Hey everyone. Welcome
back to the couples healing podcast if you did not get a chance yet to listen to the previous episode, Episode Number nine is one of the most important episodes that I will ever do on this podcast because it sets the foundation for everything else. So if you haven’t had a chance to listen to that yet, I would encourage you to go back, listen to it, I hope that it gives you a lot of direction and hope knowing that it’s possible for the relationship to heal. Now, today’s episode is all about what do you do if he’s resistant or not motivated to change, and this is for both him and her. Because I want to share with you some things that you might not have thought of before. So you can see this in a completely different light. So many couples are looking for a path forward after there has been damage done by pornography addiction. After working with hundreds of couples, as a therapist, I want you to know that there is hope for you hope for your relationship to become stronger, to rebuild the trust and the connection and to rid the addiction from your lives permanently. And in this podcast, I’ll be sharing with you the tools and the strategies that you need to heal both individually and in your relationship. My name is Sam Tielemans. And welcome to the couples healing podcast. Okay, I want to dive right in this episode. I was thinking about it not too long ago, because I had a handful of people call me who were kind of on the fence. And they knew that this is something they didn’t want in their life. But they didn’t really feel this motivation or desire to change, there was a lot of resistance still, but there was enough interest to at least reach out and get information about the process and how I can help. And so I wanted to share this episode because there each time this happened, there was much more than met the eye. So okay, what this is what I mean by that, when somebody presents or let’s say somebody is in a relationship, if a wife is in a relationship with somebody with a husband says I’m not going to do anything, this is not that big of a deal. he resists changing, he minimizes it. he avoids taking action, he’s not motivated. Typically when we see this, most people think that this is a like, what do you do with that? How do you work with that if somebody doesn’t want to change? What am I supposed to do as a wife. And the same thing is true for him, if he within himself feels, I just don’t really feel motivated, I don’t have a strong desire to change. Maybe this isn’t that big of a deal. Or maybe I can just kind of limp along and it’s, I’ll get through this or we can somehow get by in the relationship. It’s so critical. So this there’s two groups of people. But they present with the same type of issue, meaning, the manifest the meaning it’s like the resist, it’s on the surface, right? They look the same on the surface, that’s the best I can say that there’s two groups of people that look the same on the surface, which is avoid, minimize resist lack of motivation, right? It’s so critical to understand what is beneath that lack of effort and engagement in the process. There’s one group of people who this episode is not for. And this whole Podcast Series really is not for this type of person where the motivation for the lack of effort or the the reason why they don’t feel like there’s any effort or engagement is because they don’t feel like it’s a problem. They just say pornography is not an issue. I’m not going to do anything to change it because it’s not something that affects me. And if you are affected by this wife, then you’re overreacting. And I’m sorry, because this is just you know, this is what men do. And I’m not going to change. This episode is not for that group of people. However, there’s another group of people which might be bigger than this first one that I just mentioned, but it looks the same. And it’s absolutely critical to figure out when somebody says, I really don’t feel like I want to change or they resist what is driving that resistance. This struck me so clearly, about six years ago, when I was working at a clinic, and somebody came in from another state, they drove for a few hours to come in. And what they saw when he showed up in session, the first thing he says was just what I just mentioned, just just what I was mentioning to you guys about this idea of I don’t want to change that was his he says, I don’t really want to change. This isn’t that big of a problem? And so my initial thought was like, okay, like, what are you doing here? Then? Like, how can how can I help you if you don’t want to change, but you’re here at a clinic that specializes in helping individuals and couples overcome this problem? What can I do for you? And the wife said, I feel so devastated by this. I desperately want him to do something about this. And he’s not changing and I don’t know what to do. And so what I started to do is ask him questions, and there’s no judgment, right? If somebody says, I don’t want to change, I just get curious about what drives that what could be leading you to make that decision. So when I met with him, that’s all I did was asking questions about Okay, help me understand this.
