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Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart, and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa, and I'm here to show you how. Let's go.

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Hey man, thanks for listening to my interview with Rich Savoy, who is such a close friend and amazing leader. You are going to learn all about HMA triads, the small groups that are starting up this next week. You'll find out what is a triad, how does it work? How is it different from an accountability group? And why this unique opportunity can be a breakthrough on your journey of outgrowing porn. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to Husband Material. Today's episode has been a long time coming. You get to hear from Rich Savoy, who is a dear friend of mine, a board member of Husband Material Ministries, and our director of HMA

Meet Rich And The Triads Vision

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Small Groups. Welcome, Rich.

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It's great to be here, Drew.

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What's the story of how you first got connected to Husband Material?

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I I've spent years on my journey towards kind of healing and understanding myself. I read through the unwanted book by Jay Stringer, and that was really helpful for me. And it really helped me understand why I struggle with some of the things that I struggle with. And I came to husband material, which would really was the now what.

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Revealing does not equal healing. It's part of the process, but you needed something that

From Revelation To Real Healing

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was more practical, something you could do in order to connect with Little Rich, for example.

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Yeah. So one of the phrases that we use at Hudson Material Academy is you have to feel it to heal it. And part of my journey is my struggle with bullying. But I also learned to just stuff emotions and not express emotions. And part of my way to healing was that I needed to learn healthy ways to express my emotions.

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And one of our favorite approaches at Husband Material and specifically between you and I is IFS, Internal Family Systems. Can you talk about that?

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Sure. Internal family systems really resonated with me. And so I learned that from going through Husband Material Academy. But I've continued the journey with internal family systems. So I've read a number of books. I've got to spend some time in a group with Jenna Rusmiersma. I've worked with two different coaches that are IFS coaches. And I've really worked through my own story and my own parts, you know, understanding my managers, my exiles, and the concept of internal family systems is that all parts are welcome, but some parts are burdened. And we can go through a process of approaching a part with kindness

Internal Family Systems Explained

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and curiosity and understand why the part does what it does, but also what do I need to do to help unburden the burden that that part is carrying?

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Common burdens include shame, self-condemnation, unwanted sexual behavior. And the IFS approach is so beautiful in freeing us from those burdens.

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Porn is often a firefighter, right? So I feel this pain, I don't know what to deal with it. So a firefighter says, Hey, here's a quick way to deal with that pain. And of course, here at Hus Material, we deal with a lot of men that struggle with you know going to the act out behavior of the firefighter of porn.

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Yeah. And we have often tried to fix that through the manager of purity culture, through fear and shame and control rather than love and curiosity and compassion. So thank you for all of the love and curiosity and compassion that you have poured into the men of Husband Material. Because you were not just a student of Husband Material. A few years ago, you came to me with a vision for how it could be even better.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

I said, Drew, I have this vision that we should have guys whose lives have been impacted by Husband Material Academy from Husband Material and these different principles, be able to give back to other guys. And it was at a certain point after that that you called me up and said, Rich, how would you like to be the director of small groups and kind of pursue that vision of helping guys that have been impacted give back and help other guys?

SPEAKER_02 5:35

It used to be that you would try to find a few other guys who were starting the program around the same time, and everyone was starting at different times. And triads were hit or miss. Like you didn't know if people were gonna click. Oftentimes they would fizzle out. Sometimes guys would trigger each other, and then that would be the end of the triad. So it really wasn't a great system until you came in and started developing leaders. And now when men are joining HMA and getting into a small group with a trained leader who's been through the course and who's being supported by you and your core team, they're getting a much better experience.

Building Led Triads That Last

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Yeah. So in the past, I would say it was kind of like this awkward dance, you know, and you know, of you know, who are you gonna ask to go and dance and what are you gonna do? And guys would start to get to know each other and they weren't sure who they should ask to be in their triad. And there was just this awkward process of guys coming together. And, you know, what we've now changed over the years is now that we have led triads, is so, you know, I and a group of my leaders that we call core team, but we also have a group of triad leaders that have been through the program, and they're the people who really have been influenced and impacted by the program and the things that we do. And they will lead the newer people through the process. And as you know, we have a number of different modules, we have exercises with every module, but we go deep, we get vulnerable. You know, we talk about things that potentially guys have never talked about with anybody before. And so we we develop a triad of trusted men so that you can get vulnerable with and go deep with where you're not judged, and you can experience grace and other people that can encourage and infirm you and attune to some of those emotions and hard things that we might be working through with our struggles.

