Thrive Beyond Pornography

You can join a free call to overcome your pornography addiction at zachspafford.com/freecall

During a coaching session this week my client and I were discussing agency and how language matters in the way that we perceive our struggles and engage with our trials.  

As we were talking about pornography we were going over the different ways that we deal with other things that we abstain from.  In particular, beer. 

I think i’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but I’ll just touch on it briefly here.  If you want to go into the way you’re thinking about things in depth, the membership and individual coaching are great ways to really dig in and actually apply these concepts to your life.  

Most of us have been offered a beer in our lives.  When I worked for an insurance company, I even had a coworker tell me that he was going to get me to drink as if it was a badge of honor.  To be fair, we lived in Wisconsin at the time which has a deep tradition and culture of drinking.  It is the home of a number of major breweries and Milwaukee, the biggest city, has more bars per person than any other city in the country.  Basically, drinking beer is a way of life in Wisconsin.  Totally unrelated to this story, two fun facts, In Wisconsin, you can take your 12 year old to the bar with you and they will serve them beer if the parent consents and your first seven drunk driving offenses were misdomeners until just recently.  That’s how big beer is in WI.  

In that interaction with my coworker, I was polite and happy to banter with him, but I wasn’t going to drink a beer with him.  I would say things like, I don’t drink and that’s just not something for me.  

As he pressed me, saying “oh, you’re not allowed to drink because your church says so.”  I found myself double-checking my reasons for not drinking.  It was never really in doubt, it was simply a check at my core of why it was that I had never had a beer.  

I didn’t feel like I wasn’t allowed to drink.  I didn’t feel like my church would cast me off if I did.  I didn’t feel like my wife would be upset and leave me if I had a beer. (some of you may remember that Darcy joined the church as a teen and her family aren’t members)  

It came down to this. I felt like I could drink a beer with this coworker if I wanted.  But I didn’t want to and so I choose not to. It was my choice. It wasn’t something I wasn’t allowed. 

So, I simply said, I could drink, I just choose not to. 

As I was coaching my client we were talking about agency, which is essential to our ability to own and make decisions. I talk about agency in-depth in my first episode Agency and Addictive behaviors and episode 82 Easter, the Atonement, and Agency, I would highly recommend you go back and listen to those episodes and get a sense of how agency works.  

As we were discussing his sense of whether he was choosing this and how agency plays into the way we act, he said, “I found that if I say, I’m never going to do this again, it puts the decisions into such a big picture that it’s hard to make choices from that long term [perspective].” 

I don’t know if you are hearing this the way that I did in that moment.  But it was a profound lesson for me.  It was this lightbulb moment that made my conversations with my coworker make more sense about who I was and how retaining our agency is such an essential tool that any time we become rigid and inflexible in our sense of what we will and won’t do, begin to lose our agency and we begin to lose the battle of our choices.  

When someone has asked me why I can’t drink, I’ve always said, “I can, but I choose not to”.

I don’t intend to ever drink, I don’t think I ever will.  But, I’ve also retained my agency, even while saying no thanks to alcohol. 

I didn’t say, “I’ll never drink”

I regularly use an example in my coaching that helps people understand their agency and how it works.  

After we establish the idea that most of us can get behind that we can drink beer but we choose not to, I take my clients on a thought experiment.  I say, what if I could come up with a scenario where I can almost guarantee that you will drink beer.  

I say, what if you were stranded on a deserted island and on that island was a case of beer.  And that case of beer is the only thing between you and certain death.  You can either drink the beer and live as long as possible and maybe get rescued.  Or you can not drink the beer and die pretty quickly.  What would you do?  

I know, for me, I would drink the beer.  

I wouldn’t feel bad about it.  I would simply do it and make the best of a horrible situation.  

I think it is easy to see, in a life or death situation, how we can shift our priorities and values to best help us move forward and grow in this life.  This is the mental flexibility I talked about in episodes 108 and 109 on values.  

Porn is not life or death so we don’t acknowledge our agency the same way with it.   With porn, how many of us have said, “I’m never going to do that again.”  

We try very hard to be as rigid as possible about the way we think about pornography.  That it is unequivocally bad, that it is never ok to choose, and that we are addicted if we do choose it.  

Now, if you want to believe those things and I’m certain many of you do, then there is nothing wrong with that.  My question would be, has it helped you solve the problem you are facing?

Has saying, “Never” helped you resolve the issue, or has it made you feel helpless, small, and incapable in the face of such a monumental task?

I remember clearly the day that I left never behind.  

I was in the bathroom at the house next door to this one.  We owned that house before we bought the one we live in now.  

I was standing there, with my phone, going to the bathroom and my brain offered me the idea that i was alone and no one was home and I could check out some pornography. 

It was a quick thought, maybe not even a full sentence like the one that I just described, but it was full of meaning to me.  

This would have been a fight usually.  I would have exercised as much willpower as I could to keep from going down the path.  I would have phoned a friend or called Darcy to rescue me.  

But I was tired of the fight.  I was tired of the struggle and the neediness of having to rely on others to help me manage my brain, knowing that, in the end, they really couldn’t. 

So, I simply said, I can do that.  I can look at all the porn I want to.  I can stand here and search until I explode.  But, if I want to, I’ll do it later.  

It was kind of magic. Not because there were wands or fairy dust or any special effects.  

The magic was that the battle stopped.  It was quiet and I didn’t have to fight or run the way we often talk about our pornography struggle.  

In our efforts to reassert our agency, never isn’t a word that seems very useful.  The phrase, “I can” holds immense power.  

It is the power to choose, even if we can make choices that don’t live up to our moral standards.  

But that power to choose gives us the capacity to learn from our mistakes and choose differently the next time.  

Without it, we will not succeed at overcoming pornography for good.  

If you’re thinking it is a little scary to have that power and that you might mess it up.  You’re not alone.  You’re actually having the same discussion that I think our Heavenly Father had when his children were given the choice to accept His plan or the plan of the son of the morning.  

You once made the choice to take on agency.  Make that choice again.

Real quick, before we get too far, I have a free masterclass for anyone who wants to overcome pornography forever.  https://www.zachspafford.com/freecall

Here you’ll learn how you can overcome pornography forever.

I want to talk about why it may be that you are not telling your partner about your pornography struggle.  

You may be one who always tells your partner. There are a lot of reasons that I believe this is the best course of action in the long run. The biggest reason that I believe this is the best is that it allows your partner to actually know you. What I mean by this is, when you tell your partner what goes on for you when you are alone with yourself, they get a real sense of who you are and can more fully make decisions about how they want to choose you or even reject parts of you that they don’t like.  

 You might not like the idea of being rejected. But I can tell you from personal experience, being rejected from an open and vulnerable position, rather than being validated from a dishonest position is more valuable to your development as a person and your process of leaving behind pornography. Being validated or told you are enough or good or loved from a dishonest, hiding position, leaves us with even greater guilt and possibly shame over not being who we say we are and our partner even more confused about who we really are.   

Speaking of who we are, telling your partner about your pornography activity allows you to live with greater integrity. There are two meanings for integrity that are important here.  

