Thrive Beyond Pornography

Check out our webinar at zachspafford.com/freecall

First, we want to announce here on the podcast that this is the year!  

Darcy and I have built a world class membership for you and your loved ones to come and make 2021 your year to finally put pornography behind you and as a special offer, you can be a founding member for less than the cost of one date night each month. 

Get a year pass as a founding member, lock in this price forever, and make 2021 the year you stop feeling so frustrated and overwhelmed and start feeling more confident, fulfilled and successful!  

We can help you do that.

We are going to get you there and have fun in the process.  

We are going to have seven different ways you can get help in the membership. 

We are going to have a monthly workshop, where we take a deep dive on one of the skills you need to get pornography out of your life. 

Then we are going to have six monthly calls for coaching and Q&A. 2 for those dealing with pornography, run by me. 2 for spouses and 2 for parents. 

IF you are dealing with pornography in your life, in your marriage, or in your household , this is the perfect moment to set yourself up so 2021 is your year. 

We can help you do that. 

As part of our last webinar we had two very interesting questions come up in our discussion and I wanted to highlight them here with the help of my sweet heart

What is the catalyst that gets the wife to jump over the anger and betrayal issues, my wife has been upset and angry for 11 years now.

I’m a wife. I’d like to know how you rebuild trust, when lying is such a big part of the pornography compulsion addiction or problem?

If you would like to come to our next free webinar, you can by signing up at zachspafford.com/freecall or click the “Free Webinar” link at zachspafford.com

We love having people come to our calls and work through some of the very deeply held difficulties that have been part of their struggle to overcome pornography use in their marriages. These calls are free and are so helpful at getting people started on the road to a life where pornography doesn’t intrude on their happiness. 

These two questions boil down to essentially one thing.  “How do I trust and even love my spouse again?”

Darcy: I think it’s really important to recognize here that no one is requiring that you stay.  You can choose to leave this situation.  You may not like what that looks like for any number of reasons but staying or going is 100% your responsibility and your choice. 

-       That perspective is essential to building the life that you want, not just in terms of a marriage where pornography has been present.  

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Zach: I think it is also really important to see that the men who are struggling with this issue are almost invariably, earnestly trying and have desire to eliminate it from their lives. 

-       I’ve spoken to so many men and women who struggle with pornography use in their lives and not one that I’ve come across has said, “I don’t want to give this up, but my spouse says I have to.”

-       Their struggle is real and they are trying to be the best they can. 

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1.     The behavior of an individual is about that person trying to feel good. 

a.     We’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but maybe we’ll just put a fine point on this. 

b.     Our lower brain is geared toward helping keep us from feeling bad and is not very good at distinguishing between actual physical danger and the pain of feeling lonely, sad, stressed, tired, hungry or angry. 

c.     As a result it looks for ways to keep us from having to endure pain. 

d.     In doing so it creates habits that it engages at various times to avoid that pain. 

e.     A good example of this is food. 

f.      Lots of us eat when we feel uncomfortable. 

g.     It is pretty common to find that after a long stressful day, you’ll have eaten more than your fair share of the delicious things around you.  

h.     I think it would be a pretty thin argument for me to say to darcy, “I can never trust you again because you keep eating all the Nutella in our house”

i.      We would seek to understand what is going on, why this keeps occurring and help that person find ways to eliminate that action without making it about us

j.      

2.     If you never knew would you be, betrayed?

a.     This question is a good exercise to help understand that what you are choosing to believe about the behavior is what is creating your pain, not the behavior itself. 

b.     

3.     Is demanding your spouse change their behavior something you would tolerate?

a.     Let’s talk about food. 

b.     What would you do if your spouse all of a sudden started demanding that you stop eating meat?

c.     Or only eat fruit in its natural season?

d.     Not only do they demand it, they get really upset and threaten divorce if you don’t stop

e.     They tell you that every bacon cheese burger hurts them, makes them feel like less of a person and that when you eat something that isn’t part of what they make you, it is a direct assault on your marriage

f.      That might sound absurd.  

g.     It isn’t a perfect comparison

h.     We think it is an apt one

i.      

4.     Losing what you thought your marriage would be or was doesn’t mean you’ve lost your marriage.

a.     This is a really interesting and important point

b.     Our marriage is different than it was when we first got married

c.     Our expectations are different than they were when we fell in love

d.     Our beliefs, values and personal traits are different too

e.     The truth about marriage is that your marriage is nothing like you thought it would be.

f.      It is a very different, more real, more difficult, more fun thing than we could have ever imagined. 

g.     No one could have told me I would be working for myself 

h.     Much less have 8 kids and 3 cat. 

i.      I could have predicted a dog

j.      but have always said no to. Animals 

k.     

l.      

