Episode 1: Sadism in Relationships with Chad Fraga LMFT

In this episode I join Chad Fraga LMFT to talk about sadism in relationships

James: So culturally, we think, oh, sadistic behavior is rare. It's like this outlier, like there's a small percentage of the population that is routinely sadistic and Schnarch says. No, he says in most marriages there is sadistic behavior on both sides most of the time. When I first read Schnarch like six years ago, it like turned my world upside down and specifically it really changed the way I saw myself there's no shame and there's no judgment and there's no condemnation there. It's just this is where we're starting from, and we're capable of becoming kind and loving and considerate and courageous, but only if we face the reality of where we are in the first place.

James: And so he'll often say, don't work with couples who don't hurt each other on purpose. Because if you think you're not hurting each other on purpose, then you're refusing to acknowledge reality. And if you refuse to acknowledge reality.

James: We won't be able to get anywhere because you're pretending you're not starting where you're really starting. So it is an unusual view, especially in the world of couples therapy. In the world of couples therapy. The general assumption is that when we hurt each other, it's accidental. Oh, I didn't mean to, that wasn't my intention.

James: Say, if I've been living with someone for 10 years and I'm regularly hurting their feelings, there's this idea that's an accident even though it's happening, say a dozen times a week.

James: And that just seems a little far out to me.

Chad: No, there's definitely ways in which couples purposely hurt their partners. I, one thing I don't agree with is that we inherently want to do that. And that to me is the reason why I think I had such a charge conversation about it and thought about it so much was because I think it's a really dangerous, tricky, slippery slope.

Chad: Because I'm wondering how does that help couples encourage courage? Behavior change. If you're telling somebody that, I don't believe you, that I believe that you're doing this on purpose, and I believe that you're doing it because you're evil. It doesn't really, it's not very inviting to the

James: I wouldn't say the last part. I don't think people are evil.

Chad: When you say people are do sadistic behaviors, there's this idea of between right and wrong, and I think evil comes up with it. And then this is what I'm talking about. Like the conversation we're having has been happening for several centuries.

Chad: Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau, they did it and then they're also talking, before as well in, in ancient Greek philosophy as well. So I don't know if we ever really will know the answer. But I think the premise of starting from a very hobbesian, leviathan type of approach, which is that people essentially need to be controlled.

Chad: People need to be, have rules and regulations because people are naturally going to do bad things, I think is what's problematic in relationships. 'cause it doesn't breed an opportunity of wanting to. See the inherent good in somebody, and when you don't see the inherent good in somebody, I think that it starts a conversation off in a very defensive, critical way, and it's not very inviting.

Chad: It's not I don't wanna show up to the plate if someone's calling me evil or saying no, you did that and you did that on purpose. I think that's difficult for someone to hear and for someone to be able to want to show up for that.

James: I think the root of this is what I would call benevolent parent bias. Where children are programmed to see their parents as benevolent. Even when they aren't right.

James: And so we all had parents who were benevolent to a certain extent. And many of us had parents who were definitely not benevolent in certain situations. And the problem is that a child's brain is programmed to only see the good side. It's pretty easy to imagine a reason why we would be programmed to see mom and dad in a positive way. 'cause that does. Improve chances of surviving childhood, which until say 200 years ago was a really big deal. So we're designed to survive childhood. Part of surviving childhood is sticking with mom and dad no matter what.

James: Part of sticking with mom and dad, no matter what is mom and dad are okay no matter what. And I know you've worked with people who've been abused as children. I have two. And they always say the same things. They say, mom and dad didn't know what they were doing. Mom and dad didn't mean to hurt me. Mom and dad didn't know they were hurting me.

James: And they definitely didn't enjoy hurting me. And then you kinda look at the reality and that doesn't line up. It just doesn't line up. So once again, you're creating this world where people are in an organized fashion, in a predictable fashion, hurting innocent children by accident. And they're not getting any benefit from it.

James: It just doesn't add up. People don't behave that way. We don't accidentally do the same thing in an organized fashion over and over on a daily basis.

Chad: I agree. They don't do it on accident. That's not that people don't do bad things. Necessarily because it's a complete, just oh, I just happened to do this. What I believe, and I think like you said, I'm on the camp of the majority of couples therapists, is people do this because they're playing out their maladaptive coping ideas of what makes sense in their head.

