Episode Transcript
Jeni:
I'm so glad to welcome you to Healing In Christ Light, which is geared towards those with loved ones who are participating in destructive behaviors. We explore healing in various forms and how it fits with the doctrine of Jesus Christ. This episode might also be beneficial for clergy and therapists.
Today we are going to delve into four A type behavior and why it should be treated differently than regular issues that might arise. Four A type behaviors include addiction, abuse, adultery and/or abandonment.
My own interest in this subject stems from being married to someone who struggles with sex addiction and in various ways. I've experienced all of the four A's. I tried all sorts of things to fix the situation and even thought that I was controlling his behavior, which turned out to not be true. I felt crazy and like I didn't know how to handle situations that most people seem to maneuver through more easily.
I find that for those of us who are on the receiving end of destructive behavior, what we are experiencing and how that manifests can be largely misunderstood by many, including the person experiencing it. For example, in my own situation, the subject of sex addiction could largely be misunderstood by authority figures who, with the best of intentions, could treat our situation like it was the fault of both my husband and I. Please know that I do not believe that I am perfect and definitely have things to improve on. And being on the receiving end of abuse, addiction, adultery and or abandonment was not my fault.
The first time that my husband and I sat with a therapist who seemed to really understand four A type behavior and the severity of what was going on, I completely melted. The therapist understood things that I hadn't put words to, and I came to learn that I wasn't crazy and that I wasn't responsible for my husband's destructive behavior patterns.
I've written a book called Healing in Christ Light from Patterns of Sexual Betrayal as a Covenant Keeping Daughter of God and I'm excited to say that Cedar Fort Publishing plans to make my book available in January of 2024. Thank you, Cedar Fort. In the book, I write about Four A type behavior and multiple of my beta readers mentioned how validating it was to read that part. At that point, the spirit whispered to me that I need to broaden my scope of reach. Whereas I have been healing with, been ministered to, and have been ministering primarily in community with wives of those struggling with sexual addiction, I could see that the message that I was prompted to learn from and write about might have a broader application. This podcast is my effort to broaden my scope, so to speak, as the spirit has prompted me.
If you have experienced or are experiencing four A type behavior from a loved one, I am truly sorry. It's not your fault either, friend. I've come to see that those of us who experience such behaviors from others are also experiencing oppression of different sorts. Let's consider what we need for true freedom, which is the opposite of oppression. This is in the Guide to the Scriptures that's published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and all sources will be linked. And this is about being free or freedom. And it says, "the power or ability to make personal choices without compulsion."
Those experiencing consequences because of another's abuse, adultery, addiction and or abandonment are often lacking freedom.
Common things that we might experience are having the truth twisted, being blamed for their destructive behaviors, and/or not being aware of them living a double life. Some might feel physically intimidated or afraid. Some might experience abandonment if they say the perceived wrong thing. All of these things and more can make it difficult to make informed and wise choices. All of these things bring oppression of sorts. And for any who relate with oppression like I do, I wish that we could sit in my living room, sharing stories with each other, mourning with each other, and even sharing about redemption, even if that hasn't come to fruition quite yet. All of these things and more can make it difficult to make informed and wise decisions.
I wanted to explore four A type behavior further and thought that I would bring you along on the journey today. As such, I have invited licensed marriage and family therapist Geoff Steurer to have a conversation with me about four A type behavior. Geoff and his wife Jody, host the podcast From Crisis to Connection, and Geoff is a co-writer of the book Love You Hate the Porn, Healing a Relationship Damaged by Virtual Infidelity. Geoff is a sought-after speaker and also writes a weekly advice column for relationships on his blog. A few months ago, I saw a social media post that Geoff shared about four A behavior, and I knew that I wanted to ask Geoff some more questions. So, without further ado, Geoff Steurer, welcome to Healing In Christ's Light.
Geoff:
Thanks so much for having me.
Jeni:
I'm so grateful that you're here, and I have a question for you. I've been chatting with my audience about the four A's being abuse, addiction, adultery, and abandonment, and I am wondering if you can expand on how experiencing these behaviors might affect those on the receiving end. What might it look like? How might they feel?
Geoff:
Yeah. Well, at their core, these four behaviors are one of the deepest violations of the marital covenant, the marital bond. These are, for most couples, deal breakers. They're foundational. 1.6s Ruptures that make it so difficult to even think of the relationship in the same way. It's because you let somebody so close to you, you truly throw down all your self-defenses so you can become one in marriage. And every single one of these behaviors is something that, in a way, takes advantage of that proximity, takes advantage of that trust and that open goodness. Because those four things aren't going to hurt as much or even at all if it was done by a stranger. And so it's the proximity, it's the trust, it's the openness.
