Pure Sex Radio – Helping Couples Walk the Path of Restoration After Sexual Betrayal
Pure Sex Radio is a podcast resource of Be Broken Ministries. Founded by Jonathan Daugherty, Be Broken Ministries is a faith-based group that “provides resources for individuals and families directly impacted by sexual brokenness.”
In this podcast, Jonathan interviewed Dr. Sytsma with the focus on the restoration path for couples when there has been sexual betrayal.
The show notes describe the episode this way:
Sexual betrayal in marriage is more common than most of us would like to admit. But this terrible fracture is not incurable for couples who choose to go on a journey of healing and restoration.
Today’s guest on the Pure Sex Radio podcast is Dr. Michael Sytsma, a licensed professional counselor, ordained minister, professor, and founder of Building Intimate Marriages. In our conversation, Michael answers questions about:
• The “why” of affairs
• The impact of past trauma
• The myth that affairs only occur in “bad” marriages
• How to know if restoration is possible
• What is required for restoration
• And more…
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Transcript (transcribed by AI and not totally accurate)
Jonathan Dougherty
Good day listeners Jonathan Dougherty here with another edition of the pure sex radio program. sexual betrayal and marriage is more common than most of us would like to admit. But this terrible fracture is not incurable for couples who choose to go on a journey of healing and restoration. Our guest today is Dr. Michael Sytsma, a licensed professional counselor, ordained minister, professor and founder of building intimate marriages. In our conversation, Michael answers questions around the why of affairs, the impact of past trauma, the myth of affairs only occurring in bad marriages. How to Know If restoration is possible, what is required for restoration, and more. To learn more about Michael and building intimate marriages, visit intimate marriage.org. For additional resources visit be broken.org or check out links in today’s show notes. And would you please rate and review the podcast after listening because this really does help other people to find this information. Pure sex radio is produced by be broken and be broken. His mission is to help men, women and families move from sexual brokenness to wholeness in Christ, and equip others to do the same. Now let’s dive into today’s hopeful conversation with Dr. Mike. Well, all right, Michael Sytsma. Welcome to the program.
Michael Sytsma
Thank you very much, sir. It’s an honor to be here.
Jonathan Dougherty
Yeah, I was glad to be able to get you on the podcast just because of your experience in dealing with couples, especially couples that have dealt with betrayal trauma. But before we dive, dive into kind of some of the specifics of that particular topic, why don’t you just share a little bit of of who you are, and kind of how you got into this space of counseling and work?
Michael Sytsma
Yeah, that that’s actually a long story. But to kind of keep it about as short as we can. I am an ordained pastor. My original training was in addictions. So working with chemical addictions, and then in 1990, started working with sex addicts. And people kept coming to Pastor Mike asking questions that I didn’t quite know how to answer. So I kept going back and getting training, fell in love with doing marriage work in the mid 90s. And got my PhD specializing in marital sex therapy in 2004. And have run building intimate marriages since 98. Working pretty exclusively with couples, about 70% of them post affair, or post sexual kind of trauma.
Jonathan Dougherty
Yeah, so a lot of times when we have a conversation like this, and when I invite a guest on, and we’re gonna be talking about betrayal, trauma and kind of couples recovery from that, it’s easy to jump real quickly into, okay, how do you start working on restoration? But before we get to that, I want to ask you, because of your experience in dealing with so many couples, what are some of the factors that you see that lead couples toward betraying their covenant betraying their vows that they have taken? Like, why does this happen so often in marriage?
