From Restraining Order to Reconnection: Bryan Power’s Journey Through a Brutal Breakup (Ep 301)

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
So have you ever been in a relationship where things got so
bad, so toxic, so painful, you honestly didn't think there was
a way back? Or maybe you've been through a
brutal breakup, and even though part of you wanted to move on,
another part of you kept wondering, well, what if I could
actually fix this? Well, if that's you, you'll want
to tune into this week's episodewhere we explore one of the most
dramatic relationship comeback stories I've ever heard.

(00:22):
And my guest, Brian, went from abreakup and restraining order
with his wife to rebuilding a relationship that's more honest,
connected, and powerful than ever before.
And the crazy part is, he didn'tdo it through therapy, retreats,
or miracle advice. He did it by diving deep into
attachment theory, owning his trauma, and doing the hard work
that most guys avoid. So this episode is for guys who

(00:44):
struggled in relationships, especially the ones that ended
ugly and want to understand how to grow from failure rather than
repeat the same patterns. You're listening to the Inner
Confidence Podcast. My name is Robbie Kramer, I've
been a coach since 2007 and I'vehelped countless men rapidly
achieve all their social and dating goals.
My mission is simple, to help you position yourself to meet
stunning women, make awesome friends in route to becoming the

(01:06):
most confident and attractive version you can possibly be.
I'm absolutely obsessed with giving you the most leverage
ways possible to win the game. So stick around.
Let's go. Welcome, Brian.
Oh, Robbie, thanks for that introduction.
Man, I, I, so excited to be here.
I'm excited to hear this story. It sounds amazing, but you're,
you're right now, I, I do have afun story to tell and I hope, I

(01:27):
hope the story I tell will, uh, it will resonate with a lot of
your listeners. And I hope that the information
I shared today is going to help change somebody's life and
hopefully you can save some relationships with the
information that we share. But yeah, thanks for having me
on the show, man. I really love what you're doing
and happy to be a part of it. Thanks.
Yeah, of course. And I'm eagerly waiting to hear
the story, so let's dive in. So what I'd like to do is I
typically like to share a littlebit about my childhood, right?

(01:49):
Because I, I truly believe that a lot of my issues at an adult
and for all of us, really, a lotof our issues coming into
adulthood stem from childhood. And, you know, and, and those
wounds that we, we, you know, you know, we grow up with, if
you will, and we, and we obtained throughout our
childhood tends to, you know, resonate in our brains and play
out in ways that we don't even understand a lot of times.

(02:10):
And that's really what happened to my wife and I.
A lot of the subconscious woundsthat we were dealing with from
our childhoods began to play outin 2024.
But you know, for me, I was, I was raised by a single mom.
My mom was 21 years old. My brother and I, you know, my
brother was a little older than me, about a year, a little over
a year older than me. So at 21 years old, my mom had
two kids and my my father was struggling with addiction.

(02:33):
And so they divorced pretty muchwhen I was born.
And I was raised by a single momwho really, you know, was trying
to find herself in her 20s and, you know, struggled to, you
know, just put food on the table.
And, you know, at the end of theday, working 2-3 job didn't have
the emotional bandwidth a lot oftimes to, you know, to really
help raise and nurture 2 boys. You know, again, as a female,

(02:54):
they don't always know what boysneed either.
So that that also difference is sometimes hard.
But, you know, and then we movedaround a lot too.
So my mom was trying to, you know, find out how to live, how
to, you know, how to fun with her life, how to figure out
where she needed to be, how to make money, how to pay the
bills, how to raise these kids. And then it was it was
tumultuous, you know, and I saw a lot of things as as a child in
that, in that atmosphere, if youwill, as you can imagine, you

(03:15):
know, seeing something growing up that, you know, probably kids
shouldn't see or be around and, and stuff like that.
And yeah, so my father was in and out of my childhood as well.
So a lot of times he would come into our lives cause a little
chaos, things would get crazy and then they would fight
whatever and not see each other for a while.
And my father was just constantly kind of in and out of
my life up until I was about nine years old.
At nine years old, there was a big incident that happened and

(03:38):
that would be the last time I would see my father for another
three years. Three years later, I did see him
in a courthouse where my mom waslooking for child support and
dad was looking at, you know, have some visitation rights.
And it just became this mess here in that regard.
So I did see him for a short time in the courthouse at 12
years old. And then I did not see him later
until I chased him down in my early 20s to find a little bit

(03:58):
more my father. And I was able to have a
relationship with my father, thank God.
And it was kind of interesting and everything in my 20s for
about 6-7, eight years before hedid ultimately pass away.
So that's just a basic outline, if you will, of kind of the way
I grew up. I could get into some crazy
details and, and all that, but Idon't think we need to do that.
But just to give an understanding like trauma, you
know, we obtain trauma through our childhoods and a lot of

(04:18):
times a childhood grows up in a,you know, maybe a crazy
atmosphere. Like, you know, think of kids
that grow up in a war-torn zone or something, you know, where
they're, they're, they're seeingbullets fly and everything.
That's obvious trauma, you know,and you know, something like
myself, maybe, you know, there was some trauma, there's
parties, there was stuff going on that was just maybe crazy
moving around a lot, you know, could also be difficult not
having the nurturing that we needed as kids would play out.

(04:39):
I love gabber. Matea has a line that says, you
know, trauma isn't just what happens to the child, but also
the things that don't happen to the child.
So if a child is looking for comforting, let's say, and
there's no parents around to comfort that child, you know, as
let's just say an infant, right,2-1 years old, you know, six
months, one year or two years, you know, if a child's looking
for comfort and can't find it, that's traumatizing for a child.

(05:00):
So sometimes, even if you came through a pretty healthy, you
know, quote UN quote childhood, sometimes we obtain these
wounds, if you will, just because sometimes our parents, I
can't be there. Maybe my mom and dad are working
too working or just not even in the room or something at the
time. And those things can happen
where children develop these subconscious wounds, I feel.
Like a kid could even get traumafrom losing a balloon or

(05:23):
something that we would. Yeah, to my 5 1/2 year old right
now, that is a traumatizing experience.
And that balloon takes off and he's like, you know, right,
Sure. Yeah.
So it's funny because, yeah, something simple like that can
to us, we can laugh about it as adults, but as a child that can
be kind of traumatizing and trauma really begins to develop
over two things, mostly repetition and emotion.

(05:45):
These are the things that are going to really set in in a
child's brain and develop more of those wounds.
So. So again, emotion is really the
the big player because emotionalcan be the the stronger of the
two because let's just let's just say you drive to work every
day and you're fine. Never even think about it.
Get in your car, drive to work, no problem.
You do that for 10 years. But one day you get in that car
and you have an accident at a certain Rd. at a certain light
and it's a pretty bad accident right now.

(06:07):
Every time you get in that car and you're driving to work
again, you may have some, some, you know, subconscious like
repercussions going on there because of that one time trauma.
So trauma is basically from emotional and repetition, but it
doesn't always have to be repetition.
So, but essentially it's throughout our lives and for a
lot of it is childhood. You relate it the formative
years, zero to seven, even 8 years old are extremely

(06:28):
formative. There's studies about that.
Sometimes the first seven years are just like the hyper most
critical years of a child's life, if you will, a person's
life. Sometimes you can really set a
pattern for a child for their whole life in that first seven
years. So coming through some
dysfunctionality in there as a child, it's gonna set, you know,
set me up for some failure coming on into my adult hall

(06:49):
into my adult life. And, and that's kind of what
played out for my wife and I, mywife just real quick, she also
came through her through her owndysfunctional family.
Their family had some issues and, and some stuff like that.
And, and there was a lot of trauma on her side.
So she was dealing with her own trauma, you know, in her adult
life. And ultimately we we got
together, you know, about 2015, 2016, I think it is.

