Infinite Devotion

By Andrew & Dawn - infinitedevotion.comSociety & Culture Health & Fitness Education Self-Improvement Relationships Sexuality

Infinite Devotion episodes

October 12Why She Doesn’t Feel Safe With You (Even Though You’d Never Hurt Her) | Infinite Devotion Episode 153
Why She Doesn’t Feel Safe With You (Even Though You’d Never Hurt Her) | Infinite Devotion Episode 153

Ask most men if their woman feels safe with them and the answer comes fast: of course she does, I’d never hurt her. That’s the floor.

Underneath it is a layer of safety almost no man accounts for, and it decides whether she ever truly lets go in his presence: whether she can tell him the truth.

People will lie to you unless they feel safe enough not to. In this episode I get into why hiding is the human default, why comfort and safety are two different things, and why the only man a woman can fully trust is one who tells her the truth when it costs him something.

In this episode we get into:
Martha Beck’s year without a single lie, and why losing her marriage, career, and home felt like “safety, safety, safety”
Why everyone you love has edited themselves for you, probably today
The layer of fear most women carry that most men never see
Comfort as the absence of friction, and safety as knowing where you stand
The arm test from Diary of a CEO, and how Dawn and I use it to find what’s true in our bodies
Why keeping the peace makes you untrustworthy, and why she can feel it even when she can’t name it
Leading by going first, and the one sentence that makes saying a hard thing possible
What it cost me to admit why I really started my old business
Why the man who can’t say the hard thing usually can’t hear it either
How the truth brings back the fire you had at the beginning
Where to start: a journal, a friend, and one thing you’ve been afraid to say

Mentioned in this episode
Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity: https://marthabeck.com/the-way-of-integrity/
Last week’s episode with GS Youngblood: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog/powerful-at-work-powerless-at-home-how-to-lead-a-strong-woman

Listen to the full episode
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/infinite-devotion/id1703653891
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3NOiUF8kMERd52klxIrr1w
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@infinitedevotion

More from Infinite Devotion
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion
Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 What Safety Really Means
01:19 Truth Requires Safety
02:58 Martha Beck Truth Year
06:26 Women and Deeper Fear
07:40 Body Knows the Truth
09:22 Truth Changes Your Life
11:41 Comfort Versus Safety
16:41 Lead With Hard Truths
20:12 Receive Her Truth Too
23:19 Reviving Long Relationships
24:45 Let Truth Wash Away
27:34 Practices to Tell Truth
30:38 Final Challenge and Wrap
32 min
October 05Powerful at Work, Powerless at Home: Leading a Strong Woman with GS Youngblood | Infinite Devotion Episode 152
Powerful at Work, Powerless at Home: Leading a Strong Woman with GS Youngblood | Infinite Devotion Episode 152

I haven't had a guest on this show in over a year. I decided I'd only bring someone on if I really wanted to talk to them, and it took a year to find that person. GS Youngblood is the author whose books I've bought and given away more than anyone else's, and when he talks to men about relationships, you can hear that he has lived every word.

GS spent seventeen years in the tech industry before a divorce left him feeling like a failure and sent him looking for a better way. Twenty years of study, and a thirteen-year relationship with a woman who carries both a strong feminine and a strong masculine, became the laboratory for his Masculine Blueprint: three elements that, embodied daily, put a man back in his masculine core and let his woman feel safe enough to open.