5.     Choose to trust

Darcy: A word that comes up often is “betrayal”

-       Just want to give a quick run down of what that word means and how understanding it might help us see this issue more clearly.

-       Betrayal is “the action of betraying one's country, a group, or a person; treachery.”

-       It is synonymous with duplicity and deception. 

-       As the woman from the webinar noted in her question, she felt that lying was such a big part of the issue and wanted to build trust back into the marriage. 

-       One of the things that we all deal with in marriage is when our spouses are not 100% forthcoming with their problems, actions and even wants.

-       In the broadest definition of betrayal, all of us have, at one time or another betrayed our spouse. 

-       Choosing to trust each other is a continual act of intimacy that over the lifetime of a marriage is wiped away and rebuilt like a sandcastle on the beach. 

Zach:

-       I don’t think darcy has ever held back a secret from me

-       But there are definitely things that we have agreed to in our marriage that she has not upheld 

-       What I tend to think we do is say, “this is worse than that.”

-       Which I don’t have a problem with per se

-       When it becomes a situation where you are being the victim continuously once you know what the new situation is, then that is a recipe for misery. 

Darcy:

-       To avoid that, decide, two things:

o   1. Will I stay or will I go?

o   2. Will I choose happiness, compassion and love by not making this about me?

-       Once you decide those two things, the path is clear. 

-       If you stay and you are choosing happiness, compassion and love, not making this about you, then you are choosing trust. 

-       If you choose to go, then it is simple, you don’t have to trust. 

-       If you choose to continue to make your spouse’s behavior about you, then it will be hard to stay. 

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Join the Mastery Membership at Founder Pricing by going to zachspafford.com

This interview with Ashlee Ayre is meant to give hope and a path forward to anyone who is dealing with pornography use in their life as a teen.

zachspafford.com/thestuff for the mini course for wives mentioned in today's show.

Your brain is probably lying to you

One of the things that happens when we start down the path of buffering is that our brains will tell us things that are not true. 

It will try subtle phrases that it knows have worked in the past and that have taken you down the path of your buffer before.  

It does this because a little lie is ok most of the time and especially if it is said to make someone feel ok. 

You know what I mean if you’ve ever told your spouse that you loved her in that dress when you really hated it.  

Little white lies are actually pretty normal, simple stories that we all use to grease the wheels of social interaction. 

You wouldn’t tell your boss that you absolutely can’t stand being in meetins with him because he never shuts up.  So when he asks, “do you think we got the message across?” rather than saying, ‘yeah, you repeated yourself about 8 times” you say, “I’m certain the team knows what you were trying to convey.”

We also do this with our kids, we indulge them with stories that, while not strictly true, help us and help them navigate the world around us.  

The easter bunny and santa claus are examples of this, but also when we are encouraging our children to accomplish something they’ve never done before we tell them, “I know you can do it” when you know no such thing, but you simply think it will help them try. 

what we say to others, while not about being deceitful, can often be construed as not quite truthful when put under strict scrutiny. 

Our brains use this same capacity to keep our external interactions running smoothly on our internal dialogue as well. 

The phrase my brain used to tell me “This is the last time”

I remember distinctly being upstairs in our Chugiak Alaska home as a kid, tucked away in the cubby under my parents water bed.  

It was always warm in there and since we lived in Alaska, it was a great place to hang out, read a book and be alone. 

By that point in my life I had been taught that masturbation was to be avoided so there I was, warm and cozy and wrestling with the hormones of a pubescent boy. 

I told myself, “this will be the last time and then I’ll never do it again.”

It made my decision to masturbate easier.  It was a final farewell.

It made it so that immediately afterward I felt good about myself.  I felt like I was going to follow through with that promise I made to myself. 

We do this with food too. “I’ll start my diet on Monday.”

You’ve already not followed your diet today, it’s ok if you don’t follow it the rest of the day. 

These are some of the things it says to help us feel better when we are not doing the things that we said we would.

These are the little white lies that grease the wheels of feeling uncomfortable.  

The simple thoughts that, when you examine them closely, often turn out to be only partially or completely untrue. 

Our brain lies because it wants us to feel good. 

It wants us to know that we are going to be ok, that we are safe, that we will survive. 

When we choose to believe these stories our brain tells us we get immediate relief from the discomfort that we are feeling by saying yes to a buffer that we may not really want in our lives. 

For instance, it’s the holidays, I have a bag of white chocolate mint pretzels in the house.

I also have been working on not eating mindlessly and eating healthily. 