 The first is living with greater truthfulness. 

Think of it this way. Would you rather get hired after telling your employer that you have a certificate or diploma you do not, only to look over your shoulder for the rest of the time you work there and live in dishonesty? Or be rejected by that same employer, with the knowledge that you have been honest, earn the respect of the employer and come back stronger later when you’ve actually gotten what you need to be employable?  

The second is living in a more integrated way with the person you are when you are alone and when you are with others. Your private self is more fully integrated with your public self. 

 So, even though we may suffer rejection in the short term, as I spoken about on the podcast before, we earn greater trust with our partner and with ourselves that we are being who we say we are, even if we are not yet living up to our moral standards around pornography.  

 This is about the aggregation of marginal gains. Getting a little better here, even at a cost, is going to help us succeed at overcoming pornography for good.  

 Now you may not feel like it is worthwhile to tell your partner and they may have told you not to tell them. That is between you and them. I am simply offering my very real sense of what has made the most difference for me as I have overcome pornography personally. 

 Those are the reasons for telling your partner. What, then, might be keeping you from telling your significant other about your pornography struggles?

 One may be that you promised that you would never do it again and you will admit that you’ve failed.  

 Let’s talk about that for just a moment. First, if you have not promised that you would never look at pornography again to someone else, I would shy away from that idea. If you are going to be having this conversation with someone else, you want to set yourself up for success. The first thing you’ll want to recognize about the promise to never look at pornography again is, it is very unlikely that you will be able to avoid pornography for the rest of your life no matter what you do. I recall walking into our local pizza shop in Franklin Wisconsin, a long time ago and seeing a picture of a topless woman on the cover of a magazine laying on a table in the pick-up area of the restaurant.  

 I didn’t do anything with it or about it. I didn’t take it any further from that moment. But, if I had promised to never view pornography again, in that moment, through no fault of my own, I would have failed and my conversation with Darcy might have been one of mistrust rather than one of commenting on the occurrence.  

 Some of you might be saying, “well, that obviously wasn’t your fault so no one could hold that against you”. You might be right. But I’ve had conversations with spouses who were just as upset about accidental viewing of nudity as they were about purposeful viewing of pornography.  

The truth is, words matter. I was listening to Jordan Peterson and he said something that I feel is true and I try to do, though I don’t always succeed. He said, “be precise in your language.” We expect others to say what they mean and do what they say. If you have promised to never view anything pornographic again, then that is what you mean in the mind of the hearer, regardless of the possibility of accidents that are outside your control. This is like promising that you’ll never get in a car accident. The reality is, you have no idea if you are going to be rear-ended tomorrow by someone.  

Be precise.  

So, if you’ve made a promise that is going to be impossible to keep, the very first thing I would do, right now, pause the podcast, is call the person you’ve made the promise to and rescind it.  

Call and let them know that living up to that promise is likely impossible. You may not be planning to view porn in the future, but you can never promise to never view it ever.  

That accounts for the reality of life and it now recognizes with your partner that you are going to be honest about the possibility that you may not always succeed at this.  

That, by the way, doesn’t set you up for failure. It set you up for being able to have real conversations without the idea that you need to be perfect yet.  

If you have promised this and you have made the choice to view pornography, then we run into a bit of a dilemma. The reasons not to tell your partner can be compelling in the moment. They can be real and deep and help you manage whether you get to stay in your tribe and whether you will suffer some real shame and even a potential abusive reaction from your partner as they try to deal with what they may see, and will likely feel like, a real and deep betrayal of their trust.  

 At this moment, we need to recognize that not saying anything is about managing our partner. You might even call it manipulation.  

We aren’t telling them what is real and true because we are working to manage them to make us feel and them better in the moment.  

 If that is the case for you, ask yourself, do you want to have to manage them forever?  

 If not, it’s time to rip off the bandaid and say what is real without any expectation of how your partner will react.  

Another reason you may not be telling your partner is that you’ve done so well for so long and you don’t want to lose your streak in their eyes.  

 When we choose pornography as a way to manage our emotions, we are not on some imaginary timeline that starts over. 

Rather, we are at a moment of discovery, data, and divergence.  

When we look at our choices objectively and with our partner openly, we are more likely to discover what it is that opened the door to go down the path we chose.  

Utilizing that data is more valuable than anything you can do to understand what is going on for you emotionally. Emotions are data. They might feel like they rule our lives and drive our actions without input and they may be. but they are key to understanding what it is that our brains are going through to arrive at the decisions we make.  

Knowing how we got to the place we arrived at gives us a greater chance to diverge from that path in the future.  

That divergence is where the magic happens and you will be able to leave pornography behind forever.  

You don’t have to be perfect, but you do need to be a scientist. And, usually, the best person to help you with that discovery process is the person beside you who is most invested in your success. 

One last reason that you might not be telling your partner about your pornography struggle is that you believe you need to protect them.  

Let me just face this one head-on. You do not need to protect your partner. 

This has a couple of really powerful negative effects. One is that you are telling your partner that they are not capable or strong enough to handle the real you.  

The second is that you are pretending that you can handle everything on your own and without their input. 

These are both, massive miscalculations. If your partner is to really your partner, then they need to know the real you as we talked about earlier. Could you immagine going into a business partnership with someone and not knowing all the facts and then finding out that they were withholding information from you to “protect” you?  

That would not be a partnership that would last very long.  

Disney movies often portray a story where a charming prince comes along and becomes the caretaker of a hapless damsel.  

Darcy and I were talking about this the other day and how she really believed that I was there to caretake her financially in the beginning of our marriage. On the flip side, I thought that she was there to caretake me sexually. So we were even on that score. But the sooner you get out of the Disney fantasy, the better off you’ll be. 

So, how do you do this? How do you tell your partner if you haven’t yet. Or if you have but need to reengage them in the conversation that has been going on inside you?

 Three steps:

1. Start by figuring out what you are going to say. Write it down if you need to, but start formulating the sentences. 
2. Practice. Get in front of a mirror if you have to. Practice with someone you know who is willing to help you out with this. Just spend some time saying the things that you want to say. All while recognizing that any speeches you have may get tossed the moment the conversation begins. 
3. Speak. Start saying the words and keep talking until you’ve said what you need to say. 
4. Listen. Hear your partner. Be there for them as they grieve this moment of change. 

If you’re anything like me, in your quest to eliminate pornography, you probably have tried to eliminate everything. 

You might have gotten rid of your phone, blocked all the apps, given over your access code to someone else, tried avoiding certain shops at the mall, not gone to the beach.  Those are the physical things. 

Mentally and emotionally, you might have tried to eliminate urges, run from your emotions, suppressed your sex drive, and generally worked to stop feeling, sensing, or thinking about anything to do with pornography or sexuality. 

In all the avoiding you’ve done, I want you to just think for a moment and ask yourself, has it really helped?  

What I mean is, has it helped you become the person you want to be?  Has it helped you grow and love and triumph in your life?  

If you are anything like me, or any of my clients, the answer is very likely, no.  