How long has this been going on? What’s been the impact in your life? When you decided that you don’t want to do this? helped me understand what what does the addiction serve what purpose does it serve what does it do for you so he went on to describe that the addiction was his way to cope with pain and so just like we’ve talked about in these these other episodes i want to really drill this idea in like the core of it is it’s a coping mechanism and so i asked him what would happen if you didn’t have a coping mechanism this particular coping mechanism then he started which really caught me off guard he started to tear up and he said if i didn’t have this coping mechanism then i would have no way to deal with my pain and i just i don’t know how i would move forward with life because his situation was such where he felt depression he was struggling with a lot of negative beliefs about himself and the addiction served as a way to distract him from his pain as it does for most men and so as he told me that he started to tear up and he says i’m scared to let this addiction go because if i don’t have this then i have nothing and the instant he said that to me that was one of the first times that this idea came became very clear to me there’s so much more than meets the eye we have to get underneath the resistance because if he didn’t think it’s a problem and he genuinely believed that and he wasn’t going to do any work about it he just says like sorry this is this is what i do and i’m not going to change then just the plan of action is different right that if i was working with the wife or the couple in that situation i would say okay like this is we would move forward in a different course of action so for her it would involve solely focusing on individual healing and yes well i think individual healing is important even within the couple context of course if he’s not going to change and she says i need him to change or else this is i don’t know what i’m going to do she then focuses on individual healing she puts up boundaries in place to protect herself emotionally and then i would really help her clarify what does she want to do and what will you do in terms of like what will and won’t you do in terms of this being the relationship that you’re in what can you tolerate for some people they’ll say like this is something that i hate but i’m not willing to divorce them over other people say i can’t stay in a marriage with somebody who is not willing to see this as a problem and make changes to overcome it and so there’s a whole lot of things that you can do again in that situation that’s a completely different thread and it’s a different a different approach but there’s things that you can do and again it’s just focusing on helping them get clear about how they want to proceed and move forward the other thing though that is underneath resistance is what we were just sharing about this guy who came in it’s fear and it’s shame as a result of the fear and the shame that’s why he’s not trying so the reason why i thought of doing this episode is because again i got a call from somebody a few weeks ago and he’s just like you know i really want to get this out of my life this is a problem and i said okay great then on our first session he started to talk about that you know i don’t i actually don’t know how committed i am to this process and then i again my first thought was like okay well what can i do for you but as we started doing this line of questioning to help him understand just me just being curious he reveals the same thread which is i’ve failed so many times i just don’t know if this is something that i actually can do and so what i do is i tell myself that maybe it’s not that big of a deal i tell myself maybe this is something that i really desire and i want in my life and i said that makes sense that you would say those things to minimize the shame or the pain that you might feel if you fall back into old habits because if you can just tell yourself and convince yourself even though it’s not really convincing yourself because you know in your heart of hearts how you feel so even if you tell yourself it’s not that big of a deal you try to minimize it really what you’re doing is trying to minimize the pain which i understand and for him when we explored this idea and i said well if you got different tools and you really could overcome this and this wasn’t a problem in your life anymore if this mountain of failure didn’t continue to stack up if these things didn’t it if these failed attempts didn’t continue to accumulate would you want this out of your life and he’s like well yeah of course i don’t want this this is not something that i want in my life because it’s affecting me it’s affecting my spouse and just the idea for him that trying again could result in another failure that’s what put up this smokescreen of maybe i don’t want to overcome this maybe i haven’t haven’t hit rock bottom and i haven’t tried hard enough
because i don’t really care but the reality for so many men that is that that’s just not true at all they’re just afraid of taking another step and having it lead to another failure because most of the men who are listening to this my guess is you’ve tried to overcome this problem countless times over the course of years of your life most people that i work with have been struggling with this problem for years and so on the surface it looks like there’s a lack of motivation and a lack of engagement in the process a lack of commitment to the to the process of healing but if you really go underneath the surface and you explore what’s causing that lack of commitment what’s causing the resistance most of the time you’ll find that it’s fear and so another thread that i think is important to this is sometimes people say that the initial motivation to get somebody into the process of healing needs to be because he wants it sometimes people say that you have to do that he needs to do this for himself he can’t do it for his wife you can’t do it for his leader at church he can’t do it for any other person other than himself and that idea never really resonated with me just because there’s two fundamentally different ways of looking at addiction and when somebody says he needs to get in there and do this for himself the way that they’re looking at addiction is that addiction is because an addiction exists