How You'll Know It's Safe to Swim with a Killer Whale

This blog is all about encouraging couples to work together to overcome pornography problems. However, some individuals who are struggling need to do a lot of work on their own before a spouse can safely work together to help them. For a spouse to work with such individuals too closely in the beginning can do more harm than good.

Henry had repeatedly told Cheryl that he would not have a pornography problem if she was more responsive to his needs. He exerted unrelenting pressure on her to engage in sex acts that made her uncomfortable. He told her that he'd find her sexier if she'd undergo breast augmentation surgery.

Cheryl was diligent in her diet and exercise routine, in part because she remembered Henry telling friends before they were married that he'd get divorced in a heartbeat if his wife ever got fat. She tried to keep their home immaculate but Henry always seemed to find a reason to complain. She hated how much pressure Henry put on the kids to achieve and perform.

Whenever Henry and Cheryl worked together, it was always Cheryl who bore the load. They taught a children's Sunday School class together. Henry had initially been offended that they were even asked to teach it, feeling like that kind of work was below his capabilities. In the classroom he had good rapport with the kids as long as they behaved, but Cheryl often felt like he would interrupt the lesson she had planned and "steal the show," spontaneously taking the lesson in a direction that often had little to do with the topic they'd been asked to teach that week.

Cheryl had not been a doormat when she married Henry. However, years of his anger and complaining and blaming had made her doubt herself. She sometimes wondered if the things that were wrong with their relationship really were all her fault. Henry seemed so confident most of the time, and so convinced when he wasn't that the problem was all Cheryl.

I knew that if Cheryl were to work closely with Henry on his addiction, she would end up bearing the brunt of it just as she did with their Sunday School class. I encouraged each of them to do some work on their own first. Henry needed to change some lifelong patterns of self-justification and entitlement. He needed a lot of practice taking responsibility for his behavior and future rather than looking to Cheryl to meet all his emotional needs. Cheryl needed to work in a group with other women to develop more emotional independence and the capacity to stand up to the pressure and control Henry could exert.

Many men in Henry's position, who are used to blaming their wives for what's not right in their lives and looking to her for soothing and solutions, bail when they discover that in the early stages recovery for them is going to be primarily an inside job. To Henry's credit, he didn't bail. He read Why Is It Always About You and learned about Narcissism. He read Jeff Young's book, Reinventing Your Life, and learned about the entitlement lifetrap. He worked in therapy to reverse those patterns. He read Terrance Real's book, Why Can't I Get Through to You and really took in Real's message: Your wife is probably right. It's you who need to change to heal the relationship. We watched as Henry worked his tail off in individual and group therapy. It took a while, but when they were finally ready to work together as a couple, Henry and Cheryl's marraige counseling sessions and the work they tried to do as a couple really made a difference.

He Needs Honesty as Much as She Does

Once Phil started telling Carrie about his slips right after they'd happen, it changed the addiction for him. It robbed the addiction of its potency. Shame is such an intense emotion. Keeping our behavior a secret seems to just supercharge the whole struggle emotionally. Opening up to Carrie seemed to release some of that energy, the way a ground wire discharges electrical energy into the ground, neutralizing what otherwise might have been a dangerous charge.

Another thing happened for Phil over time as he got in the habit of being real with Carrie about his struggles. He finally felt like he had support in the midst of his worst moments. I told him early on, "You're a decent guy. You're one of the good guys. You deserve to have the support of the most important person in your life. There's no reason a guy like you should have to face such a gnarly struggle on your own."

It was a surprise for Carrie to see just how bad these periods were for Phil once he started conveying his true struggle to her. Since he'd never shared with her what was really in his heart and soul when things were bad with his addiction, Carrie had become convinced that he enjoyed it more than she now realized he did. She thought acting out sexually was a light-hearted thing he engaged in, something that he wanted to keep from her so that he wouldn't have to give it up. Seeing his angst and turmoil firsthand convinced her otherwise. He was less the bad guy in her eyes.

