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In our most deeply-personal episode ever, Brad, Taco Mike, and guest Jimmy Durbin discuss how they all three survived lengthy separations that ultimately helped save their marriages. Learn from these examples about how they were wrong in the first place, how they were wrong throughout the process, how they made it right again and how YOU can get right by recognizing your own part in relationship wrongs, regardless of your current status as a single, married, partnered, separated or divorced person.

We discuss how trauma, failures from past relationships, self-righteousness and fake, phony strength and other issues made us drift intro colossal failure. Mike makes a comparison between his past and a character from Lord of the Rings, Jimmy discloses his slow maturing process, and Brad outlines his self-righteous judgement and projecting, all of which led to near-divorces. Ultimately, we became grown-ass men and acknowledged our faults and worked it out. Miraculously, our wives forgave us and we are each now happily married. Brad and Jimmy are therapists and Taco Mike is a recovery and relationship coach and entrepreneur.

We teach how our crucial mistakes created pain in our lives:

• ego
• masks
• denial
• addiction
• blaming
• perfectionism
• control
• idealism
• impatience

We also share how we discovered these principles after a lengthy season of hardheadedness and how these saved our relationships:

• humility
• patience
• discipline
• gratitude
• forgiveness of self and spouse
• controlling selfish urges
• contact with a higher power
• ongoing dialogue with honest men

If you are the person in a failing relationship with a dirtbag of a human, this can help you understand where he may be coming from and what you may be able to do to help him.

Who*ever is reading this: you need this information more than you could even know. You don’t even have to be in a bad relationship to learn through our experiences what may be amiss, perhaps even in you. This episode colorfully illustrates the grueling and gut-wrenching experiences of a combined 5 years of manning-the-freak-up by three unassuming alphas who learned to conquer their self-absorption and reconnect with the women they love.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Brad Singletary (00:01:15):
Welcome back to the alpha quorum show. Guys, Brad Singletary here. This is about to go off right now. This is going to be I believe, our best show ever. We have a great guest that I’m going to introduce here in just a few minutes here with taco Mike and Jimmy Durbin. I just want to talk about Jimmy just for a second before we get started here. So I’ve known Jimmy for about a year. Jimmy’s in longterm recovery from pornography, alcohol, heroin, meth, bulemia and prescription pills. His history includes an attempted suicide, depression, self-hate, and even homelessness. He says that through God’s tender mercies and while applying the 12 steps of recovery and implementing a spiritual program of action in his life, he’s become aware of his pride, ego, and developed a manner of living that allows him to live wholehearted. Today we’re going to talk about stories of redemption. Jimmy is a, is a great example of that.

Brad Singletary (00:02:11):
He’s working in the professional world as a substance abuse counselor and a clinical social work intern. He has done many great things. I’ve got a whole list here in his bio. He’s been a board member of LDS family services, a program coordinator for a 12 step recovery group and has served the Nevada, Arizona and Havasupai Indian reservation. Grateful to have Jimmy Durbin with us. We’re going to get started today. We’re going to be talking about separation as an option, separation from your marriage or your significant relationship. We’re gonna talk about some of our own stories and I just want to first, I guess, ask each of us to open this up with the context of your marriage before you got separated. So maybe I’ll, I’ll begin there. So I had [previously] been married for 13 years. I had been recently divorced and actually I wasn’t even divorced yet when I met my wife, I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.

Brad Singletary (00:03:13):
We met online. It was a very short courtship, something I encourage people not to do after the ending of a relationship, but we both had some trauma that we hadn’t healed from and we kind of had a Rocky beginning. There was lots of fighting and insecurity because of the things that we’d been through before. So we were together for a few years before we got married. And then after we were married, we had two children. And so we had two toddlers total of six boys between us, a blended family, hers, mine, and ours. And she went through some trauma and the effects of that trauma really kind of thwarted our progress as a couple. And I became impatient. And as much as I encourage people to hold space for their partner and for the things that they’re dealing with that are difficult, I wasn’t able to do that because the emotion that she had most was anger.

Brad Singletary (00:04:16):
And so if she had to cry, I could hold her and wipe her tears and comfort her in those moments. The emotions of anger seemed to be kind of projected at me. And I’ll talk a little bit later as we, as we let this story unfold about how, how, you know, the realization that I came to about my part in all this stuff. But so we had been married a few years, been together, I guess, Oh, I don’t know, seven or eight years. And things were just difficult and the decision was actually mine to separate. How about you guys talk about the beginning or, or your relationship before you got separated. We’re going to kind of unfold this as we go here, but how about you Mike?

Mike Spurgin (00:05:04):
So we were married 15 years and then some our marriage, I’m going to just speak from, from my standpoint, you know, I will, I’ll frame it from my perspective. I thought and believe that all right, convince myself that we are in a very happy situation, that things were going well and we’re going very smoothly. What I didn’t realize that I had this huge sort of like I was, I built our marriage on top of this like lava dome and it was underneath was like resentments, resentments, and then disappointments of for things that she was doing and not doing that I was projecting into what I thought an ideal marriage looked like or was supposed to look or act like. And then when she disappointed, which she could do nothing other than disappoint because she is a human. And I had set up this whole projected image that was not real or realistic.

Mike Spurgin (00:06:00):
And so when she would inevitably disappoint and then it allowed me to be mad and be angry and then add a little more reason to be a victim and to also just continue the whole cycle of this low level, low grade, low fever, resentment. And I really, somehow in some way got this weird charge out of holding these resentments like we’re watching. This is, this is interesting timing. Right now we’re watching the Lord of the ring trilogy with my son. He sees 13, and that’s a complicated storyline and the movies are there. They’re deep and they’re dark and they’re challenging. And so my wife and I have decided like he’s probably ready to, to watch that and have this unfold to him. And last night we watched the first one and I looked at that little Gollum creature, right? And he’s, he’s down in the cave and the cave is dark and drippy and wet and smelly.

Mike Spurgin (00:06:58):
You can just imagine you could put yourself there. He’s got this little ring that he’s just holding there and, and it’s, it’s destructive. It will destroy him and he fully knows it, but yet there’s something so like delicious and powerful and profound holding onto this thing that he knows is like harming him. And that is exactly the feeling that I had and held for 15 years. And it just, I couldn’t give it up and didn’t want to give it up and that clouded everything. And so I just felt like we were in this great marriage. But I think the reality was is there was a lot that was broken that I was just pretending wasn’t there.

Jimmy Durbin (00:07:35):
How about you Jimmy? Well, first, thanks for the warm introduction. You bet. I appreciate being here. So as I mentioned, 29 years in may I am a person in longterm recovery and I didn’t choose to separate it. It came as a result of the addiction. Mmm. I couldn’t hold a job, kept spending the money my dad was sending every month. And when she found out she, the mama bear came out and she said, get out. Rightfully so. So I went where any 42 year old man would go, which was to my mom’s, you know, I’m gonna run to my mommy’s house. But it didn’t work. You know, I did another white knuckle off the heroin, but went right to the bottle. And so from there it was to inpatient rehab, but in our marriage Shannon was young, was 20, when we got married. I was young as well and just had, like Mike had mentioned, just some perceptions, ideals of what I thought marriage was. And at that time I was in the hotel business. So I distinctly trying to rewire Shannon circuitry to make her become what I thought she needed to become and essentially destroyed

Jimmy Durbin (00:09:09):
And created a lot of insecurities in her as a result of my actions. And then with the addiction, you know, she’d go left and one day that’d be fine and she’d go left again. And depending on where I was, I’d blow up and it was a landmine. So she, she had no chance, you know, it was set up very toxic that way as a result of my addiction. And then

Brad Singletary (00:09:33):
Once I left,

Jimmy Durbin (00:09:36):
Mmm. You know, that’s when the unfolding of the separation and how to get back.

Brad Singletary (00:09:42):
But that’s kind of where it was prior to. So she decided for you to separate, how about you Mike, who, who made the decision that you needed to make a change in your living situation?

Mike Spurgin (00:09:51):
Yeah, it was colossally colossally evident by what had happened and maybe we’ll, we’ll get into that a little bit later, but I, she did. And with the, with the supportive, like both sides of our family because of how things were going.

Brad Singletary (00:10:11):
In my case, it was my choice. I thought I kinda had a, a very self righteous point of view and I just thought I didn’t deserve to be treated the way that I was treated. I had a serious change of heart through that year. But it was initially my decision. And I actually left on January 1st of that year before she woke up that morning. I got up and got a basket full of clothes and went to my friend’s house and crashed on his house for awhile and and through the next couple of weeks, told her that then she needed to move. So although I left, I made her move out and I’m not proud of that, but that’s it. That’s how it went down. That’s, that’s kinda where I was at the time. Did she know that you were going to leave that morning? She had no idea.

Brad Singletary (00:10:59):
She had no idea. I had written her an email, kind of demanding some conversation and demanding apology and things like that. And she apparently didn’t get the email. I still, I’m not quite sure whether or not she did or didn’t. It was, I always say it’s Gmail to Gmail. There’s no way that fails. But for whatever reason she didn’t see it. And I kind of put this ultimatum out there. If X, Y, Z doesn’t happen by January 1st I’m gone. And I didn’t have any conversation with her. Felt it was too dangerous to talk at that point. So I just bailed. So that’s how it kinda came about for us. That’s how they separation actually.

