Episode Transcript
[00:00:12] Speaker A: And hello, welcome back to the Marriage Altar podcast. My name is Mike. I am Shanna, and together we are the Williams family.
Been a crazy day, crazy week. We're going to eat kayaks to get around. Yes. It doesn't stop raining.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: It doesn't stop raining in Texas.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: You know, luckily we've had some heavy downpours, but no tornadoes like the rest of the country, so I feel blessed in that aspect.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Our house is still standing. We still have electricity.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: So we're thought, well, let's just go ahead and make a podcast because we can't do anything else and we can't.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: Be sure if we're going to have electricity in 20 minutes or not. So we're going to try to cram all this in into living in the country.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: That's fun.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Gotta love that country life. What was that show? Green Acres is the place to. To be.
It's really not. But here we are.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: Here we are.
So the first two episodes, we talked a lot about our story of our marriage and how God has completely saved it. But also we touched on the addiction that you had, which led to the betrayal.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: You know, in our marriage, which led to a suicide attempt by you.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:28] Speaker B: And throughout, I would say, the last several months, you've been kind of uncovering, okay, this didn't just happen, like you woke up one day and you just wanted to die. This was like just a slow progression of probably trauma that happened in your childhood, teenage years, even. Even on into when you served in the military and the combat that you saw and that you were involved in. So that really played into your addictions, which in turn affected our marriage.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: So we decided today we would talk about how trauma affects your marriage.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: And we are going to go into some statistics later, but I think if we just kind of talk a little bit about trauma, your trauma or what you feel led to talk about. And maybe I could talk a little bit about mine.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Yes. Yours too, because it's a male, female. It's a male and female problem.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: And I think that most people don't realize in their marriage that they probably both brought baggage in.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: From. From some trauma in their past. And I don't want to overuse trauma because it's like. I feel like everybody uses that word. But. But when you think about what trauma really is, it's just anything that causes pain or it's abnormal. It shouldn't have happened.
[00:02:54] Speaker A: Should not have happened.
[00:02:56] Speaker B: Because we weren't meant to live in this fallen, broken world. So we weren't designed to endure all this suffering and pain that we go through.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: However, suicide has been a part of culture since we were created.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: And I don't think we were meant to live in this, but we do. So God does help us and heal us and all that. But when we, when people come into marriages, I think they don't realize their own baggage and their own trauma that they're bringing in.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: They're showing, you know, when you first meet someone and you're super attracted to them and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so in love. Like, you only show that's not happening with us, Right. That you only show the. The part of you that you want them to see.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: See. Yes.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: And for that brief amount of time that you're dating or whatever.
[00:03:40] Speaker A: The first couple of years.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe even the first couple years, you're able to kind of like be a chameleon in some ways.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: And because you. You're like, if they really know all my secrets, they really know all the bad stuff about me, they probably wouldn't ever talk to me anyway.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Which I think that's how with you and I, our situation, you withheld a lot of important information.
You lied basically to me about some things.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: I didn't tell. I didn't tell the truth on a lot of things.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Well, you didn't. You were afraid that if I knew.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Well, that's the stigma that goes along with male depression and male suicide and male.
It's not normal in society or it's really looked down on in society for a man to have any type of mental issue. Yeah, we're looked down on as weak.
And to be honest with you, the male mental health is lacking in so many areas when it comes to getting treatment and therapy.
You know, society puts. You're a weak man and nobody wants to be. Nobody wants to be classified as the weak link in the chain. You know, you don't want to be classified as that. You know, we got a lot of pressure on men to be the provider, to be. To be the spiritual leader, to be the work leader, to be a good father, to be a good husband, to be a good son, to have it.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: Together all the time.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: You have to, you know, because society, society is just that way. It makes you feel like if you have one moment of weakness in your life, then you're never going to get it back again.
[00:05:13] Speaker B: And I think with you, if you, you were afraid that if you showed me that you were having a weak moment or you were struggling, then all of a sudden that would change the way that I look at you, and I would perceive you as being weak, and you couldn't allow that.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: So that's 95% of men out there. You know, we, you know, any guy that I know or guys that I know and stuff like that, they pride themselves on one thing. That's being a protector of the family.
Can't be a protector if you look down on as being weak. And, oh, you're just depressed today. You need to get out of it. You know, you need to climb up out of the depression. But it's not that easy. Once depression gets ahold of you, it just sucks you down a dark tunnel and the light in the tunnel gets lower and it gets dimmer and dimmer and dimmer the longer that you're there.
But men work through it just so we can still provide, we can still be a good husband, a good father. Even though when you don't feel like. Even though you don't feel like getting up in the morning and doing anything, the stress keeps building and you keep not saying anything, and eventually there's going to be a breaking point.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Eventually there is, absolutely.
And I think if we go back to some stuff that you dealt with as a. As a teenager, as a child that was kind of ingrained in you. Your. Your dad, you probably didn't see that he had a lot of emotions. He wasn't allowed to probably.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: He probably wasn't.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: And then he wasn't there a lot.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: He wasn't. Dad had the best marriage of many men that I ever knew. He was never home.
Dad worked the first, I guess the first 12 years of my life. My dad worked offshore oil company.
At the time, he was on the largest oil rig in the world, which is the Alaskan star for Western oceanic.
And he worked his way up to tool pusher. So he was basically running the rig.
He was home. He was gone for two weeks, three weeks at a time, and he was home for two weeks. But he often didn't stay the full, too. He'd come home and get his family fixed, then he'd go back out in the oil field and work.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: So there wasn't a lot of interaction between you?