Chad: It's pretty hard for us to stomach the idea that someone in their right mind thinks that it's a good thing to abuse a child. However, when you talk to somebody like that and you ask them, what was the tension like? 'cause I refuse to believe that you are evil, that you're just a bad person, that you're just someone who wants to purposely hurt your child.

Chad: Why was it that you hit your child? And

James: but I wouldn't say you're evil. I would just say you're normal. Because, the default is that the chain of abuse continues and, I'm programmed in a certain way in childhood and I carry in that programming. And then hopefully we stand up and we say, I'm gonna break that chain.

James: The act of breaking the chain. I really think that for me to break the chain, I have to face the reality of what actually happened. And the reality of what actually happened is usually, if I'm a person who was routinely abused as a child. Someone was enjoying that or it wouldn't have happened over and over, like someone was someone, was it?

James: It was ego syntonic, someone was receiving some kind of pleasure or benefit from doing that. 'cause people do not routinely do things they don't like to do unless there's some sort of incentive to do it.

Chad: Absolutely. They were doing it to serve a purpose or a role to feel that they're powerful, to feel that they're in control, to feel that they were helping their child, and all those are things are the reasons why, but they didn't do that because they enjoy inflicting pain in their child. And that's my belief.

Chad: I, I don't believe that they said I'm gonna continue to do this because I like to see my child hurt. If that would happen. That that's very evil in nature. I believe that they're doing it, but it's like you said, there is a positive reaction to it for themselves, but they're not saying, the positive reaction is, I love seeing my child hurt.

Chad: They're not gonna say that,

James: One of my favorite stories about this comes from Terry Terry Warner, who started the Arbinger Institute. There's a bunch of books. Some people have heard of him, but Terry Warner tells this story about a father waiting for his son to come home by midnight curfew. So the father's waiting up, he's waiting, it's 1155, no one's here.

James: It's 1157. And then at 1159, the son pulls into the driveway and runs through the door, and he made it by curfew. What emotion does the father experience in that moment? Is the father rejoiced? Or is the father disappointed And the answer is the father is usually disappointed because he was getting ready to enjoy punishing his child.

James: That's the normal state of human affairs, and this is something we just don't face in therapy world most of the time, is that for most parents and most spouses, we enjoy getting a jab in at the other person.

Chad: What would be the enjoyment of wanting to that, that he was disappointed in that story? What's the enjoyment that, because I guess I'm confused on what would be enjoying,

James: So it yeah. So most of us face this problem, this crisis of, am I good enough? Am I okay? And the default way of answering that is, I'm good enough and I'm okay because I'm a little bit better than someone else. And it's so tempting as parents, if I'm an adult and I'm raising a teenager and that teenager breaks the rule, it's once again ego tonic. There's this little sliver of pleasure and saying, aha, I gotcha. And I don't know. I just see that all the time and I see it, I see it in parents all the time. I see it in spouses all the time. I, and it's just, once I see it, I can't unsee it. And so I would call that sadistic like if the father is disappointed that his son got home before curfew.

James: That seems like kind of sadistic pattern to me

Chad: What? But again I guess I'm just wanting to be more cur, like when you say disappointed, what do you mean by disappointed?

James: because, 'cause he was looking forward to being able to berate the son because he was looking forward to the ego boost from feeling superior to the son because he, the father is being the good one and his son is being the bad one. Now if his son shows up on time. Then the father doesn't be, doesn't get to feel superior to the son 'cause the son, because the son fulfilled his agreement to come home by midnight.

Chad: Sure, and the disappointment relies you believe in the action of wanting to hurt his son because he believes that he's gonna feel better about it. But I'm wondering. What does him hurting him son do for him? What?

James: Oh, I just told you it, it helps you like, like when I push another person down, I feel better about myself. And so it comes from this place of personal unworthiness. I don't feel good about me. And the normal solution to that is I'm gonna start, I'm gonna try to feel a little bit better about me by pushing someone else down.

James: And this is so common in parenting.

Chad: It's a classic bully behavior, right? This is what bullies do on the playground, right? I'm gonna push you because I hate myself or I don't know what I'm doing. I believe though the real behavior change and the real second order change that can happen with that father though, is realizing that you don't need to feel powerful.