It's sort of like in the animal kingdom when our dog turns on their back and shows us their belly and we're scratching their belly. They are as vulnerable as they can be. And we love those moments because we feel that they really trust us. And when a human's doing that with us, whether it's a child, but certainly an adult who's consenting and who's offering themselves to us in this way, it requires a tremendous amount of protection to honor that choice and that vulnerability.
The way it affects the person who's betrayed in those four different ways... it's hard to wrap words around it. It's earth-shattering. It makes you question everything from who you are to who God is to the whole institution of marriage. And male, female, it just rattles everything. And the shockwaves are just really hard to contain and hard to measure and it can span generations. I've worked with people whose grandfather cheated. Or was abusive, and they're still talking about it today. You know, it's just something that, you know, can certainly be healed and can certainly be repaired, obviously, but maybe that's not so obvious to some people, but I'm just here to say that it can be healed. But I think it was President Kimball that said it years and years ago. He said something like, the bandage must fit the wound, and the amount of work and what it takes to heal these earth-shattering foundational betrayals is a large effort, and it's something that unfortunately gets minimized all too often in terms of what it really takes to heal it.
Jeni:
I appreciate that. Then I guess I have a question. Because somebody who's experienced something like this for me, at least at a time when I was really distressed and I had gone into a clergy's office, and I remember how distressed I was and how upset, and I thought, oh, he's going to see and he's going to understand. And he didn't. With the best of intentions, he didn't. And I got some of the blame for the behavior I was experiencing because it seemed like, oh, this is why you're receiving this behavior is because you're behaving in these ways, when really that wasn't my normal behavior. That was abnormal for me because I was in high trauma, I was really struggling. And I'm curious because I think that it takes some training to understand what that looks like for people so that we can really help those who are struggling and not blame them for what's going on. Does that make sense? Yeah. I'm wondering if you might have ideas about what people can look for to say, oh, they're really not generally this distressed, or whatever this is because of what they've experienced.
Geoff:
Yeah. And I'm sorry you had that experience, first of all, and it's far too common. As I've worked with church leaders, as I've worked with people over the years, they often will go to someone who they assume is a safe person or understands these dynamics. And in my experience, it's highly misunderstood. It's commonly misunderstood. And I think the deepest misunderstanding with this is to fill, to recognize a power differential, I think. And what I mean by that is, in regular marriage, I would just say garden variety marriage disagreements. There's a level playing field. There's two people that are basically, you could say, fighting or disagreeing or struggling over it or over kind of a shared resource time or sex or money. They're just disagreeing on how to do things. And there's a struggle. Two different people trying to figure out one thing and it's two people bringing their stuff to the table and trying to wrestle. And that's a large part of just being married and working things out. And that tension is essential to their growth, both individually and together. And I see it as a really developmental and healthy thing for couples to work and struggle and learn and grow through that experience in marriage. That's the way I believe God intended it. Male, female, working together, bringing their different families and histories and all kinds of stuff in to create this new family. And it's something that happens every day in every land, in every relationship. That when you got two people.
But there's this moment where we're talking about the four A's, right? Abuse, addiction, adultery, abandonment, where one person creates a power over dynamic, meaning that they do something that shifts that equality. They do something that says, I'm now going to diminish you. I'm now going to leave you. I'm going to put you in the dark. I'm going to hurt you. I'm going to scare you. I'm now going to become bigger than you. It's a form of control. It's a form of manipulation. It's changing that agreement that we're equals, working through something in a shared kind of struggle. And now it's like, I'm going to put myself before you, I'm going to overpower you. And when that happens, we've now entered a totally different conversation where there is no more equality. If it happens for just five minutes and then the person repairs it, that still has to be acknowledged that that line was crossed. Or it could be that something like this is just an ongoing pattern in a relationship. Either way, anytime we exercise that option to go above the other person, and that can be above in terms of getting bigger and louder or becoming secretive and hiding, it doesn't matter. It's changing the equality of it, which is we both know the same information, we both feel respected and we both like and of course, men can do this to women, women can do this to men.
