Worth Group Q&A with
Maurice Harker
May 26, 2016
Q: How do I remind him (my husband) of things to do/books to read
for his recovery without moving into the "mother" role, or is this
reminding discouraged?
A: We have a
concept that we are trying to revise called boundaries. I want to repeat the
revision theme to the boundaries. This is a concept that is intended to be for
your safety, sanity, and protection, but has the tendency, especially as the
other one hears it, as coming across as an instruction, which is controlling of
someone else’s behavior. It also leaves women in a
position where their safety and security relies on another person’s behavior to
be controlled. Be very careful as you clarify the environment that is needed
for your to survive and thrive. The shortest way to describe this is, instead
of boundaries, please write up a description of the environment necessary for
you to survive and thrive.
Sometimes I have men who confront me, and ask what the
deal is about pampering and catering – all these things you do with the women.
My response is “dude you are going to be lonely and in pain as long as you
don’t comprehend what and who you are married to.”
In my experience, the female mind, heart, and soul is very
much like a plant and if you starve it, it will definitely shrink up and
produce less fruit, it will not be able to reciprocate, it is dependent on its
environment in many ways.
Ladies if the man you are married to is not empowering
you, facilitating, or protecting your environment, or going back to the three
basic words: presiding, providing, or protecting the environment needed for you
to survive and thrive, then you need to create thicker walls or greater
distance between you and him, even if it feels to you like a contradiction, or rather
it doesn’t feel celestial.
We will talk about that more as we proceed here. I do not
recommend that you remind him to do things, or read things unless he starts the
conversation about it. Let me give a mini role play on that. Let’s take this
woman’s situation where this last lapse was not quite 3 weeks ago, he lied
about it for a week, still not coming clean until she called him out on what
she found. This is a man who is more invested currently in his own emotional
well being, or rather safety – he is protecting his behavior, he is protecting
his feelings of worry etc. by not keeping her informed, so he misrepresents the
truth, he hides things from her, so he
is communicating that her safety and well being is not his highest
priority. For whatever reason he has
come to the conclusion that she is better off not knowing etc. etc. Anytime a woman is in danger, anytime there
is pain going on around her, it does not do her any good to be left in the
dark. There is no value to making decisions for a woman by telling her what she
needs to know and what she doesn’t need to know. She gets to pick that for
herself.
When she observes that he is not invested in, not ready
for, for whatever reason the woman does not need to psychoanalyze the reasons a
guy is not disclosing the info. all she needs to know is that he isn’t. He isn’t telling her, he isn’t making sure
she is informed, therefore she doesn’t know whether she is safe or not.
I often go back to the comparison or analogy of a princess or queen in a castle and the man is supposed to be the knight in shining armor. If he is out on the outskirts of the castle walls and the enemy or a dragon or something is coming and he doesn’t tell her about it, where something is close and he doesn’t keep her informed because it is none of her business, or she doesn’t need to know, or for whatever reason, all she knows is that dangerous things are happening and she’s not being informed. So she is going to have to build her own walls between herself and him, creating some distance there, that usually starts to become uncomfortable for the man.
I often go back to the comparison or analogy of a princess or queen in a castle and the man is supposed to be the knight in shining armor. If he is out on the outskirts of the castle walls and the enemy or a dragon or something is coming and he doesn’t tell her about it, where something is close and he doesn’t keep her informed because it is none of her business, or she doesn’t need to know, or for whatever reason, all she knows is that dangerous things are happening and she’s not being informed. So she is going to have to build her own walls between herself and him, creating some distance there, that usually starts to become uncomfortable for the man.
Men have a place in their brains where they want a
boundary-less relationship. They don’t want distance, they don’t want walls
between themselves and their wives when they are in a healthy mode, and so what
usually happens if a woman is protecting herself correctly, she will obviously
be more distant. Unfortunately, that isn’t always obvious. Sometimes these guys
depending on how distorted they currently are, don’t even notice that you’ve
now moved 100 miles away and have an 80 foot wall between you and him. And he’s
all “holy cow, oh, I didn’t even realize you were so far away.”
But he turns to you and says, “hey, how about we have some
connection time?” which is often asking for something more than you feel
comfortable sharing with him. That’s when you say, “it is also my goal to have
a healthy, well connected relationship with you, but recent events have made it
so that I need more distance from you, and I need more protection. If you
really want to be closer to me and have a quality relationship with me, you are
going to have to do some reading, you are going to have to get trained, you are
going to have to learn how to keep a woman safe and secure, if you want that
type of a relationship with me.”
You can see you things proceed where once you assess that
he is not in a state of mind, and has not fine tuned his behavior to the degree
that he does provide you with an environment of safety and security, you
withdraw to a safe distance (that’s a phrase that I’ve learned I can rely on –
withdraw to a safe distance) and when he notices that you’ve withdrawn to a
safe distance, you say, “I would love a quality, bonded, connected relationship
with you, but you are going to need to learn a few more things before we can
have that, and I’m not your mother, and I’m not your therapist, and not your
man trainer – I have so much confidence in you, please go find the resources
you need, and I can tell you are doing it right because I will feel more safe
and secure around you.
Unfortunately, many of these men will respond to such a
thing with, “That’s not fair!” “What about what you are doing wrong?” “How come you are ruining my life and we are
not talking about that?” etc. etc.
There’s a bunch of different
things that a man might say in that situation. But don’t agree with him. {Connecting to associated following
question}
Q: How can I lovingly detach from my husband, especially when he
is in addict mode?
A: When a
woman usually asks this question, it is because the man has described you as
not being loving – from his perspective you aren’t being loving, based on his
definition of how a wife should react.
Unfortunately, a man who has mis-behaviors that are a threat to the
family, rarely has a healthy perspective of how a wife should behave in a
marriage, and part of objectifying a wife, is picturing her as someone who is
not hurt by your mis-behavior, who does not need recovery time, who can
disconnect from her own fears and pain, and who can respond with her own
lovingness no matter what he does. They
will often cite the phrase “unconditional love – no matter how much I run you
over with the truck, you should be loving with me. No matter what I do to you,
you should be nice to me.” These are
basic principles. Let’s do follow up questions for clarification:
Q: Carlification
on when he is in that place and blaming you, and just everything that you
should be doing…I’m starting to detach and he is saying, “I don’t feel
appreciated and loved, there’s things you are doing too – it can’t all be me”
how can I respond to that, when he says you need to fix you too. He said to me
the other day, “I don’t know if I can continue this relationship if you feel
like it is only me that needs to change. You need to change and show me that
you are willing to change in order for me to make efforts (is what I got from
what he said).