(07:09):
But in 2024, we were already 8 years into our relationship and
really things were going fairly well.
I would have thought, you know, we had a pretty good
relationship. We didn't have too many fights.
We didn't have any drug issues. There was no money issues.
We both work hard, we both pay the bills.
We both, you know, have our own lives a little bit.
But but you know, we and we havea lot of fun together.
We just really love each other and connected and, and we did,

(07:31):
we actually loved each other tremendously.
But we would have some of this. Yeah.
So I have a 5 at the time, my son actually, it was 4 1/2.
I'm gonna have a stepdaughter who's about to turn 14 now.
So she was what, about 12 at thetime?
So, So yeah, they're just great kids.
And and so the thing that is funny because what happened with
my son when he was born, a lot of our fighting began to kind of
exacerbate a little bit. It started to touch those wounds

(07:52):
a little bit. We started to see each other
more. You're starting to fight over
like the parenting styles and some of the things, you know,
with your kid. The kid is kids are the greatest
thing in the world, but they will also challenge you in ways
that are really kind of like interesting, right?
And challenge you to be the bestperson you can be.
But they're gonna push buttons. They're gonna show you who you
are sometimes and your parentingstyle versus your wife
sometimes. And that's really what started

(08:13):
to happen that was triggering some of our wounds, if you will.
And we would have some of these minor fights, but I would
consider mostly minor fights, nothing major per se. 2020 and
2021 was kind of hard. We had, you know, with that the
COVID stuff and the shutdown wasbeing locked in together
sometimes that was a little tough year for for some things
there as well. And, and at that point, my son
was only, you know, just like one years old.

(08:33):
And so we are still dealing with, you know, figuring the
parenting stuff out. So it was a little bit of a.
My, my wife and I don't have kids yet, but we're planning,
you know, maybe a year, a year and a half from now.
And I'm already kind of like anticipating that that could
cause a lot of, you know, disagreements over who does what

(08:54):
or, you know, like kids crying in the middle of the night is
like, who's going to get up to to deal with this?
Like, you're, you do it. No, you do it and.
Those are some of the things we would literally fight about and
not only, you know, the kids crying.
In fact, that's one of the things we did fight about.
Like my son would be in his cribsometimes and and I would be the
one that kind of get up and I was always the one that I had no
problem with that because I always felt like, Hey, my wife,

(09:15):
she went through the pregnancy. I got to do everything I can to
keep her, let her rest and and deal with.
That's fine. I'm also she would work, you
know, so many crazy. I just I had no problem being
the one to get up. But then we started to get to
the point where like, is that the right thing to do, right?
Should you be getting up? You know, are you, you're
comforting him and like you're not letting himself sued.
And then this became this whole issue of like, do you let
himself soothe or do you comforthim and let him and put him back

(09:37):
to sleep? So these are some questions that
really that's one of the questions we started to have.
And that was something that started to kind of again,
trigger some of these minor fights, but nothing was major.
We loved each other tremendously.
We had a, again, overall a pretty good relationship, but
through the, through the couple years with my son and everything
else, things started to play outin 2024 February, we had a

(09:58):
pretty good fight. My, I was out working.
I didn't get home till eight, 9:00 at night.
My, my wife was home with the kids and yeah, my son was acting
up a little bit. And by the time I got home, she
was like fired up. She just wanted to talk about
some things and parenting and all this.
And I said, man, I had a sore throat at the time.
And I said, man, I'm exhausted. Can we just please, can we put
this on the shelf and do this another night?
And she was not in the mood. She wanted to talk about it that

(10:20):
night. And, and so now I'm listening to
defend. And this is something that we do
a lot of at times, instead of listening to understand, we're
triggered a little bit. We just, we're not listening to
the end and, and, and not take ownership of our, of our issues,
if you will. And so that was starting to
happen. I was looking at, you know,
listen and I'd, you know, that'snot happened.
That's not the way it is and youdon't understand and all this
other stuff. We kind of worked that out.

(10:40):
But at that point, she says, Hey, you know what, I think it'd
be great if you went and saw a therapist and I'm like, OK, I'm
OK with that. Like, you know, I will take
some. Yeah, I'm fine with that.
And here's a tough thing for us to do, whether it's male or
female, it's really tough for usto accept that we may be part of
the problem, right? We we never wanted to say it's
my fault. I'm part of the problem here,
right. So to you have to be able to do

(11:02):
that. You have to be able to say, you
know what, I may be, and I probably am part of the problem
here. So that was the first step for
us is to say, OK, I'll go to thetherapist.
But I did challenge her to do the same.
And so we began to see some therapist.
And, you know, first we thought would be couple therapy and
stuff, but it quickly became I had a therapist that I was
dealing with and she wanted working with a childhood trauma
specialist, which was in many ways a great thing because, you

(11:23):
know, again, that's really what she needed to deal with some of
the childhood trauma. But at that time, we started to
have all these these fights. And because she was seeing the
childhood trauma specialist, it would almost trigger more put
her on the heightened emotional state as well.
And so we would go out and we would have a good time.
Maybe one night we'd have everything was cool.
We'd have really good conversation about things and
things felt like we were moving in the right direction.
And then things would emotionally, you know, dissolve

(11:45):
over the the next week or two and it'd be like, wow,
emotionally heightened, you know, stuff.
And it was just like, what is going on here?
How do we fix this? You know, and it just.
And you guys had separate therapists.
You weren't going to like one therapist together.
Yeah, no, we didn't. And, and and it was OK.
You know, she had a again, she had a.
Because that seems, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but
when you like, you know, watch ATV show or movie, it's
traditionally like couples go tolike couples therapy, right?

(12:09):
And I actually, yeah, I haven't really heard actually know my
sister and her ex kind of had different therapists and that
that actually led to some problems.
So I'm curious if you would recommend that or the OR the
opposite or I guess it kind of depends.
I think I think at that point it's it's, it's everybody's kind
of got to figure their own way alittle bit.
I think I think it would be goodto maybe do both and even then

(12:29):
have maybe some couples there coming together in that regard.
So maybe each having your own and then coming together,
Everybody's got to find that part out a little bit on their
own. And so I wound up coming across
something else that wind up working very well for me.
And we'll talk about that here in a little bit because that
that's some really exciting stuff.
But at this point though, because of the trauma that she
was dealing with and our stuff that we're kind of going through

(12:50):
our childhood trauma, these wounds that we have, these
subconscious wounds that we're stuck in here.
And if you told me this before it all happened, I might, I
might have said, like, I don't know about all this stuff, But
honestly, I watched how this emotional struggles that both of
us began to play out in our lives.
Like she would pull away and, and then that would trigger my
wound of abandonment and fear. And all of a sudden, I live in

(13:11):
Massachusetts. I didn't have a big network up
here. I didn't have a whole lot of
friends and people that I could,you know, spend some time with
or maybe go move in with her in a month or two and give us our
little space. She started talking about
needing some space. And I'm like, whoa, what do you
mean space? Like, what is going on here?
You know, And so, you know, the stuff that you start to go, wow,
what is really happening? You know, I felt like I was
losing my family, my wife, my, my situation here.

