[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Helping Couples Heal Podcast, a place for healing and hope for couples impacted by betrayal, resulting from infidelity and or sex addiction.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your host is Marny Breaker, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex addiction therapist, and founder of the Center for Relational Healing in Los Angeles and San Diego, California.

[SPEAKER_00]: The helping couple's heel podcast was launched in June, with the intention of bringing hope to couples all over the world, who are desperately trying to recover from the devastating impact of betrayal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Realizing how many people the podcast was reaching, and that we could offer even more support to our listeners.

[SPEAKER_00]: Marni Co-founded Helping Couples Huel, which has since grown into a global online coaching organization.

[SPEAKER_00]: This podcast is a foundation of all the work that we do at Helping Couples Huel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening.

[SPEAKER_00]: Marni brings over a decade of experience and expertise in the field of betrayal trauma and is honored to support you wherever you may be in your healing.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've lost hope, you've come to the right place.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, they can slow deep breath and let's begin with the helping couples here podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: Hello everyone, welcome back to the Helping Couples Hill Podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is Marty and I'm really happy to be here.

[SPEAKER_01]: This is my first episode back in the United States after a much needed vacation in Greece where I did end up recording a podcast episode while thinking I would not do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I hope that you've all had the chance to listen and that you've found it helpful.

[SPEAKER_01]: And this week, I am excited to interview my guest who is Chandler Rogers, and Chandler has himself walked the recovery road and is now supporting others, especially couples on that path.

[SPEAKER_01]: He is the co-founder and CEO of Relay, which is a digital platform and app designed to support individuals in recovery through group-based connection and accountability.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am very happy to have you here, Chandler, and I'd love for you to share with us a little bit about your story.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thanks so much, Marne, it's great to be here.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I never planned on working in this space of helping others with pornography and sexual addiction and restoring intimacy.

[SPEAKER_02]: That was not something I'd planned around my life, but here we are.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it does go back to my own personal struggle.

[SPEAKER_02]: For me, I was really young when I got exposed like most.

[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, it's probably a little bit older, even then maybe the average.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was probably a freshman in high school when I was exposed to pornography.

[SPEAKER_02]: For context, I grew up in a home where it was very faith-based, Christian home.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was the oldest of five kids.

[SPEAKER_02]: And both my parents, I would say, had very high expectations, is how I perceived that.

[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe it was partly being the oldest.

[SPEAKER_02]: But pornography was something that we did talk about at home.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember the message was like, [SPEAKER_02]: You know, this is something that you need to watch out for or something bad, something to keep, almost like a danger to stay on the lookout for.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was just kind of in the age of Instagram and Facebook who really becoming popular in those teenage years.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I didn't have to go looking for anything.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I saw myself as someone that like, [SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to walk the straight line.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to be a good kid.

[SPEAKER_02]: I would often be told that I was older than I was in spirit.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was responsible, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Academics and sports and music, all the things I was involved in.

[SPEAKER_02]: I could set my mind to it and perform.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think that performance was something I look back and it's more obvious and retrospect.

[SPEAKER_02]: But as I was kind of slowly gradually exposed to sexualized content, it was all through Instagram, through social media.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was intriguing, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: It's maybe a natural curiosity is, you know, my own body was changing and trying to figure out what was going on.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think I didn't really know what to do with those feelings.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't pair this message that I had heard about this thing, pornography is not good with what I was actually experiencing.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't realize until I think I was so far down the path that I was like, oh, this is what I'm dealing with.

[SPEAKER_02]: And there's kind of this old shoot moment of [SPEAKER_02]: I was trying to stop, I was trying to get a handle on the behavior, but didn't feel like I was fully able to.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was like the harder I tried, the more aware I got, the more elusive and out of control things felt.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it was really a complex time of life to feel like I was fearing out who I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now near the end of high school going into my adult ears, figuring out goals and plans and feeling like everyone on the outside perceives me one way, perceives me as Chandler, who's got it all figured out and is captain of the track and field team and whatever else titles you could put behind my name, but on the inside just feeling like [SPEAKER_02]: a fraud, like one area of my life, totally out of control and no one knew about it and that for me defined everything.