[00:07:19] Speaker A: No, not really. Yeah, not really a whole lot of action. It was more, you know, I have two old. I had two older brothers and. But they were so busy doing their own thing, I basically was occupying myself, you know. You know, every kid that age in the 70s would look to, you know, your superheroes as your role models, you know, and. But as far as anyone show me, technically how to be a man or, you know, showing me the ropes. There wasn't really anybody around.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: Well, I don't. I don't. Yeah, that. But I also think with you, it was a lot of things. I know that you guys struggle financially, so poverty is a big traumatic thing for kids to go through.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Yeah. My dad was too proud to get on food stamps. He said that he would never do it. He would never.
He wouldn't even entertain the idea of getting on food stamps in his house.
So a lot of times we ate beans and rice and cornbread.
Occasionally we had some meat. But I remember growing up and many times we would get our protein from beans, you know, carbohydrates from rice. And you have cold cereal every morning because it's cheap, you know, and then.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: The moving around that you guys did.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: Went to one year of high school. I went to four different high schools that one year, totaling, all in all, from the time that I was in the sixth grade to my senior year, I went to probably 12 or 20, 13 different schools at one time.
So.
But my dad didn't have a good education. You know, dad was a. Dad was a blue collar worker. He didn't really have a whole lot.
Very smart guy.
But I think he quit high. I think he quit school in, like, the sixth grade and went into the Navy. But his grandfather, he was living with at the time, came out and pulled him out, said, he's not gonna come in. You got to discharge him. So they discharged my dad from the Navy.
I kind of lost my train of thought there. Where was I going with that?
[00:09:25] Speaker B: Well, just the moving around that you guys did, and I think that that created a lack of stability.
So you, I think, didn't feel loved, which is.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Well, my brother James, even before we started moving around a lot, me and my. My youngest memories of my brother James and Carl getting everything they wanted.
You know, things were pretty good Whenever. Whenever they were kids, they, you know, now the physical abuse was really bad with James and Carl. Dad. Dad really physically abused them.
And I guess, you know, there's always the kind of running joke in the family that dad got all the physical abuse out on James and Carl before I was born.
But I remember sometimes there was some pretty harsh circumstances there.
But after my oldest brother graduated high school and Carl left the house and kind of went out in his own world, he went to the job corps and got a career there. And after that, we sort of moved around all the time. It was like my mom and dad sacrificed and sacrificed and Sacrificed for the oldest son.
But then whenever we came along and we were going to school, my dad didn't have enough education to understand that you would constantly be ahead of a class. You'd constantly be behind a class.
So, say I moved from a school in Texas to a school in North Carolina one year, which I did.
Well, when I got there, they were, like, five or six weeks ahead of me, so I had to study and study and study just to catch up. And then I remember bringing home my report card, and I had a C on it, and I got a spanking because I had a C. And when I told my parents, hey, this is why this is happening, it was like speaking to a stone wall. My dad was like, nope, school is school.
You're not trying hard enough. And then he ground me or punished me, which.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: That further reinforces the lie that as a man, you can't have any emotions. You can't make excuses. Excuses. You can't tell anybody. If you're struggling, you can't get help because you're made to feel like when you do ask for it, yeah, what is your problem? Just get it together.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Right? Just get it together. And my mother always said, well, you guys are living your best life because you get to see all these new places. And I'm like, man, I don't want a best life. I just want to have friends.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And I. I think what was missing was love.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: Absolutely feeling loved.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: There wasn't a whole lot of that.
[00:11:56] Speaker B: In the house, I think. I'm not saying that they didn't. I never would say that. I'm sure they did.
But showing it and feeling it are two different things.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Yeah. My mom and dad weren't very huggy, touchy type of people.
Just never really showed a whole lot of affection growing up.
You know, if you get a good grade, they're like, good job, you know? Or if you get a bad grade, you get beat.
I remember when I was saved. I was saved when I was 12, 13 years old, living in Mississippi, I would say when I was 12 or 13, and my dad was with. My mom had stayed home that day. She wasn't feeling well or something.
And dad came home, and he was like, mom.
He always called her mama. And he said, mama, Michael got saved today. She's like, okay.
I remember looking at her and. And he's like, is that the only thing you got to say? She's like, what do you want me to do? Throw a party about it? And I'm like, yeah, wow, man.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: I mean, that's exactly what you need to do.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Really? Because the angels sing and another guy is going to heaven in your family. You know, I wasn't asking for a whole lot, but you know, something, give me something.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Well, and I also think that neglect.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: Yeah. There was a lot of.
[00:13:13] Speaker B: That is a huge form of trauma for children.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Well, you know, neglect makes you reach into dark places.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:21] Speaker A: To get affections.
And that's where we're going to go with this.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: But I wanted to, I wanted to kind of build that up for, for the people listening because I think some people think, oh, trauma is only like if you were sexually abused or trauma's only if you were like physically beaten all the time. Trauma is, it can be so many things that a child, if a child needs something and they're not getting their needs met, that is trauma as well.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Trauma comes in many shapes or forms. Mental, physical.
You know, there's a. Numerous things that can be trauma. If you, if you're sitting there and your mother refuses to talk to you for three or four hours.
[00:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that's emotional neglect.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: That's emotional neglect.
If you refuse to get food stamps because your family is basically starving to get your pride is keeping you from getting it. That's, that's physical and emotional neglect.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: So it comes in many shapes and forms. And unfortunately my family, you know, we experienced a whole lot of that. You know, we really did.
It leads into lack of self worth. It leads into self doubt in yourself, body dysphoria, always thinking that you're not good enough just by saying, well, that's, you know, okay, good, do better next year.
You know, it makes you, it makes you seek affirmation and good feelings in other ways.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Everybody, Everybody, yeah. Subconsciously wants dopamine.
Even if we don't know the chemical, we don't know the word for it. We don't understand the chemical process.
