40 | Harrison Scott Key: Do You Want to Be Married to Me?

What do you do when your spouse tells you she wants a divorce and is in love with another man?

That was a question Harrison Scott Key never thought he'd have to answer. But it's exactly what happened. Over the course of several years he navigated an excruciating saga of fighting for his marriage and for his sanity. He tells the story in his New York Times bestselling book How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told.

In our conversation with Harrison, we talked about what it was like living it, writing about it, and the unexpected impact of book tour promotion about such a personal experience. We talked about family healing, and how his friends and his church helped him find the capacity for forgiveness.

It's a rare talent who can take such a heartbreaking story and also make it so funny; but that's exactly what Harrison does - in the book and in our conversation. Harrison is a professor at Savannah College of Art & Design, has written three books, and lives in Savannah with his wife Lauren and their kids. (He's also the drummer in a cover band called The Love Handles.)

#harrisonscottkey #howtostaymarried #marriage #infidelity #reconciliation #spiritualhealing #counseling #therapy #gospel #grace #awaken #awakenrecovery #awakenpodcast #whatwereallywant #wwrw #recovery #connection #conversation

Harrison's website

Harrison's books on Amazon

Harrison's TEDx Savannah talk on YouTube

Transcript

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SPEAKER_05 0:00

Like I have the weirdest art and I was hang it hung it all over the house. I'm like, and I'm like, I can't wait till she sees this crap. She's gonna hate it. And so she's walking up the driveway, and I just looked at her and I was like, Do you want to be married to me? Like it wasn't a rhetorical question. Like, after all this, do you want to be married to me?

Announcer 0:22

Welcome to What We Really Want. Conversations about connection. Settle in and get ready for a great conversation. Let's talk about what we really want.

Greg 0:34

Ready? Ready. Hey friends, welcome back to What We Really Want. Greg and Stacy with you today for episode 40. Our guest is Harrison Scott Key. And the name of the episode is Do You Want to Be Married to Me? That's a question you've already heard in the little clip that opened up our episode. Harrison Scott Key is an author, a speaker, a college professor, and he's the author of uh three books, including New York Times bestseller, How to Stay Married, the Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. Hun, you were the one who introduced me to that book not too long ago.

Stacey 1:11

Yes. A friend had told me about it and just thought it would be something I would be interested in reading. And I actually listened to the audio and it was so good. Yeah.

Greg 1:20

And you told me about it, told me what the what the gist was, that it's his memoir of his experience with infidelity. But unlike our story, it was his spouse who was unfaithful to him multiple times with the same affair partner over a number of years. And so I was really interested in your perspective on the book. Yeah. Having had the similar experience to what he had. Wasn't exactly the same, but it definitely involved uh infidelity, betrayal. What was it like for you listening through that this far down the road for us?

Stacey 1:56

Yeah, I was curious to hear I guess from a male perspective. And there were a lot of differences, I guess, but so many things that I yeah, I resonated with.

Greg 2:08

So many things that he said in the book.

Stacey 2:10

Yeah, like even just when there was going to be a conversation before he knew anything, and just all the things that were going through his mind, wondering what it could be, or just all the things you don't know and just the the rapid fire thoughts that are in your head trying to figure things out. And then a lot of the anger.

Greg 2:30

Something that I noticed that I thought was kind of a cool I don't know, the word that came to mind was juxtaposition, but that seemed a little bit uh pretentious. Um was that uh some people who read the story were like, uh dude, why did you stay in it for so long? You know, why did you just continue to subject yourself to that kind of pain, you know, especially when it ha when you realize that it had happened again. On the one hand, yeah, you could say, wow, he seemed really slow paced and long suffering. But then just when he's describing just the thought processes that are going on, I mean, there's so much reactivity in your mind because your mind's trying to figure out like what just happened.

Stacey 3:14

Yeah.

Greg 3:15

What does this mean? You know, you're you're flashed recounting everything that's happened in the relationship. Was any of it real? And so there's a whole lot of speed. Yeah. I mean, you've talked about that. Yeah.

Stacey 3:25

Yeah. No, no, no. Well, and I r I know that I was thinking, man, I don't know, I don't know why he stayed so long. Or I think we all do that. And I think it's so important to remember if you're not in the story, you don't know what you would do. I had people say to me what they would do if it were them, and that's not helpful. So I love you listeners. If you've done that, please don't do that. Don't tell people what you would do. If they're sharing something they're going through, I don't whatever it is, if you can just not say, Well, this is what I would do, because you just don't know.

Greg 4:18

Something that is uh unexpected, I think, is just how quickly he can shift between making you laugh and making you cry.

Stacey 4:25

Oh, yeah.

Greg 4:25

Because it's a very emotional story. And if you're listening to the audiobook, there's so many things you're like, oh my gosh, like that's hilarious. And is it appropriate to laugh about you know, about that because of what he's talking about? And and he's shared in the interview, he was writing these things. What turned into the book, he was writing it down basically as a journal while it was still happening. One of the things that's cool and refreshing to me is just to hear the freshness of it, to hear the realism of it. Just them talking about like, well, I mean, this is where we are right now.

Stacey 4:57

Right, right.

Greg 4:58

And and as people who kind of live in a community where the our marching orders are living one day at a time, I mean, that's really underscored by their story because we really don't have any guarantees. We make vows, we make promises, but we're broken people. And we do things, I mean, I know firsthand, doing things that go against the vow that you made with every intention of keeping it.

Stacey 5:20

Yeah. And it did, it's not a I did not hear at all like a one foot out the door.

SPEAKER_04 5:26

No.

Stacey 5:26

But right now, this is where we are, and we're we are fighting for marriage today. I love that Lauren was able to s to share some of her story. That was so I was so excited, I didn't see that coming, and I was just almost giddy and jumping up and down in my car because I was driving when I was listening to it.

Greg 5:45

Yeah, because Harrison's wife Lauren wrote the second to last chapter of the book. And it's like, yeah, by the time that happens, it's like you you wanted to meet her.

Stacey 5:55

Yes, yes, yes. Something about how people would think she's like the villain and make her out to be the monster or whatever. And I guess because of our story, and I have come to a place of empathy and understanding of your own story that I just broke for her. And I had like so much compassion for her, and I I was so excited to hear her side.

