Episode #1009
What do you do when trust has been broken in your relationship—especially if you were the one who caused the pain? In this episode, Doug and Chris have a raw, no-fluff conversation about what it really takes to heal after betrayal. They unpack how long is “long enough” to sit in guilt, when it’s time to start setting boundaries, and why beating yourself up won’t rebuild connection.
This isn’t about quick fixes or fake apologies—it’s about doing the real work: owning your part, creating a new path forward, and protecting your self-respect while also holding space for your partner’s pain. Whether you’re the one who broke trust or you’ve been betrayed, this one’s going to hit home.
If you’ve ever found yourself stuck in the cycle of shame, anger, or not knowing how to move forward—this is the conversation you need to hear.
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Transcription
Doug Holt 0:01
So the last thing I did in that conversation is I closed the loop. I said, “You need to leave, or I need to leave, and we can come back tomorrow and try again.” Because if you leave that loop open, you’re basically saying this conversation is over. You need to say, “Hey, we can come back again to do it.” So in the listener’s mind, they know they have a second chance to get that grievance off their chest.
Doug Holt 0:37
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the TPM show. We’re laughing over here because we got Christopher Hansen back here. He hasn’t left. We’ll keep going here. Colton, our producer, has had coffee for the first time in six months, so he’s on a level 10. And shout out to Justin, who does a lot of the editing to make these episodes happen.
So Chris, we were doing questions, but I have a question, so I thought I’d throw that onto the table. I was recently talking to a client I’m working with, and he did something I don’t say “wrong,” because that’s not the right word but he violated the trust in his relationship. He got caught cheating by his wife, and he was telling me how much he’s getting beaten up.
This has been going on for a while. Some days she’s happy it’s great, they’re even more intimate than they’d been in a long time. The next day, she’s coming at him, yelling, cussing, telling him how horrible of a person he is. So he’s repented for his sins, so to speak. He’s apologized. He feels horrible about it the pain it’s caused for him and the people around him. It’s not the man he is.
When we got into this, we’re a couple of months in now. When I talked to him, he was in tears. He said, “Man, she’s saying the most hurtful things to me about how horrible I am, and she’s dredging up stuff from the past.” I asked, “So what do you do?” He said, “I just feel like I need to sit there and take it. I need to repent or be punished for what I did.”
So my question to you and I definitely have my opinion on this, as I do with most things is: somebody violates trust, does something “wrong” in the relationship. What’s the time period of how long they get to suffer for their actions?
Christopher Hansen 2:36
I don’t know if there’s a linear time period for it. I’d say their relationship to their own punishment is going to be the thing that eventually gets them to a place where they’re no longer going to have that experience.
If somebody feels like they deserve to be punished, punishment will show up for them. To me, it would be this client’s relationship to his actions. Has he truly won with himself? Let’s take his wife out of the equation. Has he truly acknowledged what happened with himself? Has he been completely honest with himself about the situation why it happened, what happened, all of that?
At that point, he’s clear with the actions that were taken, felt all of the feelings around it. Shame. He’s probably mad at himself. He’s probably in a space where maybe he doesn’t feel like he deserves to be in a relationship with his wife. He’s got to sort through all of that for himself first, because if his wife is coming at him saying hurtful things, and he believes those things about himself, he’s going to internalize them and feel like he needs to just take it.
From my perspective, in a situation like this, ultimately you want to get to a place where you can sit in neutrality and allow your wife to say whatever she wants to you. You know you don’t believe that about yourself. You know you’ve taken accountability. You may have made a mistake, but you’ve forgiven yourself. Then she can say whatever she wants, and you know it’s more about her pain at that point.
When you can get to that place, those words aren’t hurtful. It’s just like, “Hey, I can see that what I did hurt this person. This is her expressing those feelings. She may say hateful things, but I don’t believe them about myself.” You can create space for her to get it out.
At some point, it may get tiring, and you may need to start setting boundaries around it. Just say, “Hey, I understand you still feel X, Y, Z about this. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t speak to me this way.” Do that in a non-reactive way, and you can start to establish boundaries.
But first and foremost, it’s about his relationship to what he did before it’s about his wife’s relationship to it.
Doug Holt 5:31
I love that in a lot of ways, and I agree with everything you said. I also think there’s a point where boundaries get to be set of respect. In this case, I’m guessing because I haven’t spoken to his wife she feels disrespected. Not only the affair, but also the lying portion of it. The violation of a sacred union, if you will.
