Typology Podcast - Episode S09-013
Justin and Trish Davis
Ian Cron (00:38.826)
Hey, Typology friends, welcome back. We are excited today because we have on with us Justin and Trish Davis. Now Justin is an Enneagram 8 with a 7-wing, Trish a 3 with a 2-wing. Of course, my side friend, my producer, you know, navigator, Anthony Skinner is with us.
Justin And Trisha Davis (01:10.542)
Hahaha!
Anthony Skinner (01:12.557)
Captain.
Ian Cron (01:13.526)
There it is. Perfect. Anyway, Justin and Trish, welcome to Typology.
Justin And Trisha Davis (01:19.436)
Hey, thanks so much for having us. We're excited to be here.
Ian Cron (01:22.004)
Okay, I am really excited to talk about your new book. The title of it is One Choice Away From Change Break the Cycles That Hurt Your Relationships and Hold You Back. But first, I want to talk about the Enneagram and I want to talk about your marriage under the umbrella of the Enneagram because I'm sure we got some folks out there that are in relationships with eights and threes or we might even have a number of people listening that are an eight, three combination. So Justin, as an eight with a seven, you're going to bring a lot of intensity and energy and drive to protect. You've got this passion, this lust for life. right? This powerful, powerful instinctual energy. Trish as a three with a two, You're going to bring a focus on achievement, getting things done efficiently. You're going to bring care for others, you know, as the juice of that two wing leaks into your dominant three type. How did you first begin to recognize how these core patterns shaped your merit?
Justin Davis (02:23.91)
Way too late. You know, we just celebrated 30 years of marriage this last summer. And I would say for the first 10 years of our marriage, we had no idea how our wiring patterns, how our personality types, how our Enneagram numbers ever affected our relationship. We just felt like we’re in pastoral ministry. So we like if we love God and love each other, it's going to all work out.
And, you know, it wasn't until our marriage imploded in 2005 that we actually started doing some of the interior work that was required to not just rebuild our relationship, but find healing personally. So, you know, Trish and I joke when we talk about the Enneagram because I wish that we would have discovered it years earlier because rather than judging each other for our differences, we could have appreciated them and actually leverage them a lot more.
Trisha Davis:
Well, we’d heard of it. just didn't, we're like, I don't really get it. I think a lot of people, that's how they approach the Enneagram. Like it's a fad, it'll move on. And then I think more people understood how it could be a beautiful guide to relationships that people started paying attention. And that, that was really for Justin and I, I have a friend, her name's Jackie Brewster. She's an Enneagram coach and remember sitting down on the couch with her and she's like, you know, talking about the enneagram. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's like, what do you think you are? like, I don't know. And so we started talking and as a woman in ministry, it doesn't matter what I think I am. I should be an enneagram two because that is what you need to be in the church world. Becoming an enneagram three is like, well, you just might as well just damn me to hell. Like that was just like the one thing I didn't want to be.
But she said something so beautifully, Ian, that changed my world and perception. I think for both of us is that the Enneagram is not a weapon and it's not an excuse. And then all of a sudden it was like, now I want to learn more about this.
Ian Cron (04:36.32)
Hmm. Hmm. Well, wise words from that coach. You actually said right before we hit record, we were just saying in passing. What you said was, you know, our therapist told us that when we're healthy, we're like magic. But when we're not, we're toxic. First of all, what were you talking to your therapist about when that line came up? And number two, describe that to help us understand what that means.
Justin Davis (05:01.454)
Well, pop some popcorn everybody. Here we go. I just want to say as an Enneagram 8, I challenged that completely. No, actually Trish and I about three and a half years ago went through a season of just tremendous loss. We had some personal trauma that we were walking through from a family standpoint. And then we were pastoring a church through COVID that ended up closing.
And so here we were at 49 and 47 years old trying to figure out what we were going to do with the rest of our life after all of our achieving and all of our striving and all of our hustle had ended in such a tragic way. And we flew to Colorado and spent three days in a life planning process.