Michael Sytsma
And and that’s a it’s a good question, I want to answer it, but for the couples that are coming in, I tell them that that question needs to wait until we get a little bit further in the healing. That the simple answer for the WHY is that somebody chose sin. Somebody chose not to be self discipline, somebody chose not to follow through on the covenants that they made. And often people in trying to figure out the Why are trying to make sense out of nonsense. And you can’t make sense out of nonsense to try to understand why somebody would put everything at risk. Often people put their jobs at risk their families at risk, their spouse at risk, sometimes at mortal risk, if they’re bringing disease or, or physical threat from somebody who’s not particularly safe, why they would put all of that at risk. It just doesn’t make sense. And I tell them, it comes down to something is simple is the individual believing they deserved something they weren’t getting. I’m at the place that I just really detest the phrase I deserve. It’s almost always followed by some type of, of acting out some type of sin, something that is unhealthy, that wounds other people. But if we believe that I deserve something, or I really am craving and wanting something that I’m not getting, even if I am getting it in my marriage, I could get it someplace else also, and I’m undisciplined, then they’re going to act out. And so the why it comes down as simply as they they chose to behave in a way that was different than their covenants than their commitments. A deeper than that, once a couple has started to do some healing, they can dig in. And often there’s something that’s really unhealthy that’s gone on in the marriage that both contribute to, I call that the cancer in the relationship that both have contributed to a cancer that was growing. But even though there’s cancer in the relationship, that’s not what we start working on. When we start with the arterial cut, that you stepped in and chose to be unfaithful in your relationship that’s like, you know, taking a knife to an artery, we have to work with that, first, the healing has to happen there. And part of my concern is when couples spend too much time looking at the why they’re trying to figure out the cancer. And they spend so much time attending to the cancer that the individual bleeds out, the marriage dies, because they weren’t doing the recovery from the wound. But sometimes that cancer is worth looking at once some healing occurs.
Jonathan Dougherty
Yeah, that’s really good. Now, I want to also ask, you know, by, by the time a couple makes the decision to let’s say, reach out to you and your group for counseling, clearly, there’s a recognition of some kind of brokenness, there’s recognition of need, how often do you see that there that some of these may be reasons behind? Why either, you know, the betrayed spouse has done what they’ve done? How much do you see history, a history of trauma, a history of maybe marital brokenness in their own family of origin? I mean, are some of these repeated patterns? Or, you know, how does some of the history in each of the spouses individually play into then the brokenness that they’re experiencing in their own marriage,
Michael Sytsma
that’s going to really vary from couple to couple. You know, it’s a myth that affairs only happen in bad marriages. affairs happen in really good marriages. And sometimes there isn’t an awful lot of history, there is a stupid moment of there is a impulsive event that occurs. And, you know, sometimes it’s an impulsive event that the person then needs a follow up on. One of the ladies I worked with, she had an impulsive affair. She had too much to drink and impulsive affair with a co worker. And she said, I laid there in bed afterwards, thinking this is not the kind of person I am, I must like this guy. And she said, So I worked to develop a relationship with Him. Because I don’t, I don’t do those kinds of behaviors with somebody I don’t have a relationship with. So to look into try to figure out what the background is, there was no trauma, there’s no wounding the chief did something that really wasn’t very smart, and then tried to justify it in your own mind. At other times, you’re right, especially if it’s a pattern of behaviors, you know, working with one client right now that just revealed his fifth affair. And there there is trauma in the background, there’s some deep woundedness that helps to drive that type of acting out behavior. So it’s going to vary greatly from into visual to individual. Like I said, I call that the cancer, you know, and what that what kind of cancer that is, and why it’s there can be a host of different reasons.
Jonathan Dougherty
And I would imagine that’s got to be a difficult process, to be able to deal with those factors that are real, in a person’s past that have affected them without using that as an excuse for their current decisions. How do you as the counselor, especially because I’m thinking about also the betrayed partner, right? And how easy it can be for them to become highly offended if they start feeling like there’s an excuse in this person’s life for the decisions they’ve made, where they say, oh, it’s because of my dad or is because of my mom or was because of so how do you as a as a counselor kind of helped navigate and hold that tension between the realities of those historical traumas and wounds, but also the reality of the decisions that this person has now made that’s broken their their vow?