In this episode we get into:
Why so many men run teams at work and fold the moment their woman gets upset
Respond versus react, and why good intentions vanish the second the fight starts
The little boy trying to get out of trouble, and where that "oh shit" feeling really comes from
"I may or may not be the problem, but I am the solution," and how to take full responsibility without drowning in blame
The trifecta of embodiment practice, therapy, and coaching
How to feel deeply without becoming the "emotional flow boy," and what it means to hold your emotions and share them judiciously
Logistical, emotional, and sexual leadership, and why all of it starts with inner clarity
What to do when she asks you to lead and then shoots down every attempt
The sentence his ex-wife said that took him years to fully understand: "I can do all this stuff. I just don't want to have to."
Strong spine, big heart
Holding her fire, setting a boundary without leaving connection, and the line between a hard truth and actual abuse
Why everything she feels is accurate to something, even when it doesn't match the facts
The fear most women carry that most men never account for

Connect with GS Youngblood
Website: https://gsyoungblood.com
Instagram: https://instagram.com/gsyoungbloodmir
Books (on Amazon): The Masculine in Relationship and The Art of Embodiment for Men

More from Infinite Devotion
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion
Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:48 Why His Work Resonates
02:38 The Leadership Challenge
04:42 Origin of the Blueprint
08:04 Doing vs Embodying
11:19 Three Blueprint Elements
11:44 Respond Versus React
17:18 Nervous System Over Mindset
18:36 Responsibility Without Blame
23:43 Deescalating Conflict Fast
27:16 Feeling Emotions Like a Man
31:29 Flow Boy vs Containment
34:02 Provide Structure Leadership
35:15 Inner Clarity to Lead
37:11 Logistical Emotional Sexual Leadership
38:53 Why Leading Gets Rejected
39:30 Build Conviction and Start Small
42:24 Finding Inner Clarity
45:49 Work Mode vs Relationship Mode
53:12 Safety and Emotional Containment
56:49 Boundaries and Abuse Labels
01:05:59 Fear Empathy and Truth
1 hr 12 min
September 28Why I'm Not Threatened When Other Men Want My Wife | Infinite Devotion Episode 151
Dawn sat down with a list of questions and didn't tell me what was on it. We were both in tears within the first five minutes.

A few weeks ago I posted, "I don't want you to be mine. I want you to be free and choose to stay." On Facebook it reached over a million people, and plenty of them were angry. One said that giving a partner that much freedom will turn even the best person into a bully. Another asked if it meant Dawn was done surrendering. This episode answers both. It's also the first time I've told the story of what happened on a beach in Los Angeles seven months ago, when I asked Dawn to stand up.

We also get into why most men's ideas about leading are really about getting, what faith becomes once it stops being a way to avoid questions, and why male, man, and masculine mean three different things.

In this episode:
What we each love about ourselves and each other (it got emotional fast)
The beach in LA, and why I asked Dawn to stand before offering her a new symbol of her surrender
Dawn on finding her own wholeness and choosing to follow from there instead of from self-abandonment
Why freedom doesn't turn your partner into a bully, and why I don't set boundaries on what Dawn can do
Two sentences that make everything make sense: there are no contradictions, and check your premises
Why your body sometimes has to learn to trust you again before you can fully trust it
Walking out of Catholic education at 13, and what faith means to us now
Male, man, and masculine, and what actually makes a male become a man
Do I get a blowjob every day? (No. And the men who want one are giving themselves away.)
Why other men seeing and wanting Dawn doesn't threaten me
Marriage as a choice you make every single day
The teachers who've shaped me most, and the one I've learned the most from by far

The book: Infinite Devotion comes out November 10. Join the email list at https://infinitedevotion.com to get notified when it's available!

More from Infinite Devotion:
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion
Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store
1 hr 12 min
September 21Why I No Longer Have a Love Language (It Was Lying to Me) | Infinite Devotion Episode 150
Everyone knows their love language. Couples quiz each other on it, therapists assign the book as homework, and it gets treated as the starting point of relational wisdom. In this episode I take the framework apart. Your love language is real, and it is telling you something true. It is a precise map of where your emptiness lives: the exact spot where your okayness depends on your partner's behavior.