And so if you ever gone through that process, you go through this, you know, all the, all these exercises that basically look back, almost do like an autopsy of your whole life. And we were going through the last day and the coach that we were working with had all of our life kind of up on this you know, whiteboard. And he said to Trish, he said, what do you see when you look at this, you know, at your life and…
Trish Davis: Are you going to share what I really said?
Justin Davis: I'll give it, I'll give the PG version. She just said, I see a crap show. And, and he said, well, I see resilience. And then he kind of began to unpack. We had talked about our Enneagram in that conversation. He began to unpack how when Trish and I are healthy, God had wired us in such a way to compliment each other.
Anthony Skinner (06:35.833)
Mm-mm.
Justin Davis (06:50.306)
But we had spent so many years resenting the other person for what they were bringing to the table rather than being inquisitive and learning from them, that there were so many areas in our marriage and in our, you know, business and in our ministry that had become toxic. And he said, when you're healthy, you're magic. And when you're unhealthy, you're toxic. And it just gave us almost like a North star to be able to kind of put a pin in that then come back to it as not necessarily to use against the other person like, you're toxic right now, but more of, hey, if we can maintain a level of emotional and spiritual health personally and in our relationship, then we can actually accomplish way more together than we ever thought possible.
Ian Cron (07:41.964)
All right, so Trish, what do threes have to do to remain spiritually and emotionally healthy in a relationship or just in general?
Trisha Davis (07:52.055)
It's such a great question because we want the manual that says five ways to strive to be the best friend you can possibly be, you know, and then let us achieve it. And so for me as an Enneagram three, I have to recognize that it's okay not to be perfect. That it's not about achieving in relationships. And that's, that's really hard because there's not that metric to say, am I being a good friend? And so one of the ways is recognizing I don't have to achieve in relationships, but I can still fully show up as myself in those relationships.
Ian Cron (08:39.606)
So interesting you should say that last night I was at a 12-step meeting with a group of dear friends and I shared with the group I said, I have a very strong three wing and because I'm a self-pres four I have a lot of three-ish and seven-ish qualities, right? So I said to them, I said, know, I'm 65 years old and I still sometimes feel like every room I walk into I'm being graded on my performance.
Like what impression am I leaving? Am I the smartest guy in the room? Have I established that with everybody? You know, it's just crazy how our little brains think. Now, the good thing is I can spot it now and I'm able to go, I don't think I want to play that story. You know, like that's not the story I want to live in. But you know, it takes some work. Justin, what about eights? Like what does emotional and spiritual health look like for you as an eight?
Justin Davis (09:36.675)
I think one of the things that I really struggled with early on and didn't really know how to identify it and really have a self-awareness about it, was a level of authenticity and vulnerability that was safe but wasn't necessarily true. Right? And so there was this, there was this facade that I lived under that I didn't want people to challenge my character. I didn't want people to challenge my choices or my discernment or my leadership. And so I pretended like I was way better than I really was because I did not want to feel a level of accountability or a level of, you know, answering for some of the choices that I was making. And so I think as I began to understand kind of the shadow side of an Enneagram 8, it helped me step into full transparency, authenticity in a way that was just, you know, it wasn't just the Sunday morning authenticity, but more of a deep level of being known so that I could finally feel like I could be loved.
Ian Cron (10:46.828)
That is beautiful. You know, Anthony and I have a term that we use to describe that. And often I see it a lot with pastors. right? Having been one, I know about it. So we call it fauxnerability, F-A-U-X, nerability. And another way to put that would be like strategic vulnerability. I'm going to, I'm going to almost, and it's actually very interesting because it can be very three-ish, not eight-ish.
Justin And Trisha Davis (11:01.26)
Hmm.
Anthony Skinner (11:01.997)
Mm-hmm.
Ian Cron (11:15.168)
But I see it a lot where there's this kind of false self that we throw out there that is kind of like trying to charm the crowd a little bit. That's not just for threes. I think people in leadership positions in particular find themselves falling into this temptation. So man, I get it. Thanks for sharing the growth places.
Anthony Skinner (11:15.287)
Mm-hmm.
Ian Cron (11:44.436)
Really, really helpful. Now, your marriage hit a breaking point a number of years ago. I want to hear about that. And I want to know how did your Enneagram wiring contribute both to the fracture and to the healing of your relationship?
