Walking Through Truth, Honesty, and Disclosure In Your Marriage w/ Dr. Janice Caudill | Ep. 461

Hello there, good listener. I am your host Nick Stumbo, and you are listening to the Pure Desire Podcast, your biblically based and clinically informed approach to healing from betrayal and breaking free from all forms of compulsive sexual behavior. And whether this is your first day in recovery or your 10,000, we hope that these are conversations that will encourage, bless, and guide you in your recovery. Today is episode 461, and here joining me is My co-host for this series is Rebecca Vandemeer. Welcome back.

Hey, thank you. It's good to be back. It's been fun so far, and I'm looking forward to more.

Yeah, you know, I didn't mention it, I think, in the first intro, but you're kind of our, you know, our Latina sensation because you did Pure Desire and even taught Pure Desire around Latin America before coming on to our clinical team.

I did, I did. It was the best, probably one of the best parts of my life, and I got to translate for Dr. Ted in Latin America and begin in the translating of the resources as well. And so, yeah, it's fun to now be here representing my people.

Yeah. Well, and you and your husband Bob are a part of working with couples here. And many, a big part of that process is moving towards and implementing a full disclosure.

Yes.

Which can be a very challenging part of anyone's recovery. And so today we got to interview an expert in the topic. I mean, one of the authors of some of the biggest workbooks out there on full disclosure, and that's Dr. Janice Caudle. What are our listeners going to get when they hear this conversation today?

She's definitely the queen of disclosure. So if you haven't heard of her or read any of her material, please do. But this podcast is going to give you a lot of great information. It's going to answer a lot of questions that even our couples have when we begin counseling with them. Just the hesitancy or curiosity of what is this disclosure? How long? Why can't we do it sooner? I need it right now, right? When we start the process, like, I need to know everything now. And so this will give you a lot of those answers and better understanding so that you can ease into taking your time and using that time very mindfully and intentional.

Yeah. Yeah. So if you are preparing or pre-full disclosure, you're going to get a ton out of this. If you've done disclosure and it went poorly, you're going to learn a ton. And if you're walking in health after full disclosure, there's great pointers. And, and even if you're single and thinking about how do I learn to be truthful and honest in future relationships, there's great material here. And I think everyone's going to get something out of it. You know, one of the resources we have here at Pure Desire for Couples is called Connected: Building a Bridge to Intimacy. And I wanted to mention that during this series that we're doing on couples recovery, we're going to be offering a 2-for-1 special on the Connected workbook. So if you go to our website, we're gonna have a code in the show notes And if you use that code, you can get a workbook for each of you, and you could walk through some of the primary marriage tools that our clinical team uses in couples recovery. So again, that's Connected: Building a Bridge to Intimacy, and there's a 2-for-1 special going during this series on couples recovery. So a little bit more about Dr. Janice Cottle. She is a Texas psychologist, though we found out she's from Kentucky, who is also licensed through PSYPACT. For teletherapy in most states. She is the founder of Intensive Recovery Healing and Intensive Recovery Coaching, programs that specialize in customized intensives for individuals and couples recovering from sex addiction, betrayal trauma, intimacy anorexia, or other life traumas. Janice is a certified sex addiction therapist and supervisor, also a certified clinical partner specialist and supervisor, and a certified partner trauma therapist and supervisor, and finally a certified intimacy anorexia, anorexia therapist, and somatic experiencing practitioner. So all that to say, she knows what she's talking about. And for those that know ITAP and that resource, she is one of the primary voices within ITAP developing their full disclosure material. So here now is part 2 of 5 in our couples recovery series on truth, honesty, and disclosure with Dr. Janice Cottle. Dr. Janice Caudle, welcome to the Pure Desire Podcast.

Thank you so much for having me.

It is great to have you on today. I was mentioning in our pre-conversation, like, I'm, I'm honestly surprised it's taken us 400-some episodes before we've had you on because you are highly regarded around Pure Desire as such an expert on the disclosure process. And I'm really, really excited for our audience to hear from you today.

Such an honor to have you here. So thank you for taking the time.

Well, it's an honor for me to be here because of the fantastic work that Pure Desire, you know, does with the focus of the topic today.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. So for many of our listeners who may not know a lot about you, or, and since this is your first time on the podcast, would you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do in your own words.

Okay. Well, I am Dr. Janice Caudill. I'm a psychologist. I am licensed in Texas, and through PSYPACT, I'm also licensed for telehealth in most states. And, you know, my, my identity is professionally as a trauma therapist. I think everything I do is um, in one way or another related to healing from trauma. Um, so I've done a lot of different things in my career, but where my passion landed is working with, um, people who are struggling to recover from problematic sexual behavior, often in an addiction—sex addiction, porn addiction—and helping their, their betrayed spouses. And in doing that, my hope is that it also helps the relationship heal. And because I know there is a trickle effect from this, I also know that that extends out to helping their families heal, helping their communities heal. Mm-hmm. And a particular passion of mine in that trauma work is a professionally guided therapeutic disclosure. Wow. Okay?

That's just so, so incredibly beautiful that you get to walk into people's less than ideal circumstances and just be such a light, uh, in their, in their lives. And so, uh, thank you for what you do and for sharing a little bit about, about what you do. Uh, you know, as we know, one of the most challenging aspects of recovery, uh, is precisely disclosure, the disclosure process, right? And so would you please give us a brief overview of how a disclosure would look like in an ideal recovery setting?

