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Episode #1068
If you've been cheated on or you're the one who broke the trust, this episode breaks down what to actually do next. Doug and Chris get real about what betrayal looks like inside a marriage, the shame that often comes with it, and how most men either shut down or avoid dealing with it head-on.
They talk through how to stop sweeping things under the rug, the exact first steps to take when trust has been broken, and why just moving on doesn't work. You’ll hear about the Clean Slate Method, why taking ownership (even when it feels unfair) is key, and what micro-commitments actually look like in real life.
If your wife feels distant, if you're walking on eggshells, or if you're the one carrying guilt, this episode will help you see the path forward and it starts with showing up differently than you have before. You'll learn why consistency matters more than big promises. The truth is, most guys try to fix the problem the wrong way and it only pushes her further. Doug and Chris explain what rebuilding trust really looks like day-to-day. They also break down the difference between being needed and being wanted by your partner. And you'll hear why her testing you isn't a bad sign, it's actually your window of opportunity.
Want a simple step-by-step breakdown on how to fix what's broken in your marriage? Watch the free training at https://fixmarriage.thepowerfulman.com/scales. It'll walk you through exactly how to get clarity and start turning things around.
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Head over to our BONUS page for special access to some of the deeper tactics and techniques we’ve developed at The Powerful Man.
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Transcription
Doug Holt 0:00
When he cheats, he doesn’t want anybody to know about it. So you end up feeling trapped. And oftentimes, men in either situation feel that they’re alone. When you’re not showing up fully, that’s when she’s gonna start looking outside.
Christopher Hansen 0:13
There’s always something to take ownership with there. None of us are perfect.
Doug Holt 0:17
There are other men who are out there who are trying to sleep with your wife. Next thing you know, they have a couple of drinks, and they end up in a hotel together.
Christopher Hansen 0:23
Her job is to find all the cracks in that foundation. It’s great.
Doug Holt 0:27
My wife doesn’t need me. She wants me.
Doug Holt 0:41
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of the TPM Show. Once again, we’re taking your questions, fielded by none other than Christopher Hansen, one of our program advisors here at TPM. Chris, thanks for being here, man.
Christopher Hansen 0:52
Thanks for that.
Doug Holt 0:53
Rolling on, man, this has been a great day.
Christopher Hansen 0:56
Absolutely has.
Doug Holt 0:57
I love the insights that you give from the guys you’re talking to, and it’s perfect for me because we get to kind of answer these questions right off the cuff.
Christopher Hansen 1:09
Thanks for that. I enjoy it. So, one of the things I wanted to talk about—I have a lot of conversations with guys that are either in the movement or considering coming into the movement. One of the through-lines recently in those conversations is something that I’ve experienced in my life—sure, maybe you have—but a lot of the guys that I talk to have, and that’s a betrayal of trust in the relationship on one side or the other.
It could be that their wife has had an emotional affair, maybe even a physical affair, or maybe it was the guy that I’m talking to that betrayed her trust in some way, shape, or form. Happens a lot, yes. So I’m curious, from your perspective, what do we do with that?
Doug Holt 1:59
I think it happens more than people realize, because in my experience, when a man finds out his wife is having an affair—physical or emotional—he doesn’t want to tell anybody else because he has a lot of shame around it, right? Vice versa, when he cheats, he doesn’t want anybody to know about it. So people don’t talk about it, and oftentimes men in either situation feel that they’re alone.
And I can tell you, from not only coaching within TPM but before TPM—I had two other coaching businesses that I ran—I heard it all the time. So, super, super common to be out there. So, great, it’s common. “Doug, I’m not alone, but how do I fix this thing?”
Christopher Hansen 2:43
Well, to share, I’ve been in that situation on both sides of my marriage and betrayal of trust, and that’s the biggest piece—it just feels like you’re completely alone. You can’t tell anybody about it. You feel like you’re going to be judged. You feel like, if you share it with family, your family is going to judge your partner, or vice versa. So you end up feeling trapped.
