hazmat suit. You need an exit plan. I mean, you really are going into something that could— and I don't mean this just emotionally, but biologically could kill you. Your T-cell function goes down, you start noticing that you're having all kinds of gastric complaints, you start noticing that your face is breaking out, you're not sleeping right, your brain isn't getting any kind of break. So you're— if we looked at your brain on the CAT scan, it looks nothing like a healthy functioning brain. The lights are not where they need to be. The prefrontal cortex looks like it's just out to— I mean, you know, you can physically see this damage. And so that's where my new insight is, is that if you are a person of faith, you need to consider that you given one option, which was to leave, you're choosing to stay. You— I encourage people, go back to the uncreated creator of all things. Get his okay for you to do anything other than what you were first given the option to do. Because if you're choosing to stay, then now you're, you're choosing to, like, go off to war. It's almost like you're not in— you're not at home during peacetime.

Right.

You're now choosing to go off to war. And so then when war erupts, your choice is what matters. You're choosing to stay. And sometimes, in certain circumstances, people didn't really choose to stay. They just didn't get divorced. That's not the same. So here is where the gap was. And the book is about, in the end, making a peaceful— that is what stops wars, making a peaceful, conscious choice to do one or the other. You do not have to have a tormented nuclear divorce. That is 100% unnecessary, especially with the resources available to people. Your programs— I mean, there's programs all around the country. You can avoid a disastrous, annihilating divorce, but you may not be able to avoid a divorce. That may be the natural unfolding of things. You may have to just Yes. Start like a fresh, clean slate. But that's everybody starting a fresh, clean slate, including the person who was betrayed. They're having to figure a way through all this pain, through all this angst. I mean, it is literally something you can feel in your body. It is an actual loss, the loss of the first marriage. You are no longer the same person. You are forever changed. You know, and so there's these concrete changes people make, like they maybe have to leave that job or they have to move or whatever, these concrete changes. But then there's these deeper emotional and spiritual changes that people are needing to know they're signing up for as well.

Well, they have to figure out, I mean, the issues of trust.

Yourself, trusting yourself. So that's part of that workbook is it's not actually a workbook about trusting the other person. On some level, you have thought, how did I not know this? Why didn't I see this? So you're really questioning your own judgment, your own ability to take care of yourself. And coming back full circle and saying, you know, if a blind person hit my car, I'd say, why were you trying to drive a car? And I wouldn't question myself for having it parked there. I would say, where's your insurance? And then I'd have to file against their insurance. You know, if a person who wasn't blind but a careless driver hit my car, I'd ask for their insurance. Like, under what circumstance do I then pay for the car to get repaired myself? If I was at fault for the accident, that's when I have to pay. But in this situation, you're not necessarily— is it your fault? But now it's your responsibility to figure out what to do. And that's where all those metaphors fall apart because it's not your— Just because it's not your fault doesn't mean it's not your responsibility to be able to trust yourself again. And the crazy thing is, no one knows that you don't trust yourself. You can pretend and you can present, but then what happens is deep inside this lack of trust, now we see all these psychiatric symptoms and there's no peace, there's no rest. And I'll tell you, the number one thing I see off the bat in the beginning is the sleep disturbance. Immediately. Nobody's sleeping well when this happens. Nobody's sleeping. People sometimes haven't slept for 2 days. And I'm like, well, now you got to go to the hospital first. I mean, getting medically stable is step one. Like, I do an assessment to see the hostility levels. And if the hostility level is too high, we cannot begin joint therapy because I'm just going to be a referee. I'm just sitting there watching the fight. You know, I'm just—

Yeah.

And then the sense of safety is eliminated and ruptured for therapy because we're getting nothing done. Right. I'm watching someone get hurt. I'm experiencing vicarious traumatization because I'm thinking, why did I—

I just have a picture of you with 2 sides coming at each other with guns, and you got a hand out on one side, a hand out the other side, trying to keep hundreds of people on either side from killing each other. And they're going to run you over.

They're going to run you over, right? So you just say, okay, we're not ready. But what I typically do is the So the workbook sometimes is helpful. Um, you know, and I'm not here to sell a workbook. I want people to get quality information. Like, I like your stuff, you know.

Sell the workbook. It's okay.

I think the world we live in now, information is free. You can get anything— YouTube, Instagram— but it's expertise that's at a premium now. That is what's at a premium. And for that, you, you must look at the quality of a person's work and even their personal integrity.