I’ll admit, each of those techniques, may have helped you succeed at distancing yourself from your last pornography session. They may have been helpful in slowing down the number of times each week, month, or year that you turn to pornography.  

But, there is a good chance, that if you’ve been suppressing your life to avoid pornography, you’ve been suppressing your happiness and growth on the way. 

In Acceptance and Commitment Coaching, there is an idea called experiential avoidance, which is about utilizing certain methods, processes, or techniques, to avoid the real and sometimes unpleasant experiences of our lives.  

The problem with experiential avoidance is that when we avoid the bad, we are also avoiding the amazing, wonderful, and deeply joyful experiences of our lives. 

Here’s what I mean.  

If I suppress my emotions so that I don’t feel sexual in order to avoid pornography drawing me in, I also am suppressing my wholly appropriate and deep desire to be intimate with my wife. 

As a result, there is a good chance that something will give eventually.  

It may be that my suppression will work for a time, but will power always runs out and then what happens?  What has happened to you when you’ve pushed down the feelings and temptations for a long time?  

An analogy that I like to use is that of a beach ball at the pool. 

If you’ve ever tried to push a beach ball under the water, you’ve found that you can control it as long as you concentrate on it.  As long as you manage it actively.  But, eventually, your mind may wander, you may become distracted, you may have to deal with something and boom - out of the water blasts the beach ball. 

Our emotions, feelings, and urges are like that.  In trying to avoid them, we push them under until there is a moment when we no longer have the capacity to control them.  

That is what experiential avoidance looks like.  We avoid certain experiences for as long as we can and then they overtake us and overwhelm us and we lose control. 

In addition to losing control, we’ve also lost out on so many beautiful, amazing, experiences that can enrich our lives and help us feel the fulfillment we have been seeking. 

Imagine being at the pool and spending your entire time focused on pushing that beach ball under the water and keeping it there. 

When others offer to play a game, you’ll be busy.  When someone wants to engage in meaningful conversation, you’ll be distracted.  When your family wants to grab a quick picture with you, you’ll be somewhere else. 

As I’m writing this, it occurs to me that there were moments when I would take my eye off the ball, like Christmas or birthdays or vacations and I found that I gave in to my urge to engage with pornography.  I would become engaged in the everyday life events and make mistakes in my quest to eliminate pornography. 

So, I would double down, push the ball deeper.  Only to find that the next time I became engaged in real life, I would make a mistake.  

Darcy used to say that I would ruin every big event in our family for her.  Our beautiful memories would be tainted by knowing that Zach made pornography part of it at some point.  

If this describes your life, I’m glad to know you’ve been where I was.  And I hope you’re glad to know that there is a way forward. 

Avoiding the experiences of your life, the ones that happen internally, like emotions, urges, and sensations is not the way to finally get rid of them. 

It is the opposite.  

What we work to suppress our brain latches on to.  

Famously, there have been many experiments where participants have been told not to think about things, like pink elephants.  No matter how hard they try participants find themselves unable to keep the idea out of their head.  

Telling ourselves that we must never think of pornography, sexuality, or the urges that drive our very natural and normal sex drives results in the same thing.  Eventually, they come up and we find they consume us. 

So, how do we succeed at handling our urges, thoughts, and sensations?

Three things.  We work on these in-depth in the membership and in individual coaching sessions, where we can dive deep and apply them to real-life situations. Here on the podcast, we get to talk about them, but the real work happens in the coaching that I get to do with the men and women who struggle. 

The first thing we need to get good at and practice, even when pornography is not the issue is, recognizing our feelings, sensations, and urges.  

Becoming clear with what your brain is sending you will help you know what to do with it. 

I’ve often said that men, and women too, have not been given a lot of emotional training in life.  Most of us have been instructed to suppress anything that we can’t control.  

It is the way of western culture to be repressed in our feelings and so we don’t let them show, we try not to feel them, and we try to tamp them down whenever they arrive. 

Getting good at recognizing the depth and breadth of your emotions, urges, and sensations will be essential to actually resolving them in helpful and meaningful ways.  

Second, you need to become comfortable with these sensations being there. 

That, by the way, is not the same as giving into them.  

Most of us have two ways of dealing with urges, we either push against them and try to suppress them in some way, or we give in to them and follow them wherever they take us. 

But there is a  third thing we can do. 

We can simply observe them.  

Becoming an active observer is a skill that everyone who wants to eliminate pornography from their life must acquire.  

Much like those who film nature documentaries, we must become willing to objectively and thoughtfully see what is happening without getting entangled in the drama. 

Our brains are full of drama. That is the skill of every mind, to tell a compelling story to drive us to act. 

Rather than act on the narrative, we have to be willing to feel the anxiety of the moment without acting.  

That might seem counterintuitive at first, but if you’ve ever read a story of deep emotion without becoming a sea captain, fighter pilot, or wolf dog in the great wilderness of alaska, then you are already capable of this skill. 

See the story, feel the feelings, but withhold action.  

Someone out there is probably saying, but that’s what I’ve been trying to do, not act and that isn’t working.  How is this any different?

Avoiding your emotions is not the same as feeling them and doing nothing. 

Avoiding your urges is not the same as acknowledging them as though they are normal and making no choice about them. 

Suppressing your desires is not the same as being willing to allow them the room to run out without them overtaking you.  

This requires a maturity of thought that wasn’t available to me at first.  

I used to think that if I even had a desire or thought or urge that I was bad and irredeemable.  

But, as you may know now, the urge, thought, or desire is not what makes us bad.  Those make us human.  

Being willing and able to see them, acknowledge them, and sit through them rather than avoid them is a skill that will pay dividends not just in eliminating pornography, but in every part of our lives.  

If you are ready to take your knowledge and understanding to the next level, join the Self Mastery Membership at zachspafford.com/workwithme

Hey, everybody, and welcome to another beautiful mastery Monday here on the Self

Mastery podcast. I'm your host, Zach Spafford.

Listen, I got something for you guys. I'm here to help you overcome

pornography. You guys know that right? I just want to let you know that there's

some stuff that's gonna change.

That's all. I'm not going to tell you what it is right now. But I'm going to

tell you something a little bit later in this podcast.

But these last few weeks have been a great deep dive into how you can really begin to

move past pornography by not just focusing on pornography, but focusing on how

you can become the person you want to be.

By the way, I just want to thank all of you who have written in and said how

much this has helped you. That's kind of awesome, actually, that you guys are

like, hey, you know what, this changed my life. So thank you for sending that

in to me. If you have a second, just take a moment and write a review that

helps people find us and all of this great content, more than anything else you

could do. You know, share it, obviously, with as many people as you can, but

writing reviews helps people find this. So please do that.

Many of you know that I am all about an evidence based approach to Overcoming Pornography.

You've probably listened to my episode about how pornography is not an addiction and the book by Dr. Lance Dodes, you may know Cam Staley, who is a PhD researcher out of the University of Idaho, a really great guy, quite like him.