[SPEAKER_02]: It didn't matter how well everything else was going because this one area of my life felt totally out of my control.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm hearing, which makes sense to me as I'm thinking about this, but I'm hearing a lot of shame.

[SPEAKER_01]: People looked at you as a certain way.

[SPEAKER_01]: You were an old soul.

[SPEAKER_01]: You were great in these other ways, which, by the way, was still all part of you.

[SPEAKER_01]: You were not all about your pornography use or pornography addiction, but oftentimes that's how we feel.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm imagining that you had some kind of discovery because it sounds to me like you were not in any way preparing to or planning to share this secret with anyone.

[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I remember, I don't know, it's a little bit fuzzy, but I remember feeling like if someone were to ask me about it, like, if one of my parents were to come to me, it's almost like I was hoping for that to happen.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I don't feel like approaching them and trying to figure out how to have that conversation was on my mind.

[SPEAKER_02]: I remember, because we were going to church quite irregularly, I was thinking about, is there a way I could talk to one of my church leaders about this?

[SPEAKER_02]: But it was actually my mom felt I guess kind of the nudge to go and ask me one day and so she did is where the story does shift.

[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I think this was early in my senior year of high school.

[SPEAKER_02]: She comes to me and is like, hey, I just feel like I need to ask.

[SPEAKER_02]: That's part of our group and something that you've encountered.

[SPEAKER_02]: Is it something that you're struggling with?

[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, Marne, funny enough over the years, I feel like so many of the guys that I've talked to and work with, it felt like those opportunities being the opportunities to maybe hide or to withdraw or to deny or to blame.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I felt in that moment almost kind of a freedom of sense of like I wanted to be open.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wanted to be seen.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I shared, as honest as I could, what was going on and basically like, yeah, this is something that I wanted to seek out.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like it found me, you know, in the last few years, I feel more and more out of control and trying to stop feeling like I can.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember she broke down and she just started crying.

[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like it was all her fault and feel like she had failed as a mother.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think I was aware of the shame, maybe that I had in my own self-perception, but what I do remember is in seeing her kind of turn on herself and feel like this is my fault as a mother.

[SPEAKER_02]: It instantly in that moment kind of provoked this part of me to come out and say, you know, hey, it's not your fault mom.

[SPEAKER_02]: You're a great mother, you know, this is my thing to own.

[SPEAKER_02]: This part of me that wanted to step up and maybe protect and help smooth over and say, like, I'll figure this out, you know, not to diminish your minimize what was going on.

[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I don't think she knew how to handle that.

[SPEAKER_02]: The conversation kind of stopped at that, but she eventually a few weeks later came to me and said, you know, hey, I got an ad or something for this group online.

[SPEAKER_02]: And it's led by a therapist.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was living in Washington State at the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: So it was an online group.

[SPEAKER_02]: And she's like, you don't have to do this.

[SPEAKER_02]: But if you want to, it's for this young adult type of program for pornography and sexual addiction.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I said, sign me up, like, I'm very open because I think what I knew is that I've been trying to do this alone.

[SPEAKER_02]: and I was sick and tired of hiding a part of me and I wanted to step out of that.

[SPEAKER_02]: I just didn't know how and so that was the first time that there was an opportunity to do so.

[SPEAKER_02]: She showed me this group and I was like, let's do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm feeling really sad listening to your story because as you know, I have a son who's seven years old and something that I think about way more than I wish I did and I'm certain that it's because of the work that I do, but how do I protect him from the harms online and pornography is obviously a big part of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: and hearing you say that you didn't seek it out and that it really did find you.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's just reminding me of the responsibility that parents have now more than ever because we need to use the internet.