You know, you're talking about someone you work with, like a therapist or—

So I, I'm willing to not work in couples initially. I'm willing to do that because I know sometimes it will do harm. I'm willing to say to a couple, I think we need to wait. I think individual is expected first. I ask couples, are they willing to like set a peace treaty down for minimally, you know, a period of time? Because we have to begin the work. And to begin the work, I need everything to just stop for a minute. Like nothing— the divorce can't proceed. Don't— like, literally just put the keys down. Just stop.

Putting a relationship in a safe harbor.

Yes.

This is a period of time for 3 months or 6 months. We're not going to talk about divorce.

Exactly, exactly. But for some people, they want to— they say, I trust God for this relationship. How am I trusting God if I don't quick— am I going to be quick to forgive? And I say, okay, the person that you're actually needing to be quick to forgive is you. You need to be quick to forgive yourself so that you can now do this deeper work on your own. You have one person that you got to answer to him for anyway, and that is you. When you go, he's— you go, I had this terrible person and they cheated on me, and now my life has been in shambles for the last 15 years. And God's like, so I had 15 years worth of stuff I need you to do, and you were absent from class for 15 years, and I'm holding you responsible for those 15 years. You know, it's that parable of the, the talents that the servants had, and one says, I I put my talent in the soil and buried it because I was afraid of messing it up, and I didn't want to mess up my talent. And I'm saying that your quick forgiveness needs to be for yourself so that you can release your full potential back into the world, who you really are back into the world. And now when you're calm and back to being your true self, you can make a decision. It's your hurt self. Don't trust that person. That person has no good ideas except to avoid pain. They're needing to be loved so much that they will eat hot peppers in the desert and skip past the water, you know. So you have to release your true self. And to release your true self means the first person on your list of forgiveness is you. You focus right there. You give your voice— okay, I have a voice of wisdom returning to me. I might observe and trust, right?

The first place of trust is not trusting you, it's trusting myself.

Myself, right. So now if I trust myself, I know people would like to believe that once you find out the person has done this thing, that you have discovered it all. I have never found that to be true in 22 years. It has never happened that everything came out in one fell swoop.

There's always more.

Always more. So part of why you have to start with your relationship with yourself Is because if you are jumping the gun and so quick to forgive the other person, you don't even know what you're— what all you're forgiving yet. So you're forgiving a debt, you don't even know how much debt there was, and then you find out, oh, I can't— you're bankrupt, you can't ever pay me back. So now you're not really forgiving a debt, you're making a choice to allow someone to file emotional bankruptcy. They can never repay. And so now your choice— well, how do I extend emotional credit back to you? If we're going to stay married, I'm issuing you emotional credit. You're bankrupt right now. How do you rebuild that emotional credit with me? Well, first, I have to trust my decision-making because I'm the one deciding to issue you the emotional credit.

You know, you have done the best job of anyone that I've heard about self-care for partners, about really looking at themselves. Because there's a lot of, well, you know, I should have known that, or how could I not have known that, or How could they love me and hurt me at the same time? And, or this, the whole process of self-care, you know, I'm going to go out with friends, I'm going to get my nails done, I'm going to, or whatever that is, what they— you're saying that self-care means trusting myself, making peace with myself, having faith in myself and listening to the voice inside of me.

Exactly.

That is a form of healing that I get. And I had never really thought of it that way. And for you partners, I hope you're listening. That has nothing to do with someone else. That has nothing to do with what they do, how they do it. Your own healing comes from your place of peace with yourself. And I just love, love, love that. So I want to ask you something more about the book. You went back and forth. The person who's cheated, the person who's been affected, the person— what are those messages? Do they mirror each other? Are they completely unrelated? Like, why didn't you tell the story? story? Why did you go back and forth?

I'm gonna tell you what. So there's one part of this book where the person who cheated is advised to do not promise that you will never cheat again. Do not make that promise. Like, it's literally verbatim. Do not do that.

But they'll never come back to me unless I promise.

The editor and I said, no, I mean that. I mean for them to never do that. He's— so it kind of seems almost contrary to the whole point of the book, right? And he said, so it's about recovery from that? I said, yes, but they are in no position to make that promise. Just like someone who's gone through AA or NA, you're not in a position to say, I'll never drink again. You don't say— but, but do you make a promise to yourself, to yourself, to put every effort, every effort you can, one day at a time, One moment at a time, you know, all that one day at a time, one moment at a time. Do I do everything in my personal power to do no harm to myself and to others?

Yes.