Greg 6:17

That's cool.

unknown 6:18

Yeah.

Greg 6:18

Well, we hope that you'll feel compassion for yourself or people in your life who are going through maybe similar things. We talk about anger, we talk about deception, we talk about forgiveness. This was such a cool conversation with Harrison Scott Key. Hope that you're already familiar with him. But if not, you're welcome that we're your introduction to a really, really great author, speaker. We hope that you will really enjoy and be drawn into deeper connection with people you love through this conversation. It's episode 40. It's called Do You Wanna Be Married to Me? And our guest is Harrison Scott Key, and the conversation starts right now. Harrison Scott Key, we're so thankful that you're here and excited to have a conversation with you today.

SPEAKER_05 7:04

Well, thanks for the invitation.

Greg 7:06

And we've both recently read How to Stay Married. Really are excited to talk to you about that and other things.

SPEAKER_05 7:12

Let's let's do it, man. You can ask me anything and everything. I promise you, I have been asked questions that I never thought I would be asked.

Greg 7:20

Well, let me start it by asking what we ask all of our guests, Harrison, is what do you really want out of our conversation today?

SPEAKER_05 7:26

I would love for you to Venmo me $10,000 by the end. That would be fantastic. That would help me cover some of the tuition I'm paying for my child in college. That is great requests. I beyond that, I just I just like to have, you know, these these conversations can go any which way. And I've had, I've I don't know, I've probably done 150 podcast interviews in the last two years since this book came out. And I always find myself learning something new every time. And uh so yeah, I'd I'd like to learn something new too.

Greg 8:03

Yeah, I love to hear that. And your your first request or your first what you want makes a lot of sense just from something you said in your TED talk that uh, you know, you and Lauren didn't write the book for money, you wrote it for what the money will allow you to buy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:19

Well, that's funny.

Greg 8:21

You said you've done about 150 of these since the book came out. We're just a couple of weeks, I think, away from two years since the book's been out. And I would love to talk to you today about kind of your perspective now that the release and the subject matter is not quite as fresh, you know, just to kind of talk about if anything has changed, if anything has gotten deeper. Plus, I just really love the theme and how you talked about forgiveness. I think that if I was to say what I really want, it would be just to really explore your experience with forgiveness. Let's let's just jump right in. I'd I'd love to hear what two years of having this book out into the world has been like for you and for Lauren and your family.

SPEAKER_05 9:06

Uh well, pretty awful, honestly. Um, at least at first. Um not surprising. I mean, when you write a when you write a nonfiction book in which you are a main character and the people that you love most are main characters, which I've written three of those books so far, you know, you're used, you know it's gonna be that you people want that vulnerability when you interview with them or when you come to their bookstore or book festival in their town. You know, the book is writing anything autobiographical is so challenging because you have to be vulnerable in a way that is, but also engaging, you know, you people you you want to write a book that people want to read and finish it. Otherwise, what's the point and need talking, you know? And so you expect a certain amount of you expect to have to sort of walk around with that vulnerability when you're promoting a book. And that's that can be hard. I mean, the book writing the book and being vulnerable in that space of the page is already hard, and because you have to, it's not hard like that you're resistant to it, you're resisting being vulnerable when you're writing, uh, although sometimes you are, but it's more it tends to be very unconscious. Like you don't want to go in a certain direction and you don't really know why, but you just don't. And I'm sure you guys see this in therapy. You have a client who just doesn't want to go there, and you're like, maybe that's where you should go because you don't want to go there, you know. And it's the same way with writing. But what's hard is that then you have to, it's really hard to describe. It'd be like, you know, you go, let's just keep the therapy analogy. You go into therapy and say you have a good, you know, hour-long sessions every one or two weeks for a year, and it's hard, right? It's hard, it's vulnerable, you're growing, you're sharing, you're learning. And then it would be like, okay, you've done that for a year. Now you're gonna go around the world, and then you're gonna tell everybody all the things that you experienced in that year, and you've got to do it in a way that makes them seem authentic. So it's emotionally very exhausting to promote a book like this. This one, this third one, far more so than my first two books. And those were pretty vulnerable too, especially the first one I, you know, wrote about Mississippi and racism and misogyny and hating and loving my father and just all these things. And that was hard to do. But this one, the marriage book, has been especially hard. And I kind of knew that, you know, and I knew that that that was one of my hesitations in publishing this book. Was I just like, did I want to be that guy? Did I want to be known for this?

SPEAKER_04 11:51

Right.

SPEAKER_05 11:51

And, you know, we can, I mean, it's a was a complicated thought process that led to our publishing the book. Uh, and a lot of conversations with friends, and of course, uh, between Lauren and me, between my editor and my agent and Lauren and me. I mean, it wasn't, we didn't just say, hey, let's write a book, boom, you know, let's go. It was much more like, do we like what is this gonna be like for our kids if we do this? What are the pros? What are the cons? So promoting it, you know, at first it was like when the book came out in early June of 23. And at first, you know, it was it was fine. It was, it would, you have a lot of adrenaline when a book first comes out. But then you start doing these interviews, and people start coming up to you at the book signing table, and they start DMing you with everything that has ever gone wrong in their marriage.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:45

Right. They send you their phone numbers, ask you to call them. Can we please talk? My wife just kicked me out of the house for XYZ reason. I just heard about your book. I'm three pages in. Will you call me? Like that was like at first, it was funny. It was like, oh, this is weird. And you know, Lauren was getting the same sort of DMs. Uh her Instagram account is private, in part for that reason, but she was still have people were still finding her and asking her the same thing, like, can we talk? Or, you know, I had an affair, and I you have no, I've never met anybody else who've who's admitted that they've had an affair, and I would love to talk to you, Lauren. And yeah, it was just so much for both of us.

SPEAKER_04 13:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:26

And so every day that was happening. And by the end of that summer of 23, I was just fried. My heart, my brain, everything was fried. I was trying to engage with people, you know, when they would message me with something really intense, and you know, like you don't want to just give the thumbs up emoji, you know, like, great job. Like, I don't, you know, here's a suicide hotline number. Like, I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. You know, and I would come up with some sort of just sort of classic responses that I felt would be helpful to people. And I got to eat where even where I was copying and pasting, I because I just couldn't engage.

