Question of the Month: When You Really Screw Up

Join the host certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them. Amen. Hello, and welcome to the Relax Mill. I'm your host, Brian. And we're doing some something a little different today, and we're diving into an email. And, actually, I've got a bit of, I guess, an announcement or news or whatever. Well, now that I'm thinking of it, it's more of an apology.

And the reason why I have got this I wanna apologize for something is that for a long time, I've had an email or a a contact form on the site. And, honestly, I thought I had it set up to where it would sit because from time to time, I would. I would get an email from them saying, hey. I've you got an email from so and so, and it would be just spam. And I was like, I'd not ever really gone into the email program again or the contact form again and done much digging around in it.

And sadly, when I did, I realized I left a lot of you men hanging, and there is a whole mixture of thoughts and emotions and self loathing and and irritations and everything along those lines that are centered around the fact that there were about 10 or 15 episodes or possible episodes that I could have had where I was giving you guys some more direct information based upon what y'all were needing to know, and I dropped that ball.

And just everybody that tried to contact me slipped right through the cracks. And because of that, I am truly, truly sorry. No wonder. I've sat around for the past well, this show's been going on, what, 4, 5 since the end of 2019. So, yeah, we're on 5th year right now We're coming up on the 5th year. And I'm been wondering. It's like, well, no one wants to contact me. Why does nobody contact me? Well, people been contacting me. I've just been the dip wad who hasn't been following through.

And I'm sorry, guys. I'm truly sorry for letting y'all hang like that. And so we're gonna I'm gonna be going through about once, once a month. I'm gonna go through, and we're gonna answer one of the questions. But I'm also wanting to let y'all know that I have had a lot more interest in the group coaching for

that I was I've been kinda set I'd set off to the side of the brotherhood of men. I had taken it and just kinda set it off to the side. It's something I've been kinda contemplating, but most of you men are curious about the brotherhood of men group coaching package. And it sat there, and I was just like, yeah. I'm not gonna really push it that much because all the coaching people that I had talked to were more about get individual coaching going 1st, then do your do your group coaching

because it'll be a little less expensive. And because it's a group, it's not so much 1 on 1, not all my time is focused strictly on just you. It's you, and you get to get garner information from everybody else. And so it was supposed to be a lower feed item. So I was like, alright. Well, let's get my let's get the end of it 1 on 1 coaching going. And all this time, I had me you men sitting there going, hey. I would like to do a little bit of 1 on 1 or a little bit of group coaching here.

And because I missed that, I am going to go ahead and start offering that out. If you were if you had asked about group coaching, here soon, you're gonna receive an email from me. Within the week, you'll have an email from me going making this offer, and I'm going to give you guys specifically a discounted rate because, 1, you were showing interest in it, and I screwed pooch on this.

So we're gonna start off with that, and we're going to go ahead and start getting you men together in that fashion because y'all are wanting to be y'all wanna get together and help each other become better that way, which is in all reality, that's more of a something a guy would do than than 1 on 1. 1 on 1's a little scary

and a little well, scary. It's just a little unnerving because all of a sudden, you have all your problems being laid out there, and you're not sure, you know, is that am I the only one who's had this problem or or what? So we're going to gonna do that. But something else that I've saw, like I said, was that we had these other contact lists, contact form

emails come through that never got to me. So what I wanted to do, and I wanted to say to get you guys besides for sorry, how am I fixing this problem? I am fixing this problem by actually I have changed up how the notifications happen. So not only did I go through I cleared out all the all the trash requests, which were there were a lot of a lot of spam in there. And so

I've gone through there. I've cleared out all the spam. I've kept all the actual questions and and comments and and inquiries so that now I'm going to go through, and I'm going to, once a month, I'm gonna answer one of those specifically on here. And and if they are and that's also depending on if they allowed for me to to pose that question to, through the podcast.

So and that's what we're doing today. So the title of this episode is actually getting more respect because this is the email that I got. I am currently a recovering addict, and I live with a wife that never for, let me forget all the things that I did wrong while I was active, did wrong while I was actively using. I've been clean for a year 8 months, which, first off, man, thumbs up, thumbs way up.

I have no privacy. I get no respect from anyone in my home. I have no friends because they all have betrayed me in some way, or they have showed me no respect at all. Well, if they haven't shown you respect, they're not friends, obviously. So what do we do? How do you do this? How do you get more respect? Especially when you've had a very slightly or not just slightly, but, like, if you're a drug user, there's a lot of times you have kind of a very disrespectful lifestyle.