I share my own story with words of affirmation, how the neediness underneath it played out with Dawn for years, and what finally filled the void that no amount of her words ever could.
In this episode:
What Gary Chapman actually got right, and where the prescription built on top of it goes wrong
What each of the five love languages confesses about where your self-abandonment lives
Where the emptiness comes from, and why your partner can never fill it
Three tests you can run tonight: joy or relief, what happens if they stop, and who you were really excited for when you found the quiz
How my collapse into neediness pressed on Dawn's oldest wounds
Why love from outside only ever lands on the performance
Inner child work: the only substance shaped like the hole
What love languages become when neither person needs anything

Read the full companion post on the blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog/why-i-no-longer-have-a-love-language-it-was-lying-to-me

Have a question about this episode? Send it through the contact page at infinitedevotion.com and I will answer it on a future Q&A. Questions for Dawn are welcome too; she will take them on in a future Ask Dawn Anything.

If this episode was valuable to you, a five star review takes fifteen seconds and helps us reach more people. It is the only thing I will ever ask of you.

More from Infinite Devotion:
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion
Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Love Languages Hype
01:35 Framework vs Prescription
03:51 Love Language as Emptiness Map
07:21 Where Emptiness Comes From
16:02 Why It Turns Transactional
22:33 Relief or Joy Tests
24:30 Andrew and Dawn Story
33:06 Filling the Void Within
38:32 Love Without Strings
41:15 Use Love Language as Diagnosis
43:51 Closing and Next Steps
45 min
September 14How To Be Untriggerable | Infinite Devotion Episode 149
How to Be Untriggerable | Infinite Devotion Episode 149

In this week’s episode Dawn and I dig into a word I've used for years, one that keeps coming back to me from listeners, especially men: untriggerable.

This episode is about what that word actually means to us, why most people go about it the wrong way, and what it's really taken for us to get to the other side of the things that used to set us off.

In This Episode
Why the word "untriggerable" resonates with so many people, and why nobody wants to feel triggered in the first place
Why we can't discipline our way into being untriggerable, and why effort and force actually work against us
The real definition: being untriggerable means encountering the thing that used to upset us and having it not upset us anymore, not forcing ourselves to not react
Why we have to let ourselves get triggered, fully and repeatedly, instead of trying to shut the reaction down
The four survival responses, fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, and how each one has shown up differently for each of us
Why the fawn response is likely the most common one in men, and how it shows up as the "nice guy" pattern
Why being untriggerable is never about the moment we're in, it's about what happens next time
How resisting a trigger keeps it alive, and why trying to talk ourselves out of a feeling is the same suppression that created the pattern to begin with
Gabor Maté's idea that trauma is self-inflicted, meaning the event is one thing and the ongoing suffering we build on top of it is another
How single-sentence beliefs get written in childhood, before language even exists, and how life keeps handing us "evidence" for them
Why it can take until your late 30s or 40s for these patterns to run out of road
The different way triggers show up for men and women: women often protect the physical body, men often protect the heart, and why understanding that difference matters more than fully relating to it
Why "your triggers are gifts" is true even though it hasn't felt that way to us in the moment
Why this whole process isn't something we can do perfectionistically, and what it's actually felt like as it's started to change for us

Quotes Worth Sitting With
"You can't discipline yourself out of a reaction."
"Being untriggerable isn't about this time. Think about next time."
"Every attempt to talk yourself out of feeling what you're already feeling is the whole process just keeping itself alive."
"The trauma is all based in the reaction that we have to it, and the meanings that we make out of it."
49 min
September 07The Kid Nobody Picked: An Open Q&A With My Men's Group | Infinite Devotion Episode 148
The Kid Nobody Picked: An Open Q&A With My Men's Group | Infinite Devotion Episode 148

Every Wednesday morning I get on a call with the men inside Becoming a Dominant Man and answer their questions. This time I flipped it and told them to ask me anything.

They did. What came back was a mix of the light and the heavy, which is how life actually goes. My bike. My sex toys, or lack thereof. What it actually takes to prepare for a nomadic life. How you get a dog to the vet without an address. And the friend who died at 38 a few days before this call, and what that did to my thinking about power exchange, plans, and time.