I'll mention one final benefit for Phil. Porn keeps us hooked, in part, because it's been paired repeatedly with the pleasure of sexual fantasy and masturbation. The frontal cortex of the brain, which processes our values and priorities and goals, is trying to keep us away from porn. However, that's not the part of the brain that is in charge in the heat of tempting moments. Rather, one the most primitive parts of the brain, a part we have in common with the reptiles, takes over at the controls at such moments. That reflexive part of the brain responds not to reasoning, but to conditioning. If what immediately follows a behavior is pleasure, that part of our brain wants to go back to it again and again. If what immediately follows a behavior is aversive, it will go to great lengths to prevent that outcome in the future. Just like we don't scold a puppy for wetting on the carpet three months ago because it would never connect the discomfort with the behavior, telling my wife three months after I had a problem with porn doesn't make smut less attractive to me tomorrow. However, if I disclose to her right away, the primal core of my brain starts making the link. After that, the bloom is off the rose of acting out sexually. If I know that I'll open up and do it right away, then the idea that no one has to know about this just doesn't hold water any more, even in the tunnel vision kind of focus we go into when we're craving.

What are the benefits for you of working together with your spouse? How has it been different than struggling on your own and trying to keep your ups and downs a secret?

The Benefits of Disclosing Slips

Quinn and Martha both look back on it as the turning point in his recovery from a pornography habit. It was when Quinn committed to Martha that if he ever lapsed back to pornography, he would let her know within sixty minutes. If they couldn’t talk, he’d let her know by code through text or a voicemail. Their key phrase would be “a problem with the credit card.”

Quinn was convinced that this promise alone would put the final nail in the coffin of his porn problem. Martha wasn’t so sure. After all, he had expected other steps in the past to be just the thing to help him put it all behind him once and for all.

It turned out that Quinn relapsed a few times during the first year after he’d committed to within-the-hour disclosure. It still bothered Martha every time it happened, and she let Quinn know that. Nonetheless, great things came from it. It changed the dynamics of the struggle between them, the struggle within Quinn, and the struggle within Martha.

A couple of months after signing their new contract, Quinn called Martha at 4:15 one afternoon. He explained to her that he’d been reading the news online during a slow time at his office. One of the links on a mainstream news website had been titillating. He clicked. Links on that site were even more edgy. He followed that trail back into familiar territory, clicking and clicking around through the smut for several minutes. Then he came to himself, clicked out, and with the effect of that potent drug still reverberating through his system, Quinn had picked up the phone and dialed his home number.

It was a victory, but it hadn’t been an easy one. “The way my heart raced when I looked at pornography again after months without viewing it was nothing compared to how it pounded as I waited for Martha to answer the phone.” He had walked outside into the parking lot so that he could talk more freely with her about what he’d done. Both he and Martha, at my suggestion, avoided asking about the nature of the content (like which celebrity did Quinn find irresistible and why? Did the women he looked at have larger breasts than her?). Instead, they talked about how many minutes it had gone on, whether it escalated to courser content over time, whether he had masturbated or not. They also talked about what had been going on in the hours and days before his lapse. Were there any warning signs that he’d been at risk? What had his thoughts been? What was going on emotionally that might lead him to hanker for an escape?

Quinn’s honesty had profound effects. (With all the benefits, it’s no wonder “Thou shalt not bear false witness” is one of the ten commandments.) Martha explained, “As we’ve talked after his lapses, I noticed things I never had before. These were things that had completely escaped me because he had never allowed me close enough to his struggle to see it clearly, to see it for what it really was. I could tell right away was that he wasn’t going to pornography as a way of turning away from me and toward other women. He’d lapse into it to turn away from life, to escape. It was a drug to him. I could never compete with porn, not because I don’t have a supermodel’s body, but because I’m a real live person. He associates me with real life. I’m not a blissful escape, and I don’t think he expects me to become one.”

Another thing occurred after Quinn opened up to Martha immediately following his second slip-up. “I was angry at him again,” she recalled. “All I said to him that time was, ‘Really?! Can I not even go to book club for two hours? Really?!’ I was so mad. He didn’t even try to talk to me about the details, and it was a good thing because I wasn’t in the mood. I just couldn’t believe that he was still going to keep going back. I thought, just like all the other things we’ve tried before, even this one isn’t going to work. However, in the following weeks, I started to notice some of the tightness inside me easing. I realized later what it was: the threat of secrecy was no longer this cloud looming over our relationship, over our lives. I still didn’t know how he was going to do today, but at least I knew—really knew—how he’d done right up to yesterday. In fact, I knew that if he’d had a problem and gone back to porn, it would have happened within the last hour. That was comforting, to at least know what we were dealing with. He might still be struggling with an addiction, but at least he was being real with me.