Michael Sytsma
Good. The first thing that I do is I tell them the story of the cancer versus the arterial cut, you know, you walk into the hospital and you’ve got an artery that’s just bleeding out. Even if they realize you’ve got cancer, they’re not going to pay attention to the cancer. They might acknowledge it but we have to heal this artery that’s bleeding out. And when somebody has been unfaithful in their marriage that is devastating to the organism to the marriage. And so I work really hard to not not getting distracted in the wise on what got him to this place, but to spend time sitting in the wound and stitching up the healing, often it is months before I allow a couple to start really talking about the why about the cancer, about the the foundation that led them there. When we do my mentor Doug Rosenthal, he used to tell the story of you go out and you buy a brand new Porsche, and you pull into the parking lot and you roll down the windows, you drop the keys on the seat and you walk into the store. Well, we kind of expect that the car’s not going to be there when we get back. But once the police find the car in the person who stole the car, they stand in front of a judge and say, well, he left the window down in the keys in the car seat. And the judge might look at you and say, Well, that was a really stupid thing to do. But he is still charged with grand theft auto, his story responsible for the crime for the sin for the offense that he committed, doesn’t matter what the foundation is, or what the the reasoning. Many times I listen to why people have an affair. And I think no, that makes sense to me. But it still doesn’t excuse it. They still chose to not be disciplined in their behavior.
Jonathan Dougherty
Yeah, that’s really good. So now let’s let’s let’s dive in this, this couple has come to you. And I recognize that a lot of what we’re going to be talking about here, Michael, there’s going to be you could probably answer every question. Well, it depends on the couple. Right. So I recognize that that everything, every situation has a uniqueness to itself, because each individual in that marriage is unique, and that marriage itself is unique to other marriages. But then I think, but I think we’d also argue there’s patterns, there’s principles, right? They kind of are overarching in this whole restoration process. So take us through what you seek to do with a couple that number one, says we would like to pursue restoration. I think that’s key first, right? Because and maybe that’s the first question I should ask you in this process is how can you tell? How do you know maybe if restoration is even possible for a couple like what are the key foundations for that even being the track that a couple takes?
Michael Sytsma
Well, first I will say that, you know, I joke if you want to get a couple of therapists arguing ask them how to do a fair recovery, how to heal from from sexual woundedness because we all have a path that we we like and some principles that we will live and die over. But for me, couples come in and actually a number of times a couple will come in and one is not not repentant, not ready to work on it still caught up in the lies that they’re involved in. And I am one of those servers that I’m happy to work with that I will sit with you while you figure out whether you want to be a part of this or not. And in the draw them in and try to help them to sort it out. In once they decide I am definitely want to work on the marriage, we want to heal the marriage. And it could be the wounding or the wounded boughs who is hesitant. But once they both are mostly on board, I’m starting to assess for two major things. For the wounding spouse, I’m looking for a level of contrition, one of my favorite words, contrition is that I, I come into it with a sense of repentance, because I realized I did something wrong. And it’s a type of, of penance, almost a sense of remorse. If there is a contrition on the part of the wounding spouse, we’re off to a really good start. If not, I know I have my work cut out for me because I need to help them to get to a place that they are not minimizing the wound that they have created, that they are acknowledging this was outside of the boundaries of what they covered into to in the relationship and get them to a place that they can say with an authenticity, what I did was wrong and caused an enormous wound. And I don’t expect people to understand the depth of the wound to start with. I tell them it’s going to take months before you really have an accounting of what your behavior has cost. But I want to see some level of contrition to begin with, on the part of the wounded spouse. There’s kind of two things that I look for their Jonathan one of them is an early sign of some forgiveness that they would be willing to forgive. Sometimes they walk in having already made what we would call in the field of positional forgiveness stance. They have said positionally, I choose to forgive. I don’t know what that means yet. And I haven’t done the work of forgiveness, but I already choose that I’m going to forgive you Other times they come in and they’re