(13:31):
I felt very unsafe. And so I was just getting my
triggers, you know, we're starting to get pushed, which
would then push her triggers even more.
So here we are now butting head because we're both dealing with
our trauma in two different ways.
And because we didn't understandthat, it was now, you know, more
combative in a sense, emotionally combative because we
just didn't understand how to how do I give her more space?
And then, you know, for her to maybe meet my knees and say, how

(13:53):
do I meet in the middle? So we can kind of work together
to figure this out. But unfortunately it became a
real mess through the next few months.
The trauma just kept going and Iwas having night sweats.
I mean, this is the level of stress.
It got so bad. You know, I would sweat, I would
wake up some nights where maybe one side of my, you know, body
would be sweating like, or just one area.
And I'm like, this is weird. Like I've never had night sweats

(14:15):
before. Like this is.
But and then the next day it would be might be the other
side. And then maybe it would be like
one night, it might be the my entire bed would just be like,
like completely wet from the sweat.
And I'm like, is there somethingwrong with me?
I don't even know if there's just stress.
Is there something else going onhere?
Looking back, I realized for sure it was definitely stressed.
But these are things that added to the extra stuff of the
emotional, like, my God, what ishappening?

(14:36):
So this played out for about four months.
So February, right until June, early June, we were battling
back and forth trying to figure this out until one day, the
emotional culmination, you know,I taking my son to a Red Sox
game here. We're about 1/2 hour north of
Boston area and we had a great day.
But I come home and she's sitting on the porch and she
says, Hey, we need to talk. And and she brought up this

(14:58):
situation that I talked to one of her, you know, somebody that
she knew basically, and she thought it was kind of like
inappropriate, not not in a sexual way or anything like
that, but more just about our relationship.
And I was trying to talk to her about some things and asking for
some, some prayer and whatever she might OfferUp.
And she just felt it was inappropriate and, and felt like
I'm done, like I just I can't have you crossing these
boundaries anymore and I'm goingto put a restraining order on

(15:20):
you, a restraining order on you.And I said, Oh my like, wow, is
this for real? Like, I was just like, this is
this is serious. And she goes, yeah, yeah.
It's not words you wanna hear. I promise you.
At that point, it's like, wow, this is pretty bad, but she was
pretty serious. I looked at her and said, you
know what? No problem.
I went in, I grabbed my stuff and I was like, I'm done.
I just don't even know what to do anymore.

(15:41):
At that point, I really felt therelationship was over.
Yeah. And I was talking to a buddy of
mine. I said, hey, man, I'm on the
phone with my friend. And then, you know, I said, I
don't know what to do. I said, I'm probably just going
to have to move back to Florida.He goes, what do you mean you
can't move back to Florida? I said, what?
I said, what am I going to do? I can't stay up here.
I don't know anybody. I don't have the money to kind
of do this on my own right now. Like.
And he says, well, yeah, But he says, you know, you can't
abandoned your son. I'm like, what do you mean?

(16:03):
He goes, yeah, well, my father abandoned me.
He says, I'm dealing with that for my whole adult life.
I'm dealing with that because ofthat.
He says, your father abandoned you.
He says you can't do that to your son.
Yeah. And I said, you're right.
And it hit me. And it was like, yeah, I can't
run away from this. There is no running away.
So I've got to face this 100%. And.
And it was funny because honestly, as soon as I made-up
my mind to stay though, really, some miracles began to happen

(16:25):
for me. And so I really just saw, you
know, God worked for me on my behalf.
I found a place to stay within aa couple of days, within a week,
really the first week I had, I had a casual friend up here that
I had talked to before and didn't have a place for me to
stay. But I happen to reach back out
because I'm like, well, I'm desperate.
I'm going to call anybody I knowagain and just see what they
got. And in this case, he finally
says, hey, he says, no, yeah. He says, I got a 2 bedroom

(16:47):
apartment, beautiful upscale place.
He says, come stay with me. I was like, really?
He goes, yeah, you want to come check it out?
I said, Nope, I'll be there. I don't need to see it.
I said, I'll take it. I'll take it.
Yeah, I'll take it. Man.
I was happy just to like, have aplace to rest my head and know
that I was going to be OK for, for that regard.
And, and as soon as I landed there and just, you know,
emotionally, things started to happen.
One of the things I came across that really worked for me

(17:09):
through this entire experience is towards the end, before the
restraining order actually happened.
I learned about attachment theory and a woman named Tyus
Gibson out of Canada created a program called Integrated
attachment theory, which is really learning the attachment
styles. There's four different
attachment styles, but also she has 6 core elements of the
integrated attachment theory on how to actually fix the

(17:30):
attachments, which I, I really love that.
So real quick on the, on the attachment styles, the four
different ones are #1 there's what's called a secure
attachment style. That's a person that's
emotionally regulated. They they deal with doing
emotions very well. They know how to communicate
very well. They know how to, you know,
handle conflict and deal with all these issues.
And you know, they have typically have pretty good
relationships. If you break up with them, they

(17:50):
might be hurt a little bit, but they're not going to be
devastated there. There is that more emotional
control. They just kind of take life
pretty good and they just have alittle bit more of that
emotional stability. It's not that they don't have
feelings, but they aren't as intense and triggered in
negative ways that that begin toaffect them in a negative way.
So that's the first one. That's the one we all want to be
is a more right attachment style.
Then there's what's called an anxious preoccupied attachment

(18:11):
style, which is kind of the way I was leaning when everything
started to happen and, and things started to fall apart.
I became a lot more anxious. My anxiety became, you know,
became very severe. A lot of times anxious
preoccupied will have again, they'll have like a fear of
abandonment, feeling of being unsafe.
They'll have, you know, maybe I'm never going to be loved or
I'm unloved or I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life.
And so these are all those subconscious wounds that are now

(18:33):
kind of being touched. So and that begins to act in
cleanness and, and the desire for closeness constantly and,
and wanting more reassurance to the point where it's just
unhealthy. You know, it's not that those
things aren't important, but to the point where it just becomes
really unhealthy. So that's an anxious
preoccupied. And correct me if I'm wrong,
that also that can also deteriorate like attraction from

(18:53):
the other partner, right? If they see completely,
especially for guys, I feel likeright if a woman sees you
getting needy and clingy and anxious, right?
Like her desire is pretty quickly gonna start fading.
Sure, for sure. And and listen up until that
point, but before things really started to devolve there, I
would have said I was pretty secure and and for the most part
I was. But I always say you're really

(19:14):
everyone's secure until the shithits the fan, right?
Every everybody's secure until your spouse is walking out the
door. Then you're like, whoa, what is
going on? So, so, but this is what it took
to kind of bring those, bring those out for us.
So the subconscious started to show me and reveal like, oh,
you've got some weaknesses here and you are in this, in this
negative zone, if you will. So yeah, that but 100% right,
yes, anxious, you know, being needy and clingy.

(19:36):
No, no woman like that. And guys don't either.
Let's face it, you know, even a female that's, you know,
constantly needing that constantattention, that becomes
problematic. So that is definitely plays out.
So on the flip side of that though is more what's called a
dismissive avoidant. And that's where my wife was
kind of leaning at the time. She was leading into that
dismissive side where they love,they love their independence,
hyper independent, they wanna shut it down.

(19:58):
If they're triggered, they just shut down emotionally.
Don't even wanna talk about it at all.
They probably grew up in a sense.
I always like to picture them like their parents probably
said, oh, you're feeling emotional.
Well, we'll go to your room and deal with that, right?
You know, just go figure that out for yourself.
And so they just probably learned how to like, OK,
emotions are bad and you deal with them yourself.
And you know, you're not it's not about closeness.