Mike Spurgin (00:11:36):
Did you leave like some goodbye note on the table or something? Nope,

Brad Singletary (00:11:38):
Just ghost gone and I don’t even remember through that day she was like, where are you? What are you doing? And I said, I don’t live there anymore. And you know, check your, I didn’t know that she hadn’t seen the email. I didn’t know and I just thought she was resisting. So that was a poor, poor choice on my part to just kind of throw it out there in writing. I sent, I tend to communicate better that way sometimes, but I just assumed that she would have seen it and I thought she was opting out of the conversation that I needed. And so pretty bad on my showed her. Then there’s the immediate regret. Chicken little, I’m just going to sneak out the back door. I don’t want to let her know. Serious. I, so so we talked about in both of your cases your wives made the decision. So who is to blame? So at that time you’re saying that both of your wives would have said that the false where you were yours, I mean you’re admitting to some pretty serious things that you were doing to destroy that.

Mike Spurgin (00:12:43):
Yeah, my wife would say that she, if she was here, she would say that she was a contributor to the sort of like the chronic because she would have to write any of us who are in a relationship with another person. We’re the common denominator. We’re in relationships with many people and if those are dysfunctional or have problems, then that thread carries through and all of us fall into that boat. Right. And so she’d be very gracious and let’s say that some of the, some of the things that led to that moment she would be complicit in or a participant in. However, what I had done, maybe maybe to tag on kind of where Jimmy was coming from. One of the things that was a common thread to my own life was a Sikh, I almost lived like a secret underlying set of destructive behaviors and ideas and attitudes that undermine any good faith effort that she was putting into it.

Mike Spurgin (00:13:32):
So her dysfunction was normal to anyone. My dysfunction was aggravated and accelerated because of just the dis ease that I carried within me. The unresolved anger and unresolved issues that I just ran and hid from and denied those created in me so much darkness, so much, so much heaviness that I, you know, I had these thoughts, dreams that were so much more accelerated and aggressive over her own human stumbles. Mine were, you know, she would catch her FID metaphorically speaking. She would catch her foot on the rug and would stumble. What I would do is I would chainsaw up the floor and then dig a hole and then I’d rent a machine to dig a hole. Right. And so like this is the level of the two, the two perspectives that, that are living under the same roof. And so when she decided it was, it was smart and safe for her to move out, everyone else in our life agreed and there was no alternative and it was the right call.

Mike Spurgin (00:14:42):
And I back her 1000%. And one of the beauties that have come from our own personal experience is how transformative and all three of us are here right now. How transformative taking assertive decisive action can be in your life or in the life of your relationship when you’ve maybe been in denial for an untold amount of time. Cause I know that our relationship was both in both instances, often very good and then very bad. And what was so harmful was my secrecy and my secret living that was, that was a blind side to her. It came out of left field at her. And so she had no other choice than to respond and to react by leaving. And that was the right choice. I know of people and I just want to say this piece and then I want to hear Jimmy’s side.

Mike Spurgin (00:15:42):
I know people who are, who don’t believe this is what I want to say. I was trying to get to the punchline. I know people who don’t believe that that separation is a viable option for them because to them it feels like a cop out or some sort of like pre divorce thing and I’ve made up my mind I’m not going to get a divorce or whatever. My experience taught me that separation is a as a 1000% viable option for, I’m not going to say any marriage, but I’m going to say dysfunctional life support marriages that seem hopeless and dead ended that seem like they and feel like they are moving towards the divorce train is on the track and that’s where it’s going to end up. I would say that still may be the reality, but if, if it’s not, if one of the stations on the journey to divorce isn’t separation, then that’s incomplete. That’s like an incomplete journey. And I am a, I am pro where the circumstances warrant it. I am pro separation and believe it’s an absolute essential tool in the marriage journey with these dysfunctional issues.

Jimmy Durbin (00:16:56):
Yeah. That’s good. I like what Mike has said. I agree. I think it’s [inaudible]

Mike Spurgin (00:17:00):
There’s violence. Absolutely. You know

Jimmy Durbin (00:17:06):
But for me,

Mike Spurgin (00:17:09):
Because I too was leaving living a secret life and trying to keep my drug use and drinking

Jimmy Durbin (00:17:17):
Mmm.

Mike Spurgin (00:17:19):
And the porn

Jimmy Durbin (00:17:20):
Separate from her when I would get caught

Mike Spurgin (00:17:25):
Or come home drunk,

Jimmy Durbin (00:17:28):
Mmm. Shannon’s part, it’s probably just being codependent, you know? And allowing it to like the mama bear could have come out a lot sooner. She had absolutely every reason to leave at any point the journey. And that’s been part of her work of, of healing and, and realizing how that played into what our life experience was. But I, I’m causal. I’m, I personally believe I’m 100% responsible 100% of the time. And when I work with men, it’s, and the reason that need that works for me is with my ego and my pride. When I could take 100% responsibility. It’s kind of like the Kevin bacon, six degrees of separation, right? So if an I lost lie Ash falls out, I can connect the dots and bring that back to the fact that I’m an alcoholic and I caused the stressed in the betrayal trauma that caused that eyelash to fall out. And so to try to insert a percentage of her into that equation feeds my ego in a very deceptive way. And so it’s a way for me to keep my ego at check and take responsibility in an effort to stay neutral so that Shannon could heal. And that’s, that’s part of it. Yeah.

Brad Singletary (00:19:06):
Process. So you’re both saying that you knew your kind of culpability, you accepted your responsibility, but were you angry? I mean, what was the feeling when the, when the hammer drops, what was your response to that?

Jimmy Durbin (00:19:19):
That’s for absolutely. You’re the reason I’m drinking and drugging. Like, yeah. Angry, pissed off. Restless discontent. Yeah, absolutely resentful you if you know, I’ve learned this after the fact, but going through it I had this huge hole and I was trying to fill it with anything that I could get, you know what I mean? If the definition of addiction is something I do impulsively and chronically, you name it or do anything there. Absolutely. I was trying to fill something that couldn’t be filled and so I had to transfer all that energy on to her. Yeah, she was at fault. I had to believe that it was constructed that way.

Brad Singletary (00:19:57):
How about you Mike? You’re saying everyone in your lives knew that that was the right thing to do, but did you so readily accept it or did you, were you resistant? Were you pissed off? What was your emotional reaction to the news that like, love this is we got to do something different?

Mike Spurgin (00:20:13):
I feeling about it at the time was complete awash of, it was so complex in those like early moments in early days because what I had done is I had, I had wrecked, I had, I had created so many house of cards in my life and they all came, they all came crashing down at one time and so for me it wasn’t, I didn’t have the ability to try to weasel out of one thing. I would have had to weasel out of 75

Jimmy Durbin (00:20:43):
[Inaudible]

Mike Spurgin (00:20:44):
And I had done such a such I guess a good job of masking and pretending and projecting. I guess I was trying, I was, I was trying to live this perfect life and project this perfect life. I had so many things that I was involved in on so many different levels and I was working tirelessly to keep all of those, all of the image up, up, up, up in each of those things. And so like I just had to ma mentally manage who I had said things to and how I was being perceived and projected at and and all of those things all at one time. Everybody everywhere universally globally, and it, it, it just came crashing down and so I felt so many emotions when it was exposed, like when I became exposed as a fraud. It was at first the panic and shame and the and the disgust of self that I wanted to disappear.

Mike Spurgin (00:21:45):
I wanted to go into a hole and never be seen again. Like I wanted to figure out a way to erase who I had been as a person and to have been that, gee, that great Jimmy Stewart movie a, what is it? Where he like is was never born. What does that movie called? Christmas story, the Christmas movie, I forget the name of it. Anyway, the guy is so distraught over his life, he just prays out loud. I wish I was never born. That was me. I want to never be born and raised every, every monument that I ever built to myself. My ego was so huge. Really, this was just this ego self-serving system that I was on. And so when it was all exposed as a fraud, after I got through that first feeling, the first hours or whatever of just I need to disappear in, wish I’d never existed, then I had this wash of relief of the, the, the actual what I felt was like the removal of the, the, the S the S wheel was no longer spinning.

Mike Spurgin (00:22:42):
The hamster wheel that I was in. The bearings froze up. The thing fell over, you know, in, in a blew up and there was, I was looking at thing and flames and I felt a ton of relief because I realized like, it’s all over. It’s gone. Like that life that I was living, the way that I was living, the energy and effort that I expended into doing that, I could no longer go back to that. And so looking at the flaming wreckage of it was incredibly relieving and satisfying because in that moment I realized, okay, I have a couple of quick choices I need to make here. I can become a nothing. I can, I can off myself. So that’s for sure an option. And let’s explore that, which, which you know, that’s a rabbit hole that I, I saw myself going down. Let’s just, let’s do that.

Mike Spurgin (00:23:27):
Let’s disappear. Let’s ceased to exist. Okay. So that was on the table. Another one was, I’ll just, I’ll vanish, but I’ll just, I’ll stay alive, but I’ll vanish. I’ll just disappear. I’ll go to Mexico, I’ll just go away. I’ll see. I’ll, I’ll stay alive, but I’ll, I’ll vanish out of the life of these people. I’ll go away. And then the third option was I’ll own it. I’ll man up and I’ll deal. And that option came last because the first two were the path of least resistance. And those were the ones that I thought of immediately and explored initially. And then through, and I’ll have a conversation, I’ll go to lunch with anyone I’m leaving, I’m carefully leaving details out and I’ll go to lunch with anyone and, and talk full story. I don’t think this is the time or the place to really dive some of that stuff, but I have no problem meeting anybody over a hamburger and, and we’ll lay all this stuff out.

Mike Spurgin (00:24:24):
So when I’m looking at the flaming wreckage of everything, there was just a huge weight and relief that came knowing I don’t, I’m not going to be that guy anymore and I’m not going to, I’m going to now be able to take whatever energy that’s in this body, in this, in, in me and apply it to something different and become reborn and become remade and become a different person that that energy started to take over. And I started to feel some hope and optimism and excitement. And these are days, this is, this is sort of a, I’m walking you through a multi multi day thing, but this was sort of the arc of those [inaudible].