You're doing stuff. You're more interested in the addiction and what the and I'm using addiction. I understand. If you have no clue as to who I am and what I believe in, addicks I don't actually believe there's such thing as a quote, unquote addiction. There is no chemical out there that is called that is identified as the addiction chemical. There is no pathogen out there that makes you addicted. It is what an addiction is is it's a a coping mechanism that has gone completely awry. It is

you not being able to control your it's an out of control habit is a best way to describe it. You are more interested in watching porn than doing the hard thing of trying to have a better connection with your wife. It is easier to go off and to light your brain on fire with with heroin than it is to actually face what you're running from. A lot of times, addiction is we're just running from something.

It is easier to take a drag on a cigarette than to actually deal with the stress in your life at that moment, and we do. This is I was a I was a cigarette smoker for 20 plus years, and it was one of those things where I wanted a cigarette. If things got a little tough, that poof. I was lighting up. I've I quit. I quit for 12 years and then picked it back up come around COVID time

thinking, ah, you know, I can control it. I've been long enough. I should be able to have one as a reward for me completing, you know, a task at the end of the day, whatever that task would end up being. Problem? That task was, that task didn't matter. If I wanted a cigarette, eventually, it was, yeah, 1 cigarette in the evening, One cigarette in the evening.

2 cigarettes in the evening. 1 cigarette in the morning, 2 cigarettes in the evening. And that kept growing and evolving and becoming bigger and bigger until I was back up to 2 packs a day within a month and a half. I was like, oh, wow. They get this, this got out of control. I better go ahead and stop it. And, again, it was tough to stop. So I smoked for 2 years before I was like, alright. This is the we've had enough. And I at the end of 22,022, I stopped it again,

and I have been smoke free since. And I now know I'm not jumping back into that because I want that satisfaction of nicotine way too much. I used to enjoy a a a pipe, and it I would have, you know, a pipe. I'd smoke a pipe, maybe. And that's a tobacco pipe, not a, not a not a joint marijuana pipe, but an actual, you know, good, it it was a Joby, pipe. I loved it. It smelled good. I loved the smell of of pipe tobacco, and I would have one, you know, maybe every other week,

once a month. I mean, I just I would have it, and I I ran out of tobacco. Alright. Well, fine. I ran out of tobacco until I made it back over to the tobacco store that I liked to buy some more tobacco. And that I did that for a couple years. It was just an enjoyable thing to do. But then whenever I I was like, hey. If I can do if I could do pipes, I can do do,

cigarettes just fine. I should be able to have that type of control. No. The you because you of how I ingest the cigarette smoke, it's got a lot more satisfaction to it. And so the pipe tobacco was more taste, while cigarettes were more of the nicotine satisfaction. So when it comes to a recovering addict, okay, I get what he's saying. He had a he had a habit that was out of control. Now what he was an addict from, again,

I read the message to you. Didn't didn't really say, but his wife has never let him forget all the things that he did. Because, sadly, an addict, somebody who is wanting to get the satisfaction, whatever their drug of choice is, whether it's alcohol or what, addict addicts are liars, as much of a liar as a people pleaser.

And the reason behind that is because they want their they know people look down on them for the fact that they're using whatever substance they're using, whatever their coping mechanism is. And so they're going to try to hide that because they're they've got their own shame. They're ashamed of that of of what they're doing, and so they're going to violate trust over and over and over again. So yeah. Now an mister anonymous and because he didn't actually leave a name.

Your wife never lets you forget, forget about the the the shortfalls that you've done, the the damage that you've done to, to the to the relationship, but she is still there with you. So, sadly, one of the hard things you've done one hard thing. You've gotten yourself clean for a year 8 months. Beautiful. You keep that up, but you have to understand a couple things. First off, you're basing your worries and the fact that your wife

you're saying that your wife will not forgive you of the things that you've done or forget. She may have forgiven, but she didn't forget. But, yeah, it's because you've only been a year 8 months. If you go off and you cheat on your wife, there's a lot of guys that go, well, I've cheated. It was 6 months ago, and she still won't let it go. You're damn right. You violated the trust.

When you were actively pursuing your coping mechanism, you are violating your wife's trust time and time and time again. Once bitten, twice shy. You've heard that phrase. And so, yeah, she's going to want verification that you're keeping your happy butt clean, and that's gonna take a whole lot of work. You're going to have to make sure you stay clean. And by and the only way you can really help her

have the trust because you can't really control what her thoughts are. You can't control her actions either. All you could do is control your thoughts about the circumstance. Alright? The circumstance is she's she's waiting for the the other shoe to drop. Fair or not fair beside the point. Alright? It it is what it is. That's the circumstance. She's expecting you to relapse back into back into that addiction once more? How do you show her that you're not?

