John [00:00:00]: Withholding the truth from your partner is selfish. Like cheated. Some people will think it's not selfish because they're not hurting that person. I don't believe that you will eventually hurt them. I haven't rehearsed this. Being that I want this to be authentic, I don't want to, like, try to manage my image. I've been lying. It's not the first time. I owe an apology, obviously to Nicole. Beyond the perfect we discovered through our flaws, we complete each other. Better than perfect. Perfect we stay through every fault. We find our way. All right, welcome back to the better than perfect podcast, where we're two people helping each other grow equals one better than perfect relationship. So, yeah, so it's just me on the podcast this week. Nicole's not here because this is an important episode. I haven't rehearsed this, so I haven't even thought about it for a reason. Being that I want this to be authentic, I don't want to try to manage my image here. I'll just start off by just saying what this is about. I've been lying. It's not the first time that this has happened, and I'll give you the details of that. But, you know, I owe an apology, obviously, to Nicole, my wife. You know, I owe an apology to all of you, to, you know, pretty much when you lie, it pretty much affects everybody in your life because you lie to. To everyone. And this isn't the first time, you know, that I've been in this. So I'll just start with the story of what happened and what. And then I will kind of share about, kind of my thoughts and what I've learned from that. But. So four and a half years ago, approximately when Nicole and I moved back to San Diego, when I moved back to San Diego. First, if you know the history of our relationship, what had happened, just to give a quick recap so that it makes sense. When I met Nicole, I had been cheating on my ex wife. At the time, Nicole was not aware of that. She had no part in that. She had. I had lied to her. You know, that was the lifestyle that I was living. Not proud of it. I won't make excuses for it. It was wrong. It's always wrong to not exit a relationship, instead to do the cowardly thing and cheat and lie. Regardless of that, I did meet Nicole, did fall in love with her. And to make the story a little bit shorter, we, you know, I told her the truth about being married and having a child. And, you know, she was still obviously not happy. About that, but, you know, was accepting enough to feel like, okay, there's no more of this, no more cheating, no more lying. And we got together and I moved to Florida. And during that time period, I was, you know, I had a lot of guilt and shame around what I had done. I made more mistakes. I left Nicole. I broke up with her. I left. When I did leave her, I lied about the reality, like why I was leaving or like what, what was going to happen when I went to San Diego. And we get. We ended up being sort of back together during that time. And I was, I wasn't honest. Like I was shutting her out. I was not, I was not treating her with consideration. I was being selfish after that. And during that time, what I did was I went back to propose to my ex wife. As crazy as that sounds, that's what I did. Not proud of it again, I could give you my reasons for it. I was overcome with a lot of guilt and shame. I wanted to. Felt like I could restore my family. There was a lot of. But it was. The big point of it was that it was deceptive. It was a lie. It was wrong to do to Nicole. It was not considerate of her. It was selfish, right. It was cowardly because I should have just told her what my real intentions were, like what I was actually doing. It was, you know, and I didn't tell her that when I came back. I lied about that, about what I had done. I wanted to be back with her, right. And then in, I think it was like December of that same year, I left again. I broke up with her again. I wanted to go to San Diego to restore things with my daughter because I left my daughter. I felt guilty about that. I also was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn't sure. I was in a very bad state of depression. But. But yeah, so that was another like selfish thing. Instead of working through things with Nicole and figuring them out and whatever, I just popped that on her, sprung that on her after had having done it the first time. And then, you know, I'm not painting a very good picture of why she should even be with me still. But this is the full truth, right? So. And you deserve that and she deserves for me to say all this. So after that happened, that's what brings us to San Diego in the four and a half years ago time period. So during that time when I was in San Diego, I. Well, I had broken up with Nicole. We got back together about three days later. I was in San Diego. She was in Florida. But we were technically. Not technically, we were together. We were together during that time. I got on dating apps and I slept with four women during that time period. Did not tell Nicole about that. Not only did I not tell her about that, but I had turned on my. When we had broken up that time, I had disabled her access to my Tesla, which had the location of the Tesla, but I had re enabled that access because we were getting back together and she was potentially going to move to San Diego. We were figuring that out one night when I went to go pick up a woman that I had met on a dating app who was in Mexico at the border, and I was picking her