(20:18):
You know, you kind of isolate and all that stuff.
So here's here she is trying to figure out herself and, and get
some isolation and some time that you work through some
things on her own. And then here I am now being
triggered because she's saying, Oh, I need space to figure my
lifeout. And I'm going, no, you don't.
We need to stay close. And you can see where that just
becomes a problem, you know, andthat's where we are, where we
were. And that's where the battle
became, you know, and just last one is in the middle of that is

(20:42):
what's called a fearful avoidance.
So fearful avoidance tend to swing from both sides.
They, they like that closeness, like an anxious preoccupied.
But then next week the, the dismissive side will kick in and
they and they have a hard time with trusting people and they
want that independence as well. They don't want to feel trapped.
And so they swing between the two, if you will.
And that could be really complicated.
And that's really where my wife and I are.
We're both more fearful Avoidance again, I probably lean

(21:03):
a little more anxious, she probably leans a little bit more
dismissive. Real quick, if you're a divorced
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(21:26):
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That's interesting because I've I've studied attachment theory
at, you know, decent length and read a few books on the subject,
but I haven't heard of the fearful avoidance before, so

(21:48):
that's cool. Some people call disorganized of
as well, disorganized attachmentstyle or something like that, I
believe. But but I've always heard it,
you know, when Tyice Gibson talks about it, she talks about
it as a fearful avoidance. So that's the the term I like to
use. But yeah, so those are the four,
four attachment styles. And I started to look at this
and man, I was fascinated by thework.
And I thought, man, there's a lot of answers here.
And I started to realize like, holy cow, like this is exactly

(22:10):
what's going on. One of the things I love that
Tyice Gibson said as well is shesays that the that 95 to 97% of
your decisions in life are made by the subconscious.
And I thought, wow, that's crazy.
And the other thing she said is that the the conscious cannot
outwill this subconscious. So even though we know it here,
the subconscious is still playing that that recording and
when it hits, and that's what I experienced because like I said,

(22:33):
I felt pretty consciously, I feel pretty confident.
I'm like, I know who I am. I'm not I don't feel like I'm
afraid or any I don't have all this anxiety every day and
everything else. But when it started to really,
it happened and the triggers began, no matter how much I said
I'm going to be fine, everything's OK, I could not
stop the train wreck. I could not stop those tapes
being played, if you will. And that those wounds were being
touched in such a way that it became so hyper emotional that

(22:56):
it didn't matter what I thought.It really was the problem.
So that became something that was eye opening for me.
And I realized, wow, that is so powerful and so true because I
experienced that on a level thatwas like, wow, 100%.
I will say one last thing on this subject.
I have a friend of mine, she's an ex-girlfriend of mine that I
was talking to and, and she was helping me through the
situation. And she says, Brian, she says

(23:17):
right now she says, you sound like a drug addict.
And I said, you know what? I feel like 1.
I feel like 1. I felt like I couldn't let it
go. I couldn't relax, I couldn't, I
needed that. I needed this relationship, I
needed this family to stay together.
I needed this stuff, right? I needed it like, like, like I
had to have it right. And so that was putting me in a
place that was just awful. And when she said that, it, it

(23:38):
struck such a nerve because I realized like absolutely that is
kind of what was happening. I almost had made the
relationship and my situation mydrug, if you will, you know,
and, and, and and so it's hyper unhealthy.
And so this was this was my sideof that.
But yeah, it was it was an amazing statement When she said
it, that really became eye opening.
And again, it was part of that subconscious stuff playing out
in my life because I realized, wow, my father dealt with his

(24:00):
wounds. You know, his drug was different
stuff, you know, whatever his things were that he used to kind
of help shoot himself, here I was using the same thing kind of
in a different way, using my relationship, using my family or
whatever, and maybe it helped meshoot and stuff like that.
So it was just an eye opener forsure.
Gotcha. And that was you kind of
realized all this stuff once youhad moved in with your buddy or.

(24:23):
So I started, I came across the attachment integrated attachment
theory work right near the end, before the before the
restraining order was placed on me.
So maybe a couple of weeks, maybe a month or so before I
actually got thrown at a house, if you will.
And I tried to use this stuff. I tried to do some of some of
this to my girl, but unfortunately, at that point it
was just just wasn't meant to be.
So. But yeah, I continued the work
though. So once I got thrown out and I

(24:44):
was settled in with my house, into my apartment with my friend
Bob here, who was also facing a divorce and Bob was going
through divorce, we were able tohelp each other in such a great
way. Like we've just bonded through
that experience. And I'm eternally grateful for
Bob being there for me. And I hope the same with him.
I think he would say the same like we just help each.
Other I work with a lot of divorced guys and what I find in
common pretty much all the time when they reach out is they

(25:06):
don't really have anyone they can talk to their buddies who
are buried. They don't want to like burden
them with their problems or whatnot.
Or, you know, it's just they, they find themselves very much
alone without anyone to talk to,maybe a therapist or whatever.
But it's different like versus having a real friend is going
through it. And that's why a lot of the guys

(25:27):
will ultimately join my program just for that network and to
have people to talk about it andto go through it with.
And that's so lucky that you hadyour buddy there who you were
able to move in with. Yeah, I didn't just have my
buddy Bob. I had some other people, great
people in my life, some good friends that really I, I mean, I
would be on the phone sometimes.Some days I'd be on the phone
678 hours a day with somebody like I, I was just such a mess
trying to figure everything out.So I would, I was truly blessed

(25:49):
to have, you know, my, my mom, my brother, an ex-girlfriend
really helped me out. And and another buddy of mine,
Dax, you know, my son's name is Dax, but my buddy's name is also
Dax, one of my best friends. And I would say the four of them
were just crucial and just beingthere for me, willing to talk,
have conversations whenever I kind of need them.
But yeah, man, guys, because really, if you don't have
somewhere to talk to and somebody to kind of like, you

(26:09):
know, get you through that, man,my heart goes out to you.
By all means. That's where guys like us maybe
can help coach them and, and get, give them some advice and
be here for them a year to, to lend for sure.
But yeah, man. And so I, I just delved into
this work, though I was fascinated by Tyus Gibson and
what she was doing with people. And I started to learn about the
integrated attachment theory, which really consists of 6 core

(26:30):
elements. Okay, okay.
These 6 core elements are #1 your core wounds.
And those core wounds we talked a little bit about before
typically develop throughout ourlives.
A lot of times your child and stuff, fear of abandonment, fear
of feeling being trapped, feel of being a loved, and all these
other things. But they're all subconscious.
And so those are playing out. Our needs are very important.
So #1 core wounds #2 working on our needs, Understanding what do

(26:53):
I really need in life? You know, what are my true
needs? Not, you know, like, what do I
want? Like, I love contribution.
I love, you know, being connected to people and stuff
like that. So understanding what are my
needs and asking myself that question, right?
And then I need to understand my, my emotions.
All right, learning my emotions.OK, if I'm angry, anger's not a
bad thing per SE, but then I have to ask myself, you know,
why? Why am I angry?

(27:14):
You know, emotions are really just information.
So if you're dealing with some emotional twists up or down,
good or bad, right, Those positive ones are information
that tells me some things are, are proper.
Some of the negative ones tell me maybe I need to make an
adjustment and, and figure out how to, you know, get to the get
through this so I don't have to experience too much anger.
But but don't be afraid of angeris how we control that, though
obviously we want to make sure we don't do anything foolish

(27:35):
with that. And then we're going to do our
boundaries, right. How do I set certain boundaries
in my life? What do I need to say?
Hey, this is important to me. I need you to respect this
particular boundary without being too extreme, where it's
like, OK, you're just being senseless, you know, also not
being having any boundaries. So like a lot of times anxious
preoccupies will almost be boundary less.
Like they just don't have any boundaries.
They're just all about connection.

