Every Man’s Battle Podcast

Announcer: Welcome to the Every Man's Battle Podcast, brought to you by New Life Ministries. In this podcast, you'll hear honest conversations and encouragement for living a life of sexual integrity. In every episode, licensed marriage and family therapist JJ West and licensed professional counselor Doug Bards break the silence around sexual integrity struggles that millions of men face but rarely discuss openly. Each episode offers practical strategies and genuine hope to dissolve the shame and isolation that keeps men trapped in destructive cycles. Let's get to today's episode.

JJ West: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Every Man’s Battle Podcast. Thanks so much for listening. We know there are lots of options out there. You could be listening to hundreds, thousands of other shows. We’re glad that you’ve chosen to listen to this podcast, and we hope that it’s helpful to you.

I’m certain that today’s episode is going to be helpful to you. If you haven’t already listened to last week’s episode where Mark came in and started sharing with us the different sexual propensities of the attachment styles, you need to go back and listen to that because we’re going to pick up the conversation. We’re going to continue that conversation today.

This is great information for us, guys. This is going to help us in our recovery from our sexual addiction, but it’s also going to help us in our recovery in our relationships. And that’s a vital part of our recovery. So, Mark, Doug, happy podcast day!

Doug Bards: Happy podcast day. I'm waiting for the cake.

JJ West: Me too. I want cake. I love cake. I love all sweets, as most people who know me know that. But man, we’re so glad to have you back, Mark. Thank you so much for joining us.

You did such a great job last week of sharing how the sexual propensities of the—we tackled the first two insecure attachments. We talked about avoidant. We talked about the pleaser. We need to tackle the vacillator. We need to tackle the chaotic disorganized, but then we also need to wrap up with what is it supposed to look like? How did God design this to look?

We’re excited that we get to dive back into this topic. Maybe we just need to pick it up right there with moving on from avoidant and pleaser to the vacillator. What does the vacillator look like as a sexual being in that broken attachment?

Mark: The vacillator is another term for somebody who’s anxious, preoccupied, or also ambivalent where they have conflicting feelings. This is a style that’s on the anxious spectrum. But whereas the pleaser is more fearful-based and can have avoidant tendencies, the vacillator is more resistant-based and they can push-pull.

Vacillators grow up in a home where they get inconsistent connection from a parent. They get some attention and connection, but then they’re made to wait on that. That could be because they have a parent or a caregiver who is not available all the time because they physically are out of town or in a divorced situation where custody is split.

It could also be a job where a parent frequently travels or goes on deployment if they’re in the military or they do shift work. They get this connection and then they get made to wait on it. In the wait, they feel unseen, unknown, and misunderstood. When the parent comes back, they protest. They want to show the parent that they’re upset, and so they pout, they cry, and they throw themselves on the floor depending on how young they are. They want the parent to come and soothe them, but then they’re resistant to the soothing and they push away again. It’s a demonstration to say, "I'm hurt, I'm upset, don't do that."

The vacillator grows up and goes into adulthood longing for connection. The connection gets turned up on high, looking for this consistent connection that they didn’t get as a child. Dating is just highly intoxicating for them because it’s all about the things that they missed out on. It’s all about time, attention, and connection with another person.

Of course, when you first meet someone, there’s this idealization phase. There is in every relationship where the sexual attraction, the physical attraction draws you to the other person. You tend to see them in this more positive light and you disregard red flags, but they can quickly get into a relationship. They can share too much, too soon, and they can get into sexual relationships very, very quickly.

Real life sets in and they get let down or they discover who the person truly is because they’ve built this idealized version of the person in their mind that’s unrealistic. Now they see the person for who they are, they get let down, they get made to wait, and all those feelings come flooding back and they protest. They do this push-pull.

The relationship can really flip at that point where it’s all of this intensity, emotional sharing, and sexual connection. All of a sudden, now I'm mad, I push you away, and I'm resistant to you coming back after me because I'm so hurt. You shouldn’t have hurt me in the first place.

JJ West: Right. When we’re allowing them in and they’re the kings and queens of hope and romance and it’s all going to be wonderful, it gets really intense real quick. I think that is often why the avoider and the vacillator end up together because the avoider is looking for sex as that stress reliever and here the vacillator is looking for that romance, that connection, but they’re offering it through sex.

Mark: An avoider typically hasn’t had a parent who pursued them, who idealized them, or who adored them so much. All of a sudden, you’re getting this and you’re like, "Great, everybody wants that, everybody wants to be wanted, for someone to think they’re amazing." So it feels good. "I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread" until I'm not.