[00:15:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: We want to be happy.
We were created to feel good emotions, not negative ones.
[00:15:10] Speaker A: Well, we want to feel loved.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: You know, and parents out there today, and I'm pretty sure there are some men who are in this. I'm sure there's men and women who are in a similar situation. Situation similar to mine. And I'm going to tell you right now, dads, you are one of the most important parts of your kids life and I'm going to tell you why.
For any of you new fathers out there and you, you know, soon to be dads or even dads who have several kids, that child looks up to you on how you Going how he is supposed to treat a woman.
If he sees you arguing with your wife, if he sees you downing your wife. This cooking is not good enough. You know, verbal abuse, physical abuse or anything like that. He watches you.
There's a really good song by Blake Shelton saying, I've been watching you. Ain't that cool?
And they imprint that into their minds and they're going to beat you one day.
So if you want your children to be the best people, they can be moms and dads.
If you're going to argue, if you're going to disagree, do it in private. Don't do it in front of your kids because your kids are watching. And you're the example for your kids on how to be an adult.
Absolutely.
[00:16:25] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Physical abuse really just messes the kid up. If you're. If you see. If your dad.
If you see your dad physically abusing your wife or your mother, he's gonna do it to his. Because he thinks that's the. That's the norm, you know? Yes.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
So walk me through how you go from your.
Okay, your. You're getting to be a teenager and you're miserable and you're crying all the time. Probably in a. I was very depressed. Yeah.
You didn't have any. Any friends or anybody because you guys were. Were you moving all the time?
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Yeah, we're moving all the time. At that time, dad had gotten a job with a company called Divini Construction and they were doing fiber optic cable. And they got this huge contract to go all the way across the US for along the railroad to life. It was the first of its kind, fiber optic cable.
And the moving became really, really steady. Always.
There were several times when we were homeless, we're living in hotels, you know.
So growing up, feeling like I didn't have a whole lot of self esteem, I didn't know what a normal family was like.
But then when you become a teenager, you start having these urges and you start looking at. Like if you're a man, you start looking at women differently. If you're a woman, you start looking at boys differently. And I didn't have anybody to talk to. About.
About the. About.
I guess I'm just gonna say it about sex. I didn't have anything to talk about men and how we're supposed to react to these feelings that we're having.
So it really came to a head. We were living in a little town in Mississippi called Leeksville and I had a back bedroom all to myself. And one day, as most boys do, you Wake up, things are awake.
And self satisfaction started. And that threw me full blown into sexual addiction.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: Super quick because. Yeah, I mean, the chemical, what's going on physiologically is there's a flood of dopamine, there's a flood of adrenaline, there's that for once in your life, you actually feel good.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: I actually felt good, yeah. I felt good about myself, you know, I felt good about life. You know, I looked at myself a little bit differently and that just flooded over into my personal life and not knowing anyone, not being that God, not getting that positive affirmation from my parents and my brothers for that mark. You know, around that time I was the oldest son. My brother Doug got all the attention. He's the youngest. You know, my parents really sacrificed a.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Lot for my brother, which is a common thing for the middle child to say that that also. It plays into addiction.
[00:19:30] Speaker A: Yeah. I quickly became the black sheep of the family.
And through sexual addiction, that's how I would respect express.
[00:19:39] Speaker B: Well, it's no different than someone finding or getting in, you know, a doorway into drugs are open for them when they're 13 or 14. Maybe it started with smoking pot.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: And then it's like, oh, well, let me try this. And then before you know it, they're 25 and they're addicted to meth. They've destroyed their life. It's. It's literally no different than what you did.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I think the one thing that kept me from going into drugs very bad is that I didn't have any friends.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: You didn't have any money?
[00:20:09] Speaker A: I didn't have any money, but I didn't have any friend influences. You know, I think that going to a different school every few weeks or every couple of months, it kind of saved me from the drug culture. Now the alcohol, the alcohol is easy to get. You know, there's always a bootlegger somewhere or someone like that that would get you alcohol. They charge you two beers.
[00:20:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: You know, but yeah, so the alcohol became pretty prevalent from the time I was 15 up until.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: In addition to the sexual addiction.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: In addiction. In addition to the sexual addiction. Yes.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: So that, that is. That was your. Those were your teenage years.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: Yes. Teenage years were a blur, basically.
Going from school to school, home to home, lay down, lay down.
Going from home to home, school to school, and feeling worse and worse about myself. So the sex, so self pleasure sex in school became the ways that I found the dopamine release.
And as an adult sex, you get the dopamine release. It feels really good, you know, and that Was the only thing that I could do to make myself forget about myself because I was getting nothing from my parents around that time.
Got through my teenage years. I graduated high school in 1990, and I tried to go to college. I was too poor. Couldn't afford the. Got a scholarship for anything, for theater arts, believe it or not.
And I went to a little college here in Texas for one semester, and I couldn't afford it.
Couldn't afford the housing.
So I signed up for the military.
I just want to say women love soldiers, you know, and for 18 years, I was very sexually active. I was.
You know, you go on deployments, you'd be gone for a few months to a year, then you come home and.
And you would just be wide open. You know, all you could think about was getting your next fit.
[00:22:25] Speaker B: Well, I mean, but there's the element of. Not only did you have the sexual addiction that formed in your teenage years, now you're dealing with combat and ptsd.
So of course you're going to go back to the thing that made you feel better.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, if you're not getting the adrenaline rush from being in combination combat, which most of my veterans out there know, that adrenaline rush is unlike anything that you'll ever experience.
If you're not getting that when you get home, then you're going to find it another way. And that's either through my sexual addiction took the place.