By accepting the fact that she you've gotta prove to her that you are dedicated to her and the family and that you're not going to be sliding down into that into that pit of despair and misery again. I have no privacy. Sweet. You don't need privacy. That's one of the big times that we all turn to our to our, our poison of choice. I'm alone. I can I I can get bored? I get bored. I can I can light up a cigarette now? I was a bored smoker. I'm a bored eater right now.

If I we have and the that's the one of the problems that we run into is boredom. We struggle against what we make boredom mean. We make it mean such a horrible, terrible thing. We run from it. But what if? What it what just what if you accepted the fact oh, okay. I'm bored. What if you accepted the fact that you made yourself bored? Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. You can make yourself bored. You can be bored on purpose, and it you can actually use boredom as a motivating, device to get stuff done.

And the way you do that is you look at a white wall, just a white wall. You don't get you don't get to look at your phone. You don't get to look at the television. You don't get to look at a book unless it's pertaining to what you're deemed to get accomplished.

If what you have to do requires you to read a book, alright, then that's all if you're finding yourself not doing anything else, then you have to look at the wall. You look at the wall. You look at the just that white wall, and you're gonna notice after a while, your brain's gonna really start screaming because there's no stimulation going on.

And it wants that stimulation. It wants that dopamine. That's the reason why your brain's always going through picking up that little black phone of yours, Looking at it, going, hey. Check that. What's happening on Facebook? Oh, yeah. Look at that. I got a fight on Twitter going on. This is kinda fun. This is why we do the stupid things that we do because our brain wants the stimulation

from it. It wants the dopamine and the serotonin bumps that it gets from interaction and having connection with people on social media. They've designed it so that we get a constant flood, a constant ding, ding, ding. Oh, hey. What's going on on on Facebook today? Oh, what's going on on Facebook today? Oh, look at TikTok happen in here, and you find 3 hours goes by. You're not, like, going you realize you've been thumbing through just stupid stuff. You have to first accept the fact

that, yes, you're a recovering addict. You have violated the trust from your wife. So what are you gonna what are you gonna have to do? You have to become an open book. She wants to inspect anything about your violation of trust? Hey. I've got it. Guys who cheat, she gets access to everything. So she has passwords to your messenger services,

all the messenger services. You open up a new messenger service. You add that to the list, and you give that to her. It's like, hey. New messenger service. Here's this, this, this. You volunteer that. You don't make her dig for it. You put your if you're if you're caught, like again, like, cheating, find my friends. You make sure you have yourself on find my friends, and you are and you're on doing the Google tracking part where you share your location with, friends and family.

That is what your wife is your friend and family that you're sharing every second of the day with. See, his phone's sitting around in the, at the factory, so we know he's working. It's lunchtime. He's over at the, over at the diner. She can look up. Anytime she gets worried, she has a a proof that you are being a re responsible and respectful, honorable man. This and I've told my kids this along for most of their life, if not their whole life. Trust

is one of those things. It's the most important crucial foundation to any relationship. You have to have trust. The problem with trust, though, is that it doesn't take much to knock it over. A major fart will will rattle the the foundation and and cause it to crumble, and it is a chore to build back up. It is hard it is one of the Herculean task to build that foundation back up, to build that trust back.

Well, she should just let it go. No. No. No. You should let it go because you can't control what she does. She you can should on her all day long, and she's gonna should all over you. Or you can be the adult. You can be the grown man and said, you know what? I'm the one that screwed up. I'm the one who bit the weenie. Alright? So I have to make this right. I have to do the make good, and the make good sucks balls. I get it, man. It does. It sucks that you have to go off and repeatedly

show and prove to her. She gonna forget? No. She's not. Because you violated you hurt her feelings. Well, you didn't actually hurt her feelings, but you presented a circumstance that caused her to have hurt feelings. You have the ability, though, of controlling your thoughts and your actions. Well, she never forgives me. Well, I deserve to not be trusted at the moment. How long is that? I don't know. It depends on your wife,

and she will start to trust you again. How do I know? Because I am one of those guys. I did cheat on my wife once, and it was hell for 5 years. And then there was a get a little spot in about the year 10 where all of a sudden, some some triggered in her brain, and she needed that reassurance again. And she wanted to look through everything, and I was like, yeah. Sure. Right there. There's a phone. Look at it. Look through everything. The woman in question was not on there.

She stayed blocked. I show pulled up my phone, showed it to her on on Facebook, what they're her seeing, and I made sure she saw me hitting them, hitting everything so that I couldn't she couldn't go off and go, well, you might have just, closed it up real quick. No. Everything about her, I cut that woman out of my life, rightfully so. And it's I have done the work.