Okay, so I'm going to own these as, as kind of my belief system, but I'm— as a trauma therapist, it's got to be dealing with trauma and healing in one way or another. And the very first thing I would say is it needs to be guided. It needs to be guided by someone who has specific training in helping couples navigate this process. And just in case you have some folks out there who are really early to this discovery, mm-hmm, what I've learned is that I got to be more precise with the word disclosure. Because sometimes I'm working with somebody brand new, maybe they discovered a bunch of secrets, a bunch of betrayals, the Betrayals 2 weeks ago, or the Betrayer, okay, comes into my office because the secrets have been blown. And if I use just the word disclosure, I might hear, well, that's happened 20 times. Okay. And my guess is usually at 3 AM, usually after a lot of questioning. And so I actually just call that confession. Okay. And so the first piece is a professionally guided disclosure. It means that you're not alone. You're not— it's not the two of you in your living room, trying, thinking you know what you need and you don't know, thinking you know what will help with healing. Those usually don't go well. And there are many, many people who are specifically trained to guide this process. So first, first rule is not alone and guided by somebody who knows what they're doing. But the second piece of that is being realistic. Like, where are you? I call it the disclosure continuum. Where you at? Because if you're 2 weeks in and you're wanting to do a professionally guided disclosure, that's probably going to be a confession. But if you're 3 months in and you got some, a little tiny bit of traction, well, if you're 3 months in, the person holding the secrets is probably not even aware of his own history at this point. There are so many things that have been shoved into that, you know, that compartment in the back of his brain. It's so stuffed, he doesn't know, and you'll probably get a partial. Disclosure. If that's super important, that there's some information that needs to come out now, totally understandable. But to be realistic, if I'm the partner, and I do want to say that I work mostly with traditional couples. So in my office, the person doing the disclosing is mostly men, and the person hearing the disclosure is mostly women. So I want to acknowledge that's not always the case. That's the way I'm going to speak about this. Okay. But, you know, part, part of what, if you really want to do it well and do it really, really early, part of what the partner might have to also accept is you can get the truth of what he can get to now. But memory is a factor. And so we're going to have to prepare for a process of, for maybe a long time after the disclosure. You know, how are you guys going to transfer information as it, you know, it unearths itself into his memory? If somebody's a little further down the line, let's say that there's been some solid recovery work, there's been some, like, adequate time for thorough preparation. Now we're in a different category. Okay. Because that's a process where The partners probably had a lot of time to literally not just prepare. I think partners sometimes think there's nothing for them to prepare, it's just to be very passive and wait for the addict to give the truth. But no, this is going to be traumatic. We know that from research. And so if we know that on a scale of 1 to 10, that the therapeutic professionally guided disclosure the full disclosure is going to be probably on average like a 7.7 on the Richter scale. That's a major earthquake. Wow. Then, then you— then, then the partner probably needs to do some preparation for that 7.7 doesn't devastate her. There are places that are— have a lot of earthquakes, prepare their infrastructure. So a 7.7 doesn't topple all the buildings. And that's the reality. If I want to come through this in a way that the pain I go through becomes the pain that moves me toward healing, then I actually have to do some work, you know, to prepare myself. On the other side of the spectrum, if we're a little bit further down the continuum, so there's some basic understanding, so there's probably still some denial, but not nearly like it would be at 3 months in. Now the addict works, or the discloser, is gonna work with a guide that helps him pull those bits of fact out, get them in a timeline, to maybe then to cut away at rationalization, justification, excuses, distortions, blame shifting, all of the types of things that can happen without even maybe the person writing the disclosure recognizing on his or her own. So there's the preparing for the content truth. What are the facts and what are the raw facts? Because once you can cut away all that stuff, the facts themselves tell a story. Yeah. Okay. Kind of with that. And it also gives both sides the opportunity to prepare for what Dan Drake and I call behavioral truth. And behavioral truth may be I can have— if I'm the person writing the disclosure, I can be completely thorough and accurate in putting my facts on that page, but I can also, through my behavior, show that I've not done much recovery growth whatsoever. I can be irritable and grumpy. I can go off the script on my page and stick in blame shifting. Or I can be, frankly, really mean. Like right up until the disclosure, maybe the night before, maybe the morning of. I can unknowingly say or do the little things that I know none of the guides will understand, but my wife will get that I'm sticking. I'm sticking it to you. Even right now. And so the truth of my behavior says, I've not grown, I've not matured yet. And so preparing both parties for both content and behavioral, that's a really important element. An important element in an ideal disclosure is attunement. And by that I mean, just like in relationship coupleship recovery, we want to help our couples move into attunement with each other. Well, you know, there's the possibility of attunement in the disclosure itself. If I'm working to prepare the discloser, I don't want to guess. What things are really vital for his spouse, you know, the questions that are really vital for her that be answered. And quite frankly, I probably don't trust his perspective of what he thinks his wife needs. Right. I'm going to want to, like, get that from her. And I'm hoping she's working with somebody who is helping her to figure all of that out. I can say that one of the tools that Dan and I created is a disclosure needs assessment that sort of helps the spouse relay the information to her husband and to his guide about, hey, here's what my needs are. Yeah. Here's the type of information. Here's where my intuition has been really driving me, my suspicions. And I really need to If it erased that, this here, here, 10 questions I really need to erase from my head because they've been haunting me. And here's the things I want or don't want. And that may be as simple as, you know what, I don't want to, I don't want an apology during the disclosure because I've had, I probably had 100 apologies, right? And they mean nothing to me anymore. And if the disclosure goes well and I feel like I get, you know, the factual truth, and I see the behavior that says, okay, he's growing, I don't want to contaminate that by hearing the words, I'm sorry, because those words are painful to me now. So there's a lot of little pieces, because this is an important ritual. Yeah. Okay. And so the attunement of it. Which means that— and that's Dan Drake and I wrote workbooks. So there is a Tuma. And the books we thought were going to take maybe 4 months to write took 2 years. Okay. And some of that's, you know, work and some of that's we're in different time zones. But a lot of it is learning from each other. So Dan reads something that I've written for the partners book and he's like, oh, I gotta prepare the guys for that. I read something though, the way that Dan is preparing the recovering addicts. And I'm like, oh, partners are not gonna understand that. I gotta prepare them for that. So we literally had to go back and forth in creating a process where there can be attunement in the disclosure. Yeah. So everybody's using the same terminology.