Greg 14:02

Well, you kind of had to, didn't you? I mean, I I would imagine that with the subject matter of the book, you guys knew you were gonna get a lot of people who were resonating with it. But I think I think I wouldn't have expected them to push in that personally. I I think that would have surprised me. Did it surprise you?

SPEAKER_05 14:22

The the frequency of it did. You know, I mean, I wrote a book about my dad dying, and so you know, for like three years, um, random men on the street would just stop me and say, My dad died too, and they would hug me, and you know, we just kind of like okay, I'm sorry, you know, like but but this was like 10, 15 DMs every day for six months. Wow. And then you just stopped reading them, even the even ones that were like, hey, love the book, you know, like that was it, but I just I'd stopped reading them all together. And then, you know, I made the mistake of reading, you know, all the negative Goodreads reviews that were mounting up, and those were just so cruel, even if they even if they said things that I kind of agreed with. I was just like, this is not healthy for me to be reading this and all this. And so I just kind of detached, I stopped doing as many. I I would continue to do interviews like this every couple of weeks, but then I just I didn't go on the road for a while. I got really tired of having to tell everybody how bad I was at being married. You know, it just was it was continual. And also, you know, I tend I write funny books, and when you write funny books, it's fun to promote them in a funny way. And this was really hard, even though the book is very funny. And but it's like if a parent dies, somebody close to you dies, and you see an old friend, say a year later, and your old friend's like, Hey, how's your how's your dad? And you say, Oh, you know, he passed away last year. Now you're not really grieving so heavily anymore, right? You buried your dad a year ago, but this person, when they find out that your dad, who maybe coached them in Little League Baseball, just died, like yeah, they they're sad, and and you have to kind of match that sadness so you don't make them feel bad. And so that's what it was like with this book. Every time I had to tell the story to a new audience, I was like, oh, I'm so tired of like reliving this story. That's why it's in a book. Like, just go read the book, man. You know, even though I asked nobody asked me to write it, and so I I couldn't be angry with anybody but myself, but it was tough. And over time, and I mean I was very honest with Lauren about this. I by the by 2024, I was in a pretty severe depression because of all this. And I felt just ready to move on to a new book project. Let the book out there do its work with people, let people enjoy it, review it, whatever. And, you know, I was very honest with my wife about this and my friends. Uh, and over time, it's it's gotten so much better. You know, just the the heat of it died down. I I maybe get a DM now once a month, infrequently enough that I can engage with that person in a way that doesn't like give me PTSD. So it's gotten a lot better. And I will say, these, these kinds, these types of conversations are are different. It's it's not a burden to talk to somebody like you guys about it. It was just being kind of assaulted by strangers when I didn't expect it. That was really hard. And I I've I for a long time I wanted to write something silly or weird that was just kind of cleanse the palate. And I've lately come to see that that I might need to lean into the problem a little bit, the same way that we were talking about earlier with like therapy. Like, if this is something that's really bothering me, maybe that's what I need to write about. I'm not saying I'm gonna write some sequel, How to Stay Married, part two, but then I need to really, I need to really think and reflect on why I felt so terribly and why I I normally love to speak to audiences. I I spoke at a conference in New York two weeks ago about the book, an audience of about three or four hundred at this really old Episcopal church in the village, and it was so awesome. And I just hadn't done a talk in like months. Yeah, and I was really dreading this talk just because it had been a while and I didn't know if I'd still have the magic. And it went really well, and people really laughed, and I had a great time. And it just reminded me that like I can have fun with this and I can help other people, even with a topic that's heavy like this. So it's gotten so much better.

Greg 18:35

Well, it seems that makes so much sense as far as how it was in that initial season of promoting it when then when the book was new. But I'm also thinking about the fact that when that happened, it hadn't been all that long since the experience itself. You know, and now there's I don't know how long it takes you to write a book, but if that what you were writing about was in 2020 and the book came out in 2023, I imagine you started writing it probably what, a year after Lauren came home? Probably not much more than that.

SPEAKER_05 19:06

No, I actually started it before she came home. I started the book when we were while we were separated. I didn't quite know what it would turn out to be, but I but I did, I was writing about our marriage and writing about sort of our past, even before I knew about this affair. I was I had already kind of started to write about that. And in faith, you know, I talk about faith a lot in the book, and I was kind of writing about that. And so then when everything blew up, it was like, oh, this, I I guess I have to write about this. I was clearly writing about those topics before I knew because I think I knew. I think I knew something was wrong. So I did start writing it before she came home, but I didn't finish, I mean, I I didn't really finish the book until 2022, summer of 2022, so a year before it came out. And so, like, really, guys, like I I just had PTSD. I mean, I was I was out here trying to, you know, promote this book, and I was still I had gone through the absolute worst period of my life. And funny or not, like that's heavy stuff. And uh I didn't have time for therapy when I was on book tour. And so that a lot, that was a lot of it. I was just I was still healing. And Lauren, Lauren did do some book events with me, and she still does. She just doesn't do as many. I mean, she works, she can't travel with me every time I go somewhere because we still have two kids at home. I think I think it was easier for her. She seemed a lot more emotionally healthy this you know, that year after the book came out than I did.

Greg 20:40

You said you had PTSD. Is that something you realize now? Did you realize it at the time that that was going on?

SPEAKER_05 20:48

No, I I if you had had if you had told me that, I'd been like, oh yeah, that makes sense. People did ask, like, well, why'd you write the book so soon? Like you should have waited. I mean, you might still get divorced. And that's true. All that's true. We still might get divorced. Like anybody who's married can get divorced.

SPEAKER_04 21:04

Right.