because there’s a lack of desire to stop if somebody says he needs to do it for himself or he’s not going to quit that just again fundamentally tells me they’re seeing addiction as just it’s like it’s a desire it’s a lack of desire when i see it from the completely opposite way i don’t think addiction i don’t think somebody struggles with addiction because they lack a desire to change i think people struggle with addictions because their their coping mechanism has become so ingrained that that’s just how they’re again like they say in neuroscience why neurons that fire together wire together so in other words the more you make certain choices the more those pathways get built up in the brain so they just develop these habits of coping with their pain in this particular way and then it just has this grip on them because it’s so wired in on one level and then on second level which i think is even more important emotionally they have no other way to cope with their pain so it’s not that they don’t want to overcome the addiction they just have no alternative they don’t know how to process how they feel in a healthy way it’s difficult for them to connect they have these negative beliefs about themselves so all of those things all of those factors contribute to somebody going back to addiction even though they know that they don’t want it in their life so if somebody says well he needs to do this for himself it’s just you’re fundamentally looking at it in it through the lens of he’s choosing addiction because he wants it when again for most people that’s not actually true and another reason why i think this is i don’t agree with that statement of he needs to do this for himself or rather let me clarify that that the initial motivation of what brings them into therapy needs to be for himself for me personally for me it doesn’t i don’t think it matters what the initial motivation is that bring somebody to therapy and the reason why that’s true for me as the clients that i work with there’s a couple of reasons number one i remember doing a call with somebody last year this has stuck with me because again this idea i haven’t really had a good way to describe this he said that he hears that he needs to do this for himself but the problem for him is that he said that he doesn’t value himself so why would he do this for himself when he doesn’t see any value in himself when he said that the light bulb went on for me is like that’s another good reason why
requiring that somebody come into therapy strictly for themselves will eliminate a swath of people it just takes a whole group of people who otherwise would take action even if it was motivated by i don’t want to lose my wife or i don’t want to lose my kids if i keep doing this i’ll lose my job it’s for me it doesn’t matter what the motivation is because once they come in and they get the tools that they need it’s not the desire that sustains their progress some people mistakenly believe that if he’s not doing it for himself then he won’t continue to work on it if he doesn’t want it it’s not going to work because he’s not going to do it but the other way of looking at it is it again it doesn’t take into account the fact that people have fears they have a track record of failure and inadequacies and a lack of belief that it’s possible they feel shame and all of this contributes to resistance so if somebody has to come in because the wife says i’m not going to stay in this marriage anymore if you’re not going to take action i love you i care about you but this is too painful for me so if you will not take action as much as i want to stay i can’t so he says okay i’ve got to get into action that motivation overcomes the degree of fear that he has the track record of failure,
that
that fear of loss can get him into action. So that he can actually get the tools that heal the core of the problem. So even if initially, it wasn’t his idea, once he starts to take action, once he starts to heal the core of this, the healing of the problem is what sustains growth. It’s not the unwavering desire that he has to overcome the addiction. It’s the the momentum and healing of the core issue that allows him to sustain his progress. You see what I’m saying? Whenever there’s resistance there, or if there’s a lack of desire, it just simply means there’s a block there, because who wouldn’t want a happy marriage? Who doesn’t want to be at peace? And so it’s the deeper healing that makes the progress sustainable, not the willpower, not the desire for change, of course, there needs to be some level of desire. Just like I mentioned, at the beginning of the podcast, some people if they don’t have the desire to change, because they don’t see as a problem, that’s a whole different thing. But if somebody has a baseline level of I really don’t want this in my life, but the motivation isn’t quite there to get into action. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter what that motivation is, because it’s not the desire that sustains progress. It’s the healing of the core of the problem. hope that makes sense. So what do you do, because I get that there’s a lot of women who are listening to this, who might have a hard time believing that their husband who has been resistant to change, at least during points or periods of their relationship, that has been resistance resistant to change, that he really does care, and he wants to overcome the issue. It might be hard for them to believe that. Because if that’s really all that they’ve seen is resistance and dragging their feet and just minimizing and avoiding. They’re gonna say, he doesn’t want to do this, I’ve begged him, I’ve asked him, I’ve done everything I can and he’s still not working. So what do you do in this case? How do you know if he actually does care, and he wants to overcome the issue? So my response is that you ask him, how would encourage you to have a conversation with your husband. Because I shared a story yesterday, not yesterday, sorry, last episode of the couple who the wife had the same belief, my husband doesn’t care. He’s not trying, every time we have a discussion. He minimizes how I feel, he avoids talking about the pain that I’m in. And I’m all by myself. And so the process that I took them through was to help him express how he felt underneath his the wall underneath the wall coming up underneath the shutting down, what was actually