Jimmy Durbin (00:25:08):
So that change happened just within a few days from a few days. The resistance and the in the, in the anger and frustration and then the, the, the easy way out kind of options. What about you Jimmy? How long did it take? Years? Years, years. I explored option a, you know I mean the timeline for me was I lost a job in the hotel industry in July. This is in 2008. And then lied to everyone that because of the economy, they are just getting rid of their top paid salespeople. Right. So once again, just fake and a phony. And then it was in September September 9th, 2009 that I tried to kill myself. So over a year later, no. Oh, [inaudible] yeah. Okay. August, September two months. Okay. chose that date specifically because nine, nine, nine upside down kind of gives you an idea of where I was mentally, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually.

Jimmy Durbin (00:26:09):
Like I was done. That was my disappear. And I couldn’t even do that. Right. You know, woke up the next morning, just pissed at God, pissed at myself, just I was meant to live this tortured existence. And then one last runner and then mama bear came out. Shannon asked me to leave and middle October. But I didn’t get that. I had no idea who I was. In fact, in my head, in order for me to ask for help meant that I also had to own, I was broken, I was wrong, I was unworthy. And a guy like me, I’m not going to do that. I can’t, I can’t admit to that. So, which meant that I was boxed in this corner where I couldn’t ask for help and so it was just Groundhog’s day over and over and over again. And then when I went to rehab the plan was for me to stay up in salt Lake for six months.

Jimmy Durbin (00:27:14):
So do the inpatient and stay up there and do that patient. So Shannon wanted me out, you know, till April and I got kicked out from rehab it 45 days cause I don’t like to be told what to do and that’s, yeah. And that’s when I found myself, you know, homeless and, but I didn’t find that sense of maybe I’ve gotten onto something, maybe I’ve surrendered and gotten to a place where I could unpack everything that’s happened to me and start to like myself again, like that, that didn’t happen for till I was a couple of years sober. Mmm. And then I could see the light, then I was showing up differently and my countenance had changed and I didn’t love myself at that point, but I, there was some good in me. And I, that was my truth, you know, that was undeniable. My head couldn’t find a way to unconvinced me of that.

Jimmy Durbin (00:28:22):
And so at that point was when I’m like, okay, I, I think there’s a way through this. And of course Shannon was like, I don’t want you to come back to Vegas. Like you need to stay away. So I stayed up in salt Lake until I was six months sober and then I was ready to kind of get a job. And so we talked about that and she’s like, [inaudible] no, you’re not welcome at the house. Like, okay, so stayed in sober living and that’s kinda, that was this exploration in this journey of really kind of dissecting and being mindful and aware of like, what is this? And I wanted back in, you know, I wanted it back in the house. And so manipulatively I decided to get a puppy, you know, and grabbed her and said, Hey, I want to show you something. And so once again, my old behavior, she fell in love with a dog and I said, listen, I will, I’ll come over every day.

Jimmy Durbin (00:29:15):
I’ll walk in, I’ll clean up the poop. You know, just, I was trying desperately to find a way to get back into the house. There’s some dude right now, listen to this show. Who’s Googling like, puppies Las Vegas. Great idea. JV. How did you go from flunking out of rehab to the next step? What was the next step? Find a place to live. Yeah. The way it unfolded was I got kicked out on December 24th and the day before Christmas, day before Christmas, Merry Christmas, Jimmy. Yeah, exactly. And I didn’t use, I didn’t drink. I went to the Alano club, hopped up on nicotine and coffee. Yeah. And you know, the midnight meeting came and Jimmy, you got to go. I’m like, I don’t have a place to stay, but you’re an addict. You’re resourceful. You’ll figure something out. And that was me on the corner, you know, at one o’clock in the morning, it’s cold.

Jimmy Durbin (00:30:20):
I’m so tired. Christmas day now. Yeah. And screaming at God, you know, I’m one of those crazy people on the corner just talking to myself, Lieutenant Dan screaming, what’s the sky like? What do you want from me? Just using all kinds of cuss words and just good, you know, like, and I heard the Lord’s voice of like, I want all of you. And, and that for me at that moment meant do the 12 steps, just surrender. Let, let me help you please. And that was, that was my third step of just making that decision to turn my will and my life over. And that for me is when the miracle began. That was, you know, step 12 promises a spiritual awakening. And that was one of them for me of just, and I, and I gave myself to the Lord. I gave myself to the 12 steps. And it’s, it’s been an unfolding ever since.

Brad Singletary (00:31:19):
It took me several months to even even consider what I, you know, that I was a part of this problem. I was a, I felt like I was, had been treated pretty poorly. I didn’t deserve that. But through this separation we started, my wife and I started going to lunch and so we worked nearby each other and so we would meet somewhere. We would have 30, 45 minutes for lunch and one day she, the first few of those they didn’t go very well and we couldn’t even sit down and have, you know, a salad and soup before. There was some tension and it just wasn’t ending well in one of those days. She said she looked at me and said, you’re a narcissist. Well, as a, as a clinician, I was thinking in terms of the you know, the clinical definition of like narcissistic personality disorder. And I knew that that didn’t fit for me,

Jimmy Durbin (00:32:11):
Really got under my skin. I actually got up and left and just kind of walks away and goes back to work and such a narcissistic injury. Right. But I it, it kind of sunk into me a little bit and I just thought, no, you’re the narcissist, you know, and you’re the one who does. Yeah. Perfect. Right? Yeah. Just bouncing it right back. But can you imagine being somebody sitting at the table next to you guys listening to all those? No. Actually what he did and said, I’m going to go to the restroom and never came to that. I sent you an [inaudible]

Brad Singletary (00:32:40):
An email. So it kinda took a little bit for me to really think about that. And I started to think about the ways that I had been absorbed in myself. And there were some things. One of the ways I like to ask questions of my clients is, okay, if we’re watching your sh, if we’re watching the Brad and Kara show on TV, you know, what would people have seen? What, what does America tweeting when they watch you happening on what I’m looking for is like objective behavior. Yes, she did say this terrible, hurtful thing. Yes, this did happen. People see it. What I wasn’t seeing was that was my lacking in sort of meeting her needs and you know, some of the things that I guess I had done that it took me a little while to recognize I was, I’m kind of a workaholic, you know, that’s, I’m have multiple addictions that I battle daily, but one of those is just being busy.

Brad Singletary (00:33:29):
I feel like I always have to be dreaming up some new thing and working on a project and you know, sleep six hours and every part of my day outside of that has to be hustling. And that’s allowed me to do some good things. But I wasn’t there. I blame that on the financial needs of our family. And I just wasn’t really tuned into her. And even when she was th some of the trauma that she went through, she had a brother who was a 25 year old Afghanistan veteran and he died by suicide. And about three months later, another brother overdosed on heroin. And part of what made that traumatic is that he was a sort of in a brain dead state. I don’t know the technical term there, but they, they had to go and pull the plug and he was, you know, there were, he was there and seem to be, you know, sleeping or like he was in a comb or something, but he’s moving, making sounds and things like that.

Brad Singletary (00:34:26):
And she could not believe that he was literally gone and had to say goodbye to this second brother within three months. So it just rocked her and, and there was plenty of crying and that kind of thing, but she just felt a lot of anger. She also had her mother died when she was 14 and had some very difficult adjustments after that and felt a lot of responsibility for, for things that happened with her, her younger brother, the one who took his life. And so that should’ve been something that I could have handled. That should’ve been something I knew all about, but what I didn’t, what I wasn’t prepared for was angry words and, and bitterness directed at me. I felt like I was a resource. I was there to love and help her. And as much as I tried to do that, I just kinda got, I felt like I was getting stomped on. Well, so that was my justification for leaving and saying, look, something’s gotta be different. And I was the guide making the demands. I was saying, look, you need to go to therapy. You need to go to groups. You need to be reading books. Have you listened to any, you know, podcasts? Have you, have you done any work? And I was waiting for, I was waiting for her to check the boxes. And the day she called me a narcissist, I was initially resistant.

Jimmy Durbin (00:35:43):
I still don’t believe I’m a narcissist. You are,

Brad Singletary (00:35:45):
You’re not [inaudible] he says, yes, he, why he sees me. I, we work and we work together every week. But, so I, I had to really take a look in the mirror, took several months to do that. And I have to say maybe it wasn’t such a dramatic thing, but I have to say that it was my higher power that helped me kind of humble myself and say, all right buddy, I got some changing to do too. So talk a little bit about you guys. What happened during your separation? So you come to this realization, I’ve got shit to fix in myself. How did it go? Kind of day to day once you know, once you establish the groove, you’re in the rhythm of, okay, we’re separated. I mean, did you see each other? Did you talk, what were you doing on a regular basis? How did you engage with each other?

Jimmy Durbin (00:36:29):
What was it like once you kind of got settled into the new deal? I remember, so when I went up to salt Lake, I had a three day bag of clothes that I put together when she kicked me out. And that’s subsequently followed up into rehab. And so I was in January ready to come home and like get my truck and get some more clothes. And I had a guy say some things that really helped out that I’ve always kind of passed along. One was if you want to stay married, act married. Hmm. The second one was she’s going to have a bunch of questions and so apologize sincerely take responsibility for everything and then just shut the heck up. And so she didn’t want me to come to the house cause I wasn’t safe. And she did like it. Who would you sleep with?

Jimmy Durbin (00:37:32):
Where’s the money? Where’s the big cowers 401k where did you pawn? And I was like, Holy moly. And I just, I took ownership of everything was just rigorously honest, apologize sincerely. And it just was quiet not to, because I knew that I would try to rationalize or minimize or justify and I didn’t want to do that. Her response was prophetic. What she said to me was, listen, I don’t believe anything you say because you’ve been lying to me for years, which was true. I love you, but I’m not in love with you. Hmm. But, and here was the hope. I will watch your feet. And honestly, I was tired of apologizing. I was tired of hearing myself talk. I wanted to watch my feet too. Like I was curious as to, it’s great analogy, how have it show up? When I would show up what my would do it, it was not about the words anymore.