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Yeah. That is oxygen when it comes to outgrowing porn. We need that.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Um I see the book, your book behind you of outgrowing porn, and we have the pacifier. And one of the things that we really talk about is the pacifier is like the baby who cries, and they need something to kind of deal with that pain so they get the pacifier. And what we do within triads is we get guys to talk about their pain. You know, so a lot of programs will deal with counting. Well, here's the number of days that I've had since the last time I've acted out, or focus on I need another level of blocking software, not only on my computer, but on my phone. And none of those things are wrong, you know, and a number of those things can be helpful. But what we really do is try to get down to more of the root of what you're struggling with, with what's the deeper need that's really driving you to the act out behavior. And it all often has to do with an emotion that that is difficult, maybe that we don't even realize or acknowledge, you know, and you

Safety, Size, And Real Connection

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know, so the part of our journey together in HMA is understanding what's going on the inside, what's going on with the boy, what's going on with those pain and hurt areas, and living authentically and vulnerably where you can talk about those things and not be judged is really a significant part of the healing process.

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Amen. Oh my goodness. Without that, I would still be struggling with porn. I'm absolutely sure of it. Thank you for the work you do in the husband material community. There has been some confusion about like what is a triad? Could anyone join a triad? Can you help us understand what that process looks like?

SPEAKER_00 9:45

Sure. I'd be happy to do that. So anybody within the husband material community can get together with a group of other guys and connect with them and and grow with them. We have guys who come and are part of the HUBS Material community for some period of time. It could even be a year or longer, and then they decide, I think I want to go deeper in my work and I want to join Husband Material Academy. And so those doors open in January and July, and they open in those two time frames so that we can have a whole group of guys go through HMA together. There's a two-step process, and the first step is you just say, I'm interested in a triad. And then there's a second step where we'll open when we open up step two, and that all happened within the next week and a half. Then you get to select the triad that you want to be a part of. So for guys internationally, and they're in a different time zone than many of us in the US, they can pick a triad that works for them. So we have triads that meet all days of the week. Some of them meet mornings, afternoons, many of them in evenings. So you get to see the triad leader and you can look up on the system to learn more about the triad leader. And you can see the other guys that are just signing up for that group. So maybe some guys want to be in a triad together, or maybe you found like one other person, the two of you want to be a triad together. Well, that works. You both sign up

Beyond Counting Days To Emotions

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together for a slot that works for you, and then you have a triad leader that will actually work with you. And most of those groups will be launching by beginning of February.

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Awesome. So if you're part of the free husband material community, you can organize your own triad, maybe go through the book, outgrow porn together, and you're welcome to do that. If you want an organized triad with a trained leader and men who are committed to going through Husband Material Academy together, that is included in the paid membership, which you can join at joinhma.com. And that's starting up very soon, and it's very exciting. Why do we intentionally keep them so small?

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We've purposely keep it small so that you can connect and go deep with these men. And one of the really important parts of the triad community is it's a safe place. And part of a safe place means things that are shared within your triad community doesn't get shared outside your specific triad. So safety means I can be vulnerable with these guys, and these group of brothers are committed to keeping our conversations confidential, where we can just work through deep things together.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

That's so beautiful. I've been a part of groups where there are so many members and not enough time so that it feels rushed. I love that triads are so small because especially if you're only meeting for an hour in that amount of time, how many men can really go deep? Like if you have six men, that's only 10 minutes a guy. And sometimes somebody's opening up about something really vulnerable, really tender. Like we need to have groups that are small enough that meet for long enough so that everyone can really be cared for.

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Yeah, and that is an important part of the way that triad works. So one of the things that I do with our triad leaders is we work to say everybody gets to talk. You know, everybody gets to participate. So we try to make sure that everybody has a turn to share. And now on one giving week, one guy may be struggling and his time maybe just be a little bit longer than somebody else. But I think a really good triad meeting is when everybody talked and everyone felt heard, and everyone got to give feedback and affirmation to what's going on with the other guys. And for that, it needs to be a smaller

Iceberg Model And Going Deeper

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group of guys to do that. You don't have a large group of people to do that an hour. And so, yes, true, the triad meetings are one hour a week, but that doesn't mean that's the only time you connect with those guys in the triad. One of the things that we encourage and happens all the time in our triads is there's a signal chat, a WhatsApp chat, some kind of a chat where people can connect throughout the week. Or maybe you're having a hard day and you're gonna just kind of check in and say, hey guys, I need your prayer. I could use some support. If anybody's available to talk, I could use somebody to talk to. I'm really struggling today. And we see that happen. That's an also an important part of triads. So there's there's communications through technology that happens even beyond that one hour.