Yeah. I love that. I love what you're describing, Dr. Janis, that you're describing a very thorough process, a very thoughtful process, a process with many pieces of preparation. And I think it does change our paradigm or our mindset because I was very much, you know, where you started in our 10 years in my marriage when I was stuck in my addiction and offering half-hearted confessions that were as truthful as I knew how to be. I was in that mindset of, well, what's needed is truth. The Bible says you'll know the truth. The truth will set you free. And if I confess, I'll be healed. And so there's just kind of this emotion, what I call emotional vomiting, like, here it is. And that expectation, like, okay, now it's going to get better. But we didn't have the tools, the resource, the support for anything to go differently. And so it just kept happening. And that sense of like, I feel like I'm telling her everything and yet we're stuck. And, and it wasn't until we got into counseling, it's like, oh, There's a lot more to this than just the truth of like, did I go view pornography or not? Yeah, there was, there was a lot more pieces to it. And then what you said, that balance of the truth is part of it, but another part is the attitude and the emotion in which it's communicated. Because if there's not a real attunement that comes, the truth itself does not help the couple heal. It's the truth plus the attitude and attunement and the emotional awareness of the struggler to, to take ownership, you know, to truly integrate change. And I think we had missed that. So for years thinking I had done quote unquote disclosure when really, like you said, it was more just emotional confessions. Yeah. And, you know, to—

I can totally relate to a little bit of your story in regards to when Robert and I started our process. We, especially in Latin America, there's no resources, right? Like we were completely on our own trying to figure what this monster of a thing was that we're dealing with. I didn't have an actual full disclosure until probably 10 years into our healing process, even after counseling. Um, and that for us it worked. However, yes, I could see that if we had the help and the tools to do that earlier than 10 years, uh, we would have gotten a lot more support, especially for me personally, um, to have gotten better understanding and preparation and even that attunement would have been so beneficial. But I can also see the importance of what you were mentioning, Janice, was that making sure that the, the couple, but the addict is at a good place to remember, to be present, to be at a place to unpack his actual sexual history, to then be disclosed.

Yeah, well, even if he's at a really good place and has done really good work, and, and I should say that that I have some biases, and it's because I, I do probably 50% of my work is with women, 50% is with men. And I, I, I tend to work with two types of recovering men in general. One is, is somebody who knows they've got some trauma stuff. They really know it. They know they're going to have to unpack it, and they want to do this, this process with somebody who's got, who's got some pretty good training. The second type is that I think I specialize in working with are men who really, really do want to, you know, love their wives, who do want to help them, but gosh, just don't have the skills, that don't have the know-how. Or maybe there's still some sort of cloudiness here that gets in the way. And notice that in order for me to really grow, and move toward healing, which does help my spouse. But I got to know my own truth. And if I don't, if I'm not really peeled, like I'm taking the varnish off, stripped, stripped varnish to see kind of what's the, what's underneath. You don't know how to work with a piece of furniture unless you know what type of wood it is. And if I haven't really completely seen and owned my own truth, then I may not realize the level of dishonesty, not just with my spouse, not just with me, but even with my Lord. It's a barrier to deep intimacy. Yeah. And I think it hits people in lots of different ways that they don't realize.

That's really good. Well, you've described in some ways, Dr. Janis, the, you know, the ideal situation, how disclosure should work. But we know a reality that most couples won't experience the ideal. The staggered or forced disclosure is already happening, or there's been ongoing deception and cover-up even after a type of, you know, confession. Or you've got a spouse that's diving deep, deep into details that are not helping anyone. And what can a couple do in these situations where some form of a partial disclosure has gone very poorly and now they, they're fearful of trying again. They're like, well, we try, quote unquote, we tried that. It's too much pain. How do you encourage them to see there's, there's more here and it could still be helpful?

Well, I sort of liken a lot of the analogies in the process of the medical world because I was sort of dabbled in the medical world at one point. And the medical world also deals with the word trauma healing. Hmm. I would— that's right. And if I have had a botched surgery, and I'm in the medical world, maybe I'm going to find a different doctor. Maybe this time I'm going to kind of listen to things. Maybe. But I'm probably going to see, is there a way to do a redo? Is there a way to do this and clean this up? Yeah. That's good. And because maybe I was one of those like that did it 3 months in. And even though my guide tried to tell me, here's the things that you can get, here are the things you probably can't get. I didn't, you know, I was, my mind was still in a swirl. It's in shock and such chaos. I felt this sense of urgency. And now it's about, oh, now I know myself better. That approach didn't work. And notice that's always about looking at yourself in self-honesty. So now we take the knowledge that we have of who we are, we really look at where we're at now. What are the needs now? And I'm— because I do a lot of do-overs, okay? A lot of do-overs. I, in addition to outpatient counseling, I also do a lot of multi-day intensives. So I do a lot of do-overs. And when you take that, that same process, and again, I'm biased because Dan and I created sort of workbooks to help prep people. Like, what I usually see is that most couples don't need to do the entire process. It's, let's do a cleanup on, on what got infected. So maybe it's, it's often it's, I don't really need to know the whole history. The spouse might say, I don't really need the whole— to know the whole history prior to our relationship. But now, now what I need is to just drill down on the history of betrayals since my relationship. Or it might be, no, I just need— because turns out everything was okay. I got enough. I got the basics of up until the time we did the original disclosure. But you know what? There were secrets that happened afterwards. There were relapses that weren't discovered for maybe a year or two. And so it gets notched down to what the need is, kind of with that. So it doesn't really for most people, it doesn't really feel the same horrific intensity. Probably the avoidance of going through it has more intensity and distress than the actual doing it.