And 28 years in, we she she trusts that I'm not going to be running around again because I one, I whenever I saw the how much that violation of trust hurt her, that rang home that I failed horrendously. So how do you get more respect? Well, first off, you have to respect that your wife loves you. She hasn't left. She may be an angry woman right now, but she never left. That's the key point that she actually still cares for you because she gave up on everything about it.

She'd be out of the house. She would have taken the house, the, the the kids. You would have been out on your butt, and she would have had everything. But yet here you are. You're setting at the house. Your wife is somewhere in that house, and now you gotta figure out how do you repair that relationship. That is don't expect privacy.

Under start to letting yourself and get yourself to understand and believe the fact that if you're being private, you're, yeah, you're demanding privacy, you're doing something sneaky That's taking trust away from your wife. You're all about, I am going to be the most trustworthy man to this woman. She can check anything and everything at all times. How do you build that respect? Again, how do you build that respect? You build it by showing her respect.

You haven't respected your wife in a while. You probably haven't actually respected your friends in a while. That's why you have no friends. And it's not that it's shame on you, but a lot of us have misunderstandings as to what respect is. We think we are due respect, and we don't do anything to actually earn that respect. Because I'm walking on earth. I deserve respect. No. You don't deserve anything. You can earn that respect, but earning respect is a lot like money.

You have to give it to earn it. You have to be able to give, and this is where the 100 to 0 principle comes into play. That's where you give a 100%. You expect 0 in return. When you're able to do that, you're on the you're on the right path. And how you do all this is you have to pay attention to what you're thinking. You're getting angry. You're getting upset because your wife won't let you have a phone with and and with a password on it.

Won't let you have a have a social media account without her being have an access to it, well, you made that you made that that that bed, man. You get to lay in it. It sucks. I get it. I am sorry that it blows chunks in that way, but you have everything you need right now to turn around. How do you find your find some friends? Who do you want to have friends? Who are good, noble, righteous men that's in your general vicinity that you could make friends with?

If no one comes to mind, start looking someplace else. Start looking around. One place, a lot of us guys have turned our backs on, and rightfully so because it's more designed for women these days. But go to church. Start looking and seeing what you have in the men's group at a church. Your wife may go, well, you don't need to be going to church. That's not your her decision. Can you go to church and go to the men's group and find a group of men that's in the same path that you wanna go on?

Wanna become entrepreneurial? Are there guys there that, are doing doing their own business? You wanna be a more harmonious family man? Are there guys in this group who are your ideal family guy, who you see as doing great family wise? Then start hanging out with them. Start talking with them. Start having conversations and listening to what they say. Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future. Another one, Jim Rohn. You're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.

Who are you spending your time with? Are you hanging around your wife all the time? Well, yeah. Maybe it is time. She may not trust you. So you again, I've got the tracker on the phone. You could see me at all times. If you don't see me on there,

call me. If I you can't reach me, I will you know, if I notice that I don't have cell signal because it might be you know, if you're out camping or something, I'm just kinda throwing up, you know, a hypothetical out there, then that is I will let you know whenever I appear again. You'll kinda have an idea. You know? You can kinda tell where they last were. Well, it's out in the middle of nowhere. He was going camping with Bobby. Bobby showed up at the truck, you know, with his pickup.

You can do it, but you have to be 1st intentional with your thoughts, intentional with your actions, intentional with what you're wanting to accomplish. Number one goal, I wanna have trust my wife trust me again. How do you do that? By being trustworthy, worthy of trust, by doing what I say I'm gonna do, when I'm going to do it, and that's all even the actions around the house. Oh, okay. I'll pick up the, pick up my underwear off the floor here in a moment.

2 weeks later, that underwear better be off the damn floor, and she better not have picked it up. As a matter of fact, within the next 2 hours, you should be picking up that that that skid marked stained bit of tighty whitey and getting it clean and taking care of it, and you start you can actually go and start doing some of the stuff around the house if you don't. I don't know. I don't know if you do or don't. But if you don't, then start.

It's not you're not people pleasing by taking care of your your home because it only becomes people pleasing when you're doing it to try to make your wife happy. If it's you're trying to make your wife happy by doing stuff around the house, by doing the dishes, by cleaning the bathroom, by doing, you know, doing the laundry and all that, no. You're you're doing it for the wrong reason.

Take care of your house. Take care of you. Take care of the relationship between you and your wife because you want it. You to be the most selfless man out there, you have to become what everybody else deems selfish. It is all about you. Alright? It's not what you feel. It's about what about you. I am cleaning the house because I want a clean house. What do you want out of this relationship? What do you want in this house? What do you want out of life?