not ready to forgive you, because they don’t know what the boundaries are going to be. They don’t know if the person is going to be safe. They David stoop in his book, forgiving our parents forgiving ourselves did a great six step process of forgiveness. And part of why I like it is step four is create boundaries to keep ourselves safe. And that comes before step five, which is the actual forgiveness. And if there are boundaries that keep them safe, you’re still engaged in the affair, or you’re still looking at that material, or you’re still involved in a fantasy relationship, or the then I’m not ready to forgive. But if I see the early signs of forgiveness, or at least a believing in their spouse, you know, you you’ve done something really stupid, but that’s not who you are. I know you love me, I know you care about me, I know you care about the family. So maybe they’re not at the point of forgiveness, but they they can still believe in the other. That’s the other thing that I need to see, if I can see on the part of the wounded spouse, some sense of grace, believing in or early forgiveness. And then on this part of the wounding spouse, any sense of contrition, I know are off and running, they will probably be fine. It may take months, two years, but they will be fine. If I don’t see either those I know I have a lot more work. I tend to be a chronic optimist when it comes to these cases. I’ve worked with 1000s of them over the course of my 35 years of doing this. And so I just see, so many come in with horrible trash pits of marriages. And I watch God make profoundly beautiful rose gardens out of them. And so I tend to believe even when I don’t see those signs that they can still make it if they’re willing to do the
Jonathan Dougherty
work. Yeah. Now this may sound like a silly, stupid, maybe even simplistic question, but I can, you know, the fact that you, you just jumped right there to forgiveness. Why is forgiveness so essential to the restoration of a couple of its faces betrayal?
Michael Sytsma
Well, it’s essential to the restoration of the individual who was wounded. To me, it’s actually secondary to the couple relationship when they’re wounded, that wound often goes profoundly deep when it’s this type of a wound. And forgiveness is a huge part of what allows them to heal. If they don’t forgive, then they’re still carrying around that debt. The wounding spouse always heals faster. And that’s part of what’s not fair in this process is if they’ve enacted a cost of wound on their spouse, they heal from it pretty quickly, the wounded spouse, that wound is a slow heal. And forgiveness allows it to heal a little bit faster, or at least a little more complete. So I fight forgiveness, fight for forgiveness, just so the wounded spouse can actually heal and move on. To me, it’s a secondary benefit that it heals in the relationship. If the relationship is going to heal, forgiveness is critical. For much of the same reason, otherwise, they’re always dealing with this wide open wound.
Jonathan Dougherty
Can you talk a little bit more about how forgiveness and boundaries are complementary, not contradictory?
Michael Sytsma
Yeah. I’m actually going to go back to David stoops, six steps there. And he starts by we we have to identify what the wound what the offense was, what the emotions related to it are, what what the cost is expressing the cost. And then the fourth when he says is develop some healthy boundaries around it. And if you’re still acting out, it is really critical to me that I keep myself safe. What I tell spouses, let’s say the wife is the one who’s had the affair. And I’ll look at those men and say, if she’s not going to protect you, you have to protect yourself, and know that that’s just the reality of it. We don’t know what their sexual acting out is going to bring into the relationship. And so those boundaries become critical even to take the steps of healing. As both spouses returned to protecting the relationship and protecting each other, then those boundaries can come down a bit. If they’re not there, it’s not safe to do healing. Once the boundaries are in place, and it may be we don’t have a relationship or we’ve put a boundary around the sexual relationship for a while, or we’re living in separate places for a while. And that allows us to be In that forgiveness process, because I have something that’s going to keep me safe, since you’re not keeping me safe, you’re not keeping my heart safe. Those that don’t put any kind of a boundary in. I experienced that the forgiveness, the healing, the grace is not as complete. Because they’re always having to reserve a little bit of space, if that kind of makes sense. Yeah, absolutely.
Jonathan Dougherty
So as couples start to engage in you realize, okay, the the wounding spouse is is engaging in kind of a, an attitude of contrition, the wounded spouse is starting to learn about forgiveness, like what are some of the key principles and kind of next steps that they’re going to need to take in order to see their their marriage sort of be rebuilt and thrive in a new way? What are some of the key steps to that are stages?