Chad: That it's okay that you are walk, you have to grieve the fact that you're walking through the day feeling that you're not strong enough or powerful enough. And that is the true second order change. Not saying, not calling out, oh, you really wanted to hurt your child, didn't you? Because

James: the way you're talking about it is not the way I would talk about, because you're talking about the way a bully would talk about it. But I think there's a third way, which is. I can talk to you about what your experience was of putting down this other person, but I can do it in a kind and loving way because, 'cause you're picking up something which is really dangerous, which is if I, the therapist, then step into this role and say, I'm gonna put you down so I can feel better about me, which also happens in therapy all the

Chad: Sure.

James: That, that is just the same thing happening over and over again. And therapists are specifically vulnerable to all of those mistakes that parents make, and especially to the mistakes that our parents made.

Chad: No, but I guess I'm, I guess my fear is that if you hold the stance that people are doing sadistic behaviors because they enjoy it. And I'm fearing that in therapy as a therapist, you are going to be replaying that bully mentality because your job is to try to root out that evil sense of sadistic behavior in them.

Chad: And they're

James: and if I fall into that trap, obviously, then I'm just doing the thing that I'm preaching against.

Chad: Exactly. 

James: So I don't think the solution is to pretend that people aren't who they are. I think the solution is to tell the truth with love. And I do think that's possible.

Chad: But I think this is where the conversation goes back to, we don't know who people really are. We you have this philosophy that you think people are really sadistic in nature, but that's a philosophy that's not true, that's not rooted 

James: But I don't, I don't look at it that way. I look at observations of individual people and so I'll watch a couple in therapy and I'll watch one, get in a jab at the other one, and then I'll watch their face and like after, after they hurt their partner's feelings. Did they feel better about themselves or did they feel worse?

James: And that's like an in the moment observation. And if I in the moment observe this person just got an ego boost from putting their partner down, which is the normal result, I'm not gonna pretend that didn't happen just to make that person feel better.

Chad: But they didn't, my opinion, they didn't do. The putting their partner down on purpose so that they can get the ego boost. That was not the intention. The intention was to feel like they are I don't know. Maybe they're think that they're actually helping their partner because they are gonna tell them that, look, when you show up on time and you or you show up late all the time, this isn't helping us.

Chad: So you need to hurry up. And they think that belittling is going to actually result in some behavior change.

James: Which reminds me a lot, a, again, of the excuses we make for abusive parents, right? Oh, my mom didn't really want to hurt me. My mom was doing it for my, my, my parent was not trying to hurt me. It was like for my better, for my betterment. It was for my good. They didn't know what they were doing. And I honestly, okay.

James: I think that most therapists had above average difficulty in childhood. I think there's a reason we become therapists and I think because of that, we're more susceptible to this child mind blindness than most people. And because we have more blindness, we tend to jump through more of these hoops and do more of these mental gymnastics, pretending that people accidentally hurt each other.

James: And so that's I just think that because therapists are more susceptible to the problem, we tend to promulgate it into the population more.

Chad: Where is your stance on forgiveness with that?

James: Oh. It should be instantaneous. The forgiveness is should come before the confrontation. If I'm holding judgment in my mind towards a person, then anything I say to them is just gonna be counter effective. So

Chad: But with the whole, let's just take all of us therapists, right? You said we've had, below average experiences or whatever, or above average difficulties with our parents. When you think about how, like you said you don't wanna replay that. We just make excuses for our parents. I'm wondering if your version of excuses is just our version of saying we've forgiven them for who they are and their humanity is. Like I don't believe that my parents wanted

James: but I think that's different. Forgiveness. I can't forgive someone until they face the reality of what happened. And so forgiving and deception, or forgiving and ignoring are different things. And so if I'm gonna forgive you, I'm gonna first acknowledge, Hey, this is what you did. That's the first step.

James: And then I'm gonna say, and I hold no ill will towards you. Like I, I see what you did, Chad, for example. And I love you completely even though I see what you did. And that's what forgiveness is. And forgiveness is not I'm gonna pretend I didn't see what you did. That's different.

Chad: No, but forgiveness is also saying when you say I see what you did for what it is.

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Chad: When we don't, when we don't acknowledge that people don't try to hurt people just for their own egocentric views. I don't really believe that forgiveness has been accomplished because then there's still anger and depression and upsetness in there in that statement.