You are probably thinking, okay, yes, we know that you like evidence. So not

only do I have the evidence from my own journey that I've shared with you, one

of the components of my coaching to Overcoming Pornography is based in

Acceptance and Commitment coaching, I call it ACC, which comes from Acceptance

and Commitment Therapy. Now, I'm not a therapist, but I have studied the

techniques and processes and systems that have helped 1000s of men and women

and their pornography struggle.

And I've done it myself, like, this is not pie in the sky. This is not, hey, you know what, let me tell you a theory, and I will help you figure it out. That's not it. This is real life. This is my journey. You are like, Yeah, I need somebody who's been there.

You know, I always talk about I have an MBA, and I've been in business for a long time,

before I became a coach, I, I was an insurance and I loved it. And I did some

other things that add some great, cool stuff. And I always think about, who's

the guy that I would come to, who's the person that I would go to, if I needed

help running my business. I would not even go to a Yale or a Harvard School

Business School professor, I would go to a guy who's actually lived the

process.

Some of you guys know Gary Vee, cool guy, I listen to his stuff, I don't listen

to a guy who works for Harvard. I don't, because I want to know what it looks

like to actually be in the trenches. And that's why I use ACC. And the coaching

that I do is based in both my real life experience and acceptance and

commitment, coaching. And then Acceptance and Commitment coaching, there's a

principle called the choice point. It is one of the key principles of ACC that

I use in the membership, which has been closed now to members to new members

for a little bit, a little while.

But I will tell you this, this month, I'm launching a new platform that will make it so

you can download a single app and get all the great content on your phone. So

I'm looking forward to it. And when it's ready, I will open up the membership

to anybody who wants to join. So keep an eye out for that.

When I talk about choice point, though, I want to go back to choice point because that's

really the point of what we're talking about. I want you to imagine a narrow,

long road that you're traveling, you're just out there in the woods. And I

always picture a Midwest road in the fall. So it's beautiful. It's cool, it's

damp, the leaves are falling. There's all these colors. That's the road that I

imagined your road might be totally different use yours might be in the desert.

And you probably know the the poem by Robert Frost, two roads diverged in a wood and I,

I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference. So I want

you to imagine you're standing there at that same crossroad that that Robert

Frost talks about. And only instead of figuring out which one is the less

traveled road, you're going to apply a different calculus you're going to apply

a different set of rules.

If you recall back to October of last year, I did two episodes, one called

Overcoming pornography by choosing values instead of goals and the following one,

the one right after that so is episode like 108 and 109, Overcoming Pornography

by practicing the values we have. If you go back to those after you listen to

this, to help determine you what your values are, they will be excellent resources

for the choice point exercise that we're about to discuss.

Most of us are living a life in a way that we simply react to a lot of what's going on

around us. It's just reactions, we don't often think about why we do the things

we do. And we often simply make decisions, without giving them much thought,

this is a really, it's some is pretty normal. It's a habitual way of making

choices. It's super normal, it's super helpful, actually. Because if we don't

do this, we would actually have enormous mental and decision fatigue by about 9

am every single day. So every day would just be like, too tired to make any other

decisions.

But when it comes to pornography, one of the key elements of most people's habitual use is

found in this same idea. We've made the decision so many times before that

we've lowered what I like to call the consent threshold or the threshold that

we have to consent to making the decision. And our decision is really made in a

pretty automatic way.

So the choice point is a visualization of the crossroads that we come to every

time we encounter the discomfort that we want to avoid, that often leads to

pornography viewing. Using the choice point, and a little bit of a pause, each

of us can make decisions that more fully aligned with our values.

Now, you're like, What? Is this the only thing I need to know? No, this is not a silver

bullet, you're not likely to automatically stop viewing pornography because you

visualize this imaginary fork in the road. But when this is coupled together

with a number of the other skills, I teach in the membership, and with my

individual coaching clients, it can be a useful tool in your skill set.

So here we are at this crossroads. And the two roads are ahead of you. And to your left,

we have what we call away moves, or the away road. And to your right, we have

toward move or the toward road. Away moves are traveling down a path that takes

you away from your values. And the toward Road, as you may have guessed takes

you towards your values. You can see now I'm sure as you listen to this, you're

like, oh, yeah, of course, I need to know what my values are. Because if you

don't, then how do you know which direction to move.

So still just imagining, right, we're standing there, we take a pause, maybe 10 deep

breaths, maybe we just step back mentally, from our brain from what our brain

is telling us. And we just start observing where we are, and what choices we're

gonna make. And then I want you to imagine taking the away road, I want you to

see what's down there and how it ends. And how you feel when you've completed

that journey and what that actually looks like at the end. Now, I want you to

imagine taking the toward Road, what's down there? How does this end? How do

you feel when you've completed that journey?

And that's, it's as simple as that. It's a simple, simple process, if you are willing to

try it, take some time right now and see how it works. So you know, if you've

got a small decision in your life you want to make right now, it's a perfect

little, little experiment, we'll run together. And by the way, you might need

to do this, like 92 and a half times before you get any good at it. So just

don't, don't be discouraged.

But the key here is to try it, get used to it in your daily life and use it to be the gatekeeper for some of those automatic decisions that are not currently in line with your values. Again, it's not gonna be a silver bullet. But the more you try it, the more likely it is to work. And the more likely you are to align your actions with the values that you really love.

I love you guys, you know, keep going. If you're out there, and you're listening to this,

you know, whatever, choice point… that's fine. Just keep going, keep listening,

keep doing the things that I teach you just try them out. And one day they will

work and the better you get at all of them. So like get good at one at a time,

tiny little bits. And in the long run, you're going to aggregate do what I call

aggregation of marginal gains, right? You've probably heard that term. And

you're going to get so good that you're going to be way better than you are

now.

I've been where you are. And I know how to get you from where you are now to the place

where you want to be. So let my experience guide you. Alright, my friends, I'll

talk to you next week. Bye.

Differentiation – enmeshment

Meaning frames - Disorganization - Reorganizing with integrity

Self-confrontation – other confrontation

Self-validation – other validation

Self-disclosure - Self-presentation = Intimacy p 102-103

This month has been a real deep dive.  It has included a lot of really meaningful topics and subjects that I have tried to make as understandable as possible.   

We started with looking at our meaning frames and how disorganizing it can be to have them shattered by our partner not living up to the understandings that we have about pornography viewing in our relationships.

Next, we moved on to the process of confronting ourselves and our partner in loving and meaningful ways that can help us reorganize ourselves into more integrated people. 

The following week, we discussed how we are extracting validation from our partners, how we can stop doing that, and how we can become more self-validating through some of the work we discussed in the previous weeks.  

Last week we talked about disclosure and the ways in which we present ourselves to others in order to manage their beliefs and ideas around who we are.  

This is the last episode of the series.  Here we are going to explore enmeshment, differentiation, and the process of becoming a whole person who can also be a good partner without the need for someone to function for us. 

One of the biggest struggles that I think most marriages have is the issue of how much we fold into each other. 

What I’m talking about here is the amount of enmeshment and conformity that occurs when we become a couple. 

What this might look like is, a need to have the same opinion on important issues.  It might look like, one partner over functioning while the other partner under functions, which can be flipped in certain circumstances. 