Trisha Davis (12:02.926)
As a three, you know, the ministry is like our playground to achieve our way into all the things. And it's, it's also very elusive because in the church, you know, if I worked at a bank, I would have my coworkers and that's who I would be in relationship with. As a ministry leader, you're connected to families and you're connected to you know, an array of giftings that you can you can be good at this or you could be good at that, and so I wore myself out just trying to achieve and please. And with that two wing, I'm the type of three that I don't want to play a solo sport. If I, if I played tennis by myself and won the championship I'd be so sad. I want my people to be with me. And so in the context of ministry, trying to care for other people at the end of the day, just really wanting to make sure that I was doing what I needed to, that people knew I could do it, it wore me out. And so for Justin operating out of that eight, same thing in ministry, it's like, vision, we're gonna conquer the world, we're gonna grow, grow, grow, and we're gonna build buildings and ministries. And so we were like almost set up to fail.
Not having that language or context of the Enneagram because we assumed kind of a theological perspective, that this is how God made us. And so we got to give it our all regardless of cost.
Justin Davis: I think to dovetail off of that a little bit, you know, ministry is set up really well for an Enneagram 8 because, you know, energy, passion, and then challenging the status quo, right? Like you want to see a preferred future and inspire people to pursue it together. And so being persuasive and being, you know, able to communicate that vision is a, a huge advantage in that regard. At the same time, I think I took personal being challenged. Anytime someone would challenge a thought or an idea, I felt like they were challenging me, right? Like it felt so personal and so deep and it really affected the depth of relationships that I allowed myself to have because one, we would move from ministry to ministry because I was never satisfied. And then, you know, when we began to, you know, go deep with people, I would be completely torn up based on what someone would say or the opinion that they would have that would be different than mine. And so there was just this volatility that was a part of our relationship. were like a volcano that at any point could erupt simply because all of the ingredients were there all of the time for that eruption.
Ian Cron (15:17.258)
Yeah, and it's interesting, right, because an 8-3 combination, right, has a lot of wonderful possibilities, right? The areas of potential problems sometimes fall in a couple of categories. One would be it's an explosive combination. There's a tremendous amount of energy and desire inside of the hearts of Eights and Threes. And they can both be assertive and aggressive.
Justin And Trisha Davis (15:43.15)
Hmm.
Ian Cron (15:44.95)
And you're both prone to avoid vulnerability, although for different reasons, right? Like Justin, typically, eights avoid vulnerability because they confuse it with weakness. And weakness is one thing they're not gonna, weak is one thing they are not gonna be, right? And for the three, there's always sort of a question around like, well, who am I anyway? I don't really know because I, you know, that's just a…
Justin And Trisha Davis (15:59.343)
Yep. Yeah.
Ian Cron (16:11.372)
…feature of twos, threes, and fours, right? You've got a double, you got a little double dose of the identity thing. And so you're, you have an image to maintain. So, if vulnerability, true vulnerability, there's always that anxiety about, how is this going to impact people's perceptions of me?
Ian Cron (16:39.346)
And of course, that's very important to threes. I mean, is that your experience, guys?
Trisha Davis (16:44.226)
You know, it's interesting when you, if you were to have said that to me even like five years ago, it would be Fight Club. I'm like, I'm not wired like that at all. Like, no, because that wing two, you know, I would consider myself a very open book person. You know, I grew up in a very tragic family and we weren't at a place where we could hide our things.
Ian Cron (16:52.064)
Hahaha!
Justin And Trisha Davis (17:12.418)
But when my friend Jackie and I had that conversation, she mentioned how threes are chameleons. And that, it just grabbed my attention. And it was like, Ooh, you know what? I am truthful about life events, but I definitely hide and become a chameleon of how people think I should show up in those events. So I equated being truthful about my circumstances with being truthful about who I really am.
Ian Cron (17:34.657)
Mm-hmm.
Trisha Davis (17:42.293)
And that wasn't true. And so it was difficult to have to go to that deep space to your point of like, then who am I? Because when you don't have that anchor of people telling you who you should be, it's very disorienting. And that, you know, is where we become healthy. And so as a three, I've had to work with being okay with who God created me.