[SPEAKER_01]: You can't really keep a child these days off of being online.

[SPEAKER_01]: I can say for myself, my son was in first grade last year and they gave him an iPad at school.

[SPEAKER_01]: They enforced the use of technology in the schools now.

[SPEAKER_01]: So the onus is really on us to protect our children even when they're not [SPEAKER_01]: Because it's hard enough kids are curious anyway and do often go out and seek things.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here I'm hearing from you that you weren't even seeking it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm just having a lot of compassion for you and even a little self-compassion for myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that self-compact from parents too.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think especially when you're own awareness of the impacts that this can cause down the line, like it makes sense why we want to do everything we can to protect and prevent.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I look back in my parents, like they did put some parameters in place, maybe more than the average household at that time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the more I understand my own story, I think we could go into this probably a lot more than we have time for, but I think those expectations of feeling like some amount of perfectionism, some amount of performance and the need to [SPEAKER_02]: live up to feeling good enough for myself, for parents, for whomever.

[SPEAKER_02]: It made me feel some rigidity.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that rigidity was a part of my story and feeling like no matter how on top of my life I was.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe feeling like, even though I know my parents love me, even though they say they're proud of me, [SPEAKER_02]: I want to feel more deeply appreciated, more deeply seen in love for who I am, maybe beyond the behavior, right, behavior being, you know, am I being responsible with my use of time with my screens, with tours, with grades, whatever it is.

[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like that was a [SPEAKER_02]: a large focus that I experienced growing up and it wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but I think looking back, it's like, oh, whether it was self-imposed or environmental from my family feeling that sense of maybe control and feeling like, man, I just want to be more deeply respected and valued and seen.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think to play the role in my story, even though there were safeguards with technology.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure that's going to be hard for some people here because here your story is your parents came to you and talked to you about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't something that they shied away from and there were safeguards in place and parameters in place and yet still it found its way.

[SPEAKER_01]: The reality is this is the world we're living in now and we do have to be aware and we do have to talk about it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, I think that more than ever before we need to talk to our kids about the dangers of the online world, what's out there, pornography and predators being a part of that.

[SPEAKER_01]: But that is a whole other podcast.

[SPEAKER_01]: I realize that that is just an entirely different podcast, which we can do another time.

[SPEAKER_01]: But for the purposes of this one, let's get back to your story.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I would love to hear what happened after you said yes to your mother when she mentioned this group therapy.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I think even though I was open to the idea, I remember sitting down opening the computer logging into Zoom for the first time.

[SPEAKER_02]: And kind of having, it wasn't a panic, it wasn't necessarily a large fear.

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I was more nervous than I'm giving myself credit for it back.

[SPEAKER_02]: This was over ten years ago now.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I do remember wondering who's going to be on the other side and having this image of the type of man that deals with this and how [SPEAKER_02]: Whether I really told myself the story or not, I think what I truly believed was I'm not the type of person who struggles with this.

[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody who looks like me, which I guess I viewed myself in some degree of, I am a successful person and I want to be a successful person and live a good life and have good relationships with others and I'm in control of my choices.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm expecting, I don't know what, creepy, pedophile, whatever kind of [SPEAKER_02]: dark, you know, label you might put on that.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I remember in that first session hearing some of the other guys share on that call and just kind of being overwhelmed with the sense of how normal they were in hell.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, belonging and feeling like, well, you know, maybe it wouldn't be best friends with these individuals.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're all different, different ages too, but like feeling like the most part, the theme that stuck out was like, these are good, good men.

[SPEAKER_02]: And like you pointed out, this is just a part.

[SPEAKER_02]: of them that is learned to adapt and deal with some sort of pain, some sort of thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: This probably weren't the words going through my head at the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: But just understanding, they were talking from a place of shame often, right, feeling broken, maybe, you know, sharing about a relapse that had happened recently.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I just want to kind of reach to the screening, be like, dude, I can see that you're a good person.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I just like, I want to infuse some of that belief in you.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think as I started to get into that more and more, I realized how much of the shame that I had myself, how not in tune with my own emotions I really was.