SPEAKER_05 21:04

Um, but I I wrote it. The reason I wrote it so quickly, and I wrote it in the midst of sort of what was going on, is that it was sort of like war reporting, you know. Like I was, you know, like I was in the field with the army and things were happening. And so I was writing these things. So I was getting every detail and what it felt like. And I knew that my feelings would change and evolve. And you do write, if I wrote this book now, it would be uh, it would have a different tone. I don't know what, I don't know how different. I think it would probably be funnier and sadder. I think it would be a little bit of both if I wrote it now. But that's why I wrote it quickly. Because it just everything felt so fresh. And I and I honestly, guys, I mean, you know, I just kind of said, screw it. I mean, this is happening, this is wild. It is blowing my mind every step of every day. I I and I feel like I have to put this story on paper. Now, the disc now the disc I did put it on paper, the discussion about When and where and how and why to publish it was a different conversation that I had with a lot of people. But I was writing it in real time. And so yeah, now I realize, like, oh gosh, I'm definitely I was definitely still processing. And that comes through, I think, in the final chapter. I say, I still feel terrible about every other day. And I don't know if we're gonna stay married. I mean, in part, I it's kind of what I like about the book that I it wasn't tidy. It's not all happy endings and just have a date night every three weeks. No, it wasn't that at all. You know, it was much more honest. I know. I just I did not want to write that book. Yeah, I was afraid, like my agent did ask me, she was like, Do you want to like wait five years and write this book? And I didn't I didn't want to wait. I felt like it would be too tidy. The ending might, if we stayed married, the ending would be a little too happy and tidy. And that doesn't, that's not realistic in most cases.

Stacey 22:55

Yeah. I was thinking about when you were talking about people messaging you. This is very different, but I it made me think about what we do. And it's been hard, even doing it as a ministry. Probably we started six years into doing it officially.

Greg 23:13

Six years and six years into my our own recovery.

Stacey 23:16

Recovery and therapy and all of that, but still like I think in a different way. People are reaching out, but it's because we're a ministry and that's what they're supposed to do. But I think just the continual talking about it can just it just keeps it there, you know. And I I I got it to a point where when I would hear women sharing their side, it didn't take me down or make me real sad. But I think the cumulative probably over the years, it's it still can be really hard. So identified in in a weird way with that. But um, I was thinking about, yeah, I was wondering when you just talked about, you know, it's kind of sounds like more like not more like, but like journaling as you were writing and then deciding to actually make it a book, publish it. Did you and Lauren pretty much feel on the same page about that?

SPEAKER_05 24:02

Or was it like harder for one of you to oh, it was definitely harder for her.

Stacey 24:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:08

There's a lot of reasons it was harder for her. You know, it's very easy to assume she's the villain of this book. She had this affair with this guy. And I and you know, people who don't read the book or who only read the first page or the first chapter, whatever, could easily walk away being like, wow, this guy is a real jackwad, you know, for writing this book about his wife having this affair. Like it seems like such a shaming move. And I knew that people would assume that if they mean this book, all this book did is call forth whatever you already think about marriage. It just made you feel it very intensely. Right. Like people who people who are, you know, bitter and angry or distrustful of the institution, you know, they read this book and go, like, man, this guy, this guy's an idiot, this girl is an idiot, they never should have written this book, they never should have been married. And then other people who have a more hopeful view of marriage and love and forgiveness would would have the opposite view. And you think, oh, this is great. I'm so glad a book like this exists in the world. Um, but we knew Lauren and I both knew that she would look like it would look like a real target on her face when this book came out. And um, she's not used to being in the limelight. I have a lot more comfort with that just because of what I do. Uh, I'm also a you know, a ridiculous circus clown extrovert. And I I've done stand-up and you know, improv and been a performer and I played drums in a band. And my wife, aside from dancing in ballet, you know, 30 years ago, she hasn't, she's not that way. And so it was tough. And then we talked about, you know, like I I basically said when she came home after a few weeks, after it was clear that like we were both gonna really try for the first time with her, maybe ever in our marriage. It seemed like she really wanted to try. And I and I and we were both rock bottom, stripped bare, you know, on a gurney in the ICU of love. I mean, it was bad. And so once it was obvious that we were both kind of stuck in the ICU of love together now, slowly recovering. I I said, I could bring this up to her. I can mention it to her. So, hey, you know, I don't know if you know this about me, uh, but I am a writer. Um, you know, at the time we've been married for 20 years, and she's like rolling her eyes. I'm like, I really think I have to write about this. And that's very scary to me, but it I think I have to write about it, you know. And she got she got mad and she was like, instantly knee-jerk reaction. No, please go write a book about the dog. Like, people love books about dogs. Like, don't don't say this. So, you know, a few days later, I was like, Look, let me, I'm just gonna write it, and then I'll and then when I'm done, you can read it and then you can decide then. And she's like, fine. And I, you know, we were both in therapy like three times a week. I mean, when we were when we were in the ICU, we were in therapy more than we were anywhere else. And so she was also in a process where she was sharing. I mean, I was really learning to listen during that period, and she was learning to share. And she started having, she would practice sharing. And so she would go out to dinner with, you know, a girlfriend of hers, and she would just tell them the story. And after like three or four of these, you know, her friends were like, You guys have to publish this. And so I finished, I finished uh the book, I showed it to her, and she was like, She read it. I was so nervous, and this was in 22, and she said that she was surprised that it was so funny. She said she thought it would be more angry or bitter or something, or sadder. And she was surprised, and she actually liked it. She gave me some editorial feedback, which was really unusual and surprising. She was like, I think you should say more about this and less about this, and you know, um, and then she wrote a chapter for the book, and it just slowly it was just this conversation of like, all right, how do we feel? And then we would talk to my editor about it. And then we did a soft launch in the summer of 22, where she read a chapter, her chapter, and I read a chapter in front of an invited audience of about 50 people, mostly from our church, but other friends from just around town, and just to see, like, this is what it's gonna be like. And of course, as soon as we did it, you know, like I read my chapter, and people laughed like I wanted them to, and then Lauren read her chapter, and everybody's bawling at the end of her chapter. I mean, just bawling. Yes, and then nobody would look me in the eye for like two weeks. Like every man in that room was scared to death. Because this is a story about your sweet, you know, homeschooled Christian wife having this torrid affair and your marriage being ripped apart in part because you, that which is me, was blind and selfish, and it was just every sin sort of laid bare, and it scared the crap out of a lot of people. And I was like, Lauren and I were like, Well, that's what it's gonna be like, I guess. We'll do this.