When that conflict happens, that’s when the cycle occurs and the avoider deals by pulling away and the vacillator deals by pushing toward. But they push toward with complaints and criticisms, and that doesn’t really fuel a connection. They feel deeply disappointed because they tend to idealize. They build someone up in their mind. When that is not true or they discover it’s not true, they feel duped and then they swing all the way the other way, which is why Milan and Kay described them as the vacillator. They’re all over here and then they vacillate and they’re all over here. Then they detach and it’s, "I'm done."

A vacillator pursues sex to relieve anxiety, but they mistake this intensity for intimacy. It’s all about dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. When that goes away, it’s like, "Well, I guess I'm done. I'm going to move on or I'm going to withhold so that you pursue me again." Or, "I made a mistake, I chose the wrong person, this isn't my person, this isn't the one who’s going to give me everlasting happiness, it must be that person." They just keep looking for "the one."

They often look for "the one," like there’s this one person for me, this one amazing, idealistic person for me, and I've just got to find them in the world. I thought I found them in you, but you duped me, you tricked me, you didn't really show me who you were. But who duped whom? The vacillator duped themselves because they idealized and also the vacillator didn’t show this side of them to the other person, because they may have run away if they’d known that all of a sudden they’re going to swing and then they’re going to criticize and devalue me. So they duped themselves.

A vacillator wife can often appear that she has a higher sex drive than her husband. It’s not because she necessarily has a higher sex drive; it’s that mistaking that physical connection for intimacy because they want connection that they can feel, to know that it’s not going away. Sex is the highest form of physical connection you can have with another person.

When they protest and they’re separate from the other person, that anxiety builds. Oftentimes, sex is used also as a makeup tool and it can be very intense. But if they get to that place where they devalue somebody and then it’s detached, a cutoff can happen at that moment and then they go looking for someone else.

If they are in a marriage, then they can have affairs, but their affairs look more like "I'm falling in love, I've fallen in love with someone else," not the one-night stand that the avoider does. This is, "I've fallen in love with someone else." When you start to build connection with someone else, when you have an addiction, that becomes the master. You can’t have two masters. Jesus said that. You can’t love God and you can’t love money; you’re going to obey one and not the other.

When you fall in love with someone else, then you’re going to detach from your spouse, and it can be very hard to get the vacillator back because they think, "I've lost that loving feeling." There’s a song about that, "You’ve Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," and therefore that loving feeling can’t come back. "And now I have it with this person." But affairs are fantasy; they’re not real life.

JJ West: Our brothers in Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous say it’s the avoider that tends to be sex addicted and the vacillator that tends to be love addicted. That’s a great way to put it. So Doug, in our first episode with Mark, I talked about how he was reading my mail when he was talking about the avoider, and I'm curious if you’re having a similar experience as he talks about the vacillator.

Doug Bards: Actually, I am. I'm sitting here just thinking relationship after relationship after instance after instance where many of the things that have been said just now I've experienced firsthand all the way through to the detachment. It was pursuit, it was love, it was the best thing since sliced bread, and then, "Oh, you pissed me off, okay, well, I'm going to go to the next one."

That was a pattern for a long, long time. Even when I got married, I've learned how to stay within the guardrails. I don't go all good and all bad. I try—that’s a lie. I'm learning how to stay in the middle where I'm asking to get needs met and I'm not expecting her to read my mind to already know what I need. That’s been huge for me.

To know that we can disagree and still be connected so I don't have to complain, I don't have to protest, although it catches up with me every now and then. I'm less protesting today than I was 14 years ago when I first started looking at attachment styles. So yeah, I'm resonating with it all, trust me. It’s there, for sure.

JJ West: I think about how with the vacillator, because there is this striving for the ideal and of course we never reach the ideal, reality never reaches the ideal, and so I'm miserable because I'm not experiencing the ideal. Part of healing is in being okay with what’s real rather than the ideal.

That’s huge for me especially because now I'm getting to that point where it’s okay and I'm learning to recognize when what’s inside of me is pushing towards that ideal, that picture I have in my head that says, "this is perfect." I'm learning to recognize when I'm starting to go to that place and go, "Hold on, no, that’s not real life. What I have and experience, that’s what’s real."

I have to talk myself off the ledge a lot, and I'm doing it in a healthier way now. I remember I was working with this one couple and the wife was the vacillator and the husband was the avoider. She had gotten to the point where she was disconnecting because, "this isn't fulfilling me, this isn't what I wanted, this isn't what I was looking for when I got married."