up there. Nicole saw on the Tesla app my location that I was driving to Mexico at that time. She started calling me, texting me, and I ignored the calls because I had a woman in the car with me. And then when I got back to the apartment, I called her up and I proceeded to turn it on her. I lied. I told her that some stupid, crazy story about a valet at the apartment taking my car for a joyride. I got mad at her for checking on my location. I just was completely trash in my behavior and just horrible, horrible that I lied to her at that time in the way that I lied to her and the way that I was treating her when she. When she had caught me and I was lying and then treating her poorly while I was lying to her after that. The next morning, I had called her up and I knew that I didn't want to ever be with anyone else again. I was very confused at the time with a lot of stuff and the drama of going through the divorce and whether I wanted to be single. And the big thing there was that I should have just told her that I wanted to figure things out. I should have just been upfront and honest with her. But anyway, I called her. She ended up moving to San Diego. And I basically committed to myself at that point that I was going to take that what had happened during that time. I was in San Diego by myself to my grave, because. And this was my rationale, as stupid as it is, which I will talk about to explain to guys who need to hear this message. That's also part of the reason why I'm doing this, how stupid that rationale is and how hurtful it is. But my rationale at that point was that, well, I know that I love Nicole and I want to be with her. I don't want to be with anyone else. I'm going through all this turmoil in my life, but I know that. That. That there's no one that like. Like it. I have this clarity that I know that this is who I want to be with. And because of that, there's no reason to tell her this and ruin the relationship and hurt her about this because it's done with and it'll never happen again. And I know it'll never happen again because I have no desire for this to ever happen again. That was my rationale, not an excuse. Because there is no excuse. There is no excuse for not being honest. I have no excuse for myself. But I only say this rationale so that the guys that are watching this, you can understand that you might have a similar rationale at some point in your life about telling a lie. And it is not. It's not correct. I'll talk about. Well, I might as well talk about why it's not correct, and then I'll tell you the rest of the story. But the reason why that's not correct is because the best way that I can describe this is that when you're lying to someone that you supposedly love, it's like hoisting a net with a bunch of bricks over their head. And every day that goes by that you continue in that lie and don't tell them the truth, you're putting another brick into that net. And yes, maybe your hope is that that net will never fall and those bricks won't fall on their head. But that's a pipe dream. That's a ridiculous way of thinking. Because if you love someone, why would you put them in that jeopardy? Why would you suspend those bricks above their head? Why would you add more bricks every single day and making it worse when it does fall? Because I think in the man's head sometimes. Because I know. Because in my head I thought, oh, well, over time it'll be less, right? Because, oh, this happened a long time ago. No, no, no. Over time it's worse. Over time it's another brick. It's worse. To find out about something four and a half years later is way worse than to find about it that night or that day or a week later or a year later, the longer the time. And that's something that I was completely stupid about. I did not understand at all. Like, it makes perfectly clear sense to me now. But I'm saying this so that maybe I can benefit other men who would make the same mistakes that I've made. And I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, and I can tell you that Holding a pile of bricks over someone's head, knowing that someday it could likely fall is a selfish thing to do. It's a cowardly thing to do. What I did was selfish and cowardly because I was trying to protect myself, because I didn't. My fear fear was losing Nicole, which was a selfish fear. I rationalized and justified it as that. I can't tell her because I could never tell her, because I don't ever want to lose her. But when you look at my real motivations for that, that is a selfish motivation because she deserved the right to know and to make her own choice about the relationship, and I deprived her of that. Not just that one time. That's why I went all the way back into the past, but every single time, every single time that I lied, every single time that I didn't disclose the truth when I left the first time, when I didn't tell her that I had proposed to my ex wife, re. Proposed to my ex wife, as embarrassing as that is, anytime that I had kept information from her, I deprived her of the ability to make a decision about her life, while I had the ability to make clear decisions about my life and my future, which is a totally selfish and cowardly thing to do instead of actually facing the truth. So, yes. So that is what happened. And what happened recently, I'm also not proud to say, is that I would like to be here today to be able to say that I volunteered this information to her. That's not what happened