Michael Sytsma
Well, the first is they have to stay in those spaces. And there will be lots of things that try to drag them out. In a lots of times that the wounding spouse is going to want to look over and go Seriously, I’ve answered that 12 times are you not over it yet. And I look at him and say, Wait, that’s not contrition, you do not have a right to tell them that they need to be healed. You’re the one that did the damage. And in for this healing to occur, you have to stay in that state of contrition. If the wounded spouse moves into a sense of punishment, rather than forgiveness, I point out to them, your wounding yourself, you know, don’t let, don’t let the wounding spouse’s sin become your sin, don’t take it on and start to act in a sinful manner just because they wounded you. When we punish somebody else. It actually does the greatest damage to us. So my first task is keeping them always in that contrite and forgiveness kind of a stance. Even seven years in, I had a couple walked in. And I had worked in through their fair recovery years ago, they sat down across from me, and we’re here to deal with something that was going on with an adult child. And I said, so catch me up. And they started talking about how they went out for vacation, and weren’t thinking that they were returning to one of the buildings that he had acted out in. And she said, we’re walking up the steps to this building, holding hands, and all of a sudden, it dawned on me, my husband was engaged in sexual activity with another woman in this building. And sitting on the couch in front of me arms around each other, she began to cry. And she looked up at him and she said, You hurt me really bad. Now remember, this was seven years ago that this happened? And he didn’t look at her and say, seriously, are we not over this. He looked at her with true tenderness in his face. And he said, I am so sorry, babe. And 30 seconds later, they were laughing about their vacation. And I took them back to it and said that’s true healing, she can still experience the wound that you inflict it on her in, and she expressed it to you with a grace and forgiveness. And you stayed contrite, which allowed that healing to be complete, once again, seven years later. And the task is how do we keep couples to where they’re kind of sitting in that space? The wounded or the wounding spouse cannot minimize the cost. You know, many times well, it wasn’t that bad it was to them. Well, I have some justification for it. Now that minimizes the cost. So keeping them in, in the place that they acknowledge that the wound they did was really huge. I tell them you took out a debt in your spouse’s name, they did not agree to now you cannot pay off the debt, they have to pay off the debt, plus all of the interest, you don’t have a right to look at him and say get over it, it’s gonna be a long time of them paying off the debt in the interest that you occurred in their name. And if you don’t acknowledge that, it’s a lot tougher for them to heal. When you acknowledge that it was really profound what I did to you, it makes it a lot easier for them to hurt to forgive and to move on. To go back to your first question, I think part of healing too is keeping them from getting stuck in the whys. Because like you said they it easily moves into a blame game. And that’s not a that’s not helpful. Once they start to heal. And there’s a true state of contrition in this true forgiveness, then it’s often easier for them to sort through, yes, I did contribute to this part of the relationship and not feel ownership for the wound or the wounding, but ownership for the foundation that was in place that the wound grew from many times that’s an important piece. I think the greatest thing, though, that I help couples to do is to reverse the patterns. And I’ll use that language with them often. When we’ve been wounded, our trauma brain doesn’t, doesn’t store the details as much as it stores the pattern. And people forget that the patterns re traumatize us and the patterns are triggers. One husband, he said, I went out to Walmart, told her, I’m headed to Walmart because I need to pick something up. And he said, I got there and they didn’t have it. So I went over to the drugstore, and they didn’t have it. So I went over to the hardware store. And then I came home, and my wife was totally freaked out. He said, I didn’t understand what I did wrong. And she’s like, You lied to me. You were someplace that you weren’t supposed to be. And he said, it’s not a big deal. And I interrupted him said, it’s a huge deal. Because what happened in the affair, you are someplace, your wife didn’t know where you told her, You were someplace else. And you were engaging in an activity she didn’t know about that was wounding to her. All she knew is you went someplace that you didn’t tell her that her unconscious brain, her trauma brain recognize the same pattern, and she freaked out. Understanding that we have to reverse those patterns. So you have to be ultra transparent to her for a while, or the wife that kept the relationship hidden. And through her texts, she has to keep those altra open for a while, that I had to be the detective to find out what was going on in your life. Okay, we reverse that pattern. Everyday you sit down and you go through, you go through fantasy, you go through some kind of, of a, here’s where I’m at, here’s where I’m at, in my healing, or here’s how I’ve stayed faithful to you, that you’re bringing the information to them. If a potential affair partner or a past affair partner reaches out to you, the first person that knows immediately is your spouse with so you’re drawing them into the middle of the relationship, whatever the patterns are, that contributed to the the acting out behavior, or were a part of the acting out behavior, we have to identify those and flip those in the relationship. All of that allows for to heal.