But I have to live the amends, not tell them. You live amends. You do living amends. So in the book, one of the chapters is about that person making living amends by never doing again. But verbal amends is actually a curse almost. It's like A painful curse coming out of your mouth because the person's like, "Didn't you already make that promise when we made this? Isn't that how we got here?" You know, so you can't make the verbal promise, but you do living amends. Meanwhile, the partner is asked to kind of you know raise your expectation, lower your patience, raise your expectation and lower your patience. Be honest about what you want. You have to be honest about because I've heard partners say. Well, I mean, I'm okay if they do this. I'm like, you're really not. You're not okay with that. That's not consent. So the other one is really pushing. Think about what you— you have to be honest with what you're consenting to. You're thinking that we can do a little of something when sometimes— my office may not— when we office together, had a rule about pharmaceutical companies bringing us desserts. We did not allow it. Why? Because we would sit there. We would sit there and eat all that by ourselves. You know, it's just a 2-person office. We didn't have a whole big staff.

Oh, yes, folks, you don't know that the pharmaceutical companies come to the doctor's office and they say, we'd love you to buy our medications or refer to your clients. And by the way, here's 3 bags of chocolates and a trip to whatever.

Yes. Yes. And we would tell them, do not bring those because you're just going to sit and eat. So that's what I mean by the partner who's hurt sometimes wants so badly for things to work out, they say, I'm willing to do it. It's almost like somebody goes on the car lot and says, okay, I'll, I'll get that car. You cannot afford those things. You're convincing yourself that you'll do it, but you really couldn't. And you couldn't the day you got that car, you know. And so the other partner is really encouraged to Be very, very genuine in what they expect, but not to adjust that expectation out of fear of rejection from their partner, fear of losing that love. Because your choice is not to control the other person. And sometimes the other partner, the one that's hurt, doesn't see themselves as controlling. But when you're saying, "If you love me," You will— and fill in that blank.

Never do this again.

Yes, never do this again. You won't ever speak that name.

You will never look at another person when you walk by. You'll never find them attractive again. I don't want to see that head swivel, not even once. And we're human beings.

Right, right. So the ultimate goal, the person's— everybody involved being able to be Transparent, because it may be true. Like, some of the complaints that the person being cheated on and the person who did the cheating, they may actually both have some legitimate complaints about each other that cannot be heard until we work through this, this present issue. It's like getting everybody out of the burning building First, we have to get out of the burning building. We cannot figure out who started the fire or who left. You got to get out of the burning building, get across the street, you know, make sure everybody goes to the hospital and gets fully checked out. Is everybody okay? Okay, they're in ICU. We're not going to be able to start this until they get out of ICU, which is the individual therapy sometimes. Like, we can't do this until they get out.

Let me ask you this. I have partners who've experienced profound infidelity say things like, And I'll give you 2 examples. One is, how could you love me and do this at the same time? I hear that a lot. How could you love me and do this at the same time? So the other thing I hear is, if you ever do this again, that's the end of our relationship. And I think, well, if the goal is for your partner to be honest, then telling them that means they're never going to be honest. So how do you handle questions like, if you love me, you wouldn't have done this? Because then you're really conflating the 2 issues, how you feel about me and your actions. So talk about love.

Yes, let's talk about love. So remember the umbrella here, the context of faith. So if we're, if we're going there, and maybe kind of in, in some of the humanistic psychology, but in any case, the ability of a human to love is present, right? We can show love, we experience love. If someone you care about Gives even a text message, you release a little bit of oxytocin.

Okay, you're gonna have to tell them what oxytocin is.

Oxytocin is a hormone that you release under certain circumstances. It's a shy little hormone. It doesn't just pop out all the time. It comes when mothers have babies, some mothers when they have babies, during nursing, they may have a release sometimes during sex. But it's a very— it's one of my favorites because it's one of your most It's honest hormones. Dopamine is just flaky. Dopamine comes out for a bag of chips, for cocaine, for whatever. Anybody knocks on the door, it's flinging the door open, you know. But oxytocin is very honest. So if it comes out, it's from the experience of love. But there are receptor sites on your heart that bind to oxytocin, and it has a healing effect for the adverse effects of stress. It's a beautiful thing. And we do love— we can love each other. We show each other love. But sometimes the love within a very tight, you know, intimate romantic relationship exceeds human ability. It exceeds what any human can do. And we tend to sometimes just go a little too far. And it is now what you're actually expecting is only available to you from the divine, from the uncreated creator of all things.

But you promised me.