either. Instead, what happened was that about a month ago or so, Nicole had texted me, and she had said that she didn't feel good about something and she wanted to talk about it, and. And we got on a phone call, and she said that. She said she kept on thinking about that night where I told her that the valet had. Had taken the Tesla for a joyride and did that. Is that really what happened? And again, not proud to admit this at first, but I still, even at that point, lie. I mean, this was what I thought I was gonna take to my grave, but I lied to her at the beginning of that conversation and tried to, you know, ask her, like, you know, basically try to avoid it, trying to, you know. But the one thing that I will say that, you know, that I did do is that at that point on that conversation, I did come to a crossing point in my life, a crossroads in my life, where I did start to realize I'm like, am I going to continue to lie to this woman who has been nothing but great to me, who has loved me, forgiven me many times in my life, has taken care of my daughter like her own, has given everything to me and trusted me again. Am I going to lie to her face yet again when she's asking me this? And. And I don't know how I actually had the strength to be able to do it, because it was the scariest thing that I had ever done in my life. But I did tell her the truth at that point. And. And I knew in that moment that the likely outcome would be that I would lose her. After all that I had done, after all the lies, after all the leaving her and all that, and, and now having cheated on her, even it was in the past. And so. But the thing for me is that what I did realize in that moment is that that's. I wasn't really loving her as much as I wanted to be loving her. I wasn't really loving her when I was lying to her, when I had secret from her, when I had done this in the past. I tried to live my life as a different person and change my life, but I couldn't because I wasn't living in my integrity. And so to me, in that moment, I had the moment of clarity to realize that rather than hurt someone, put more bricks over someone's head that I profess to love and selfishly not lose them, it would be better to lose the person from your life, but having done the right thing by them, at least at this point. It should have been done a long time ago, but it should have been done at least at this point in time. So I did make that decision. And there's a lot of repercussions from that decision. I'm glad I made that decision. I would not. You know, I did talk to some guys afterwards and they were like, no, that was a stupid decision. You should have taken it to the grave. You should have made up a different story. And I tell you this because I want you to. Like, if you're a guy listening to me, I mean, if you're a woman, you already know this and you're like, duh. But I know how guys think because I've been coaching guys for a long time, and I am one and I have made this mistake. But, like, it's not right. It doesn't matter how many people say it, how many guys think that it's right to, like, you're protecting, you know, you're not protecting someone, you're putting bricks over their head that are going to eventually fall on their head. Can you imagine? You know, like, again, I didn't think about this, but can you imagine if I would have held this secret for 20 years and then on my deathbed or whatever? Hopefully my Deathbed isn't in 20 years, but you know that I would have confessed this. Or imagine if it was on my deathbed. Maybe I held it for 40 years or whatever, and I'm 90 something years old, and on my deathbed I tell Nicole, by the way, there's something I need to get off my chest before I die. And then her whole fucking life is a lie. Can you imagine how many bricks that would be? You know what I mean? Like, four and a half years is way too many. Way too many. But I only say this because I didn't think that way. I didn't think about those things. And that's in no way to justify my actions, to be like, oh, you're not such a bad guy. No, I am a bad guy. I did bad things. But I'm just telling you my rationale so that you, if you're listening and you have this rationale, you can see how wrong this is and how stupid this is. Not in any way to justify my actions. They don't make sense. They are inconsiderate. They are selfish. Regardless of what I had, if I have wrong thoughts in my head, it does not make my actions any less selfish or any less cowardly or wrong. But people will say that and people will think that, and guys will think that. And I don't know, I mean, I'm sure some women might think that too, but I know how guys think, and that's how I thought. And a lot of guys I talked to thought the same way. I guess what I'm saying here is that it's never the right choice. Facing the truth, facing the consequences of your actions is the right choice. I am glad that I finally did make that choice. I wish, like I said, that I had made the choice on my own rather than being asked about it. But I am glad that at least when confronted about it this time that I did, I could actually say in that moment that I do love Nicole. I couldn't say it before then, even though I want that to be true. It's not loving someone when you're stabbing them in the back. It's not loving someone when you're keeping something from them that is very critical to them and you're creating a lie for the life that they're living with you. That's not loving. And