Jimmy Durbin (00:38:38):
It was about my action and my feet and those things coupled together. Because the other thing that he told me was, listen, that’s her house. Okay. I had this argument of like, well, I’m paying, you know, I’d been unemployed and so my dad was actually paying the mortgage, but I own the house because I’m entitled and I’m the man. And so he said, act like a guest. And I grew up in the hotel business. I know what it means to, you know, have manners. And so literally I got to the front door and I wouldn’t go into the front door until she invited me in. And then I took one step in and close the door and wouldn’t go any further until she invited me into the house. And if I wanted a glass of water, would you mind if I had a glass of water?

Jimmy Durbin (00:39:31):
Would you mind if I use the restroom? And I kept asking until she was like, listen, do you know where the water is? You don’t need to ask, you know, like, but that set a tone for me to keep my ego and my sense of entitlement at Bay. And you know the, the thing that you mentioned like going to lunch, w this is one of the reasons why I think separation is a good option. What I was realizing was that I was trying to control the ingress and the egress. I wanted to build positive experiences with Shannon because it was toxic at every level. And I would step on myself or I’d step on her or I’d feel stepped on and then that my ego would come out and I’d rage or try to twist it and make it her fault old behaviors. So I had to realize like how much time can we spend together before I need to leave.

Jimmy Durbin (00:40:35):
And in the beginning it was, we couldn’t even, we could be in the same room for a while, but you know, when I go see the dog mojo, that was about it. And so that’s one of the reasons why I think separation is helpful as a tool because now I can control when I go in and make sure I have a plan to go out so that I can [inaudible] we have this principle of attraction rather than promotion. And I was trying to attract her into my new way of living in my new countenance and, and I had to be able to, and wanted to control when I went in so that we would have a positive experience, whether it was a minute, half an hour, several hours, and realize that that’s not right or wrong, good or bad. It just is, it’s a marker. It’s a measurement. And I had to be aware of that though. Like sometimes

Brad Singletary (00:41:34):
Five minutes was too much. And so, okay, like this week I just, it needs to be a couple minutes and then go and really trying to understand you’re welcome there. Yeah, exactly. How about you Mike? What were the, what was it? What was the interaction like what, what all happened during the lengthy period of separation? The day to day, week to week stuff?

Mike Spurgin (00:41:54):
Yeah. Dude, I, Jimmy, I like the whole concept. I’m sitting there visualizing, watch my feet. So one of the things that I do, I ride a lot of motorcycles and that can be sketchy on the road. And so if it feels like the car next to me is a threat, you know what I mean? Like I don’t know that this guy is going to see me or not. I look at his tire in relation to the line. I don’t look at the car, I look at the tire. The tire will tell me what he’s doing. If that tire starts to get close to the line, then I, then I have to react and react. So just that all of his relation, she’s not going to watch you just watch your feet. She’s going to see where you go, what you do, how you do it.

Mike Spurgin (00:42:35):
That’s such a clear picture to me of how she was, how she was acting, reacting to your next steps into your progress. And yes, it is true. Attraction, not promotion. That was something that was taught to me through the life of Jesus because whenever he would interact with somebody, his, he used kindness, compassion, love, grace and mercy to attract them to his, to his style of living and thinking. The thing that is so attractive to me about Jesus is his modeling. I don’t care about Jesus from a religious standpoint. It’s irrelevant to me what religion does with Jesus. I don’t care. What’s fascinating to me about the person of Jesus is his way of dealing with difficult people in difficult situations. He did it in a, in a, in a unique and novel way that I don’t see anyone else doing, which is why I don’t use anyone else other than Jesus to sort of inform how I want to have my relationships go.

Mike Spurgin (00:43:54):
And, and, and it looks like this and this is, so to answer your question, Brad, in those early days, weeks and months, it was incredibly tense and difficult and awkward because I had hurt and harmed her in a way that was so catastrophic. She sh she would have been justified in coming at me with both guns with every bit of anger and fire and destruction for the way that I had destroyed things. And so anyone from the outside looking at this who had would have been, we would have been like led in to the big picture. Had she have been the type of person to have made it consci and this would be a decision she would have to make this decision where she would say, you have hurt me, you have harmed me now I will harm you and I will hurt you. Had she have done that, it would have been absolutely justified.

Mike Spurgin (00:45:00):
Nobody would have seen that and faulted her. You hurt. I hurt nobody. Nobody would’ve said you were wrong. They would have all said this woman was justified in this. You get what you get, you get what you get an eye for an eye. And she was patient. And I, you know, to my memory kind and it, it was so [inaudible] it helped me so much to begin to change my heart because what would have happened if she had attacked me? I don’t know. I don’t know, but, but I know that her showing and sharing this level of compassion and, and grace that she did allowed me to, to figure out, first of all, where was that coming from? Where was she getting the power and energy to be in that sort of head zone? Where is that coming from? Because I know if everything was reversed, I would be filling the machine guy would just be slaying.

Mike Spurgin (00:46:17):
You know what I mean? Like there would be no reason why you would be convicted at trial for like that person retaliating. The judge would just say, you know, you get a pass, get full pardon from the governor, you get a pass. So it was so helpful to me. And also, and I must say her mother, her in my inlaws. And my family, I was, I was shown a level of compassion and grace that it changed me. It changed me. And it, it, it’s set to work in me and deepened in me my own growing desire to use the model of grace and empathy and unconditional love to not only heal and transform myself, but then to just use that as the basis of a new life. And so instead of in my old life having as a underlying basis of these, you know, resentments and angers and wounds and all of these things that I, anything I had in my life sat on top of that and it, and it was shaky and sketchy and I had to input huge amounts of energy to continually write this to this.

Mike Spurgin (00:47:33):
I’m thinking of the leaning tower of PISA that’s continually trying to fall over, but yet someone’s putting a ton of money and effort into just holding it and sustaining it. And so that’s what I was doing was inputting huge amounts of effort to just maintain. And because I was shown all of these examples and because I was admittedly broken and accepted, the fact that I was catastrophic, Lee broken and hopelessly lost and gloriously lost. There was no, it occurred to me that there is no shame. Well, let me say it like this. It was, it was a gift to me to have that taken away. It was a gift given to me through the power of the beauty of the universe and the ancestors and the heavens to eventually help me get to a point where I no longer felt like I didn’t warrant this, these gifts that, that, that I did warrant these gifts in the same way that everyone, everyone is eligible for all of these gifts.

Mike Spurgin (00:48:41):
Nothing made me, one of the things that my narcissism made me do initially was to think that I had screwed up in such a way that was beyond the ability of anyone else to love me again and to accept me. And then for my story and my experience to be forgiven and then just for it to be okay. It never crossed my mind that at some point it could be okay. I always thought in that original early broken state that no, I have to fix this cause that’s what I always do. I’m a fixer. I’ll repair it. I’ll just put in, Oh this is okay. And so here’s a little bit of a tweak space too in that early time. So I started going in 12 step and then I thought, well, I’ll just fix everything by freaking pouring the energy and effort. So like I used to have 39 things that I was sort of like managing a manipulating.

Mike Spurgin (00:49:36):
Well that’s all gone. So now I just have one or two or three. Like I was very narrowly focused. Now I thought, well I’ll just zero in on 12 step outs, work the F out of that. Like I’ll just be the best mother scratching 12 step dude ever check list. You know? And I, and I, and I saw myself becoming addicted to that, becoming addicted to the thing that was helping me overcome my myriad of addictions. Like how [inaudible] is that? When I had that realization, it it that was this window into like who I was as a person to that moment that I had built. And like I said just a moment ago that I was everything I was building, I was building on top of this foundation of just these resentments and fears and, and anger. And that’s some of the awareness and awakening that happened when I just realized like I gotta let that shit go. Like it’s over. The old me, the old person that I was, he needs to go away. He’s done that model. Like I, I worked that model for 40 plus years, whatever it was, and it got me here. Do I need any more proof or evidence that that’s a broken model practice by a broken person, with a broken brain and it’s pointless and fruitless. There is no energy or effort that should be expended into trying to work, work that back on to its wheels. It’s done.

Brad Singletary (00:51:12):
It’s interesting you, you make it sound like, and I think what I’m hearing is that your greatest teacher was the person that you hurt. So you’re separated because of things that unfortunate things that happen with your wife or are things that hurt her. So, but she was the one to show you love. She was the one she led with this grace and this love and this, she was kind to you and she had every right to be angry and murderous and you, and you just learn from, I’m wondering about you Jimmy. What, what was, what person or what thing or what idea, what was your greatest teacher? What was the thing that reached you the most during that time?

Jimmy Durbin (00:51:56):
God’s probably the answer short term. The manifestation of how he showed up was through angels. You know, my sponsor my kids, my best friend you know, something that Mike said like Marshall Goldsmith wrote a book, what got you here won’t get you there in leadership. And just realizing like some unconscious habits that keep us from reaching a higher level of spirituality. And I felt the same way. Like my thinking sucks. Mmm. And I had to, for me, I got a group of men that I used as my brain trust and I would run everything through them. And in some pockets of my life I was still on point and I wasn’t too bad. Like I’ve inherently have always felt like I’m an amazing dad. It’s in me. It’s a gift. It’s intuitive. There were other aspects that I was miserable and I use them to help navigate this journey and this path.