Mm-hmm. See, now, here we— here we go. Now, I know some people listening, y'all need to understand I have a lot of unorthodox theology, but it comes from a lived experience as a counselor. And some of this is genuinely my heartfelt belief. But I'm going to say this out loud. If your listeners hear something that pulls you away from your faith, forget what I say. I mean that peacefully. Forget what I say, and you pull into your heart your faith and your beliefs. I am not here to torture you, you know, taking in what I say and replace it, right? But this is what I believe: if my expectation can only be met by the divine, I have set us both up for continual letdown and failure. It can never be met. It can never be met, and I'm going to genuinely feel disappointment. It's just that I'm— as I'm pulling into Chick-fil-A every day asking for a fish sandwich, they're never going to have a fish sandwich. I really want a fish sandwich. I've got to get out of the Chick-fil-A line and go over there where they're selling the fish sandwiches, because every day I get in that Chick-fil-A line, I'm just going to be disappointed once again. And I'm holding up the already long Chick-fil-A line with this demand, and the people behind me are like, Ma'am, they don't have any fish today. They didn't have any fish yesterday. They're never going to have any fish. And so that's kind of the love expectation, is if it's something that could only have been given to you from the divine in the first place, which is, you know, complete restoration. The divine, God, that's where you feel peace that surpasses our understanding. Your partner, unless they can create you and have authority over time and death, there's a limit to what they can do. And that's what I think is something we expect too much.

When I listen to you, and we all have, I hope, deep and meaningful beliefs and faith of various kinds, whatever that means to you. Even atheists believe in something. But, but listening to you, it sounds like this book is faith-based.

No.

And yet I don't think— and so you make a lot of references to the Bible, to spirituality, to God. And I wonder about the person who doesn't have those beliefs. How will they benefit from your words and from what you've written, or is it really not for them?

It's not a faith-based book at all. And I probably should say that besides it not being a faith-based book, it is very open, meaning there is not a scripture reference anywhere in the book. It is more about authenticity, integrity, transparency, the concept of you being your full self. Your unedited, uncensored self, both partners being your unedited, uncensored self, and you accepting yourself as is, no warranty, so that someone else can accept you as is, no warranty. That's not a promise that you won't experience pain. It's saying this car window does not roll up, and you're taking it off the lot saying, I understand this car window does not roll up. You know, and that's kind of what it's about, is you having that level of acceptance for another person. So there's a lot of pat answers. I saw a social media post literally this morning where this woman posted anonymously in a mom's group, you know, my husband, I went through his phone, what should I do? You know, and so everybody's coming, oh, you gotta leave, you need to leave, you— and yes, you know, you need to leave, you need to think for yourself and just leave. And I'm telling you, I do not tell people to leave. I say, okay, you found that out. Let's sit with it. Let's breathe. A lot of breathwork. I do breathwork in session because I need your heart rate calm. I need you in your parasympathetic nervous system. And for your listeners, that's your relaxed response brain. When you're in your autonomic— when your brain is agitated, Which is likely to occur when you're thinking about the affair, even if it's been years ago. If you're thinking about the affair, allow yourself about 90 seconds minimum of agitation. Just know that there is no good thing coming out of your mouth or from your thoughts for the first 90 seconds. Take a breath. Keep breathing until my thought is— my saying to my clients, while your breath is in your face, do not let anything come out your mouth. Until your breath is all the way down to your belly and breath is coming from all the way down from the center of your body, which is your belly. Now maybe trust it, maybe, but see what thoughts you're having. By then you can possibly engage what we call metacognition, where you're thinking about the thoughts you're thinking and you can see the thought and you can see—

Observing what you're thinking, right?

Yeah. And when you get to where you can knowledge and set aside when you're in a meditative thought, you might be ready to talk. Not genuinely, you might. But your power of choice is to choose time. You have time at your pleasure right then. You can choose, I'll talk about this tomorrow. I'll talk about this tomorrow. Tonight what I'm going to do is I'm going to write down everything I'm thinking I'm gonna allow myself some time to let everything I just wrote down cool off. I'm gonna maybe go for a walk, and I'm gonna allow myself the first half of my walk. I'm gonna allow myself to say everything I'm thinking. I may even say it out loud. I'm on a walk. I may say, "You know what? Forget this." Da da da da da. I can't stand. I can't believe anything I'm thinking. I'm gonna let it all out for maybe half my walk, and then the other half, I'm gonna choose to. Breathe deep. See if I can get it down to my belly. See if I can get calmed down. We know so much about neuroscience now. Exercise helps you rewire your brain. It helps you to settle down. You know, it's going to help you sleep a little bit better later on that night. And you may even say, as part of your safety plan with your therapist, you know, if I run across something really, really triggering, I'm going to give my body, physical body, my biological body, 48 hours to settle back down. At least before I do anything, especially if it's particularly triggering. And I've had clients get— oh my goodness, the stories.