so the moment that I told her the truth was the first time that I actually loved Nicole, as hard as that is for me to, like, I don't want that to be the case. Like, in my mind and heart, I felt like I was loving her. But I can be an adult enough now to acknowledge and realize that that was not loving her. And that was the first time that I actually did, because that was the first time that I made a choice that would. That would. Not that it would benefit her, but it would because it gave her, like, the information that she deserved that would benefit her and hurt me. And that is what love is, is when you make those choices, and when you make the opposite choices, that's just selfishness. And whatever you think that it's love, when you think that you're preventing someone from being hurt by. By holding on to something, by keeping information from them, that's selfishness. It's disguise. You think you're loving them, but it's selfishness. It doesn't matter how many other people back you up and say, oh, no, you're just protecting someone from being hurt. No, you are hurting them. You already hurt them. It's just a delayed reaction. The moment that you chose to cheat or to whatever it is, or lie or do the wrong thing, that's the moment that you stabbed them in the back when they trusted you. The moment you violated the trust, it's just a delay. When you've. When you haven't told them about it, it's just. You've already. The knife is already plunged. They just haven't felt the pain of it yet. But it's. It. The dagger is in the back already. So you can't undo that. You can only resolve it as soon as possible. And the longer that you. You. You proceed in that, the worse that it is. And so, yeah, so that is the full story again. Like I said, I'm not proud of these things. You might say, well, why would you get on the air and talk about this? And there's a couple of reasons for it, obviously. In no way does this make me look good. In no way is this designed to make me look good, and it shouldn't. I have been the biggest scumbag and hypocrite. That's the other thing that I should say, is that it is hypocritical for me to sit here on this podcast every single week telling you how to live your life and your relationship when I'm not living in my integrity. It doesn't mean that all the advice that I've ever said is thrown out. It just means that in many ways, I wasn't following it. There's another piece to this as well, which is that not living in my integrity, even though I've tried to be a good husband and a good father, when you have a lie, when you have a secret, when you're not living up to be the man that you can respect yourself, then you're not going to respect other people. In addition to this, there's been so many times where now I am seeing also the other things that I was doing wrong in the relationship, that I was blaming Nicole, that I was projecting onto her, that I was gaslighting her, especially around trust. There are so many conversations, so many arguments, and we didn't have a lot of arguments, that is true. But when we did have arguments, a lot of them revolved around her trusting me and me trying to compel her to trust me when I knew that I wasn't trustworthy and getting upset about her, about that. And not only that, but the thing is, what I did tend to do was I would be reactive instead of responding. So I created an environment for Nicole where she could not be comfortable with feeling a certain way, where if she tried to talk to me about. I made it difficult for her to talk to me about things, because I took offense in every single little thing. Because I was protecting my ego, because my ego was so fragile, because I knew that I had this secret that I was holding, whether it was conscious or subconscious. I didn't think about it every day. But. But that's the other danger of this, is that I lost myself in this. And I caused Nicole to lose herself because of me doing everything to protect this lie, this thing, because of my fear of losing her, which is a selfish fear. Right? And I've talked about it before, that everything that we do in life either is on the spectrum of fear or love. And those are at the two opposites of that spectrum. And so I should have known from my own words that acting out of fear is the opposite of acting out of love. Courage is love. Fear is not love. It's the opposite of that. A lot of my interactions, a lot of how I showed up in this four and a half years, even though I tried to live a good life, and I really did, I did, I did make the changes. I haven't cheated, I haven't created new lies. I have really tried to make those changes. And I've come in here on this podcast in order to try and really genuinely help people. I mean, I don't make money from the pocket that has been my heart. But even though those were my motives, I was sabotaging myself because of what I had done and what I was still holding onto because I hadn't. You can't just put the skeleton in the closet and never have it come out. And so my other apology to Nicole is for the way that I responded in so many situations. Even with this step parenting, I didn't have her back as I should have. I didn't. When she came to me with concerns with things, there's many times where I either brushed them off or I got upset because of the way, like, I made it impossible anyway, that she comes to me. I'm going to. Somehow it's going to bruise my ego and I'm going to be reactive to that again. It didn't