I can’t keep going like this.
Darcy caught me.
I had been looking at inappropriate pictures on my company laptop when she thought every thing with my pornography problem was behind us.
We were suffering through a really difficult miscarriage and I was turning back to the old things that made me feel better whenever I was feeling less than good.
She was furious.
She threw that laptop down the stairs, along with some laundry detergent and my dignity.
I was caught.
Being caught is a terrible place to be.
There is not a thing that you can say that really makes it better.
There is not a thing that you can do to make the other person trust you again in that moment.
It is the point where you feel your absolute worst while someone stares at you feeling your absolute worst.
It is the dream where you find yourself standing in front of the entire class in your underwear, except you are in real life feeling just as exposed and the other person hates you for it.
This was the moment that I broke my wife. The woman who had, up to this point seen me as an amazing husband.
When she tells this story, she talks about me being the guy that our friends would tease because I was always up, changing diapers, putting kids to bed and helping with the babies.
I think I am that guy, in part because of my pornography problem.
I think I am that guy because, at least in some way, I am trying to make up for being rotten and broken on the inside, so I make myself look awesome and helpful on the outside. At least to my wife.
At least until I got caught.
What is terrible, is that getting caught in this moment was not the moment that I can tell you that I changed and started getting better.
This was not that moment.
This was a moment that made me get worse.
This was the moment that made me turn inward and become more sneaky. Made me stop allowing my wife to see the real me.
I stopped sharing Zach Spafford, vulnerable, loving husband. I started being a character in my own marriage.
I became a guy that never failed at anything.
I would mess up at work. I wouldn’t tell my wife.
I would mess up with pornography. I wouldn’t tell my wife.
I would be stressed. I wouldn’t tell my wife.
I would be depressed. I wouldn’t tell my wife.
That moment was the moment I turned inward. I became a perfect guy outside as best I could so that she wouldn’t have to deal with my weakness because she couldn’t handle it.
I’m not proud of it. But it happened.
This is true for so many people that I work with.
What if my spouse is never going to be ready to forgive me and be my partner again in every way?
The truth is, you need to be honest with your spouse. Not because your spouse deserves your honesty, although there is an argument to be made there.
Telling the truth is about being the person you want to be.
Building the person you want to be is about being conscientious about behavior that brings us down, and tears down our sense of the greatness we have within.
So, I want to talk about building you.
This is the topic of today.
I told that story because I didn’t get that I wasn’t becoming someone. I was building someone.
Tony robbins has a documentary on Netflix called “I’m not your Guru”. There is a lot of swearing.
Near the end he says something that struck me deeply, he said, “I constructed Tony Robbins,” “I created this motherfucker standing here.”
When we create, construct or become the person we want to be, it isn’t an accident.
It has to be done deliberately.
1. Determine the virtues you want to have
Benjamin Franklin, Early on in his life he deterimed 13... Support this podcast
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