It's not about his Recovery Plan, a Life-altering Boundaries Mind Shift with Pam Blizzard

It’s not about his recovery plan — it’s about your safety.

In this powerful conversation, Jane is joined by trauma-informed recovery coach, consultant, writer and educator Pam Blizzard to explore a life-altering shift in how we think about boundaries after intimate betrayal.

So often, betrayed partners get pulled into monitoring, managing or debating their husband’s recovery plan. But as Pam explains, his recovery is his responsibility. Your work is not to control the details of his healing, but to pay attention to the fruits of recovery: honesty, responsibility, maturity, repair, safety and changed behaviour.

Together, Jane and Pam unpack what empowered boundaries really look like, why boundaries are not about forcing someone else to change, and how they help you stay connected to reality, your nervous system, your agency and your own sense of self.

This episode is for you if you feel exhausted from doing the heavy lifting, afraid of what the “cold, hard data” might reveal, or unsure how to step back without jumping straight to separation or divorce.

Pam offers practical, compassionate wisdom for protecting your nervous system, responding instead of reacting, and remembering that boundaries can become your superpower.

To contact Pam

To check out Choose Connection Academy

To join Pam's Facebook Group, Recovering Spouses of SA Men

Connect with Jane at Quiet Wisdom

Join the Support Group Waitlist

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello friend, you're listening to Confident Again, your place to reclaim confidence and healing after intimate betrayal. I'm your host Jane and with my very special guest we're going to discuss it's not about his recovery plan, the life-altering boundaries mind shift that will save your sanity. This conversation will shine a light on how empowered boundaries can work for you when your husband is or is not in recovery. If you have conflicts with your husband about your boundaries and his recovery plan and behaviours, this episode is for you. My very special guest today is Pam Blizzard. Pam is a trauma-informed recovery coach, consultant, writer, and educator, specializing in betrayal trauma and sex addiction recovery since 2017. Her journey began with her own personal experiences of betrayal trauma and the profound impact of addiction in her own family. These experiences fuel her passion for helping others heal and rebuild their lives after betrayal. She refounded Recovered Peace, an educational platform offering online learning, coaching, and support groups for wives of sex and porn addicted men. Pam emphasizes practical boundary setting as a cornerstone for creating safety, reinforcing values, and fostering deeper relationships throughout the recovery process. She's also the director of Couples Care at Choose Condiction Academy, a coaching community for couples working toward recovery using Dr. Jake Porter's couple-centered recovery model. You can hear Pam and some of her colleagues on Hope for Wives, a faith-based podcast for women healing for intimate betrayal. Pam, it is so good to have you here. Thank you for being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Oh, well, I'm honored to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Thank you so much for asking me. Oh, it's amazing to have you here. I'd like our listeners to know that you also host a private community of literally thousands of women in this space on Facebook called Recovering Spouses of SA Men. And that's really where the seed of this podcast was planted. So I'm a member of that group, and here's what happened. I asked a question in the group about a difference of opinion between my husband and me about his recovery plan. And then I discovered that the group moderators declined my question, and I reached out directly to you, Pair, to find out what happened. And you graciously sent me a private message about that. And I've written down here what you said. I'm going to read it verbatim. You said, We don't just discuss their recovery here because we have no responsibility over it, no ownership for it. It's theirs to figure out. It's very disempowering to discuss something we have no power over. It's our responsibility to have boundaries around the fruits of recovery first and foremost. We get to have boundaries around whether or not we will be with someone who isn't doing recovery work at all. But it's a slippery slope to get into the weeds about the particulars. That being said, I get to have boundaries around this behavior in my marriage, regardless of where he is or isn't in a recovery plan. If he says, oh, but that's okay for me to do because it's in my recovery plan as okay, I get to say, I didn't give a rip about your recovery plan. XYZ behavior is unsafe for me. And if you choose to XYZ, I will not be available for intimate relationship. And hopefully then he puts that XYZ behavior in the no-go zone. If he doesn't, that's the cold hard data for her to inform how she keeps herself safe. She's the authority, not his recovery plan. That was a badass reply. I'm just gonna say, Pam, I was you sent that to me, and I went, whoa, that was so um assertive and clear, and it was thought-provoking for me to think about. And so, because of that, I asked you to discuss it with me on the podcast, and you agreed. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Oh, sure, sure. Oh, and I, you know, I want you to know, I didn't just wake up one morning and have this idea. This was a um um healed-over scar over and over again of you know my own journey in the beginning when there was finally a diagnosis from what my husband's behavior was. And oh, there's a recovery for this. My boundaries were you will go to therapy, you will go to group, you will do this, you will do that, and and then we're gonna be fine. I really believed that's where I was. I was in such black and white thinking of this is the problem, the solution is you go get this treatment, and then we're all gonna be okay. Uh, that was me setting, that wasn't really even setting boundaries. It was like, thou shalt, right? It was just please go do this. No, you have to go do this. And um in the progression of our journey, because it's been several cycles, he of course went and did those things, came home, kind of kind of like came home one day and said, Okay, I'm done. I'm all done now. I don't need to go to any more therapy. My therapist says, I'm fine. Uh, I don't really, I'm not really comfortable going to group. I'm not really like those guys, they're very different than me. And this was really in the early stages of uh the progression of this recovery. It was about 2010, so it really wasn't a CSAT sex addiction group. It was it was a group for just all kinds of sexual behavior that was problematic. So there were quite a few people in that group that were not like him. That was true, but that was what I learned. I've learned to call it tick in the box. He was just performing the tasks of recovery, and I wasn't making the connection between I I evolved into understanding. Hey, I wanted some fruits of the recovery. I didn't want him to just go sit in in the room for an hour, look at his watch, and then leave, right? I wanted the therapist to be talking with him, to be diving down into his whys and learning some new skills. And so that's where I started to understand. Wait a minute, I need to have boundaries around the fruits of the recovery, the changed behavior, the growth, the maturing, the slowing down, the learning new adaptive behaviors instead of the maladaptive behaviors.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Yeah, I've heard someone say that fruits of recovery look a little bit like broken, open, and willing. I don't know how you feel about that, but what you're saying is finding stuff that you can actually observe.