[00:23:01] Speaker B: Yeah. A lot of people turn to drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: It's all the same thing.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Absolutely. It's all the same. Actually affects both. Most of the same parts of your brain.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: The pleasure center of the brain.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Yeah, effects. The pleasure center of your brain is activated.
And I don't want to say that I enjoy combat, but it fed my addiction.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: It fed it. And they train you how to do it.
They train you how to be a combat better. They train you to use teamwork, the buddy system on.
[00:23:36] Speaker B: But then when you come home, how to survive.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Yeah. They teach you how to survive. But then when you get home, they're like, okay, welcome home. You can go see your families now. And you're like, man, I'm screwed up. I don't even know how to act right now. You gonna send me out to civilian population the way I am?
So naturally you're gonna turn to alcohol. In my case, it was just alcohol with me. I never did any type of illicit drugs. You know, we talk about stories about when you're deployed, but the drug use when you're deployed, stay awake or to go to sleep. There was a lot of that, but stateside, it was just strictly alcohol. And we drank a lot of alcohol, me and my buddies. We were. There was always a party somewhere, and the alcohol was always running freely.
And then you combine alcohol with sexual addiction, and it just sets up a scenario for really bad choices, right? Yeah, it does.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: And so all of that, and you think.
You think you're okay when you and I meet, you think that you've beat. You beat it.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, you know, you and I had this conversation a lot about. About my sexual addiction when I was in the military. And you asked me, where were you ever convicted?
We talked about porn, which is something that I never watched. I never was into pornography. And she asked me, and you asked me why. And I said, because I was instantly convicted.
And she said, well, how are you convicted of porn? But you weren't conduct. You weren't convicted of sex. About sex.
And my first response, I was single.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: You know, I was single. That, to me, in the military, it's normal.
So you're thinking that you're single and you're doing just what's normal.
[00:25:20] Speaker B: It's almost like peer pressure.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a lot of peer pressure. Pressure involved in that.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: But. But you're technically saved.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Technically. I was saying when I was.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: But here's the problem with that. You didn't get discipled. You get saved.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: And then you're not surrounded by the discipleship and the love and the growth that you need and the people pouring into you.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: So that you, you know, what the voice of God sounds like or you know, when you know.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Right.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: Certain things you shouldn't do and all these kind of things.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: I went straight from being saved, moving all over the country, you know, and hardly ever went to church. My parents. My parents were always closet churchgoers, you know, But I remember when I was living in North Carolina, my parents, we never went to church. I was there for a year, and we had a little church we were part of in Mississippi called Coletown Baptist Church. And Purvis, Mississippi, that's hometown for me, is Purvis. So, hello, Purvis sites. How you doing? Doing.
And then.
Yeah, you just.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: Yeah, so. So the million dollar question, I guess, is how does the trauma play into the addiction, lead into the betrayal?
[00:26:39] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:40] Speaker B: And then how does the marriage get impacted from the unresolved or unhealed trauma?
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Okay, so the first thing I'll tell you, an intervent will tell you, that's Pride himself. He said, I've got it under control.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: That's that's where the downfall starts, is whenever you think, I've got this under control, I can control this, I can control my alcohol intake, I can control my impulses sexually, I can control all of that.
But once you open that door to the demons, once you just have a minuscule thought, once you open your door to it, it comes in and it is non stop on your mind 24 7.
You're constantly finding a way post military to get that adrenaline rush, to get that good feeling. So what I did is I transferred my love for adrenaline rush. My sexual addiction took over.
Then I'm back in the adrenaline rush again. So I was constantly going back and forth with it, you know. See what I'm saying?
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Sort of, yeah.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: So, you know, you get risky behaviors, you start talking to people, texting with people, and that feeds your adrenaline.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Right?
[00:27:54] Speaker A: So one addiction is feeding the other, you know, I'm saying.
So the sex addiction is feeding the adrenaline addiction, but the adrenaline addiction is the reason why you have, is the reason why you're using the sex addiction.
It's just a perfect scenario for marriage destruction. Because what it does is once it's found out that your spouse has been unfaithful like we did, it completely destroys your security.
It destroys the belief system in the marriage. It destroys your faith and trust in the marriage.
And getting that back has not been easy, you know, and we're still working on that today. We really are.
Only through counseling. We've got an amazing counselor, but only through our counselor and faith. Trust in the Lord. Prayer, people. Prayer, Prayer, prayer.
Can you get some semblance of a normal marriage?
[00:28:51] Speaker B: Honesty.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: God, yes. Brutal honesty.
It's not always easy to be honest with your wife or your husband about your sexual addiction or your adrenaline rush addiction.
Because if you've never been in that situation, then you don't understand it.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Well, there's so much shame attached to it.
[00:29:06] Speaker A: There's a lot of shame. Yes, absolutely.
I have a lot of good friends of mine who still drink alcohol and they're ashamed of themselves. You know, I got a buddy that lives in Pennsylvania.
He was. He's golly Dwayne, could drink some alcohol in the military, and that cost him his marriage.
He just falls in love with the dream, you know, Sexual addiction, adrenaline rush, addiction. Alcohol helps you come down, or drugs help you come down off of it, and it's all bad.
The whole thing is just all bad.
[00:29:52] Speaker B: Well, I think really the solution had you have known what you needed when you were a child, which you didn't figure out until you're 50 something years old that what you were missing was the love of God.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Missing the love of God. But most importantly, I was missing the love of my parents.
[00:30:13] Speaker B: You were.
[00:30:14] Speaker A: If I had had that from my parents, none of this would have ever happened.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: Maybe so. But I also think that we view God through the lens of. Of especially our. Our earthly father.
