Disclosure

Let's have you guys walk us through now. What does the process of full disclosure actually look like? What are the pieces and steps along the way that someone could expect or could look for as they engage in this process?

Sure. Well, there's a sexual history that's written out. Sexual history goes back to the first experience of memory being exposed. Oftentimes we'll encourage five year increments, chronological order.

Like is it I looked at these types of images or did it with this specific person or is it more of like the action that happened rather than the specific in detail?

Not completely clear on the question.

So one of the things we talk about is, and we talked a lot on the podcast, is we don't share every single detail because specifics can be painful, certainly. So in the full disclosure, where are we on that range?

Where we're at, there is if there has been an encounter with another person that's stated.

Got it.

The behavior stated, gotta be.

Yeah. And if the betrayed spouse knows the person, they need to know that they know the person that it happened with.

Otherwise, names aren't named.

Exactly.

So the chronological order is constructed. Second set of eyes. And then from that chronological order, often an individual will write out a narrative. There's no. It's just the facts. We need the facts. There's no embellishment. There's no justification or rationalization for the behavior.

This is what it is.

Yep.

Yeah.

And it has to be. And so we also talk about a polygraph. And if that's important to the betrayed spouse, and if it is, that creates another layer of essentially work that needs to be done by both parties.

Right, Right. She will need to write questions that she might have and those have to be formatted in a certain way. So she's going to need guidance.

And the polygraph creates like a foundational kind of baseline of we know where we're at, black and white.

It's helpful to get a third party to verify truthfulness.

They are telling you everything.

Yes, indeed. And that's often one of the questions from the spouse. Have you been completely honest with your history? Are all the pieces in place? There's also a couple of letters that are written.

Yes. When I'm working with betrayed spouse, I have them write a couple of letters. One is an initial emotional impact letter. They know how they feel, they know how the behavior has impacted them up to now. And it helps them to process through that pain in that way. In a letter format. They're going to have an opportunity to write a follow up letter to that after they do know the whole story. But up until now, this is how this has impacted me. They also write. I have them write a letter to the person I thought I married, going back and thinking about, why did I marry you? What were the things about you that made me want to marry you? That helps them think about, you know, not everything has been terrible. There have been good points in this relationship because they need to have some hope that it can go back to that place. And then also, we talked about the polygraph questions. Usually they can write three polygraph questions for answering during that polygraph situation.

So after the polygraph, if there is a polygraph, the results come back. Just depends on the scenario. It may be handed to the individual. It may be emailed to the couple afterwards with the results of the polygraph. And from there, that is often read between the two parties. And if there's a third party party involved, it's read by them the results of the polygraph. And after that, the individual will read his full history. And that's when the disclosure takes place. Oftentimes people think the disclosure should take place before the polygraph. We're reinforcing truthfulness. And so the question is, have you been truthful with your full disclosure? And that, again, is often one of.

The questions so that the spouse knows as they hear it, what you're hearing is accurate. It's factual. It's the full story. Otherwise, a spouse who's feeling wounded and has this lack of trust is maybe listening to the whole full disclosure through this lens of, well, this is probably only half of it, and what aren't you telling me? And that's not true, Especially if they've.

Experienced that staggered disclosure. Well, you told me this once, and you told me it was everything. Is this really everything?

Here we are again.

The interesting thing that sticks out to me as you guys are describing it is it's not something that just the person struggling or the addict does. It's a process that both parties are putting a lot of time and investment. Emotional, like, physical. You know, there's a lot of effort on both ends, which I did not. I didn't realize that was as involved for both.

Sam.