SPEAKER_02 7:30

I think I've heard the broken, open, and willing. I think that for me, and again, I I always put this disclaimer out. I'm not here to tell other people how to do recovery. I like to share how I've done recovery. And if this works for you, that's great. For me, those words are what do I need to see in the very, very beginning to even consider moving forward in this relationship. Let's call the elephant out in the room. After betrayal, a lot of relationships just dissolve. A lot of people say, No, I'm not doing this. Thank you very much, or I'm not thank you very much. Goodbye. I never really want to see you again, or let's part ways. Um, so for those of us who are saying, and it takes a special person to say this, am I willing to stay and work through this? Well, the very first thing I need to see is the remorse, the brokenness, and the willingness to say, yeah, I'm gonna go get help, I'm gonna go do something different. That's just the beginning. And that has, and I, you know, that has to sustain throughout recovery. But I think some of the other things that come after that are growth, maturing, because this behavior comes from a very immature place, a regressed emotional place. So maturing, and that looks like slowing down, not rushing to judgment, not re-jerk, knee-jerk reactions, not just automatic replies, um, whatever comes into your mind you just say. So the slowing down, the mindfulness, the stopping to consider if I say X, what will Y and Z happen afterwards? What are the consequences of my next behaviors? And the most important one is getting out of the single person psychology, like a one-person psychology. How does this affect only me? How does this affect my world? How does this affect my relationship? The decisions I'm about to make or the things I'm about to do or say, how will this affect my relationship or my spouse? So I think we could we could probably spend a long time talking about the fruits of recovery.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Yes, 100%. I remember having a boundary crisis in my own relationship. And what I came out with was the fruits of relationship need to be two words, honest, responsible. I need to see honest and responsible. And he had been taught to ask me if I was triggered or upset, what do you need? And I would just turn and say honest and responsible. Just give me honest and responsible. And for me, that I that was a real clarifying moment around this idea of fruits of recovery. If I'm seeing that, I feel safer. If I'm not seeing that, then I felt unsafe and triggered. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Yeah. And that covers a lot. Like honest covers not just yes, I did that thing. Honest is here's how I'm feeling right now. I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling anxiety, even I'm feeling resentful or I'm feeling sad. That kind of authenticity and the responsibility of, and this is hard, um, showing up every single time as many times as you need to own it and say, yes, you're triggered, or you're sad, or you're scared, or you're having grief because of the behavior that I had, because I betrayed you, and get specific about it and just owning it and being responsible.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Yeah. It's those words can go a long way. And again, we can have a whole conversation about those two words.