Greg 29:18

You know, you you talked about being unaware that that was going on because of your own selfishness, your own character defects that you were bringing in. And in chapter 16 of the book, you talk about that a lot. I mean, you talk about ownership an awful lot. And I I re that stood out to me because in in our story, uh, when everything that I had been doing for so many years came out at the beginning of 2009, we started doing a lot of work individually and together. And it wasn't very long before Stacy started owning some of the stuff that she had brought that was negative into the marriage. And I that was hard for me to hear her doing that because you know, my narrative was this was all my fault. And it and it and it was. I mean, what I she could have brought all that negative stuff in and it still wouldn't have justified what I did. But, you know, it's not a matter of cause, it's a matter of contribution, however you want to phrase it. There was also something that was very healing for me that my life wasn't just all the time, look what you did, U SOB, look what you did, look what you did. I mean, there was there was that too, you know. And I had I had a a nickname whose initials were FB. And, you know, that was that was great. But yeah, there was something about that about taking ownership when it would have been so easy for I'm talking to Stacy now, for you not to have that was really powerful.

Stacey 30:46

Yeah. Well, and I think early on some of the ownership was like trying to make you f which is weird. Why would I care what you felt? Like in the beginning. But like I we had a we had a reputation and you know, I grew up a missionary kid, he grew up in a Christian home. We were in church, you know, church staff, he was church staff for the whole of our marriage to that point. And I think there was some salvaging the reputation and like look, be the good wife. And some of that I think was well, I have I have my things too, which don't equal what you did. But I think some of that was not altogether healthy, but you knew you just you're just get surviving each day. And so I think though at some point, whenever I our therapist kept encouraging me to reach out to somebody because there weren't any recovery groups or anything like that. And she's like, This lady has been through this. And I was like, I'm not talking to somebody else. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be hanging out with sex addicts' wives because that's not my story, and that's not gonna be my story. And and then, you know, months into the process, he's in therapy, we're both in therapy, and he's feeling better and he's free, and he's just it's this this burden is unloaded. And I'm like, this is annoying. I'm I'm I'm still so mad, you know. And so I was like, okay, whatever, I'll call this lady, and then she starts going through a codependent book with me, and I'm like, what is this garbage? But in reading all of the things about codependency, I was like, oh, this is how I live my life, and it's actually not healthy. It's actually not biblical, even because the way I grew up, I resonated with so much of y'all's backstories, you know, because there's just so much that I was taught that isn't Jesus' heart, you know. So that's when I think things shifted for me as far as starting to own even more, was when I did see, like, even just for myself, and it wasn't about because I did this, well, then of course you went and did whatever. Now there's some of that that like is understandable, like how you felt. It's not that it was ever an excuse, but like I I I guess understanding the dynamic of our relationship and well, yeah, I understand how you could feel that way or whatever, but it's not owning what you did. Yeah, and owning my surprising unhealthy stuff and how I relate to other people, even, you know, just doing everything to look good and and helping anybody with anything, because that's all I thought I had to offer was my help, you know.

SPEAKER_05 33:07

Well, this sort of gets into forgiveness and forgiveness territory. If if you want to move into that, um would love to. You know, it it's it is a complicated situation when like forgiveness is because it seems like it's permissiveness sometimes, you know, like I forgive you for being a terrible person, whatever. You know, the best advice I got in all of this was from my buddy Jimbo, who's in the book. And I I say this in the book. He says, you know, he was he's a counselor, he wasn't my counselor, he's the front man in my band, but he's also a counselor, your cover band, right? Yeah, that's right. We're the love handles. Um but Jimbo's a good a good dude, and he's a a marriage and family therapist, and you know, he was one of my confidants in all of this. You know, when something like this goes down, you need you need about three or four people that you can just talk to about all of it, in addition to your therapist, people who can, you know, come sit with you on the porch and have a beer and you know, whatever, feel normal with. And Jimbo knew what was going on. And he said, you know, in in my experience as a counselor, when the betrayed spouse owns sort of their identity within the marriage, like owns who they are, what they bring to it if it's not great. That that's the only time that a in his experience that a couple can survive infidelity is when the betrayed spouse says, Hey, you're not you're not the only idiot in this marriage. Here's how I've messed up. And and it's it's not a it's not about balancing the scales of justice, but it is when someone has an affair, you know, Greg, you mentioned this. When someone has an affair, everybody hates you. Everybody hates you. You're a bad dude. Even people who don't even believe in marriage think you're a bad person. Like, well, man, like you can do a lot of things, but if you cheat on your spouse, you are a bad person. And that moral clarity is so toxic and poisonous for, I mean, you know, we're Christians. Like, you know, check the you know, the beam in your own eye before the speck in your you know spouse's eye. I mean, it's it's one, it's Christianity 101.

Greg 35:26

Yeah. And so I felt until somebody does something really bad that you know.

SPEAKER_05 35:31

Right, right. And then you're like, oh, that's out the window. I mean, you feel, you see red, you you want, you know, either vengeance or there's violence and vengeance and anger, all these things are there. And so it's so it's kind of intoxicating in a bad way. When like everybody, like when anybody would call me and be like, I heard what happened, your wife is so terrible, even though I didn't want them to say that about her. She was still my wife, still the mother of my child three children and would be for the rest of our lives. It was kind of intoxicating. Like, yeah, what she did is really bad. And this this was this was unfair. And it and it put and it elevates you as the betrayed person into this role that you don't belong in, which is I'm awesome and you're not. Now, did I have an affair? No, I didn't have an affair with a person, but you could make a case that I had an affair with my career, that I had an affair with my time, that I had an affair with money. You could easily make that case. So recognizing my own faults, and I catalog those in the book to some degree. I would it would have been a 10 books long if I would write every fault, just to show the reader, like hey, this was what I was doing. I was like, you know what? Like, that's why, in some ways, that's why you separate, right? You can't really do that work on yourself when things get really bad unless you separate. And and that's when that work really happened for me. And that made forgiveness um so much more plausible. I won't say easier, but it made it so much more plausible. But forgiveness is definitely not something you do once, it is something you do. There's a reason that, you know, 70 times, seven times that phrase is in the Bible, because every time you remember what happened, you have to forgive. Because when as soon as you remember all those predatory response mechanisms in your brain are like bad, bad, bad. This thing, you know, like uh the other day I was playing with my wife's leg. She was just sitting on the couch, and I'm just kind of like, you know, playing the piano on her leg. And out of nowhere, I thought, some other man has done this while we've been married. He's he's he's been affectionate with my wife on a couch, and I didn't know. And as soon as that thought comes back, it's just you see red for a split second, like, oh, this is bad. I don't want to be thinking about this. And so that act of forgiveness is like, all right, let's just remember, forgive. Like, this is not something you want to think too much about, buddy. You know, move on past this, but you need to forgive. And every time you remember, and as time passes, I think you have those moments less often.