That's good. That's good. You know, I'm just thinking how beautiful it is, again, that even, even when there's a less than ideal process, that they're just like what you were saying, right? In the medical field, there's, there's, there's options. There's better, right? There, there is the opportunity to, to get to what you deserve and you need in your process. And so it is beautiful that, that you get to do that. But it also makes me think of some of these couples, right? Whether it's because they have to do a redo or because they're just in the first try or at the disclosure process, there is like a time gap that exists between the moment of discovery or awareness of the addiction and that process of full disclosure, right? So it's like what, Nick, I think you like to call it like the messy middle, right? Where you're stuck in that place where you know what you, what you're dealing with, but you also know that you're both working towards that full disclosure. Um, so in those cases, um, How can the addict or struggler move towards transparency and honesty without adding more pain or trauma to their spouse?

So, Rebecca, you know that a big word in the partner recovery world is the word boundaries. Yes. And so a really important— like, you put a boundary around that. Okay, doesn't mean that it's going to fall through, but we— Dan Drake and I call those wait time boundaries. Okay, which is, um, that exercise initiated by originally by the partner. Okay, in the wait time, if I get really triggered, that might be I take a stand that I really would prefer to not have the trickle, you know, dribble kind of discoveries. So what I prefer is that we— you, you put that into the disclosure document. And maybe, maybe I'm going to ask if it's a relapse, you let me know within 24 hours. But, but if there's a lot of information that you're picking up while you prepare that you realize you have not told me, you know, I think I want to wait and learn that all at once. In the disclosure. Okay, so here's the thing. I know I get really triggered sometimes, okay? And there are times I just feel like I gotta have that information now or I'm going to die. Yes, because it feels so desperate and so visceral. The way townbounders would say, um, remember that when I'm calm and cool and collect and think about it and after I come off the trigger, I will probably regret if you answer those questions. So here is— I'm gonna— and she put it in quotes, these are the exact words— I want you to say to remind me of my boundary. Oh, beautiful. And then we generally tell the recovering addict, if she really keeps pushing, okay, so there's no choice, I think you have to actually tell her, right? After you have honored the way she asked you to remind her of what her boundaries were that she wanted. So we all know that that can happen sometimes. It's just so desperate that the partner can't stop, hold it in, because it really does feel quite visceral, life and death. It's a safety thing. Yeah. So if you feel really pushed, you always have to lead with Truth. Okay. And that's probably— she's probably going to regret it afterward. Okay. But, you know, here's the thing. You know that you honored boundaries that you really clearly thought out. That's not something that you're doing to hurt her. And what's really important is for the partner, because I wrote that out and filled out that exercise. I wrote it out. I put quotes around it. He literally said 16 times, He reminded me of that thing, oh, you know what? I'm the one that created the trickle. I'm the one that created the stagger. So I'm not necessarily gonna like shame myself or blame myself, but I'm also not gonna blame him. Right, right. So we try to put, you know, and that's accepting reality. It often happens. I think it helps Um, I think it helps recovering men like know what to say to try to honor their wives without making the choice for her. But in the end, is that you actually have to— if you have to go with truth, you have to go with truth.

Yeah. Okay. I really, really appreciate your thoughts around this, Dr. Janis, and I, I think it helps someone recognize, um, that, that, that is something we can begin to work on immediately. That the betrayed spouse can have boundaries about what do I want to know, what do I need to know. If, if you have a relapse, I do want to know, or I don't want to know. If you're viewing pornography, I do want to know. Like, they, they have that power and agency to decide what they need to know in that in-between, that wait time, versus unfortunately— and I, we haven't addressed this much on the podcast, but there's a very unfortunate false belief out there, even some thinking that Pure Desire advocates for this that says, well, the, the addict or struggler needs to have 6 months of sobriety before they share anything with the betrayed spouse. And that's actually a misquote of something Dr. Ted Roberts says in the Conquer series, because he does bring up the idea that the ideal full disclosure would happen 6 months into recovery. But we've found that there will be these guys like, well, I'm not 6 months clean, I can't tell you anything. And there's like this total avoidance in there, and they're even using it as like an excuse And then if they relapse, they're starting over the 6-month clock and like, well, I still can't tell you anything. And I'm like, that's crazy. That's not what we mean. That's not healthy. Uh, we do need to have boundaries. And I think for both of them to be clear on, yeah, if I relapse, I need to tell you, and there may be consequences, or there may be things I need to physically remove myself from the bedroom or the home because it, it creates further distrust and And for that addict or struggler to know too, that anything I engage in— and this is what was helpful to me in my first year— I knew, you know, that both a lie detector test for me and a full disclosure were coming. And so that awareness of anything I do between now and then will be included. And it's only going to add to my pain. And that actually was very helpful for me of like, you know what, I may not be right now telling her everything like I used to in an unhealthy way, but we're moving towards complete transparency, and anything happening now will either help me in that moment or become one more thing I have to share. And it became a great motive that, man, I'm going to do group, I'm going to do my homework, I'm going to stay in recovery, I'm going to make my phone calls, I'm going to track my Faster Scale, because like, I've already got enough that we have to dig through. I don't want to add to it. But it— but in that time, we also knew the boundaries of, hey, if, if I cross certain lines, I will have to take steps. And that'll make it that much harder. So I, I think you've helped us with some tremendous clarity around that wait time.