unknown 11:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Yeah. So I wonder if we could um switch gears from talking about fruits of recovery to talking about what does it look like to set up effective boundaries and maintain them? Can you paint a picture for us around? That's a big question, but maybe you've got some uh ways that you can just paint this for us in uh explain like I'm five kind of way.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Ah. So we're here because our partner had a failure of his own boundaries. Right? This this whole journey that we're on is about boundaries. And so that means because the other person doesn't have boundaries around protecting themselves and their own health or you, we need to have stronger boundaries. And there's a lot of myths out there. I had a lot of myths. I thought saying thou shalt not, or you will, or you won't, I thought that was a boundary. Um, boundaries, and and we there's this myth that boundaries will change the other person, or boundaries are supposed to, or they should. And that could be a secondary or tertiary result, but ultimately, primarily, boundaries change what I do in response to a certain any other situation or other people's behavior. I need to be willing to remove myself from a situation that is unsafe for me, is unhealthy for me. I need to be willing to say, I'm walking away from this conversation. I'm will, I need to be willing to say, I will not be in close relationship with you. I won't provide you with relationship comforts. I won't listen to how your day went. If if you're not safe for me and you don't care how my day's going, my day's not going well because you haven't owned, you haven't been honest, then I'm not going to sit and listen to how your day is going. It's about me changing what I do. And when that happens, other people, and again, as a secondary or tertiary result, other people are educated on what we will and what we won't tolerate from them. And then they have a choice because I've made a choice to do something different. Um, they get a choice to either adjust their behavior or stay the same and lose access to me.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

You just said something about when I act on what my boundaries are, in other words, follow through when my boundaries are broken. Other people get educated. I thought that was a very interesting turn of phrase to talk about educating, which is actually opposite to what we think, because we think education is about talking. But what you're saying is it what the education piece or the um the reality piece here is what is the container that I'm creating through my own responses that communicates really clearly this is what is not going to be okay for me.

unknown 14:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

There's a saying that says, you know, we teach other people how to treat us. And that's what boundaries do. It can teach other people. If you want my presence, you have to be kind. You have to be a healthy person. And, you know, and it educates them on what I will or will not tolerate. And then they get to choose. No, part of my boundaries, healthy boundaries say, you're gonna do this, you're gonna do that, you're gonna go to therapy, you're gonna not go into that neighborhood, you're not gonna have this on your phone. That's not a boundary. That's parental, that's being an authority, a one up over the other person. And I don't want that. None of us want that. We we start to feel that. And then, you know, you'll hear some of us say, I don't want to be his mother. No, we don't. And well, we don't have to. Um, as long as we're saying, this is what I value, this is what I want out of life, this is the direction I'm going. You can come with me in that direction. If your behavior falls within these gates, and I I say, you know, boundaries are not walls, um, they're gateways and they're they're roadmaps, they're treasure maps to my heart. Here's how to get to the best part of me. Stay within these parameters, and you'll come right to me. You can have all of me. But if you go outside of those parameters, you just you can't have access to me.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah. So, what are some common ways in which women lose their way with boundaries in this context?