And in that tension of never being enough and always being too much, will kind of always feels like the Achilles heel. And so in order to not give into that shadow side, it is a daily practice to be okay with my own thoughts and feelings that aren't persuaded by other people and their needs.
Ian Cron (18:24.46)
Hmm.
________________
Ian Cron (18:33.3)
Yeah, I remember a three telling us one time that he could look into another person's eyes at a conversation, at a party and read in real time how that other person was responding to the things that he was saying. And then literally in the moment, like craft and retool his self-presentation.
Anthony Skinner (18:33.913)
Mm-hmm.
Ian Cron (18:58.922)
Like he's like, the data is telling me that when I do this, you like that more. So I'll do more of that, you know, and the data in your eyes tells me that you don't like it so much when I talk about that. So I'll, I'll actually, you know, not do that. And it's like, there's the chameleon, right? It's, it's like a kaleidoscope. You're just constantly turning it to kind of get that pattern that you think is going to most please the person looking through it. You know, rather, rather a rather amazing kind of a deal.
Trisha Davis (19:03.905)
Yes.
Justin Davis (19:22.647)
Yeah. Yeah.
Ian Cron (19:29.292)
You speak openly about this affair that rocked your marriage and imploded your marriage. And of course, love, I hate to say it, I love these stories because I find people endlessly fascinating, but I'm also most interested in how people deal with suffering. Like I'm very interested in how people pass through the gauntlet or the crucible of suffering and how they come out on the other side. Do they?
Justin And Trisha Davis (19:45.966)
Hmm.
Ian Cron (19:59.316)
Are they just people that suffer PTSD or do they, do they go a level higher and begin to experience post-traumatic growth? Like where, what begins to happen? So the question I have for you guys is I have to imagine that like grief played a really big role in that season of your life. Like there was a lot of grief going on. And for eights and threes, that's tricky. How did you navigate grief?
Justin Davis (20:07.8)
Hmm.
Trisha Davis (20:26.124)
Yeah.
Justin Davis (20:29.868)
Well, I think leading up to the affair in 2005, you really spoke into it a few minutes ago when you talked about just the perception of weakness, right? And so there were so many opportunities in our marriage relationship for the first 10 years where Trish would say, I think we need some help. I think we need to talk about this. I think we need to get some advice or a mentor, or I think we need to, you know, seek help in this area. And I just, I resisted that like the plague because I did not want, asking for help was a sign of weakness. And I did not want anybody, especially people I worked with or people I was supposed to be spiritually leading to think I had any weaknesses. And so there was this built-in mechanism in our marriage where, you know, hiddenness and performance became a part of the DNA of our relationship.
Ian Cron (21:06.924)
Mmm.
Justin And Trisha Davis (21:28.226)
I'll never forget being with the chairman of our board and he is the CEO of this huge company in the town where we had started the church. And he's being vulnerable. He's sharing some issues that he's going through. And I just felt this voice say, it's safe. You can be honest with him. And then I felt another voice say, the biggest contributor at the church, like he could get you fired.
And it was just this moment of choosing to give into that shadow side of an Enneagram eight and stay hidden and view asking for help as not wisdom, but weakness. And a few weeks later, the affair began. And obviously, you know, it was this big bomb that went off in our marriage relationship. We were separated for two and a half months. We started going to counseling and I'd never gone to counseling.
Ian Cron (22:10.732)
Hmm
Ian Cron (22:15.083)
Right.
Justin And Trisha Davis (22:27.98)
Because I just thought counseling, I don't go to counseling, I do counseling. Counseling is for people who are weak. And so it was through that process of beginning to go to counseling that I began to understand that seeking help and being known and allowing the weaknesses that we have to be illuminated is not weakness, it's actually the pathway to healing and strength. And that began kind of a grieving process…
Ian Cron (22:32.684)
Hmm.
Ian Cron (22:52.128)
Yes.
Justin And Trisha Davis (22:57.838)
…really for the marriage that died in 2005 that would then help us begin to rebuild a brand new relationship. I know I didn't speak directly to grief, but I thought giving that context would be helpful.