When I see those pretzels my brain will tell me, “it’s not that bad, you’ll just have one.” 

I grab one and chomp it down. 

Then, to keep me from feeling the discomfort of having to stop eating them and the discomfort that will come because I now have eaten something that wasn’t really going to help me reach my goals my brain will offer me a new thought.  “It’s not that bad.”

“You’re already here you might as well keep going” 

My brain isn’t outright trying to lie to me, it is just trying to make me feel better when it knows there is discomfort on my horizon. 

So how do we deal with our brain lying to us when we really want to stick to our goals and become the masters of self?

And if you have questions about this topic or anything we discuss on the podcast, register for our free webinar Sunday night December 6 at 8 Mountain time. There will be a link in the show notes or you can go to zachspafford.com/freecall

The first thing you are going to want to master so you can work with your brain and not fight against it is going to be, recognizing the urge. 

Urges are thoughts and feelings that intensely drive us to actions that feel better than our current state. 

To get to a place where you can manage these urges you first have to start to recognize them.  

You’ll have to pay attention to when you are uncomfortable and be willing to question those thoughts and feelings and delay action.

Delaying action here or withholding action is one of the hardest things we do.  People are set up to act, there is a well known principle called action bias that says we would rather act than wait.

Once you notice the thoughts and urges The next thing you’ll need to do is question them. 

Why am I feeling this way?  can I just feel this instead of doing anything about it? What is bringing this up for me? 

This process of having a discussion with your brain is key to getting to the root of the issue. 

For me when I was eating those delicious chocolate covered pretzels, I was bored, and tired.  

It would be more in line with the purposeful and intentional person I want to be to put the bag down and go to bed. 

Having the conversation, without judgement helps us determine what we really want and gives us a better understanding of how this request for action from our brain will play out in our long term lives. 

The last thing you need to do with those thoughts and urges is feel them to their fullest.  

This is a little difficult at times because sometimes we feel like our feelings go on and on.  But if we just stick to one feeling at a time, it takes only about 90 seconds to go from beginning to end. 

That’s because our feelings are chemicals in our bodies that run a course.  Just like when you feel happy, it doesn’t last forever, when we feel hungry or lonely it won’t last forever, as long as we don’t keep repeating the story in new ways, question the thoughts that brought up the feelings and feel what we are feeling to the fullest. 

So, the next time your brain tries to pull one over on you and talk you into buffering with food or pornography or anything that you have chosen to quit but don’t quite seem to have it kicked, take a moment and ask, is my brain telling me the truth about what it’s asking me to do?

Black Friday sale

An interview with Eric and Jackie, a couple who has been coached by Zach and Darcy through pornography issues in their marriage.

https://www.zachspafford.com/freecall

https://www.zachspafford.com/workwithme

https://calendly.com/masterycoach/30-min-consult-darcy?month=2020-11

Motivation and willpower aren’t enough. 

When I was about 14 years old I told myself that I wasn’t going to do this any more.  I knew what I was doing was not really something that I wanted to be doing but felt like I had to just get the right motivation and put some willpower to it and it would be done.  

I could quit this.  I wanted to be the kind of kid who didn’t have to feel ashamed of who I was when people weren’t looking.  

This was around the time I went to my first youth conference, I’m pretty sure it was in Seward Alaska, at some high school and it was a blast.  

The theme song was Fly like an eagle by the steve miller band. Pretty sure that is a not so veiled reference to getting high from the same band that brought you the line, ‘some people call me a space cowboy, some call me the gangster of love’  - but as kids we just went along with it and enjoyed our time learning about the gospel with our friends, meeting new friends from around Alaska and singing along whenever the leaders played the song, “time keeps on slippin into the future.”

I came back more motivated than ever to be done with masturbation.

The thing about motivation and willpower are that they are unreliable partners. 

I’ve talked about willpower being a trap and how it is the wrong tool in episode 38.  

Let’s talk about motivation. 

Motivation is fleeting, it comes, it goes. It usually only sticks around for a little while until some other emotion takes over our current moment. 

Anyone who has dieted knows this.  We are forever fighting the battle of the bulge in this country and part of the reason is, we use motivation to start strong and then, when that motivation is all used up, because emotions all fade eventually, we haven’t built the habits that we need to behave the way we think we wanted to when we were motivated toward the end result. 

As I have been reading the book, tiny habits by bj fogg I have noticed that is what I was doing as a young man working to eliminate a behavior that had been keeping me from being my best self.  

This problem didn’t go away as I got older because, as BJ puts it, my behavior “was a design issue, not a character flaw.”

What I needed to do, and what I eventually did, long before I read BJ’s book was create a series of habits that crowded out my pornography and masturbation habits.  I undermined what they were giving me by creating habits that gave me more.  

