It’s not just her trauma that keeps her skeptical of you.
When you secretly led a double life, you operated from a position of power and control. Now, as you try to live out the amends process, you're tangled in your perspective versus hers and it leads to adopting a powerless stance. Your best empathy won't create true equity or trust. Instead, you need to cultivate an understanding of dialectics and examine the self-protection that keeps you hiding. Let me show you a different way.
Whats keeping you stuck can be resolved quicker than you might think.
Establish an equity perspective...
which will shift everything.
The "floating saint" is the man who has stopped betraying his partner but is struggling to repair the damage he's caused. He's well-intended - applying what he's learned in therapy - but his wife still has significant complaints that leave him confused about what more he can do. His earnest desire to help her heal has him stuck in performance mode; trying to be who she wants and needs him to be. His "floating" makes it difficult for him to show up for meaningful connection. He's working to atone for his past but doesn't understand his own power moves that keep his partner feeling unsafe and unable to truly read him, know him, and feel safe with him.
The floating saint thinks his wife holds the power now but that's not accurate. There's work he hasn't done yet.
If you're serious about being trustworthy, it's time to meet your floating saint.
ENROLL IN SEGMENT ONE00
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Establish an equity perspective...
which will shift everything.
The "floating saint" is the man who has stopped betraying his partner but is struggling to repair the damage he's caused. He's well-intended - applying what he's learned in therapy - but his wife still has significant complaints that leave him confused about what more he can do. His earnest desire to help her heal has him stuck in performance mode; trying to be who she wants and needs him to be. His "floating" makes it difficult for him to show up for meaningful connection. He's working to atone for his past but doesn't understand his own power moves that keep his partner feeling unsafe and unable to truly read him, know him, and feel safe with him.
The floating saint thinks his wife holds the power now but that's not accurate. There's work he hasn't done yet.
If you're serious about being trustworthy, it's time to meet your floating saint.
ENROLL IN SEGMENT ONEWhat Will Segment One Offer?
Work through Segment One at your own pace. For optimal progress, commit 2-3 hours per week to the lessons, homework, and Live Support Sessions. This approach will allow you to understand and apply the material within 3-4 weeks.
If you want to go slower, you can. You'll have six months of access to Segment One and the weekly Live Support Sessions, giving you flexibility if you need more time. You decide when you're ready to advance to Segment Two.
Segment One is both a foundation and the starting place for the necessary shift that helps you dissolve the power dynamic of your former secret life. You'll learn concepts you haven't heard before and you'll find the material to be organized in a way that helps you gain mastery quickly.
Here's what we'll cover in Segment One - The Floating Saint:
Define the Floating Saint
- Your private inner world: Understand why she feels "you haven't changed" despite the progress you've achieved in recovery.
- Unconscious hierarchical thinking: Reset your mind about her trauma so your well-intentioned actions won't miss the mark for creating true safety.
Achieve Equity, Not Powerlessness
- Dialectics: Understand how your efforts to acknowledge and validate her pain become counterproductive and can actually reinforce distrust.
- The trauma you've caused: Truly help her heal by balancing the power dynamic (this is your job to do.)
Avoid Common Pitfalls
- Reactionary mode: Get the roadmap for eliminating defensiveness and withdrawal and foster the two conditions that set you up for meaningful connection with your partner.
- Free yourself from floating: Learn to productively navigate even the most difficult conversations with a new toolkit.
Address Root Issues
- Where it comes from: Challenge your long-held ways of "protecting" yourself and discover the strength you have to be steadfast when you're uncomfortable.
- Overcome feelings of inadequacy: Extinguish hopelessness and powerlessness using a method that generates confidence and capability.
00
DAYS
00
HOURS
00
MINS
00
SECS
What Will Segment One Offer?
Work through Segment One at your own pace. For optimal progress, commit 2-3 hours per week to the lessons, homework, and Live Support Sessions. This approach will allow you to understand and apply the material within 3-4 weeks.
If you want to go slower, you can. You'll have six months of access to Segment One and the weekly Live Support Sessions, giving you flexibility if you need more time. You decide when you're ready to advance to Segment Two.
Segment One is both a foundation and the starting place for the necessary shift that helps you dissolve the power dynamic of your former secret life. You'll learn concepts you haven't heard before and you'll find the material to be organized in a way that helps you gain mastery quickly.
Here's what we'll cover in Segment One - The Floating Saint:
Define the Floating Saint
- Your private inner world: Understand why she feels "you haven't changed" despite the progress you've achieved in recovery.
- Unconscious hierarchical thinking: Reset your mind about her trauma so your well-intentioned actions won't miss the mark for creating true safety.
Achieve Equity, Not Powerlessness
- Dialectics: Understand how your efforts to acknowledge and validate her pain become counterproductive and can actually reinforce distrust.
- The trauma you've caused: Truly help her heal by balancing the power dynamic (this is your job to do.)
Avoid Common Pitfalls
- Reactionary mode: Get the roadmap for eliminating defensiveness and withdrawal and foster the two conditions that set you up for meaningful connection with your partner.
- Free yourself from floating: Learn to productively navigate even the most difficult conversations with a new toolkit.
Address Root Issues
- Where it comes from: Challenge your long-held ways of "protecting" yourself and discover the strength you have to be steadfast when you're uncomfortable.
- Overcome feelings of inadequacy: Extinguish hopelessness and powerlessness using a method that generates confidence and capability.
A Note from Hope
As a specialist, I've worked with hundreds of couples who want to heal but get stuck rebuilding trust and safety.
I call this the "fallow period" where the work and toil of rebuilding has not produced enough harvest to make it all feel worth it... yet.
When couples are stuck here, the trauma of the betrayed partner is seen as the culprit; the reason for the delay. Couples go to therapy to work through this trauma together but the glaring issue is almost always overlooked. There is a power imbalance that hasn't been addressed and it won't be fixed until the person responsible for it does the necessary work to dissolve it.
Specifically for men who have betrayed their wives, recovery and addiction treatment does not address the dynamics that keep the power in play. My mission is to help serious men in advanced recovery to finish the work - to become husbands who've examined the equity gap they've created and show up as the men they are capable of being. The kind of men that their wives are hoping for and, in time, grateful for.
This will be the toughest work you've done yet - but it's here for you when you are ready. I look forward to leading your through this process.
-Hope Ray, LPC CSAT CHFP CCPS