Ian Cron (23:07.244)
Hmm.
No, think it's super helpful. And I also think you actually did answer it because for an eight, right, and for a three for that matter, know, grief would be a real challenge because the three would want to as quickly and as efficiently as possible move through it to get back to, let's get back to our projects and our plans and moving ahead and buildings, you know, whatever. It's like, I don't have time for too much grief. This is too messy, I don't have time. And to the eight, it would be like, I don't, this whole weakness thing, this grief thing is intolerable and is so counter to everything. I've come to believe about myself and about life that I'm gonna muscle through it. Yeah.
Trisha Davis (24:06.094)
Yeah, I'm a rule follower. So I'm a rule following three. So, you know, that achievement comes through justice, like I did the right thing. And so when my world fell apart, I did exactly what you did. I got on the phone with a counselor. And that poor counselor probably quit after that conversation because I was just like, you know, three my way through it.
Anthony Skinner (24:30.329)
Hehehe.
Trisha Davis (24:35.19)
And obviously did not have that language, but just tell me what to do. Tell me what to do to have him come home. I know that we can fix it. You know, I believe that God can heal our marriage. And then he said something to me that changed my world. He said, if you love Justin, you will let him go.
Now I grew up South Side Chicago and so I can get a little spicy and so I may have said some spicy things to him. Something to the effect of you may be the dumbest counselor I've ever talked to. And obviously he is a counselor for a reason and could handle my hurt. And I said, if I let him go, he's going to choose her. And then my counselor said, he's chosen her anyway.
And until you let go, you will always be his escape goat. And I think as a three, I was trying to do exactly what you were saying. I was trying to achieve my way back to my relationship with Justin because one plus one equals two. And that cannot change. So just give me what I need to do and I'll do it. And I think as an Enneagram three, I had to be okay that the world doesn't come with a manual. And that doesn't mean that I can't show up authentically in wanting to present in a way that I want to achieve things and show up in that way, my best self in relationships, but it wasn't, it isn't the thing that drives me. And that, I think that changed our relationship for what it is today.
Ian Cron (26:26.358)
That's great. So let's talk about the book. Once again, I want to remind people is the title is One Choice Away from Change Break the cycles that hurt your relationships and hold you back. What are some of the relational problems or barriers that you see people struggle with when trying to move beyond their past, like through an episode like the one we're talking about here?
Trisha Davis (26:51.118)
Well, I think shame is a huge inhibitor of people feeling as though the failures that they have define them rather than inform them. Like I began to view as an interim eight and three, like sometimes, you know, we can adopt the posture and the behavior of each other. And when you allow failure to define you, then you begin to think, man, I'm never going to be able to recover from this. I'm always going to struggle with this. I'm always going to, you know, repeat this behavior. And I think as I began to, as we get began to work on the book, one of the things that I really wanted to take on is that shame piece and allowing people to understand that you're not defined by your worst mistakes. Your worst mistakes can actually be leveraged to, you know, allow you to become the person that God's created you to be. But without recognizing some of those behavior patterns, then we constantly live in this cycle of shame. And we tell ourselves, you know, we talk to ourselves more than anyone else. And the stories that we tell ourselves usually are not positive ones. They're usually ones filled with shame and regret. And so helping people see that your past can actually be used in a powerful way rather than something that determines your future.
Ian Cron (28:23.372)
I think that's really really important Anthony. What are you gonna say?
Anthony Skinner (28:27.607)
I was just going to say with everything that you went through, the betrayal, the healing, the restoration, what is like a myth around marriage recovery that you wish you could shatter?
Trisha Davis (28:40.765)
Man, that's a great question. I would say one size fits all.
Anthony Skinner (28:46.093)
Hmm.
Trisha Davis (28:48.236)
You know, we're so uniquely different in how we show up in our pain. And so it's, you can be an expert of yourself in a way that leads from a place of healing and not a place of being haughty and knowing it all. But confidence is saying, I'm confident in who I am, regardless if I fail or if I succeed. Arrogance says I am always good at what I do and I can do anything. And so just having the confidence that healing is possible. It's not a one size fit all. It's, it's a confidence to know that you will find your way if you're willing to do the hard work of love.