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We need that too. How are triads in HMA different than accountability groups or groups that are more behavior focused?

SPEAKER_00 15:06

So it's interesting. I want to share with you the way that we start a triad. So the triads will start out at the beginning where everybody will do a check-in. And and and what a check-in is, it's not to say, here's the amount of time since the last time I acted out. Guys may decide to share that, but more importantly, a check-in is the emotions I'm feeling today are. So we start out to triad meetings with the emotions I'm feeling today are, and the guys sharing their emotions. And at the end of that, we say, with that, I'm in. And so we're into this container, this community of connected people where there's kind of safety that, and and Drew, as you know, guys don't do emotions easily. We don't understand emotions. We don't halftime we don't get what we're feeling or why we're feeling it. Girls are encouraged from growing up to share their emotions, and guys are encouraged growing up to do the opposite. You're you don't talk about emotions. If you do that, you get made front of in the locker room, right? And so we talk about emotions more than just the behaviors because emotions have to do with really what's going on inside of us.

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Yeah. It's not a scorecard, it's not a

Inner Child And Triggers Work

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grade report for the week. It's not performance, it's being present to each other.

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So one of the things that we talk about when I speak on emotional intelligence is I put up a chart that has iceberg. And within that iceberg, you see kind of what's above the water and what's below the water, right? And for most people, they just show what's above the water. They just they present themselves the way they want to be seen, the way they want to be perceived. But what we talk about in the motion emotional intelligence seminar is there's a much bigger part of the iceberg below the water. And below the water has to do with feelings and beliefs and values and purpose and much deeper things of what's really going on inside of us and what we're really trying to explore together as a part of the academy and as a part of these triads.

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So instead of just talking about behavior in your triad small group, you'll go into childhood experiences, emotional triggers, sexual fantasies, God-given desires, what's happening in your brain, in your body, in your soul, and what redemption looks like. Now that is deep.

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It might be interesting to just take a minute and talk about each one of those parts, right? Because those are parts of Hus Material Academy. So those are there's a part of what you're going to do within your triad. So you start at the beginning, kind of being introduced to the boy. And so when we connect with that inner child, it helps us to connect with our emotions, but it also helps us to connect with that wounded part of us. And so what we go through in the academy is how do you help that boy in life? Because when the boy was a boy, the boy was alone, and the boy had to figure out things by himself, right? But now we have our adult self, but we also have other brothers that can help us along that journey. Some people initially have some problems with, well, the inner child, this kind of sounds is it Christian? Does it sound kind of too new agey? And the way that I kind of explain that, and the triad leaders will talk about this is God

Arousal, Regulation, And Support

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has given us emotions and God has given us imagination. And we can use our imagination to help connect with our emotions and that emotional part of us. And that's what we do in inner child work. But then the next thing we deal with is triggers, right? And so triggers can be pleasure triggers and pain triggers, and you do such a great job of explaining that as a part of the academy. If you don't understand what happens, is each each unit you'll watch a video from Drew, and Drew will talk about a concept, and then there's some kind of exercise to process. And we do that on Momentum Mondays, we do that as a part of the triads. And one of the things I love about the way that you frame it that has been really helpful is every trigger tells a story. And so a trigger is like a trailhead that we can just ignore or maybe just go to porn because I'm triggered. I just talked to somebody earlier today in a in a session where they were talking about I was really triggered in this situation. It was a conversation the person had with their mom. The first thing I thought about when I got off the call is I need to go look at porn. You know, and you know, but there's a story behind the trigger. So it's a trailhead to a story for this individual. It has something to do with his relationship with his mom that is very triggering, right? And so we explore that as a part of the academy. We explore that as a part of our triad groups together.