You have to figure out how to go off and get it. If you don't, then you're gonna struggle, and you're gonna eventually falter, and you're gonna wind up back in having some type of addiction. And then you're going to be back in the same cycle of where you have violated your wife's trust once more, but then she may not give you any more chances and tell you to get the hell out, which is one thing you don't want and one thing I don't want you to have. So first, get out of the victim mindset.

I'm a recovering addict. I live with my wife. That never lets me forget. What have you accepted responsibility for all that you did wrong? I did. Did you? Then you would still be accepting that you'd screwed up. I accept the fact that I went back into smoking. I accept the fact that I did cheat on my wife. I accept those, those those actions. I accept that I what I have done wrong, and I decided to fix what was wrong.

I can only fix what I did wrong. I can't fix my wife. I can't fix how she thinks. I can fix myself. My thoughts create my emotions. My emotions create my actions. My actions create my results. If I am not getting the results I want, change the thought. That's where it becomes a a better solution every time you come up with better instances of how to better yourself every time when you start paying attention to what it is that you want out of that relationship.

I want a loving wife. How do you get a loving wife? It's not through manipulation. It's actually by improving in the four pillars of relax now. Start reading. Start exercising. Eating right. You started you're on that path. You've stopped the the whatever the addiction was. You got rid of the addiction. You've done that for a year 8 months. Let's see if we can get in get some more some more

months under our belt. Let's take that year 8 months, turn it into 2 years 8 months, 5 years 8 months, 15 years. You can do this. It's just stop acting like it's everyone else's fault that I that you're where you're at. You can start reading, start growing, start improving your knowledge of something. Find a purpose in your life. Work on that soul pillar. That will keep you occupied

so that you're not even interested in anything else. Your wife will start to see well, question why you're so obsessed with finding your purpose. And when you find your purpose, why you're so hell bent on getting getting to it. She may have worries, and you have to be able to stand there and tell her why this is important to you. You have to tell her what for. Not give her a what for, but tell her what for. Why

are you doing this? And she may not agree, and that's okay. You don't have to force her to agree. Well, I don't agree. Oh, I'm sorry, but this is this is to better me. I am improving my brain. I am getting myself in shape. I am eating better. I am dedicating myself to you. I am getting in shape so that I can protect you. I have found a purpose. I am doing that purpose, and I have got these noble men around me so that I become better. With all that together, you become a better man.

You become the man that your wife wants you to be. You become that man that your wife fell in love with all those years ago. Will she ever forget the fact that you were an addict? No. Will she forget all the times that you you stabbed her in the proverbial back? No. She will not forget the times you hurt her and the times that you let her down, but that's okay because you're showing her that you're a better man because you're doing what it needs to be done to have a better life for her.

When you do that, she will have a better life. She will not be bringing up the bad stuff in the past because why should she? The life is better now. So, guys, with that, I wanna say thanks so much for listening. If you have any questions, you wanna send a question to me, you can do so by going to, relax mail dot com forward slash contact, and that will actually get to me now,

or you could shoot me an email, brian with a y at relaxed mail dot com. Send an email with a question, comment, thoughts, insights, whatever it is. I am going to start making sure I keep a very well grouped set of email messages together. I'm going to be more focused on that this year. I am talking about the emails. I'm talking we're getting more people to come to the site. This is the site's growing. It's it's developing. I'm actually fixing to be,

putting that actually, here, I'm gonna be putting out I've got well, I've already got it out. I'm just here. Alright. We are now live with if you've listened to this show at all, I would love to know what you think of it, what what your insights are on this, on this site, on this and on this podcast, actually.

And so if you would go to relax mail.comforward/survey, nothing to it, didn't cost anything, Nothing is required, but the more information you could give me, the better I can do to make this site and this show even better. I wanna make this podcast stronger, and one of that is going to be through being able to talk with y'all. And if you are, interested in doing group coaching, the order, the Brotherhood of Men

is gonna be coming, going live here within probably the next month. I'm just getting everything all together, and I wanna make sure I get the guys who actually were show had shown interest. Let them know that, hey. This is we're we're going live with it and that they have first dibs on on everything.

So I will be giving you more information about the brotherhood of men in the near future, and we're going to we're gonna get this we're gonna get this guy show rolling. We're gonna get you you men are gonna help me, and I am gonna help y'all, and we're all gonna help each other become the better men that our society, our wives, our children, our friends need, and we're gonna do that

in ways that might just blow your mind. So, guys, with that, thank you very much for listening. Have any comments, questions? Again, Brian with y at relaxmail.com. We will talk to you all next week. Till then. Bye.