As I keep working with couples like Quinn and Martha, I’ll keep sharing here the benefits they report of working together to retrieve their marriages from the jaws of porn. If you’re in the same boat they are, I’d love to hear what you’re noticing and learning along the way.

The ABCD Alternative to Porn

Gary had always tried to avoid conflict. He just didn't like it when a fuss was made, especially if he was at the center of it.

He'd always been shy. As a kid, it always made it worse when someone pointed out how shy he was. The worst of all was when someone tried to help him "get out of his shell." Now he was okay being called shy. Someone had noticed the truth and he didn't view it as a negative anymore. It was his way to be a little more anxious, thoughtful, and solitary than others and he was okay with that. He enjoyed being able to do his thing, contribute in the ways he felt comfortable, and feel like that was enough.

Gary had settled into patterns that worked for him in most areas of life. However, his current job is creating some problems for him. He manages computer systems for an insurance company. Most days and most weeks, he has more to do than he can get done. With so much on his plate, he's often frustrated at the end of the day. The worst part of it for him is when he doesn't get everything done on time. If it's bad enought that his boss or a customer complains, that's torture for Gary. He tries to avoid that at all cost.

Unfortunately, sometimes it costs Gary a lot to try to avoid disappointing other people. When things got busy sometimes he comes in to work early, stays at his desk through the lunch hour, and stays late trying to get caught up.

Unfortunately, he can't stay in that wound up mode for long before he needs a release. The primitive, surival part of Gary's brain knows an "effective" one: pornography. He is at a much greater risk of relapse during such times of stress.

Gary tries to combat the urges to view porn again, and he succeeds most of the time. However, every time he lapses (lately that has only been once every few months) it's almost always during or right after a particularly stressful day and week.

For Gary, avoiding porn is like closing down the Queensburrough Tunnel. It's probably not going to work unless we make sure to direct drivers to the Brooklyn Bridge so that traffic still has a way out of Manhatten.
What could be Gary's alternate release?

I knew it would go better if that new and different release came early on, before his brain and body had a chance to work themselves up into a state of reactivity. He needed something to do as he was getting in to work early or instead of skipping lunch. I encouraged him to try the ABCD technique to help shift his body and brain out of reactive mode and back into a state of mastery.

A is for accept. Try accepting whatever it is you find threatening. I encouraged Gary to accept that he might disappoint his boss. Surrender to the possibility that he wouldn't get everything done rather than wasting so much time and energy and expending so many stress hormones bracing against that possibility throughout the whole day. Accepting the dreaded outcome doesn't mean that it will happen. In fact, once we allow that things may very well go poorly, it frees us up to work more effectively on the tasks at hand. We've let the final outcome go, and thus we can plug along at the nitty gritty details, the very place where we can work most productively anyway. Accepting the worst improves our chances that things will actually turn out just fine.

I encouraged Gary to take acceptance one step further. "When your anxiety hits, instead of thinking 'Oh, no!' say to yourself, 'Oh, good. I'll practice mastery.' Anticipate those bad moments as great opportunities to recondition yourself." Conditioning is a simple process, it just takes repetition. Pair a response with a trigger often enough, and the response will eventually be generated by the trigger. It got to the point that Pavlov could make his dogs salivate just by ringing a bell. The automatic response we want is mastery when we usually rise into reactivity. If we practice the ABCDs of mastery enough when we start to feel anxious, eventually our body and brain will pair the two. It will start making the shift on its own, automatically generating some of the elements of mastery when we feel anxiety coming on.

B is for breathe and notice. Take a nice, full breath and notice something that's real now: a sight, a sound, or something you can touch. Breathing insures that the body and brain are getting oxygen, which helps calm the nervous system out of reactive mode. Noticing some concrete and specific aspect of the physical reality helps bring us back to the here and now. Here and now is where Gary lives and can exercise power; he can't do anything to directly influence that imaginary future where his boss is ready to fire him for what he failed to get done.

C is for commit. Commit to a mental image of how you want to live. For Gary, this wasn't a vision of him checking off all his tasks off the list at the end of the day. Rather, it was the image of living a life not driven by tasks. He didn't want work to dominate his mind and his life. He wanted to get his work done, but keep his primary focus on what really mattered: his life after work, with his wife and two kids. That felt very compelling to him. They were the reason he was going to work. He wanted to be able to remember that in the middle of the day, to really feel it, rather than getting so focused on and caught up in work that it seemed life or death.