[SPEAKER_02]: As I heard others share as I experienced connection with that group setting, I think it kind of unveiled some deeper layers that I had not really noticed to that point.

[SPEAKER_01]: Did you become sober from using pornography right away or was that a struggle for you?

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if you could guess it fits the theme, I performed my way through that program and I was basically perfect.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was an A plus student in the group and that didn't last forever.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was really frustrating because it was this initial burst of understanding for the first time.

[SPEAKER_02]: The one-on-one behind addiction and the brain and something we say nowadays in relayed the company that I've created.

[SPEAKER_02]: We say you don't have a porn problem, you have a pain problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think just that basic elementary understanding of, oh, there's maybe more to this than just willpower and behavioral compliance.

[SPEAKER_02]: You know, maybe there's some emotional capacity that I needed to develop to be able to deal with discomfort.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know you've talked about this on other podcasts.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I did.

[SPEAKER_02]: I achieved a twelve weeks was the bar, you know, like a lot of programs and I got there and once you hit that threshold, you can continue to attend group that'll paying.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so, [SPEAKER_02]: You know now I'm kind of in a place to mentor and support and I remember it was a really exciting experience because I felt like it wasn't that hard actually at the beginning.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I left the house at this point I graduated high school and I went and did a mission trip for our church.

[SPEAKER_02]: I went out to New York City and so I was living alone out in New York City and you know all the pieces that come with that transition and being alone, being out of the house, still trying to carve out some identity and who I am and I was planning to do college after that and [SPEAKER_02]: Man, pornography and just sexual compulsion just really kind of reared.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's had even stronger than it had before.

[SPEAKER_02]: It felt like I knew more.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had more skills and I understood that I couldn't do this in isolation.

[SPEAKER_02]: But it felt like they didn't matter because it just got worse through that period.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's a progressive disease as you know.

[SPEAKER_01]: And for people that really struggle with an addiction, I think that that would separate some addiction from somebody who just is experiencing the same behavior, but they're not an addict is that, you know, it can't heal in isolation when you're really addicted to something that's progressive in nature.

[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to actually get worse before it gets better.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think to this point, I really was still just kind of focused on behavioral strategies to achieve sobriety.

[SPEAKER_02]: And didn't really have a full awareness that there were maybe these deeper wounds, deeper traumas, if you will.

[SPEAKER_02]: And for me, there wasn't obvious capital T trauma in my story.

[SPEAKER_02]: Again, I thought my parents' relationship was great.

[SPEAKER_02]: I still really admire their relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're together and been married twenty-five years.

[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like I was raised in a good environment for the most part.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think progressively to kind of summarize the years to come in my story, it was up and down.

[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't linear when it came to sexual sobriety, but also maybe to the broader understanding for myself of what recovery and what healing really meant for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was just continually being beat over the head with like it's not just about behavior.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's an underlying current from past wounds, current pain, a lot of maybe smaller things layered together that continue to create this cocktail where my brain realized that I could feel better.

[SPEAKER_02]: I could feel comfort.

[SPEAKER_02]: I could feel soothing through this learned.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think in this time of life, being a young adult, leaving the house, like there was a lot of changes.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so it felt like once I kind of figured out something that worked for one period and got to some sort of stability, got to some sort of success, things would change.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I would enter another chapter, different decisions.

[SPEAKER_02]: I ended up meeting my wife in college.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so then there was the relationship piece that kind of factored in later on.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I was still trying to navigate round three, round four of trying to pursue recovery in each time.

[SPEAKER_02]: Each time was like newer insights in realizing like the way that I'd been approaching it wasn't wrong, but maybe wasn't complete.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think that's a lesson.

[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know who may need to hear this about.

