Joy Recovery Radio

S2 E37 | Why She Asks the Same Question Forty Times

You've answered her question ten times. Maybe forty. So why does she keep asking? Roy opens with the sigh he made "on about 100 occasions" when his wife asked a question

S2 E36 | What Her Wound Actually Needs

Job's friends sat with him in silence for seven days. It was the best thing they did. Then they started explaining his pain to him. Roy spent nearly two years after disc

S2 E35 | How Men Actually Change

Why can a man understand his patterns and speak fluent recovery language, yet stay the same man a year later? Many couples live with that question. In this episode, Roy t

S2 E34 | Stop Trying to Get Your Wife Back

Most men in recovery are working hard. The problem is what the work is aimed at. This episode takes apart a pattern that shows up in almost every man's recovery after di

S2 E33 | The Three Jobs of Real Recovery

Most men walk into recovery overwhelmed. Sponsor, therapist, workbooks, disclosure, inner child, attachment styles, triggers, 12 steps, couples check-ins. All of it can h

S2 E32 | You Trained Her Not to Trust You

Seven months into being honest, I started a sentence with my wife that I never finished. "I've been honest with you for seven months now." She heard the rest of it anyway

S2 E31 | Integrity Abuse: Why You Keep Harming Her and How to Stop

For two years after D-Day, Jacqueline would bring me her grief, her anger, or a question she had already asked, and I would get defensive. My working theory was that if s

S2 E30 | When She Knows More About HIs Recovery That He Does

She Knows More About His Recovery Than He Does A listener sent us this question: "When does a betrayed partner's expertise in recovery accidentally become scaffolding th

S2 E29 | Right Sight: Overcoming Objectification

Somewhere in the last hour, you sized someone up from a single look. Your mind took one piece of information and wrote a whole biography. In this solo episode, Roy makes

S2 E28 | Listening Without Self-Referencing: The Hardest Skill in Recovery

He can be silent, nod, even say all the right words, and still not be listening. In this episode, Roy defines the skill that often determines whether a relationship has a

S2 E27 | Your Wife is Grieving Someone Who Never Existed: Here's Your Job

Hurricane Katrina came ashore more than twenty years ago. Some neighborhoods came back stronger than before. Others still sit under blue tarps. That is the most honest ma

S2 E26 | Dismantling Defensiveness for Good

A man named Daniel wrote in. Eleven months sober and honest, full disclosure done, and one night his wife looked at him in the kitchen and called him a monster. Everythin

S2 E25 | Does the Minwalla Model Silence Men?

Men come into this work and land on the same conclusion: the model wants them gone. In this episode I take that complaint seriously, and then I take it apart. Everything

S2 E24 | The Recovery Wall - What Happens When Fear No Longer Drives Change

After exposure or disclosure, a lot of men change fast. They stop the behavior. They go to therapy. They check in constantly. And from the outside, it looks like recovery

S2 E23 | Why Empathy Training So Often Fails for Betrayers

  After discovery, a lot of men start saying all the right things, and they say them fast. He tells her he understands how badly he hurt her. He cries. He apologizes for

S2 E22 | (Listener Question) When You're Innocent and She Doesn't Believe You

A listener wrote in with a question a lot of men in recovery are sitting with. He's about a year past discovery, working on his integrity, and honest enough to admit he s

S2 E21 | The Five Systems of Integrity Abuse

Most men assume the lying stops once they get caught, because there is nothing left to hide. That is almost never what happens. The same instrument that built the secret

S2 E20 | Shame Tolerance vs Shame Collapse

Joy Recovery Radio — Shame Collapse, Shame Tolerance, and the Compass of Shame This episode is an excerpt from a live teaching inside the Joy Recovery Academy, co-hosted

S2 E19: What "I've Told You Everything" Actually Means

Most betrayed partners have heard the sentence "I've already told you everything." In this episode, Roy and Jacqueline examine why that phrase—and four others like it—alm

S2 E18: Her Hypervigilance is Information (And What It's Actually Telling You)

Most of what gets called hypervigilance in a betrayed partner is not a malfunction. It is information. In this solo episode, Roy reframes what her nervous system is actua