I’m not making him wrong, or anybody that cheats or does something wrong, but at some point you need to stand up and say, “I understand you’re mad, and you have every right to be, but you can’t be disrespectful. For me, I won’t be in that conversation. If you want to have a conversation, I’m happy to hear everything, but it needs to come from mutual respect and love love for yourself, love for me, and love for our relationship.”
If you want to work this out, that’s critical. Do both parties want it to work? Not always. Sometimes couples stay together for religious reasons I understand that. That’s not this case. I asked him, “Does she want to work this out, or at least try?” If the answer is no, she’s 100% done, then there you go. But if she’s still got a foot in the door, your job as the leader of the home is to provide leadership and guidance.
Something I’ve used before with Erin early on is: “Look, stop. I love you too much to allow you to speak this way to me, and I love myself too much to allow it. Our relationship is important, and I need to protect it. You can’t come to me and speak this way. If you want to have a respectful conversation, I’m in. If you can’t, then I need you to step away, or I need to step away, and we can come back tomorrow and try again.”
There are a couple things I say there that are deliberate. One is: “I care about you too much to allow you to play down to that level. I know you’re better than that” that’s the subtext. Two is: “I love me.” I need her to understand I did something bad, violated trust, but I still love myself enough to be respected. Yep, I did wrong. I deserve to hear her out and feel guilt and shame initially. And there’s the third entity of our relationship. My job is to protect that third entity. Her job too, but right now, whether she does or not, I’m going to.
And the last thing I did in that conversation is I closed the loop. I said, “You need to leave, or I need to leave, and we can come back tomorrow and try again.” Because if you leave that loop open, you’re basically saying this conversation is over. You need to say, “Hey, we can come back again.” So in the listener’s mind, they know they have a second chance to get that grievance off their chest.
Christopher Hansen 8:53
I’m curious about the line when we say “respect.” What if that line exists differently for everybody? Where is that line?
I’ll use an example from my own life. I carried deep shame around something that almost lost me my marriage, lost my entire family. I’ve been sober since 2018, but for eight years prior, I was an opiate addict. As much of an addict as you could be lying, stealing, doing anything to feed the habit.
When I was married, when this happened, I had kids. In 2018, when things hit rock bottom, I had to rebuild myself while also rebuilding my relationship with my wife and everyone in my life.
One of the things that came up in that healing journey was my relationship to her anger. She had a huge amount of pent-up rage toward me. There hadn’t been space for her to express that during that time she was in survival mode, I was off doing my thing. When we came back together, I had to learn to sit in neutrality and allow that rage to be expressed, witnessed, cared for, and known.
Because it’s true that rage, that feminine rage, whether it’s pointed at me or not, has to have a safe place to be expressed. It taught me how to sit in a deeper place in a safe way, creating a container for it. It wasn’t me internalizing it, or believing what she said about me. It was me being able to sit in a space of: “I’ve reconciled what I’ve done. I’ve gone through the healing journey. I’m good with me. I want to hear what you have to say.”
Doug Holt 11:51
Hey guys, I just want to share something with you. I’m sure we can both agree that in order to fix something, you need to know what’s broken. And not only do you need to know it’s broken, but also have a step-by-step methodology on how you can fix it. That’s the easiest way to do it. Otherwise, you’re going to be toiling with things.
That’s why I created a free training. A training that shows you how you got to where you are, where your relationship is missing that love, respect, admiration, and even intimacy it used to have, and how to get it back. How do you retain that where your wife looks at you the same way she used to when she said, “I do”?
I don’t know about you, but for me, when my wife looks at me like I’m her man, I feel like I can conquer the world. And I want that for you. Simply go over to thepowerfulman.com/scales. That’s thepowerfulman.com/scales, and I have a free video training for you. You can just click play and see if it resonates.
Now, back to the podcast.
Christopher Hansen 12:53
How curious can I get about how you really feel about shit? Right? But there’s a line somewhere with the disrespect. I think maybe it’s an agreement an agreement about what we’re about to talk about. If my wife were to just come at me with rage for no reason, that’s a lot. But if we’re both sitting in a space where we’re acknowledging that she feels a certain way, and she’s got some stuff she needs to express, then I’m okay sitting in that space with her. So I don’t know that’s just kind of what came up for me.