The heaviest question was the one about what makes me different as a dominant man. The answer is nothing, except that I've been willing to sit down with the seven year old who got picked on all day and let him say what he never got to say. Including the part where I admitted, out loud, that I still half believe nobody likes me.

In this episode:
The bike I ride and why drop bars saved my shoulders
Best and worst part of RV life (same answer for both)
Whether constant novelty kills novelty
My two biggest challenges building a 24/7 power exchange, and why life never gets in the way of it
Ten years of preparation, six months of purging, and the storage unit I now regret
Why community on the road is still the problem I haven't solved
Escapees mail service, Banfield, Discount Tire, and the unglamorous logistics of no fixed address
Abundance as acceptance, Carl Jung, and the two year old running most men's lives
Why a sailboat would be a hundred times harder than an RV
The only honest answer to "where's your favorite place you've been"

More from Infinite Devotion:
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion
Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store
53 min
August 31Ask Dawn Anything: Your Fear Is What Drives Away What You Want | Infinite Devotion Episode 147
We haven't done one of these in a long time, so we sat down by the fire and answered your questions. Yours, all 6,500 plus of you who follow along on email and social, and Dawn's own following too. This week is every safe for work question you sent in. The sexual ones, the kinky ones, those are coming soon to the paid platforms.

In this episode Dawn gets into:
How she handles getting emotionally dysregulated without asking me to fix her, and why "help me" used to be a crutch
Practicing trust and surrender when the future of your marriage feels genuinely uncertain
The fear of losing this connection, and why what you're actually afraid of is never what you think it is
Why "life gets in the way" is the wrong frame entirely, and what to do instead
Her advice for a younger dom sub couple trying to build something that lasts
How she handles public opinion, criticism, and being recognized in public
Her favorite version of me that almost nobody else ever gets to see
What she's had to unlearn about sex, marriage, and monogamy
What she thinks couples misunderstand most about staying alive to each other over the long haul
Our actual morning and evening routines, no filter
How I show up for her when she's sick
What to do when your partner's preferences don't match your needs, and how to tell the difference between a hard no and a freeze response
The words that actually comfort her when she's struggling, and why there's no perfect sentence a man can say
How she handles it when she feels like I'm dropping the ball, and why that question itself was worth taking apart
And the one we get asked every single time we do one of these: when exactly did she fall from heaven

All the NSFW questions, the sexual ones, the dirty ones, the kinky ones, will be coming in the weeks ahead on Dawn's OnlyFans and inside the Infinite Devotion Community. Keep an eye out.

Dawn's OnlyFans: https://dawnofdesire.net
Infinite Devotion Community: https://community.infinitedevotion.com

Listen to the full episode:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/infinite-devotion/id1703653891
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3NOiUF8kMERd52klxIrr1w
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@infinitedevotion

More from Infinite Devotion:
Blog: https://infinitedevotion.com/blog
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion
Want to go deeper? All our courses and coaching: https://infinitedevotion.com/store

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Fireside Chat Setup
02:09 Ask Dawn Anything Begins
03:08 Self Regulation and Support
06:47 Surrender in Crisis
09:57 Keeping the Dynamic Alive
15:02 Fear of Losing Connection
16:44 Advice for Engaged Couples
19:25 Handling Public Image
22:33 Containment and Desire
28:04 Favorite Side of Andrew
29:51 Unlearning Marriage Myths
31:31 Desire Keeps Love Alive
33:23 Fantasy Versus Real Kinks
33:54 Learning Self Love
36:11 Morning Night Rituals
38:33 Care When Sick
39:53 Needs Wants And No
43:54 Support Without Fixing
49:24 Sub Dom Control Trap
54:52 Closing And Heaven Joke
58 min
August 24How Good Can This Get? Leadership, Health, and Loving Her Body Better Than a Doctor Would | Infinite Devotion Episode 146
This week we get into one of the most practical ways I lead in our relationship: taking ownership of our health optimization. It started with a routine idea to get full blood work done and turned into a discovery that Dawn's ferritin was at seven, that I have early markers for Hashimoto's, and that Dawn carries a genetic marker (lipoprotein A) that changes how her body handles certain fats.