Doug Holt 3:10
You really do—100% correct. You feel trapped. And a lot of times, men—again, there’s shame, and shame is a big word on either side. Men that cheat tend to have regret. They tend to regret it. My experience—whether they’re regretting the affair or regretting getting caught—there’s regret there. And they don’t want anybody to know that. You know, “I’m a cheater,” or, “I’ve done this, I’ve hurt…” It’s the pain that they cause the other person, right? They see their wife crushed on the other side of it when they find out their wife is interested in another man.
Or what I see happen all the time is guys find out that she’s talking to somebody—an old boyfriend, somebody online. Happens all the time. And they’re crushed: “I don’t feel good enough. I’m not good enough as a man.”
So how do you rebuild that? The first thing you’ve got to do is acknowledge it. The mistake I see a lot of people make is they don’t call out the elephant in the room. They try to brush it under the rug—“It’ll get better”—and it doesn’t. It metastasizes.
And so, if your wife’s cheated on you, or is cheating on you now, or having an affair, or you think she’s talking to somebody—you get to confront that head-on as a man, as the leader of your home. If she knows you know and you’re ignoring it, you’re losing respect every moment of the day. She’s losing respect for you, and she’s not feeling like you’re man enough to be with her. So she’s probably—the reason she’s seeking out this other guy, I hate to say it—guys get pissed when I tell them the truth—but the reality of it is, when you’re not showing up fully, that’s when she’s going to start looking outside.
Now, some women find their solace in friends and family to get that leadership. But guys are guys. You know that there are other men who are out there trying to sleep with your wife. They’re trying to sleep with any girl they can get. And they’re online, and maybe they’ve had a couple of drinks or what have you, and they’re scrolling Facebook or Instagram and they say, “Oh, there’s Susie! I haven’t seen her since college or high school,” or, “We grew up together in the community.”
And they send just a cheeky message, right? And then she responds, they send another one, and that’s how these things escalate—because she’s lonely, right? And at home. And the same thing happens to men. Men feel lonely, or they don’t feel appreciated. And you know, the barista at Starbucks is treating them kindly, the secretary at work, their coworker—they go away on a work trip, and next thing you know, they have a couple of drinks and end up in a hotel together.
So how do you do this? Well, again, you’ve got to call out the elephant in the room. Just say, “This is what the issue is.” So it could look like, “Hey Susie,” or, “Hey babe, I know that you’re talking to John.” I’m making up this scenario and doing a bad job of it, but, “I know you’re talking to John, and I just want to let you know that that’s a strict no-go zone for me and our relationship. What I want is for us to be together, but it’s going to take a lot of work to rebuild this trust.”
And vice versa—if you cheat and she knows, you’ve got to call it out, right? I’m not saying this is the time to go confess all your sins—that’s not what I’m saying—but if you’ve been caught cheating and you want to stay in that relationship, you need to own your side of the street. Call out what you’ve done and how it’s impacted her.
If she doesn’t think you truly know how it’s impacted her, she’ll never let it go. Never. So that’s the first step—calling out the elephant in the room and the impact of that action.
If your wife has cheated on you, you get to take responsibility for it—which is a friggin’ rough pill for guys to swallow, right? You cannot blame her: “You did this, you did that.” On either angle, you’ve just got to own your own stuff. Own your own shit first. Whatever it is. “You know what? I was working late. I came home, I was sitting in front of the TV or going out with the guys, and I wasn’t paying attention to you, and I apologize for making you feel alone.”
She has to handle her own stuff, but you get to handle that—and that can be really tough for a lot of men.
We have a whole methodology we use called the Clean Slate Method that allows men to do it. And I can tell you, Chris, every time a guy writes a Clean Slate letter, it needs to go through three, four, or five revisions. I’ve never heard of or seen a guy do it one time without a coach going, “That’s not right.”
This guy—you want to put that little spiteful thing in there, right? Like, “Well, this is true. I cheated because she was such a bitch to me,” or, “I cheated because she did this, or wasn’t doing that, or we weren’t having sex.” You can’t do that. You’re blaming her. You have to own your side of the street completely and honestly.
