People quote Hebrews 10 at Patrick and Maddie: do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together. Patrick's answer is that the verse is about community, and that a church where you cannot question a doctrine without being removed is not offering community. So they went and found it elsewhere. A fathers' group in Tulsa. An AA meeting, though Patrick has never been an addict. The mats at Maddie's jiu jitsu gym, where a training partner asked how she was really doing and her instructor corrected him when his advice went off the rails. She calls that better Christian community than she was getting on Sunday.

Then Patrick, who spent seven years as a pastor and went to Bible college for this, lays out the part he cannot get around. He argues the church has the gospel itself wrong. That "Jesus died for your sins" is a thin description of the cross, like saying he bought Maddie a wedding ring so she would have something pretty to wear. That everlasting life in John 3:16 is not heaven, and Jesus defines it himself four chapters later. That salvation was never about accepting forgiveness, and the best salvation prayer in the Bible is Paul's five-word question.

They are not deconstructing. Patrick is clear about the difference: they name what is broken, and then they put something in its place.

If you have a good church, keep it. This is where the two of them landed.

Chapters

00:00 Previously, in Part 1

00:55 Welcome

01:16 The three reasons, recapped

01:59 The verse people quote at us

03:09 You cannot question the doctrine

03:20 So we found community elsewhere

03:41 The fathers' group

06:28 Adhere to all of it, or get out

07:16 The church as a black hole

09:38 You'd be a better Christian in the parking lot

10:42 If your church closed, would anyone notice?

11:38 Better Christian community at jiu jitsu

14:35 The biggest reason, we can't buy in

15:11 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees

16:21 Jesus died for your sins is a weak description

17:23 They made salvation all about heaven

18:02 John 3:16, and what everlasting life means

19:08 Salvation has nothing to do with forgiveness

20:22 What a salvation prayer actually is

21:25 How you actually hear God's voice

22:48 Not deconstructing, reconstructing

23:26 Why the Bible is not like any other book

24:21 God's Word is one Greek word

25:18 You can't grasp it with a 3D brain

26:37 Reading the Bible topically

27:51 What they never teach you

28:46 Where Jesus would actually be

29:14 Thanks for being with us

The Tenacity Podcast is Patrick and Maddie Martinez, a podcast for couples about marriage, family and getting through a crisis together.

Free 30 minute call with Patrick: call.pem.coach

Patrick was a pastor for seven years. Maddie came to faith as an adult. They found a church they loved, with the best preacher Patrick had ever heard, and they told the pastors their entire history before they ever volunteered for anything. The criminal trial. The false accusations. The not-guilty verdict. Every pastor there knew, and every one of them said it would not be a problem.

Then one couple in their small group looked them up, said they were uncomfortable, and the pastor called Patrick and Maddie in. Not to defend them. To tell them to go.

This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation about why the Martinezes stopped going to church. Patrick tells it plainly: the meeting where he cried in front of those men, the walk across the parking lot, and the slow realization over the months that followed that there was no other church waiting for them. They visited others. They sat through a worship set that was all me, a youth pastor who promised that a bigger tithe would sell their house, and a sermon on fear from a woman whose worst moment was getting separated from her tour group at the pyramids, delivered to a couple who had spent fifteen months not knowing if he was going to prison.

They are not telling anyone else to leave. If you have a church you love, keep it. This is their story and the three reasons behind it.

Part 2 goes into the scripture and the theology.

Chapters

00:00 It's not about right and wrong, somebody complained

00:20 Welcome

00:56 Reason one, we got kicked out

01:51 The church our friends brought us to

03:02 The best preacher I ever heard

05:43 We bought in, and I wanted to serve again

06:50 We told the pastors everything

08:39 The first day I ran sound, I cried

10:02 A prayer request in small group

11:04 One couple looked us up

12:25 I was devastated. I was heartbroken.

13:20 Church hurt, and who it belongs to

14:15 Reason two, there wasn't another church for us

15:07 A service that was wrong start to finish

16:53 The youth pastor whose tithe sold his house

17:38 The tithe is not in the New Testament

19:27 A sermon about fear

20:43 What do you know about fear?

21:54 It's a business

22:36 Twenty hours a week, for free

23:55 The church is a greenhouse

24:39 So I rewrote the book

25:23 Why we don't call ourselves Christians

26:58 We've grown more since we left

29:19 What people in crisis actually need

31:34 Not our target audience

32:29 More in common with people in recovery

34:29 We're not deconstructing

36:05 Reason three, the Lord hasn't told us to go back

The Tenacity Podcast is Patrick and Maddie Martinez, a podcast for couples about marriage, family and getting through a crisis together.

Free 30 minute call with Patrick: call.pem.coach

#church #churchhurt #leavingchurch #faith #christianity #christianmarriage #marriage #relationships #tithing #deconstruction #tenacitypodcast #patrickemartinez

We launched this podcast on April 1, 2026. That was the last day we saw our girls. Their mother filed a notice suspending visitation and named this show as the cause. No police report, no doctor’s note, no counselor, no teacher, no evidence the children ever watched a single full episode. Because they never did.