It's the same thing for an addict. You know, I want to go use, I want to go act out. Could you just sit for a moment? And what I asked them to do is think it through. So what's going to be other— so you're going to kill them? You're going to leave them? What is on the— how are you going to feel on the other side of it? You're going to go and drink? How are you going to feel on the other side of it? And give that moment of reflection, action. And I hear this all the time, by the way, because I was on Amazon last night, and I was shopping for this and shopping for that. And I said, no, I'm gonna— and my spouse said, you know what, my husband said, why don't you just pick one thing and shop for that? And then the other thing you could buy tomorrow, because you're getting overwhelmed, you know. And I do have a question for you, which is, you know, as each of us— and I agree with you, you know, revealing myself To my spouse unconditionally. You love me, you won't love me, you— and boy, I wish this happened before marriage, by the way. It's so interesting to me that, you know, a marriage— someone who's counseling people get married, they ask them, you know, about their finances, and do they want to have children and all the things that they don't ask it. Well, what if your husband or wife cheated, or your boyfriend? Nobody asks that. And yet, isn't that the thing that produces so many issues? Anyway, that's a whole separate But what if I really reveal myself and everything about who I am? And that person says, you know, I didn't realize all of that. And I don't want to be with that. You know, I didn't know who you were. And I know who you are better. And God bless you for telling the truth. And I appreciate that. But that's not the truth I want to be with. Is that mean game over?

It might. Because now you're admitting that I'm never gonna want that chicken sandwich. And the most merciful thing you can do if you're never going to eat chicken and you keep getting in line at Chick-fil-A looking for fish, the most merciful thing you can do for all of us is stop getting in that line, go over there to the fish place and enjoy the fish. That's the most merciful thing you can do. So yeah, if you really— if you've allowed yourself to calm down to a truth and realize that, you know, I might forgive you, I might not. I can forgive this part. I really can't forgive that part. I keep You know, I keep coming back to a place where I want to be mean to you just for nothing. You know, I'm just— I'm doing all kinds of microaggressions and passive-aggressive things. And really, it's because I have this resentment. I want you to just feel pain. Like, if I'm honest with myself, that's what's going on. And I don't have any idea when I'm going to stop doing it. No idea how long this is going to go on. Well, am I being merciful? Am I being Myself as I could be, that I could choose to continue to be this way towards you and to feign mercy by being gentle and beautiful to everybody else in my world. So now I'm even doing something passive-aggressive by doing that because I make it look like I would never, right? You know, so I'm even doing that to prove to the world that I am the Better person. And you did this to me. How could you? You know, but if I pause and I sit with myself— because as we mentioned at the beginning, this is really about you trusting you— if I sit with myself and say, who am I?

The self?

Is this the self, the capital letter S self? I actually technically first married to myself. And in this marriage to myself, I only have so many days.

Yes.

I cannot tell death what to do. Nobody can tell death what to do for me. You know, the sun is just going around doing its thing. Time is just doing its thing. Nobody— I don't care how much power they have, nobody can help me with that. So myself only gets the experiences that I choose to expose it to. And right now I'm exposing my little short time to this. Can I do better? Can I? You know, Am I busy? I'm— I don't get any of these minutes back. I mean, finances, you can actually recover from your finances. People recover from their finances all the time. They get a better job, they get a better house. Your time gone while you were upset, yeah, and that's such— they don't— you don't get that back. So I, I don't know if that answered for you. I got on a rant there, I think, but I hope—

We both rant. It's okay. It's what I love about you now. But, um, but I, I think you mentioned time and you mentioned finality of time. And, you know, is that right? The finite— how finite time is?

Yes.

It's all good. I have a lot of couples who come in, and they've been married for 40 years. They met when they were 19. And their children are come and gone, and they're with each other. And then we have a lot of them. And a spouse finds out all this stuff's been going on. And they've been together 40 years. And now they're in their 70s. They don't want to sit around and make a decision, or 60s or whatever. They don't want to make a decision about, well, now I'll accept everything you are, now I won't. It's kind of a little late. And most people, I hate to say that, but when you've been together 40 years, you don't want to go back out in the market. And you don't necessarily want to be alone.

Right.