Jonathan Dougherty
Yeah, as part of this overall kind of restoration process, how important is increasing one’s like emotional intelligence, and just being able to communicate emotions, to understand emotions to identify emotions. And I’m, in some ways, I don’t want to be too stereotypical. But I do a lot with men. And there’s a huge deficiency in the emotional quotient, let’s say, how important is that to this overall, not just restoration, but really the rebuilding of a thriving relationship? Because the reason I asked that, Michael is because I see so many times in our ministry that some of the factors that that are part of betrayal in a marriage, is the fact that there’s a loss of knowing how to actually connect at that deeper emotional level with their spouse, when they’ve only really known how to kind of be functional with each other. They know how to be good partners and finance are good partners as parents, but in terms of actually knowing how do they connect their hearts, that’s usually an area that that’s easily drifted. So how important is that in this process,
Michael Sytsma
I would shift the language to how valuable it is, it’s extremely valuable. The the issue comes in when sometimes I’m assessing the relationship, and it’s never been there. And some neurotypical or neuro atypical brains are really struggle with connecting emotionally, and asking your spouse to connect emotionally, when their brains hardly wired to do it is a longer task. And we have exercises in therapy that we can walk people through that teach them the skills, because like you said, it’s really valuable. But part of what I love about working with these kinds of couples, is we’ve just, we’ve just witnessed a huge explosion in the relationship. It’s torn everything apart. And they have the opportunity to come back together radically different than how they’ve ever been, and helping the wounding spouse to sit in the pain of the wounded spouse, and to really empathize and care. And you’re right. Often that means as therapists or as coaches, we are really guiding that process and teaching them the skills to where the wounded spouse feels like I was hurt. I always point out, you will never fully understand each other’s position. You will never fully understand why your spouse acted out sexually. You will never fully understand the depth of the wound that you cause. But we can get pretty close as we empathically connect with each other then that allows for a healing that’s far richer, it is extremely valuable. However, I would want to say that it’s not critical. I’ve watched couples really heal well, even when one spouse struggles to have some emotional connectivity. Because they are able to say the words they’re able to follow through on commitments, they’re able to show self discipline, they’re able to, to prioritize the relationship and the spouse. So even without that, that rich emotional connection, they can still heal really well. But it is your right very valuable.
Jonathan Dougherty
Well, it isn’t that the beauty of how God has designed a man and a woman to come together in marriage is that there’s no such thing as like, okay, there’s the picture right there look up on the wall. That’s that’s what a perfect couple looks like. It’s like, no, it’s there’s so much dynamic to it. So before we before we wrap up our conversation, there’s one other key area that I want to ask you about, because I’m sure you’ve seen this, in all of your experience, what are some of the key dangers to watch out for or pitfalls that couples can run into or maybe just obstacles that there’s they’re going to run into as they seek to do this really hard work, of restoring after there’s been betrayal and relationship?