SPEAKER_03 38:06

Yes, but they do.

SPEAKER_05 38:08

I mean, Stacey, you can probably agree that they still come back when you're least expecting it. You'll have a thought, you know, it's not just watching a TV show where somebody's having an affair, but something happens, this a smell, the color of the light, and you're like, I don't want to, I don't want to be thinking about this. And so forgiveness is continual. And I hope it, I hope it's like that for Lauren. You know, we have we don't talk about this all the time, but she she said something, I don't even remember what it was, guys, but she accused me of something the other day. It was something small, like, you always do that. And we were kind of laughing about it. I don't remember what it was, but I but you could see the old resentment in her that in part made the affair easier. You could see that kind of come out. And I went, I crossed my arms. I was like, I don't do that anymore. I haven't done that in a long time, whatever it was. You know, I don't know, like leaving empty dishes on the counter or something. And it was really nice to see her go, like, oh yeah, I guess it has been a while. I was like, so don't paint me into a corner. I was like, I don't do that anymore. I'm better now. Leave me alone. Shut up. I hate you. Yeah.

Stacey 39:10

His favorite phrase these days is let's update, because I tend to go back, even though our stories might be the flip-flop, but I can do that, like recall things.

SPEAKER_03 39:19

For sure.

Stacey 39:20

For sure. And yes, remembering things out of nowhere, it's like, oh my gosh, we have been in recovery 16. How many times were we watching and times? Is this gonna like ugh that whole my whole body? And it's like instant. I don't have time to go, okay, that was terrible. Let me get mad again. It's like, no, it's just but I will tell you, I will tell you, with you doing the work, it gets less and less over time. But it doesn't ever, I think, go away. But it does get less.

Greg 39:48

And when you were saying you're forgiving over and over again, I mean, we've we had friends who early in our process said something that stuck, which is forgiveness is a process, not an event. It makes me think of I was listening a little while before we recorded to your TED talk in Savannah, and you said, you know, love keeps no record of wrongs, but hate writes them down. Hate remembers. And it seems like in those moments, it's kind of that's the fork in the road, isn't it? I mean, if the offense is coming back, and if I dwell on it, it that's a sense of emotionally and mentally writing it down again.

SPEAKER_05 40:24

That's right. You have to, I have to remind myself that my wife and I, even though we have the same social security numbers that we used to, that we're different people. And the Lauren that did those things is is a different Lauren than is here with me now. And it's a good it's a good thing to remind remind myself of that, and that I'm a different husband than I was before all this, and should endeavor to continue to be a different husband and continue to grow and evolve. But I have to remind myself, those were different people. They look like us, they have the same fingerprints, um, but they are different people.

Stacey 41:01

Yeah, I love how you said it because we say this all the time, but not not quite so eloquently, about the marriage being the first marriage being dead. Um, and this this is our second marriage without a divorce, but um, because we don't want to go back to the old, you know, and I forget how you worded it, but like dead, buried, and let's see if something new grows, or maybe Lauren said that. I don't know who which one of you said it, but I was like, yes, that I resonate with that for sure.

SPEAKER_05 41:26

Yeah, very much. You want to you want to salvage what's still good about it. Um, you know, like we're both still funny. That's we fell in love because we were we were funny. She liked that I were both very funny people, and I think she liked that I was ambitious and driven, which she felt would be good for the security of our family. And I love that she was nurturing and caring and just amazing with children, which I was not. And I think we both decided to hire each other and get married and and do start this company together. And we still have that. She's still this super mom that every mom calls when the baby won't go to sleep. And you know, I'm still driven and you know, I'm I I I've given our family a much more stable uh life than she had growing up. Yeah, we're both very funny, still funny people, but those things are a little different now, too. So it's still like we're exactly who we were at our best, but all the all the crap we've shaved off. We don't do that anymore.

Greg 42:26

Yeah, and the the stuff at your best then you can really enjoy now because there's not as much stuff getting in the way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Stacey 42:33

I have a question. Something that has annoyed me. People that are like, he's so lucky you stayed. He's so lucky and he's you know, whatever. And I just like I don't know, yeah, yeah, because our therapist is like, yeah, he's pretty damn lucky. But and yes, but like I think but I'm so grateful that you stayed, that you didn't choose to walk away. And I was just thinking about Lauren, like she also chose to stay and to do the work and to rebuild. And so I don't know if if that's something that you have experienced or ever felt.

SPEAKER_05 43:05

It's a good, it's I've had to constantly remind myself of that, especially when I go to a dark place, that we were practically divorced, right? You guys read the book. I mean, it was gone. Like I was I that last phone call was me saying, hey, like let's go ahead and do this. It was like logistics, basically, right? Yeah, like let like yeah, like I'd already met with a divorce lawyer. I was like, all right, I'd I'd been resistant and felt like I had tried every possible strategy to save the marriage, and it was obvious that it wasn't gonna be saved, at least not by me. And so we were we were in we were divorced in all but name, and she had her own place, which she could afford, and she had her own budget, she had her own income, she had her own car. You know, I was still paying the car insurance and health insurance, and that would all have to get worked out and you know, whatever. And we thought we had talked a little bit about how we would pay for tuition for the girls, how we would handle that. Like we'd already had all those conversations. And so she had every opportunity and uh and a and a an open door to to end the end the marriage and the fact that she chose to return. I mean, when she came back, and it's uh it's complicated, and you have to read the book, it was very messy there at the end and very very dramatic. But when she finally walked up the driveway with her suitcase at the end of that whole nightmare, you know, I just looked at her like, are you really gonna live here again? Like, what's gonna happen? And um, I mean, I was a single dad, I was good at it by then, man.