She was also into theater, and so she talked about how she felt like, "I've outgrown this role and I need to go find a new role." I said, "You know, I understand that because I've grown up doing theater myself. Sometimes that’s the case that we go from one role to the next, but sometimes we get a role where it’s a long-running show."

We have to learn how to experience that role in a new way because the audience coming in the next time I perform, the audience, it’s first time for them, but you’ve been doing it for 180 days. You’ve gotten to the point where you know exactly—you know all the lines, you know all the cues, you know all the reactions, and you feel like this just isn't doing it for me anymore.

But you have to find a way to bring a new experience of yourself into that role. I think that’s oftentimes what the vacillator has to do in marriage or in a significant relationship. Instead of going, "Oh, I had this for a little while, we had it, it was all great, it was wonderful, it was intense for a little while and now it’s fizzled, so now I need to go find something over here," it’s, "How can I learn to bring a new aspect of myself into this role? How can I open up more of myself into this role as opposed to looking for someone else to do that for me?"

Mark: I love that metaphor. Like Doug, I'm a recovering vacillator, and my wife too. We’re both recovering vacillators, so you can imagine what that was like. We were intense very quickly, married within three months. We didn’t know one another, and then real life set in, and the fireworks were a different type of fireworks that were going off. It wasn’t 4th of July, nice fireworks; it was more like rockets happening like a war zone.

For the vacillator, they need to—leaning toward the opposite for the vacillator is because they swing, they need to be more integrated. As Doug was saying, it’s learning to find that middle ground. I love the metaphor that you gave; it’s learning to show up differently. If I show up differently in this same relationship, how does that change it?

Vacillators just move on living life for the intensity. They’re thrill-seekers. It’s all about dopamine; they don’t realize it. They say, "Oh, I have this strongest connection with this person," and what that means is I have a lot of dopamine going on right now and it feels really good. But if they really look at the history of their relationships, they’ll see that happens over and over again.

How come you have a lot of dopamine and you think this person’s the one and you’re greatly connected with them, and then all of a sudden you don’t have the connection anymore and you want to detach? You’ll never be happy as a vacillator because you won’t find your ideal. It doesn’t exist. Even if you find someone and they are your ideal, healthy things grow.

You should grow in your relationship. So that person, you will either grow and change and they won’t be your ideal anymore or they will grow and change and they all of a sudden won’t be your ideal anymore. You can’t ever get to your ideal because it doesn’t exist, or it limits you or them from ever changing, which is not the nature of how relationships go.

There is a societal influence or a cultural influence. For the avoider, there’s the cultural influence of a sex-saturated society, sex-saturated media, and pornography where you can escape into this and you’ll feel good. I think for the vacillator, there is this fairy tale that’s presented over and over. If you can find your prince or princess, you’ll have the fairy tale ending.

It’s available to you if you just find the right person and the right situation, and it’s a lie as well. It’s just as much of a lie as pornography is. Hollywood movies are really about the beginning stages of a relationship, everything being amazing, or they’re about the ending of a relationship where, "I'm done with this person."

There’s more about the beginning stages, though. It primes us to think that there is this person who’s out there and it’s just all-natural. When we find them, it will just be all-natural and it will just flow and it will be organic. This is what the vacillator expects. They often don’t realize that they’re idealizing, but the expectation that something is organic and someone will read your mind and know what you need without you having to tell them and they won’t let you down—that’s idealization. We get primed by Hollywood for this type of relationship.

Doug Bards: One of the best tools that helped me learn how to connect heart-wise over sexual was the comfort circle. It slowed me down so that the idealization didn't go as fast, and so I could recognize it quicker when that was coming up where I could now have a relationship where my heart could actually slow down enough to stay in the middle as opposed to going to one of the guardrails. I just wanted to end with that.

JJ West: Fantastic. Let’s talk about the final insecure attachment: the chaotic disorganized.

Mark: The chaotic disorganized typically occurs when a person grows up in a home that is dangerous. Usually in this home, there’s addiction, drugs, alcohol, abuse, and neglect. This person’s exposed to dangerous situations, and so their needs are basically reduced to learning to survive in this home.

Somebody who has a disorganized or a chaotic attachment really can have tendencies of all the different insecure attachment styles because they try everything and either nothing works or they get bounced around between different family members or foster care homes. They have different attachment figures in their foster parents with whom they have to learn to attach separately or differently, so they learn different strategies.