James: And if that, I mean if that really is the way things, then that would be honest from your point of view. But it would not be honest from my point of view because that's it's very rare for me to see, I work with a ton of couples and, people in really happy marriages generally don't come to counseling.

James: And so you tend to have some pretty difficult situations. And I just see a lot of organized behavior. Taking place. I would say intentional. Intentional is a little bit harder because I think my favorite word for it is organized, predictable behavior. And so something that happens on a daily or weekly basis is just not an accident.

James: If I crash my car once, that's an accident. If I crash my car every day, it's just not an accident. And if I. Insult my partner once that could be accidental. If it's happening repeatedly. These couples I work with, you're seeing, insults and put downs and emotional abuse consistently daily, on a daily basis on both sides.

James: And to say that's like somehow chaotic or unpredictable or disorganized behavior, it just doesn't add up for me.

Chad: Yeah. That's where I think I agree with you. It's not chaotic and disorganized. I think they're doing it on purpose, but the reason why they're doing it is not because they enjoy hurting their partner. That's a that to me is something that like, there's no way

James: So why then? Why then?

Chad: yeah. Why would somebody want to hurt their partner?

James: No. Why? Why? Why are they doing it?

Chad: Yeah. That's the question why we don't know. We.

James: It's almost like you're saying they're do something that they don't want to do, like they're

Chad: No, they're doing something that's actually beneficial for them.

James: I would say it feels beneficial to them.

Chad: No. So like for example, if you put down your partner and make fun of them for showing up late, this is one of their trope that, that they always show up late all the time. And you make fun of them when you try to get down to the root of why they are doing this behavior. It could be any number of positive reasons.

Chad: I'm trying to get my partner to show up because I don't want, I'm trying to save face. And so I think that me putting them down is actually gonna result in some sort of behavior change in them. That's like shame-based motivation, right? They're trying to shame their partner into motivation, right?

Chad: Because that's how they were shamed when they were kids,

James: But you called that positive behavior and that, that sounds like negative

Chad: No. It's a positive intent,

James: Oh yeah. Once again, we disagree about that, but yeah.

Chad: It they think that them doing that is going to work.

Chad: That it's positive behavior. No it's awful

James: yeah, so you see it as positive intent with a negative impact, which means that the person going into it expects the partner to not be hurt. Because if it's a PO I can't have positive intent if I think I'm gonna hurt my partner.

Chad: I don't know if they're thinking about whether or not it hurts them. They think that the overall goal. Is be like in this instance of trying to shame them for time stuff, they think that the overall goal that's most important in that instant is behavior change

James: Yeah. And so I would guess in this example that the overall goal is actually to cause emotional harm. And that the behavioral change is, I know you disagree but that's how I would see it. And there's a related concept once again from Arch, which is. The idea of anti-social empathy, that if I'm effectively hurting my partner on a consistent basis, it means that I have a really good understanding of how my partner's feelings work.

James: Because if I didn't understand how my partner's feelings work, I wouldn't know how to insert the knife to cause maximum damage. And so this once again comes back to the child blindness is my dad didn't know what he was doing. And so the question I usually ask is that, is if you did this to your child, would you know the impact you were having?

James: Oh, I would totally know. I'm like, how do you square that with this idea that your dad had no idea what he was doing when you would totally know? Is there really that big a difference between you and your dad? And the only explanation I can come up with for that is that my mind is programmed to perceive my parents as benevolent no matter what.

James: And it, my mind refuses, refuses to face the reality that my parents were not nearly as benevolent as I thought they were. And that's just, that's what normal parents look like. And if I'm a therapist, I probably was a little bit under the normal.

Chad: sure. Yeah, I think. When you've practiced this with couples, I'm curious what are their responses when you basically spell out no, you did that to hurt them, right? And you show them that in a, probably in the most loving and compassionate way that you could do because you're the third eye here, you're the third object in the room.

Chad: You're not in relation with them. So you probably can confront the abuse and manipulation. When you confront it in that way to our clients, what is their responses like? Is it like, oh, you know what you're right. I did do that to hurt them.

James: That happens about half the time.

Chad: Really?

James: Yeah. Yeah. So the most immediate response is in the other person. So if I'm talking to, partner a, I'm talking to Bob and Sue's sitting on the couch and Sue's complained about this behavior, I. And Sue says, he just hurts me over and over.