Jimmy Durbin (00:53:17):
And it, if it wasn’t for them I’d be lost. You know? So when we talk about like getting men in our lives and having an alpha Quorum and what that takes is for me to be vulnerable. What that takes is for me to be intimate and share something that’s very vulnerable and scary for me with another man in fear of being judged in fear of rejection or betrayal. And I learned through that group that it wasn’t as scary as my head made it out to be, that I could begin to trust. But, but I had to bounce something because of the way I have my thoughts and my thoughts affect my feelings and my feelings affect my behavior. And I had run my life on my feelings. I cannot run my life on my feelings. I’ve got to find a series of actions that I can take every day regardless of how I feel.

Jimmy Durbin (00:54:21):
And that’s the series of actions. And so that, that concept, but I had for someone like me to admit with my huge pride and my huge ego, that my thinking sucks. Like that’s, that was monumental. I was in enough pain and causing enough destruction and so toxic to everyone around me. I mean, unlike Mike story, my inlaws and Shannon’s siblings wanted to kill me, you know, put a, put a hit out on me. My dad gone, you know, my grandparents I was alone. Addiction’s a choice is what they told me. Just don’t choose. You know, I’m not a believer of the choice model with addiction. It is a disease and I had the allergy and I just didn’t realize I wasn’t broken, unworthy, unlovable, any of that. I was just very sick and I needed to get the proper treatment. And so having that knowledge and understanding that and having it be true for my lived experience was helpful in removing a lot of the shame, which then allowed me to be vulnerable and practice being intimate. Mmm.

Brad Singletary (00:55:57):
Does that answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. So for me, I think my greatest teacher was my pain first. I’ll just say that this, this person that I said was, you know, angry and treated me poorly. I recognize through that time how loving she was. And even though things were very difficult, I mean, I sent her out to find an apartment, go find an apartment, I’ll handle this part of the financial stuff and you’re, you’re on your own for the rest. And it was, it was kinda dirty what I did really to hurt after the separation. I just felt like I was justified, but she became very kind and maybe she had been that way all along and I was just kind of stirring that up and, you know, her unmet needs were, were coming out. But what my greatest teacher was my own pain.

Brad Singletary (00:56:43):
I just, I, I kinda, I kind of fell into my addictions even further, just self-indulgence. And it was, it was very difficult. But what I think broke me was the pain that I put myself in, the pain of the realization that it was a humbling process. Really say, I’ve created this. I’m the one that made the eyelash fall. I’m the one that made all of this happen. Everything is my fault. And actually my friend Derek, who’s been on the show in the past, he was one that helped me with that. Also, Mike I, I, I found teachers in my tribe of men just like you’re talking about something that we promote. You just have to put it out there. I mean, I was forwarding text messages to my, to my, to my men’s group, you know, to my friends to say, here’s what she said, here’s what I want to say.

Brad Singletary (00:57:37):
And they would say, don’t, don’t send that, don’t you dare. You’re thinking about this wrong, what she needs. Is this, what she’s asking for this? She needs your, she needs forgiveness, she needs unconditional love, she needs these things. And I didn’t see that. I was just so blinded by my own, you know, self interest and that’s why you need men in your life to help you. I’m curious about something, I guess touchy and feel free whether or not to talk about this, you guys, but I know if guys are separated out there and they’re listening or they’re pondering this, there’s, there’s the temptation or the like what about boundaries on things like, you know, being with other women, where you, where you attempted, where there opportunities you know, I don’t know whether or not you want to, you want to talk about those things.

Brad Singletary (00:58:22):
But for me because I was in a place of self self absorption and I think the tests were coming to me from the universe at like I’d never had. I, yeah, there were people, there were some women who pursued me. There were some people that I had my eye on or had interest in and I never, I never crossed any boundaries. I never did anything that would have been unforgivable. But the temptation was really there and I just know that that’s what separated guys are going to think is, well, who, who am I going to have sex with? What, what happens now? I’m, I’m, I’m lonely. I don’t deserve this isolation that I’m finding myself. And I’m curious about that type of coping that men may want to run toward. Hey, I’m separated. This might not work any way. I’m a douche bag and you know, I’ve ruined this or whatever happens. Any thoughts on that? Whether from your own story or just in general? Yes,

Jimmy Durbin (00:59:23):
If I want to stay married, act, married. And that certainly through that 18 months of separation, I put myself into situations where I had to remind myself of that, that mantra. I remember meeting someone on a flight and she was miss Minnesota and 25

Mike Spurgin (00:59:50):
Jimmy got game.

Jimmy Durbin (00:59:52):
And I could see why a lot of my male friends, you know, turn the wife in for two 25 year olds. You know, I could, I could see it being unfolded in front of me and part of it was the hunt, the man in me, the just Cardinal cave man conquer. And then this little boy inside of me who was scared to death of pursuing that. And like you, I, I didn’t cross any lines, but I, I acted in several occasions, not married and [inaudible] for whatever reason. I’m glad that’s not part of my story. Like I’ve, there’s a lot of things that are part of my story. I don’t, I don’t know if Shannon, I would have survived that. Mmm. I don’t believe we would have. And I’m glad that’s not a decision we had to make through that process, but that even today still it goes like if I want to stay married, what does it look like to act married? No. And as a regulator to, to my behavior.

Mike Spurgin (01:01:14):
How about you Mike? So my story similar to you guys, the in that I never crossed any boundaries. I never experienced anything that would have disqualified me from reconciliation with my wife. And I think one of the things that got set into my mind when this all happened was, and this felt very, it’s PR, this felt like a piece of inspiration or revelation to me. And that was where I had this vision that I would, that I would be on a five year journey, that I should be prepared for the separation the last five years for this journey, last five years that, that I needed to understand this was a long game, that this was going to be a long process and a long journey and I needed to be okay with that. And the thought was like, it wasn’t a inner, are you in or are you out as a CSRA?

Mike Spurgin (01:02:11):
No, it just was fact. Like here it is homey dummy. It’s gonna be a five year journey. You’re on a five year plan is a five year process. Buckle up cowboy like you need to be in this to win it. And as soon as I felt that, then the thought came to me, I’ll like, I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll endure whatever hardship comes and that look now I, you know, in our, so I’m going to answer your question simply no, but the thoughts were there. I had, I had thoughts of like, well, I’m separated. And that means what it means. It means my mind can wander, my eyes can wander, my, my thoughts can go rampant wherever they go. And there’s no, there’s no harm in that. And so for sure that was going on, but the, the, I also had this thought of, no, I’m in the long game.

Mike Spurgin (01:03:06):
I’m not going to screw this up. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna sabotage this. I’m not going to shoot it in the back. And it probably, and I’m also probably afraid to of just like talking to women, my wife and I just have a connection and interaction that is so natural and fluid to me that an, if I’d ever talked to other women, it felt weird and clunky and awkward and I didn’t like it. I did not like it. I went out to lunch one time twice actually with this, with this woman whose brother I had some personal involvement with. And so the first interaction was, Hey, can you, can we meet up for lunch? Like my brother, I want to talk to you about him. And I said, okay, fine. And I think I even must’ve talked to Lisa about this and it was all very sort of, you know, professional I guess.

Mike Spurgin (01:03:56):
And then, and we’re, and we’re, as we were talking, I was just like, I like this. I don’t like it. I don’t like being here. I don’t like talking to her. We had one other lunch to finalize when we finished, there was a couple of things that needed to be wrapped up and she asked me to go to lunch a second time. It happened to be at a place that I really liked. As I look back on it now, I did not want to. It was, this is so funny. It was a place that I really liked. I was like, okay, I want it. Like she said, I’ll pick up the tab this time, and I was like, all right, it’s this place and you’re going to pay for it. Okay, fine. And, but it was just as weird and as awkward as it was before and that really solidified into my mind. I’m like, I have no business being with or talking to any woman other than the woman I’m married to Seb currently separated from, but married to.

Brad Singletary (01:04:46):
Oh, that’s great. I’m glad there wasn’t any embarrassing answers to that. I, we didn’t talk about pre show about what could be. Is it okay to bring that one up? But I’m glad we’re all kind of in the same boat there. Yeah, I’ve definitely some temptations, you know, mostly thoughts, wandering and those kinds of things for me. But I just probably like you might get just some of those. It didn’t feel right to ever explore those kinds of thoughts or conversations. And I’m glad that somehow I was, I dunno, protected or preserved in that regard. So

Mike Spurgin (01:05:16):
Just gotta go ahead. Did you, so I’m curious to both of you guys. I remember when I was just married, so when I was in high school and then before I got married, I was not a player. However, I had plenty of girlfriends and had lots of female attention and lots of Mike’s over there. I had pled enough female attention that, that I could handle. And so right after I got married, I remember thinking like, I gotta sh I gotta like turn this faucet off. Right. And then being on the, it’s funny, I was on this motorcycle trip and I was in this college town and I was looking for a place to stay that night. And as I was sitting at stoplights, I would see groups of girls come up to the stoplight and now I’m 24 20 2324 and they’re 22 2122 my same age and I’m S I got a ring on my hand, I can see it, but I’m, my mind is still like in that mode. And so that persisted for maybe a couple of months, but for the last 24 we’ll be 25 years. Once that sort of turned off, it is not turned back on. Did when you guys were separated, did you feel any of that? Cause I think maybe the answer is no. Maybe you guys have have gone into married brain and that player brain just to me, I don’t think it exists anymore.

Brad Singletary (01:06:40):
I dunno. And that’s a little tricky. I felt a little swagger, you know, I felt a little, I felt a little as I, as I was able to kind of look in the mirror, my self confidence really showed up in a superficial way first. You know, my, I, I gained some self confidence. I felt some, some, some swagger. I guess, and I was actually getting some attention from some people that seem like women were coming out of the woodwork for me. I’d never been a player either. I swear never as good looking as I am. I never was. I never, I didn’t, I wasn’t calling them, I wasn’t pulling them like you are Mike. But there was just, you know, there was just a few things that kinda came my way. And on one of them, the one situation I told a friend about it, an older man that I trusted, a man that had been through some difficult things, we kind of had a spiritual connection and he, I looked up to him in a lot of ways and I told him about, I said, you know, I don’t really want to do this, but it sure is, you know, attempting and he just told me don’t do it.