This also looks like some of the requirements we have that our partner reflect our sense of who we are back to us.  Rather than holding up a mirror to who we are as we discussed in the self-confrontation/other-confrontation episode. 

In the process of creating intimacy that is built out of the validation of others, we often move along nicely together, until one day everything gets stuck or snaps and we find ourselves and our relationship in a moment of crisis. 

It might be a small crisis. It might be a big crisis. 

In the case of a pornography struggle, this is often a pretty big crisis.  

Where we have spouses saying things like darcy did to me, “if you don’t get this under control, this is the end of our relationship.”

In part, this is occurring Because the meaning-framework that we brought to the marriage is insufficient to hold onto the reality of the situation (that one partner is viewing pornography and pornography is destructive so our marriage is in jeopardy and so is my sense of self) in the face of the pain that is occurring through the rejection that the other partner is feeling.  

When we have crises points like this in our lives there are basically 3 ways that we can deal with it. Here we are again leaning heavily on dr David schnarch’s book, passionate marriage. 

I.

The first is to either violate yourself by folding into their demands on you or violating your partner by requiring them to fold into your demands of how things must be.  

In this scenario, I think a lot of women and partners of those viewing pornography feel totally justified.  Part of our culture and part of our moral code demands that pornography never be part of the equation ever or it will destroy.  So making this demand that your partner violate themselves to simply behave the way you need them to behave so you can be enough for them sexually regardless of what that looks like is pretty much ok with in LDS tradition. 

D – this is how I felt when I first found out.  etc. I would also do things that tried to fold into the way I thought Zach wanted me to be.  I tried being sexier, even though I didn’t feel like it just to try and please him. 

Z- the way I would do this was to give Darcy anything she wanted, even when it wasn’t in the best interests of our family or my own personal sense of self.  Like giving up meaningful activities that I enjoyed appeasing her.  

This is really about enmeshment.  It’s the kind of “I can’t live without you and you can’t live without me” kind of way that we deal with our partners that draws them in with a view of becoming one based on a single sense of self.  

II.

The second thing that often happens in relationships when there is an intense sticking point it to distance ourselves from the relationship emotionally or physically or both. 

If you have been in the depths of this kind of situation or know someone who has, you’ve likely experienced this or seen it.  

It shows up in a variety of ways that might be dramatic, 

Or that might not be that dramatic.

But either way our behaviors become about moving away from our partner and even closing off emotionally. 

I don’t think Darcy ever really did this, because she was really invested in me and our relationship. 

But I would do this by withdrawing back into pornography. 

Unlike the enfolding into each other sense that we get from accommodating or being accommodated, this looks more like, “I’m drowning in our us-ness and I need to escape it in order to be me”

Where this might be problematic is, that when I cannot be in relation to another person without taking on their anxieties and struggles, it is also not a refuge to be alone.  

Especially in the midst of a marriage.  

III.

The final way that we can engage with these stuck and difficult moments is to confront yourself and become more differentiated.  

This last process is one of ambiguous trying.  As I’ve read through Passionate Marriage and as I’ve listened to people like Jennifer Finlayson-fife, it has become clear to me that there isn’t a lot of concreteness to this process of becoming differentiated.  

Differentiation as a word means to make distinct from the things around them.  

But I’m not sure this word in itself captures for regular people like me how that is accomplished or what it means in terms of how relationships can be improved by it.  

In part, it is the amalgamation, putting together all of the concepts that we’ve been discussing this month. 

Doing each of these things helps us to determine how we are different from our partner.  But there is a step that we haven’t talked about that is key to this concept. 

While we are different physically and mentally, we often try to conform to each other in order to create a sense of unity. 

But differentiation does not include conformity.  It includes choosing closeness in the face of our differences without letting go of our sense of self.  

One way that this is put in the book is that differentiation is the ability to soothe your own anxiety and resist being infected with other people’s anxiety.  

I take that to mean, that I can manage my own emotions, not require that my partner take care of me, willingly accept the loving critique of my partner, while also being willing to confront the things in myself that I don’t like, as I also overcome my need to be validated by others and become capable of validating myself, in the process of eliminating unnecessary ways of presenting myself to others, especially my spouse, as I disclose to my partner who I really am.  

If that seems like a lot, we took 5 podcast episodes to explain all of it for this one moment.  

No wonder it is hard to become the people we want to be.  We have to get good at so many important and sometimes difficult processes at once.  

Another way that Dr Schnarch describes differentiation in the book is having the ability to maintain a sense of self while in relation to others.  

He also describes it this way, Differentiation is your ability to maintain your sense of self when you are emotionally and or physically close to others – especially as they become increasingly important to you. 

For many of us, the closer we get to our partner the less we see ourselves as one person who chooses another.  We are more likely to see ourselves as an indistinct part of a whole.  

We live in a world that is really good at presenting itself to us in ways that are designed to get our appr   oving likes, hearts, shares, and follows.  

In talking about the ways that we use other-validated intimacy last week, we began to understand what it is and how we might be working to get it from others.  

We didn’t really talk about why that might be a problem.  

Relationships built on other-validation create cycle of self-presentation for validation, which eventually breaks down when one or more of the people involved don’t want to play the game any more.  

There have been a number of scandals over the years of influencers doing work that wasn’t quite real or genuine in an effort to gain more social media currency.  They are putting forward a picture of themselves that is not real in an effort to be seen as more than what they really are.  

They fake houses, cars, vacations, and other status symbols so that those who follow them believe in the person’s success regardless of its truth in the real world.  They present a picture of themselves as something they are not when they are alone with themselves.  

As a pornography user, this is exactly what I did to my wife and what she did to me. 

I would present to her a reality that wasn’t a reflection of who I was when I was alone with my inner thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  

I was presenting myself to my partner by not telling her how I felt.  I was not real with what was going on for me.  I was actively trying to manage her impressions of me, how she felt about me, and her anxiety around the difficult subjects in our life. 

I would do this by not sharing difficult situations at work.  I would do this by not showing her that I was stressed, I would say I was tired or something else instead.  I would find ways to avoid her when I had looked at pornography.  I would lie about my pornography use.  I would tell myself that she couldn’t handle it.  I would tell myself that I was only hurting myself and that she didn’t need to know.  

I was presenting a picture of who I was to Darcy in order to keep her “happy” or “Safe” or to get her to like me.  When the reality was, I wasn’t the person I was saying I was.  

D - Sometimes I would have sex when I really didn’t want to. I would be more sexual to try and compete with the porn that you were using.  I would act like everything was fine when they weren’t.  

This, in turn, created a great deal of anxiety for me.  It made me constantly nervous and anxious about our future and my ability to care for Darcy. It left me lonely and alone in very real ways.  

Which, incidentally, were my biggest emotions that I was trying to escape.  And were some of the main reasons I would turn to pornography. 

So, in self-presenting to Darcy, curating the image she had of me, especially the false parts of it, I created a lack of intimacy.  I removed intimacy from our lives.  I made it so she was not able to track honesty and openness in me.  Which was the very thing she would tell you that she wanted.  