James: And I talked to Bob's oh, I didn't mean to, I talked to Bob and I say, Bob, actually I think you did mean to, in fact I think you knew exactly what you're doing. And I think this is organized behavior. And Bob, there's gonna be 50 50. He's gonna, he's gonna it's gonna make sense to him.

James: He's gonna pick it up and he's gonna see it, or he's gonna push back. But either way, Sue's gonna relax in that moment because. She sees that I'm not getting sucked into Bob's narrative and this, this is based on the precondition that I've already, you know 'cause Bob doesn't always know what he's doing.

James: Sometimes it is like whatever. There's reasons but usually it is like a pattern of organized behavior. And Bob usually has a pretty good idea, especially if he's really effective at this. He has antisocial empathy. And he has a pretty good idea of what he's doing before he says his first word.

James: And yeah, I've had immense success with this. 

Chad: So then when you confront them, and let's say they, say, they say, yeah, I did do it on purpose. You're right. ​

Chad: I did.

James: Yeah.

Chad: does the behavior, where's the what do you call that the theory of change happen within this theory of understanding of confronting the.

Chad: The abuse like this and basically calling it out. How what? How does this play out in therapy and what does it look like to change?

James: The whole idea is the reason it hasn't changed. Yes. The reason I haven't, like if I'm the person who, the perpetrator, the reason I haven't changed up until this point is that I haven't really been able to see what's happening. And so in my mind, I've been telling the story. No, I'm just trying to make you come on time.

James: I'm doing this with your interest at heart. I don't enjoy seeing you suffer. These are all the stories I'm telling myself. And so then, I'll just tell you from my perspective, 'cause I've been in this seat with a therapist telling this to me many times and it's been immensely beneficial to me.

James: And so it's helped me see past my own blindness. I grew up, with parents who had conspicuous character flaws as most of us did. And so I developed a blindness to those flaws both in them and in myself and in others. And the critical part is that I was blamed to those flaws in myself.

James: I was unable to see specific behavioral patterns that replicated the undesirable behavioral patterns of my parents, as we all are. And so what my therapists have helped me do is say, James. The way you're behaving here in your mind is innocent and even benevolent. And the way I see it is the opposite of that.

James: Like when I look at your behavior, it looks like you're intentionally trying to hurt your wife. And that's been the only thing that's helped me move the needle on my own behavior in my marriage. And I was, I went to years of couples therapy before I encountered that for the first time, and that was the first thing that made a difference.

Chad: That, that actual,

James: That intervention, the idea of let me tell you how I see you and you're not gonna like it. But the key is it's delivered with, it's delivered with pure love and pure compassion. And that's actually really hard. So if the therapist is being a bully, then obviously that's not gonna work. But if a therapist, if I can sense this person genuinely has my best interest at heart and has no desire for me to suffer.

James: That's the precondition. And so that's actually quite difficult to get to that point as a therapist, especially for someone like me who I would say I, I grew up in a low compassion family and so developing that ability to really care about another person has been an immense challenge, but it's part of learning this approach.

Chad: And then, thank you so much for sharing, first of all your own personal story. I think it's really helpful for people who are listening or whatever you were confronted or when a client of yours is confronted like that. Then what does the therapist do afterwards to work on how do we do something differently now? What does that difference look and how do you help the client identify, oh, you're gonna do that thing again, and what is the thing you do differently?

James: so one of my favorite is what I call a reverse reverse role play where I will play you and you'll play your spouse. And so they, there's some conflict came up, and I'll say, okay, what did your partner say? And they say that, and I say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you an example of what it looks to hold onto yourself.

James: Stand up for yourself. Ask for what you want in the kindest way possible. And it's easier for me 'cause I'm outside the relationship system. I haven't been married to this person for 10 years, I don't have all this resentment built up. I can do this. It's easier for me to pull myself up to that level of functioning even than it would be in my own marriage.

James: If I'm trying to do this in my own marriage, it's much more difficult because of all the history involved. 

Chad: Sorry.

James: show this person, Hey, this is what it would look like. This is an example of how you hold onto yourself and how you take up space in the relationship. But in a kind way, not in an antagonistic way or in a collaborative way.

Chad: Exactly and so then how do you as a therapist do that proxy voice and play that reverse role play? What are the things that you are going to utilize to, to say differently? If you're not going to insult them to try to, because of your own egocentric views. In the example of my partner shows up late and I'm trying to insult them to do that, what are you gonna show them as the therapist proxy voicing to say differently in that instant?