What Milan and Kay observed in their book, *How We Love*, is that when somebody goes through prolonged, pervasive abuse, they can go to one of two ways. They can become a controller because they learn that relationships are like this: one person is in charge and they get to control and abuse the other person and this person can’t do anything about it.

They either become the controller or they become the victim. The controller says at some point, "I'm big enough and strong enough. I'm going to fight back and I won't be in the one-down position. So that means I'm going to take this position." The victim learns that, "I can't do anything to prevent abuse. It's hopeless and helpless."

They develop something called learned helplessness and so, "it's going to happen. If I stay under the radar, then maybe it won't be as bad. It won't be as bad and it won't be as frequent, but I can't get out of it." These two often find one another in adulthood and they end up in the cycle of abuse where this person feels like they can’t leave, even if the door is open for them, and this person finds people they’re going to control and they need to monitor them.

When it comes to sexual propensities of these two, touch in these homes, if it’s abusive, touch is not nurturing, gentle, or comforting. You’re being beaten, and so it’s paired with this adrenaline. Touch gets paired with adrenaline, and so these folks can become thrill-seekers.

When it comes to sex, pain can then be paired with sex because that’s what I'm used to. I'm used to adrenaline and cortisol when it comes to touch. This type of touch should have and must have adrenaline and cortisol. Controllers can require their spouses to endure painful sex acts and humiliating sex acts and victims can endure that.

It’s tragic, but it shows up again and again. It’s obviously broken. Some of the other insecure attachments, how the sexual propensities of those are more easily hidden. They can be explained away like, "Oh, that's just the way I am. I'm a people pleaser or I'm just not a hugger." But abuse can’t really be explained away. It’s so much more obvious, but it happens so frequently.

There’s a need to control. "I'm in charge," and so sex for the controller is very unilateral. It’s not about connection; it’s about what I want when I want it. "I'm not trying to have a connection with you; I'm just using you." Often, and again, this is not about gender because all of these attachment styles can be either gender.

Most often, what we see is a controller will be a man in the relationship because they typically are the stronger person in there. Men need sex to relax, and so they get angry very, very quickly. They get volatile very quickly. Again, sex is used as a way to relax and calm them down as a release.

JJ West: And then what does sex look like for the victim?

Mark: For the victim, it’s a way to calm down my abuser. It’s a way for me to make it better. If you’re satisfied and your needs are met, then you’re not going to make life hard for me. It is similar to the pleaser where there’s this anxiety, but really it’s about physical safety most of the time for them. Really, it’s survival. If I calm you down, then it’s survival for me.

Now, it’s important to note that with these attachment styles, we’re not blaming the parents for the attachment. We’re just really explaining why we become a certain way because obviously your parents had their own attachment figures in their parents. We tend to see that insecure attachments can go down a generational line.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that because your parent had one attachment you’re going to have that same one. If you have a vacillator parent, you could become the pleaser because you’re calming them down. But an insecure attachment can’t produce a secure attachment. That we know for sure. You have to be securely attached to produce a secure attachment style.

These strategies are about learned strategies for what I had to deal with for me to survive. It’s not our fault that we learned this, because in childhood we are generally in this one-down position. We don’t get to choose our family, our environment, where we go to school, our parents’ discipline, or their rules.

When we get into adulthood, now we become peers, and we have more power and more responsibility. It’s on us to learn to recognize this and learn how to reshape. Unfortunately for the controller and the victim, they are the least likely to seek help. Controllers are more likely for people who do want to help to give up on or victims because victims don’t leave. You give them a way out and they don’t leave. Then controllers you’re just mad at.

JJ West: Is there anything you’ve found in the literature or in the research that tells us why the controller and the victim are the least likely to seek help?

Mark: Relationships for them, this seems like it’s normal. They are full of shame. They’re not going to go and say, "Oh, I think I have an anger management problem." They can go to anger management if they get court-ordered or if people find out about the abuse; then they might end up going.

They don’t want to go back and explore their childhoods. That’s the thing. In order to be able to heal, you have to go back and make sense of what happened to you. Research shows part of earning a secure attachment is to build a coherent narrative. Coherent is something that makes sense; narrative is story. I've got to make sense of my childhood story.

They don’t want to go back and talk about that because for them, "I have to relive this if I talk about it. I got out of there, it was so horrific, I'm never going back to that." They usually cope with life through addictions to numb the pain. Addicts, as we know, are least likely to seek help because the addiction is the help; the addiction is the enabler. "I don't have a sex problem; I have a sex solution to my problem."