D is for do. In reactive mode, energizing chemicals are coursing through our systems. Even when we resist the urge to act on a destructive impulse, that may not dissapate the energy driving that impulse. Spend some of that energy by deciding on an action and then taking it. Even if it's just getting up for a minute to take a quick little walk. Gary spends a lot of time in meetings, so he may have to do something while sitting still. I encouraged him to tense muscle groups in his body briefly, for instance by pressing his toes up toward his shin, pressing his heels into the ground, and then also tensing his thighs, hamstrings, buttocks, and even his abs. Just for maybe 15 seconds before releasing. He can do all this without anyone else at the conference room table noticing. It will burn off some of those energizing chemicals and he'll feel a little less compulsive and driven as a result.

I'm hoping that this tool will help Gary stop getting so wound up that he's at risk of falling for that old, self-defeating release of pornography. I'll let you know how it works for him. Please feel free to try it out and let me know if it works for you.

Former Porn Junkie Sober 20+ Years

I have lots of spare moments, chances to brush up on my reading, as I travel around the country training therapists to treat pornography addicts. I’m knee-deep in this material all the time, but I was still a bit self-conscious sitting on a bench outside the airport thumbing through a volume, Pornography Addiction Workbook emblazoned across the front in bold red letters. There was a smartly dressed man sitting a couple of seats down from me. When I glanced up he said, “I used to be addicted to porn.” I put down my book and smiled. “Got into it in the Navy. Then I couldn’t kick the habit. My wife hated it. And who can blame her: sweet young thing, thought I would have eyes just for her. I wanted to ease her mind, but I kept falling back in. So I’d hide it. Then she’d find it and around and around we’d go again.” He shook his head. “Those were hard years. Struggled into my late twenties. Life got much better once I got that under control.”

He looked to be in his late fifties. Some quick math told me he must have close to three decades of sobriety under his belt. I’d only been in the business fifteen years, so I’d never talked with anyone with that kind of recovery to look back on. What an opportunity. Suddenly I hoped our hotel shuttle would be slow to arrive. I wondered what it was like for him now.

“It still calls to me sometimes,” he admitted. Then he shrugged and laughed. “I just take that as part of life. It’s all around us these days. I pay attention to see if there’s anything I did to put myself at risk so I can avoid those problems in the future.  I don’t watch TV late at night anymore. I bring something to read when I’m travelling, or some entertainment of my own for evenings in the hotel room.”

The airbrakes screeched and the door of the shuttle bus popped open in front of us. I realized we probably weren’t going to be talking about porn anymore. “How are things for the two of you now?” I asked as we settled into our seats in the bus and it lurched away from the curb. “The two of us are now thirteen. We have four kids and seven grandkids. We've been blessed. You’re from Salt Lake. Are you LDS?” I nodded and he continued, “I’m serving as a Stake President in Colorado. Help lots of people with this problem now. Life has been good to us. Couldn’t be happier.”

It was just a brief conversation, but I’ve thought about it a lot since. A few things were striking:

• He doesn’t overreact when porn sometimes still calls to him. He doesn’t let that suck him back into shame: “What’s wrong with me?! I’m never going to get over this! I’ve ruined myself for life!” He doesn’t sound the alarms: “Dang! I’m still addicted! Gotta fight these urges with all my might!” As a result, he doesn’t overcorrect. He isn’t hypervigilant, worried that every sexual cue might lead to his downfall.


• He seemed to be relaxed and at ease. I remember him shrugging and laughing about temptation being a part of life.


• He stays observant and flexible. As a result, he learns from experience. If something puts him more at risk than usual, he takes it to heart without panicking. He takes simple, sensible steps to make life easier for himself in the future. If his new approach works better for him, he sticks with it. He doesn’t assume that the mere passage of time makes him safe and knowingly put himself back in harm’s way.

His way is a relaxed, perceptive, easy-going, but committed one.