Yeah, yeah. But, and maybe just a couple of other quick points. Yeah, okay. Because if that wait time becomes really extended, which will always feel that way to partners— it can't come soon enough— but, um, sometimes people ask me, how come the workbook for helping the recovering person write the disclosure is actually smaller than the workbook for the partner who's going to receive it. And it's because of this word, little word we call trauma. And so, you know, part of the reason I like— if I'm working with somebody and they've done a lot of good work and we're preparing for the disclosure, I'm not going to necessarily have them do everything that's in that workbook. Okay. But I discovered a long time ago that partners who really, really, really want and know that they need to know what's real and what's not, they're actually willing to finally sit down and do some trauma recovery work that I maybe have wanted them to do for a long time. And so part of the reason that the preparation book for the partners is so, so much bigger is because we're working through trauma. And we don't know if I'm, if I'm preparing the partner, I don't know if that disclosure is going to be written in 6 weeks, or 6 months, or a year. And that wait, that continued wait time is really painful. That's part of the research that we know about disclosures, the the 7.7 on the Richter scale for the disclosure itself, and we're talking about a guided disclosure. And then the initial discovery, 9.6 on the Richter scale. That prolonged wait time is 9.2, which is much higher than the actual pain of the disclosure. So if we get really extended work time, then we also get extended prep time. And guess what? All of the prep work is actually trauma healing work. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So it's so that you— there's nothing that you prepare for in a disclosure that's not also some— a tool that you get to use in your healing capacity. So that's a really important piece. And part of that prep is to really help partners discern the difference between what do I want to know versus what I really need to know. Yes. And if I do, if I really, if I'm preparing for, if I'm the partner preparing for a disclosure, if I do a really good job and I'm really willing to look at that and let my guide help me, I guarantee you the questions I think I want answered when I very first start this process are probably going to be much more narrowed and more precise. Not only am I going to, they're going to be more precise, I'm going to actually know the purpose for them. I'm going to know the difference between this is something about my intuition. I'm checking on my intuition. And that's a very different reason for asking a question than I think he's lied to me during, like, the recovery process. And if I know what the purpose of my questions that are need-to-knows are about, then I start to put together that puzzle. That all of those facts and information that I get in the disclosure, I can put them together so much faster. And once I can put that together so much faster for like, what's, what's the reality of what he's been doing and living? Now I get to toggle that. Oh, and what was going on with me? Right. And I start to create my own timeline of how I came to be Who I am in this moment after a disclosure. Wow. So now I'm working on my own self-truth.

So empowering, um, and, and I love it. Just even— I'm just imagining that process as you're sharing it, um, and how empowering, but also, um, how educated and competent, right, within your own self-healing, you as a betrayed spouse can be once the actual disclosure happens. Like all that prep work, whether it's, it's short, but I kind of like the long one just because of the sake of how much work the betrayed spouse gets to do on their own, meaning they're going to be so much more well-equipped by the time the disclosure comes that they, they will have the tools and the healing and the self-awareness to be able to navigate that disclosure in a healthy way.

Yeah. Yeah, well, and I think it answers one of the maybe pushback or questions we get from betrayed spouses who feel like, this isn't my problem, why do I have to deal with it? I don't want to do this work. But the reality is you have your own story, and whether you wanted their addiction issues to impact your story or not, the truth is it did. And you're really well served to see how did their issues and the truths I'm learning, how did that impact me and feed into things I've believed about myself or traumas I've walked through, life experience. It all gets mixed together and we can act like, well, that's just their problem. You go fix it. Or we can say, you know, we've used the illustration a lot of I may be the passenger here in a car accident and I didn't make the driving decision. I didn't want it. But, but as a passenger, I got hurt, too. And I can act like I'm fine and walk away with a broken leg. Or I can say I got hurt by someone else's behaviors and I need to do some work now to recover, which might include looking at my own story. And, and when we do that, it is so empowering, and it can really create the new foundation for a healthy marriage or a healthy life. Um, one of the dynamics we've touched on a little bit, uh, Janice, and I, I feel like we get this question a lot at Pure Desire, so I'm really excited to kind of get your take on it, is we can see two ends of the spectrum with that betrayed spouse, and I think both are a trauma response. One is the spouse that now is hypervigilant, like, I need to know absolutely everything. And if you have even a lustful thought come into your brain, you will tell me about it. And, and they're on that end. And then there's the other spouse that can go to the place of, I don't want to hear about it. I want to know nothing. Like, so it's like pain avoidance. So we either have like pain shopping or pain avoidance, and we know neither extreme is going to be helpful or healthy long term. So what does it look like to come to that healthy middle where truth and honesty are a part of our relationship without veering to either extreme?

Yeah, well, well, one end of the stream, and I'll just say this is the metaphor I use with partners who are on the, it's his responsibility to do everything. What do you mean there's work for me? I use the, I use the, what if my, what if I'm hit when I drive home tonight? I'm hit by somebody who runs that red light. My legs are mangled, okay? And let's say that it turns out that the person in the car that hit me is my husband, and that he is genuinely broken and sorrowful and willing to do anything on earth to help me. But the reality is, even if he will— if he's the one who will go to physical therapy 3 times a week for the next 6 months and do all that hard work, that's actually not going to help. I want to walk again. I have to do that work, kind of with that. Sometimes I think the avoidance extreme is— that one's, I think, more important that you are working with someone who gets and understands the concept of trauma. Yeah. Got it. Like with that, and an avoidance response is there's some things that happen in the nervous system that I'll spare Hugh, getting into the nitty-gritty with that. But there are ways to work with that response. Wow. To come alive and to do that. So the ways to honor temporarily. The hypervigilant response, which I tend to see probably more people who are hypervigilant at the beginning. Okay. That's also in the mammal world, of which we are mammals. Okay. There's a threat response cycle that we all go to. Okay. So if I can help that person work to get their nervous system, like, back into a range of resiliency. Okay. Hypervigilance. And my team really got, they got their little tushes kicked last week. So it's not the best time to do this, but Let's imagine that this is my coping cup. Okay. If it gets, if I try to pour more coffee in there than it contains, it's going to spill out. And if my nervous system takes to more than I can contain, I can cope with, I'm going to spill out in one way or another. But if my, so if I work in a way that actually helps me to beg a builder cup, begger cup, Now my hypervigilance is gonna go down because the same amount, um, the same amount of coffee, right, is not going to flood over the sides. Yeah, right.