This is not necessarily something that's just reserved for men, even though more commonly men will. I would say in more cases than not in marriage. We do know that men tend to be more guilty of exercising power differential, power dynamics because we are louder, bigger, more aggressive by nature. And so it's an easy thing for guys to slip into if they're not careful. And so when you're talking about seeking help for something like this, if the person helping you doesn't understand this power differential, if they don't understand or agree with or buy into the idea that the dynamic has shifted and we're treating this as one person has a responsibility to reestablish the balance. One person has a responsibility to own and acknowledge the impact they've had on the other person. So there's a restoration, there's a confession, there's remorse, there's repair, there's an ongoing effort to rebuild any damage and trust and restore what they can.
All of that process has to happen before we can get back into a conversation of equals. And until that restoration happens, then the person who's been violated is not going to feel safe. Their body's going to feel frozen. They're not going to be able to open themselves up and be able to move toward them in a really authentic, free, relaxed way. So somebody who's trying to help, whether it's a church leader or a family member or a therapist who's coming in and trying to say, let's just work on your community communication, or what did you do to create this? Or perhaps if you were just more of this or less of that, this would somehow change the dynamic. Ignoring that massive power differential dynamic really hurts both people. It keeps the person who crossed the line, who broke the trust, keeps them in a state of acting against their own conscience and their own commitments, and they're violating themselves and betraying themselves even they're not congruent. And then, of course, for the person who's been violated, it just continues to break them down and create more trauma.
Jeni:
Thank you for saying that. I've also found that just to go along with what you're saying is that the person who is validated by such conversations where it's, "this is your part and this is your part," that they can then escalate sometimes the behavior that they're doing because they feel validated in that. And so when we're going for help and then it makes it worse, sometimes that's really distressing. So I'm really hopeful that people can understand by the time we're done, what the person struggling might look for in somebody safe to get help and in what leaders or authority figures or therapists or clergy, what they might do as well to maybe step in and be a little more educated about what this is so that they aren't accidentally perpetuating destructive patterns.
Geoff:
Yeah. And one thing I would say is if you're in a position where your partner has done one of these four things to you either once or repeatedly, I would not waste your time trying to get help from someone who does not acknowledge knowledge the power differential. I love that it's only going to like you said, it's only going to perpetuate more blame on the person who's been hurt, and it's going to embolden the person who crossed the line, the person who was abusive or cheating or whatever the problem may be, to go deeper in their own denial and to hide behind that permission. And it's going to create more damage. And so I wouldn't even spend five minutes with somebody who's trying to support you by leveling the playing field. If they're not acknowledging those dynamics, it doesn't mean that couples can't seek help and figure out what to do. But that conversation together isn't going to be the standard thing of let's just communicate better or let's go on more dates or whatever those things may be.
It's not going to be let's work as a team and put this thing back together. Like takes two to tango or kind of a thing. It's not that. There has to be this structure that acknowledges that power differential and go from there. And once that's been established and there's more safety and things have been dealt with in this way of restoring back the equality and the safety, then down the road you can start looking at relational dynamics. It's safe to do that at that point because the person who's crossed those lines has had a prolonged period of accountability and remorse.
Jeni:
I appreciate that. What I'm hearing from you is safety needs to be established first.
Geoff:
Immediately. Safety needs to be established immediately.
Jeni:
OOH, that's such a good word.
Geoff:
Because you can't relax, establish you can't relax, you can't open up, you can't be safe. You're almost disembodied. Like you're just kind of in trauma trying to. 1.5s You know, you're just you can't shut off the fight or flight freeze. You can't shut it off if there's no safety. Why would you that'd be that'd be silly. Why would you? That'd be silly.
Jeni:
Gosh, that's one of the most validating things I've heard. Thank you for that. I love that Psalm 74:21 says, "oh, let not the oppressed return ashamed." And to me, those who have experienced destructive behavior from a loved one, we really can be oppressed. Like, that is a really great way to describe what we've experienced. And I love that shame is addressed in the scripture because shame can be piled on thick as the loved one of someone who is behaving in destructive ways. And we can pile it on ourselves. Other people can unintentionally cause damage in that way as well. For me, I felt responsible for behavior that wasn't mine to own, really. And I feel like we can just feel like we're not enough. I'm not enough, or maybe I'm too much and this is all my fault. How would you suggest addressing shame for those who are experiencing poor type behavior?