How different it is from the knee-jerk reaction we have when we’re fed up. We’re prone to fall into an uptight, impatient, put-my-head-down-and-do-whatever-I-need-to-do-to-put-this-habit-behind-me-once-and-for-all mode. Unfortunately, that way is inflexible and more of the same. It hasn’t worked for us before, why would it now? Even a good Navy man knows that sometimes there are better ways than “ @#!*% the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

Letting Her Express Her Pain

It’s perhaps the most common pattern we see among couples who are dealing pornography issues: He is reluctant to talk about it—so much so that her opportunities to work through it by reaching out to him and talking out her feelings are stifled. Thus she’s prevented from gaining more and more freedom over time from the issue of his pornography use. We’ve made sense of this pattern by exploring just how much of his world turns on how he’s doing in her eyes. To delve into exactly how and how much she’s been wounded and disappointed—for him to see the pain in her eyes and know that he’s helped cause it—is terrifying and can seem, at a very primal and convincing level, like the exact wrong road to take.

However, giving her more opportunities to freely bring up and fully discuss her hurts is the exact right road to take. Remember, if I open up and let into my ears and my head and my heart the feelings my wife shares, they become like superglue between us. Negative feelings don’t fester and grow when they’re expressed and truly heard. Rather, each time, a little of their toxicity dissipates, a little of their flammability is defused. Miraculously, more and more, I, who have hurt her, become the toxicity dissipater and flammability diffuser of choice for her. What was once the wedge between us becomes the Velcro.

The process of sharing her feelings and the tremendous healing that results does not occur in a moment or a day, but over weeks, months, and often years. Nonetheless, many couples find it helpful to have a "big talk" about her hurts and suffering and wounds and injuries to initiate this process or to catalyze it if it’s already been occurring.
Set aside adequate time—perhaps an hour or so—to talk in greater depth than usual. Use the questions I’ll share below to "interview" your wife. If needed, take more time a day or two later to have a second session to further discuss these questions and her answers to them.

Men, your goal is simply listen—to truly hear what she says and then to empathize with how she seems to feel. Try to genuinely understand what your wife is going through: what’s she she’s experiencing now emotionally and what feelings she’s been having that you have perhaps not fully understood or taken in. A man may already come into this discussion feeling like he’s had his wife's feelings regularly dumped on him as though out of a dump truck, since emotions have been so raw and abundant, and thus wonder, "How could I have possibly missed what she's feeling?" In truth, however, it has typically been hard for him to take in her pain because he feels so ashamed at having caused it and has been so are antsy to get those conversations over with. He may have been so eager to explain how the pornography meant something different to him than it did to her, convince her he's doing better now, commit to avoid pornography in the future, and so on that he neglected to first simply listening in an effort to understand. It usually takes a lot of reminding yourself to keep breathing (rather than holding your breath, eagerly waiting for it to be over) and trying to imagine what it has been like for her to have had those experiences she’s had.

Most men feel a tremendous amount of pressure to respond verbally in a way that somehow helps. However, then they start to feel afraid they’ll have the wrong response or they feel self-conscious and sheepish that they don't feel worse or perhaps worry that their remorse may not be showing on their face. If this ends up being the case for you, don’t give in to the temptation to end the discussion. Don’t try to act the way you think she wants to act—or even try to convey what you think she needs at first. Simply share with her that impulse ("Gosh, it is hard to stick with this right now because I'm afraid you won't see the response in me that you want to see. I'm afraid this will disappoint you. That I'll be a disappointment to you again.") Then go back to listening and encourage her to continue to share her feelings. There's no right or wrong way to respond, she just needs you to be present, "there for her," and really hear her. That is do-able, even if it feels threatening. It helps to have this discussion sitting knee to knee or at least kitty-corner to each other so that she can look you in the eyes your eyes. Believe it or not, what she sees in your face will be much more powerful than anything she hears you say. It helps some men to take themselves out of the equation: "Even though this is about what I did that affected her, it's not about me anymore it's about her—what is she going through. For the next hour and a half I don't have to apologize, convince her I'm contrite or that I'm going to do well in the future, or make amends... I just need to listen. She is the focus, not me or my behavior."