Stacey 44:42

You hung up a lot of what did you hang up everywhere? The hooks you hung up everywhere.

SPEAKER_05 44:46

I put hooks, she hates hooks, man. I put hooks up everywhere, and I hung all these pictures and bought new art, and you know, I didn't, I got like I have the weirdest art, and I was hanging, hung it all over the house. I'm like, I'm like, I can't wait till she sees this crap, she's gonna hate it. And so she's walking up the driveway, and I just looked at her and I was like, Do you want to be married to me? Like it wasn't a rhetorical question. Like, after all this, do you want to be married to me? And she said, she gave me the most honest answer. She said, I'd like to try. Yep, I'd like to try. And I was like, I was like, that's all you can really do in a marriage is try to be married.

Stacey 45:27

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_05 45:28

And so I was like, All right, well, I think I'd like to try. So let's shake on it and give it a shot. We didn't know. We when she came back, we didn't know if we were going to make it, but we we thought we'd try, and and it has worked. We're still married.

Greg 45:41

So you talk a lot about your new church friends, not new friends, but your friends from the church that started. Talk a little bit about what it was like to have church friends walking through that who were safe, who were supportive, who who made things better and not worse. Because a lot of us have experiences with church and people in the church where there may have been good intentions or at least neutral intentions, but it actually made it worse. But for you, it sounds like it was just well, it doesn't sound like it's an exaggeration to say that it was life-giving. What what was that like you know, for you in the midst of it and for both of you since it was very strange.

SPEAKER_05 46:21

It was very strange to have, quote, church friends that I loved. That was really weird.

Greg 46:27

Who would come and help you beat up a guy if necessary?

SPEAKER_05 46:29

Yes, I mean these guys. I mean, there really are two kinds of churches in the world. And you know, there's a great quote. I don't know who said it, somebody famous said it. You know, they wish that church could be more like AA. And this person said, Well, it can be as long as Christians are okay with with being as honest as alcoholics are. And, you know, uh, it's a cliche, but in the evangelical church uh in the south, people just aren't honest about what's really going on because the church is so tied up with status in in m so many communities, especially in the south. Yeah, it is and so you can't. If it if your church cares about status, even if they don't say they do, you can tell. You just look around and look at the building, you look how people are dressed, you look at the budget, you look how much the pastor makes, you know, if that's status, then you can't put that at risk. And vulnerability puts that at risk and can tear that apart. Yeah, it as I say in the book, it takes a lot of money to keep lights on at a big church, and you need as many donations as you can, and you can't, you gotta kind of there has to be a sort of veil of a fairy tale to that. You might have a parish group or a small group, whatever you community group, and within that group, you may have a couple of buddies that you can secretly go off and talk to and tell them what's really going on. But nobody who runs the church, nobody who shepherds that church really knows what everybody's doing. And that's the kind of churches that I had belonged to. And uh, where when something happens like an affair, well, we have to condemn that. We have to condemn that affair. So she has to either break it off right now or leave. And uh, as you know from the book, it it took years for her to end the affair, right? And judgment would have ended our marriage. If we if I had been as as judging as these other churches wanted me to be, I would not be married to Lauren today. So our our new church, which has been going now for about six or seven years, it seems like yesterday, is very small. We're up to about a hundred people now. It's got a slightly different vibe, but it's always been kind of we call it, you know, Muppet Church. It's kind of weird and a little bit chaotic, you never know quite what's gonna happen. But it's it's a confessional church, it's a Presbyterian church. It wasn't so much that I had church friends, it was that I had friends and we went to church together. I knew I needed some wise people to talk to. And I had a lot of offers of very wise people, people that I didn't even know. They were like, oh, you got to talk to this lady who who is this like I met all these like informal marriage gurus that are out there floating that have been through something like this, and they're not therapists, but they they just walk with people through things like this. I met so many amazing people in this experience, but I needed somebody down the street that I could call if I say, You got to go pick up my kids today because I'm dealing with a nightmare over here. I needed people like that, and that's what those guys became. And, you know, it wasn't just me laying burdens on them, you know, they lay a lot on me and the rest of our group of friends. And uh there are situations I'm in right now with with close friends where I'm on the other side of it. I'm I'm the guy, I'm the guy that's helping them while they're going through the nightmare. And it's it's just it's so strange to be on the other side of that now. And I'm like, I was giving this guy some pretty rough advice. Like, you need to pull your britches up, son, and XYZ. That's my football coach dad coming out. And I was like, I was like, hold up, Harrison. It's like, how would you need to hear this? You know, five years ago, what would you need to hear? Okay, like, all right, tone it down a little bet. You don't always need to be a football coach.

Greg 50:25

Let me take a second run at that.

Stacey 50:26

And everybody's so different because I mean, with what we do, I'm walking with the spouses, the wives who are going through betrayal trauma. And there are some who, and my one really good friend, I was like, I straight up told her this. I said, This is what I want to say, but I'm not gonna say that. But like, there are some times I'm just like, it's not working.

SPEAKER_05 50:44

There are many times, right?

Stacey 50:46

It's like, but they have to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that that's what they need to do. And if they don't, if they're not there yet, then why would I need to push them to do that? You know, I think well, you don't want it to hurt. I don't want it to hurt, that's right. And it's like enough already, but people gave me advice that I didn't appreciate, you know.