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And our triggers take us to specific sexual thoughts and feelings, which is why we also have a unit on arousal and learning to understand what sexually arouses us. But in order to process that, we also need to learn how to regulate, which is why we have a unit on regulation so that you can do this work safely without putting yourself at risk of relapse. And this is

Decoding Fantasy And Desire

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a part of the course where I think triads are really, really helpful because you have a group of guys who are there to help you process some things that you may have never told anyone before. And when we start to work through our patterns of arousal, that's when we need other people the most, both to regulate and to receive us and help us make sense of our sexual stories.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Yeah. And so we'll give tools out and how to help you regulate. But then we get to this really challenging area of going deeper into your fantasy. Everybody's fantasy, everything that people go to in porn or whatever you act out behavior, is not the same. We talk about paying attention to the particulars of what's the storyline that you're looking for. What are the things that you type into the keyboard to get to the storyline? And what is irresistible in that storyline? That it's just like when you, if you don't find this certain thing, you're clicking, you're going to the next scene, or you're fast-forwarding to try to find that. That shows you your path to healing. And one of the things we talk about is there's deeper desires that are God-given, divine desires, you know, that and porn has twisted the way that we get those desires. But this is where doing it with some guys in a triad working through that. Yes, maybe some people won't come because they're like, wait a minute, I'm going to talk about these kind of things in a triad. Yes, that's what we're inviting you to go deeper and go to and become vulnerable about these things that really will show you your path to healing.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

Right. Because once we see what those desires are, then we can actually meet them in healthy ways. But you might not fully understand the desire without facing the fantasies.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

So we do that in the triad. We also, there's coaching calls on, you know, you lead a call on fantasy Fridays. It's a hot seat call where you can go deeper and kind of exploring your fantasy and spending one-on-one time with you, but then some other guys are watching. So there's a number of ways to do that, but a lot of guys find that they feel comfortable and safe doing it within their triad with guys that they've just spent a number of months together with that feel trusted, already understand some of their stories. And we're now going to share the thing that feels really vulnerable, that's the dark secret that you've never wanted to talk to anybody about. But true, it's so freeing when guys go there. I love some guys are kind of afraid of this part when we get to this part of the course. But a number of guys will say, This is the part I've been waiting for. This is the part I've been looking forward to. This is the deep work that I know

Community, Belonging, And Next Steps

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that I need to do. And even the guys that are hesitant gone in come out in really meaningful ways, saying, This was really worth it. And I've really taken some significant steps and gone through this process.

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It makes me want to go back through it again. There's more.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

So Henry and I get to go through it every six months over and over again, and we love it. So, and our triad leaders.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

That's so cool. Rich, what's your favorite thing about HMA?

SPEAKER_00 24:49

I'm going to answer that in two ways. So, my two favorite lessons were inner child work because that really helped me to keep to kind of go deeper and connect it with that emotional part of me that I needed to. And as we talked earlier, internal family systems, and that helped me to continue my work. So those were my two favorite lessons. But my favorite thing about it, you know, so healing happens in community, and healing happens by feeling connection and feeling belonging. And so it's it's really the connection that happens with the guys. And, you know, you feel that connection on Momentum Mondays, the guys that are are are coming every Monday night. And just to be clear, I mean, you don't have to come to Momentum Mondays. We strongly recommend it. And you definitely don't want to go to the 12 different coaching calls. That's way too much. I had one guy at one part say to me, this is total over totally overwhelming for me to think about all these coaching calls. I'm like, just pick one, just pick two and figure out what resonates with you. But what really is the my favorite thing is just the connection that guys start to feel with being together, belonging, realizing, you know what, I'm not the only one that struggles with this. You know, in the church, people feel felt slip so along, alone in these struggles because this is the thing that you'd feel like it's just really uncomfortable. You can talk about, you know, I have a struggle with anger. You can even might say, I have a struggle with alcohol, you know, in your church environment. It's really hard to say, I have a struggle with pornography. One of the things about that we that I talk about with husband material is we talk about anything and everything. You know, we're not afraid to explore anything in terms of what guys want to talk about and what guys want to explore. What we need to do for connection and especially authentic connection where we're seen and understood.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

Right. No matter what your sexual attractions are, no matter what you have done or what has been done to you sexually, no matter what thoughts or feelings or fantasies you might have, truly all parts of you are welcome. Rich has been a huge part of making that a reality. Thank you so much for doing that. And if you guys want to get into HMA, go to joinhma.com. When this episode is published, there are just a few days left to join and be a part of this next round of triads with the awesome leaders that Rich has been supporting. Rich, thank you for making this possible.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Andrew, thank

Enrollment Details And Closing

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you for all the work that you do. And for those out in the listening audience, we hope to see an HMA soon. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Awesome. Go to join HMA.com. We hope to see you there. Rich is available to communicate with you guys inside the husband material community. Thank you for listening. Always remember you are God's beloved son. And you, he is well pleased.