happen every day. It was pretty big gaps in between. But I did so much damage at those times that even if I hadn't lied or cheated, I would have still eroded her trust. I still wasn't worthy of her trust. Because how can you trust a person that you're not emotionally safe with? Again, I'm coming on the podcast. I'm telling you how to do it. I still believe the advice I'm giving you is the way to do it. But was I actually executing it at some level? I was for sure. You could say, oh, yeah. Someone watching my interactions might say, yeah, John, but no. When you really study it carefully and you look at my motives and what is in my heart, no, I was not truly valuing her. I was taking her for granted. I was taking her forgiveness and her love and. And her trust that she had put in me for granted, and I didn't listen to her. So all these things that I'm telling you, she was already telling me, I don't get to take credit for all this stuff. I'm glad that I know it now. But she told me so many times the issues that exist in a relationship. I didn't listen to her. I didn't listen to her intuition, told her that there was still something I was hiding from her. Right. And you know, if you're in a relationship and you're supposed to trust someone and that person doesn't listen to you, really, and you see problems and they're brushing those problems on the rug, or they're ignoring those problems, or they're not treating you in a way that makes you feel valued and like your contributions are valuable, then how do you even have an identity? Then how can you even trust someone? How can you feel safe? And that's the thing that I did was I did not create that safety for her. So with that said, what have I learned from this? Where am I at right now? So, like I said, I think the biggest thing is that at first, when this hole went down, I went into the victim mindset as well. So let's talk about that as well. Unfortunately, even though I told Nicole the truth, immediately after that, I did get defensive immediately after that. I started explaining away why I did this thing and how I still love her and all these things and how I'm not that person anymore. Whereas those things may be true to a degree that doesn't matter, that still doesn't show that I understand what I did and why I did them and how that's never going to happen again, or that I truly felt remorse and sorry because again, my instinct was to, now I've done this right thing, but now I'm still protecting myself, which is wrong. Which, again, how many times did I tell Nicole that she was protecting herself? But who was the biggest protector of themselves? It was me. And protecting yourself is always a selfish act. And so in the next couple days after the truth came out, I did not handle it very well. I did not handle it very well at all. I again tried to. I was defensive. I didn't get it. You know, we almost got a divorce over that. But what I have learned, what I finally clicked for me maybe like four or five days later and over the next couple weeks was that I finally put myself in her shoes for the first time, and I finally saw not only what the lying and the cheating had done to her, but everything that I had been doing to her and could actually see the impact that I always had. Like, because you don't want to believe that about yourself, especially when you're trying. Because again, like, it's not like for the last four and a half years that I haven't been trying to be a good person, that I haven't been doing, like, you know, I have. I can honestly say that I don't have anything in my life that I. That I. That is, brings joy to me for the last five years, besides the time that I can spend with Nicole. But essentially, I have woken up every day and lived my life to try and help the people that depend on me. Yet I was still failing. I was still not doing it because I didn't see. Because I didn't listen to Nicole, because I didn't hear, because I was still being selfish even in doing that, right? Because I was still protecting myself. And so Yeah, I mean, I learned a lot of things about, like, it's hard now. There were so many insights that came in the last few weeks, and I didn't really prepare for this because I didn't want it to be scripted in any way. So I'm trying to think about what all the. I've shared a lot of them already. But, Yeah, I mean, I guess the biggest thing for me was like, realizing just how, like, my actions would have made her feel, like understanding, like, seeing even just the things where, you know, here's a good instance. Like, I'm trying to remember all the conversations. But, you know, Nicole, in a lot of situations where we're in conflict, she would say that you're holding things against me. And I would say, that's ridiculous. I'm not holding things against you. We'd be in an argument where I would say, I did this for. I bring you cough every morning. I do all this, and my intent is to show her how much I love her. I'm doing all these things for you. But what I realized was that that's not how it was coming across at all, and that was me holding things against her. Because if you do things for a person, just the way that I was communicating, the pattern of communication, instead of saying to her, if she's questioning that I love her, instead of saying, what I would say was, oh, well, no, I do this for you. I do this, I did that, and all of this thing, which makes it feel like an obligation, which makes it feel like I'm