Along the way we talk about what it actually means for a man to lead, why individualized data beats throwing darts at a dartboard, and how being cared for this deeply lands for the one receiving it.

A few things we cover:
Why circulating iron and ferritin are not the same thing, and why it matters
What a standard yearly checkup tends to miss
Using your own body's data instead of internet rules about "good" and "bad" foods
How health optimization becomes a place to lead, and to be led
Eat the chip

Function Health
We are not affiliated with Function Health in any way (yet, but if anyone from Function sees this...call me!) I just love what it's done for us and want to share it. They have a referral program that gives anyone who signs up an extra $25 discount, and gives us a $25 credit in return.
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If you sign up and learn something helpful about yourself, come tell us. We’d love to hear it.

Links:
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
All of our courses and offerings: https://infinitedevotion.com/store
Becoming a Dominant Man: https://infinitedevotion.com/becoming-a-dominant-man
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@infinitedevotion

Connect
Instagram: @_infinitedevotion
YouTube: @infinitedevotion
• • More writing on the blog
CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Welcome Back Lakeside
01:11 Leading Through Health
02:50 Ferritin Wake Up Call
07:37 Taking Charge of Care
10:35 Function Health Discovery
14:27 AI Powered Tracking
20:05 Biometrics Environment Data
26:09 Supplement Tweaks Results
27:50 Dawn Perspective Perfectionism
31:45 Cholesterol LpA Genetic Risk
34:18 Actionable Heart Risk Plan
35:14 CT Scan Peace of Mind
36:20 Lowering LDL Ammo
37:29 Rethinking Cooking Fats
38:56 Fear to Self Trust
44:12 Love Leadership Polarity
47:20 Body Signals and Salt
49:03 Different Bodies Same Meals
52:57 Grounding the Fear
56:31 Why He Leads Health
01:00:52 Advocacy and Wrap Up
1 hr 4 min
August 17The Newest Version of You Is the Most Authentic One | Infinite Devotion Episode 145
The first version of us you ever saw was the least authentic version of us you'll ever see. Same goes for you, if you’re doing the work and going inward in your life. Every new thing that surfaces as you shed conditioning is truer than what came before it, which means the person your partner is becoming is more real than the one they used to be.

Dawn joined me for this one, and we recorded outside by a lake in northern Wisconsin. Bugs, birds, wind, squeaky lawn chairs, all of it. Slowest, easiest conversation we've had on here in a long time.

What we get into:
Where we've been since April (Grand Canyon, Page, southern Utah, Moab, Yellowstone, the Black Hills) and why moving weekly burned me out
Why I've been pivoting away from the dominant/submissive framing, and why none of the teaching actually changes
The version of you that lives in everyone else's mind, and what happens when you stop matching it
What it means when someone else's life makes you think "how dare they"
Permission versus acceptance, and why permission can't be used as a tool to pry something out of your partner
Why intimacy and sex are not the same word
One year of adult content: what surprised us, what Dawn found in it, and what I'm still working out for myself

We'll probably do more of these outside.

If this one lands for you, take five seconds and leave a five star review on Apple or Spotify, or drop a comment on YouTube. It's the only thing I ask in return for everything we give away, and it's what puts this in front of more people.