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Uh well, one of the things I've learned to do, I've changed my boundaries education over the years, and I've started adding in the very beginning is when you first start really using healthy boundaries, it's not gonna feel good. It's gonna be scary. It's gonna be because it's different, and you can't predict what the other person's gonna do. You can't predict how it's gonna go, you don't have a history. And the other thing that happens when you start to have um really have boundaries is you begin to feel your feelings. You actually do feel the damage that the other person caused or the hurt that the other person caused. Uh, a lot of us, myself included, I would drop my boundaries because I wanted connection and I was willing to take breadcrumbs. I didn't like being alone. I didn't like spending time with myself. I didn't like thinking about the boundary rupture. And so I would sweep it under the rug so that I could feel better. But um, that teaches the other person. Again, think about what that teaches. And what are you teaching yourself about yourself? When you really start to take time and space, you start to feel your feelings, you start to feel the sadness and the hurt and the grief. But you know what? That's okay. Because those feelings that are uncomfortable have also instruction and education, and those feelings have a purpose to move us to do something different, to create more boundaries, to create more limits. Um, and it's okay to feel those feelings and let them do their job. I say we in recovery, because this hurts so much. Um, we just want to feel better. But the goal should not be to feel better. The goal should be to get better at feeling. I think I don't I don't know about your culture, but here in the States, you know, we went through this period of time of follow your heart, if it feels good, do it. And um, some people uh in in the church community are getting the message don't pay any attention to your emotions because they'll lead you astray. And but we don't have good skills at actually sitting with those feelings, identifying them, figuring out what they're trying to tell us to do. Feelings have a purpose. They, every single feeling, emotion, or even bodily affect, like butterflies in our stomach or a tenth shoulders, are trying to tell us to move in a direction to do something. And I was, you know, I didn't want to feel those feelings. So instead of dealing with it, I went to my husband for that awful connection that was very shallow, but it was any connection, and and I it distracted me. It was a distraction from feeling the feeling of the heartbreak that he had caused. But then we get caught in that circular place because it's just gonna happen again, right? I mean, it's a cycle.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

That's what I'm hearing too, is that you have the boundary, the boundary doesn't get followed through on, but the feelings are too difficult to face. So I'm going to accept breadcrumbs with the distraction of trying to connect at the breadcrumb level.

unknown 19:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

And then you're right back into it because what you said is we teach people how to treat us.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

Right. And and I would say to anybody who's feeling that now, if you've just started to employ boundaries and you're feeling that disconnection and you're feeling the pain, get support. Go to a betrayal trauma-informed community of other betrayed people, of other women, uh, or if you're a man of other betrayed men, and and um get connection there with people who get it, people who will see you, hear you, know you, empathize with you, provide you with connection, and um, or or even you know, go sit and process with a professional that can who's trained to actually process through those feelings where you don't get stuck in rumination, somebody who's gonna actually help you move through them, not get stuck in them, and take the next logical next step.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Yeah. Yeah. So having ways to not just sit with our feelings, but process our thoughts and um work through the feelings to what they're trying, because our feelings are also teaching us. If the theme of this is about how do we learn, one of the things is that our feelings are are teaching us. What you're saying is let's get curious about what our feelings are there, what they're about, why are they there, and what needs to shift. Yes, because that that uncomfortable feeling that is telling us something about our reality.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

And a lot of a lot of women, and myself included, have been disconnected from our reality for a long time. And part of that disconnection is not knowing what our feelings are, not honestly owning our feelings.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Yes, exactly. Because for a number of reasons. I mean, we've been gaslit when we intuitively knew something was wrong, and we would go to our partner, and our partner would say, What? You're overreacting, or no, nothing's wrong, everything's fine. Look, I see, here I am, and you Know two different realities, we kind of have no choice but to sort of quash, like, okay, is it me? What are these feelings? Um, we gas, I gaslit myself. Oh, I'm overreacting. I shouldn't, I shouldn't feel this way. And so we do, we get disconnected from our feelings.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

And some of us, for some of us, it goes even further back to childhood where having those feelings was not welcomed. And so we've learned to do different things in to have the breakcrumbs of connection without the truth of um integrity and responsibility. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