[SPEAKER_02]: like our initial attempt sometimes to address these pains, address these areas of integrity that we want to improve in our life.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it can be really frustrating and it was for me when that initial attempt to see some progress but to have it not stick for a long term was more discouraging than almost the initial cycles of being hidden alone.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I imagine especially for you because you started your story by talking about how you were the oldest child and that you were sort of the, I don't know the word is that the perfect kid maybe the one who got it all right, the one who did the right thing, got good grades.

[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like if I tried hard enough, I could do what I wanted to do, but not this.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to probably ultimately create more feelings of shame, more inadequacy, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: All of that stuff.

[SPEAKER_01]: And also I was thinking when you got into the group and you wanted to reach across through the screen and tell people you're really good and all of that it immediately gave me that sense of you really do want to help others and you have a real [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a gentle soul and a kindness about you that I think is incredibly authentic and yet you couldn't help yourself, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like you have that desire to help others, but you struggle to sound like for quite a while.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, man.

[SPEAKER_02]: That last piece, I think, has been in the last few years.

[SPEAKER_02]: A really deep realization for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think you worded it almost exactly how it came to me one night a few years ago, which was like, I feel like I can help everyone else, but not myself.

[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that hurts.

[SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[SPEAKER_02]: That feels really, really isolating.

[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that for those of us who can relate to that, there's often a self-betrayal that comes with that, right, in helping others, which is such a beautiful thing.

[SPEAKER_01]: There's sometimes a self-betrayal where we need ourselves so badly.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need the support.

[SPEAKER_01]: We need the optimism and the hope and the hand holding.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the reliability.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're not there for ourselves.

[SPEAKER_01]: We're actually ignoring us in service of caring for other people.

[SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: totally I think that's definitely a piece of my story that's taken me a long time to continue to learn and I won't pretend that I've got it all figured out it's like these layers I think it's been a beautiful thing on the one hand realizing that maybe my initial goal was just really sobriety and I think the evolution has been realizing [SPEAKER_02]: I have a lot more to learn about myself than I realized I did at the beginning of this process.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then that's been a cool thing.

[SPEAKER_02]: It's unlocked so many relationships, so many opportunities, my entire career and what I'm doing right now, wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't been open and receptive to kind of going around the journey of like the first solution and necessarily provide a comprehensive solution to what I thought the problem was and that was okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's taken humility.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I know in the last episode you talked about four things that partners who have done the betrayal need to give the partner who's experienced the betrayal.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think you talked about empathy, accountability, transparency and humility.

[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote them down because I really liked them.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think those four things, empathy, accountability, transparency and humility have been the things that I've needed to learn in different ways over and over and over throughout this whole process.

[SPEAKER_02]: Those things are what my own recovery journey, what being in a group, what working on, call it phase one of my own sobriety, has been about learning how to develop empathy for myself and for others, learning about how to take accountability without collapsing into shame.

[SPEAKER_02]: learning how to live with transparency without maybe performance and, you know, maybe shielding parts of me, like true authentic transparency.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then humility, I think it's been a huge piece in realizing I don't need to have it all together and that just because one part of me is struggling, doesn't need to define my whole self.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I thought those things were very applicable, both maybe on the individual healing roadmap and obviously together in couples.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think one of the reasons also that I mentioned that in that last episode was because I was talking about how it's not just the sexual sobriety that is going to help a couple heal that there's still all of these ongoing patterns of behavior, integrity violations, et cetera, that are keeping the couple disconnected or in a traumatized state.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I was saying that sadly, the four things that are really necessary for the betrayer to be able to give to his partner or her partner, [SPEAKER_01]: are the things that most betrayers or addicts, at least for a period of time, they don't have those skills.

[SPEAKER_02]: They're very tough.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like all four of those are pretty tough skills.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[SPEAKER_01]: And here it's like, well, okay, you've done this.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now your shame is probably more activated than it's ever been.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now you're terrified that you're going to lose the person who means the most to you, but that person feels that they don't mean anything to you because of what you've done.