Links:
Free resources: https://infinitedevotion.com/free-resources
All of our courses and offerings: https://infinitedevotion.com/store
Becoming a Dominant Man: https://infinitedevotion.com/becoming-a-dominant-man
Instagram: https://instagram.com/_infinitedevotion
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@infinitedevotion

Connect
Instagram: @_infinitedevotion
YouTube: @infinitedevotion
More writing on the blog

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Lakeside Podcast Setup
01:57 Why We’re Here Today
04:15 Beyond Dom Sub Labels
09:20 RV Pace and Burnout
11:44 Southwest Route Highlights
16:50 Boondocking and Remote Living
18:25 Page Arizona and Lake Powell
21:25 Antelope Canyon Must See
22:39 Moab Parks and Mountain Detour
24:50 Yellowstone Awe and Wildlife
28:56 Dakotas Stops and Badlands Take
32:56 Wisconsin Reset and Fan Meetup
34:53 RV Parking Requests
35:19 Avoiding Big Cities
36:14 Adult Content Backlash
38:58 Authenticity Evolution
48:52 Acceptance in Relationships
52:44 Permission vs Safety
57:37 Porn First Then Depth
01:00:54 First Year Reflections
01:07:48 Romance Books Mirror
01:12:55 Lakeside Wrap Up
01:14:20 Rate and Review

Join the Infinite Devotion Community: https://infinitedevotion.com/community
1 hr 16 min
August 10Love and Sex in Relationships Can Be Easy | Infinite Devotion Episode 144
Most couples who have been together a decade or two are not fighting. They are holding their breath. Somewhere along the way the relationship became a landmine map, a whole terrain of subjects you don't raise, tones you don't use, days you don't bring up money. Nobody signed up for that. It accumulated, one unhandled thing at a time, until the ground you could safely stand on got smaller every year.

This is part two of the abundance versus scarcity conversation, and it takes last week's idea straight into love, sex, and embodiment. Abundance is trust. Here is what that trust does once you put another person in the passenger seat, and why the couple who can find it is the one still laughing, still adventuring, and still having sex ten and twenty years down the road.

If you haven't heard part one yet, it stands on its own, but you'll get more out of this one if you go back to it after.

In this episode:
Why scarcity turns your partner from a person into a supply line to be secured and monitored
Two people, two brakes, one car, and why you both keep blaming the other for the fact that nothing is moving
The landmine map, how it forms without anyone deciding it should, and why it explains a fading sex life better than "we fell out of love" ever could
What abundance actually looks like in a man, why control is always the tell, and why he can lead, hold her, and hear a no without it landing as a verdict on his worth
Why a woman's nervous system reads a man's nervous system first, and why neediness pushes away the very desire it's reaching for
What abundance looks like in a woman, why the guard she built for good reasons is the thing standing between her and the surrender she wants, and why no man can install that trust for her
The shift from facing each other looking for threat to standing side by side looking forward at a life of possibility
Why "whatever happens, we'll handle it" is the most valuable thing a couple can own, and how it dissolves the landmine map instead of tiptoeing around it
How losing the scarcity makes money conversations, sex conversations, and honestly the whole rest of your life easier
An honest word on the in-between, why the first attempts to let go will feel reckless, and why that feeling is information about the size of the fear rather than proof you can't do it

The whole point in one line: love and connection do not have to be hard. Fear, control, and lack are what make them hard. Trust is what makes them easy.

If this one lands, a five-star review on Apple or Spotify, or a comment and a like on YouTube, is the single biggest thing you can do to help it reach more people.

Connect
Instagram: @_infinitedevotion
YouTube: @infinitedevotion
More writing on the blog

CHAPTERS & TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Abundance Recap
05:23 Scarcity Creates Clinging
07:12 Partner As Resource
11:02 Landmine Relationship Map
14:58 Abundance For Men
17:48 Control Versus Presence
24:33 Hearing No With Trust
26:06 Why Women Feel It
30:05 Abundance For Women
39:39 Shared Abundance As Couple
43:28 Truth Play Adventure
49:08 Devotion And No Pressure
50:47 Practice And Grace
53:34 Wrap Up And Review
56 min

About Infinite Devotion

From the publisher's feed

Most long-term relationships end up in the same place. Two good people who love each other, living like roommates, wondering where the fire went and whether it's ever coming back.