She wanted to know me, but she was also scared of who I actually was in meaningful ways.  

What was that like for you?

D – I wanted to know you as far as it made me feel ok.  but when it came to you, when it made me not feel ok, I didn’t like it.  So, in a very real sense I was helping create an environment that encouraged Zach to self-present.  Which is not the same as making him do it.  He was still very much responsible for his own actions.  It’s important to understand that this is not an excuse for us to lie.  It is simply an acknowledgement of my part in the environment.  

Z- We all do this in some small ways and most of us do this in some significant ways. 

The reality is, that being able to present a picture of who we are to others is a valuable tool that helps us advance our interests. As far as I can tell, It also seems to allow us to keep things that aren’t really good to share with everyone to ourselves.  

D – we all know that couple who we might even look up to and we think they are doing so good.  Then the next thing you know they are getting divorced.  And we wonder what happened.  Really, they were just super good at presenting a certain image, while underneath something else was happening.  

Z - This is the time and place issue that we run into with a lot of things that are important to us, but that wouldn’t be really appropriate to share with everyone, at all times.  

Here is where we move into the ambiguity of being the person we want to be. 

If we only told the truth, what was absolutely real for us at all times to everyone, in every situation, there is a good chance we would alienate ourselves from those around us. 

Imagine going in and telling your personal business to everyone at work, regardless of the details, in an effort to be entirely transparent and honest and open. 

Doesn’t seem like a good idea. 

But, there is someone that it may be in our long term best interest to share who we are with.

Let’s just take a moment and talk about what I mean by the idea of who we are.  

We present a picture of who we are to those around us. Our work has a picture, that we choose to show them, of who we are.  Church has a picture of who we are, based on what we choose to show them. Our Children have a presented view of who we are, based on things we share with them.  Thiers is a more intimate and real view, but it isn’t the most real view.  

Then there is our spouse.  He or she will know who we are the most of anyone, usually. 

This is your personality at its core.  This is who you are at your core.  This is the place where there are things that you know about yourself, that maybe no other person knows.  It is the place where we put the things that are the most true about us.  (this isn’t to say those things can’t change, it’s just where that reality is). 

This is who we are.  

D – In an ideal world, The person that we can share this stuff with is our partner, our spouse.  It really boils down to how intimate we want to be.  Some of us really don’t want intimacy in our lives.  What we really want is a relationship where you tell me I’m awesome and I tell you that you’re awesome. We don’t really want our partner to tell us what is really going on because it is scary.   

We talked about this last week on other-validation.  

Z - To create the greatest intimacy in our lives, we need to be willing to stop self-presenting to them and start self-disclosing. 

To create the intimacy that is the most fulfilling, we must be willing to take a risk.  The risk of being rejected by others. 

A good way to explain this is to take us all back to high school.

If you are like me, you might have been interested in certain things in high school that would have labeled you.  

You might have been labeled a nerd if you liked star wars or star trek.  You might have been a popular kid that worried that if others knew how much you liked band you’d lose credibility.  All the things that you liked that you worried that your friends might make fun of you for any reason and you wouldn’t share because it was too much of a risk.  That is what I’m talking about. 

Often we think there are only two outcomes.

People could reject you, judge you, and never talk to you again.  Or they would be just like you. They would love it too.  And it would deepen your friendship.  

This all sounds so shallow. But it was real I think for most people.  

Now think of the things that you keep from your wife or husband that you think would make them reject you.  

The things that you feel like you are keeping from them to “protect” them from you. From the real person that you are when you are alone with yourself.  

Self-disclosure is a really scary thing when it comes to pornography use.  Overcoming pornography, is a struggle in and of itself, but telling others about it can be debilitating.  It is fraught with a deep and real fear of being rejected.  

Here’s the thing.  If you want to be successful at overcoming pornography, you need to have the skill of being real with your partner.  Being the person that you really are with them. 

One of the reasons that I believe that men and women turn to pornography is that they are afraid of rejection and pornography never tells them no.  It never says that your ideas are unacceptable.  It never rejects what you want. 

One of the reasons that we are often afraid of intimacy and self-disclosure is because our partner and others around us are not only capable of telling us no, they do it regularly.

One of the reasons that we are not able to eliminate pornography is that this thing we do, even if we talk about it after we have done it, is just ours.  It belongs to no one else when we are doing it. And it never rejects us. 

To be capable of overcoming pornography and entering into a deeper intimacy with our partner, we have to be willing to brave that rejection, sometimes endure it’s intense feelings, evaluate whether it is worth it, and still choose our partner.  

The Self Mastery Podcast is dedicated to helping Latter-day Saints overcome pornography. Men and women struggle with overcoming pornography.

This podcast draws on the real-life experiences of the hosts, Zach and Darcy in their struggle to overcome pornography, strengthen their marriage, and grow personally.

If you want to know what real success looks like in overcoming pornography from real people who have been where you are, then this podcast is for you. The interviews with real clients who have succeeded, the amazing skills, techniques, and systems that are shared, and the real-world experiences of the hosts make this the number one podcast for Latter-day Saints looking to overcome pornography.

If you are ready to take your knowledge and understanding to the next level, join the Self Mastery Membership at zachspafford.com/workwithme

The concept of validation is not a complicated one, but it is a huge part of how we show up in our lives and how we can understand how to better feel the love that we want for ourselves.  

The way we seek validation will also help us understand how pornography has been playing a part in our self soothing process. 

I am going to lean on Dr. David Schnarch’s book “Passionate Marriage” for the definitions of these two concepts and then we are going to talk about what they mean in the context of pornography and marriage. 

Other-validated intimacy involves the expectation of acceptance, empathy, validation, or reciprocal disclosure from our partner.  

Self validated intimacy relies on a person maintaining their own sense of identity and self-worth when disclosing, with no expectation of acceptance or reciprocity from their partner.  our capacity for self-validated intimacy is directly related to our level of our ability to maintain a clear sense of ourselves when our loved ones are pressuring us to conform to their views, wants, or expressed desires.  It is the tangible product of our relationship with ourself.  

So, let’s talk about other-validated intimacy and how that might be keeping you from being successful in eliminating a pornography habit. 

When we expect our partner to give back to us as much or more than we are giving them, we are engaging in what Dr. David Glover calls in his book, “No more Mr. Nice Guy” a covert contract. 

This is our way of trying to get our partner to tell us that we are enough for them. 

I used to do this all the time with foot rubs and back rubs for Darcy.  When I wanted her to reciprocate with sex or love I would do things for her to make it so she was supposed to give back to me. 

I also did this with things like house work.  I would do everything so I could take off her plate any excuses she might have for saying no to me later.  

I did this so she would validate me with sex.  

This covert contract was about expecting something from her that she was not offering freely because she wanted to give it. 

D – and when he would do this I would …. Tell your feelings about this here. 

D – Give an example of how you would seek validation from me.  –  we never talk – this was a regular refrain, even when we had spent all day together the previous day.  I was seeking for Zach to tell me I was enough, accepted. 