Patrick and Maddie walk through the whole case: the two earlier rounds of false allegations that ended in a seven day criminal jury trial and a not guilty verdict, the motion to enforce visitation, a 45 day statute that took 126 days, the demurrer, and the ruling read out loud word for word. Patrick reads the legal definition of abuse and shows the burden was never met.

This is the hardest episode we have made, and it is the reason the show exists. We started The Tenacity Podcast to help couples in crisis learn to suffer well. We did not expect to be living one on air.

They want us quieter. We are going to be louder.

Talk to Patrick. Free 30 minute call.

If your marriage is in crisis right now, you do not have to sit in it alone. Patrick is a relationship coach and he is not speaking from theory. He will get on a free 30 minute one on one call with you. No pitch, no pressure. Just an honest conversation about what is happening in your marriage and what your options actually are. It costs you nothing but half an hour, and he will run long if you need him to.

Book here: ⁠https://call.pem.coach⁠

Go deeper with Survive & Thrive: ⁠https://PatrickEMartinez.com/relationship-rescue⁠

This episode is Patrick and Maddie Martinez’s own account and opinion of proceedings they were party to. Not legal advice.

#TenacityPodcast #FamilyCourt #ParentalAlienation #FathersRights #FreeSpeech

Spotify gets a trimmed 16 chapter list because it shows far less copy before the fold than YouTube.

We launched this podcast on April 1, 2026. That was the last day we saw our girls. Their mother filed a notice suspending visitation and named this show as the cause. No police report, no doctor’s note, no counselor, no teacher, no evidence the children ever watched a single full episode. Because they never did.

Patrick and Maddie walk through the whole case: the two earlier rounds of false allegations that ended in a seven day criminal jury trial and a not guilty verdict, the motion to enforce visitation, a 45 day statute that took 126 days, the demurrer, and the ruling read out loud word for word. Patrick reads the legal definition of abuse and shows the burden was never met.

This is the hardest episode we have made, and it is the reason the show exists. We started The Tenacity Podcast to help couples in crisis learn to suffer well. We did not expect to be living one on air.

They want us quieter. We are going to be louder.

Chapters

0:00 The ruling that took our kids

1:26 Five months, no contact

2:36 Two false allegations and a jury trial

5:10 Why the book and the podcast exist

9:01 April 1: the podcast launches, the visits stop

12:16 The podcast as "emotional abuse"

15:04 The motion to enforce visitation

19:29 A 45 day statute that took 126 days

23:58 Why Patrick never took the stand

27:47 The ruling, word for word

31:00 This was never about the children

35:04 What "abuse" legally means

39:10 Supervised visits that never happened

41:02 Presumption instead of evidence

49:51 Going to the press

52:23 Learning to suffer well

Talk to Patrick. Free 30 minute call.

If your marriage is in crisis right now, you do not have to sit in it alone. Patrick is a relationship coach and he is not speaking from theory. He will get on a free 30 minute one on one call with you. No pitch, no pressure. Just an honest conversation about what is happening in your marriage and what your options actually are. It costs you nothing but half an hour, and he will run long if you need him to.

Book here: https://call.pem.coach

Go deeper with Survive & Thrive: https://PatrickEMartinez.com/relationship-rescue

This episode is Patrick and Maddie Martinez’s own account and opinion of proceedings they were party to. Not legal advice.

#TenacityPodcast #FamilyCourt #ParentalAlienation #FathersRights #FreeSpeech

Spotify gets a trimmed 16 chapter list because it shows far less copy before the fold than YouTube.

Her husband would not get clean. So she left, took the baby, and told him: this family is drug free, and you are invited. Was that manipulation? Or was it the thing that saved both of them? In this episode Patrick and Maddie Martinez break down what a boundary actually is, and what it is not. When a marriage is in crisis, most advice you find is written for couples who are not on fire. This is for the ones who are.

Before you can grow anything, you have to stop watering the weeds. They cover why boundaries are freedom and not a cage, how the same approach works with your kids, the boundaries they hold each other to in their own marriage, and the story of two friends whose wedding had an entire front row of empty chairs. This episode is drawn from Lesson 4 of Survive & Thrive, Patrick's ten lesson, 42 day guided course for couples in crisis. Get the full course at PatrickEMartinez.com/relationship-rescue 

Part 2 turns into the argument the whole story was actually about: whether your body gets to make your decisions for you. She has a panic attack and reads it as her answer. Maddie, who has lived with anxiety and panic attacks most of her life, makes the case that a nervous system response is conditioned rather than true, and that the real question is whether your reaction to a situation is actually logical. Then there is the prayer, the sign she went looking for, and one line near the end that reframes the entire story.

Part 2 of 2. Start with Part 1.

Courses, blog and free 15 minute call at PatrickEMartinez.com

A woman posts a story time about why she left her husband. It gets millions of views and a comment section full of people telling her she did the right thing. Patrick and Maddie Martinez watch the whole thing and keep running into the same problem: almost none of the story is actually there.