[SPEAKER_01]: And now you're wanting to heal the relationship and [SPEAKER_01]: This is what you need to do, but likely you don't know how to do that.

[SPEAKER_01]: And you don't have those skills on board.

[SPEAKER_01]: So it's definitely a really complex dynamic that occurs and it's not easy.

[SPEAKER_01]: But let me roll back for a minute because I want to make sure that our listeners and me, too.

[SPEAKER_01]: I had very curious about your story.

[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned that there were sort of several iterations of your recovery, and that you went to college after you had struggled in New York City, and that you met your wife there.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm curious about sort of the intersection of all of those things, getting to college, meaning your wife, your addiction, all of that.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I mean, the first thing I did when I got to college was like, I need a group again.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to attack this back head on and it was still very much like I'm going to push and hero my way through again to try harder.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I joined a local group and worked with the therapist as well.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that was good.

[SPEAKER_02]: There was new things to that chapter, new, you know.

[SPEAKER_02]: phases of life right figuring out what I wanted to do and I this is kind of relevant to relay and what I'm doing now but kind of on the side I was realizing that I was really drawn towards tech and I taught myself to code a little bit on the side but I didn't see myself necessarily being a full-time developer.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was also drawn to business and thought that that align more with my personality and so I kind of found the intersection of [SPEAKER_02]: startups and building technology building software and entrepreneurship.

[SPEAKER_02]: This was very early on in my college experience, but I got connected with the startup and so I very quickly in my college experience was kind of juggling work and learning how to work at a startup and figuring out what I love and there was a whole learning curve there and at the same time I also met my wife and it was my first year of school there.

[SPEAKER_02]: We were volunteering on a project together.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this was also typical for me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I need to beef up the resume.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to go find something that'll look good on the resume.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was authentic.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was like, I want to actually be a part of a cool service oriented project.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so there was like an organization on campus to help try to improve the accessibility of campus for wheelchairs and crutches and things like that.

[SPEAKER_02]: and she was the project lead on this project and so I met her very quickly like just really clicked on a deep level and just very quickly got into that relationship and I knew so so entering this relationship how this intersects with my recovery story.

[SPEAKER_02]: at the time I want to say maybe I had like a month of sobriety max like it wasn't that long three four weeks maybe five weeks and probably coming out of a period where it was like relapsing weekly was like my normal cycle and so I felt like I was actually doing relatively good maybe having some sort of a you know back on the up you know we're back to like past five six weeks whatever [SPEAKER_02]: And so as we were starting to date, I wanted to tell her early.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I didn't have a lot of good resources at the time.

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't know much about whatever the best practices are for this.

[SPEAKER_02]: But I just knew I valued being honest about this.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I had been open about my story with a lot of other people now at this point.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was like, I'm just going to talk to her about that I've dealt with pornography.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is something I'm actively working on.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember talking to her about it.

[SPEAKER_02]: And we hadn't been dating very long.

[SPEAKER_02]: I want to say it was less than a month of dating.

[SPEAKER_02]: and it went okay I remember she needed some time to process it but I think where it was different is I hadn't necessarily been acting out in the relationship where she felt like I was betraying her it felt more like still coming into the relationship I was bringing this thing this baggage whatever you want to call it and she's come on a few podcasts with me and she describes it as [SPEAKER_02]: having to reconcile this guy that she was getting to know and starting to fall in love with and really clicking with and feeling like, how does this piece fit in with everything I thought that I knew?

[SPEAKER_02]: What is still true and what is not?

[SPEAKER_02]: And so it definitely added some complexity and I'm happy to go more into this if we want, but tried to be upfront about it was like the intention there, you know, for my integrity, luckily enough she ended up becoming my wife.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think what I've loved about her perspective on this is [SPEAKER_02]: She helped me see at that chapter of my recovery journey.