James: Let's do that right now. Let's, so let's say you were the partner who showed up late, and so I'll be your, I'll be your partner. Chad I want to talk to you about how you showed up late yesterday.

Chad: This happens every time. I try, but I just can't. I got all these things going on and I just I try to show up on time, but I just I, you always complain about this.

James: Yes. And I can see I understand how this is difficult because I know that in the past I've actually behaved really poorly on this, where I have used, I've used my complaint as a way to bludgeon you and to make you feel bad on purpose, and I'm really sorry for that. Even though I've done that in the past, I still want to talk to you today and just acknowledging that, this is your choice, not mine.

James: And it's not something that's in my control, but I do want you just to let you know that your behavior has an impact on me. And when you showed up late yesterday, that really affected my day. And it just makes it harder for me to trust you. And I almost wonder.

James: It is just hard for me to believe that this is really accidental on, on your part because it just happens so often. And so it seems it just seems like something that, that you kind of plan on doing because it seems like if you didn't plan on doing it, you would probably show up on time more often.

Chad: So if I can pause here for that,

James: ahead.

Chad: your reaction to me was the exact way. And the reason why I don't hold people in of saying that they do statistic behaviors because you just said. The true reason about why in the past you have done this you've acted differently. You've acted differently because you feel it's hard to trust, and that pain was so hard for you to deal with that you chose a maladaptive coping skill to try to solve that pain and inflict pain on me.

James: That's not what I told you though. I said, I've used it to bludgeon you in the past. And bludgeon is not, bludgeoning, you could call it a maladaptive coping skill and you could also just call it sadism. It's the same thing. Anything, Hitler had maladaptive cope coping skills, I, I feel like that's a dodge where yes, it's a maladaptive coping skill, it.

James: Sometimes I think it's useful to go beyond just calling it a maladaptive coping skill. I agree with that, but I think all of the bad things we do are maladaptive coping, coping skills. So I don't think that really makes it any better.

Chad: I guess I'm still confused on what is the benefit of calling it sadism versus maladaptive coping skill. 

James: I'm, I don't call it sadism I, I don't use that word like, I'm using that word now, but like with clients. I don't say sadistic. I don't say sadism. I don't find that helpful. But I do say, I don't think you, usually what I just say is I don't think this was accidental

Chad: But if we don't

James: That's the most, that's the most thing. And so I think sadistic is the most accurate term for it. It's just not the word, I don't find it the most helpful word to use with clients.

Chad: And I guess what my fear is that if it's not the most helpful views of clients, I think us as clinicians shouldn't be using it. Because then we also in inherently internalize, oh, our clients are sadistic. That's right. This is

James: just our clients it's us too. And I don't know. I. I guess culturally we want to pretend that we're a lot less sadistic than we are, and I just looking around the world, I just see it everywhere. I just think it's very normal for people to enjoy hurting other people.

James: And we usually keep it, we keep it within a very narrow range. There's, except one of the examples from one of my favorite books is a waiter spills coffee on you and you get up and you yell at the waiter, and that's considered acceptable behavior more or less, right?

Chad: no.

James: I, okay, but the comparison is the waiter spills coffee.

James: On you and you get up and you punch the waiter in the face. And that's like in a cultural context. That's like way out's no, you don't go there. But if you get up and yell at the waiter, that's considered forgivable. And so there's like this big difference. I'm talking, I understand you disagree.

James: I would say culturally, I, if I asked a hundred people, a lot of people say, oh yeah, I can understand why you yelled at the waiter. I don't understand you punching a waiter in the face.

Chad: No, I can understand even why you punched him in the face. I understand that, but it's still not okay. Even the yelling too. Like I understand it's not okay. I think it's like when we look at the world though, and we look at through this idea that people will do things to purposely hurt other people.

Chad: The thing that I really want to make sure is I feel like there's a big danger in that, and the danger is that we don't promote positive intent within our relationships, and if we don't

James: I see it as the opposite because I see I. I would say promoting what's actually happening. And so one of my favorite sayings is you can't change what you can't see. And so in my marriage, I was definitely sadistic, like absolutely. And I came by that honestly.

Chad: I disagree,

James: I know, but you also don't know the details of what I did.