A: If I have
a man (and I do have some cases where the wife is having a hard time
maintaining her dignity - some of the women can get pretty brutal). First off I ask – “are you serious? Are you
really hurting because of how she is treating you?” (Now this is a therapist
thing, I will come back to what a wife should do later).
And they say, “yeah, totally man, it’s very, very painful.”
Then I will tell them, that I will give them the same
advice that I give her: withdraw to a safe distance – don’t leave yourself
in a place where she can hurt you. If you need to, withdraw. If it is
reallythat painful to you, then you have a right to withdraw also.
The reason my book is called, “I’m not Okay and You’re Not
Okay” is that there usually IS a phase where both people are feeling
unfulfilled, and the other person is not quote unquote “meeting their needs” (a
phrase that I abhor in any type of marriage repair work). I encourage the men
to retreat and do their own work so that he isn’t sitting around and waiting
for a woman to appreciate him, and not waiting for someone to clap for him, and
throw a ticker tape parade for him, and make sure he feels strong and
competent, stable – even if his wife is not in a position to celebrate his
greatness. Or what he perceives as his greatness. He also has a right to be
rejuvenated, and empowered by something healthy if his wife is unavailable.
Ladies, many of you are experiencing some psychological and emotional trauma,
and it is like lying in a hospital bed, and someone wants you to get up and
make a sandwich for them. You are in no position to get up and do all of the
things that a wife is supposed to do. So if a man is complaining about what his
wife isn’t doing for him during this time, say “you have a right to have your
own stability, and your own stableness if I’m not good enough for you, or if
I’m not able to meet your needs or whatever else you want to call it. So go
ahead and retreat, go ahead and take care of yourself. The assumption is that he will take care of
himself using divine resources, not deviant resources. If he runs off and uses
deviant resources, that just helps you understand that it is not wise to invest
a lot in the marriage.
Feel free to use a positive assumption with him and say,
“If you go, retreat and regroup and bond with God, and if I retreat, regroup,
and bond with God – we both will be stronger, we will both be more stable when
we talk the next time.
Q: So when he
says these things, basically, just tell him he has a right to feel you are in a
stable place, and if we are both separating right now and building our
relationship with God, then when we come back and talk again, maybe we will
have some insight – is this correct?
A: Anytime
someone’s emotional stability is falling apart because of someone else not
meeting their needs (I’m disturbed and have to be careful because I feel like I
repeat this a lot, but I have a lot of feelings behind this). In graduate school we were taught a very
significant contradiction. They taught us when doing marital work, to let the
two spouses make a list of unmet needs from their spouse. What they didn’t say
was – we are basically implying that you will stay dysfunctional as long as
your spouse is not meeting your needs. And then in the next class they will
teach you about co-dependency, and tell you not to be co-dependent, when in the
previous class, they just set you up to be dependent on whether or not someone
else is doing something. It is a very cruel therapeutic concept, that your
sanity should rely on someone else’s ability to meet your needs.
If you go back to pre-marital psychology ladies, everybody
gets this if you have a 21 year old daughter. Would you ever train your 21 year
old daughter to think in terms of, “Honey, you just need to find a man to meet
your needs, and you are allowed to be dysfunctional until you can find a man
who will take care of you.”
You would never say that to your 21 year old daughter, and
sometimes the guys do think about it that way. That’s insane. What I try to do
with the guys is go back to pioneer days with polygamy. Why would you take on a
5th wife? Because a general authority asked you to help facilitate,
help empower, bring greater stability and life to a woman and her children.
What if that was the purpose of the first wife too? To serve her. To empower her. To bring her safety and security.
Not to relieve all of the sexual tension you’ve had for your teenage life. That
is not the purpose of a wife. (Maurice has some feelings on these topics).
Other follow up questions/clarification:
Q: Any ideas
of how he can rebuild trust with me?
A: This is
not something you train him to do. There is a lot that he can do to rebuild
trust with you. But you should not be the one teaching him how to do it. The
principles are very universal when it comes to building trust with a woman. He
can find it in almost any book available for helping a marriage recover. They
are very consistent things like transparency, being consistent with his
behavior, open honesty. It is one of the basic concepts of building trust with
a wife – it isn’t rocket science. He can come to the men’s marriage repair
workshop and for $20 for a full hour I can explain the whole thing to him.
Q: My Husband
has struggled with pornography ever since he was a kid. I found about it a few
years after we were married. 11 years ago we had a very proactive Bishop that
tried to help him as best he knew how with weekly goal setting and checking. In
the end he decided to apply church discipline, and he has not had the
priesthood since. We have had 3 different bishops since then, and they have all
expected him to be free of his addiction for a full year before allowing him to
use the priesthood or have a calling. I have been supportive of that because I
want him to be free as well. But lately, I have gained more insight, and have
developed some sympathy. My husband is wonderful in many ways and tries hard,
but apparently not hard enough. He acts out in his addiction about every 2-3
weeks. My question is “can he ever over come it completely?”
A The short
answer is, yes. Unless he has some mental health issue that we need to take
into consideration. If he has what we call a co-morbid condition, which is like
bi-polar, or official anxiety, or official depression, or ADD, Asperbergers –
autism spectrum stuff, those are the most common things which we run into that
can make it more complicated, but it definitely does not make it impossible. If
this man is doing well in many other areas of his life, the thing that he is
missing is some of the basic training necessary to conquer it. We have boiled it down to a strategic science
– not just hoping or daydreaming, not just fight harder, fight smarter, sing a
hymn. We know how to train self awareness and high speed accurate intense
responses. The simplest thing to do is
to look up the “Breaking the chains of bondage” videos on youtube that we’ve
done. Or go to our LCS website – there are places to download “Like Dragons
they did Fight” book for free, if you want a paperback copy also, there are
many ways he can get started. Men of Moroni program. There’s a personal warrior
training – a tool we’ve developed over the last few years for people who don’t
need full therapy, and they aren’t in the position to pay the full cost of
therapy, but they need a little bit more direct attention than the group
experience. My recommendation is that you do personal warrior training with one
of our certified coaches in addition to Men of Moroni or Sons of Helaman, but
it also can be done instead of the group training sessions. We’ve worked really
hard to make them as inexpensive as possible. All of our services - so we can keep your budget in mind and not
overwhelm you. So yes, it can be overcome. If it does appear to be something
unique or extreme about it, I recommend at least one session. I and most of the
other therapists can assess within an hour, if we have a complicating issue – so
that we can possibly talk to the Bishop and say, “This person has a unique
circumstance with the following things – we recommend maybe a 3 month
expectation instead of a year expectation.” But that is rare and the church
leader always has the option of ignoring the therapist.