(27:56):
And it's like, OK, you can crossmy boundaries anytime so long as
we're connected. Yeah.
So, so and a dismissive might have extreme boundaries, but
then, you know, but there may bea little too out there, if you
will. And, and, and so there's this
balance where we have to find, OK, how do I have some good
healthy boundaries? And then once I know that, how
do I communicate those things? So #5 is communication, how do

(28:17):
we have proper communication? And this one is huge for me.
How many, how many relationshipsfail because, oh, you know, that
person didn't know how to communicate or, you know, they
couldn't communicate together. You hear it all the time.
Communicate, communicate. Well, a lot of times we're just
speaking different languages, you know, so if I'm a, if I'm an
anxious preoccupied, let's say, and somebody else is dismissive,
avoidant, I could be trying to say one thing and she's hearing
something else. And because of our core wounds

(28:39):
and our own needs, it becomes more of like completely not
nobody's hearing each other. We're not completely
understanding. We're not getting through that.
We don't get that. And so now we're just butting
head. Now I feel like you're attacking
me. So you may be just trying to
convey something, you know, likemy wife was trying to say, hey,
look, you know, there's some issues with our son.
I'd like to talk about that. And what was my, I was like
triggered because my core wound is, oh, you know, you're going

(29:00):
to abandon me. I'm not good enough.
You know, that's what I'm hearing, right?
Subconsciously, I'm hearing these things.
And So what do I naturally do? I'm going to say, OK, I'm
shutting you out. I'm going to start planning my
defense and I'm going to defend myself.
I'm going to explain why I do these things and you're going to
understand me from that point ofview and all this other stuff.
But that's not really the healthy way to go.
So communication is huge. My wife and I have learned some

(29:20):
communication tools now that arejust amazing.
And we really learned how to do something called hold space,
where she gets to talk for 5 or 10 minutes and I don't interrupt
at all. She gets to plead her case, talk
about her feelings and everything, whatever it is that
she wants to talk about there knowing that I'm not gonna
interrupt her. And I'm now listening to learn.
And that's the thing. When she's doing that, I'm no
longer looking to defend. I'm actually listening to

(29:43):
understand her because I want toknow my wife.
I want to know what's in her heart, what's in her mind,
what's in her soul. Like what is she really trying
to, you know, share with me, youknow, And so now I can take that
time and do that. Well, you know, but I also know
that I'm going to get my chance to speak my piece as well.
And I know that I'm going to be able to share some of the things
that are good or bad and my feelings.
I don't have to agree with everything she says.
I can say I disagree, right? But I'm going to be able to

(30:05):
share and talk without her interrupting me.
And she's also doing the same thing.
She's learning, you know, she's listening to learn and
understand each other. And when we do that, it's, it's
the game changer right there forsure.
And then last but not least is number six.
That is your behaviors. Learning how to change our
behavior. Sometimes we're in that negative
state. Maybe I'm a little bit triggered
instead of reacting, right. Instead of saying having that

(30:25):
conversation right now or yelling at each other and
elevating it, we can now change our behavior and learn some
coping mechanisms that get us back to a regulated state.
And you know, and I would say don't ever have conversations
when you're triggered. If you're having, you know, that
heightened emotional state and you're trying to have
conversations, it's usually going to just explode and be
horrible, right? It's not not too many good

(30:45):
things come out of that. So always get yourself into a
what I call a regulated emotional state.
And now you can have more of that real conversation from a
non not so emotional place. And that could be a much better
experience. So when you work on all six of
those core elements in a relationship, it's a game
changer for any relationship, whether it's number one for
yourself, sorry, number one for yourself.

(31:07):
You're always going to change your relationship to you, which
is huge. OK.
We learned to kind of overcome some things #2 it can work with
your spouse, your your family members, your friends, your
coworkers. You take this stuff that you
learn and you heal and you're able to kind of take it into
every area of your life. And it's amazing.
And that's kind of what I was doing while I was separated from
my wife. And again, I had given up on the
relationship with my wife. I wasn't trying to get her back.

(31:28):
I was just trying to move forward.
And I had a fighter in in court just to kind of have some
visitations and stuff. So it was, it wasn't like, yeah,
what did that? Process look like of getting
back together. How long did that take and what
what led to a reconciliation and?
Yeah, great question for sure. I mean like so, yeah, I mean at
the other day, like I had moved on.
She was, she was. I didn't.

(31:49):
I had no idea what she was doing, thinking or anything, you
know? So you guys were no contact
basically aside from like? Yeah.
So essentially restraining or zero contact.
Like there is no contacting her,you don't contact friends, there
is. How long did that last?
So she was able to put a full year on me and we didn't fight.
I had a lawyer, but we didn't, we decided to give it to her.
We didn't fight it. We said, OK, let's just let's

(32:10):
just move on and let's just giveher the restraining order.
I didn't want to deal with it any.
I was like, I don't want to communicate it this way.
I just, I am over it. I kind of just want to, you
know, deal with it, whatever. But Long story short, yeah.
So it was put on for a year, butat this point.
And during that, during that year, were you able to see your
son or how did that work? So for the first few months, so
on the restraining order was theinability for me to see my son

(32:30):
as well. So and I thought that she had
put him on the restraining order, but I turned out later on
that she did not. The judge actually put my son on
the restraining order. So she never wanted to keep me
from my son. But again, I didn't know that
because we weren't able to communicate in my mind.
I thought, well, she wanted to. She obviously wanted to keep me
from my son. She was trying to take my son
away. I thought it was like, there's
all this craziness that you start to think and, you know,

(32:52):
again, not knowing we always, sometimes we think the worst.
We think, you know, this obviously what must have had.
Well, of course she put him on there.
Like, what else would happen? Well, what else might happen is
the judge actually said, no, I'mwe're going to put the son on
there too. And OK, so, yeah, so this would
go on. So I didn't have any access to
my son. I take took her to court just
for visitation reasons. I wanted to be able to see my
son. And so we were able to get that
and not began opening up some some doors, if you will.

(33:15):
We were able to have small conversation through an app that
we would use basically for me topick up my son and I would come
to the house, pick up my son. I didn't say Boo to her.
You know, I just I didn't even hardly look at her.
I was just like not interested. I was just like, grab my son and
let's go and move on. And so this went on for probably
a good month or so where I just didn't even really pay attention
to her when I see see her. I just didn't give her any looks

(33:35):
really nothing, nothing good, right.
So I was just didn't, didn't, didn't know, I didn't care and I
had no idea. Again, I didn't know if she was
with somebody else. I didn't know if she was.
I had no idea what she was doing.
So, but as it would turn out, you know, we would just went on
for a couple months. And then my buddy said, listen,
man, you can't do this forever, right?
You got you got to be, you know,stop being so mean.
Maybe just be a little bit nicer, just be a little bit

(33:56):
nicer. I'm like, all right, whatever.
So, so I would, you know, one day I just like, I waved to her,
you know, like waved her and she, she waved a smile And so
started to just be a little bit nice in that regard.
And one day we just had like a quick couple minutes
conversation and, and when I wastalking to her, she, she says,
you know, that she was still in love with me.
We both kind of realized like, OK, well, let's, let's work on
this. OK.
We sounded like we were both still in love and she had been