Michael Sytsma
I think expecting their spouse to know their mind. I expect you to know how wounding it was to me, or expect you to understand how difficult to temptation was and why fell, our spouse will not ever really fully understand us, nor will we fully understand them. If we if they need to do that before they can heal and move on. They’re going to stay stuck. The hopelessness that is a part of the process. You know that you’re not healing fast enough? I don’t think you will ever heal from this. And I always look at him say, Well, maybe they won’t. But why would you bail now, let’s stay present and allow them to come back to the table. People often forget to let each other be human, you just deeply wounded your spouse, they’re going to have very dark days, they’re gonna have good days. And some days you’re thinking we’re both going crazy. Don’t lose hope in that process. Because as you continue to lean in, and you allow each other to be human, allow your spouse to grieve the loss of a relationship that shouldn’t have been, that’s a human thing. It’s important, horribly painful should not have occurred. But they’re grieving the loss of relationship. You’re grieving the loss of what should have been what was covenanted, you’re going to have bad days, just like any grief. And so allowing each other to be human not to give up on hope. But to hang into, you know, what, next week will be better. Next month will be better, we will slowly figure this out. In we’re not going to give up Partway into the process. I also would say it helps to have in this is tough in our culture. But it helps to have some trusted people that know the story. That you know, and those days that I really don’t like you for what you did to me, or I really don’t like you for how you’re treating me now that I did this to you. I’ve got somebody that I can call up and they commiserate with me, and then point me back to the relationship. You know, sin is bigger than any of us individually. And we need to have support. Whether that be a coach, a counselor, a therapist, a support group, or just a couple of good friends who know the story, who believe in our marriage and believe in our spouse.
Jonathan Dougherty
Yeah. Well, as we wrap up here, Michael, what are just some, some final just kind of words of encouragement and hope that you would give to the couples out there that are saying, Hey, we’re trying to navigate this. And then also what are some resources that you can point them to that might be helpful,
Michael Sytsma
okay. God’s sense of timing is very different than ours. It irritates me to no end. You know, he made a promise to Abraham. And it was, what, 500 years later before he started to fulfill it. I want healing to occur today. Now, I want to be fixed. Now. I want my heart to be okay. Now, I want you to not experience the wound that I caused to you now, and it doesn’t work that way. It often takes years to heal. So, I would tell people be patient and allow the healing to occur. that healing process is rich and profound. And that’s where we learn. You know, the wounding spouse learns contrition and repentance. They learn a sense of brokenness that nobody should have to learn. The forgiving spouse has to forgive has to extend mercy and grace. They have to learn to believe in somebody who wounded them. Those are rich skills, they’re rich characteristics that take time for us to learn. So I’d invite them to be patient in the process would be the, and have hope, because almost all the couples I work with go on to have far better marriages than they did going into the wound. In terms of resources, really excited that the, you know, my first book is now out secrets of sex and marriage. We studied a few 1000 married individuals and about 500 Married couples, and ask them questions about sexuality in their marriage in the relationship and learn some really cool surprises that can help transform couples lives and helping them to identify vision and what’s what does healthy sexuality and marriage looks like. And that can be very important for couples that are in healing. Because many times they didn’t have a healthy relationship to start with in terms of physical intimacy, and heavy vision for Okay, all of that was broken. Here’s where we’re going, here’s what we want it to be. Those can be good. They can find me at intimate marriage.org. Or they can find out about the book at Secrets of sex and marriage.com.
Jonathan Dougherty
All right. Well, Michael, this has been a great conversation. And I think it will bring a lot of hope and just some clarity and direction for couples that are trying to just figure out, hey, how do we, how do we navigate after we’ve had this experience of betrayal and our relationships. So thank you for what you’re doing. And thank you for being with us today.
Michael Sytsma
Thanks for letting me be a part of it.
Jonathan Dougherty
Yeah, well, listeners and viewers, we’re going to put all of that information in the show notes so that you can find Michael’s book and their website. And we would encourage you to take that next step. We’re always here to help you along your journey. So please feel free to reach out to us and we look forward to seeing you back here again next time. On the pure sex radio programs take care. Pure sex radio is paid for by be broken ministries, visit us online at pure sex radio.com
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