And kind of like what I talked about culturally before, too, about just I think in this culture, we just we don't we don't validate each other's emotions. We can't we go to a friend or um somebody else. Oh, you're just you're overreacting, or everybody does it, or just you know, be more available, or you know, uh other people, untrained people. And this is the part too where I say, I thought I knew empathy. I'm a woman, I'm a female, I'm a mom, I know empathy. But I didn't truly know empathy until I got into my trauma training and found out what true empathy and presence was. Um, so I think we just culturally we could do better at validating each other's feelings. Of course, you feel that way. Of course you're angry. You have a right to be angry. Um, you have a right to feel angry. Um, I think anger gets a bad rap. So I'm glad you brought it up because this is a journey of injustice, and anger is a very appropriate emotion.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Yeah, yeah. So you said in your message to me that this I'm gonna quote, if you choose to XYZ, I will not be available for intimate relationship. So I wonder if you could paint some a picture of some examples of what not available for intimate relationship looks like. Because I think a lot of people hear that and they go, right, separation and divorce.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

And I wonder if you can tease that out a little bit for us.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

Yeah. Um, you know, we do we talk about the zero to ten, black and white, all or nothing thinking. Zero is I'm serving you papers, I'm packing your bags or my bags, right? 10 is I'm constantly here, I'm available for every conversation. I'm here to put dinner on the table for you. I'm here to rub your shoulders, you're having a bad day. Listen to your bad day. You're just constantly available. Well, there's a four, five, six in the middle where I, and I don't have to be mean or cold if I'm closer to the four or three or four. Um, but I I you're my family member. I love you. If you're having an appendicitis attack, I'll call the ambulance to come, right? I care about you. I'm not going to act like I don't care about you as a human. But literally, if you're having a bad day, I don't want to hear about it. Don't tell me. I'm not here to be your confidant. I'm not here to be your soft place to fall. I'm having a bad day. You broke a boundary, you haven't owned it, you haven't repaired, if you haven't repaired for it. Um, I'm having a bad day over that. And if you don't want to hear about my bad day, I don't want to hear about your bad day either. I tell this story. This is a teeny tiny but significant relationship comfort. After my first really bad discovery, um, we talked about, I, you know, I was like, does this mean you want to end the relationship? Are you trying to end, are you trying to end the relationship? You don't want me anymore. No, no, no. I want the relationship. I'm willing to go to recovery. I'm like, okay, I wanted to do image management that I'm going to be this mature woman. Okay, we can get through this. I'm going to support you in your recovery. Um, I'm going to be very pleasant and create a nice environment. We have this thing about coffee in the morning. My husband likes his coffee cold. So I would get up first, I would pour his coffee, prepare it the way he liked it, and leave it for there. He'd get up later and he'd get up and his coffee would be there for him. So I did that all the time. Did never really thought much about it until there was another relapse, a significant relapse. And again, we were going back and forth, and I was in this place of do I want to stay here? Maybe I want to stay. There's a lot of reasons to stay. Forget the relationship, you know, financially and whatever. I got up in the morning, I went to go pour his coffee, and I thought and I went, I'm not pouring his darn coffee. He can drink his coffee hot, or he can pour it himself. I didn't pour his coffee. He got up, he came out, he looked at the coffee maker, he looked at me. I'm sitting at the table drinking my coffee. He goes, You didn't pour my coffee? I looked over and I went, Nope. That was he told me that was a significant, meaningful moment. That small little relationship comfort. I did it as a friend. I did it as somebody who cared about him. It was a little, you know, courtesy. It was just this little thing. Okay. Think about the times we cook dinner, we do laundry, we clean up everybody's dishes from the table. Maybe you only clean up your own dishes from the table. You let his dishes sit there, right? Maybe you only wash your own towels. Birthday cards. I don't here in the States anyway. It's it's kind of like the female thing. We're the ones that get the cards and write the cards or the Christmas cards and sign the husband's name. I stopped doing that. He said, Oh, did we send a Christmas card to this person? I'm like, I did. I don't know if you did, but I did. I signed my name to it. Little, little things. So think about those. I would I would ask each woman, here's a challenge. Throughout the day, as you go, as you do things, how many times do you do things for the both of you or just for him? Uh the grocery store. As I was going through the grocery store, I was thinking, oh, I would like to get that, but my husband doesn't like that. Darn it, I'm getting it anyway. And I didn't, I would go past the shelves and say, Oh, my husband likes that. I'm gonna grab that for him. I stopped doing that. Little things.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Does that sort of answer that question? I think what I'm hearing you say is you're there's an adjustment in how you're seeing the relationship because you're still in the same space, but you're living as if um you're you're prioritizing yourself, actually, is what I heard in that.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