(34:16):
doing some work to her. She stayed with her therapist
and so she had been doing some of the work.
And so we just both realized like, Hey, we want to, we want
to figure this out a little bit.And so now we've decided we got
to get the restraining girl off because I'm like, well, we can't
really have conversations like this.
We need to get the restraining girl off.
It still took another month and 1/2 to get the restraining order
off once we decided we wanted to.
So it was still some time. And at the whole time, like I
had no idea ultimately, like even though she told me she

(34:40):
still loved me and she wanted like your brain because of the
situation is still confused by it all.
Like it's really just a mind screws with your head because
you're like, does she really? Does she not what's really going
on here? It's such a a roller coaster of
emotions and trying to understand the other person that
it was pretty wild. But I realized at that point,
it's worth a shot, and we wantedto see where we would go with
it. And yeah, once we rarely get the

(35:00):
restraining order off, you know,her and I just had that
connection again right away. And we began to spend some time
together and instantly realize like, yeah, this is, you know,
we're both kind of doing our work.
And it's funny because about a week and 1/2 after the
restraining order came off, I was still living with Bob, but I
was spending a lot of my time atthe house.
And all of a sudden Bob and I get thrown, thrown out of our
apartment. And I, I walk in one day and I'm

(35:22):
like, what's going on? And some guys are packing up our
stuff and they're like, you guysgot evicted.
I'm like, what He's like. So Bob had ran into some trouble
and did what, you know, making some mistakes.
And, you know, his business was failing again because he was
struggling with his own divorce.Like he some things that
happened with his business. And so he was struggling
financially, wound up not payingsome of the bills.
And now we're getting thrown outon, on my butt and I'm like,
wow, this is crazy. So my wife, my wife says, well,

(35:44):
you know, let's think about it for the weekend.
And you know, we'll, we'll talk at the end of the weekend.
So by the end of the weekend, she says, you know, listen, you
can move back in if you, if you want to it.
You know, I think we can do that.
Well, let's make it work. And I looked and I said, you
know what? I can't do that.
I said, I can't do that. I'm not ready.
I said, I'm not ready. That's not the right thing to
do. I said.
So I went about excuse me, I want to grabbing a an apartment

(36:05):
close to the house. I literally looked I looked on
like Facebook marketplace and boom, there was an apartment
literally a quarter mile from myhouse, something that I can
afford decent place. I was like, it was like, God,
just saying here, I've got a place for you and like here it
is. And let me tell you, it's not
easy to find that it's not easy to find good, you know,
apartments here in my area like that at all.
And to have one show show up just like that, literally that

(36:25):
night I found it. And to be able to move in within
a couple of days was pretty amazing.
So I don't know, I wind up furnishing this place.
I furnish it. I get it all nice and looking
good. But in the meantime, while I'm
furnishing and get it all ready,I'm spending all my time at the
house with the kids and the wifeand things are going really
well. And to be honest with you, I
never spent one night in that apartment.
So for the the next two to threemonths, I literally was just

(36:45):
paying the monthly the monthly bill on it.
Storage unit or Yeah. I mean, it's just the storage
unit. And so I was just paying the
bills on it and things at this point.
We realized things were going really well and I realized I
noticed a lot of changes in her.She really was just a different
person. I like to think she's obviously
noticed some changes in me. And because of those changes in
some of the work we did, you know, it was starting to look

(37:06):
hopeful that. Yeah, I think we can.
I think we're going to be able to do this thing.
So I wound up letting the apartment go and pretty much
from about a week and a half, two weeks after the restraining
order came off, I've pretty muchbeen living at the house and
things are better today than ever.
My wife and I, we still see therapists, we still work on
this stuff. We don't just put on the shelf.
We continually to work on this, continue to learn more, more

(37:27):
about the integrated attachment stuff as well.
I learned all that stuff more and.
So was she also studying attachment theory while you
were? Not so much so her, her
therapist brings it up and she'sfamiliar with attachment styles
that like this because of her therapist.
But but her, her therapist did mostly more childhood trauma
stuff. So getting through that
childhood trauma where she's nottriggered in the ways that it

(37:49):
once was, like like things that would trigger her before because
of that childhood trauma. Now that she's done some of that
work was no longer trigging her.And she got a lot of awarenesses
like myself, because the extrememeasures that we were dealing
with, she, she learned a lot just by sitting around lonely,
looking at herself, figuring herlife out.
And she realized that she would say to me, she said that I

(38:10):
became her mirror. I was her mirror.
A lot of the things that she said were my fault, my problems
and everything were actually herown.
And so she started to realize like, wow, I need to do this
work and make some changes stuff.
And she was doing that. And so no, not as much there now
she's come a long way with the attachment theory stuff because
of me. And we kind of, I talk about it
more now and she knows a lot more familiar arity with that.

(38:33):
But also again, our therapist aswell, you know, they talk about
some of the attachments and wounds and how to communicate.
I think the communication thing has been huge for us.
And that's, yeah, my wife's ability to get in touch with her
feelings. So a lot of times, you know,
when you're dismissive of avoiding they, they have a hard
time connecting with their feelings and accepting the fact
that they do actually want connection.
They crave it as well, you know,but they just, they just kind of

(38:54):
put it on the side, like it's not a good thing to go for.
But she realized at this point like, no, she adored me.
She loved me. She did not want to lose me.
And, and she wanted to, you know, she just wanted to work on
this thing and make it work. So she's willing to do that
again, the work and change. And so that's the key part.
Both parties need to do some work and change in order for the
relationship to come back. If I had done all the work and

(39:16):
she didn't, then I might have moved on and had something great
with somebody else, right? Or vice versa.
If she'd done all the work and Ididn't, then maybe she would be
with somebody else and I'd be. Like you have like an unbalanced
investment. Yeah, exactly.
It becomes unbalanced war. Yeah, Both of us didn't do the
work and we both came back and we were both at that low vibe,
if we will. Now we're, you know, if we
didn't do the work, we came backtogether and we hadn't learned
anything or changed anything, then now we're going to get back

(39:38):
into that same mode and have thesame fights and have the same
problems and that wouldn't work either.
So the only time it really worksis to you do the work, they do
the work and now you can come back together.
And when you do that, you got a really good chance of, of making
that thing come together. And, and that's what happened
for us. I was very fortunate that, you
know, things worked out the way they did for for us.
But I always say well. You both had to, you know, you

(39:59):
both had to show up and do it. And you can't push the other
person to do it because then they get resentful and they feel
like, oh, I'm only doing it because they think I need to,
right? So.
Dango, dango. And that's the thing, man, it
was so great because I would saylike, listen, the restraining
order became a gift. You know, a lot of times, you
know, I felt like I was being punished at the time, like it
feels like punishment, but it was the best thing that ever
happened to me. And the restraining order became

(40:21):
a an amazing tool that caused usto separate.
We had to then separate. We had no.
Took away the option for you to try to like convince her, change
your mind, or do all the things that like most guys would do it.
Was no longer an option. I couldn't convince her.
I could do nothing. All I had to do is let her go.
And that's the hardest thing to do is let somebody go that we
truly love, right? They say, if you love somebody,
let them go. If they truly love you, they'll
come back, right? And so that's what was

(40:42):
happening. I had to let her go.
She had to let me go. And, and by doing that, we were
able to then work on ourselves, focus on ourselves, kind of
figure ourselves out a little bit.
And, and then when we had the opportunity to share again and,
and, and realize that we do still really love each other.
Now, I always say, look, my wifeand I choose each other today.
We don't choose each other because we have to.
We're not in this relationship because we're desperate or

(41:03):
anything like that. We choose each other because we
love each other. We have fun together, we enjoy
each other's company. We're working together for, for
the family and everything we have.
We're going in the right direction together.
And, and it's healthier, it's happier.
It's like a much greater connection.
I try to meet her needs more, She tries to meet my needs more.
Like it's, it's like 1000 times better than what we had before.