For those that are only listening to the podcast, you should know that Dr. Jan has just held up a University of Kentucky mug, and, and their basketball team at the time of this recording is facing some challenges. So we, we feel for you. That, that is such a great illustration of of, right, how much can your cup hold? And sometimes we're going after details that if we had the chance to kind of come down a little, take a deep breath, talk to other people that could give wise advice, they'd say it's going to be too much and you think it will help but will actually make things worse. And that's a hard thing to hear when we're in the middle of discovery and finding out like, what else don't I know? And, and we kind of get driven by this truth of, if I just knew absolutely everything, then I could heal. And it's like, you can't, you can't contain it all right now. And we're not saying that, oh, you should just be content with deception or that they're hiding it, right? But there is a timing here. There is a process. There is a learning of what will help us rebuild and what just becomes this random thought popped into my head and now I got to tell my wife, and now we're dealing with that thing. It's like, that's not even the core of the recovery we need.

Yeah. So, so it also, too many of details is overloading. Right. And now instead of focusing on the important parts, parts of the core information that actually helps me understand, begin to understand what's going on with me, it's like maybe somebody who has a very ADD brain and you can't, you're overstimulated, you can't focus on what you want to and need to focus on. And so the preparation to really figure out what do I need? Is a core aspect of all trauma healing. And what most people who really kind of work through that, which means you got to take some time to do some work, you got to show up at physical therapy. It really does help to recognize, no, that's just, that's a distractor detail. And it will distract me from taking in. And it's not just knowing, like, because a part of knowing in truth is accepting the truth I have. Like, I've worked with— I sometimes say, thank God that I went through my process way back in the dark ages when there weren't that many books. Because— and now there's like so many, and I see people taking in, binging, like on information about his recovery, you know, binging on information about betrayal stuff. And nobody's stopping to actually do maybe the suggestions or the exercises in the books. Like, I gotta read it all and then I'll do it. It's like, no, no, no. You probably, if you get it from the gut, you don't have to read a ton of stuff. You have to start working to accept the truth that you have. Yeah. And then, and that's, that's, and I think some in this, this age, there's so much stuff out there. And thank God there are. Really glad for podcasts. But you could make a full-time job, you know, taking this in and, and not like feeling like, oh, if I just find that magic piece of information. Right. Yeah, that'll help. And usually it's— no, it's— there's a point where it's about accepting. Yes. What you have, you already know. I was just like, that's really hard to do on your own. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I think what I would have added to the— that first question around the ideal disclosure is a village.

Yes. Beautiful.

It's a village for each and maybe even a village for the coupleship.

Yeah. So good. Absolutely. Yeah. Which is why, yeah, you're talking about all the podcasts and the resources, which it's great. Yeah. Um, but then it can lead to us forgetting the important piece of having the experiential side of the process, right? There's a little bit of that theory. You can read all you, you, you, you're able to, and that's great. That's knowledge. But unless you go through it, meaning really figuring out what your window of tolerance is, gaining new tools, putting that into practice so that your cup can get bigger. So that you are better prepared for what's coming. We can miss that, and that only can happen in experience, right? And relationship, as, as you were just sharing as well with community.

So good. And one of the things I try to remind couples in this place is it's appropriate to know depth, not always details. So you need to know the depth of how far this goes. And I feel like that's a lot of what the full disclosure can bring is how far did this go? What did it lead them to? What else don't I know? That's appropriate. But the details of like, well, what hair color? What was the name of the website? What? And there are some details that can be a necessary part. And that's where I think the full disclosure, working with professionals, they can help you discern what is meaningful detail because it helps you understand the depth versus just as you brought up, Dr. Janice, it's just a distraction of, well, I got to know this. Or do you have you ever thought about that? Are you interested? The details become distraction versus we're, we're trying to get to the depth so that we know what, what's ground zero, and then we can rebuild.

Yeah. And that's, that's also though, with respect to that, that's also, it's why it's really important for partners to understand where is this question coming from, what it's, what is it really about. That's good. Because sometimes when they really figure it out, it's not about what her hair color is, It's that, that all the times I remember you trying to convince me to color my hair. Yes.

Right.

Oh, and then when you realize that's what it's about, I don't have to— I might say, if I'm working with that partner, I might say, well, you know, you could just ask him now that you know what it's about. You could just ask him about the times that he did that. Was he trying to turn you into like his, his M.O.? Right. You don't have to ask about the hair color of every person he's been with. Or thought about being with. Now you can ask the direct question and get the answer to that without necessarily needing some of that other information. And that's, that's really important because sometimes those others think of details are really important. And sometimes I found that partners can't figure out why it's so important. But if you do the work, that's huge. That's where someone can help you. Yeah. Yeah, and if you know, if you do the work to learn what it is, then you can let your guides know why that question's important. And usually in my experience, like the people who do the work with disclosures to guide this, we also have passion. Right. There's a reason that we have, we want to do that work. It's really meaningful to us to be a part of somebody's story. Yeah. That evolves towards like the authenticity that God meant for us. Okay, with that. And so if you can do, if you're willing to do that work and you can then communicate why, why, you know, did you ever take somebody else to our favorite restaurant? Right. Why that's important to you. And if I'm guiding the, you know, say I'm preparing the addict or the disclosing party. And that might feel like a real detail, like, I don't understand that. But if I get the information and realize, oh, for the last 3 years, every time they've been to that restaurant, she has felt like she's going a little bit crazy. And that's not— that's about actually erasing something, not adding an unnecessary detail. Yeah. Now it's like, oh, I get it. Now I get why your wife needs that piece of information.