[00:30:24] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: So whatever kind of relationship we had with our earthly father, we tend to transfer that onto the. Onto the Lord. And so for you, you're like, okay, I have an absentee God who doesn't really care about me.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: And so it was. It took you some time for God to get through to you. And I remember saying things to you like, I just don't think you know how much he loves you. And you're just like, God doesn't know me.
[00:30:46] Speaker A: But my favorite saying was, God doesn't know me.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: Right. And it would just break my heart when you would say that.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Yeah, God didn't know who I was, in my opinion, you know? And that's just a trap of the devil, you know, it's just a trap of the enemy to keep you from turning to the one thing that can help you. You know, up until last year, before we found out that all this was going on with me, we had a good marriage.
You know, we did. We were struggling.
[00:31:07] Speaker B: I think that we thought we had a good marriage.
I think what I knew of the marriage and what I knew about you, I thought was good, good.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: But I didn't know all of it.
[00:31:18] Speaker A: Right. Yeah, well, so I'm not gonna.
I couldn't come out and tell you right off the bat when I met you that, hey, I'm a sex addict and adrenaline junkie. You know, I couldn't tell you that.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: There were signs that I never picked up.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: There were signs, but I just. I thought I had it under control. We already.
[00:31:36] Speaker B: Yeah, but the signs are not what people would think they would be because for you, your. Your addiction is not like you have this urge to go have sex with women. For you, it's more about.
It's. It's the risky behavior of flirting and not getting caught. Of texting and not getting caught.
It wasn't really like you were just going out and having sex with every woman.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Well, here's what. No, no, no. There was not that. It was.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: I don't want people getting the wrong idea.
[00:32:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
It was texting. Texting and talking is what it was.
And I tell you what, the texting. Did it put me in fight or Flight mode.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: And from the fight or flight mode, what happens? Adrenaline gets. Massive doses of adrenaline get dumped into your system and you get high. I mean, I can. I can still remember that high that happened. And. And it felt. Really?
[00:32:27] Speaker B: Which one? The one from the back.
The adrenaline just in general.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: Yeah, just the adrenaline dump, you know, because you feel invincible around.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: Well, something people probably don't know. And I didn't know this until I started listening to some psychologists talk about adrenaline and what it does. Is it actually.
Because it puts you in fight or flight, it takes you away from the problems that you're facing. Like, if you're facing abandonment, neglect, abuse, not feeling loved, whatever it might be, if you go into fight or flight, all of a sudden, that's nothing because you're over here in some other.
It actually numbs the pain. Just like when you get into fight or flight, you can't physically feel pain.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it blocks the pain. Exactly, is what it does.
[00:33:11] Speaker B: And so I think. I think we do that to emotionally block things that we don't want to feel.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:33:17] Speaker B: And that's what you were doing?
[00:33:18] Speaker A: Well, around that time, you know, we were having some financial issues.
I had quit travel nursing, and I was working at a little facility here in town, and I was. I was making money, but I wasn't making enough.
[00:33:30] Speaker B: You started feeling bad about.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Started feeling inadequate, you know, because I pride myself on being a strong man who is a good provider who takes care of his wife.
And I always said the one thing I was never going to be was my dad. I always said that. From when I can remember saying anything, I will not be my parents.
And the more that things started rolling around, you know, we moved into a big new house and everything started piling it with bills and all that, the money started running out, and I'm realizing there's nothing that I can do about it, you know, And I'm like, I have completely failed in life, you know, and that's when you start saying, I wish I never gotten out of the military. You know, the military understood what I was going through. You know, the military. If I started feeling bad about myself, the military, I would just deploy, you know, and that would give me the adrenaline fix that I needed to make me feel worthy because I was getting satisfaction knowing that I was doing something that was heroic.
[00:34:31] Speaker B: Well, oftentimes in it, in psychology, what. What ends up happening is we become the very thing that we wish someone would have been for us.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:34:41] Speaker B: So if someone. We wanted someone to save us, then we become a Hero. And in our life, when we get older and we're just running around trying to save everyone, but it. You burn out and you don't deal with the real reason that's underneath everything, which is you have got to accept the love of God.
[00:35:00] Speaker A: Well, it leads to risky behavior, leads to adrenaline burnout. Your adrenal glands get to the point where they just don't do anything anymore. And it requires more and more and more and more stimulation to get there.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: Just like a drug.
[00:35:14] Speaker A: It is a drug. Absolutely, it is.
So whenever you start noticing that the adrenaline dump is getting less, and like me, I was getting older, so I couldn't go skydiving anymore. I don't have a motorcycle. We talked about that.
But, you know, I'm still thinking about it.
We're never going to get one. I have no faith in that.
But, you know, when you're a married man, you have responsibilities, and you can't go out and do those extreme things that you want to do because you've got a family to think about now, you know?
So it does lead to really bad decisions. If you're still addicted to that adrenaline rush. It really does lead to bad decisions.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: You're constantly looking for a way to get high.
That's the way I call it is I was looking for the high.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: And you brought that into our marriage. And you hid it so well for me in the beginning, as we were dating, which only lasted like three months before we got married.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: We got married pretty quick, and it.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: Happened so fast that I don't think I realized.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: Well, just like with any addiction, and addiction is addiction, no matter what it is, addiction is addiction. It stimulates the same parts of your brain. You have withdrawals when you're not on it.
Any addict can hide it.
Any addict can make up excuses for why things are the way they are. Or they say, well, I only do that because of this. But I don't do it all the time.
When I was drinking, I wasn't drinking every night.