Q: My Husband,
we’ve been separated. He finally decided he didn’t want a divorce a few weeks
ago. He is slowly kind of doing things on his own time. I haven’t really had
anything to do with his recovery. I set my expectations of what I would want,
for him to move back home. I asked for 30 days of sobriety for him to move back
home. In order for him to move back into the bedroom, I said I wouldn’t feel
safe unless he was getting counseling, or joining some type of recovery program.
He’s okay doing the SA meetings/ARP, but I don’t feel like those are actual
recovery. I feel like those are good at uncovering what is behind it and
discovering different behaviors, but I don’t feel like they are proactive
towards his recovery. On his own, he emailed Men of Moroni last week, which
floored me, and this last week we’ve been talking about how we can afford and
pay for this, which isn’t a problem. I would put all of our money towards it if
we needed to. Now that he is committed to this, and doing it on his own, what
is the best thing that I can do to be supportive? I want to stay out of God’s
way. So far he has come to this point with me staying out of the way and just
focusing on myself. From what I understand, Men of Moroni is pretty intense. He
does pretty good for the first couple of weeks. He will be really fired up and
committed, and then things begin to fall by the wayside. I imagine that this
will come with training with MOM. I’m just wondering, what’s the best thing I
can do as he does this?
A: I want to
commend you and express appreciation that you are so action oriented. You want
to participate and move things forward and make sure things happen, and I’m so
grateful for that. So many good things happen on this planet because you women
are so driven. Unfortunately, when it comes to a man’s development, if you want
it to be solid and permanent, you have to participate, almost zero in his
stabilizing, or else he is going to begin relying on you to maintain it. And if
you don’t do your part, then he is going to fall apart. We train the men that
they should not rely upon the arm of flesh either. They should not rely on you
for encouragement, or reminders and all that stuff. It takes longer sometimes
for them to get really good at it because they are not using you as part of
their recovery, but is also more stable because ladies, even you have off days
where if he was relying on you to be encouraging and gracious for his hard
work, and if you’ve just had a horrible day with some of your responsibilities,
and then he goes and loses a couple of battles because you weren’t there for
him, there’s no stability and security in that. That’s too much pressure on a
woman to always be what a husband “needs” to maintain his success.
I appreciate that you found the requirement that he needs
to be participating in the different program, but I would use an outcome
measurement, instead of a participation measurement. Sadly, I have another case
where the husband really likes the letter of the law thing. He says, “right
here it says that I’m supposed to attend MOM meetings, it doesn’t say anywhere
that I have to learn anything.”
That’s a pretty drastic demonstration of what a man brain
can do sometimes in these situations. Ladies, when you go through this process
of listing out the requirements for your thriving and surviving environment,
always make sure there is a clause at the bottom of the page that says,
“everything on this page can change as I learn more about myself, more about
being a woman, more about being a woman recovering from trauma.”
A man who is truly working to fix his marriage and is into
recovery, does not need you to stick with the original rules because he gets
that you aren’t an object. He gets that you are growing person, a developing
person, he has compassion that this is your first time going through this kind
of trauma, or first time ever getting trained on how to get through this
trauma. Do not let a man nail you down to a list you wrote 6 months ago, now
that you’ve learned a bunch of stuff. Say things like, “yes, based on the
information I had at the time, that was my list, I’ve grown, matured and become
wiser since then. My recommendation is, not to tell the man which program or
what. Here’s one recommendation that I was prompted to tell a woman who I
worked with last week: “I need to have at least one qualified therapist become
convinced that you are never going to have a problem with this again. I need at
least one church leader to become convinced that you are never going to have a
problem with this again, and I need to become convinced that you are never
going to have a problem with this stuff again – then we can probably share a
bedroom. You only have to convince 3 people. Not a problem.”
You can soften it a little bit, and say “I need you to
convince these three people that you aren’t going to have a problem for a
month, three months, or a year – it’s up to you decide how intense you want the
standard to be. We take away the micromanaging of what tools he uses, but we
have a measurement of success.
Dude you can stack cracker jack boxes for six months if
that helps you recover from your addiction. I don’t care what method you use,
as long as three people, myself and two others whom I trust are all convinced.
And part of my being convinced, will be God telling me – “your husband has his
head on straight now, you are probably safe.”
Try to decrease the specifics of how the man is supposed
to achieve the outcome of the measures and describe the outcome measures.
Follow up Q: If
he is working with a therapist or someone I don’t trust, is that a qualifier,
or do I need to work through that issue on my end?
A: I have a case where the wife didn’t trust me at all (but she had never met met me). She scowled at me for the whole first hour and stared me down, saying, “I don’t know who you think you are….” A therapist that is worth trusting can handle that. It is okay to go in saying, I’ve heard that you just side with the other people all of the time, and I’ve heard what you say about me because my spouse told me what you said…”
A: I have a case where the wife didn’t trust me at all (but she had never met met me). She scowled at me for the whole first hour and stared me down, saying, “I don’t know who you think you are….” A therapist that is worth trusting can handle that. It is okay to go in saying, I’ve heard that you just side with the other people all of the time, and I’ve heard what you say about me because my spouse told me what you said…”
It is so silly. Let’s take it back to the pre-marriage
days. Imagine a guy you are dating who says, I would take you out on another
date, but says, “you don’t get to decide if you like me, or how I’m doing it –
I want to take you out on a date, but there are things about me that you don’t
get to have an opinion on.” That’s just crazy talk.
Of course these guys could come back to you, that they
need to approve your therapist. Fine that’s great. Go ahead. Stand by that if
you need to be that way.
Of course you have a right to be comfortable with whoever
is giving you feedback.