Women: It can be very helpful to your husband if, during this discussion at least, you let him off the hook in the above regard. Remember that at least during the time you’ve set aside, he is not trying to say anything right or effective or helpful. His focus is not on saying anything at all, but on simply listening and trying to understand for a while. Someone who knows they need to respond is often thinking about how they’re going to respond rather than taking in what is being said. Therefore, resist the impulse to demand a verbal response from him during this process. "So now that you see how badly I’m hurting, how can you just sit there and not respond? What in the world do you have to say for yourself?" Please give both of you the gift of letting him remain free to receive what you’re trying to convey.
Questions to Discuss

Rory Reid, Ph.D., one of the preeminent researchers on pornography’s effect on relationships, has developed the following questions to help facilitate—and deepen—a discussion between partners. I’ve shared them with many couples in my practice and received feedback that quite often they really help get a dialogue rolling and stay on a productive track. We’re grateful to Dr. Reid for letting us share them with you here:

• What has it been like for you to have the sacred trust you placed in me betrayed by my choices?
• How do you experience your days differently now than before the discovery of my behavior? What ongoing events or activities trigger painful feelings for you? How often do these experiences occur?
• How have my choices impacted your beliefs and feelings about intimacy in our relationship? What boundaries would you like to establish or change about intimacy?
• What fears do you currently have about me or our relationship? When are these fears more intense? Less intense? What helps reduce your fear? How do you physically experience fear (e.g., bodily sensations, headaches, tension, restlessness, etc...)
• What aspects of our relationship need to be reorganized in order for you to feel more safe? What boundaries are you currently uncomfortable with? What things need to change in order to you to feel like you could begin to start trusting again?
• What aspects of my behavior were most offensive to you?
• What aspects of this problem am I closed about? How do I shut you down from expressing your feelings? What is one thing I can do differently to help improve our discussions about difficult topics?
• To what extent do you feel trapped because of my choices? How can I help you feel like you have options and choices?
• What impact have my choices had on spirituality in our home or in our relationship?
• As I work towards restoring trust in our relationship, what are some specific things I will need to pay attention to? What things can I change that would give you some hope?
• What do you see as being the most important priority for our relationship at this time?
• In all that has happened, what has been the most painful aspect of your experience?
• What do you need most right now in our relationship?

Feel Closer, Do Better

It seems kind of funny to talk about the benefits of feeling close as a couple. The experience itself is, after all, it’s own greatest reward. That said, such closeness also works wonders in the arena of our addiction recovery efforts.

Marcus told me, "I haven’t been triggered as much lately. Not nearly as much as I’m used to."

What did he think made the difference?

"I’m talking to Dorothy a lot more. Quite a bit, in fact. I told her about my relapse, as you were encouraging me to do. That was hard. She was mad at me for three days. But then she was over it and in fact she seemed more open and at ease with me. Since then we’ve just kept talking about other less difficult topics."

What kind of things are they talking about?

"It’s often about the addiction, but lately I haven’t been giving in, so it’s just about the initial pull I feel. It’s funny, when I talk to her, it feels like less of a burden. Having it out in the open, between us, dispels it somehow. Beforehand, there’s some kind of pressure inside that makes me feel "lit up" or super-oriented toward sex. Then I talk to her and it grounds me again. Makes me feel more stable… calm… settled… peaceful. I like it."

I’ll bet he does. Compared to feeling on that edge. Is it hard to bring himself to talk to her?

"At times I have to force myself to do it. And there are still times, honestly, when I don’t do it. I default back into handle-it-on-my-own mode. It’s hard to have these conversations. It’s hard for her to hear that I’m still craving this thing that has wreaked havoc in our lives. But we both feel better after talking it out. And she almost always thanks me for bringing it up, which at first seemed strange to me because it seemed to reopen the wound for her. She told me, ‘The wound was always there. Just because you weren’t pressing on that spot didn’t mean it wasn’t tender.’"

He'd heard about the importance of honesty, openness, and teamwork in your recovery before. What has enabled him to open up more now?

"Something shifted last month. I was reaching the point of desperation. I knew I had to do something different. I’ve had plenty of moments of resolve in the past, but those were usually associated with a new regimen or a book I was reading. It was always some plan I was going to follow to a tee by sticking more thoroughly to my checklists. This time, I’m being very loose by those standards."

It sounds like he's loosening his boundaries with your wife instead of trying to tighten his control over his urges. Instead of racheting up his efforts, he's lowering the wall he kept between the two of them, letting her in, and sharing these sexual struggles, which are deeply personal. It's so good to see him let her in. Marcus is a great guy having a common struggle. He deserves to feel close even when he's struggling. And he needs connection even more when he's struggling.