happening for him, What was he feeling, and just by helping him express his feelings in a different way, he was able to share with her, I really do care, honey, when you talk about how bad you feel, I care about you, and it hurts me. Because I know that I did this. And I feel so awful about myself that I it’s just so painful for me to talk about it, I want you to feel better, I want to do right by you, I want to have a good relationship with you. But whenever you talk about this, I get overwhelmed. And I don’t know how to deal with it. And so I shut down. That conversation changed her entire view of him in in an instant. Because she was so used to him, avoiding his avoiding her pain, which she interpreted, and understandably so, she interpreted that as he doesn’t care about me. But just by helping them identify and express how he felt in clear terms. It completely changed how she saw him. So this is the same thing is going to be true for you. So what I would encourage you to do is have a conversation with him and ask him what’s going on underneath the surface? What are the things that contributes to the resistance? So what might that look like? I want to give you maybe some words, because sometimes people sometimes it’s hard to figure out what do you say that might not because of course, sometimes these conversations are very sensitive. And so bringing it up at all will cause gridlock or a fight, or, you know, people get disconnected because of this, just bringing up the topic. So I want to give you maybe a like an example of what you can share, to start to try to uncover what is causing this resistance because again, there’s so much more than meets the eye. So what I would say, if I was in your shoes, this is what I would say. I would even reference this podcast because now you have like an anchor, you have something you can go back to and say hey, I learned this thing or I had this insight was shared with me. So this is what I would say. And and I would go to him like timing is important. So finding a time when you know that he might be more willing or receptive or open to talking
and I would say something like honey, I was listening to a podcast recently and He was sharing something that I feel like can help us. And help me understand you more. What he said was that sometimes when people have this resistance around changing or, or having motivation to overcome the addiction, or if they kind of avoid or shut down, what I had always thought is that just meant that the other person doesn’t care. But what the person on the podcast said, what what Sam said on the podcast was that a lot of times when people feel this resistance, it’s not because they don’t care, it’s just because it can be, it can be scary sometimes to take a step. And try to make a change, because for most men, they’ve failed more times than they can count. So the idea of taking another try another stab at this, trying to overcome this to then get met with failure and another slip. And if you like, nothing’s changing. He said that. That’s a very difficult experience for somebody and they feel defeated. And they feel discouraged. And it just leads them to say, you know, I’m not going to really, I’m not going to really deal with this, because I don’t really don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to change I’ve been trying for a long, long time, it’s not working. And so that’s a big part of what creates this resistance to taking another chance. Is that true for you? Does any of that resonate? When you think about trying? Is there a part of you that feels the resistance because you don’t want to fail again? Because you know how much this affects me and I’m not here to I’m not trying to cause a fight right now, when we talk about this, all I want to do is just understand you. So I just wondered if any of that is true for you? Do you? Do you notice any of that fear? Or is it scary? Or is it difficult? Is it is it painful? Like what is it like for you? When you try and then you fail again? How does that affect you? And then, okay, that’s okay, stepping out of roleplay. Now, then, once he answers that, I’ll start to give you a window into that conversation. Because my guess is that if you approach it in this way, in a very neutral way, kind of how I just again, I tried to model the tone that you can, you can follow. Just in a very neutral, I’m just here to understand you. This new insight came out, I’d never seen it in this way. And I just want to see if that’s true for you. Because I know that you’ve tried in the past. And I know we get into all these fights. Because I feel like you know, I want to see change. And the reason By the way, I want changes because I care about you. And whenever something like the addiction comes between us, I just feel far away from you. And I want to feel close. And so when I was listening to this podcast, he shared with me this new perspective that I had never considered before, I just wanted to see if that’s true for you. So by doing it in this way, it allows him to in a very open, that’s a very open forum for him to express, or at least start to express how he feels. And I would be very, very surprised if he didn’t find something in that storyline in that thread that I just shared. That didn’t resonate with him. And once he then says, Yeah, I actually I do notice that like I hate failing, I just feel like such a loser. Of course I don’t want to and then you can even just validate like, of course, like nobody wants to feel like a loser, right? That makes sense why it might be difficult, or you know, like you’ll start to get, you’ll start to be able to have a dialogue. The more openness, the more open of a forum. By creating by having a neutral conversation like that, you’ll get so much information, that then you’ll know what to do with having a conversation like that, that leads to them being able to then take the first step. Because if you can come to this common understanding of like I like my husband actually doesn’t. It’s not that he doesn’t care about me. He’s terrified of failing again, because of how bad he feels about himself. When he fails. Anybody can understand that right? anybody, any person can understand failures, painful. Now, that’s not a pass to not do anything. Of course, we want him to take action, we want him to take the steps. But the very foundation of being able to move forward.