I was working with a woman who
had been married for 30 years. During those 30 years, her husband thought
everything was fine. He said he didn’t understand it, all of the sudden she
said that she had been miserable for decades. I said, part of being a good
woman on this planet is being adaptable, and making the best of bad situations,
and trying not to make a big deal out of little things, and trying to be happy
in difficult circumstances. So, a good woman will allow all sorts of negativity
to be in her space as she tries to be noble and resilient. Ladies, it isn’t a
sign of stupidity or weakness or character flaw if you make it work with a
dysfunctional situation for a while. It’s just a scary and difficult decision
to come to, that we can’t do it anymore, it’s no longer acceptable, it’s no
longer survivable. In the end, if the man has been given plenty of time to
change something, and it is past time for him to fix it, it is okay to take a
stand. In reality, I have these flashbacks that half of my brain is so grateful
for, and the other half of my brain is traumatized by, when my own wife said,
‘We are done. No more of that. You are too old to be thinking that way. You are
too old to be feeling that way. You are too old to be interacting with me that
way. If this is really how you need to be for the next 30, 40, or 50 years,
then I just can’t be married to you anymore. Here’s what I need in order to
have a functional marriage. But hey, if you can’t do it, that’s cool. I’m a
tough girl, and I can live life without you. I can handle it.” As I thought
about it, all I could see when I looked at that list, when I let my wise brain
kick in was that I would be a better man if I lived up to that line. I would be
a more noble man, I would be more in tune with God. I would be a more powerful
man. There was nothing wrong with what she needed from me, in order for me to
get my head on straight. And I like me better because she demanded a better
environment. I as a man, like myself more. I feel more powerful. I feel more
capable, apparently women in general trust me if I can stay in this position,
because of the impact which she had on me. All of my stable success as a
professional, is because my wife expected me to become a better man.
Q: I don’t
know how to ask this, but a lot of addicts live in an alternate reality. They
believe the lies they are telling. How do you communicate with someone like
that? I obviously have an extreme case, but I still have to deal with him and I
don’t know how to handle it.
A: Ladies, I
have bucket loads of compassion when you are in a situation like that, because
some of you have read the article about the tetras puzzle concept where if you
have the spirit and the other person has the spirit, the words might not be
perfect, but they get twisted and pushed to the right and left, but they land
in a productive and constructive and edifying place. When you have someone who
has experienced that type of distortion, no matter what you say, it is going to
come off as a twisted version of something. So, it is highly aggravating. One
of the things you have to do, is in your personal time, you have to spend time
clarifying that you know that you are not insane. You know you are not crazy or
disturb or messed up. Sometimes having a trusted friend who you know is not
messed up either can help when you go, “am I twisted here?, Am I wrong here?”.
Hopefully we have a relationship with God where he can go, “you are fine”. That
way when you have a conversation with these guys, because most of the
conversations with these guys is crazy maker conversation, where you say
something, they twist your words and fling it back to you…protecting yourself
and saying as little as possible. Doing communication by email or text so that
it can be documented. People tend to talk smarter via email or text messaging
so that they can actually tell that they are being a little bit twisted.
Unfortunately there are some people that even when they write, can’t tell that
they are being twisted.
I don’t know that I have a really good answer for you.
Q: I’m an
adult, and have learned enough that I can avoid it, but my kids can’t. My son
came home the other day and we had a little bit of a conflict and he said,
“mom, he convinced me that, like I started to believe what he was saying. I
kind of knew not to but, he is convincing me.”
A: That’s
really painful. I want to reassure you that in the long run, kids figure it
out. In those moments, because children have a natural desire to respect and
appreciate their parents, and to have a connection with them, they will do
that. They will take their parent seriously that is on the other end of things.
There’s no way to dig through that, other than that every interaction with them
is an opportunity for training. The key for the mother is, don’t get scared,
don’t panic. Know that your paradigms and perspective are going to win out in
the end.
Q: If my
husband is looking at men porn, does that mean that he is gay?
A: The short
answer for that is no. Let me see if I can explain this. I’m a little
disappointed in the textbook description of where all of these problems, non
mainstream issues come from. After interviewing many men, both younger and
older who have some exposure to primarily same sex porn, the pattern I found
did not match the things that I learned in the text books. Things like some
kind of conflict with their father or something like that. The most common
pattern I’ve seen in the LDS population, is that in their early puberty days,
when a young man has a strong craving to experience sexual stimulation, if they
have a very strict rule book in their head that “you do not disrespect, or get
off on looking at naked women – you just don’t it is against the rules, it is
so wrong to do.”
Unfortunately, like water coming down a big valley or
mountain, it hits a dam and it can start to leak into another avenue, and
unfortunately, between the ages of 10 and 13, random things can cause sexual
response in a male body, and anything that is related to sexuality can cause a
sexual stimulation. They aren’t going to ask around to the other guys in the
locker room in junior high things like, “hey, when you ran into some same sex
porn, did you have a response to it?” They aren’t going to ask that type of
question, and if they did, it isn’t likely that the guy from the football team
would respond, “yeah, I had a sexual response from looking at same sex
pornography.” But they do. They all do. The brain at that age isn’t very
discerning. If it has any sexual flicker to it at all, the brain gets off on
it. The problem is, if the rule “Thou shalt not look at opposite sex porn” is
so powerful, but the sex energy is not given a healthy outlet (we could spend a
whole lot of time talking about that) – if it starts tilting towards, and they
have access to same sex porn, they could continue to have exposure to it, and
the brain gets used to having that exposure, and then within a year or two,
they start to assume that they prefer same sex porn, and they continue along
that vein for a period of time, and then they begin to have identity confusion, who/what am I? It is not
impossible to reprogram. I have many cases where I’ve trained the man to
re-channel his brain correctly, the same way you would re-channel water coming
down the side of a mountain. It does get complicated if there is any same sex
tactile participation. If boys are touching boy parts. Especially if one of the
participants is skilled at causing sexual response. Unfortunately, the
masculine brain – almost every brain when it experiences actual sexual tactile
stimulation, the brain will document it and it will hold it for a long time. I
apologize ladies if there are any of you here who were abused in your pre-teen
days, I’m probably triggering you – I will retreat from that topic. Those who
have experienced that, young men from 13, all the way down to 3 years old if
they have experienced some actual physical stimulation in their genital area,
the brain will memorize it, and it gives us one more challenge as therapists to
conquer. But that still doesn’t make them gay. It still doesn’t make them
homosexual, neither does the pornography. What we look for – is do they want to
build relationships with the same sex? Do they want to neglect family
development in order to have those relationships. I don’t classify them as gay
or homosexual unless they want to develop those relationships, and they have to
decide what their value systems are. To reassure everyone, in one of my
conversations with one of the guys dealing with this, he says, ‘You don’t know
how hard it is to control when you have cravings for a man when you are married
to a woman.” My response to him was,
“do you think that your cravings to do something that would violate your
marriage are stronger than my cravings to do something that would violate my
marriage?” Just because it is of the same sex nature, doesn’t mean that the
temptations are more powerful. You might have less intense energy than the guy
who wants to spend time with his secretary or the guy who wants to spend time
with pornography. I have an article on my blog titled Distraction/Attraction.