SPEAKER_05 51:04

And so I you get a lot of bad advice, yes. You get a lot of bad advice, and you have to it, it really you have to be so wise and discerning when you're going through something like this because you do get you get conflicting advice about things. The the best advice, not I mean, this not wasn't really advice, but a truism that Soren has said before, and he said to me, and that I've said to other people, Soren is the pastor of our church, and another one of my close friends that was helpful through this, you know, with me, he was like, dude, like Jesus says you can go ahead and get divorced, buddy. Like, you you've you've seen all the evidence, things look like they might not work out. If you really want to pull the plug, like you can, and you'll you should have no shame about that. But you'll regret not fighting for the marriage, even if you get divorced, you'll regret not fighting for it. Like, did I do everything? And I've talked to divorced people. I'm like, how did you feel about your divorce 10 years later? And they're like, definitely the best thing I ever did. And other people would say, if you really pushed them on it, they'd say, I may have rushed it, I may have made a mistake, maybe we still would have gotten divorced, but I'll never know because I didn't try to save it. I just took the first get out of jail free card and I got right out of that jail. And so I tell that to people now like, look, man, it sounds like y'all might be headed down that road real fast, but at least try to fight for it. Try to save it so you will always know that you tried.

Greg 52:31

And I didn't hear you saying this, but it's just occurring to me, I think it's important to say it out loud that forgiveness doesn't mean that you necessarily stay married. Those two are not those two are not linked to each other, and the only way you can have forgiveness is to stay married and the other way around. No. Well, I know we're almost out of time. A couple of quick questions. I'm just curious, you you're pretty diversified in what you do in in terms of communication. I mean, you're a professor at SCAD, right? Um, and you do you write books, you write in short form articles, uh, and you do speaking. Is there something that currently in your life you enjoy the most?

SPEAKER_05 53:12

Uh nothing is quite as rewarding as writing, just sitting at the, you know, sitting at the at the desk and just hammering away. Um, but man, I'm kind of all I I I need to make some decisions about what I want to do next because I have an idea for a musical.

SPEAKER_04 53:30

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_05 53:31

And and a play, a play adaptation of this of the marriage book. We're already pitching a TV pilot based on the book, and so I've learned a lot about TV writing and really enjoyed getting into that. Uh, one thing I want to do, I turned 50 this year, and so one of the gifts I'm gonna give myself is I'm gonna go try uh stand up. I haven't done stand up in 25 years, and I want to give it a shot again, just locally, you know, just to sort of see see what it's like. Uh there's no thrill like live performance, but um intellectually and emotionally, the the thrills come at the keyboard. So I'm a I'm a little bit split on writing and speaking. I do love to do all of it. I'm a I'm a ridiculous person, and I just love to make people laugh. And I just love the emotional sort of quotient and that's happening when you're in front of people speaking to them and they don't know what you're gonna say next. It's just there's nothing like it. It is the best drug, and it's exhilarating and it makes me feel alive. So I'll never stop. I think I write sometimes. I think I write books just so I can have an excuse to talk about them to other people. Yeah, and that's what would made this book so hard because all of a sudden I didn't want to I didn't want to talk to anybody about it, and so it was very ironic. But yeah, I do love all those things, and I like playing music. You know, I'm in the church band, which is so weird to me.

Greg 54:52

I was gonna say, if you're in a Muppet church and you're the sometimes barefoot drummer, does that make you animal? Uh definitely.

SPEAKER_05 54:59

Um I uh I'm very generally well behaved, but it's so much fun to, you know, I grew up Church of Christ, so we didn't have any instruments in church. And now my mom, who was also church of Christ, she's a Presbyterian and she's in the in the sanctuary, which isn't a theater. It's Savannah's oldest theater building, which is very weird, where Edwin Booth and John Wilkes Booth performed. Wow. Um, but our church is meeting there, and I'm playing the drums, and it's uh I love it. It's so much fun, and it's and there's just something like we were we only have like 30 minutes to rehearse before church every Sunday, all five songs that we play, and there's something kind of exhilarating about not knowing if we're gonna be able to pull them off in front of all these people.

Greg 55:40

And it probably doesn't matter all that much if you don't. Well, Savannah wouldn't know. Savannah is such a cool place. Our daughter and son-in-law lived there for a couple of years when they first got married, and uh we came to visit them. Just such a cool place to be.

SPEAKER_05 55:52

It is, it's an awesome town.

Greg 55:54

Well, certainly can't wait to see what's next, whether that's a TV pilot or another book or just you know, more great conversations. But we can't thank you enough, Harrison, for just letting us go back to your story and talk about what that was like.

SPEAKER_05 56:06

Well, I appreciate y'all y'all sharing y'all's story too, because it's it's uh this was a really good conversation. I feel like we could talk for four four or five hours if we needed to.

Stacey 56:16

Absolutely. Well, and I appreciate, I mean, I I don't like to sit down and read books, so I listen when I can. So thank you for doing that, and thank you for actually reading it yourself. Literally in my car laughing, and then like, yes, and like you know, feeling it. And and even Lauren's uh chapter, it's like oh, of course, this is you know, this is kind of how the the path went because of her backstory. And so I just really appreciate it. And um, I know some of my friends have also listened or reading.

Greg 56:47

A lot of our friends were very excited to hear that we were gonna be talking to you. Yeah. So yeah, and I hope we get many more chances to talk with you later. What were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_05 56:56

Well, I think it's uh I've heard a lot of I didn't, I never thought about this, but I heard I've heard a lot of people say like they didn't know that Lauren had a chapter in the book and they were listening to the audiobook, and then when they heard her voice, like it's like near the end, right? That they were like they took their breath away, that they were they were so shocked. Yes, after hearing me drone on for seven hours, and all of a sudden this new voice comes out. That was really cool to think about that. Like I never really thought about that, but um I do I do like to hear again, yes.

Stacey 57:27

I was like, Oh my gosh, hear her.

SPEAKER_05 57:31

I was in the studio with her when she recorded that because I I did my part of the book first, and then it was time for her, and so the studio is like right down the street from her house. So it and she came and I was in the in the booth like with the producer, and it was just so sweet, like because she was so nervous, and then she would she did like a practice run, and then she did another one, and it was just it was really special to see her do that and to know how how hard that was for her, uh being pretty introverted. And she killed it, and also like anybody will tell you, she's funnier than I am. She's she's way kinder, somehow also meaner and much funnier than I am.

Stacey 58:10

Well, I love I wish we could all go out for margaritas and and case.

Greg 58:14

Next time we come to Savannah and then we'll get some Leopold ice cream. Yeah, heck yeah, man. Well, thank you so much again. So grateful for a chance to talk. Hope we can do it again soon. Thank you guys. Really? I will. Bye bye.