Well, maybe I was, but, you know, I was usually drinking to curb it, to keep it all pressed down. So when you try to keep it all pressed down, you start drinking more and trading one addiction, trading one addiction for another. You know, I quit drinking alcohol, so I started drinking Coke Zero, and I got out of hand.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: I noticed that you would just switch addictions. You'd be like, oh, well, I'm not doing that anymore. You're like, I'm not drinking Coke Zeros. But then I would see you, and you drink like three Three monsters a day. And I was like, you know those are worse than Coke Zeros, right?
[00:37:18] Speaker A: Yeah. My blood pressure, my weight told me that, man.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Okay.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: I went from very healthy 208 to 320 pounds.
This is before I met her, but because of depression? Absolutely. Because I was a failure at everything that I did, and my addictions made me feel that way, you know, because you've ruined your life. I've always. I've had this addiction since I was 12 years old, and it has cost me marriages. It has cost me a relationship with my children.
It has cost me jobs and my own sense of love for myself. Because addiction is like this. You got a good angel and a bad angel on each shoulder, and the bad angel wins. And you keep giving an ear to that bad angel because it's more fun living bad than it is living good.
[00:38:05] Speaker B: At first.
[00:38:05] Speaker A: At first it is, but then it catches up to you. And. And when it catches up to you, then it is non stop conviction by the Holy spirit, especially if you're. Well, if you're a Christian. It is.
[00:38:18] Speaker B: It leads to death. You know, every. Every addiction, if it goes all the way to the end, it's going to result in death. I mean, you tried to kill yourself because you could not live with it anymore. You were so tired of it.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: One of the things I remember about that day is I kept saying, I'm tired of hurting people.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: Right?
[00:38:36] Speaker A: You know, I'm tired of hurting. I'm tired of not knowing why I'm hurting people. I'm tired of being alone, and I'm tired. I'm just generally tired of living. I couldn't do it anymore.
So that's why I was fixing to lose everything, Shay. And I think that that little dark angel on my right shoulder said, well, you know what? The only thing you got left to do is kill yourself.
And I'm like, you know what? I got one more thing I can do.
So.
Yeah.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: Well, let's talk about those stats of men.
It is. I don't know if we said this earlier, but it is men's mental health awareness month, and we do know, statistically, men are way less likely to get help, to get counseling, to even tell people how they feel because they've been shunned and told from the time they're small kids that men don't have feelings. Men don't talk about how they feel.
[00:39:41] Speaker A: Well, we know that we have feelings, but it's not cool to talk about your feelings. It's not cool to acknowledge, hey, man, you know What? I'm depressed, right? You know, I don't want to get out of bed every day. Well, you get called lazy.
I got lucky. Because you're my spouse, and you are amazing. You recognize the symptoms of things that are going on. And instead of me making me feel weak, you make me feel better because you acknowledge my struggles and you help me get through them. But there's a lot of men out there who are married, and they don't feel like they can talk to their wives about it, because here's what happens. Honey, I'm feeling kind of down day. We'll just go fishing, you know, or just. Good, just go drink a beer.
[00:40:23] Speaker B: Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You'll be fine.
[00:40:25] Speaker A: That's right. Pull yourself up, man, and get out of it. You got family to feed. You can't be depressed today, right? You can't be sick. You know, God forbid you miss a day at work because you just can't get out of bed, but.
Okay, so the suicide rates in 2024, obviously, we're still in 2025, and we haven't got all those rates back yet, but the male suicide rate in 2024 was 21.6 per 100,000.
[00:40:50] Speaker B: And that's the U.S. right?
[00:40:52] Speaker A: That's in the U.S. that's the U.S. suicide rate.
That's 14. In 2025, the rate was adjusted for suicide, and it's 14.7 deaths per 100,000 individuals, surpassing the 22 rate by a huge margin.
And I'll tell you about.
I keep harping on veterans because I am one. But I'll tell you why the suicide rate has gone up.
It's because you've got these young men, and 18 to 36 is the most common area, or they're the most at risk for suicide. The most normal, the most. What I'm saying is the age group where suicide rate is attended the most is 55 to 65.
So I feel right into that at 53.
I lost a train of thought here, but.
So the reason why the rates have gone up is because we're not in war right now. We're not in combat. You've got all these men, especially the veterans who came home from years of war, and you're like, okay, what did I do now?
I often laugh and joke about my time in the military, special operations. Only thing it taught me how to do in the military when I got out was working with arm tractors.
How do you go from carrying weapons and calling in close air support and coordinating with different battalions on what this next FOB is going to be.
How do you go from that to being a civilian?
[00:42:24] Speaker B: And I think that's why a lot of veterans go into law enforcement, because they want that.
Well, this is the closest thing I can get. Or the FBI or whatever, something like that. Absolutely, because it's the closest I can get. But yet, here's what you're doing. You're just. You're just keeping that addiction going instead of learning how. I'm not saying you shouldn't go into those fields. I mean, that's, you know, whatever you have to do.
[00:42:47] Speaker A: And just to show you the difference in the statistics between males and females, men, like I said, in 2024 was 21.6.
Right. The males comprise almost over 80% of the suicides in 2020.
[00:43:01] Speaker B: That's what I was thinking. I knew it was a lot higher.
[00:43:04] Speaker A: Women, 6.4% per 100,000.
[00:43:07] Speaker B: Here's what's interesting, though, because I've seen some stats, and I don't have them right now, but typically, women get diagnosed with depression more than men because we don't seek treatment. Right. Women get depressed. Women get diagnosed with depression and anxiety disorders way more than men.
But men commit suicide more.
[00:43:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, look at it like this. Just over the past few years, we've had that MeToo movement, we've had. The feminist movement has blown up.
And then you have these traps that are set up for men. I watch them on TikTok all the time. You got this girl working out in the gym, and she sees a man just look her way, and she's like, have you got a problem?
And the guy worked there, you know, he's like, well, I'll just kick you out the next time.