JJ West: That’s so good. Let’s shift the conversation then to what it looks like to be a secure connector. Specifically as a sexual being, what does that look like?

Mark: Secure connectors are people who grow up in homes where they have a parent who understands and picks up on what they’re feeling and approaches them and gives them language. They ask them how they’re feeling and put language to it.

How do you learn a language? Even if it’s a foreign language in your adulthood, somebody says something, they tell you what it is, and then you repeat it back. How do you learn language as a kid? You pick something up and they say, "Here, this is a banana," or "milk."

Securely attached parents also do that with emotions. They say, "Hey, you look sad. Your shoulders are dropped, and you’re looking down. Are you sad right now? Tell me about that." They notice, they observe, they put language to it, they invite, and then they soothe the child.

Every emotion has an emotional need to resolve it. If I feel misunderstood, then I need to be understood. Once I'm understood, that resolves my misunderstanding. If I feel unheard, I need to be heard. If I feel sad, I need to be comforted. Secure parents learn to do that with kids. These kids grow up learning that language for what’s happening on the inside, and they go into adulthood believing that people can be soothers of stress and I can be a soother of stress.

Securely attached people find securely attached people and they have a securely attached relationship. You can’t take two insecure attachments, put them together, and say, "Okay, now you’ll be securely attached." They don’t know how to securely attach. The math doesn’t make any sense. In order to have a securely attached relationship, if your attachment style is insecure, you have to earn a secure attachment style; otherwise you won’t find that.

They find one another. These relationships aren’t perfect because there are no perfect people out there, no perfect parents, and no perfect kids. This just happens the majority of the time in their childhood. They do get let down and they do have problems in relationships, but they know how to resolve them. When their needs don’t get met, they know how to self-soothe before they get highly reactive.

What does a securely attached person look like? They’re somebody who can admit mistakes and ask for a redo. They can ask for help when they’re struggling and recover from mistakes without getting stuck in shame. They learn from them and they have impulse control, especially when it comes to sex, sexual encounters, and pornography.

They can say no and unlike a pleaser, they can hold a boundary. They’re good listeners. They can seek understanding rather than seeking agreement, needing someone to agree with them. They have this highly reflective function where they can mirror, empathize, and validate. They have awareness of their own state and they can communicate with language what’s going on on the inside.

You’re more likely to get your needs met if I can say, "Hey, I'm feeling sad, can you give me a hug?" Then you know what’s also going on with me. Most people act out their emotions if they don’t have words for them and then you’ve got to try and guess what’s going on. Someone who’s securely attached has language for it, so they can ask for comfort and give comfort.

They’re also comfortable with differences. They know that people are different and sometimes we need to learn how to compromise, negotiate, or take turns, and they’re good at doing that. They can solve problems. All relationships have ruptures, and they’re good at repairing. They can have compassion for other people, too.

It’s not that they don’t have problems sexually or in other areas; they know how to have a conversation to address this. They know that it’s not just about my needs during sex. They’re comfortable asking about their partner’s needs. They’re comfortable accepting a no if their partner doesn’t want to do something, and they can be okay with that. They can make eye contact and have the emotional connection that leads to true intimacy. Sexual intimacy after that is the byproduct of that emotional connection.

JJ West: Boy, that’s so, so good. I think about the person who goes, "Whew, what you just described sounds great. I mean, I would have loved to have grown up in a home like that, but I didn’t have any of that, or I had very little of what you just described. Does that mean I'm doomed? I can't possibly ever become a secure connector because I didn’t have what you just described?"

Mark: Sadly, many of us don’t. Even if we are securely attached, it just means that we can do this more often than we react. Things happen in childhood that sometimes are not anybody’s fault. A parent dies, there’s mental illness in a family, a sibling is physically disabled, or a parent loses a job. Things happen that disrupt the cycle of bonding.

We can all continue to grow. This is what I outline in my book, *Understanding Your Attachment Style*. It helps people understand the difference between how they are and who they are. There’s a difference between how we are and who we are. This is how we’ve been shaped, and so we can be reshaped.

You’ve got to recognize your attachment style because you can’t change something that you’re not aware of. You first got to become aware, and then you’ve got to see how that keeps you stuck. Then you’ve got to work specific growth goals. Like I said, you’ve got to lean toward the opposite because you’ve been conditioned one way and you’ve got to recondition.