Brad Singletary (01:07:35):
He just really laid it out for me. Don’t even, don’t even consider that other friends said, go for it. Why not? She’s probably doing it. And those are, those are kind of nice friends. You know, I kind of, I lost a little respect for in some of those situations but thankfully never did anything. And but yeah, I felt a little, I felt a little confidence come back. I felt like I taking pretty good care of myself. And I don’t know if I’m even answering your question there Mike.

Mike Spurgin (01:08:05):
I just think I want to want to have it be projected into the heads of some dude out there who is in the midst of the separation thinking that he is divorced and free. And even then, so Gary Chapman, if you know that guy, the five love languages, I’ve listened to a lot of conversations with him and one of the things I’ve heard him say 5,000 times is never complicate your life with the life of someone else when your life is complicated. And so when you are in the midst of just drama storm and shit sandwich and like every moment of your life is filled with like complexity of your living and her living in the merging of all this, that the dumbest thing you can do emotionally and spiritually and intellectually is pro is to then take someone else who’s got their own shit sandwich that they’re eating and try to mash theirs into yours and make this three-way triangulated, you know, garbage pile.

Mike Spurgin (01:09:08):
Yes. Yes. So his ultimate message is you have no business in any way, shape or form thinking that you’re, you’re available, that you’re eligible, that you’re marketable because you’re not your role, your job, your duty is to get your head and heart right. See to it because you have responsibility for her to help facilitate her getting her head and heart right. And then the children that may be there and the responsibilities that you have, he goes on often and will say, even if you’re divorced, you have no business. There are, there are always exceptions. Right. And everyone, go ahead and write your comments in. Cause I know there are people and I know personally know people who are exceptions to some of these guidance markers, but for the most part getting divorced and then quickly, urgently with desperation getting reinvolved with someone else often leads to the multiple, multiple, multiple, what am I trying to say?

Mike Spurgin (01:10:18):
The multiplier effect of complexity and work and effort and draining. It just, it just, my mind is like I’m getting tired. Just sort of thinking about how much extra work that comes from, from that. So all of that to say T two guys who are at any level on this journey of pre separation separation or even divorce falling into the arms of some complicated other woman [inaudible] your life exponentially. There’s to what reward to them, to, to the, is it worth it? Is it worth it? It may be and you’ll have to decide that on your own. But I think the common wisdom and the, the general wisdom of, of wise people is that it is not it and stay in your lane and focus on what needs to be focused on. Because that stuff becomes such a distraction and yes, it’s soothing and it’s a comforting thing and it’s like a baby during a temperature and you put a pacifier in their mouth. A pacifier is good for five minutes, 10 minutes. What’s a pacifier? That’s a five minute fix falling into the arms of some woman who you know you’re, you’re on the market now. That’s a five minute fix. It’s temporary. It’s, it’s pacifying, but it’s temporary. Never be fulfilling and it’s probably not fulfilling that baby’s gonna want it. Something else. Give it a second. Now babies, you don’t want something else,

Jimmy Durbin (01:11:54):
Jimmy, I want a divorce. First question, do you love her? Like this works if your truth is, I do love her like that. Love is a choice and I need something to anchor myself to. I love Shannon. Now my behavior and my actions and my lifestyle may not say those things, but I’m lost. Like I don’t know who I am. Right? But I never lost sight of the fact that what I fell in love with. The reason I married Shannon was because of love and I, I didn’t want to lose that as well. And I think if you’re, if you can answer that question for yourself, do you love your partner? And the answer is yes. Then what we’re talking about in this context is an option. If the answer is no for whatever your reasons are then you know, you need to process that and go through your own journey and, and, and go through that unfolding.

Jimmy Durbin (01:13:19):
But for me, that I do and that I never lost focus of that. And it probably was the thing that kept me in my lane. It was the thing that had me realize that my thinking sucks that I need to practice these tools and practice these behaviors. And when I go into the house and how long do I stay in, when do I leave in the attraction rather than promotion and keeping my feet moving because I was grounded to the fact that I love this woman and what we had is we’re saving. And I had three boys. That family unit was important to me and I came from divorced parents and I knew as a child I often used to think like if my mom dad knew how much pain I was in as a child because of what they’re going through, I don’t know if they would have gotten divorced.

Jimmy Durbin (01:14:19):
Like it was painful as a child. And the the nights that I heard them fighting and arguing and, and being in my bed and just crying myself to sleep because of the crap that they were dealing with was painful. And I didn’t want to recreate that for my kids. I didn’t want to bring them through the sludge because of what I had created through my addiction and my behaviors and my sense of, and my ego and my pride and the separation allowed me to kind of heal. It allowed me to take a look at myself and what my role was, but I loved her and I wanted that family. I wanted my family to be a family and so I needed to figure my stuff out and what that looked like and what that meant and how, you know, how, how do I put the pieces back together cause it’s 9,000 piece puzzle. So I want to

Brad Singletary (01:15:26):
Talk about what are some of the biggest changes that you made? What were like pivotal lessons or the major things that you know, during this separation. What did you do to really alpha up in behavioral terms? Like there’s a lot of thinking and there’s a lot of processing that you’re sharing about, you know, my mindset changed, but what were the actions that you took that had the biggest impact on your own healing and to where you could bring this back together?

Jimmy Durbin (01:15:54):
Well, there’s only one thing that needed to change. Everything. Change everything. Oh my gosh. Well, I mean I’m a people pleaser. I’m an approval suck. And so I grew up and in my twenties and thirties. Mmm. Thinking I knew how you wanted me to be, so I could tell you what I thought you wanted to hear. Aye never. I was constantly chasing my tail. So for me the separation was finding my me, I need to find Jimmy, you know. One of the techniques, strategies that’s supported me in this process was realizing where my character defects, my ego, my pride was driving the boat.

Jimmy Durbin (01:17:01):
And so I kind of separated those two energies. Mmm. And put a name on it who I called Jim and my spiritual child of God, authentic, vulnerable, intimate self. Who was Jimmy? Jimmy’s the little boy in me that wants to love and to be loved. Jim, his role in my life is to hurt everyone that Jimmy says he loves James a Dick. Wow. Total gyms. And so now the 12 steps helped me with that. The gospel help me with that. Men in my life helped me with that to understand and to see how and when Jim would show up and how he’d find his victims, what he’d wear, how he’d lead his victims, what kind of cologne did he wear? Like it was a deep exercise of really understanding the ying and the yang, the opposition in all things. My natural man, the Cardinal self. And my spiritual self.

Jimmy Durbin (01:18:18):
Cause sometimes studying my, my ego and my pride like an artist, if you look at a painting and there’s a lot of negative space that’ll enhance the positive. And that’s what this exercise did for me was to really understand what causes conditions would come up in my life that would have my ego want to take the lead role and push little Jimmy in the back. Like, Hey dude, I got this. I know how to handle this one. You don’t tell me that, you know, like, Oh my gosh, destructive. And learning to put myself first, my by being vulnerable, by being intimate, by learning rigorous honesty, by asking for help by nurturing that side of me. And that, that was what a lot of the S for the separation did for me was to practice these principles, to practice studying and understanding the opposition of those things.

Jimmy Durbin (01:19:28):
Because that, that, that’s who Jim is. Like Mike said, Jim’s the Dick, you know, Jim’s the attic, narcissistic, self-centered, shallow, plastic, phony fraught. And I want nothing to do with that guy. That’s, that’s the guy that had me killed myself. Like that’s where he wants me to go. Just off yourself, dude. Jimmy wants to be in your life. He wants to be vulnerable, he wants to know about you. He wants to be single-minded, he wants to be in alignment with God. He wants to be useful and to be an instrument in the Lord’s hands and wherever and wherever he can. But that’s not certainly through the addiction and through the separation who was running the show? Jim was running the show and I had to figure out a way to put that guy in the backseat and I had to realize and learn when he was driving the car cause it was never good on him.

Brad Singletary (01:20:28):
I was driving man. I love that. The kind of the separation of identities, the different parts of you. How about you Mike? Biggest important changes, the actions that you took to alpha up?

Mike Spurgin (01:20:43):
Good question. Simplicity. Like I just had to simplify, simplify everything because my, my gift was complexity and I thrived in complexity. And the thing that I did was I use the term lot unlearning. Like I, I unlearned, I stopped believing just basically everything. It just just started, darted over, start over, start from zero and then only allowed in the things that brought me peace, [inaudible] and contentment and let me sleep at night. And so for me that was alpha hang up owning so maybe maybe two steps, maybe it’s two step process, first own at radical acceptance, ridiculously radical self-acceptance like excruciating Harry Carey, guts out operating table, chest open, just freaking blood squirting out heart right there. Here it is doctor, fix this thing full open, raw, horrific, exposed, honesty, acceptance. That was step one. And then the S the second component was then just throwing away everything that rallied in my head, not believing any of my own self-talk, ending the self chatter and then looking to be re built from nothing from scratch and then seeking for the rebuild re the re the refurbishment to be by wise hands guided through careful plan and an architect bigger than me, my higher powers.

Mike Spurgin (01:22:37):
So allowing, being humble enough and just to say I’m not going to rebuild this. I’ll let the higher LMI, higher power do it. That to me was alpha ING up.