Patrick is a relationship coach, and his first move with any client is an hour of questions before a single piece of advice. So that is what this episode is. What did he actually say. What did she actually hear. Why did he not want her staying at her parents' house. What does the word abuse mean, and does anything described here meet it. Maddie takes the friend's side of it: how do you listen to someone in pain without either dismissing them or handing them a divorce.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Welcome, and the viral TikTok we are reacting to

00:15 Her story: gallbladder surgery and a week and a half away

02:46 What is missing from this story

03:14 The questions a real friend would ask

04:43 Patrick's coaching call: 50 minutes of listening first

05:50 Why you need to hear his side too

07:21 Judging a marriage on one person's account

08:43 What respect actually means

10:38 When concern gets heard as criticism

12:38 He failed in the moment, and what he should have said

13:21 A communication problem, not a divorce problem

14:01 Choosing to love when you want to withdraw

16:40 The problem with "love wouldn't do this"

17:34 260,000 likes and one side of the story

19:49 She calls it abuse, and Patrick defines the word

21:55 "You would have to be the one to leave me"

22:53 Rewriting the marriage after you have already decided

24:51 Praying for direction and hearing what you want

26:15 Disrespect: never asking why he objected

27:38 The panic attack in the car

30:08 Wrapping up

ABOUT THE SHOW

The Tenacity Podcast is hosted by Patrick Martinez, relationship coach, with his wife and co-host Maddie Martinez. Marriage, relationships, and the work of staying in it.

Free course, Should We Stay Together?, and the full Survive & Thrive program are both at PatrickEMartinez.com/relationship-rescue

#marriage #divorce #relationshipadvice #marriageadvice #tenacitypodcast

Patrick and Maddie wrote eight rules, framed them, and hung them on the wall. This is the story of the Martinez family code, where it came from, and what actually changed in the house after they started living by it.

This is a special episode of The Tenacity Podcast, cut from Lesson 3 of the Survive & Thrive course.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Talk to your kids first

0:54 The morning that is already won by nine

2:43 The Martinez family code, all eight rules

5:25 Before the pills, check sleep food and movement

7:25 What actually changed in our house

8:44 My ten year old called the cookies poison

THE MARTINEZ FAMILY CODE

1. We listen to our consciences and serve the Lord

2. We respect each other

3. We control our emotions and don't speak in anger

4. We are thankful and don't complain

5. We exercise and care for our bodies and minds

6. We eat healthy foods

7. We protect each other

8. We do hard things

IN THIS EPISODE

Why safeguarding your family starts with talking to your kids rather than handing them rules. What a Martinez homeschool morning looks like, stretching and a short discussion based Bible study, and why by nine in the morning the important things are already done. Where the family code came from. What Patrick thinks parents should check before reaching for a prescription. What changed in their youngest daughter once the routine held. And what happened when she walked in, looked at a box of Girl Scout cookies on the counter, and asked her dad what it was.

The code came out of reading The Way of the Warrior Kid by Jocko Willink together as a family, a chapter a night, which is where the idea of writing your own code came from.

Patrick Martinez is a life coach and the host of The Tenacity Podcast. He and his wife Maddie work with couples in crisis.

Survive & Thrive is the full paid course this episode is cut from.

PatrickEMartinez.com

She found a divorce lawyer, told her husband she was done, and he finally started showing up. Now he packs the lunches, runs the school drop-offs, coaches the sports and volunteers to bring the snacks without being asked. Everybody in the comments called it a win.

In Part 2, Patrick and Maddie Martinez get into what that story actually shows. Whether a man who changes because he is terrified of losing custody has really changed. Whether she could have gotten the same result without ever saying the word divorce. What happened when they laid out a deck of cards and she ended up holding 73 of them and he held four. And why swapping the imbalance instead of solving it puts a couple right back in the same fight two years later with the names reversed.

The core of it: stop trying to make the list even. Divide it by who is faster, who is better at it, and who actually has the time this week. The goal is a household with less stress in it, not a scoreboard that comes out tied.

If you missed Part 1, watch that first.

More from Patrick and Maddie at PatrickEMartinez.com. Online courses are up now, and Patrick's book is out this summer.

New episodes every week. Subscribe so the next one finds you.

Patrick and Maddie Martinez react to the viral TikTok where a woman says threatening divorce saved her marriage. They break down why an ultimatum is manipulation instead of partnership, how it can backfire fast, and the honest way to fix an unfair workload at home. Part 1.

Chapters:0:00 The viral "divorce saved my marriage" video0:39 "I threatened divorce and it was the best thing I ever did"2:02 First reactions4:21 Why it's a dangerous play6:02 The honest way to ask for change8:36 Three days off, but half the time with your kids10:45 Patrick's 2015 divorce and the baby in the box14:07 What divorce really does to kids and adults

Free course: "Should We Stay Together?" at PatrickEMartinez.com

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