And, just like the examples that BJ uses in his book, when I lapsed back into old habits, I didn’t look at it as a failure that impugned my character and made me irredeemable and broken. I saw it as a moment to learn how my designed behaviors had worked and how they could be improved. 

I’ve always felt like a tinkerer.  My wife is often amazed at the things I do when it comes to building and creating and fixing the things in our home.  I love to use tools and build and create, design and refine. 

When I stepped back from 12 steps and councilors about 8 years ago, that was the same attitude that I brought to my pornography habit.  

So, I want to give you two, tiny habits that I have identified from those years that helped me create new habits that helped me so I could see pornography as a problem I had outgrown and no longer needed to help me feel better. 

If you are someone who needs help with a pornography habit and wants to work with me on it, go to my website, zachspafford.com/workwithme and set up a consult with me.  I can tell you how you can get the one on one help that you want to get to being worthy and free and clear from this trial in your life. 

The first habit was a really simple phrase.  Whenever I would begin to feel the urge to use my phone to look at pornography or get a phrase from my thoughts that would say something like, ‘now would be a good time, you’ll be all alone’ I would stop what I was doing. 

Just for a few moments, it didn’t even have to be 10 seconds as I got better at it. 

I would center myself, breath deeply and say, I can totally look at pornography if that’s what I really want.  

Those words, usually under my breath, but both physically and audibly to myself.  

Then I would, as if I were looking the moment in the eyes and addressing it like a person that I loved and respected – I realize now that I was addressing someone that I wanted to love and respect, myself – I would just wait for the urge to subside, as if it were answering me.  

Occasionally, I would use pornography in those moments.  

More often, the urge would pass, I would emerge from that conversation with myself pleased and more relaxed than when I went into that moment. 

It was a simple ritual that freed me from the fight that I had been waging against myself. 

It kept me grounded in my agency and in my higher purpose of me being a better version of me.  The one that didn’t use pornography. 

At the time I didn’t know this, but that tiny ritual was the kind of habit that bj talks about in his book.  It was simple, took little time and pushed me in the general direction I wanted to go without the need to dig into willpower or motivation.  

Some of you might be saying, ‘well, I don’t want to give myself permission to view pornography, that would mean that I am going against my moral compass and what I believe’

To that I often say to my clients when they believe that is true, you already have permission to view pornography.  It is inherent in the reality that you are able to choose between right and wrong, good and evil, coke and pepsi. 

But there’s a key in that phrase that really made this work for me.  “if that is what I really want” 

Sometimes we want things that aren’t good for us.  Like rootbeer floats.  

But if we were to have them all the time, we’d probably feel really crummy about ourselves.  

That phrase acknowledges that middle ground and clears the way for a conscious decision based on what you want, not just in the moment but over the long term. 

The second tiny habit that I had was simple but profound.  

Whenever I was tempted to give up or think that it was too difficult to keep up the streak I had built and believe that no one was perfect and that I deserved a break I would just step into my own shoes in an hour. 

I would just take a minute, I would imagine where I would be, what I would be doing, why I would be there and how I had gotten there. 

I would see who was around me, I would think about their relationship with me.  Then, from that place I would think about me, where I was right then, imagineing myself in the future and think about what I really wanted to believe about that moment.  Did I want to believe that it was too hard, was it really that I deserved a break, did I need to be perfect

Invariably, my future self would tell my current self, It’s probably not worth it, but ultimately, it’s your choice 

It was a simple conversation, but it got me out of my current place and moved me to a place where I, again, wasn’t reacting to my lower brain and it’s insatiable desire for dopamine.  I wasn’t fighting with me. I was acknowledging what I wanted from a real, long term and higher brain perspective. 

I also wasn’t taking it to all or nothing thinking.  I was being clear with who I was, who I wanted to be and who I would be based on my decisions. 

These two habits are so simple that anyone can do them in a matter of moments. 

And don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get it right the first 67 times.   Just give it time, you’ll get the hang of it. 

Welcome to another beautiful mastery Monday, this is the Monday before election day.  Please go vote.  Regardless of what your political views are, be a part of the conversation, vote. 

Our 4 year old, Felicity came to me and said “My belly is saying food, I listened and I  can hear it talking inside my body.  It says it wants pasta or a sandwich”

·      When felicity said this my mind immediately turned to how applicable this story is to all the different behaviors we use to feel something different. And how when we are buffering we are not allowing ourselves to connect with what we really want and need. Felicity in that moment was so in tune with her body and what it was she truly needed and that was food to fill her hungry belly.