So we got where we get in trouble for being a man.
[00:43:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:43:55] Speaker A: Toxic masculinity. I hate that word. I want to strangle people every time I hear it. There's nothing. There's. Man, I'm gonna tell you right now, there is nothing about you that's toxic.
Now, if you are abusive, obviously that's a different story. Obviously, that's a different story. But being a man and having. And having male urges, hunting, fishing, hang out with the boys, there is nothing toxic about that.
[00:44:18] Speaker B: I mean, that's what attract. Let me just say this, and. And we'll probably get some backlash on this. But for most women, that's what attracts us to a man, is that he is a man, not that he's, you know, let society shape him into this. Weak.
[00:44:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:36] Speaker B: Feminized man.
[00:44:38] Speaker A: Well, you know, there was a study that was done a few years ago. It's pretty interesting about that. And it goes along with women's cycles.
Women like men, but when you go on your cycle, what you look for is a strong chin, some very, very masculine men who are fit, who have great careers because, well, instinctually, that's just instinctually the breeding cycle. You're looking for the best DNA that you can find.
[00:45:08] Speaker B: Even if you realize it or you don't realize it or not you are doing absolutely.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: It is in your subconscious.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: It breaks my heart because I'm not, I'm not anti women at all.
I'm not. But I, I don't like all the male bashing that's going on. I don't like all of the women who are trying to feminize men.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: Right.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Or, you know, or try to make them just be less masculine so that, so that they're more, I don't know, acceptable.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: But. Well, you've got women that convince men to be feminists.
[00:45:39] Speaker B: Right.
[00:45:39] Speaker A: How in the heck can a man be a feminist?
[00:45:42] Speaker B: I think men can be advocates for women having equal rights, which we have in America, but you know, equality in all areas. But men and women are just different.
[00:45:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:54] Speaker B: Which I think is a whole other episode that we can talk about. But I just think the statistics are staggering that so many more men, I think said 80 something percent of the suicides that happen are men. And if that doesn't grab your attention, and then on top of that, 22 veterans a day are committing suicide. Their, their rates of veteran men committing suicide versus civilian men are staggering too. It's, it's way more veterans than it.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: Is, it is way more veterans than.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: It is non veterans. So I think there's just something.
[00:46:26] Speaker A: But like I said, we've been in a constant state of war for the past 20 something years.
[00:46:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: You know, and you've got men who weren't even born, who went to war. They weren't even born whenever the war started on 9, 11, you know, they weren't even around.
[00:46:38] Speaker B: They don't even really know what it was like to see those towers.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: So they have grown up. Okay. This is the most heavily TV watched generation I've ever seen. I mean even us with our TV went out, we started having withdrawals.
So, but, but this younger generation, they're raised on video games of combat.
They're raised on seeing combat on television. They're raised on, hey, Uncle Mike came home from Iraq this time. Let's go see and see how he's doing. The first thing you usually hear, hey, did you kill anybody?
[00:47:09] Speaker B: Almost like it's a game or something.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: Almost like it's a game because it is a video game.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: Well, they're desensitized by what? The violence.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: Right. And that's what it is, is these kids these days are desensitized. These kids have. All they've known is war, you know, and now that there's no more war to do, what are we supposed to do with these people? You know, veterans out there? Like, this guy has known war his entire life. He's 22 years old. He just came back from Iraq for the last time, and there's no more war to go to.
[00:47:39] Speaker B: Well, I'm just thinking, because, you know, the news story just broke about the veteran who killed his three daughters. Yeah, I don't think they found him.
[00:47:47] Speaker A: Yet, but they haven't found him yet.
[00:47:48] Speaker B: I don't know if they know where he is. Kind of. They think they know where he is.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:51] Speaker B: But just, you know, how could this have been prevented? Had he had a support system? Had he had the help he needed? I don't know. We don't know. Obviously, he probably had ptsd. Who knows?
[00:48:04] Speaker A: Well, to speculate, but I'll be honest with you. Veteran services has been lacking severely since World War II.
[00:48:10] Speaker B: Well, they're still learning about PTSD. They still don't know how to fix it. They don't know it can be fixed.
[00:48:17] Speaker A: Now, it can't be fixed. You're. You're stuck with it for rest of your life. But through.
[00:48:22] Speaker B: But learning how to deal with it, getting counseling, getting some healing. Right. Finding ways to deal with the adrenaline need. Because all people with PTSD usually end up needing adrenaline to some degree. And so finding ways to do it that are healthy and are not going to sabotage your body or your marriage or.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that was like, whenever we bought our cars, that guy who sold us our cars was a vet, and he's like, oh, yeah, man, I'm part of this great vet group. We drive around our trucks and shoot things like pigs or something. We're shooting pigs. I'm like, no, it doesn't sound like fun. That's not the type of guy I am. You know, I mean, since we've known each other, I shot a gun, what, five times at the dogs next door.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: I wasn't very popular then for a while, but.
But there are some guys who get out and they still love weapons. Me being around a weapon gives me the heebie jeebies now. Now I think that weapons have a place in the household. I'm not anti gun, but. But I got. I feel that stuff when I got out, you know, I did.
[00:49:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Your need for adrenaline shows up in a different.
[00:49:31] Speaker A: Shows up in different ways.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: But, yeah, I think the point of this whole episode is, okay, what have you drug into your marriage that you know that you didn't get healing from?
[00:49:45] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: Right? I mean. I mean, I'm talking like to the viewers, like, what. What have you allowed to creep its way into your marriage? It was traumatic for you, and you didn't get what you needed, the healing that you needed. Because I think all people bring things in.
[00:50:02] Speaker A: I think that. I think that marriage needs to start the very real conversation before you get married.