The main theme of it is whether it is a man or a woman, or
a bottle of alcohol, Satan doesn’t care what he uses to distract you from
keeping your family together. He will use whatever he can find to knock you out
of whack. This is on the blog for Life Changing Services. I don’t know if I
over or under answered that.
Follow up question:
Q: How would
you recommend helping children to channel those sexual urges?
A: We use the
term called passion to relate to sex energy. The part of the brain that gets
off on things, if it is given a productive environment – the old fashioned term
was, “Keep your kids/a person busy.” The problem is, if the activity that they
are busy with does not stimulate their passions, then you are still at risk for
it going a little crazy. some of them are sports oriented and they get
passionate about sports, some are artists, some are musicians, some are
dancers, some are computer programmers, some are scriptorians. In their
pre-teen ages, you want to expose them to a wide range of stuff, and the goal
you are looking for is something good that they get off on. And then you keep
throwing them into it. Unfortunately, sometimes it is computer oriented,
programming, games, I encourage you to expose them to other things as well. If
I have a child who is a gamer, and he is exposed to something like minecraft or
something somewhat productive, I’d rather have him doing that during his
tweener years, of 13-14. By the time they are 15 years old, they need to be
building something in the real world, not just something in the computer world.
There’s also an article on that on the blog, about how to respond to gamers.
That’s available for more detail.
Q: Can you
discuss lust addiction and what it looks like briefly, vs other addictions, and
what it takes to over come it?
A: Lust
addiction. Sometimes we laugh around the office, to diffuse the tension. The
idea of an inpatient pornography addiction recovery facility, is the funniest
thing I’ve ever heard because a true porn addict doesn’t need to look at anything.
They can manufacture quality porn in their head without even looking at
anything. So if you put them in a facility, he could just look at the ceiling
or the blank wall and create plenty of porn without having to look any up,
because a lust addiction involves the stimulation of chemistry without having
to see something pornography. You need to be very careful with this, and here I
will be walking on very thin ice.
The line between the mechanism inside the human masculine
brain that informs him that there is a woman present who isn’t a tree or
antelope or truck. There is this useful mechanism, I guess during the dating
years that says, “hey, that over there is a girl. She is funner to look at than
a tree, or a llama, or a truck, and she’s funner to talk to, and you don’t know
anything about her, so here’s a stimulation that will motivate you to initiate
a conversation with her.” Whatever you want to call this – a flicker that goes
on in a man’s brain that is more motivating than to talk to a tree, or truck or
anything else. It is a little annoying when you are my age and you’ve been
married for 20 something years and you don’t need to know that there’s a woman
over there. You don’t need a flicker of chemical reaction that says you would
rather talk to her, or look or interact with her, than with a telephone pole or
truck. It is about as useful at this age, or stage of life, as an appendix is,
but it is still there, and it is not an addiction, it is not lust, it is just
an obnoxious awareness.
Now. Unfortunately, if you are a woman who has been
traumatized because you are in a relationship with a guy who has actually acted
upon those thoughts and feelings, then it is like someone lighting a fuse, and
you don’t know whether the bomb is actually going to blow up or not. The fuse
is lit, but you don’t know how much danger you are actually in. So, let’s play
through what a man’s brain is supposed to do if he handles such a situation
correctly, and then we will talk about how you can tell if it is a lust addiction.
If a man is in a place where something flickers him.
There’s temptation/don’t know if I want to call it temptation because there’s no suggestion to misbehave,
it’s just noticing something and having a chemical reaction to it that is more
animal than it is value system. A trained man, within 3 seconds will notice it
and begin to be annoyed by it. Noticed it, not helpful, moving on. Within 3-5
seconds later, he will have pulled up a more relevant topic to think about.
Within 15-20 seconds, the chemical reactions will be gone, and he will be
preoccupied with a more productive thought, that is within his value system.
The whole process should take less than 20 seconds.
Now, I’m told that women who haven’t been traumatized by a
husband’s misbehavior, or a previous committed relationship behavior, they also
experience it as a flicker of annoying, but not scary or traumatizing. It is
just an annoying thing that happens and you just move past it.
Let’s clarify the meaning between lust and lust addiction.
A lusting factor would be if the
chemicals flicker and he doesn’t shut it down quickly, and he lets the
chemicals swim around in his head, and he allows distraction, and he pays
attention to it longer than is needful, or long enough to cause at least
discomfort for the woman he is in a relationship with, possibly discomfort for
the woman he is noticing. And it distracts him for more than 30 seconds, more
than 60 seconds, then you are dealing with someone who is swimming in the
chemicals. If they are swimming around in the chemicals, then it starts to get
dangerous. During those first 50 seconds, Satan will capitalize on it. He will
start to make comments like, “no better time than the present. You might as
well enjoy it. As long as you don’t touch, it is okay to look.” All sorts of
things like that that are designed to keep the problem going on in the guys
head. All sorts of colloquialisms that you hear from different people that give
permission for the guy to swim around in it.
Addiction is when the brain
documents it, memorizes it, and wants more of it.
It is very similar to alcohol. It comes up again later.
Remember how that was? Remember what that tasted like, and you want some more
of it? It taunts and follows them around. When the opportunity has passed, it
keeps coming back – I want some more of that.
Think about it like a person who has an addiction to
cigarettes. They don’t have any money, so they start going through their mom’s
purse trying to find money to go and get some cigarettes. Or it is 2:00 am, and
they are walking barefoot to the gas station to get cigarettes. When they start
itching and they start crossing values behaviors, that’s when it becomes an
addiction, especially when it becomes repetitious.
When you start adding extra craziness to it, like when
your wife starts pointing it out. “Stop pointing it out, it really bothers me!
Leave me alone! Let a guy work through his stuff!”
Lust addiction is when there is no porn present, but they
are swimming in the sexual chemicals, and hankering for more of it, and it
becomes a priority and distraction from fulfilling their value system.
Follow up:
Q: Are all men
trained this way, regardless of which group they are in?
A: The Men of
Moroni system is led by mentors who are not certified clinicians. There are
some clinical MOM groups, led by therapists and they are a little more
expensive. I don’t know that they are trained in such complex concepts. MOM is
more of a self awareness and behavioral, confrontation based system. If you
feel like the man needs some extra training in this area, he may want to meet
with one of our clinicians for more of a detailed, bio-chemical awareness.
Follow up
Q: How can I
tell if my husband’s desire for me is lust?