holding against her instead of doing that. If I would have simply said, no, I don't want you to feel like I don't. I understand that you feel like I don't love you, and I understand why you feel like I don't love you. Here's the things that I'm doing to show you that I love you. That would have been so much of a better way to do that without holding it against her. So it's like, there's so many of these insights that I've had, and hopefully more of them will come to me over the episodes that we do. But, yeah, I mean, I've been working on trying to really dig into this stuff from my past. Like, where has this come from to really look at. Why have I done these things? And how can I be a person that creates safety and trustworthiness? And over the last few weeks, that's been my focus. My focus has been every conversation, every single time that we talk. Am I listening? Am I being non Reactive? Am I responding in love to what she's saying? Am I really being empathetic and understanding what she's saying? Anyway, I don't want to get off the topic of that, of the whole thing, but. But yeah, so I fucked up. What I did was wrong. There's no excuse for it. You know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to you, Nicole. I'm sorry to everyone, you know, especially the people that counted on me and trusted me. I'm sorry for being a hypocrite. And, you know, and I guess that that's the other part of it is that like, these words don't matter. They don't matter at all. The actions matter. And that's what I'm focused on doing, is doing the actions. It's not easy to come here and say this, but I believe there's a really good reason for doing it. And what I will say is, I'll finish it with this. I'll end it with this. Is that if you're watching this, if you're listening to this, Don't make the mistakes that I made. And if you're making them right now, if you're caught, if you're in a lie right now, it's going to be the hardest thing in the world for you to come clean on that. And it's going to seem like there's no benefit for you to come clean on that. I know it. Right. It's going to seem like the logical choice is to just keep that secret. Because why, why create pain? Why create chaos when you don't need to? But that's the wrong decision. And the reason why that's the wrong decision is because, like I said, is that you're like, regardless of you get hurt, like you, you, you get caught or not, or you find out or you eventually confess, you living outside of your integrity is going to hurt your wife. You're going to hurt her in many other ways, and it's just a betrayal. It's a continued betrayal. It's not who you are. It's not what you're meant to be. I say it as a man because maybe a woman could also use this advice as well, I'm sure, But it's more of an issue of men, I would say completely come clean, tell the truth, it's going to be hard to do, and there might be consequences and you may get left and you may lose your life over it. Like you're not your, you know, your physical life, but your relationship, your. The life that you have grown accustomed to. But it is the right thing to do, right? And like, you know, if I had been guiding my life completely by making the choices that were not out of fear, but out of love, not protecting myself and making the choices to do the right thing, I would have never created. I've created so many messes in my life. So much misery I've created for myself and for other people, mostly because of lies and holding onto lies. That is the majority of the thing that. Because the thing is also, I'll say this one last thing is, which is that. But if you're willing to lie, then you're willing to do the things that you would lie about. So what I mean by that is, like, let's say that I'm living a life where I will not lie. I will be 100% honest. That limits the things that I'm going to do. If you know that you're going to talk the truth about everything that you do, are you going to cheat? Are you going to do the thing that's deceptive? Are you going to do the thing that you're not proud of? You still might do it, but it's very less likely that you're going to do it if your foundation is honesty. Because if you know that you're going to say the truth about the things, it's going to very much limit the things that you're going to. You see what I'm saying? But the reason why I'm saying this is because when you get into the habit of lying, which is where I was at, I had done that for a long time, started out real simple lies. But when you know that you can just cover things up with a lie, it opens up all these possibilities of wrong things that you might do because you're not. You're shielding yourself from the consequences of them. But when you know that you're living in honesty and in your integrity, then you know you're not shielded from the consequences. You know what I mean? So, you know, these are things that I wish I would have really thought about and known myself before I made the mistakes that I. That I did. All right. I think that's about all that I have to say. I'm hoping that I didn't leave anything out because I owe Nicole for sure and everyone as much of this as possible. So if there's anything that I've left out, it's not intentional, but I've tried to cover every single piece of thing and everything that I've done wrong here, because that's what's owed in this case. All right, guys, well, that's it for this episode. I love you and I'm sorry. We find our way.