James: If I told you, if I told you the details of what I did in my marriage, I'm not sure you would disagree with me. Even though you don't like to see it that way.

Chad: I would beg to differ that you could tell me the worst things, and I don't believe that you did it because you were sadistic and evil and egocentric. I just don't believe that. I believe that you

James: I remember, I'll tell you the moment, like this came clear to me. I was remembering a particular phone call to my wife when I said a particular thing. And in my mind at the time, I was just I was holding my ground and standing up for myself and holding onto my power in the relationship.

James: That was what was going through my mind and. And it, the thing I said hurt her deeply, like really deeply. And in my mind I was like, that's her things. Those are her feelings, not my responsibility. I'm making the right choice for me. And then when I looked on that same phone call a couple years later, I remembered what I felt when I noticed her emotional response, and it felt really good to me.

James: And so if that's not sadism, then there is no sadism.

Chad: Why did it feel good?

James: Because I'm sadistic. Because everybody's sadistic.

Chad: Without putting a label on whether you are or not, I'm curious why it felt good.

James: Why would it feel good?

Chad: What did, how did it serve you?

James: I think okay, so let's see. I was working from like an understanding of my relationship where I felt controlled and manipulated and powerless, and none of those things were true, but that is how I felt, right? So I felt, pretty typical things. We fill in marriage and so in my mind, I'm the brave freedom fighter, fighting for freedom and liberty and the American way and I'm standing up for my choices and all these things.

James: And from that point of view, from that stance, it's okay to hurt people because sometimes we have to hurt people when we're fighting for freedom, right? That's the way, that's the way the human mind works. And so why did it feel good? The best answer I could give you is that I learned when I was really young that's.

James: It's normal to enjoy hurting other people. That's probably, I think that's probably the closest to the truth I could get.

Chad: But besides it being normal, I think that you're saying that it felt good because you were able to reestablish your power in the relationship.

James: No, it wasn't about that though. It felt like her specific negative emotional response feel good. I already had my power, like this was. My power was there the whole time. So this was definitely something that was in my power. And so the hurt I caused in her felt good to me just for a moment.

James: And in the moment I, so I'd always perceived myself as like this kind, generous, typical therapist we're so awesome. And but when I looked back on this moment and I was like if I'm this kind, generous person. Why would I feel this joy in my heart when I said this thing to my wife that hurt her so deeply?

James: So if I were a good person, not that I'm not a good person, let's see. If I were a much more compassionate person than I was at that moment, then maybe it would still been the right thing to say. That's totally possible. But if I say the right thing and it hurts my wife who I love, I'm going to mourn for that pain.

James: I'm not gonna rejoice in that pain. And so it still might be the right thing for me to say that's totally possible, but I'm going to mourn with those who mourn. I'm going to feel her pain as my pain, and instead I felt her pain as my pleasure. And so I, I think that pattern was deeply ingrained in me as a small child and it was just the way I always was.

James: And I never, I can tell someone pointed it out to me very directly. I was never able to see it.

Chad: Yeah, I.

James: and as soon as I saw it, I was able to change it, but before I saw it, like I have to see that before I can do anything about it, because if I'm still pretending, oh, I'm this super compassionate person, I can't change that if I'm pretending.

James: And I was pretending it wasn't, not so much I was pretending I was just blind, like I was very blind.

Chad: Sure. No, you're. I think one thing that I'm curious about is what does the confrontation, not the con, what does the acknowledgement of the behavior and calling it for what it looks like in that moment? I. Do for our clients. And from what you're saying, from your experience with therapists, it made a huge impact on you because it allowed you to think about I don't want to do that anymore.

Chad: And I think maybe what we're doing, maybe what you're, maybe something where I could benefit from this sort of style is that if I'm trying to always do this second order change of, okay, fine, yes, maybe it's a district or not, but what's underneath, what's driving that behavior? Maybe we're not actually confronting what the behavior really is, and we're not able to actually even start the behavior change until you actually acknowledge and see the impacts of that behavior.

Chad: Is that kind of what you're saying?

James: Yeah. Yeah, that, that's part of what I'm saying. I am also running outta time.

Chad: Oh, got it.

James: Yeah. Chad, is it okay if we button it up there for now?

Chad: Yeah, absolutely.

James: Okay. I love this conversation with you, and I really appreciate you and I hope that we have many more.

Chad: Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you so much.