(41:23):
And, and it took, unfortunately,a, an incredible hard experience
to, to get to this point. I don't recommend people go that
route, right? I mean, if you can, if you can
avoid that fail that we had, youknow, like my, my website is
make a relationship fail becauseI, I like to think of failure
can be the greatest thing that ever happens to us, but it's not
necessarily the goal, right? It's not like I wanted to want
to fail, but sometimes it takes that failure.

(41:46):
Sometimes it takes an extreme measure of failure for us to
wake up and go, wow, wait a second.
I need to take a serious look at, you know, the way I'm doing
things and, and what I'm doing here.
And a lot of things were revealed to me because of the
extreme measure of this. Like having a restraining order
was like the most stressful thing in the world, but it
allowed me to look and take ownership of my own stuff and my
own behaviors. I think that's the keyword.
There's ownership, whereas a lotof guys would just say, you

(42:09):
know, fuck her, she's a bitch, blah, blah, blah.
And and play the victim role versus what you did was the
opposite. You took ownership and you're
like, OK, what can I do to heal myself?
And I'm not going to try to likeforce this or I, I can't force
it because of the restraining order, but how can I grow as a
person? And you give her the space and
do the same thing. And then yeah.

(42:30):
How long were you guys separated?
So from start to finish, we're separated for just a little over
four months. So my about 4 1/2 months.
Yeah. So it wasn't.
And listen, I got lucky it it could have been way longer.
I have a good friend of mine wholiterally went through a very
similar experience and they were, they were separated for 16
months and he's now back together with his, his wife and
things are good with them. But so sometimes it does take
longer. But at the end of the day, like

(42:52):
to me, it's just about doing thework, having some faith and, and
being willing to look at yourself and say, OK, I'm going
to do the work. And I don't know where this is
going to land. I don't know what's going to
happen. I had no idea what what was
going to happen. I, I just knew that if I did the
work, I, I, I, I would have had a better chance of success with
something, you know? And do you feel like your
attachments dial? Yeah.
Has that changed or adapted based on what you've learned?

(43:17):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So one of the things we do, you
know, is work on those core wounds.
So, so #1 having those core wound being revealed
tremendously is the awareness ishuge.
Now that I'm aware of them now Icould do some what's called
reprogramming exercises. And Tyus Gibson has some some
good reprogramming exercises that we could begin to heal
those wounds and begin to work on those.
And, you know, I mean, I don't know, like I always say, like I

(43:39):
feel pretty confident again. I feel like I've done a lot of
that work. But again, if the shit hit the
fan again tomorrow, I don't know, maybe my weaknesses would
be exposed a little bit. But yes, there are some exercise
that we can do to kind of begin to reprogram that.
Because at the heart of it that I truly believe is the heart of
a lot of these issues. The core wound is what's really
triggering our, our, our needs, our emotions, all this negative
stuff that's now coming out. So we have to work on those to

(44:02):
really begin the healing. And that's where so, and again,
that's just through us was, was the attachment theory stuff
where I've been able to do some,some exercise there, but
somebody else may and I, and I actually see a childhood trauma
specialist now as well. But you know, so you got to work
on that childhood trauma. One way or another, though,
you've got to get into those core wounds and begin to
reprogram them and heal those wounds because if you don't,

(44:23):
they're, they're going to play out in this negative state.
And so many of us are living these lives.
We went through some childhood stuff.
And what does that look like? Do you need to, like, find out
what they are? Because, you know, my immediate
thought is like, well, what if it's something you don't
remember and it's just like an emotional thing?
So what does that process look like?
Sometimes you like a OK, I can find myself what's in a called a

(44:44):
triggered state, right? So all of a sudden I'm like,
man, I'm, I'm like really triggered.
Like I'm feeling like maybe I'm talking with my wife.
We have a little conversation and it should be just fine.
It should just be a decent conversation.
Maybe a little disagreement. We're at a level 5 emotions.
That's fair enough. But I'm not at a level 5.
I'm at a level 10. Yeah.
Uh oh. Now that emotion is information.
Why am I at a level 10? What am I feeling right now?
I need to start asking myself what why?

(45:05):
What is it fear that's coming uphere?
What's going on? Am I, what am I afraid of here?
What is the story I'm telling myself that's causing the
problem? And so if I'm telling myself,
well, Oh well, she's, you know, she's telling me I'm a bad dad
because she's, you know, tellingme that I don't do certain
things with my son properly. Well, she may not be telling me
I'm a horrible dad, but but that's what I'm hearing #1 so,
and then I'm saying, well, oh, she's going to leave me.

(45:26):
That's it. I know what's happening.
She's going to abandon me that. And so I need to become aware of
these things. What are the wounds that I'm now
that are triggering me, you know, am I feeling?
It's like those deeper fears that.
Yeah, so it's those underlying fears that become.
And that's where sometimes beingtriggered, I say being triggered
is it's OK. It's a good thing.
Like being triggered can be a good thing because now you can
just ask yourself, I know I shouldn't be emotional like this

(45:49):
right now, but I am. Why?
And then once you begin to ask that question every time you're
triggered, you start to say, OK,yeah, I'm triggered because I'm
afraid she's gonna leave me. I'm afraid I'm triggered because
I feel really unsafe, you know? I'm triggered because I feel
like, oh man, I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life.
She's going to lead me. I'm going to never be loved.
I'm going to be. Feel like this would require a
decent amount of journaling or something because when you're in
the midst of, of those fears andanxieties and all that stuff,

(46:12):
like it's very hard to be present.
I, I guess with practice you could do it in terms of like,
what am I feeling right now? Let me, you know, process this,
but I feel like afterwards, you know, if you, if you had a way
to to, you know, journal each morning or do something to bring
about those feelings. Yeah, no, absolutely.

(46:33):
A lot of people do the journaling stuff for sure.
That's that could be great. I've done some journaling myself
as well. That could be positive.
Yeah, anything. But the key is to ask yourself
at some point, OK, at that point, at that moment, what was
I really feeling? And if you can do it in the
moment, that's even, that is great because you're like, oh,
wait a second, I'm feeling this right now.
What is it really going on? But even even if it's a little
after, that's fine. Like, but ask yourself, what is
it that What is it that I was thinking there?