I believe in premarital counseling. She and I didn't do it, and we were a mess because of this right here.
But I think that premarital counseling is very good. I think that everybody should have to do it. And I'm going to tell you why. Because it helps you come to terms with the way you are.
It helps you tell your significant other, your wife or husband, to be about the things that have hurt you. That way your spouse is not blindsided by this stuff. Three years in, you want to. Where's the perfect spot?
[00:50:40] Speaker B: Person that I married. Who is this? I don't even know who this is.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: Well, that's what happened whenever all this came to light, is that you're like, I don't even know who you are anymore. And like, I'm still me, who is me, like, sick and I need help.
[00:50:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: You know, and.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: Which is what we did. We got you the help that you needed, but most of it, honestly, has come from the Lord.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: It has.
Well, you know, and I'm not. I'm not putting you up on a pedestal, you know, I know you don't like that, but I am going to say that I think that God put you in my life because he knew that all this was going to come out one way or the other, and he knew I needed someone strong in my life that's going to be resilient enough to stay with me and. And not divorce me, you know, and if it hadn't been for you and your family, I would have.
I had nothing else to live for, you know, my family didn't care, you know, so, you know, but. Yeah.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: Oh, that's a lot. And I know. We keep going. We've probably been talking for at least an hour, and I guess we'll get.
[00:51:44] Speaker A: Into your stuff next time.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe. We'll see. Mine's definitely not as traumatic as yours. And I think. I think I had worked through a lot of mine before you came along. A lot of it, I think. But the problem, the trauma I had had to do with my previous marriage, and that's what I brought in was.
[00:52:04] Speaker A: The, well, you've got some familial problems in there also.
[00:52:07] Speaker B: Yeah. But I think. And yes, I did. I did. But I think the root of mine had to do with a lot of gaslighting that has happened in my life. A lot of being lied to, a lot of being just victimized by other decisions that other people made or whatever.
[00:52:26] Speaker A: But I'm going to say right now, if you're with someone who gaslights you on a continuous basis and you get help.
[00:52:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: That person that's gaslighting you is not there for you. He's there for himself or herself.
[00:52:36] Speaker B: It's a hard place to be.
[00:52:37] Speaker A: It's a hard place to be. I had a marriage like that. She had marriage like that.
You're constantly made to feel unworthy.
Yeah.
[00:52:47] Speaker B: Well, I hope that this podcast episode was in some way.
[00:52:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:52] Speaker B: If it could be encouraging, I hope that it was. Or eye opening or however you want to phrase it.
[00:52:57] Speaker A: Yeah. If there's a man out there or a woman who wants to contact us, drop us a message in the chat below.
[00:53:03] Speaker B: Comment. Yeah.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: And we will get in touch with you.
[00:53:07] Speaker B: And on that note, we are in the process of working through some.
[00:53:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Things coming.
[00:53:13] Speaker B: Certification.
Our intention is to eventually coach people.
[00:53:19] Speaker A: Yes. Coach couples in our home.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: I don't know how we're going to do it. We'll work out the details, but we're working through some training and coaching certifications for that. We have a heart for this. So.
Yeah. So stay tuned for that because eventually instead of saying, hey, drop the comment. We'll actually just say, hey, if you want to work with us, here's our information. And it'll be in the. It'll be in the posting the links.
[00:53:44] Speaker A: And I'm going to say this one more time.
Veterans and non. Veteran men and women, you have worth.
There is someone on this planet that is a better person because you're alive. I know it doesn't feel like that right now. Look, man, I've been there. I was there last year.
I had ruined every relationship that I had ever been in. My kids don't even talk to me. I'm still working through that.
You have work.
There is somebody on this planet who loves you. There's somebody on this planet that would be very sad if you were not here anymore. And just because you kill yourself doesn't mean that your suicide doesn't reverberate all across the community.
It destroys families.
Think about the long term consequences of what your kids will have to go through.
And I think about my suicide attempt today and I am so embarrassed because I was selfish and I looked for a way out to where I wouldn't hurt anymore. But I didn't think about the consequences of my actions. Hurting my wife, hurting my kids, hurting my in laws, hurting her family and my family.
I didn't think about that.
And if you need to talk, you can contact Shay, you can contact me in the messages below.
And look, please don't become another statistic. Don't do it. And I know that I say this every episode. I know I do. But it's really. It's really close to my heart.
If you're having feelings of depression and thoughts of suicide, get help.
Veterans, the VA is a wonderful resource. We have had very good results with the VA.
[00:55:42] Speaker B: What's the number they call? 988.
[00:55:44] Speaker A: Call 988 for the Veterans VA hotline.
If you need someone to walk you through it and you're a veteran, contact me and I will tell you the proper steps that you can take to get the help that you need. The veteran va, they don't make it easy and everything is so compartmentalized. But being veterans, we're already, we're used to that.
So it takes patience on your part to work with the Veterans Administration. But they're there and they care.
I've got a great care team through.
[00:56:15] Speaker B: The va. Yeah, they care about you.
[00:56:17] Speaker A: And just don't do it.
Contact somebody that you know, a friend, a loved one, and say, hey, man, I'm feeling bad today. Men, you're not weak because you're depressed. Men, you're not. You're worthy. You are. You never lose your worth if you can't go to work one day. You never lose your worth if you get down and depressed. That does not define who you are.
That's it. I'm on my soapbox now.
[00:56:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, I guess until next time, we'll just. God bless you all and we'll see you again soon.
[00:56:55] Speaker A: Like I said, drop a comment down below. If you need us to contact you in any way, shape or fashion, I will stay on the phone with you for as long as I have to.
Peace.
[00:57:09] Speaker B: Oh, my love don't let it grow cold in the night.