Brad Singletary (01:22:50):
How about you? For me it was a, I would S you talked about being a people pleaser. Jimmy, I’m one of my character flaws is idealism. And for me that looks like that, you know, I have the picture perfect idea of what things might look like including other people. Sadly that’s, you know, I look at myself and I think here are the ways that I need to be better and here are the ways that my kids need to better and here are the ways my wife needs to be better. And this would make it all better. If everything was better, everything would be better, things better, everything would be better. And so I had to, I had to kind of check my idealism a little bit and realize that the template that I thought things were supposed to be unfolding, you know, following some pattern or order that wasn’t really doing any, any good for anyone.

Brad Singletary (01:23:33):
And some of that came through, I guess, you know, culture and different things in my life. But I I had to just let go of control. I never saw myself as a controlling person. I wasn’t a domineering type of controlling person. I was a passively idealistic, controlling person. Like wondering why they just can’t be this way and wondering why they just won’t do it that way. So that was something that I let go of is a, this idealistic tendency to see [inaudible]. And really what that means is see flaws everywhere. And so I had to be a little more forgiving to too. So, you know, I didn’t have anything gravely, you know, destructive to forgive of my wife Kara. But what I had to do in, in the way that I did that was actually comes from the 12 step model, which is taking a look at my own, the injustices that I inflicted.

Brad Singletary (01:24:27):
I, I, it just doesn’t heal you to, to count up all of the sins committed by other people. It doesn’t, it doesn’t do anything for you. You know, if you’re in a, if you’re in an abusive or violent situation or certain things, maybe they, that there are clear boundaries that yeah, you jump out, you bail out, but you’re just not going to heal. If all you do is consider the harm that other people do to you. And so what I had to do was forget all that and start, you know, taking, taking account and being honest with the ways that I had done harm to other people. I was a person who demanded apologies and I just, I thought, how can you be, how can you be in a relationship if you, if you can’t apologize, how can you, if you can’t own up to your stuff and by doing all that, I was doing the same thing.

Brad Singletary (01:25:18):
Did you have this weird thought in your head of like, you know, haven’t you heard where somebody will say it’s like in the wedding day jet? Never let the sun go down on your anger. Always saddle it, always apologize. Were you thinking that kind of mindset? Yeah. Just even if it, even if it wasn’t on the same day, but just like I thought that, you know, in order I thought that I was deserving of acknowledgement, that I had been hurt. I was just waiting. I was, and I’ve, that’s a flaw that I guess I’ve had in other areas of my life too. I’m just waiting for the other person to tell me that they’re, that they’re an idiot. Is this, cause I, I’ve learned a lot from you when you talk about that King baby syndrome is this, some of them may be for sure. Definitely. I just thought that I was this victim and I needed to be coddled back to health.

Brad Singletary (01:26:04):
You know, that I needed to be taken care of and nurse back in the wounds that you gave me. I need you to fix that for me. And I had to change that mindset to look how I’ve wounded you and what helped me to forgive. I saw a definition somewhere about to, to forgive is to consider the dignity of the offender. And when I think about my beautiful wife, my loving kind, she’s a beautiful, just a miracle of a human being. And I had all this, I had this whole list of things that I needed her to do before we could get back together and, and I just had to throw all that shit away and I had to look at, look, look in the mirror and I had to do some of the work on myself. And that took really exposing myself, like you mentioned to other people and they helped. They helped me see some blind spots. And so I think the work for me was just changing the focus from this outward searching to an inward searching and that looked like laying down the idealism, being a little bit more forgiving, things like reliability and prioritizing what was really important in my life. Those are some things that that mattered. You know, I

Jimmy Durbin (01:27:16):
I mean the key word that you said there was deserving. I’m deserving of an apology, which is just another form of the ego and the pride I’m entitled, I deserve. And it’s a very sick, twisted victim stance. For sure. Somebody should call this guy in narcissist, somebody with some balls, not Brad, maybe I’m the coming word narcissist. The other thing that you said that that came up was, you know, Bernay Brown has an acronym, braving, I’m trying to build trust. The G and braving is generosity. And I struggled with that one and I, I too had to set aside all the things I think I know and realize and practice holding Shannon in her highest possibility and being extremely generous so that when she made a decision or she said something that rather than holders in her lowest possibility so I could be right and create a fight that she is being generous and she is thinking about me and about the marriage and about the relationship because I was wired and had taught myself to put it in the lowest possibility that that, and by doing so, I could be right. And I have a huge need to be right. And so for me to be right means you need to be wrong and that construct just doesn’t work. It’s disastrous.

Brad Singletary (01:28:50):
Yeah. That. I like the language of that, that, that I think that fits for me too. I’d elevate her in my mind and I saw her as the wayward person. Absolutely. I had to consider my own awful

Jimmy Durbin (01:29:02):
State before I could.

Brad Singletary (01:29:04):
So those are some things that helped me. So I want to wrap up here in just a few minutes, but I’m wondering what is your relationship like now you spent first of all, one question before that, what did, why did it take so long? So for Mike, two and a half years, 18 months for you, Jimmy, why did it take so long and how is your relationship now?

Jimmy Durbin (01:29:23):
I had to prove myself to be safe. Lot of betrayal of trauma. Mmm. And at about 18 months I was showing up in such a way that I was safer, maybe not completely safe. And that, I mean, that’s not to say even now, like 10 years into this, that I still create situations where Shannon’s made to feel unsafe. And if I’m really honest, there were a couple of times through the 18 months where I asked to come back to the house and was rejected and felt rejected and angry that I was rejected and didn’t want to understand or couldn’t understand why. And I use that to fuel the resentment and the toxicity and the shame. Mmm. And I, I reached a point where I S and it was ego-driven, I’ll admit it, where I’m like, you know what? I’m not going to ask anymore.

Jimmy Durbin (01:30:39):
Screw you. You know, I’m going to stay in my little apartment over across from you and LV on Twain. And, but I dug in and what that did for me was I could let go of that hope like, well, maybe today, maybe this week, you know, maybe I can come back. And I’m like, you know what, she’ll ask me when she’s ready and you just, I just need to work on me. Do what I’m doing, feel better about who I am and what I’m becoming heal. And it happened. No. So it, it took that amount of time for me to get to a place where I was comfortable in my own skin. I was comfortable with who I was becoming, the principles that I was learning and what that meant for me of how that should affect my behavior and my ideals. And she did, you know, she, and it was beautiful.

Jimmy Durbin (01:31:51):
It was, you know, 10 years ago, April. Wow. but that, that was a process, you know, and, but I w I wanted to back in, I wanted to come back to the house and you’re keeping me from the kids and you’re keeping me from mojo and you know, whatever I could use to feed Jim, you know, that ego and just saw, I’m like, you know, forget it. Screw it. I’m not going to ask him more. Like, let me just attraction rather than promotion, you know, let me just be attractive to her again, where we can have these interactions and we can spend longer time periods of time together. And she started missing me and missing the man that she fall in love with. You know, because I had eight years clean, I had some credit in the bank. And I think that’s one of the reasons she stayed was she could see the man and my potential even where I, where I couldn’t, she knew that I was cut from a cloth, that I did have Christ like attributes. And she saw me with his eyes with Christ size and she was able to love me with Christ’s heart and helped me in a way that was inspired. And so again, it was a surrendering process of just, you know, what, just do you heal and practice these principles that you’re learning? And she eventually asked me back, how’s it look now?

Jimmy Durbin (01:33:25):
Woo. Glorious. Oh man. Oh brother. In hearing about that for awhile though,

Jimmy Durbin (01:33:31):
It’s amazing. She’s, she’s everything I could have hoped for. I’m, we have a great relationship. We enjoyed the you know, there was a period of time where our kids are out of the house and the silence was deafening. It was awkward. And there was a moment of like, I don’t know, I dunno if this is going to work. You know, we, it was, we didn’t have much to talk about. It was clumsy. I imagine like a seven foot, 13 year old

Jimmy Durbin (01:34:05):
Gangly, like not being able to control his arms or legs

Jimmy Durbin (01:34:09):
And but our kids are doing what they’re doing and we’ve been able to have fun and cuddle and, and laugh and go on dates and she can do her and I can do me. You know, as a result of my addiction, she had to work outside the home for the first time in her life. And she’s a director of human resources and she is amazing in that space and a lot of it’s because it’s void of Jimmy. So she can, her voice matters. She has a voice voice, she has a vote. She’s on the executive committee. Like, she’s amazing. And I try to keep myself completely out of that space so she can then take what she’s learned in that arena and bring it into our marriage. Because sometimes we hold each other in our past and she looks to me to make a decision when she knows what the decision is. She doesn’t need my approval, you know? And like those are so some of the things that we’re working on, you know, of like, just own your voice. Like I, you’re amazing. You’re amazing. But I had 10 years of beating her down and telling her that she wasn’t, and crushing, crushing and destroying that spirit. And well, that’s healing like through Christ’s atonement. It’s, it’s healing and it’s fun and it’s exciting and it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s juicy. Juicy baby. That’s good to hear, man. Thank you. Mike. Why did it take so long?

Mike Spurgin (01:35:56):
How’s it going? No, it took the time it took because I needed to grow up. I needed to figure stuff out. [inaudible] I need to become a man. I needed to realize that the pattern of living that I was doing was so childish. It was so immature and irresponsible. I looked at every opportunity as a way to shortcut. I looked at everything as a way to shortcut how can I end, run and game run everything I was involved in and look for, look for like the easy way out of everything and that dad, like that whole mindset just flooded through every part of my life. And you know, I, I had wrecked such high level havoc that it, it, there was a long timeline on the horizon. You can’t break both legs and be in traction in the hospital and expect to get up and walk out of there in a week or two.