Doug Holt 13:33
I love that. I appreciate you sharing all that. A lot of questions come up for me, but what I’ll add is you can kind of feel it. Everybody’s going to be different.
Here’s an example. I turned our garage into a home gym. As you know you and I worked out there yesterday. And three days a week, sometimes more, at 6 a.m. my wife and three other women work out there. Because I have a background as a strength coach I used to run a gym in Santa Barbara, a private training studio every once in a while they’ll ask, “Hey, Doug, will you train us a little bit? Give us an ab workout or something fun?”
The first time I did it, jokingly, I came out and said, “All right, bitches, let’s go.” I said it in a joking way. The energy was clear. But if I went to those same women and just called them “bitch,” it would not have gone well. These are strong women. So it’s the energy behind it.
In my relationship, we have a strong boundary of not using abusive language toward each other. That boundary has been crossed at times, and it’s our job to call it out: “Hey, I love myself too much to let you call me that or say that.” To be fair, it’s usually me crossing it.
So we get to set that for ourselves. With you and Kristen, yours is a prolonged situation eight years or more of pent-up anger she couldn’t get out. You get to figure out what that appropriate time is. What I’ve realized is when the same argument comes up over and over, the other person doesn’t feel completely heard.
I coached a guy once who said, “It’s the same argument every time. Every once in a while, it comes up.” I said, “Okay, so it comes up routinely?” He admitted yes. That told me she didn’t feel truly understood.
Here’s what you do: sit her down and say, “Babe, you’ve been bringing this up for a while. Tell me more. What else? What else? Tell me more. Interesting, I’d like to know more.” Eventually she’ll get to a point where you ask, “What else?” and she says, “Nothing else.” That’s when you say, “Great, I’m glad we got there. I want to make sure you’re fully heard so we don’t have to have this conversation again. I want us to move forward where we both feel free to express ourselves. I want you to know I truly get what you’re trying to say.”
Most of the time, that drops the argument if she feels you really get the emotional journey, not just the words. Guys, you need to master The Hidden Motives Technique. It’s critical in this situation. But setting firm boundaries early is also important.
With you and Kristen I don’t know if she was yelling, screaming, saying mean things, maybe all of the above but at some point, probably early, you could’ve said, “You have every right to be angry and upset. What I did was horrible. I was hijacked, taken over by a foreign substance, and I never wanted to hurt you at that level. I can only imagine raising the kids on your own, having a husband who’s an addict, stealing, ruining friendships, breaking trust. You have every right to hold anger as long as you need. However, I propose we choose not to be disrespectful. I sank low, but I don’t want you to sink low. You’re better than that. Moving forward, I want to uphold a high standard for us in our marriage.”
That can help right away. Now, she might just say, “Oh, now you show up. Now you want to be the guy.” And your answer is: “Yes.”
Christopher Hansen 18:27
Then it’s just about consistency. If you’re in a place where you can have that conversation, and your relationship to what you’ve done is reconciled you’re good with yourself then consistently do that. The more consistently you show up that way, the more it proves this is real, and you can actually move past it.
Doug Holt 18:52
So you said 2018. For eight years, right? So here we are in 2025. Have you shown up consistently as Chris 2.0?
I’ll share a story because it cracked me up. I had a guy I was working with one-on-one. By his own definition, he was a jerk for over 10 years. He said, “Doug, I was the worst.” I won’t go into details, but he was disrespectful. Wife gave birth, he basically said hi and went back to work. He didn’t cheat, but he did everything else wrong.
He said, “Doug, I did everything you said. I’ve been perfect for a week and a half. I’ve used The Hidden Motives Techniquee. I’ve helped around the house. I’ve shown up. I’ve done all of these things. It’s been great.”
I said, “So your wife has evidence that you were an asshole for 10 years, and you think a week and a half proves you’ve changed? She’s just going to think, aha, there you are. That week and a half was a smoke screen. She’s going to relate to the old you.”
That’s what we get to do prove consistency. And when you screw up, call it out. Say, “I screwed up. I went back to the old me. I don’t want that guy. I’m glad we had a week and a half. Now my goal is forever. Maybe next it’ll be two weeks. I want you to call me out if you see fit. It’s not your job, but if you do, it’s fine. It’s my job, because version 2.0 is here to stay.”
When you call it out, you take leadership. She knows it. So many guys don’t call out the elephant in the room because they think nobody sees it. It’s an elephant everyone sees it.