Justin Davis:
I would say…that's a good one. I would say for me, one of the things that we see couples struggle with a lot is trying to change the other person to have a better relationship. And so if we, if we're working with a couple and each of them are committed not to changing the other, but changing themselves, there's a lot of hope there. But if you're in this, if you're trying to change the other person, you're going to counseling or you're seeing a therapist or you're, you've got a coach and their goal is I want to get them fixed. It ain't going to work.
Ian Cron (30:14.966)
Yeah, you know, there's a great quote. My spiritual hero is Thomas Merton. And Merton has this great quote where he says, the beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Justin And Trisha Davis (30:37.918)
That's good. That is so good.
Anthony Skinner (30:39.011)
Dang. Wow.
Ian Cron (30:42.144)
Yeah, don't mess with Merton. Say the Amen. You talk about this concept of the messy middle, right? First of all, tell us what the messy middle is. And then tell me like what advice you would give to people who are finding themselves in the midst of the messy middle.
Anthony Skinner (30:44.419)
Say la, say la.
Trisha Davis (31:06.422)
Yeah, the messy middle makes me think of just going through some hurt and some pain and you're not really sure what you can do with it, want to do with it, have time to even deal with it. So you go home and you put it in the closet and just leave it there and kind of forget it's there. And then more messy stuff happens. People hurt you, relationships fail, you know, job is disappointing.
Ian Cron (31:21.878)
Hmm.
________________
Trisha Davis (31:33.411)
You bring it home and you just, you don't know where to put it or what to do with it. So you put it in the closet and then at some point you go to open up that closet and it all comes spilling out. And the messy middle is when you're just sitting in it and you have a choice to make. You can sit paralyzed like this is so much. I don't even know where to start or choose to be okay to be in the messy middle and start somewhere.
And the beauty of the messy middle is we don't have to live with it under the rug where we're tripping over it. We don't have to live with ignoring that doorknob that you just don't want to open again. It's really where healing begins because the messy middle is embracing your reality. And the truth sets you free. And when we get okay with the mess, even if we don't know what to do with it, which is a big deal for me as an Enneagram three, you know, the masses like, give me the bins, let's fix this joint, you know, like goods, but it doesn't work that way. In fact, I've learned that when I sit in the mess, I actually learn more about myself. So much to achieve in the mess. It's more about knowing who I am in it. And that actually is really healing as an Enneagram three to decide who I want to be and how I want to pursue healing as opposed to what I think other people need me to do with the mess.
Ian Cron (33:03.638)
Hmm. Hmm.
Anthony Skinner (33:03.801)
Is there something when you... you may have already answered this just now, but when you're in the middle of your mess, is there something that you wanted most from each other that you couldn't get? Does that make sense?
Trisha Davis (33:20.782)
Well, you know, more of a recent story, and we share this in the book, in I think it was 2021, 22, Justin and I both found out in the same week that our dads weren't our biological dads. Through Ancestry.com. It's a long story. Within six days of each other. Now, we are not related. Our dad isn't the same person. We're very happy about that.
Ian Cron (33:33.228)
Anthony Skinner (33:33.401)
Wow.
Whoa.
Ian Cron (33:39.073)
Whoa. So that's a plus. So that's a plus.
Justin And Trisha Davis (33:47.791)
But it was a mess that we didn't even know was in the closet. And, you know, to, you know, your your question of like, what we needed from each other, we just needed each other's presence. We were both just spiraling in all different ways. And so that's what we didn't afford to each other. Before our marriage imploded, we were probably operating out of the unhealthiest versions rather than being present. I was trying to achieve, look at me, Justin, like I know our marriage is a mess, but if I can just be a little bit better and you'll see me just it's like if I could just conquer more than you know, I'll be good enough. You know now here almost 20 years from that moment of the affair and now we're looking at a different type of betrayal. It was like that we just let's give each other presence and know that we can't fix each other.