Once that is done—and done well—and guys, I implore you to have a qualified coach run through this part with you, again, I’ve done a lot of these, and we’ve had thousands of men come through our programs, and not one has knocked it out of the park on the first try. And these are smart freaking guys.
Christopher Hansen 8:31
I was having a conversation with a guy earlier today, actually, and we were talking about the Clean Slate Method and just trying to give him some insight into what that process would look like for him. And this is not a client—this is somebody who’s considering working with us—and he just laughed and said, “That sounds like maybe one of the hardest things that I’ll ever have to do.”
Doug Holt 8:56
100%. And with hard things come good rewards, right? And so that’s the difference.
So let’s say you get through that part—or when you do get through that part—you’ve called out the elephant in the room, you’ve used the Clean Slate Method, you’ve wiped the slate clean. Is everything ready? No. Now you have to rebuild the trust.
All guys are gonna say, “Well, I’ll never do it again,” or she’s gonna say, “I’ll never do it again,” or, “If you do it again, I’ll leave.” There are going to be these threats and big promises.
The key here is the micro-promises—the little things that you say: “I’m gonna do the dishes after dinner,” and you do the dishes. “I’m gonna go for a run,” and you actually do your Alpha Rise and Shine in the morning, and you get up every morning and do it.
More men save their marriage when they come through our program by doing what we tell them to do than anything else—because their wife is seeing them honor their commitments.
Because if you can’t trust yourself, she can’t trust you.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said I’m going to get up at four in the morning and go for a run or do a Peloton ride or whatever it is—and then four a.m. rolls around, I’m like, “I don’t really want to do that,” and I’ll do something else. I’m guilty of this. We all are, to a degree.
But our women are watching. You have to have those micro-commitments coming through. That’s extremely important.
And make sure you’re showing up fully each and every day. Are you going to screw up? Yes. So know that now—that you’re going to mess up. Be ready to clean up that mess. You do it the same way, right?
So I might say something like, let’s just use the micro-commitment of the dishes, right? “Hey, you cook dinner, I’ll do the dishes every night.” And then one night I’m just like, “I don’t want to do the freaking dishes. I’ll get them in the morning.” She’s going to notice that.
If I don’t clean things up and change the agreement, what I get to do is go, “Hey, you know what? I made a promise to you that I was going to do the dishes every day, and last night I didn’t do it. And I want to apologize for that. I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Or, “I want you to know I’m calling out the obvious here and letting you know I know there was a mistake made.” That allows her nervous system to calm down, and at least she goes, “Okay, at least he knows that something’s wrong.”
And I’m using the dishes as an analogy—it could be much bigger things or much smaller things.
Christopher Hansen 11:34
But it's the ownership piece—taking ownership of the tiniest little thing consistently, right? Doing or keeping the promise consistently.
Doug Holt 11:45
Hey guys, I just want to share something with you. I’m sure we can both agree that in order to fix something, you need to know what’s broken. And not only do you need to know what’s broken, but you need a step-by-step methodology on how you can fix it. That’s the easiest way to do it, right? Otherwise, you’re going to be toiling with things.
That’s why I created a free training—a training that not only shows you how you got to where you are, where your relationship is missing that love, respect, admiration, and even intimacy that it used to have—but also how to get it back. How do you retain that, where your wife’s looking at you the same way she used to look at you when she said “I do”?
You know, I don’t know about you, but for me, when my wife looks at me like I’m her man, I feel like I can conquer the world. And I want that for you. Simply go over to https://fixmarriage.thepowerfulman.com/scales—and I have a free video training for you. You can just click play and see if this resonates for you.
Now, back to the podcast.
Christopher Hansen 12:47
Taking ownership when you don’t—it creates safety. It softens her.
Doug Holt 12:55
And it’s consistency. Consistency is one of the biggest things women complain about with their husbands. “I don’t know who he’s going to be when he walks through the door. Am I getting the anxious business guy, the stressed-out guy, the happy-go-lucky guy? Who am I getting?”