[SPEAKER_02]: This wasn't right away, but it was in the weeks that followed.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think as I shared more with her over multiple conversations, she helped me see that I was still being really really hard on myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think she kind of saw [SPEAKER_02]: This very performance mindset, like, okay, you're doing all of these things, but it feels like it's maybe coming from a place that's holding you back or might not actually be truly tapping into deeper, deeper healing that you might need.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think she kind of shined a light on, maybe some missing pieces that were still not clicking for me about how I was seeing myself and what I was really trying to focus on.

[SPEAKER_01]: She sounds pretty wonderful.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I love.

[SPEAKER_02]: She's great.

[SPEAKER_01]: When did you get married?

[SPEAKER_02]: Um, so we've been married five years now.

[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, this is, uh, when did we get married?

[SPEAKER_02]: I should know this darn it.

[SPEAKER_02]: I hope she's not listening to this.

[SPEAKER_02]: Twenty, twenty, nineteen, twenty, nineteen we got married.

[SPEAKER_02]: So, yes, coming up on six years.

[SPEAKER_01]: So, and since you got married, have you maintained your sobriety?

[SPEAKER_02]: No, actually so, yeah, I had about, it wasn't a full year.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was like the majority of the first full year being married.

[SPEAKER_02]: There was no acting out, but then it started up against that was call it the most recent chapter of my journey.

[SPEAKER_01]: My question to you, I guess Chandler is if you were listening to this interview, if you were out there and most of the people that listen, I believe to this podcast or people that are really trying to heal from betrayal, whether they're the betrayer of the betrayed, but also really, really wanting to heal the relationship.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess if you were out there in that situation, would it be helpful to hear a little bit more about this part of your story?

[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I'll just touch on one angle of it, just thinking about how tricky and how difficult it can be to heal a relationship through this process.

[SPEAKER_02]: So I think what was hard right about feeling like, you know, Chandler was up front with me.

[SPEAKER_02]: I know that he's working on this.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then feeling like, sobriety didn't stay consistent.

[SPEAKER_02]: I can only speak for myself.

[SPEAKER_02]: I won't try to speak for Jay, but I think that the complexity that brought into our relationship was [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't just an initial discovery.

[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't once we did start to work through this.

[SPEAKER_02]: He got it all figured out and it's kind of behind us and now we're past at least the behavior and I can assume that some varieties there and now we can work on us on, you know, healing trust and deepening our new relationship as newlyweds, right?

[SPEAKER_02]: Learning how to experience intimacy and all forms within our relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: Those are the things that I think both of us would have loved to be focused on in those early years of marriage.

[SPEAKER_02]: But instead it was maybe confused or there was this layer of, okay, but maybe the most fundamental piece of sobriety still wasn't there.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'll speak for the individual seeking recovery, who feel trapped in addiction.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it can be really frustrating to feel like I am trying to own my mistakes.

[SPEAKER_02]: I am trying to take ownership and work on my most essential piece, which is to make it change in the behavior.

[SPEAKER_02]: but to feel incapable of doing that or to feel like after multiple attempts over a long period of time, to feel like nothing has worked fully.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think that for me, created even more of a detachment, even more isolation, even more with draw, where I'd say my own tolerance and ability to hold space for her emotions, got weakened, it got worse.

[SPEAKER_02]: Like, she started feeling I think more pain around my relapsing around my behavior, [SPEAKER_02]: Not initially, not when she first learned that this is a part of my life, but like later on, you know, after ten plus times of, you know, realizing like, okay, he is still actively struggling.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it just made me feel more hardened or calist or numb, or, yeah, kind of feeling like I have already known.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm letting myself down, but now I'm very clearly letting down the woman I love in our relationship.

[SPEAKER_02]: It continued to, I think, make quest number one of sobriety more difficult to actively now have the relationship side getting worse or getting harder to that process.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for your honesty.