So Jake Porter has this great video on YouTube. If you none of you have seen it yet, go to YouTube and search Jake Porter Coaster. And he uses a coaster as an analogy with two little Hershey kisses. But it's basically, are you all in the relationship? And again, here's where black and white thinking is. Oh, I thought I'm either in or out. No, you know what? I'm not all in. I'm over on the side watching. I'm over in the fore. I'm not all in. I'm not all out. I'm over on the side and I'm watching. You have not put the relationship first or protected the relationship. I did. Until I see you putting the relationship first consistently, consistently, not with perfection, but with consistency, realizing that you're not putting the relationship first, catching yourself and putting the relationship first. I'm not going to put the relationship first because you said as if I'm living as if reality. Because if I do anything else, if he's not doing the consistent recovery, if he's making decisions that don't include you, if he's keeping things from you, that is not putting the relationship first. So I'm going to reflect the reality that you are not putting the relationship first. And I'm not going to put the relationship first either. I'm not putting it completely last and saying I'm in the zero, I'm gone. But I'll be over here in the wings, sort of waiting, not forever, time limited, while I watch to see if you can consistently put the relationship first.

unknown 30:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

And what comes up for me when you talk about that is the many women who have said to me, I feel like I'm doing all the heavy lifting in the relationship.

unknown 31:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:05

And that's exhausting. And there's a real discouragement that comes with that. And sometimes also a resentment and anger around that.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Of course. Yeah. Well, well deserved. Yeah. And we shouldn't, I mean, we don't have to carry the weight of that. We are responsible for ourselves and for our future and for our health and for our mental health and self-regulation. So if somebody around me is um immature, irresponsible, not repairing what they broke, not doing good self-care for themselves, like doing recovery work. I mean, that's their self-care. If I mean, if you thought about it, if somebody didn't take a bath for months, you know, that's self-care. You would be concerned. You'd be standing off to the side saying, what's wrong with this person? You know, that's not a healthy person. And so we have to live in that reality of, okay, I'm I'm living in the same proximity or space with this person. It's important for us, for our brain to hear us say, that's not okay with me. I'm not okay with that. Uh, I'm concerned about that. When you have this behavior, this is how it affects me. This is how I feel. I feel sad, I feel worried, I feel scared, whatever you do feel. I feel worried. And if this continue, if this behavior continues, here's how I'm gonna take care of myself, up to and including reconsidering the future of this relationship for myself. And it is disappointing. It is important that we do stand back and let them fail. If they're gonna fail, that's cold, hard data that we need to know.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah. So that that language of cold hard data um sounds like that would come up in a couple of ways as I'm processing this. One is the fact that if they're not doing the work, if there's there's no fruits or not enough fruits of recovery, that's cold hard data when I've shown by my actions what's important to me. But also there's a bit of cold, hard data. If I put the boundary, make my boundary known, and adjust my so, like in the example of the coffee, if he comes out and says, What do you make my coffee? and then it becomes a reactivity around that. That's also cold hard data. So I'm just wondering if you could speak to the fear and uncertainty aspect around the cold hard data.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