She needs consistency to build back that trust. She also needs, like we said, the ownership part. She needs to know the impact the action had on you.
And that’s obvious if you’ve cheated, right? That’s easy for guys to kind of understand the impact because they’re witnessing it. When she has the affair, it’s harder for guys to understand. I hear, “I didn’t do anything, right? She’s the one. I stood by her side even though we weren’t having sex, or even though we were doing this. And this guy she’s out with is a loser. I provide all the money,” etc., etc.
Almost never do I hear a guy say, “You know, the guy that she cheated on me with is better than I am.” It’s always, “I couldn’t believe she’d ever be with this guy.” I hear that all the time. He’s just showing up—at least perceived—because he doesn’t have the history.
And so you get to call that out, and you get to also look at, “Hey, here’s the impact on you. Like, I see what that is.” If she cheats on you, ask: why? What did you do? What was your involvement, if any, in the relationship that put her in a position where she felt like she had to go get her needs met outside the relationship?
Christopher Hansen 14:32
There’s always something—100%, right? There’s always something to take ownership of there. None of us are perfect. I could rattle off ten things that I’ve done in my relationship that could have driven my wife somewhere—right? Whatever, outside—to have... it could be connection with family. Honestly, it doesn’t even have to be an affair. It could simply be her getting her needs met somewhere else.
So anytime somebody says that—like, “You know, she did this,” or wants to place the blame—there’s always something that you can come back to and take accountability for. That’s that first step.
Doug Holt 15:10
It is the first step, and it’s super important. That’s a great point—it doesn’t even have to be infidelity. She could be turning outside the marriage to her family, to her girlfriends, to a lot of places to find that. To Instagram—I hear that all the time. “My wife just doom scrolls Instagram.” Well, be more fun than Instagram.
Christopher Hansen 15:28
It’s the first step—100%. I talked to a guy this week whose biggest complaint in the relationship was that his wife overshares. Overshares with family, overshares with friends. Feels like everybody knows his business. And, you know, “If I could just change that about her, then everything would be fine.” Like, well, you know...
Doug Holt 15:54
Well, she clearly isn’t getting it, right? What? He’s not collecting her berries.
Christopher Hansen 15:58
He’s not creating the environment for her to feel seen and heard. I mean, end of the day.
Doug Holt 16:04
100%. So again, the way you rebuild trust—we’ve done a lot more in-depth podcasts about this and trainings—is this: you’ve got to have consistency. She needs to know if she’s feeling that you understand your actions, you understand the impact of your actions, and you’re starting to make commitments that you’re keeping.
Now she’s going to start trusting who you are, right? And it’s her job to test you. That’s what guys don’t get. We call them safety tests. It’s common—they call them men’s work tests—but they’re safety tests. She wants to see if it’s safe.
“Hey, is this new Chris? Am I getting the real Chris? Or is he going to be the one that’s going to leave me feeling alone, or go cheat on me, or whatever it may be?”
You know, could be gambling. I talked to a guy who was a gambling addict—really, that’s what he was—and his wife was going to divorce him because he kept saying he was going to quit and stop, and he was hiding it. And it was an addiction for him. But he was also able to conquer that addiction really quickly when he started showing up as the man he wanted to be.
There was a gap between who he was—the way he was showing up—and who he thought he should be showing up as, and he filled it up with the addiction. Now, when he flipped that and made the “addiction” actually showing up as himself—it wasn’t really an addiction, right? But that’s what changed for him. He was just showing up more fully, and so she could start to trust who he was—because he was consistently showing up as that man.
We call it The Powerful Man, right? Where your power is within yourself. You’re grounded—the grounded masculine. When you’re doing that consistently, now she’s like, “Okay, this is the version of Chris.” And it’s probably the version of Chris she’s always wanted. It’s probably the true version of Chris.
And when that guy shows up consistently, regardless of the storm, now she can trust that you’re going to be there.