And, and so how do you accept when you can still get out and you're 28 years old? There's a big difference than when you're 68 years old. And so how do you work differently with a couple who is a young couple just sort of figuring these things out about who they are and how they relate to each other? And this couple who's had it down in their minds for so long, and then in their transparency and opening up and beginning to trust, they find out that they've never— they've been married to someone they never thought they were married to. What do you say to the older couple?

Sometimes I feel like a chaplain who's coming in. Because the person's not going to make it. And so they send the chaplain in to be with the family. And I don't feel any responsibility for saving marriages. I more so feel like the chaplain. I'm here to be with you. I've had devout couples over ministries, over churches. It's not gonna— it's not gonna work out. And they look at trickle-out effect that their marriage ending will likely have, not right.

And the kids and the grandkids in their home, you know, all of it.

And their community, their church. And so slowing things down, there's the power about you. You cannot, you cannot make time go backward or forward, but you can slow yourself down. And go as slow as you need to so that this can end well. Now, a quote that I like for it is Nelson Mandela. He says, I never lose. I either win or I learn. And in this approach, you say, okay, we haven't lost this yet. We're all still alive. We still have opportunity, right? Now, what can we learn? What can we learn here? And sometimes what people are needing to learn is about a very low self-esteem that they've had the whole time, you know, and they never had to deal with it. Now you have to learn. You have to learn to have confidence in yourself as you are, because maybe your esteem was in having a spouse that you had for 25, 30 years. You use that as a source of esteem. And now it's, well, how will I have a sense of myself, you know? So there's, there's a lot of work, but I believe work can be done. I do not believe work can always be done quickly.

I just want to say what a gift it is to have you here. Your perspective is different than almost everyone that I've talked to because it is so non-reactive. And it is so much about doing less Rather than doing more, put the craziness aside and just sit with what is. You can both be more real, you can both be more honest. You know, it's interesting. And I know you have to go. I just, I was thinking when you talked about, about when we were talking about couples have been together for a long time. And maybe the thing you never knew was that I hate myself. Maybe the thing you never knew is that I don't trust anybody. It doesn't have to be that I want to go off and be unfaithful. Or, you know, I took all this money out of the bank to buy a It can be that, and in fact, it's important that it is those things that really matter in terms of people knowing each other. The idea to me that couples can embrace each other, even if they don't get along on so many levels, when they really understand the other person's story. And that's when the empathy becomes, yes, you hurt me, yes, you let me down. But my goodness, I didn't know all those things that you've been through. And we hide So much from each other. So I appreciate also you're saying, hey, you're in crisis, you're in drama, all those things are going on. But there's so much that you could— there's so much richness in those moments that you can learn about who this person is and then make much more informed decisions. So try not to kill them until there's enough time to sit back and see if you really want to be with them.

Yes.

Let me just say, this is Dr. Monique Thompson, who I have learned to love, and I'm going to go visit when I go Visit Dallas. And she wrote The Infidelity Recovery Workbook for Couples: Tools and Exercises to Rebuild Your Relationship. And I'm thinking rebuild doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to stay together.

Exactly.

How can people find you, Dr. Thompson, if they want to ask you questions, they want to reach out?

How are you?

Or do you have a website?

I do. drmoniquethompson.com. My name is spelled M-O-N-I-Q-U-E. And Thompson with an H, M, and with a P. Thompson. My lovely husband, I call him Big Daddy Wonderfulness, the Unconquerable Nick Thompson gave me that lovely last name. My initials were once MMM, Monique McDaniels. But it's drmoniquethompson.com. And I— when you— if you come to Texas, listen, I'm a Southern girl. I have to make you some good— some pound cake. And some good chicken wings. We're gonna have a good time. You come to Texas, you let me know ahead of time, and I'll meet you with some yummy treats.

I went to school in Louisiana, so I learned how to say yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am, and thank you so much, and all those polite things that we should all be looking at. So we're a good couple. Thank you, Dr. Thompson, and thanks to all of you who have taken the time to listen and work to make your lives better.

Hi, this is Dr. Rob again. Thank you for joining us today. If this show has inspired you to seek further information for yourself or someone you love, I encourage you to visit our treatment center website, which is www.seekingintegrity.com. There you'll find some useful information about the residential treatment we provide, which I think is some of the best, most useful short-term effective intensive care you can find for sexual addiction and compulsivity, as well as combined drug sex or chemsex On seekingintegrity.com, you can find some useful advice and direction for healing. And don't forget, if you want to write me about this podcast or reach any of my guests, please write me at rob@seekingintegrity.com.

I really look forward to our next time together.

Take good care.