·      If I take this idea one step further and ask myself what is it that my husband truly wants when he looks at pornography. I can without a doubt say that he is not looking at pornography to hurt me, make me feel betrayed or cheated on, make me feel not good enough, to ruin my girl time…You name it I can keep going of all the things I would make my husband looking at pornography mean to me and about me. The truth is the reason he was looking at pornography was because he didn’t love himself, he hated who he was, and that he wanted to feel good in the moment. 

When felicity came to darcy asking for dinner, she was listening to her tummy tell her what she really wanted. 

For many of us when we have urges to view pornography we are actually not listening to our true needs. Partly because we are adults and we have learned to set our needs aside.  

Most of the people I work with are avoiding feeling lonely, sad, frustrated, angry or stressed. 

The question we want to talk about today is, are you listening to what you really want, rather than trying to avoid what’s going on for us really, in an effort to feel good now at the expense of feeling good long term. 

I recall a particularly difficult summer when darcy and the kids went to Wisconsin for three weeks and left me in California to work at my ladder climbing job at a large insurance company. 

In my mind it was two months and darcy had to remind me that it was only three weeks long.  So, that might tell you how big this was to me.  It holds a big place in my mind.

Because she was leaving and I wanted to stay away from pornography, we had put in place some really good, quality measures to keep the internet from creeping into my loneliest times, late nights at home. 

We locked down my phone so it wouldn’t be a temptation.  My company computer was going to be left in the car at the end of the day.  And the only way I could get on the internet would be to go to the MacDonald’s half a block away. 

With all the precautions in place, Darcy set off on the 33 hour drive to Wisconsin from Thousand Oaks CA. 

We were ready. 

We thought. 

Darcy, what were your thoughts as you left?

·      In that moment I was hopeful that he would be about to stay away from pornography while I was away. In my mind I was thinking about how this would be a great opportunity to prove to me how I could trust him and that he could “behave” while I was gone. I remember being anxious about what might happen while I was not home but, I wasn’t willing at that point to not go visit all my family for a few weeks.

For me this was my moment to show that I could do it. 

I could spend the 3 weeks alone,  and show Darcy that I wasn’t going to be viewing pornography forever and that I had grown. 

So, I was setting myself up to go it alone, make my mark and show how good I could be. 

What I really wanted was connection with my wife, self confidence and the ability to say that I could do this. 

It all started well.  

I don’t recall exactly how long I was good for.

What I remember is that I stayed late at work one night, because, what else was I to do.  And that’s when it happened.  

I was alone, sad and tired of fighting.  

This moment that I had set as a point to prove my worth became yet another mark in the loss column and another disappointment that my wife would have to suffer. 

This became one of the moments that I had ruined her vacation, or girls night, or whatever event where I had lapsed while she wasn’t looking. 

Looking back, long ago and far away, I can see what, as my little felicity put it, my belly was telling me.  

It was telling me that I wanted to feel loved. 

It was telling me that I wanted to feel connected.

It was telling me that I wanted to succeed.  

It was also telling me that I felt lonely 

It was telling me that I felt tired 

It was telling me that I felt stressed. 

So let me just take two of these and talk about them and what I would do differently now as opposed to then and how I succeed now as opposed to then. 

The desire to feel connected and the reality of feeling lonely are the two that come up the most for me. 

I think they come up the most for my clients as well. 

When I feel lonely, my natural tendency is to hide away, keep to myself and stay away from people.  

While Darcy was gone I didn’t do anything to get out and be with other people.  I was afraid that they would see how lonely I was.

It becomes this self-perpetuating cycle of me feeling then fighting my loneliness. 

As I look back at that period, something that I recognize is that I rarely, if ever, did anything just for me because I wanted to. 

It created a feeling of being alone, all the time. Even when my family was there.  It was just more acute while they were gone.  And when they were gone, it was even more powerful because I didn’t have a belief that I could connect with others. 

The way I feel love is also a self-perpetuating cycle.  But the kind that lifts me up. 

Recently, I went on a trip with 12 other men because it was something I wanted for me. 

I didn’t wait for Darcy to give me permission. I chose it.  It was something that I felt I wanted and would build me up and connect me with others outside of my family.  Also, I chose it because I believe that I am worth it.  

A big difference between the me of then and the me of now is that I do things because I feel like I am worth the expense, the time and the energy.  

This is living my life on purpose.  

This is listening to my belly and creating the person I want to be and not waiting for some magical moment in the future where I will be worthy of it.  

Have you ever been upset by someone who wasn't behaving how you thought they should.

Take a listen to this week's Mastery Monday.

Sign up for the webinar zachspafford.com/freecall