What we are doing when we seek other-validated intimacy is asking our partner to manage our sense of whether or not we are OK.  

One of the reasons, that I believe men and women turn to pornography is that there is nothing we can’t ask for that won’t be given in that space.  It is almost a total free for all.  It is self-gratifying and other-validating, even when those others are not present physically, mentally, or even willingly.  

This is just an idea that occurs to me, but it makes sense, at least from one position.  Pornography validates us regardless of how we feel and regardless of whether we are acting with integrity.  When we deal with real people, in real time, over real issues, we are constantly at risk of being rejected.  

This is one of the central things that I believe makes pornography so appealing on a different level than just aroused by it.  Pornography never rejects us.  It never says that what we want is not available.  It never says, “I’m not comfortable doing that” or “I’m tired, can we just snuggle” or “I’m upset with the way you treated me”

This is a counterfeit other-validation that is available at the tips of our fingers at all hours of the day and night.  

Whereas, to be self-validated and to have self-validated intimacy, we must be able to maintain our own sense of identity without requiring others to affirm it.  We must be willing to disclose who we are when we are alone with ourselves without requiring that others reciprocate.  

This is a fine line.  Be clear.  If we go off into the land of “I don’t care what anyone thinks and I’m gonna do what I want because I’m never wrong” that’s not a healthy place and not what I’m talking about here.  Please don’t mistake what I’m saying here. 

Self-validated intimacy is about being able to choose closeness with our partner or others, while simultaneously maintaining our sense of self.  

This is a dance of being in relation to others because we want to while being solid in ourselves.  

The most clear example of this that I can give to pornography viewers who are in relationships is from my own life.  

When Darcy would come to me and ask me, have you been clean and I would answer yes, and she would follow up with, well how do I know.  I could see that she wanted me to validate her.  

In past times, I might have tried to convince her or just fold into her insecurities by working extra hard to prove that I was a good husband.  

But as I became clear that I was doing what was right and that I didn’t need to prove it to her, in fact, that I couldn’t prove it to her, it became clear that my answers needed to be about me.  

Instead of saying things to manage her emotions and try to prove my innocence, I would instead say, “I can’t prove it to you. I just know that I am doing the right things.”

It was an unsatisfying answer for her and for me.  

It lived in ambiguity.  Which is one of the reasons why I think true intimacy, the kind that lives in self-validation and the choice to be near our partner can sometimes elude us.  

Those of us who want true intimacy in our lives are going to need to get comfortable in this place of uncomfortable ambiguity.  Where we chose to understand that our sense of self is essential to our relationships with others.  

Next week we are going to talk more about this when we talk about differentiation and enmeshment.  

But for this week, if I can give you one thing to take away from this conversation it would be to look at how often you are looking outside yourself to determine if who you are, what you are doing, and how you are relating to the world around you is ok.  

For example, I had one client say, “I try to think about everything I’m saying in a way that it will make it so my wife takes it in the best possible light, so as not to upset her or create a bigger argument”. 

Everything that client is doing is to gain validation from his partner while simultaneously he is losing himself in her view of the world.  

A self-validated person would speak honestly and clearly about what he believes to be true, while holding space open for meaningful dialogue around what might be better than what he believes to be true. He would be choosing closeness, not sameness or conformity.  He would be choosing honest discussion, not shying away from meaningful disagreement. 

As Dr. Schnarch says in Passionate Marriage, Intimacy is the two-prong process of confronting yourself, (which we talked about last week) and self-disclosing to your partner from a position of working to be self-   validated

-       

Part two of our 5 part series on Love and what it looks like to really be lovable, loving, and to love one’s self. 

David schnarch talks about self confrontation and other confrontation

• Engage with our behavoirs in a meaningful way from an objective place. 

One of the keys to love is the capacity to confront who we are.  Now, this isn’t to say that you aren’t inherently loved or lovable.  But, there is an element of growth that seems to be required for each of us to love ourselves.  I think one of the keys to loving yourself is having a sense that you are growing and leaning in into the discomfort of becoming more than what you are now.  

It also requires that we hear the truthful parts of what others are able to observe and point out to us.  

This is a skill that requires a capacity to not just endure the discomfort of the process of confronting who you are, but even to lean into that discomfort.  

So, let’s just take a moment to define what it means to self confront and be confronted by others in ways that are growth and love promoting. 

The process of confronting your behavior is simple but can be difficult to face if you are unwilling to be objective about what is going on and your worth in relation to what is going on. 

In order to self confront, you’ll need to see your behavior clearly and objectively.  Meaning that you fully understand or are seeking to fully understand what you are doing.  This is as simple as acknowledging what the behavior is by describing it dispassionately, and without layering in judgments that you might be using to beat yourself up with.

Darcy and I were talking to a couple who we’ve been coaching and one of their experiences recently was a conversation in which the husband let his spouse know that he had viewed pornography.  As they discussed the situation, the husband became more and more distraught, in a sense, to convey how much he was not pleased with his own behavior.  He worked to manage his wife’s experience of his actions by being more upset about the situation than she was.  

This is an example of not being clear and objective about your behavior.  That’s not to say there is no room for passionate discourse or even deeply felt emotions.  It is to say, managing our partner is not part of clearly acknowledging where you are.  It is hard to be objective about what is going on when you are working to manage others’ feelings.  

So how do we engage with an internal process of evaluating our behaviors?  We go into this in the membership, which you can join anytime by going to zachspafford.com and there are workbooks that you can use in there to really get in deep on this   .  

But first you’ll want to start by recognizing that the high emotions are sometimes ways of . 

Often, we want to hold our ground and defend where we are because it feels safer than confronting our actions openly.  

Second, you’ll need to be objective about what that behavior’s outcomes are, how they are impacting you, and how they might be impacting those around you. You can do this by being willing to look downstream from where you are and acknowledging the results in the eyes of others and even acknowledging the effects you’ve been working to ignore or hide from.  

Many of us do this well in other parts of our lives.  For instance, at work you might be really good at looking downstream and seeing what the effects are.  But when it comes to your relationship with your partner or yourself, it is not uncommon to be unwilling to see what we’re doing based on the way it will end up later.  

I know, for me, darcy and I were having a discussion in the shower just a couple of nights ago and she was pointing something out to me, something that I didn’t want to see.  At that moment, I had a choice.  I could get defensive, push back and say that she was wrong or that I didn’t see it that way, which until she said something, was somewhat true.  Or I could listen for the truth that she was trying to convey to me. Even if I didn’t agree with every part of what she was saying. 

I was able to see the important parts of what she was saying. 

Sometimes we want to argue a point that may have been indicated by our partner but isn’t the actual issue at hand.  

One of the men I work with said this to me about the discussions he has with his wife.  “I rarely say the right thing.”  This was an indicator to me, based on that phrase and some other data that I have, that his partner is keen to pick up on anything that isn’t quite right in his phrasing and hold that up for examination, rather than get into the parts where she is being confronted.  

If this is how you are reacting to what your partner has to say, picking apart the little things to avoid the more important issue, then its time to step back and see what is being said from a kind and open place.  