It’s the same at The Alpha Reset. Guys think they can hide behind masks bravado, jokes, sadness, victimhood. Truth is, everybody sees through it. The more you call it out, the more people can trust you.
This guy has allowed himself to stay in purgatory. He thinks he’s being the good guy by taking lashings. That’s okay for a short period. But at some point you have to say, “Okay, I get it. You’re upset and mad. If you want to work this out, this can’t continue. I can’t be the man you want me to be if I’m constantly allowing you to disrespect me, belittle me. We can’t build from that spot.”
Christopher Hansen 23:17
I take it back. I just think he has to be okay with himself.
Doug Holt 23:26
And this is why men need to learn not to take on other people’s opinions of them. Which is tough it can be really tough. You have to get to a level of knowing yourself and loving yourself. It’s deep, ongoing practice. All of us stumble.
I’d love to see this guy set a firm boundary, set the path for what he wants the relationship to be. Own his side of the street fully which he says he has. And then set a firm boundary for how things will be moving forward.
For example, his wife said, “I need access to all your social media, phone, email. How do I know you’re not cheating?” Maybe once, she can check. But you can’t build trust that way. She has to either trust him, or love herself enough that if he does it again, she’s gone.
Christopher Hansen 24:45
I agree. From that standpoint, you can’t build a relationship on that lack of trust. There’s no foundation there. She’s got to have skin in the game, unfortunately, and it hurts.
Doug Holt 25:04
It’s tough. We have men on the other side of this too men whose wives have cheated. They ask, “How can I trust again?” Well, you can’t move forward unless you choose to trust. And that takes work.
All of us have had our trust violated. One of the biggest things I see when I talk to men underneath what they complain about is trust issues. “I don’t trust people. I don’t trust other guys. I don’t trust people in business. I don’t trust women.” They’ve been hurt. But you cannot build a marriage unless there’s trust. Trust can be broken, but it has to be rebuilt.
Christopher Hansen 25:48
I’ve been on the other side and had my trust broken in my marriage. I remember the moment vividly where I had to make the choice: I’ve got to let this go, and I have to trust this person if we’re going to move forward. That choice has to be made. You put your stake in the ground. It works both ways. She has to be willing to put her stake in the ground and trust him if they’re going to move forward.
Doug Holt 26:22
That’s it. If we look at this formulaically: do you both want to move forward? Yes or no. If yes, then boundaries need to be formed or reformed boundaries about infidelity, boundaries about how we treat each other.
Then you create a new story about how you want to live this next relationship. The old relationship is dead, metaphorically. How do you move forward with the new one? Trusting each other has to start immediately.
Now, it can be shaky, a wobbly trust. She’s probably going to wonder, “If he flies to New York again on business, is he going to see this girl?” That’s human nature. That may happen for a while, maybe forever. But there needs to be enough trust to move forward, plus that boundary of respect.
This guy needs to do his work. His wife probably should be doing her work too. For sure.
Awesome, man. As always, love having you at the TPM Ranch. I know we’ve kept you. Colton’s caffeine has him buzzing he’s still awake over there, back on the bean. But thank you for all you do. You’ve literally helped hundreds of families rekindle. Sometimes it doesn’t work out for the family, but the men always come out better. That’s a legacy worth living.
Christopher Hansen 28:01
Thank you, brother. None of this happens without you. Thank you.
Doug Holt 28:05
Do what I can. Gentlemen, as I always say, in the moment of insight, take massive action.
Look, infidelity is real. Emotional infidelity, physical infidelity it happens. But it doesn’t get rebuilt unless both parties want to rebuild. Trust is the foundation.
Some of you guys listening are probably triggered: “My wife cheated. I didn’t.” I get it. I’m not dismissing that. But if you want to move forward, you have to try to trust. That sounds odd “try to trust” but if it’s worth it to you, you have to. It could be hard, but being in a relationship where you don’t trust is harder. Choose your hard.
Go all in. Then get the tools to repair your relationship. Take courses. You’re listening to Chris and me today you’re on the right path. Delve deeper. More episodes of this podcast. A TPM program. Or another program that might be a better fit for you.
We’re not the pound-our-chest type of guys at TPM. Some groups are go box each other if that’s your thing. Whatever works for you. But do your work. And hold a firm line. You’ve got to love yourself. Nobody gets the right to disrespect you. I don’t get that right, and nobody else does either. That’s where we stand up for ourselves.
See you next time on The Powerful Man Show.