Mike Spurgin (01:36:52):
It’s gonna take time. And that’s why I had that feeling that thought of like this is a five year journey and I needed to be told that in my mind because what I needed to do was to chill the F out because everything for me up to that point had been how do I get the most out of the show, the least involved. How do I get the biggest bang for the smallest buck? What is the way in every situation? How do I just ring everything out? And basically this, the voice in my head, the spirit that was talking to me was like, yeah, that ain’t this. That ain’t happening now. Like that’s gone. This is, this is fine. You got five years, homey. And I needed to, I needed to hear that as a perspective. And so I had a 50% discount, I guess if you looked at it.

Mike Spurgin (01:37:43):
So the th and that’s grace. And that’s grace. I didn’t deserve two and a half years. I deserve five or for nothing. I didn’t deserve anything. That’s the beauty of the, the, the thing is I deserve nothing. And yet now I have everything and it’s, it’s so wonderful to be in a relationship. Now here’s some of the, here’s some of the things that are, so how is, how are things now when the phone rings, I don’t cringe at who it is and why they’re calling. When I go to the mailbox, I don’t hesitate to pull the lever down to see what’s in there, to see who, what’s going on, what’s around the corner. I don’t live a life now anymore where I’m doing that thing where I’m having to look back and see retrace steps and double back and, and cover and hide and any of that stuff.

Mike Spurgin (01:38:34):
That’s not me anymore. I don’t know how to do those things anymore and I don’t want to do those things anymore. I’m happy to take the long way to play the long game. I’m happy to do the work. There’s this thought that permeates my life and that is, it’s, it’s probably gonna hurt and that’s fine. It’s okay. And so instead of being in a relationship, not a relationship instead of beef, instead of now seeing myself in situation, that happens every day. I mean just in work and whatever, where you just see you just something is coming at you and you just know that it’s going to cost me, it’s going to take my time or it’s going to be some money or it’s going to be some attention or whatever. I now see that coming at me and I just have this thought stream that I, that I’ve sort of practiced that says, okay, it’s worth it.

Mike Spurgin (01:39:23):
Like it’s worth the effort to invest in whatever it’s gonna take to do this one, right? I’m going to do this one right. Here it comes. It’s coming at me. My natural instincts are to weasel and dance and pretend and hide and run and all that. That ain’t me. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna accept this. I’m gonna man up and I’m going to take it. I’m gonna deal with it. And that is why ultimately I think we reconciled is because my wife could see that she could, she could trust me, she could put faith in me, she could count on me. And, and, and that I became, I grew into the kind of person. I like what Jimmy said. I grew into the kind of person I think that she originally married in the first place. But then I started to detour away from that and, and lose focus and lose sight of that.

Mike Spurgin (01:40:12):
And so she just saw this reawakening of this person that she wanted to be with and then slowly, cautiously decided that yes, in fact, she did want to be with this person again. And so now we’re in marriage 2.0 everything is different because everything is different and I wonder often what I hit a button that would take us back to the, to the pre moment moments and not go through this path, but I’d have the same life in the same marriage and whatever and I, I know I would press it. I know I would go through the same path because of where we are now and it and it is worth it and we’ve made it worth it and it, and by doing this way, none of it was in vain. So neither one of us, I know for a fact neither one of us look backwards in time and say that there was any of that that was not worth where we are now.

Mike Spurgin (01:41:04):
The price that was paid, it was worth it because of where we are now and what that means to us now and how we can help and what we can do. My wife said something to me that was very prophetic also and we were, I forget where we were and what the circumstances were, but it was very early on and she calmed me by saying something to the effect of that some day this experience will be useful and helpful and we can teach and guide people that are in very difficult situations because we went through a very difficult situation. There’s nothing like being near death on many levels to then offer you this rich dose of empathy. We, I and her as well, both of us we could be with and visit with and spend time with anyone in, in truly any situation or circumstance and feel empathy and sh and have a shared experience.

Mike Spurgin (01:42:10):
A moment with them because of what we’ve been through and that is not how I would have continued on in my life. I would have used judgment and then I, I would would’ve used judgment and comparison after meeting someone and hearing their story, I would have left and judge them for their stupid choices that probably got them there. I would have used then that to re validate my dumb choices as not as dumb as theirs and my life sucks, but not as much as theirs. And I would never have, I don’t want to say never. It would have been, this has all been a gift. It is a, it is a it is a gift to, to have [inaudible] been so broken and now to feel so alive and then to be with those, be with anyone who’s broken and have nothing but love and compassion and hope for them.

Mike Spurgin (01:43:12):
And to know personally through my own experience that anyone can come back from anything. There’s nothing, there’s not one damn thing that, that anyone can’t come back from and, and then transcend and overcome and then thrive on the other side of that there’s, it doesn’t exist that there’s such a thing. And so having walked a path like that gives me so much joy to meet almost like I was. I hear you guys when you tell your story of being so broke down. I love meeting people and talking to people who are broke off because that’s the moment they’re in it. They’re in the moment that in two or five and 10 years back, they’ll look back on that moment. I’ll say, that’s when my life changed at the time. Now they’re feeling the things I felt. I want to die. I want to disappear. I can’t, I can’t do it.

Mike Spurgin (01:44:04):
But yet I know, dude, this is your moment right now. Your life starts right now. It gives me so much joy and S and, and, and delight to be with people that are in those moments because I see the road ahead for them and it’s going to be filled with blood. There will be blood on that road for them, but they’ll walk it, they’ll get there and there’ll be angels along the way. And if I can be an angel on the way, then then use the hands. And and so that’s, that’s where we are now. And it’s an I and I, and I want everyone to be here and everyone can be here. I don’t think every marriage can be saved, but I think every person can be saved and then if the person is saved, then I think there’s a very high likelihood that the marriage will be saved.

Brad Singletary (01:44:56):
Profound. I just, I’m blown away by you guys when I, when I think about what it means to be an alpha, I’m sitting here with two people in my world that in my 44 years, I don’t know if I’ve met anybody like these two.

Mike Spurgin (01:45:13):
Brad, I want to hear your, where are you could, the question goes back to you.

Brad Singletary (01:45:17):
How are we doing? What took so long? What took so long was the realization of my own, my own bullshit. You know, I just had to stop doing the judgment and comparison. In the last episode, Mike talked about, you know, I’m a three wheeled car that’s just, you know, crashing all over the road and their sparks flying out the back and you were talked about, you had to realize that, you know, you’re talking to men that maybe the person they’re with is that way too. I had it the opposite. I saw her as the three wheeled cars. Like, can you just get your shit together? If you just can get your, get yourself fixed up, we’ll be okay. Cause I’m okay cause I’m okay. And I had to realize that I was not okay. I, you know, and there wasn’t, I wasn’t super destructive or those kinds of things, but I had plenty of things that I had to come to terms with.

Brad Singletary (01:46:03):
And that was hard for me to do because I had all this stuff that you could have seen on TV if we were a show on TV, people would have been tweeting like, wow, she’s really, he’s really to be in this way. And she’s really being that way. But the, there were very subtle things. There were just an absence of things that should have been there. And so I was kind of admitting a lot that should’ve been, I should’ve been contributing in our relationship. Now it’s great. I mean, we’ve it’s a, it’s a different relationship now. I think we had to reestablish our friendship. That’s something that we’ve always felt was important to us as our friendship. And what happened was one day, to my surprise, she showed up at my door like eight in the morning, one Sunday morning with donuts wearing these sexy and just re looking really cute.

Brad Singletary (01:46:50):
And she wanted to have a talk and she shared some of the things that I, that I kinda needed to hear, but I know that she felt safe. You talked about you had to, you had to be safe. To me, that was me. I think I had, I had shown something that, that showed her that she could trust me enough. And you know, we went through this little honeymoon period where everything was just magical and wonderful and beautiful. And then though, and then the, you know, the sparks or excuse me, the shine wore off of that. And we kind of had to test ourselves with what we thought we had learned. And we, I think we’ve just done so much better. One of the things I noticed is the repair attempts, you know, they’ll still be a disagreement or there’ll be something and a set of lasting 10 days.

Brad Singletary (01:47:36):
It lasts maybe 10 minutes. And it’s just as much quicker process going from, you know, potential problem, the time the gap is shortened there. And it’s just really good. We of course in the quarantine now, but we can’t wait to plan some trips and do some things and have some fun dates and we’re just trying to make the best of where life is right now. But the feeling between us is a much warmer. I’m just trying to continue to focus on myself. That’s just something I’ve learned and frankly learned very much from both of you too, from both your example and the things you’ve taught me directly, things that you shared in your feedback to me. So I’m just really really thankful to be a part of this. You guys, this has been a great show tonight. We’re we’re, you know, if you’re looking for someone that you need to talk to about a situation, you may go on through like this, reach out to me.

Brad Singletary (01:48:32):
Jimmy will put his information up, or Mike Spurgeon we just have been through some things and I feel like I’m in the presence of these superior guys. They, they would never say that, but it’s true. Trust me. True alphas in every sense they’ve, they’ve taken, they’ve done the work. That’s something that we mentioned here so much that you got to do the work. You got to check yourself. You need a tribe of men. And if there’s anyone I know that’s done that is these two very happy to be with you guys. Our next episode, we’re going to share some things about just so we’ve shared our personal stories, but we’re going to just share some principles. We’re going to break it down for someone who may be considering a divorce or separation, how you might make that work in more specific, maybe practical terms.

Brad Singletary (01:49:20):
And we look forward to being with you again soon. Hey, thanks for listening to another episode of the alpha corm show. We believe that men changed their lives by engaging with a tribe to improve their actions, attitudes, and attributes. You can check out the show notes on our website@alphakorum.com all of us on Instagram and Facebook. And please leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to our show. Hey, this is a podcast, not therapy. So even though we may feature professionals on the show, this is not intended as therapeutic advice. If you need someone to talk to, please reach out to us and we can get you pointed in the right direction. Until next time, gentlemen.