But man, I'm going to draw off your strength that you're going to remind me in your eight that we're going to get through this. We're going to hold hands and I'm going to pull us up. And as an Enneagram three, we're going to figure a way to healing. And that was really impactful for us because it was the first time we'd experienced such tragedy at our best selves to be able to allow our Enneagram to be our superpower. Yeah, rather than it diminish us.
Ian Cron (35:20.882)
Mm-hmm. Right. Well, that's...
Anthony Skinner (35:24.877)
You guys should enter the amazing race.
Justin Davis (35:29.326)
We're done. We're done. We're done. We don't need any more illustrations, any more life lessons. Yeah. I think we've hit all 10 on the DSM of like trauma. So I think we're good. We've capped out. We're good. You know, Ian, back to your point about grief. I think if you try to avoid grief, no matter what enneagram number you are, it will find you.
Ian Cron (35:44.182)
There you go.
Justin Davis (35:57.391)
And I think one of the greatest gifts in life is the gift of grief. And one of the things I've appreciated about the last four years, you know, Trisha, you know, experienced betrayal from me, then we both experienced betrayal from our moms and our family in some ways in that revelation. But one of the things I've really learned to do well is grief.
And I don't see it as a weakness. I see it as a way to find healing. And I do want to get through it as quickly as possible, but at the same time, it's been some of the most intimate and some of the most, precious times of just realizing that even when the bottom falls out of my identity, literally, that I am safe in this relationship and I am fully known and that's been something that I wouldn't trade for anything.
Ian Cron (37:00.128)
Wow.
One topic that's kind of floating in the ether here around betrayal, trauma, affair, dads that aren't our biological dads, discovering that, etcetera, is, and it's a big theme too, I think in your stage of life and mine as well, right, which is forgiveness. And you write about forgiveness in the book and about the five, there's a bunch of misconceptions people have about forgiveness.
Can you just articulate one or two that apply in both those circumstances that have really supported you?
Justin And Trisha Davis (37:40.387)
Yeah, you one of them is that forgiveness is a one time thing. Once we do it, we get to, you know, wash our hands of it and move on. You know, and what's interesting, even in our family is if we count our daughter-in-laws, we've got five kids, we have every single enneagram number represented in our family. It's hilarious. One kid.
Ian Cron (38:04.128)
Wow. You could have a convention.
Anthony Skinner (38:04.148)
Wow.
Justin And Trisha Davis (38:07.81)
We totally could. There could be a think tank of our family. But it was interesting to see how misconceptions of forgiveness with our kids finding out that our dads aren't our dads and the betrayal of their, you know, both maternal and paternal grandmother. We saw this play out in their, in their numbers in just their wiring of that six loyalty piece of…
Anthony Skinner (38:32.149)
Wow.
Justin And Trisha Davis (38:36.576)
What does forgiveness mean from the posture of a six and an enneagram nine? Well, I just need to keep the peace. So I'm just going to forgive and forget. That's another misconception. You know, I just need to forgive it and move on. And so it was a real time experience for us in learning about these misconceptions through our family and how we were approaching forgiveness.
And so it came from not just our story, but walking it out through our variety of numbers within our family.
Ian Cron (39:15.734)
So, you know, I was thinking about the title of the book, right? One choice away from change. And I always understand how book titles work, right? They're supposed to be, you know, they're supposed to be grippy and sticky and provocative and, you know, sometimes overly simplified in order to, you know, catch the eye of the consumer. At the same time, you know, what...
Justin And Trisha Davis (39:27.318)
Ha!
Ian Cron (39:43.722)
What in your mind is this one choice that people can make to break dysfunctional, unhealthy cycles of thinking, acting, and behaving or feeling in the context of a relationship? yeah, what is it? What is this one choice that sounds like it opens a doorway to change?