A: This is
more complicated. As I’ve studied female sexuality, I’ve seen a wide range in
women, for how much lust is part of the bedroom experience. I’ve had some women
who are very nervous about there being a lot of out of control sexual chemicals
flying around in the bedroom, and I’ve met some on the other end of the
spectrum who prefer a lot of sex chemistry flying around in the bedroom. Lots
of lusting going on back and forth. Really, that’s a personal safety, and
preference issue.
I know that one of the ladies has done a good job studying
this for herself. She does a really good job of monitoring, she likes some lust
in the bedroom, but likes her husband to demonstrate that he is not controlled
by it. She has some really good ways of checking in. Hey, who is this in the
bedroom with you right now? What’s my name? What do you know about me? She does
a good job of bringing him back into the emotional connectedness. He wants and
likes to get it right.
Follow up
Q: It is still
hard for me to accept that my husband will be flickering for the rest of his
life. I can totally relate to the pre Dday flickers of annoying behaviors and
noticing husband oogling.
A: I have no
problem with you being bothered by this, but remember: men being in danger of
being destroyed is not a new concept. If you go back to Lamanite days, when the
men would go out farming or hunting, there was always a chance that they would
be killed by Lamanites. Men have been in danger of being destroyed for most of
the history of the world. And so I am sad, that on this planet, there is a way
for men to be destroyed. They are going to have to be attentive and protective,
self aware, and trained. We are motivated at Life Changing Services to find a
way to train every man on the planet. Every 12, 15, 18 year old so that all of
the men are ready for psychological warfare for most of their lives so that you
ladies can relax and chill out (mostly.)
My wife says “what kind of woman is not aware that this is
a dangerous planet? Part of being a woman on this planet is to be tough any
way, and to practice celebrating that your husband did return in one piece and
not be in a constant state of fear that he could be destroyed today. My wife
has commented to me, “You go to your office and have extremely intimate
emotional and sexual conversations with women who are highly vulnerable. How fun is that to know that your husband is
experiencing that kind of stuff almost every hour?” She knows that she has to buckle down, and this is part of what
she chose to marry, and knew this when she came into this. She checks me almost
every day. She checks my eyes, she checks my chest. All of those things that we
train you ladies to do, as you check the weather. And I know part of what helps
me to stay sharp, is to know that she is going to check me. And if I’ve been off,
she will know. So why do I fight my battles? Because it is too destructive for
everybody to not be aware of flickers, or what attacks you and not win those
battles in 3 seconds or less.
Follow up
Q: Does Men of
Moroni help with lust addictions, or is that more healthy for a psychologist to
helpwith?
A: Yes. The
psychologist can train and help work out the kinks. Think of them as the person
who helps identify very specific self awareness and very specific tools or
drills to do, but the MOM is where they practice their drills. Practice,
practice, practice,… and to use – think of MOM as a room full of weight lifters
or soldiers or athletes who keep pushing each other to perform well, and the
therapist is like the personal trainer, or the high coach that really figures
out the specifics. It is a lot more powerful and cost effective for them to do
most of their work in the MOM training, but some of the detailed work with a
therapist.
Follow up
Q: I’m
wondering if it is okay for a man to lust after his wife?
A: _______
just posted that she could talk about this. Maurice asks her: Tell us – is it
okay if your husband lusts you, and are you okay with that?
The way that Maurice has explained it to me that was very
helpful was when it goes from appropriate to inappropriate, is when he is not
aware that it is specifically you. Some people like to role play, or set up
situations etc. it can be appropriate if he is aware at the end of the day that
it is you that he is with. If it becomes false fantasies, then it becomes
problematic. For me the biggest thing is making sure that my husband is very
aware that he is with me, and it is me he is thinking about. I was concerned
that because of my husband’s addiction, that it would forever more be more
like, just getting into bed, and okay, let’s do it – I was afraid that any
excitement or fun would be lust driven. As Maurice put it, if there is
awareness that it is your spouse that you are with. Even calling it a little
bit of lust, it makes me nervous. But it has helped us to be able to be closer,
to feel like we can have fun with each other, and have excitement in the
bedroom. The biggest thing is making sure that you feel connected with each
other. I used to think that even positions when we aren’t facing each other, I
needed to see faces and know that he was aware of this. I realize that if we
are connected, as Maurice talked about 5 different areas of intimacy.
Spiritual, physical, sexual, intellectual, ? then I am more okay with things
being more exciting. Or if we aren’t staring in each other’s eyes, because we
are so connected in the others, and I know that he is thinking of me and
connected to me and not just on a sexual level. We are already connected on the
other 4 levels so I don’t worry about it so much.
Maurice elaborates: To enhance upon what she was saying,
you have to change some terminology from lust to playful and fun, interacting
and connected. Lust is when the person disengages from you. When the man is so
involved in whats going on in his head that you are not even there any more.
One woman described it in this terminology, “where he is using my body to
masterbate – as if I’m not even there.” I encourage you to refuse to
participate in such interactions. I’m very proud of ____ husband. He came from using a very unfortunate pattern of
behavior, and he figured out how to understand, comprehend, participate,
interact and be close and connected with his wife and understand her. He wasn’t
perfect all along, and he went back and forth, but it is very reassuring that a
man who is dedicated to figuring things out can do a really good job of it. He
can figure it out, and it is okay for you as a wife to have Olympic levels of
expectations and hopes. You can say, listen, you aren’t dumb, you aren’t weak,
you aren’t clueless. I married you because I was impressed with you. It is time
for you to be impressive now. Go figure out how to high jump 7 feet. Go figure
out how to pole vault 21 feet. You can figure it out – go and do it.
Follow up:
Q: My husband
never kisses and always has his eyes closed. Is this because of the addiction?
How do I remedy it without being awkward or killing the mood?
A: Sometimes
guys just were not taught about psychological intimacy being part of physical
intimacy. Sometimes they are entering the bedroom with “I thought that’s what
was supposed to happen in there, I didn’t think there was more to it than
that.” So, it doesn’t have to be addiction based. What they often don’t
understand is that sex is better when all of the intimacies are present. We
call it celestial sex. When the emotional intimacy is present. When the
psychological intimacy is present. When the verbal, and physical intimacies are
all present, even the man brain likes it more. He may not know that at first
because it is a little complicated to involve all of those ingredients. If he
isn’t interested in doing things differently, or doesn’t believe in your idea
of making things better, and let’s just do it my way or not at all. Then you go
with not at all being the option. He may go, wait a second, I didn’t really
realize not it all was really an option. What do we have to do here. Then they
start to say things that are messed up. Why does it have to be your way? Why
does it have to be what you want all of the time? Sadly, if they aren’t
convinced that things are better if we add the other intimacies, then they can
be frustrated.