Absolutely. Yeah, thank you. I, I— yeah, this makes a lot of sense, uh, how it plays into it practically and realistically. Um, now that's the beauty for those couples that are able to go through the disclosure process. In some cases though, disclosure is not possible, whether, um, whether the addict, uh, or struggler leaves the relationship or passes away. Um, in those cases then What do you— what would you— how do you think the spouse, the betrayed spouse, can continue to move towards healing without having the full truth?

Yeah, and sometimes we have to figure out— sometimes we have to put the cart before the horse. Mm-hmm. Okay. Right, because, because you and I know that the getting that information is actually gonna become more important about her story, her relationship with herself her relationship with her intuition, her relationship, her ability to be in future relationship, and her relationship with her creator. Okay. So what I might do is I might say, you know what, I want you to sit down. I want you to create a timeline that now that you know, and now that we've done the work, so you're more in connection with your own tuition intuition. I want you to do an intuition history. Hmm. Right. And let's— it may not be the full truth, but it's— let's, let's, let's do that work to construct what we can. We'll put what pieces of content that we know that validate that. But if it's— if you and I know that eventually it's going to be moving from his story to what's my story, then let— and then we just have to go to what's your story without getting the exact content from him. So you still do the work because we all know that there's an arc. Yeah. Of this that you don't kind of figure out until you get kind of close to very, very deep in. Oh, This healing is bigger than I thought it was going to be. So I don't think you stop the process. I think you have to— the reality is you have to modify and you continue the arc. I also think it's probably important. Let's say he leaves, he decides to leave. I also think it's important if I'm working with him and I'm his therapist, I'm going to say, no, no, we're going to write it. We're going to do it. And let's put a polygraph afterward just because it won't be the same if your wife your, your soon-to-be ex-wife is not gonna see the results of that polygraph. But, um, I know that if— it's probably a bad thing to admit, but I know if I knew that I was going to be audited, my next set of tax was going to be audited, I'd be a lot more careful. But I do that, and I probably, uh, then my— if there's somebody really important to him I might say, bring your brother in, bring your sponsor in, bring your minister in. Or I might say, here's an empty chair. Let's imagine that Jesus is here. And we're gonna put— we're gonna do the truth, share it, and put it down at the foot of the cross. I'm still gonna do something experiential. I think it's both important for both.

Yeah, for that. Beautiful. Yeah, it's so good. I, I think of it a little bit like advice we give people often about the Bible, where they complain about, I don't understand this or that part. And, and there's a statement of like, there's enough work to be done to just apply the parts of the Bible I do understand, to not get too worried about the parts I don't understand. Like, that's a life's work. And I think if your spouse has left or they've passed away and you have a lot of unresolved questions, well, did they do this, or in some regard, like, take what you do know, the parts that you did find out that are causing the pain and work through those, because that's going to take you into a lot of the same trauma work without maybe getting that full disclosure that could happen in an ideal situation. And at the same time, I say to the struggling partner, if their discovery led to, well, she took off or we're divorcing, because they can have, I think, a similar response like, well, what's the point now? And to remind them the point of this is that you get healthy. Wasn't just to make the marriage work or to make them happy. And some of us start there. And I say, whatever motivates you to start working towards your health, it's okay, even if it was for them. But ultimately, sooner or later, we all come to the place of realizing, oh, this is really for me. And my health is what I'm going to bring to the marriage. Or if, even if I'm not married anymore, statistically I'll probably get married again, right? Or even if I'm not married, I'm going to have relationships, friendships, I'm going to be in a family, and it's about my health. And so just because the other person isn't there, it might change the process, right? But it doesn't mean it's invaluable for you to do your work, because your work will benefit you, and in the long run, that's what we're after. Yeah, yeah.

And even men who've been in recovery for a really good long time before they do the disclosure process, those who do it with integrity, I've never seen somebody not come to some new awareness, new memory. It's not a useless process. It's, as I say, it's like reconnecting with my true self. That's beautiful. Kind of process. And if I'm trying to put together the puzzle of me, if I'm missing pieces, it's going to be a distorted puzzle. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.

And modify it as to you— as, uh, to your point you mentioned at some point, modify what needs to be modified, pivot, right? Like, if you need to change your recovery and the focus of it, um, do that, uh, because it is about— ultimately is about your healing, your tools, your future, uh, moving forward. Yeah, it's beautiful. Uh, Dr.

Janis, this has been a really fantastic conversation, given people tons to think about when it comes to full disclosure. But as we wrap up today, I wanted to have you think a little bit about post-disclosure. A couple that's walking together now in this new normal, what kind of advice or encouragement would you give them about making truth and honesty a regular part of their relationship and not slipping back into unhealthy patterns of avoidance or lying?