In the example of Darcy and I chatting in the shower, I could have let my anxieties about how she might see me or how I don’t like being wrong put me into attack mode.  Picking apart her argument and digging in my heals. 

Rather than do that, I took a moment to look at her thoughts and seek  to find any truth in them.  And even work to make her argument for her.  

Why don’t we want to confront ourselves or have others confront us?  

Because we don’t like the invalidating feelings that brings into our lives.   Next week we are going to talk about self-validation and validation from others.  But for the purpose of this weeks engagement on love, just being aware that this confrontation of our realities, statements, and behaviors is not about designing ways to hurt or jar ourselves or others into changing.  This is about loving ourselves and others enough to see how what we might be doing is not living up to our highest potential.  

As you do the hard work of self confrontation and listing when another person, usually the person you trust the most, offers you ideas or their thoughts about what might be going on for you, be aware that you’ll probably want to deflect from what you see and hear. 

If you can, lean into it.  If you can, be clear that only by going through it, will you succeed at being the person you want to be.  

I think it is also really important to be kind to yourself and your partner when this is happening. 

It really isn’t as effective to come in from a hard place and go through the process of telling your partner off.  That is more likely to create conflict than the self confrontation that is results and growth oriented.  

I think it’s also really important to be willing to be patient with the things we offer.  I can think of a couple of examples in our lives where Darcy has offered me some feedback that I wasn’t willing to hear at the time.  And she would step back from it, let me be, and re-offer it at a later time that seemed appropriate.  I think I’ve done the same for her.  

Confrontation is not about conflict or being right, but being willing to find truth. 

Kindness is essential. 

Patience will be rewarded. 

Leaning in will help you succeed.

The path to greater freedom. Four part series.  

For the month of february we are going to talk about Love - but not in the way that you think…

This month, love is going to be about our capacity for great freedom if we are willing to love and be loved through the process of understanding some concepts that you may not be familiar with.  We are going to talk about How to use these concepts to improve your ability to love and feel loved by others will be a central focus of our conversations around these concepts. Our goal is to help you choose yourself and be able to choose your partner.  

A lot of you listen to this podcast in order to move past a pornography struggle.  Each of these concepts is fundamental to the integrative process of becoming the person you want to be who doesn’t turn to pornography.  

Darcy - For those of you who have a partner who struggles with pornography each of these concepts is just as fundamental for you to work through in order to create the dynamic that you want to create.  They will help you engage with your partner around their pornography struggle and show up as the person you want to be in all of your life, not just your family’s pornography struggle.  

Zach - These are the topics we are going to cover over the next 5 weeks.

Meaning frames - Disorganization - Reorganizing with integrity 

Meaning frames are the way we look at the world in order to make it make sense to us. 

In each relationship we have, we create meaning frames that help us determine the way we are to act when we are alone, engage with others in our lives, and assure our place within a group.  

Many of our meaning frames are built into our theology and are perpetuated by our family of origin.  For instance, in my household, when I was growing up and as I have become and grown in adulthood, my meaning frames have referenced the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This meaning frame has given me a way to interpret the realities of life in ways that serve me and my family and help me make sense of the life I lead.

We all have meaning frames that we bring into our relationships that help us manage our life through lenses that provide meaning and value.  

In most LDS homes, pornography viewing is seen through a meaning frame of it being always destructive, personally, professionally, and theologically.  This makes pornography an always off limits type of behavior.   Those who engage with it, then find themselves deeply ashamed of their actions.  

Darcy - The family, especially the wives of those who engage with pornography, find themselves just as deeply ashamed of the pornography use for different reasons.  Including the idea that “I am not enough” if he uses that behavior to entertain himself, self soothe, or escape his emotions.  

Zach  - Either way, the meaning frames we bring to our relationships are the lens we use to help us see the behaviors and realities of our lives.  

Each meaning frame that we have does at least one thing for us.  It gives us a way to see the world on a given topic.  

What this looks like can often be a black and white way of viewing a behavior that can isolate us or others because we are not conforming properly to that meaning frame. 

When we encounter someone who is not properly conformed to the meaning frame we have and that we assumed they shared is a disorganization of thought and meaning. 

Darcy, what went on for you when you found out that I was viewing pornography?

Darcy -  Talk about how you thought I was one thing only to find out that I was someone else. And how that threw your whole sense of self and sense of me into disarray.  

What does that mean about my family?  What about our salvation?  What else might he be lying about?  Am I not good enough? Is he not happy with me, satisfied with me? What does this mean for our future?  Am I going to end up as a single mother like all the other women who ended up divorced because of pornography?  

Zach - When our sense of a particular meaning frame is disorganized it creates a lot more questions than what we have answers for in that moment.  

It is anxiety inducing and as a result can raise the conflict in the home and internally.  As you struggle to recreate a new sense of how to organize around this issue, it is helpful to know that you don’t have to have all the answers all up front.  It is also helpful to know that Darcy and I specialize in guiding you through that process.  

Within the membership 4 wednesday’s each month we help people navigate these questions and reorganize with integrity around what they want for themselves and their marriage. 

Reorganizing with integrity is the process of creating a new way of looking at the problem in order to account for greater nuance, understanding, and grace within the relationship. 

The reality of meaning frames is that we decide what they look like. 

We get to make them into what we want them to look like.  

Darcy - More importantly, we get to create the meaning frames that serve us and align with our values. 

Darcy - When it comes to reorganizing meaning frames around pornography we often see spouses using a betrayal model of meaning.  

Darcy - This looks like putting yourself in a near perpetual state of victimhood to your spouse's actions.  

Zach - This is not to say that the reality of finding out that your partner has not lived up to your implicit or explicit meaning frame is not a traumatic experience.  On the contrary, being aware that this is disorganizing, traumatic, and emotional is an important part of rebuilding a new meaning frame that serves and allows us to grow. 

Zach - For you, when you found out that I was looking at pornography, what kind of trauma did that create for you?

Darcy -

Zach - Once you were able to acknowledge that trauma, what did you do to leave victimhood and move into an empowered place that allowed you to reorganize our relationship in more meaningful ways?

Zach - when you think of the new meaning frame that you have around pornography, what does that look like?

Darcy - Answer and then - what is your new meaning frame around pornography?

Zach - I think everyone really needs to look at this for themselves and see how they want to show up.  For me, the idea that this is a struggle that I know you’ll help me with is one of those things that I see as our new meaning frame.  To be real about this, I don’t know that I’ve ever said this to you before, but I struggled being honest around this issue with you in the past because I was really afraid of disappointing you, how you would react, and of how those things would hurt me.  I didn’t want to talk about porn because I was trying to protect myself, which might be an obvious statement, but it wasn’t the same as if I came to you and told you I was having any other struggle.  

Ep

Self-confrontation - other confrontation

Self-validation - other validation

Being known - self-presentation

Differentiation - enmeshment

If you are looking for help in eliminating pornography from your marriage, this podcast is for you.

Zach and Darcy Spafford helped Eric and Jackie overcome pornography in their marriage.

Visit zachspafford.com to set up your 30 minuter consult with Zach or Darcy.