I outline the growth goals for each of the attachment styles. It’s kind of like you’ve got to go to the gym. You can’t just say, "Well, I know diet and exercise; I have all the head knowledge." You’ve actually got to go and do the exercises, and that’s where the transformation happens. This works because this is neuroscience.

If you work the growth goals that help you lean the opposite way into security, you will recondition. Slowly over time, that’s the way you earn that secure attachment style. It’s called earned secure attachment style when you learn to recondition in adulthood because it’s work. You’ve got to earn your way there.

In life, you have pain, so you’ve got to learn to pick your pain. I've got to pick the pain of staying stuck in the same cycle, or I've got to pick the pain of growth. This pain leads to freedom. That leads to true emotional intimacy. Don’t expect that you’ll have a securely attached relationship with someone else or a secure relationship if you yourself don’t have a secure attachment. It just won’t happen.

JJ West: Correct. I think added to that is the fact that God is a secure connector. He parents us all the ways that you just described. He gives us language for our emotions, He makes room for our emotions, He is compassionate and comforting to us, He sets limits, and He’s able to say no.

The only thing in the list that you mentioned that He doesn’t do is He doesn’t own His mistakes because He doesn’t make mistakes. But if He did, He would! That’s the way God parents us, and so even if we didn’t have it in the homes of our families of origin or didn't experience it growing up, I can experience it from God, which then helps me to make that transition to become a secure connector.

Mark: A key part of owning mistakes is humility. God, through Jesus, modeled humility. One thing in the *How We Love* workshops that we do is we ask this question after we explain the different attachment styles: Did Jesus look like an avoider? Was He not connected to emotion?

No, He cried when Lazarus died with Mary and Martha, even though He knew He was going to raise him back to life. Was Jesus a people pleaser? No, He could stand up to others. Was Jesus a vacillator? Did He just cut people off and rain fire down like James and John told him to? No, He didn’t do that.

Jesus was secure in all of these ways. He wasn’t a controller and He wasn’t a victim. Who created attachment? It's God’s idea. It’s God’s idea what the bond is supposed to look like between a mother and child. Human beings are the only animals on this planet that have an attachment phase that lasts this long—that lasts 20 years. Other animals don’t have that.

That must be important for our shaping and for our development. Even if you don’t believe in God, there’s a lot of atheist attachment research out there, and the neuroscience backs it up. Many people don’t believe in God, but they see that attachment is supposed to happen in one specific way. When that happens, we feel secure with that person and it shapes us. That attachment style follows us into adulthood.

A relationship is two histories colliding. You are the sum of all of your experiences, and from those experiences, you formed belief and you formed adaptations to what happened with you and patterns that you’re stuck in. If you find yourself in patterns that you don’t like, then you have to learn to recondition and change your part in the pattern.

JJ West: That’s a great segue. If that just described you—that you are finding yourself stuck in a pattern that you don’t like—okay, step one: go to the New Life website and order the book, and start reading it. Start learning the things that I need to do to earn a secure attachment. It’s available to all of us, no matter what our family of origin or broken attachment style was coming into the gate. I have the opportunity to learn a different way of connecting.

Mark: That’s the good news. It’s there within your grasp. You can do it. It’s possible. It will take work. If you’re a Christian, this is the path I believe to sanctification. You can’t be spiritually mature and at the same time be emotionally insecure. That doesn’t make any sense.

Sanctification is a process. It’s work that we have to do. We’re saved by grace and we don’t earn our right into heaven, but we work our way to sanctification by becoming more like Jesus. Earning secure attachment is parallel with that experience.

JJ West: Mark, thank you so much for the time that you’ve given to us and the valuable resource of your book that you’ve given to the world. Thank you for doing that. I can’t wait for our audience to learn, grow, benefit, and begin to experience these secure connections that, as you said, God wants for us.

Mark: I might be biased here, but I think the best place to get my book is at the New Life online store.

JJ West: Fantastic. Don’t wait, guys. Get to work. There’s work to be done. We don’t just wait for God to zap us. What does God say when the Israelites are getting ready to go into the promised land? He says, "My spirit will go before you and I'll drive out all the inhabitants of the land. I'll drive them out from before you."

At the end of the paragraph, he says, "So take up your sword and go drive them out." It’s a both-and. God is at work in us to change our broken attachment style into a secure attachment style, but we’ve got to pick up our sword and go to work and drive all of the "ites" out of our hearts.

Amen. I agree. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Doug. It was great to be on with you guys. Next week, we’re going to dive right back in. We hope and pray that you will join us again. Until we join back together, let’s keep walking in integrity.

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