Christopher Hansen 18:02
And she’s going to still continue to test, right? There’s an ongoing thing. I mean, her job is to find all the cracks in that foundation for you. And you get to a point when you’re doing this work that—I think we spoke about this on another podcast at some point—but there’s gratitude that comes with that. It’s like, “Oh, I have somebody here that’s willing to love me enough to show me my blind spots.” Got it. Like, I can navigate in that world. And it becomes fun.
Doug Holt 18:30
It does. It’s just a paradigm shift, right? Because you understand that when she’s coming at you and testing you, this is your dojo. This is your place to play. Cool—alright, she wants to make sure I’m really here.
And here’s what guys miss. So when guys often ask me, “Hey, is my marriage worth saving?” Common question—and I get it, especially when there’s been infidelity or something like that. And so there are two questions I ask. “Do you love her and want to be with her?” So it’s kind of two questions in one, I guess. The guy’s like, “Yeah, I love her. I’m in love with her. I want to be with her.” Great.
The second question that I’ll ask the guy in this situation is, “Is she testing you?” When a guy goes, “No, she’s not testing me,” okay—it’s over. Which is counterintuitive, right? For a lot of men. Like, “No, she tests me all the time, she’s arguing with me.” Good. You have a chance. You have a chance here, because there’s still fire and passion in the relationship, and she’s testing you because she cares.
I can tell you that your marriage is over over when she doesn’t give a shit what you do. You go out at night with the guys—she doesn’t care. You stay home—she doesn’t care. She ignores you. You could go have an affair—she doesn’t care. She has left the building and she’s not planning on coming back. I’ve seen guys bring it back, but…
Christopher Hansen 20:00
I’m actually talking to a guy right now about a situation similar to that, where—his words are—his wife doesn’t need anything from him. She doesn’t look to him for emotional support. She’s independently wealthy, doesn’t need his finances. Says that she loves him, right? And it kind of has put him in a needy state in this instance. A little bit of a trickier situation to navigate. Based on everything that he’s shared with me, I feel like this is something that he can pull back from.
Doug Holt 20:40
Oh, 100% man. So first of all, she didn’t put him in any state—a needy state—he put himself in a needy state. So he gets to create that state of excitement. Like, is he sweeping her off her feet? Is he taking her on dates?
Even if she’s the breadwinner—make it fun, man. I’ve had some of the best dates with my wife throwing a blanket down in our living room, cutting up some cheese and crackers, opening a bottle of wine—not expensive at all—but we have fun. The connection, the laughing, the giggling, that’s foreplay that turns into intimacy, and we have a great date night.
So it doesn’t matter if she’s the breadwinner or not—it’s about being connected. And this is why so many guys—going back to the affair thing—are like, “Oh, I’m a staunch businessman, and she’s talking to this loser over here.” But that loser is giving her attention. That loser is listening to her. That loser is doing all the things we teach in The Activation Method—at least seemingly to her, right?
Christopher Hansen 21:42
She’s getting a need met—100%—she’s otherwise not getting from you. Yes, you get to figure out what that is and how to provide it.
Doug Holt 21:50
And that’s the test, right? And it’s great. My wife doesn’t need me—she wants me. Yep, that’s the difference.
When I listen to guys talk about it, like, “Oh, my wife doesn’t need anything from me.” Great. That’s great—you have a strong, independent woman. Guess what? I do too. And does she want things from you?
And what’s really interesting to me, because my wife coaches women, is she would say that a lot of women—just like I would say with men—don’t know what they want. They’re confused. They’re lost a little bit. And I want to make sure I’m not saying that women are lost—guys are too. Guys need to find themselves.
So a lot of guys have become this “nice guy” because that’s the role they fit in. A lot of women take a different role that they’ll go into. So if you ask any person, “Hey, what is it you want?” they struggle to really articulate what they want. And because of that, they can become just doers.
But when you can figure out what your wife truly desires and show up as the man she truly desires, that’s going to be key. That’s going to be key. You become her king—she becomes your queen. And that is a great place to be. Absolutely.