(46:53):
Why? Why was I so defensive?
Why was I being so, you know, critical or something instead of
being able to just accept a, a, a loving criticism, if you will
not, not somebody that's, you know, looking to punish me and
hurt me, like, you know what I mean?
So is it, is it just a fear of abandonment is a fear of, you
know, do I feel like I'm being trapped, like, you know,
dismissive, avoid them. I feel like, you know, if I'm
trying to love on them or something, maybe they're like,

(47:14):
oh, this person's trying to trapme.
Like, you know, so now it's like, wait a second, no, I'm
just trying to love you, you know, so it becomes such a game.
But yeah, everybody's got to certainly look at that and take
stock on their own a little bit.And yet journaling it could be a
great tool to kind of help you just think about it and, and
really kind of pinpoint like where is the underlying issue?
And then if we look at our childhood, like for me, you
know, the fear of abandonment thing is pretty obvious because

(47:35):
I realized like it's my father, my father being in and out of my
childhood. Like that is, is where I really
got my abandonment issues and, and some of the moving around,
you know, so the combination of like the instability of having
a, a nice place to live for the almost like the first ten years
of my life, I went to a new school every year.
I had to make new friends, I hadto constantly.
So there was no stability. And then have my father bounce
in and out like that really justkind of, I'm sure just set a

(47:57):
really bad precedent in my own mind.
So it became like, for me, it was an obvious one.
Like those are the, some of themmight be more obvious too, like
that. And then other ones might be a
little more subtle. That may take more time to kind
of come out eventually. But yeah, and just working
through them a little at a time and the reprogramming exercise
that they Titus talks about, it's like a 21 day meditation
type of thing that we can do. And usually within 20 days

(48:18):
you're gonna feel pretty good. You start to develop new neural
pathways and that begins to bring better information, if you
will, into that brain when you're in the state.
So just doing some of that work.So 21 days minimum up to, you
know, 60 plus days for some of the deeper wounds is some of
those things that need to reallykind of be, you know,
reprogrammed, if you will. But yeah.
Well, it sounds like you have some, you know, great resources

(48:38):
for guys who might be strugglingwith this or you know, can
relate to your journey is where where can people go to like find
out and. Yeah, so I mean, if you're, if
you like, you can go to my website.
I have a website calledmakeyourrelationshipfail.com
or myrelationshipfail.com. So make your my relationship
fail.com. And on that website there you

(48:59):
can see my story a little bit. You can get some information off
of that. I always recommend my clients
actually go and join a personal development school for with Tyus
Gibson. So if you do it through my
website, you're gonna make sure you're gonna get the lowest
price available at that time. And you're also gonna get a free
session with me. So I'll be able to point you in
the right direction. I'll be able to have a
conversation with you. Make sure we're kind of getting,
you know, getting in a good zoneso that we can maximize the

(49:21):
benefits here over the next few months so that you, it really
can be getting the healing process.
And yeah, so that's my website, makeyourrelationshipfail.com.
Obviously we can put you some books, start to learn this
stuff. You know, I'm a big believer.
Go to church, get get involved with some positive people.
Find yourself, you know, find out what you really like, what,
who are you, you know, what do you really need and stuff.
And sometimes we got to let go of that relationship and, and,

(49:43):
and focus on us for a while to really get our, our stuff
together. You know, I always like to say
it's a break up. So we're going to break up.
We're not going to break down. We're going to break up.
But breaking up means I'm going to elevate through this.
OK. And and and I hope sometimes
maybe my spouse will come back to me.
That's fine. If not, it's OK.
I want you to know that no matter what situation is, if
you're in a critical point, yourwife told you she hates you or

(50:05):
is your spouse, you just feel like it's done.
There's. Yeah, there's nothing.
Oh, it's over. It's over.
It's not over. OK.
There's always hope that things can come back around.
The key is that we do the work. First thing is we have to let it
go. We have to accept that, yes,
it's it could very well be over,right?
So that's OK. So if I let that go, I can say,
OK, if it doesn't come back, I accept the time that we had.
I'm thankful for that. And, and I just let that go and,

(50:27):
and just let that be what it needs to be.
Put that on the back burner, if you will focus on me, do the
work. And when I do that now, if that
other person, like we talked about before, if that other
person is willing to meet us there, we can come back together
and we can get through anything.If I can get through a
restraining order and some of this stuff that we did.
And there's so many countless stories out there, people like
me as well, that that went through some really hard times
to get to this point, you know, and use the failure for your

(50:51):
launching pad. I always like to say it, you
know, failure could be like a, asuper ball.
And the harder you throw a superball on the ground, the harder
it hits, the higher that super ball can bounce.
And I like to think about that. If you're going to hit really
hard, it's OK, hold on, because you could take that and you can
bounce really high as well. If you, if you allow yourself to
do it, don't fall apart, let it all come together.

(51:11):
Take your time, focus, breathe, relax.
It's going to be OK. I promise you.
It will be just may take a little time here, but things can
turn around sometimes quicker than you ever think.
Sometimes it does take a little bit longer, but the end of the
day we just got to put our head down and do the work and and
just let it. Yeah, I have to remember too,
that like, you know, the opposite of love is in hate.
It's indifference. They say so you know, if your

(51:33):
partner, wife, whatever is superyou think she hates you, that's
that's better than she feels nothing for you so.
That's true. That's been said.
And yeah, emotion, at least there's some emotion there
that's better than nothing. Yeah, indifference is the Death
Note on a relationship. But yeah, The thing is, is when
you're in that zone, though, Thething is, you don't know, right?
Because your snoss looks at you and tells you they're upset.
You're angry. You've had these fights.

(51:53):
And you start looking back and you go, oh, it's over.
It's over. And now you're you're feeling
desperate. You feel like, oh, they're never
going to come back there. There's no way this can work
out. And that's just not true.
You can't tell yourself that. You have to just be able to say,
you know what? I don't know what's going to
happen. I don't know.
Yes, it's possible that it's over.
Yes, we may never be able to do that.
And if that's the case, it's OK.You just need to know that
you're going to be OK. But do the work, use this as a

(52:15):
launching pad, as something that's going to be great.
So you can look back and say, wow, you know what?
This is what happened. I learned from it.
And now, you know, a year, five years, 10 years later, I've got
this incredible life now and I have great relationships and all
this other stuff that I can now have because I went through a
pretty bad experience that taught me so much.
You know, that's the key. Learn from it.

(52:35):
That's my thing is I like to fail forward.
I like to say fail is a new F word and we're gonna fail
forward, right? We can't be afraid.
Of I like that fail is a new F word.
And The thing is this, we can't be afraid to fail, right?
Taking a chance. Love is it.
Love is hard sometimes and it's risky and it's being vulnerable,
but it's worth it. You know, it's worth being
vulnerable sometimes. And sometimes it doesn't pan out

(52:56):
or, you know, it doesn't work out the way we think it's
supposed to at that time. But I promise you it will.
It will come back around and someday later you'll look back
and go, wow, that that makes sense as to why that didn't work
out. Now it's OK, you know.
For sure well, I'm so glad that it did work out for you and I
think message for other guys listening is super powerful to
not just give up and play the victim and do all that stuff.
So for anyone who's in it, you know, reach out to Brian if you

(53:20):
know, don't, don't lose hope is kind of the main message I'm
hearing. So, Brian, thanks so much for
coming on. Appreciate you sharing your
story and and your wisdom with everyone here.
Yeah, no, thanks for having me, man.
This is a great time and I really appreciate it.
I love your show, man. I love what you're doing.
And so, man, it's been an honor just to be here spending time
with you. And yeah, if, like I said, if

(53:42):
anybody else does need help, please go to my website.
Please, please call me, contact me, whatever.
I'll be happy to help you man, myrelationshipfail.com or make
your relationship fail.com and let's get you on the right track
for sure, man. Right.
Thanks, Brian. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Out of all the guys I know, the
only ones who managed to consistently win the game are
those who built and invested in a high status social circle.

(54:03):
You can certainly approach womenand try your luck on the apps if
you're a Chad, but those strategies simply don't work
consistently to attract top tierwomen and awesome friends in
your life. But for most guys, the idea of
building a social circle can feel overwhelming, so they
continue to hunt for women in their usual ways and end up
settling for a girl they were never really that excited about
in the 1st place. To avoid this fate, join our
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(54:26):
circle of cool dudes to network and navigate your journey with.
You already know it's hard to find wing men because the good
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I'm extremely careful who I let into this community, but if you
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(54:49):
in the description.

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