A part of this foundation is having an understanding of where he’s coming from. Because once going back to the story that I shared earlier, and that I also shared in the episode previous once she understood that her husband cared about her and really did want her to heal. Now, there was a different there was a different exchange. In those moments. There was a different interaction, a different conversation, there was completely different energy. At the end of the session, they’re hugging each other. That never would have happened if they didn’t get underneath the surface level resistance avoidance he doesn’t care it’s just understanding what is driving that reaction because emotion drives our decisions when we’re in a particular emotional state it leads to certain actions if i’m feeling scared i’m not going to i’m going to do something when i’m afraid that i would never do if i was feeling clear and at peace and calm so we want to just understand what’s the emotion behind the action which helps you to then have that understanding and that can even lead to compassion right because we can have compassion for somebody who’s scared of failing i’m not saying we have compassion for the behavior of the addiction we can have understanding for the behavior we don’t give that a pass and say oh you’re hurting okay yeah that’s fine go ahead and do that no that’s not what we’re saying we can at least have compassion and understand how somebody is feeling and once you can meet the other once you can meet each other on that level that is the thing that can open up the door to taking a step this is where i was saying earlier it goes back to it doesn’t matter what the motivation is for some people it might be i don’t want to lose my spouse for some people it’s it could be something positive like i want to get closer i know this is getting in the way because once you take the initial step and you start to heal and you get the tools to change and you do those things in spite of your fears then you can actually start to see progress and like i said earlier that progress is what sustains you desire can follow progress of course if he wants to get rid of the addiction that’s going to be a part of it even if the motivation of the loss of the relationship actually gets them to take the first step there is a baseline level of i want this out of my life too but again for so many people if they don’t value themselves that’s just not enough the fact that they wanted out of their lives is not enough sometimes and that’s okay because we can work with whatever the motivation is as long as they take that first step and so just to recap all of this what do you do i think number one it can be so crucial and so helpful to have this conversation that i just shared with you you can use those words you can use your own words but that’s the general feel of the conversation that will lead to a successful outcome or you’ll have the most you’ll have the highest chances of that lead to a successful outcome then once you have this baseline understanding then you can take a step and for some people that might be listening to this podcast for some people it might be reaching out and getting additional tools by meeting directly and getting the support to work through these issues whatever that step is just by having this understanding creates an openness to take that step and once you do and you get into action then you’re going to feel more motivation you’re going to feel more excitement you’re going to feel more hope that it’s actually possible once you start to see these changes and again like i said that’s a big part of what’s going to continue to motivate the change and the growth and while yes there’s a part of that individual like yeah i want this for me to of course we want that there but sometimes that’s not enough because sometimes people just don’t value themselves enough like i mentioned earlier when i had that call with somebody he’s like yeah i want this for me but that’s not enough because i don’t i don’t see the value in me so sometimes we need a little more help and whatever that help is is okay but taking those steps will allow you then to finally solve this problem and heal and come together and leave this in the past so it doesn’t continue to follow you around so if you’re listening to this has been helpful i my hope this has been valuable to help you guys see this in a different light because it’s 100% possible for people to heal even if there’s resistance there and you can just simply follow the thread to understand the why which then can open up the door to change so if this has been helpful if this podcast already or generally has been valuable for you i know you haven’t done a ton of episodes isn’t only episode number 10 so i’m excited about what’s going to continue to the episodes that i’m going to keep putting out if this has been helpful i would it would be a huge help if you wouldn’t mind rating and reviewing it because it helps tremendously for other people to find it so this has been valuable i’d super appreciate that i’d love to hear your feedback and like i said if this is a step even just listening to this podcast and there might be some of you who are listening who want to take another step and they want to get help and if so i would love to support you in any way that i can so another couple of options is to go to the website couples healing.org and there’s a free course there so that’s a step that you can get started with to get even more information start to get some tools or you can reach out to reach out to me directly with the information that’s on the website there and so again as i finish up the goal of this was to help you see this in a different way and to give you some hope that even if there’s resistance it’s likely because of fear and we can work with that and so i would encourage you to have these conversations with your partner with your spouse i’d love to hear you responding you can shoot me an email i’d love to hear your responses how did this go what did you learn what did you notice were there any blocks that came up and then we can do some future episodes on what to do like what are some additional things that you can do based on what happens in those conversations appreciate you guys being here with me i hope this has been helpful and i look forward to having you guys on the next episode alright take care wait before you go i’m offering free access for my podcast listeners to a course i created so make sure you go to couples healing.org so you can get some tools to start the healing process individually and in your relationship or if you want even more support and you’d like to work with me directly you can contact me with the info that’s on that website as well i’m excited for you to make progress on your journey