I can. Because I've been there. Um and I know we all, I mean, we come into this world with fear of rejection and abandonment. It's it's actually not something we have to learn. It's something even infants have. There is an innate fear of abandonment. And I posit to anybody listening that you know, our we think our worst fear is the relationship ending. And that, to be sure, is something to grieve. It's serious, it has a huge impact. It's a loss, it definitely is. But I think there's something worse than that. I think the worst thing isn't losing the relationship. I think the worst thing is a woman lose her loses herself and her mental health and her authority and her identity and her agency to the relationship that we have or we have choice. If you we all have choice. If he chooses to be reactive, if he chooses to not do really do um healthy recovery, not have healthy behavior, then we have a choice. We have a choice to stay present. That's a choice. We can make that choice. We also have a choice to start making our way out or finding a way to preserve, and I'm totally for this. This needs to happen. If a woman needs to preserve her financial stability and health care, and you know, here in the States, healthcare, um, a certain structure for her children, and she decides to stay. I think that's okay too. I have no judgment around that. I think a woman should do whatever's best for her. But I also think to live in reality of that guy is not gonna be my hard place to fall. I'm not gonna be able to go to him with my bad day. I'm not gonna go to him expecting care, concern, affection, authentic connection. He's a family member. And I can be kind, we can be cordial, and I can live that way for a certain period of time. Now, if you're gonna do that, you also need probably seven to 14 other people outside of that proximity that you can go to with your hard day for your soft place to fall. Develop a support system of other women or other people, um, other healthy people that are rowing in the same direction towards growth and development. Um, but you have we always have choices. And I heard a very wise person say, nobody ever promised us choices that we're always gonna like all our choices. And this is absolutely one of those situations where if your partner's not doing the work, you don't like any of your choices. You don't like staying under the conditions I just described. You don't like staying in the 10, constantly being available, and you know, um, but you have choices. And sometimes you can make a choice that you don't like so that you can get to other choices that you do like. It's it's a it's a difficult situation. Um, it's very easy in the situation where there's this anxiety and grief to get into cognitive distortions of black and white thinking or catastrophizing, or how will I ever make it, you know, in my mind, I was I was a cat lady. I was surrounded by cats, right? You know, I'll never get married again, I'll never have friends. If I have to leave this relationship, I'll be destitute, I'll be poor. I used to have these images in my mind of I'll be in a hospital bed somewhere, nobody'll, you know, dying of cancers, nobody'll come and visit me. That's catastrophizing, right? Um, a therapist helped me understand. Pam, you'll always at least have friends. You know, even if you never get married again, you'll make friends. That's not the end of the world. Um, and and I I do speak as someone who is divorced. My first marriage ended for much the same reasons: betrayal, deception, addiction, alcoholism, drug use, um, relationship dysfunction. And I'm here to tell you I survived and I thrived, and I found parts of me again that I didn't know existed that had been subdued by all of that dysfunction in the relationship.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

We have choices. We do. And I uh you said something about we have to make the difficult choice that we don't want to make to get to the choices that we do want to make. Yeah. And that's in a way, that's a bit like death and resurrection. There's a death in that, there's suffering in that.

SPEAKER_00 38:55

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 38:55

And on the other side of that, we have the hope that that the sum will come up and things will be will have more power because we chose to um live according to what we needed.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

Yeah. We're choosing reality. We're choosing to face the hard reality. Um, I have this quote that I've been saying for years is from M. Scott Peck and A Road Less Traveled, and he says that uh good mental health is a dedication to reality at all costs. And when I was living in my relationship and pretending like everything was okay or gonna be okay, just I'm just gonna say everything's gonna be fine. I'm just gonna keep a positive can do attitude, but not living in the reality that in my deepest, darkest moments, my authentic moments, I was sad, I was scared, I was worried, I felt powerless. Um, I wasn't living in reality. And I think that women are smart and strong and intuitive, and that when we face reality and live in reality, that we make better choices when we live in ugly realities we don't like than living in pretty little hope-filled boxes that feel good on the surface. We'll make better choices for ourselves living in reality.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Yeah, that has just all the maths. If you're just thinking mathematically or scientifically, it all comes together to make sense. And it's not uh we're not living in a fiction or creating, you know, in the hope of something that hasn't actually been realized.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