And you can do that after infidelities and affairs. I see it happen all the time. I always call it Marriage 2.0 to guys. Like, “Hey, start Marriage 2.0.” Marriage 1.0—this happened. You had a promise. There was infidelity. Needs weren’t met. Cool. Build upon that. How do you build upon that and become stronger?
Christopher Hansen 23:18
Well, those are the strongest relationships—the ones that have been tested through the fire. No question.
Doug Holt 23:24
You think about your best friend, your boys—the guys you call at 3 a.m. when you had to bury a body. You know, everybody jokes about that. They’re not guys where it’s always been perfect. They’re guys you’ve done some stuff with, or been in some situations where it’s been tough, and you guys got out of it together—and that’s how you bond, right?
Same thing with you and your wife. And I hope guys listening to this—it doesn’t happen to them. You can still have a great marriage and not have these infidelities and not have these issues. But I know of a guy—he and his wife, no affairs, no infidelities—but they had massive problems with their children when their kids did something that most of us would consider very bad. And that tore their family apart.
And so he came into The Activation Method because of that. And what that allowed him to do was allow his wife to feel safe, fully seen, and heard in their conflict. And they came together—and they’re a power couple, man. They are a power couple. I love it. But they were on the verge of divorce, not because of anything they did individually, but because the actions of one of their children were so—you know, “grotesque” is the only word I can come up with—that it was splitting their family apart, and they were going to go quickly. It was like a sinking ship.
Christopher Hansen 24:39
I always tell guys that the energy that’s created with whatever situation—whether it’s infidelity, the example here of something happening within the family, whatever it is—that’s potential, right? And that energy is either going to be used to tear you guys further and further apart and can be destructive, or you can learn how to actually harness that energy toward bringing you guys together.
And if you can learn how to harness that properly and focus that energy toward bringing you guys back together, you get to choose what to do with that potential. And that—I mean—it’s massive growth. You say “power couple,” it’s like that’s the energy behind what brought you guys together. And when you’ve been able to harness that and come together—I mean, it’s an opportunity, is the way I describe it.
Doug Holt 25:35
100% an opportunity, man. You think about this—how do you rebuild trust? Well, first you do the big things, which is call out the action that happened. Second thing is call out the impact it had and make sure the person fully gets it. You need to really understand the impact, and they need to understand that you understand it, right? Otherwise, it’s going to keep coming up.
Then it’s just like anything else you do—like building a business. You don’t just do one grandiose thing and all of a sudden your business is great. No—you show up every day and do micro things, small incremental improvements every single day. Working out is the same thing. Parenting is the same thing.
But they have to know they can trust that you’re going to honor your word and show up consistently. If you can do that, you have a shot.
Great question, man. I always love when you bring these to the table and these conversations, and I appreciate all you’re doing with these guys and getting things organized—the stuff you’re doing behind the scenes, getting the infrastructure built.
When men come in—and you know, it’s funny—these guys won’t know this, but we had about 70,000 guys slip through the cracks, and you’re creating a system to make sure that never happens again, because these are all families that we’re trying to help. We’re trying to help these men save their families. And to think of the fact that we had about 70,000 men inquire that we just couldn’t get back to—it’s really important that we’re able to help them and their family. So thank you for all you’re doing.
Christopher Hansen 26:58
Absolutely, Doug. You’re welcome. Thank you for providing this environment for me to do it.
Doug Holt 27:03
Awesome, man. Well, gentlemen, if you’re in a situation where trust has waned one way or the other—just call it out. Draw the line in the sand. I know it’s not comfortable, right? But if your wife knows what she’s done, then just call it out and say, “Hey, look, I know this happened, and here’s where I want to go.”
As a leader, you need to paint the vision, guys. So paint the vision of where you want it to go and then show up consistently.
If you need the tools—just like hiring a personal trainer, just like hiring someone to teach you anything you want to learn—if you want to learn Japanese, the best way is immersion and to jump in with an instructor. Go through something like The Activation Method.
Or if you don’t want to work with TPM, go somewhere else—but do something. In the moment of insight, take massive action.
We’ll see you next time on The TPM Show.
