The path to greater freedom. Four part series.  

For the month of february we are going to talk about Love - but not in the way that you think…

This month, love is going to be about our capacity for great freedom if we are willing to love and be loved through the process of understanding some concepts that you may not be familiar with.  We are going to talk about How to use these concepts to improve your ability to love and feel loved by others will be a central focus of our conversations around these concepts. Our goal is to help you choose yourself and be able to choose your partner.  

A lot of you listen to this podcast in order to move past a pornography struggle.  Each of these concepts is fundamental to the integrative process of becoming the person you want to be who doesn’t turn to pornography.  

Darcy - For those of you who have a partner who struggles with pornography each of these concepts is just as fundamental for you to work through in order to create the dynamic that you want to create.  They will help you engage with your partner around their pornography struggle and show up as the person you want to be in all of your life, not just your family’s pornography struggle.  

Zach - These are the topics we are going to cover over the next 5 weeks.

Meaning frames - Disorganization - Reorganizing with integrity 

Meaning frames are the way we look at the world in order to make it make sense to us. 

In each relationship we have, we create meaning frames that help us determine the way we are to act when we are alone, engage with others in our lives, and assure our place within a group.  

Many of our meaning frames are built into our theology and are perpetuated by our family of origin.  For instance, in my household, when I was growing up and as I have become and grown in adulthood, my meaning frames have referenced the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This meaning frame has given me a way to interpret the realities of life in ways that serve me and my family and help me make sense of the life I lead.

We all have meaning frames that we bring into our relationships that help us manage our life through lenses that provide meaning and value.  

In most LDS homes, pornography viewing is seen through a meaning frame of it being always destructive, personally, professionally, and theologically.  This makes pornography an always off limits type of behavior.   Those who engage with it, then find themselves deeply ashamed of their actions.  

Darcy - The family, especially the wives of those who engage with pornography, find themselves just as deeply ashamed of the pornography use for different reasons.  Including the idea that “I am not enough” if he uses that behavior to entertain himself, self soothe, or escape his emotions.  

Zach  - Either way, the meaning frames we bring to our relationships are the lens we use to help us see the behaviors and realities of our lives.  

Each meaning frame that we have does at least one thing for us.  It gives us a way to see the world on a given topic.  

What this looks like can often be a black and white way of viewing a behavior that can isolate us or others because we are not conforming properly to that meaning frame. 

When we encounter someone who is not properly conformed to the meaning frame we have and that we assumed they shared is a disorganization of thought and meaning. 

Darcy, what went on for you when you found out that I was viewing pornography?

Darcy -  Talk about how you thought I was one thing only to find out that I was someone else. And how that threw your whole sense of self and sense of me into disarray.  

What does that mean about my family?  What about our salvation?  What else might he be lying about?  Am I not good enough? Is he not happy with me, satisfied with me? What does this mean for our future?  Am I going to end up as a single mother like all the other women who ended up divorced because of pornography?  

Zach - When our sense of a particular meaning frame is disorganized it creates a lot more questions than what we have answers for in that moment.  

It is anxiety inducing and as a result can raise the conflict in the home and internally.  As you struggle to recreate a new sense of how to organize around this issue, it is helpful to know that you don’t have to have all the answers all up front.  It is also helpful to know that Darcy and I specialize in guiding you through that process.  

Within the membership 4 wednesday’s each month we help people navigate these questions and reorganize with integrity around what they want for themselves and their marriage. 

Reorganizing with integrity is the process of creating a new way of looking at the problem in order to account for greater nuance, understanding, and grace within the relationship. 

The reality of meaning frames is that we decide what they look like. 

We get to make them into what we want them to look like.  

Darcy - More importantly, we get to create the meaning frames that serve us and align with our values. 

Darcy - When it comes to reorganizing meaning frames around pornography we often see spouses using a betrayal model of meaning.  

Darcy - This looks like putting yourself in a near perpetual state of victimhood to your spouse's actions.  

Zach - This is not to say that the reality of finding out that your partner has not lived up to your implicit or explicit meaning frame is not a traumatic experience.  On the contrary, being aware that this is disorganizing, traumatic, and emotional is an important part of rebuilding a new meaning frame that serves and allows us to grow. 

Zach - For you, when you found out that I was looking at pornography, what kind of trauma did that create for you?

Darcy -

Zach - Once you were able to acknowledge that trauma, what did you do to leave victimhood and move into an empowered place that allowed you to reorganize our relationship in more meaningful ways?

Zach - when you think of the new meaning frame that you have around pornography, what does that look like?

Darcy - Answer and then - what is your new meaning frame around pornography?

Zach - I think everyone really needs to look at this for themselves and see how they want to show up.  For me, the idea that this is a struggle that I know you’ll help me with is one of those things that I see as our new meaning frame.  To be real about this, I don’t know that I’ve ever said this to you before, but I struggled being honest around this issue with you in the past because I was really afraid of disappointing you, how you would react, and of how those things would hurt me.  I didn’t want to talk about porn because I was trying to protect myself, which might be an obvious statement, but it wasn’t the same as if I came to you and told you I was having any other struggle.  

Ep

Self-confrontation - other confrontation

Self-validation - other validation

Being known - self-presentation

Differentiation - enmeshment