Geoff:
Yeah, that's a great question. Shame comes from when you're being abused or subjected to betrayal in this kind of way. Shame really happens when we freeze and have the inability to take action or do anything when we feel overpowered. And then we start to we start to instead of putting the responsibility on the person who crossed the lines because of our own inaction and our own inability to protect ourselves in those moments, because we've been overpowered or we've been deceived or we've been you know, something's been taken from us, our ability to respond has been diminished or even vented.
The shame piles on because we start to feel like, what's wrong with me that I couldn't respond? How come I didn't say this? Or how come I didn't notice that? How come I didn't protect myself or push this person away or whatever the case may be? And so then we start to attack ourselves and start to feel like we're broken or defective or we're messed up or we couldn't even bring God into that, that we're being punished. It can go all kinds of places. And the way to respond to shame like this is to really get out of that free state. It's really about movement. It's about speaking up, using our voice, setting boundaries.
It's like in the animal kingdom, animals don't stay frozen when they're attacked or being chased as soon as they and this is based on some of the work of Peter Levine, who wrote a lot about trauma, right? And so maybe your audience knows this, but as soon as an animal gets to safety after they've escaped the predator, they physically shake their bodies as a response. They physically do something to handle the overwhelm in their nervous system and then they actually can groom themselves and take care of their young and eat and sleep, and they get back to a state of peace, if you will, back to their baseline. And humans, we don't do that very naturally or at all. And so we'll freeze and stay in that way for months, years in some cases.
So for example, if somebody's getting too close to you or is just overwhelming you, your ability to be able to say Stop. You know, your ability to advocate for yourself or say, I don't want that, or I'm not going to stay in this conversation, or you need to leave, or I'm leaving, or whatever the case may be, whatever boundary or whatever voice, whatever thing needs to be voiced. Those things start to reduce shame because they bring back your ability to respond to a violation. They bring back your own sense of self, of like, I'm somebody now, and I'm not going to be treated in this power differential. I'm not going to be overrun. I'm not going to be ignored or abandoned. I'm like taking back my own sense of self, my own actual, physical, emotional, spiritual self, and I'm bringing myself to this situation fully embodied. That will start to reduce shame almost faster than anything because we're not just hiding and living out this lie that we're just less than.
Jeni:
I love it. That's powerful. Empowering.
And I love what you're saying because it also addresses the safety aspect at the same time. That's great. And like you were saying, safety needs to be established. So when we can establish that ourselves, that almost takes care of multiple things at once, where it's like, I'm feeling empowered, I'm feeling safer. I can protect myself and whatever else I'm responsible for, maybe my children. But yeah, I hear the empowerment in that. That's really neat. Thank you for sharing. I had not thought about that. I mean, my thoughts are like self compassion, which are I mean, that's probably part of it, but boundaries, that's pretty cool to put that in there.
Geoff:
Self-compassion more intentionally. Yes, exactly. And the other internal work that we might do, like self compassion or seeking support or getting affirmations from other people, or feeling honored by all those things, lead to the ability to take action. It's like. Um, healing shame is not just done internally, where we just sort of privately heal our shame. You know, we may never speak to the person who abused us again, but you can still take action. You can still take action in your own life of saying, like, oh, well, where else in my life am I letting people run over me? Where else in my life am I still because you get people that, let's say, we're violated ten years ago by somebody or even as a child, and their inability to respond because of the freeze or the trauma leaves them stuck in patterns that don't serve them or their loved ones.
And so at the moment that they realize, you know what? I'm going to do my self compassion work. I'm going to reach out for support and ask for help and not do this alone, and I'm going to start to change the narrative of the shame and how I see myself and what I believe all these years. Well, they may never have to do anything directly with the person that abused them or hurt them. And if they're in a marriage and they're still married to that person, they obviously then have an opportunity to. But even if they don't, there's lots of place in their life they can start to take action and heal and get movement going again. And it reduces shame.
And like you said, the boundaries are empowering on so many levels.
Jeni:
Yeah, it's really cool. I love that you connected those for me, so thank you. I have a question also. Do you have thoughts about how the Savior feels towards those who have experienced or are experiencing destructive behaviors from a loved one?