How do I remedy it without killing the mood? You are going
to have to resign yourself to killing the mood. Awkward? Things like, Hold on a
second. It actually really helps to build psychological intimacy when you let
your brain get involved. When you are assertive and say, hold on a second – we
aren’t going that fast. Hold on a second, that isn’t going to work for me this
time, hold on a second, we need to do something different this time. If he gets
weird on you. What the heck, why are you messing everything up, being a problem
child, say listen, “ it is time for us to enhance, improve, correct, empower
our bedroom experience. We’ve already done it like newlyweds for long enough,
it is time for us to become more sophisticated and make it awesome for
everybody.” Are you with me or what? Then what is supposed to happen is you are
supposed to go through all sorts of experiments like “let’s try talking for 20
minutes before we take our clothes off. Let’s try only touching feet for 15
minutes. Let’s try discussing the weather, and all sorts of different things,
until we find what we really like.” I’m telling you, I’ve never found couples
who have the same dynamic as anyone else’s. They all have their own blueprint.
It is fascinating and confusing. I think it allows each couple to create a
unique psychological intimacy dynamic that only you have and it cant’ be found
anywhere else. You have to be committed to discovery rather than replication.
The worst thing that pornography does, is that it creates a template for the
bedroom that is based on the media, as opposed to what is supposed to happen in
the bedroom between a man and a woman. I have to rewind the video tape all the
way back to an Omish or early pioneer culture where bedroom activities were not
discussed at all, and there was no media anywhere. Two young 20 year olds would
get married with no sex education at all – neither deviant or healthy. What would
that be like for a young bride and her husband if they weren’t even sure how
things fit together? The first week would be a lot slower – a lot more
explorative. Ok..what happens when you touch here? there? when you do this?
when you do that? Lots of pleasant surprises, and a few very uncomfortable
surprises. That’s what was supposed to happen.
Q: What do you
do when your husband has a flicker and starts oogling and loses mental control
and you calling it out causes the situation to be worse?
A: First of
all, I challenge that last part of it causing the situation to be worse. It may
be worse for the moment.
Backing up to what to do. There are a couple of different
options depending on the dynamic. If
you are training your 21 year old daughter in awesome womanliness, if she was
on a date, and the guy spent more time looking at another girl or the waitress
or whatever, what would you train your daughter to do? What I hope my daughter
would do is quietly stand up and walk out of the location, and make
arrangements to get home without saying anything. If the guy has any brain at
all, he doesn’t need to have it explained to him. He’s looking across the room
at another woman, he turns around and the chair across from him is empty. “I
wonder why she isn’t there any more – that doesn’t make any sense.” Let’s not
insult the intelligence of men, by explaining everything to them in third grade
terms. Let’s assume that they are smart enough to know that when you walk out
of the room at the same time that they are oogling someone else, that he can
figure out why you walked out of the room. If you want to be a little more
confrontational – spicy or in his face, and if you are feeling excellent self
confidence, then turn to him and say, “she must be hotter than anything else on
this planet, for her to be that distracting to you. I’ve never been a guy
before – what’s it like to have boy chemicals running around in your body so
much that you forget that your wife is standing right next to you?” If you want
to be a little playful in his face, but not really playful, you can be,
“allright dude, I’m fricking cool and an amazing woman and if you are dumb
enough to stare that woman down in front of me, your issues Bro.”
You can see that it would require you to really feel on
top of your game and powerful. It is fascinating and you can say, “ we can talk
about this later, but I don’t know what it is like to be a guy who loses his
mind just because he sees something – why don’t you talk me through that
sometime. Why don’t you tell me what it is like to be a boy who forgets about
his wife when she is standing right next to him. Now whatever comes out of his
mouth will be pointless and not worth listening to, but at least he will have
an opportunity to stammer over him self. 2 different possibilities. Walk away – you have to be prepared to pack
your wagon to do this. With our daughters, the first 3 – 10 dates she is on
with a guy, I want her to have instant transportation to save herself from the
situation whether it is herself or a friend or a phone call to call me. I would
love that, to pull up, shake his hand and say “hey, I’m here to pick up my
daughter because you couldn’t take your eyes off of some other girl, peace out
bro.”
What you don’t do, is be sad about it right then and have
an elongated conversation. “Husband do you realize that it hurts my feelings
when you are staring another girl down. I don’t know that you pay attention to
my hurt feelings.” Do not slaughter
yourself by laying down on the railroad tracks until he runs you over. All he
will do is give you a good reason why he needed to do that, and you are
over-reacting. Sadly we can predict what he will do in this situation.
Q: What are
your thoughts on telling older children about my husband’s pornography and masturbation
use? Son is 17 in Sons of Helaman program, he doesn’t know about his dad. I’m
ready to leave the house if I find porn in the home again. Do I talk to the kids? Ages 6, 11, 14, 16,
& 17.
A: First
thing ladies. When children are involved. Don’t think of them as a
conglomeration of entities. Make a plan for each child separately. The way you
talk to a 6 year old is different from how you would talk to a 16 year old. In
general, I would not reveal the man’s personal issues in specifics, but I would
declare that there is something going on that requires you to take the
following course of action. Son, I’m taking the following course of action,
because it is something that relates to your father. If you want details, you
will have to ask your father.
Occasionally, there are some exceptions to that idea, but
talk it over one case at a time. In general let other people’s personal
misbehaviors and repentance process be their own business. But, if you need to
describe, I yes, as your mother am doing something that is unusual and
peculiar, but I do have a good reason for doing it. It does involve your
father, and if you want details from him, you will have to ask him directly,
and then you and I can talk about what he tells you, and work through it from there.
The discomfort a man goes through when his teenage sons
comes up to him and say, “Gee dad, I saw mom packing a suitcase, she said it
had something to do with you, but she wouldn’t give me any details. Dad, tell
me what’s going on, that would make mom want to pack a suitcase.” This gives
him a great opportunity to be a man, or to fall apart.
This gives you information based on how he handles it. If
he responds, “let’s go over 101 ways that your mom is a crazy chick” it that’s
how he handles it, then it is a weather check as to what type of a man you are
dealing with. If he says, “well, I have a few personal issues that have left
your mother in pain and I’ve got to work through them”, and if the child
pushes, “what issues, tell me in great detail exactly what you did wrong
dad?” I would like every man on this
planet to feel all sorts of uncomfortable pain in that moment, so that the next
opportunity to misbehave occurs to him, he can think for himself, do I really
want to have this type of conversation with my kids? Hopefully if he has a good
head on his shoulders, he will always remember that and avoid misbehavior so
that he has to talk like that.