Okay, well, I want to say, to do this in two parts. First of all, post-discovery, to kind of continue to use that medical analogy, I might have that surgery to repair my legs. And it might be, you know, long-term, it might be incredibly successful, but it's going to be painful for a while. They're going to roll me out of that surgery to the recovery room. You know, and then when I finally make it out of recovery room, I might be, have a lot of restrictions. I might really feel it. So I just wanna say it's also normal, like a 7.7 hurts. Yeah. And that's normal, okay? And if you don't do the work, you can easily stay there. Is in the, the, in terms of work, the partner impact statement is something I'm very passionate about. And that's not just the thing where I write, where I kind of tell my husband what a jerk he is, all of this. It's a much more involved process because it's about digesting my pain. Yes. It's about that process of like putting it together to what's my truth in this. So it's a bigger deal than people think. Sometimes it's like, I don't want to do that. And if you don't, if you're in a place where you can't do it for a while, totally understandable. But if I do think if you don't do it, it's very easy to get stuck. Okay, so you don't even get to that better place with that. And once you do the impact statement, if you just— I think it's helpful even if you never share it with your husband. But once you do it, if you're willing to share it with your husband, if he's willing, you know, to do some really good quality work, to find a way to like really let it in and really take in, well, this is the way it's hurt her. These are the limitations even today. And usually it's actually do some, a lot of work there. To sometimes even develop the concept of empathy towards my spouse, the person I hurt, the person that's— maybe I'm really empathetic with everybody else, but it's so painful for me to see the way I've hurt my spouse. I can only kind of hold her pain for a nanosecond. It's important to do the work so you can do that, to that, and respond to it. And then for couples who are further out, like, you got that recovery and like, oh, this I'll say what I think a lot of people listening won't believe. You can actually feel much closer. Mm-hmm. You know, so true. Both people are going to do some deep healing, know themselves in a way they never did before. You can do, you can do, you can actually feel much closer and you can feel like, okay, we are healed. There is nothing more to do. And so, and you know what, like doing all these check-ins and all this other stuff, it's boring. And geez, I'd rather do other stuff. But you know, it's kind of like sanding, standing on a shore. You know, one place and I'm not going to move. And as the tide goes back out, the sand is literally kind of pulled out from under me. It's easy in physical therapy, they call that a plateau, where you feel like, yeah, either I've done it all, I'm good, or just, I'm I'm still putting in this work and it doesn't feel like it's gaining me anything yet. I don't feel like I've got a growth spurt. When you stop and rest on that, you will begin to slip away from you. So it's about finding either doing those rituals so much that they become autopilot. Absolutely. So we're doing them anyway. Or being awake and aware in your own life. Yeah. Like, it's easy for us to go through phases where I don't have as much time for this now, and that'll change later. And then the later becomes years. And you wake up one day and realize, oh my God, how did I go to sleep again? Yeah. With that, it's that holding awareness of what's going on in my life. In our lives. And so creating those rituals that become part of your foundation. Okay. And doing the back end of disclosure repair. There's a lot of it that's going to be boring. There's a lot of it you don't see the use for. There's a lot of like, ah, that's a hard skill to build. I don't want to listen to him. I used to listen to him all the time. And then what did that get me? But if I want to have the relationship that I really do want, If I want to honor all the hard, hard work that we did so that we actually have a good relationship, I got to, I got to, I got to develop the skills. And when I realized maybe 10 years later, oh, this is different 10 years later. Yeah. Crap. There are new skills I got to develop.

Exactly. Exactly. It's, it's, it's remembering not to, not to get comfortable when you get in that plateau, right? It's remembering that it's a never-ending process. Process of sanctification, right? You gotta be very mindful and intentional on how you move forward, even when you are— when you've turned a corner in, in that process. And for a lot of people, disclosure is that turning corner. Yeah, yeah.

I love your illustrations and metaphors, Dr. Janis, that in many ways a full disclosure is like a pretty intense surgery process, and then the aftermath of the coupleship growth is like physical therapy. And as we all know, physical therapy lasts a lot longer than the surgery. It's an ongoing thing, but there does come a point where physical therapy might end. And now in that illustration, like we were talking about maintaining health by going to the gym, going for regular walks, like what does that look like in your relationship? So maybe you're past the surgery and maybe you even get past physical therapy where there's an intensity to it. But it is that question of what is our new healthy rhythm that will sustain the kind of life and marriage and relationship we want to have. And people really can— they can get there and it is better. We get to hear that all the time. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, this has been awesome, Dr. Janis. How can our listeners track with you, find out what you're doing? Where could they go to hear more about the work that you're doing?

Okay, so there are probably two, two sources that will be the easiest. One is just everything's on our website, which is intensivehope.com.

Intensive Hope .com. We'll put that in the show notes. That's great. And where else?

Well, this is for if you're looking for someone who is trained in the process that Dan Drake and I created, because we also train professionals to do the disclosure process. And you can go to disclosureguide.com.

Disclosureguide.com. All right.

Yeah. So if you're a professional, you can figure out when we do trainings. And if you're looking for somebody, want to find a— find a professional list of people who've done our type of training and use our process in the disclosure, go to that. Just find a disclosure guide list. All right.

That's awesome. Well, as we wrap up, Dr. Janis has reminded us that truth and honesty are foundational to lasting recovery, even when disclosure may be difficult. Incomplete, or delayed. Healing requires patience, courage, and a commitment to transparency without re-traumatizing loved ones. There is a pathway that works, and Dr. Janice, you've done a lot today to share that with us. And it's our hope and prayer that, that every couple out there can move towards deeper intimacy by doing some of this hard work together. So thank you so much for being part of the Pure Desire Podcast.

Yes, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my passion.

Amen. Well, if you're a fan of the show and of this content, please subscribe, write us a review, share it with somebody. Honestly, these are ways that other people in some of their darkest moments might find the light of this life-giving content and move towards their healing. And if you want more information on Pure Desire's groups, resources, or counseling, you can visit us at puredesire.org. Journey on, my friends. You are not alone.