A speaker warns against waiting for your partner to change as a path to healing. He argues most people blame their partner instead of taking responsibility, and that true recovery requires inner work, clear boundaries, and sometimes leaving. Spiritual teachings don't require staying in abusive situations.
Don't fall for what I call choice architecture. See, choice architecture is when your partner gives you two choices, but both of those choices are both negative. And no matter what choice you make, it's still a negative choice. Like maybe they say to you, well, tell me that you're attracted to other people or that you just don't want to be with me. See, no matter what choice that you make, The choice is still a negative one to reinforce their confirmation bias and the negative things that they believe. See, so much of the time inside of marriage, we become very black and white, and we start to project our own reality onto our partner. And what do we refuse to do? Refuse to look inside and take responsibility. Because for a lot of people, 90% of people, it's easier for them to be a victim and blame the other person than to actually look inside, feel the dissonance, and make the change that's required. How many people in a relationship that are— that's failing blame their partner and expect that their partner's change of behavior is going to heal them? Check it out. Your partner's change of behavior doesn't heal you. That's right. Meaning if they change, that does not heal you. See, the work that you need to do to heal, to transform, to grow, to evolve means stepping out of your own victimhood. Regardless of whether or not you've been a victim or not. I see people all the time. Well, you're blaming the victim. I'm not blaming anybody. I'm talking about responsibility. I'm talking about accountability because I'll tell you this, I've been, I've been through a lot of pain in my life. And if I chose to stay in that place, if I chose to stay in a place where I identified as a victim despite the abuse that I went through, guess what? That wasn't helping me. And you know what the powerful thing of this is? That the relationships that we're in, we choose. We have a choice. Nobody has us shackled to this relationship. And we could sit here, we can make excuses, we could talk about diagnosis, we could talk about reasons. But check it out, brother, you can get out of this. You don't have to stay there. And I hear so many guys and they feel spiritually obligated. It's like, yeah, but you know, the Bible says Check it out, brother. Don't you start twisting scripture. The Lord doesn't want you staying in something that's clearly toxic and dysfunctional and damaging to you and everybody else in your life. He doesn't. And check it out, sometimes it means you need to take a separation. Sometimes it means that you need to send a clear message, an actual shooting of a flare in the air to say, hey, Here's an SOS signal that I'm not tolerating toxicity in my life. I'm not tolerating dysfunction in my life. I'm not tolerating being a victim anymore. I'm not tolerating staying powerless. I'm not tolerating walking on eggshells. I'm not tolerating living in fear. I'm not tolerating any of that because I know what I want, but it starts first with me. Because if I stay a victim and I enter a relationship with a healthy person, do you think that relationship is ever going to be healthy? Answer: no. Rhetorical question. In order to have a healthy relationship, both people have to be healthy. But see, it starts with us. Yeah, well, it takes two to tango. No, it actually takes one. It takes one person to say enough is enough. It takes one person to draw the line in the sand. It takes one person to make the decision to step out of chaos and into something new, to step out of dysfunction and into something new, to step out of something that has clearly been identified as disruptive to my mental health, my sanity, and my spiritual growth, and say, hey, okay, God, I guess it's not happening to me. I guess I'm not a victim anymore. I guess it's happening for me. And yeah, it was hard, and yeah, it was abusive. Let's call it what it is. But I don't want to live in the remnants of this abuse. I don't want to live as a damaged person for the rest of my life. Because there's somebody out there right now that wants to have a relationship with me, and they're waiting for me to become healthy. Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. That person is actively waiting for you to become healthy, and God is only going to allow that connection to take place when you are ready. So do the work and know that you don't attract what you want, you attract who you are. When we're hurt, when we're traumatized, we attract traumatized people. And in no way, shape, or form is this a message validating anything. I'm just speaking facts from a guy who has been through a lot in his life, a lot of pain. Swatting cockroaches off me in an apartment in downtown Los Angeles, with a needle hanging out of my neck in a Starbucks bathroom. In toxic and damaging and abusive relationships, in situations that nearly cost me my life. And I'm telling you this to tell you something: that's not your identity. You don't have to stay there. You don't have to be— you don't have to live in your brokenness. You don't have to live right in the wounds and the scars and all the pain and all the damage that life has dealt you. Life is pain, and life isn't fair. And you know what? I'm glad it's not fair, because if life was fair, I would have been dead a long time ago. If life was fair, I would have got what I had coming to me a long time ago. God loves you, and God didn't call you to live in brokenness. He says that we're more than a conqueror. We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. No weapon formed against us shall prosper. He said that he's got good plans for us, not to harm us, plans to give us a hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11. God has a plan for you, and that plan does not involve you living in the shackles and dragging around the ball and chain of your past, to live in the damage that somebody else caused in your life. It's time to heal, because I'm speaking to you as a wounded warrior, a man who had to walk through the fire and be forged by it, a man who had to look at himself, look at his pain, look at his shadow. To gain everything in his life that he always wanted, because it all starts inside. That's why inside the Academy we have the Inside Out Method. Can't fix the inside from the outside. There is no relationship that ever fixes you. There is no change in your partner's behavior that ever heals you. It's all done between you and the man upstairs.