In general, one woman was worried about how it would
affect her children (5 kids), we found out that 3 of them will give the green
light on the course of action she would take, and the other two would need a
little more conversation about the whole thing, but they would be fine also. So
in reacting to how the children in general would respond to the situation, make
a plan for each of them, one at a time.
When it comes to discussing the specifics of what the other person did,
as much as possible leave that responsibility to him, to describe his
misbehavior. But you describe your own choice – I’m choosing to do this because
of something that happened in our marriage, there is something, it isn’t fake
or mysterious, but I’m not going to be the one who describes it to you.
Q: Complicated
as well. I am wondering a few things. We live in an area – we just need to
move. We are in OK. Got heavy rain and our family room flooded again. H wasn’t
here when it happened again. We have things that need to be fixed in the house.
We need to take out a loan – at least $10K to fix. He wants to save up for it.
There are some options, loan, borrow from 401K. I talked to him again about it
today. If we aren’t putting the money into repairs, we need to sale as is and
move. His response was for her to make a plan. How do you do that financially?
You just need to make a plan and we will talk about tonight. I responded – why
don’t you make a plan? That’s my first question.
Second question, we had home teachers that came over
yesterday to help clean up the mess. H came home, did a little work outside.
I’m still trying to clean toys and get kids ready. H was sitting at the
computer blogging or whatever, son needed attention, daughter is trying to step
in. Asking him to be present. What needs to be the problem? Need him to go out
and get things in order. I know he is tired. How do I know if he is checking
out or just tired? He had been up early, but things still needed to be done.
A: There’s
nothing more insulting when someone comes to you and says you should be able to
do more, because I’ve been paying attention to how you manage, and you should
be able to do more. It’s like when a man comes to you and says, ‘woman, you
should be able to do more’. A woman would cringe if a man came in and said that
to you in front of other women, because it is assumed, and usually is true with
the women that I’ve met, that women are usually maxed out. She’s already doing
beyond what she can do on her own. So, you have to be very careful about being
involved in the process of whether or not someone else is in the process of
maxing themselves out or not. When you use what you see with your eyes as a
measurement of someone else having more resources, this goes back to the title
of ‘I’m Not Okay, You’re Not Okay’ – you could change the title to ‘I’m burned
out and You’re burned out’, ‘I’m overwhelmed, You’re overwhelmed’. The reason I
chose that title is that as I’ve done my work, everyone I’m meeting is burned
out, overwhelmed, over their head, and so anytime your sanity is based on
whether or not someone else helps, you are putting yourself into a psychologically
dependent position. You have to do a weather check concept. Some by
observation, some by a query – “I just need to know, if you are doing all you
can do? I just need to know if you are reaching burn out similarly to the way
I’m reaching burn out. I don’t understand your rejuvenation patterns, or why
you do what you do when other things seem so important.” Personal stability is such a unique element.
My wife has for many years looked at me and said, “okay, I’m assuming that what
you are doing right now is rejuvenating to you right now, because it doesn’t
make any sense to me why you would choose that as a rejuvenation activity.”
But she has a right to the question. Are you doing your
best? But the hard part is, what do you do, when a man is doing his best, and
it still isn’t good enough?
This is the part where pioneer woman mode … there’s a look
my wife has in her eyes. She looks at me very calmly and clearly and asks, “I
just need to know if you are at your overwhelm level, so I can decide what kind
of action to take.”
And then it scares me because when some of these women get
into action phase that does not wait for a man, and all sorts of crazy things
happen. Most of them are good things but they are more intense that I was
expecting.
So, if you ask him – here’s a little role play for your
situation:
“Are you doing as much as you can? Participating as much
as you can? Including making a decision about what to do next?” Are you
participating as much as you can?”
If he says “yes”. Then okay. There are some decisions that
have to be made, and if you are too overwhelmed, exhausted, tired to make them,
I’m going to make them without you. I’ve attempted to have a celestial,
interdependent conversation with you, and you are now telling me that you are not
in a position to have an inter dependent conversation about it, a decision
needs to be made. I’m going to make it, and we will clean up the mess later. If
you decide you have to go to the bank by yourself, to do all the paperwork, to
do what you need to to sale the house and sale the house, if you’ve invited the
person to have an interdependent conversation, and they are telling you that
they are not in the position to participate in this discussion.
This has happened several times when my wife was having
physical health issues, and I would go to her if I was doing it right, and I
would say, do you want to be involved in the decision of what we do in this
situation involving our daughter? If she says, no. Then I say I am going to
wing it, and do my best and try to be wise and we will go from there. She says
do your best, and we go from there.
Sadly, sometimes it is true that the burn out is there for
the spouse as well as for you. Never assume that what you see with your eyes is
telling if the other person is living their life correctly.
Q: Even if,
with repairs, if I find something and he doesn’t want to participate, if I find
it is something that needs to be done, then I just proceed?
A: Yes. Based
on your wisdom, when you’ve come to the conclusion. Little warning ladies, that
the masculine brain is designed, and throughout the last several thousand years
to live in very horrific environments. In military situations imagine a guy
taking a nap in a ditch while there are dead bodies surrounding him – he is
supposed to be able to relax in that environment. The providing environment of
following an ox for 16 hours a day or other unpleasantries. The masculine brain
is designed to barely survive and be okay with that. So if they have a cave
with no decaying bodies and no one is trying to kill them then they are often
satisfied. That’s good enough. I’m in a place where nobody is dead. Their
motivation to celestialize the environment and take this cave and turn it into
a temple, and plant flowers and do all of the other things that make it a
temple, that is often missing in many male brains, because it is more of a
celestial female brain dynamic. So whether or not we need a chandelier in the
cave, and only one leak in the roof is better that those people without a
roof. So the definition of need is
often very different between most women and their husbands.
Closing remarks:
Please take care to maintain the Facebook page as an
uplifting place for all, without any man bashing, keep it a positive
environment.
Also, the Worth group is a free service – paid for by the
Men of Moroni program. If you are able, please consider making a donation, or
paying it forward. Contact our office if you are able to do so. We have women
who want to participate, but don’t necessarily have the room as we are limited
by finances. Unfortunately, there are many more women in the Worth group then
there are Men in the Men of Moroni program – which funds Worth.
Thanks to Jody and Jennifer for all of their hard work –
many of these questions can be addressed by them also in the individual weekly
groups.