Yeah, that's why a support group is so important because they'll keep you grounded in reality. That's the other loss that we have in betrayal, is that our partner lies to themselves so that they can do the behavior. They keep lying to themselves, they lie to us, they withhold reality from us. So our reality is withheld from us, and then we have to figure out what's real, what's not real. And that is part of our journey too. And learning to accept reality. And there sometimes the reality is I don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. I only know what's happening today. That's where the power is. That's where my true power is, is I don't know what's gonna happen two weeks down the road, two years down the road, but I know where I am today and how to make decisions based on what's right in front of me. And that's the best we can do. And if it's if if it turns out to be the wrong decision, okay, I'll learn from it. You know, we don't know. We can only do what we can with the data that we have in front of us.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Yeah, that is a that's uh that is so empowering.

SPEAKER_02 42:01

Scary, I admit, but it but doable and empowering.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

That's right, it's disempowering. I think that's a word you used when you messaged me. It's disempowering to live in the space of um of not being connected with reality, not being connected with the facts, the evidence.

SPEAKER_02 42:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 42:25

Yeah. So as we're wrapping this up, Pam, I wonder if there um is one thing that you would like listeners to remember from this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 42:45

Boundaries can be your superpower. When you protect your nervous system, which fuels, I mean, a protected nervous system, makes sure that your brain's working the way it should, the way God intended, all parts are talking to each other. When you protect that, everything else can fall into place. You don't have to worry what you're gonna do. If this situation happens, what am I gonna do? When I what am I gonna do? You're protecting who you are. When you can answer the question, okay, somebody just broke a boundary with me, who do I want to be in this moment? I want to be a woman who protects her nervous system, who responds, not reacts, who slows it down, considers all of her options, stays mindful, um, that she has a right to have boundaries, that that can be your superpower. If you protect nothing else, protect your nervous system from the constant barrage of other people's dysfunction.

SPEAKER_01 43:58

Thank you. That's like a bottom line. If nothing else, I will protect my nervous system from that constant barrage. What um services and supports do you offer, Pam, that you'd like to talk about before we finish?

SPEAKER_02 44:20

Um the effort that I am most passionate about right now is called Choose Connection Academy. And it is an educational and coaching program for couples to do the work together. In the old days, Pam and Jeff were told, Pam, you gotta go to your corner, Jeff, you go to your corner, you do individual work, and that's fine, but it reinforces a single person's psychology. Like it only reinforces how do I solve problems for myself only. Um couple-centered recovery brings both people together if if this is what the betrayed wants, if she wants that relationship and is inviting her betrayer into a new, more secure relationship where the relationship comes first, and it's a two-person psychology. I have seen miraculous turn around in the individuals and the relationships. And I think it's just the way it's meant to be. So um uh couplecentered.org is where you can learn more about that. I'm the director of couples care there. And uh just invite people to learn about this new model that's really cutting edge that pulls from multiple different disciplines that are particular to the betrayal trauma and sex addiction recovery journey or even just chronic deception, chronic betrayal journey.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Thanks, Pam. That sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

It is.

SPEAKER_01 45:57

Well, I just really appreciate having had this time to talk with you through this. If you choose to XYZ, I will not be available for intimate relationship. Thank you for taking the time to acknowledge that that's scary and that feeling our feelings is a journey. Thank you for reminding us that um it's more important that we protect our nervous systems than settle for breadcrumbs in a dysfunctional relationship. Um, I've learned a lot from our conversation. Um, you are just the kind of badass boundaries lady that I thought you were. So I just really want to thank you for making this time to chat.

SPEAKER_02 46:40

Well, thank you for being so open and receptive to my badassery. And it's been an honor. Thank you so much for having me. I I appreciate it so much to be able to share something I'm so passionate about. Yeah. Thanks again, Pam.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

Thanks for listening to my conversation about boundaries with Pam Blizzard. If this episode encouraged and helped you, please rate, review, and share it so others can benefit too. To get in touch with Pam or choose Connection Academy, check out the links in the show notes. I would love to hear from you about this content. Send me a message using the link in the show notes or head to my website, quietwisdom.com.au. Until next time, gently does it with your valuable self.