Geoff:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I know he takes it really seriously. I mean, in the Bible, he had really strong language for people who abuse children. And I think that obviously there's stronger language there in the case because children are completely innocent and can't protect themselves. And so there's obviously laws and stuff around that, 1s but just on an emotional level and just a stewardship level, just like I said earlier, even if it's another adult who's completely put themselves in our care, somebody who has completely surrendered everything, we have a deep responsibility to protect that. And so I think I know that there's strong language around it. In fact, Jeffrey R. Holland had. He basically said he talked about being married to his wife at the time. They had been married 37 years, and this address was given, like, over 20 years ago. So they're probably pushing 60 years married now. But he said that he says, "I may not know everything about her in 37 years. But I know 37 years worth. And she knows that much of me. He says, I know her likes and dislikes. She knows mine. As our love has grown and our relationship has matured, we have become increasingly free with each other about all of this," And then he says, "the result is that I know much more clearly now how to help her. And if I let myself, I know exactly what will hurt her in the honesty of our love, love that cannot truly be Christlike without such total devotion. Surely God will hold me accountable for any pain I cause her by intentionally exploiting or hurting her when she has been so trusting of me, having long since thrown away any self protection in order that we could be, as the scriptures say, one flesh. And I'll share one more sentence here if I can. Yeah.
"To impair or impede her in any way for my gain or vanity or emotional mastery over her should disqualify me on the spot to be her husband."
Jeni:
Wow.
Geoff:
So when I hear things like that, that was back in February of 2000 when that was given. And I look at that language and he holds himself to the same standard, which is when someone has been that free and open with us about everything and we intentionally exploit that, then, you know, basically the marriage is over, according to what I just read. Right? Yeah. Like, there's not a marriage. You don't have to act married anymore. When that line's been crossed, until that's been restored, until there's been some sort of repair, then the bond is broken. The bond is broken. And I believe very strongly that the person who's been violated has every right in the world at that point to ask for whatever they need. Because as far as I'm concerned, there's no marriage as far as what the agreement really was.
So a lot of people that have been hurt or injured or betrayed like this feel like they somehow are still held to the same standard. Like, they have to keep the agreement while the other person doesn't. And I'm like, nope. No. All bets are off until things are restored back to their proper order. And then we can start having marriage conversations.
Jeni:
I like that because when I think about the marriage covenant, it's between 3s the spouses and God. And so when one spouse breaks their covenant, the other spouse's covenant is still intact with God, but it is severed. It is broken until it's restored. That's really powerful.
Geoff:
Yeah. And it's not the end of the world. It doesn't mean that they still can't work it out or it can't be healed. It just means that we're just not going to have the same conversation we were having before that happened. It's a different conversation.
Jeni:
Perfect. Thank you. Before we close, I like to ask all of my a guess how healing in Christ's light has helped you. And would you mind sharing your own experience, strength and hope about leaning into Christ and what that's done for you?
Geoff:
Oh, it's changed everything for me. I don't believe healing even happens without Christ. I don't think we can generate the amount of healing and light and space in ourselves and in our relationships without Him.
I mean, I've been amazed in my own life at how many times I've just come up against sort of the metaphorical Red Sea moment where it's like, I have no idea how I'm going to pass through this. I have no idea how I'm going to make a change I need to make in my life, or how I'm going to reach my wife or a child because of something I've done or because of just circumstances.
And there's nothing like peace in Christ. There's nothing like that. Reassurance that promise that anything he touches will be made whole. So the surrender and the recognition that I'm in covenant with Him and that he's laying his hands on me, on my family, when I connect to that and I recognize that and I surrender into that, everything just starts to shift.
I can just remember so many times where I've been desperate or I feel like, I've gone to God in prayer. I've just surrendered and just pled because I didn't know what else to do. I wouldn't even say that I was even, I would say, worthy of sort of receiving that. I feel like in many cases, I had been doing my part, or maybe I had been distant. As a lot of hymns and scriptures attest to, we're all wanderers and we all tend astray from the fold.
But I'm just surprised over and over and over again how quickly and how relentless that redemption is and how quickly it just comes back anytime I reach for it. Even though I work as a therapist, even though I work with people all day long, I am not fooled or confused about where that power comes from. And I don't believe it's something we generate on our own. And I don't believe that other people generate it for us. I believe that it's something that is given to us. It's bestowed on us. It's a gift from him.
Closing Jeni:
I felt the Savior minister to me through Geoff's words, and I hope that you enjoyed it as well. You can hear more of Geoff's insight heights on his podcast, from Crisis to Connection. And I also learned from his Instagram and Facebook pages, which can be found by searching his name, which is spelled G-E-O-F-F-S-T-E-U-R-E-R. Healing in Christ Light can also be found on Instagram. Won't you come learn with me?