[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad that we actually are going into this because I think that the relational struggles are one of the most painful elements for people that are going through this.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I think often to hear from other people who have navigated this journey where it wasn't a linear, you know, a linear road.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's a lot of linear stories out there that can feel really discouraging, probably to both the individual and the relationship.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, but our story has not been linear.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, tell you, and most of the clients I've worked with, it's not been linear.

[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yes, they have been occasionally, but I think that those really are the exception.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think that, you know, trying to recover from an intimacy disorder, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: Like sex addiction, pornography addiction, and when you're talking about relationships, they're hard to heal from.

[SPEAKER_01]: And PS, your story, doesn't even include the deception and the lying.

[SPEAKER_01]: And it was still hard, as you're saying, for your wife, [SPEAKER_02]: Totally.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think a big theme for me in this whole journey has been realizing that like can I help others even when I'm still working on myself?

[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't start relay when I had it all figured out that wasn't why I started it either.

[SPEAKER_02]: It was actually I was still in group.

[SPEAKER_02]: I had actually been accelerating my early career off in the startup direction and I had some opportunities there.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so I had this chance to start the company and we raised some funding and I felt like building a tool that helps supplement between group sessions would be really valuable for me because of what I was seeing trying to take the lead and help.

[SPEAKER_02]: our group be effective and to help each other but it was not because I felt like I had it all figured out it was not because I had a clinical background it was not because I'd reach some inflection point in my own journey and yeah on the relational side too it's been complicated because even the last five years five years of my marriage roughly coincides with five years of doing relay by the way and so [SPEAKER_02]: It's also like my wife and I together have learned a lot even through the relay journey.

[SPEAKER_02]: My abstinence, my sobriety is not been perfect in the relay part of the journey, too.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that's been a scary thing for me as well and realizing like that theme of maybe I can help other people but can't really help myself.

[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I want to normalize that for a second because I think most healers, most helpers.

[SPEAKER_01]: are still on their own journeys in many ways.

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't think that our journey necessarily ever ends and I think we don't just hit this point of enlightenment and then that's it.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I have a lot of respect for recognizing that you have something to offer.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have something to give and to do that and also to continue to attend to yourself, to continue to heal yourself, right?

[SPEAKER_01]: It's when we stop doing the work on ourselves and we only become focused on how can we help others?

[SPEAKER_01]: That's where I think that there's a problem.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and even in the last, you know, year and a half of having a kid.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's new stressors as the company has grown right as I feel more and more pressure of just the new phases of life that it's unveiling these deeper layers.

[SPEAKER_02]: But that's okay.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yeah, I'm still kind of learning in this latest chapter of life that it is super important that I figure out how to take care of me and that there's still a little boy that wants to feel cared for and when I can do that.

[SPEAKER_02]: address those needs healthily.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so much better able to hold space for my wife's pain and all the things she's dealing with and I'm better able to help others too.

[SPEAKER_01]: Something that I would love to do if this is okay with you, Chandler, because I actually feel like there's quite a bit more that we can explore together.

[SPEAKER_01]: And I also want to get into how you ended up doing what you're doing career-wise, because obviously your own experience really was the catalyst for this amazing online platform that you've created.

[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm wondering if we could have a part two.

[SPEAKER_01]: And if you could come back and if we can start with right where we're leaving off, [SPEAKER_01]: and continuing in the relational dynamic.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then move into where things are now for you individually and then in your relationship.

[SPEAKER_01]: And then talk a little bit about this wonderful resource that you have.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, happy down.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's do it.

[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, cool.

[SPEAKER_01]: All right, everybody.

[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you as always for listening to Health and Couples Heal.

[SPEAKER_01]: I am always in forever grateful for your support.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we'll see you again really soon.

[SPEAKER_01]: Take a care.

[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening to the Helping Couples Heal podcast where you're healing is our number one priority.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like additional resources about the trail trauma, which will learn more about our coaching services, please visit HelpingCouplesheal.com or call five-six-two-three-seven-nine-four-three-two-five.

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[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't an easy journey, but you don't have to do it alone.

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