Justin Davis (40:10.146)
Well, spoiler alert, we give one choice per chapter. yeah, yeah, it takes the pressure off too. Cause you know, people like, I already made that choice and nothing changed. So you can get your money back from Amazon on that. But you know, I think if I had to quantify your question with one answer, our counselor said to us years ago, you can't heal a wound you don't give a name to. And that awareness piece, so many of us, want to move on rather than moving through. And so we try to fix the pain of our problem rather than diagnosing the actual wound itself. And so so many relationships, it doesn't even matter if it's a marriage relationship, if you're single, maybe it's a friendship, you move on to a new friendship because that friend treated you exactly like the last friend did. You move on to a new job because that boss treated you exactly like the last boss did. And so rather than identifying the wound and giving it a name, we just move on and we take something that helps the pain go away.
And so giving people some language in this book to go, okay, let's stop treating the symptoms of the problem and let's diagnose the actual problem. Is that problem resentment? Then here's a choice you can make. Is that problem shame? Here's a choice you can make. Is that problem, what is that problem? And then here's some practical steps you can take because if nothing changes, then nothing will change. so, but if you do change one thing, then you are then on the track to experience transformation and not just behavior modification.
Ian Cron (41:59.18)
It's so interesting. We have an expression in the 12-step world where it's, you know, we, you can...
We often think we have to feel our way into a new way of acting when actually, which is possible, I guess, but really the more effective route is to act your way into a new way of feeling. this is about making choices, new behaviors, new ways of showing up in life. And that will then change the emotional color of whatever it is that you're experiencing.
Ian Cron (42:41.868)
The other thing I was thinking about as you were talking was like, I remember many years ago when I first came into recovery and I was in a lot of pain. I was doing stuff that I had an older wiser sponsor and he said to me, do you want relief or recovery?
________________
Justin And Trisha Davis (43:01.006)
Mmm.
Ian Cron (43:02.538)
And I was like, I knew right away in my gut what he was trying to get at, you know, but he said, if you just want relief, you're in the wrong program. Now, if you want a new life. Right, like not just relief from the pain, but a whole new life, then that is possible, but you're going to have to follow the directions, you know, and…
Trisha Davis (43:28.118)
Yeah. I feel that as a, it's an empowering statement that needs to be flipped on its head that in our culture, we receive that as a, you know, a wagging of the finger. just, just make the choice, dude. And it's like, no, you, you get, you get to make this choice. And so you are always just one choice away. Like you get to decide. It doesn't mean the choice is easy or that it will change everything. My, my dad recently passed away in the beginning of January with a long life battle with alcoholism. And it, it, it played into our relationship in my adult years. He was a great dad growing up. And then our adult years, we had very fractured relationship and over those 30 years, it was one choice at a time to forgive my dad. It was one choice to, I wanted to have a no regrets relationship that I could with him. And so when he was on his death bed and passing away because of his addiction, I was so grateful I had made one choice over 30 years that led to other choices that led to the next choice.
I remember standing at the side of my dad's bedside and he was just hours away from passing and he took his oxygen mask off and he said, I'm sorry that I was a bad dad. And I think for him, it was a choice that he made in his last hours to say, I'm sorry. And it didn't lead to healing because he passed, but it changed everything in my relationship with him to hear him say that. And I was so grateful that I had done the work to be open to receive it.
And so that one choice can bear fruit that you may not see today, that down the road, you just never know. And so it's important me to share that story because we can reduce the choice to so little, but it's that mustard seed belief that sometimes it takes one choice to change the trajectory and grow something that you can't even comprehend began with that one choice.
Ian Cron (46:04.246)
Hmm. Trisha, thank you for your vulnerability. It's a beautiful, beautiful story. And it's a great place to actually end because I think that's about as good a capstone as we're going to come across today. Everybody we've been talking with Enneagram eight, Justin and Enneagram three, Trisha Davis. And we've been talking about their new book, One Choice Away from Change, Break the Cycles that Hurt Your Relationships and Hold You Back.
Guys, tell everybody where they can learn more about all the things you're up to doing these days.
Justin And Trisha Davis (46:36.0)
Absolutely, you can go to our website, which is Justinandtrisha.com and you can find all the right... Hey, I bought it a long time ago. So yeah, Justinandtrisha.com.
Ian Cron (46:41.77)
You got that URL?
Ian Cron (46:47.806)
Wow.
Nice, well done Enneagram 8. Holy smoke.
Anthony Skinner (46:53.283)
Thank you
Ian Cron (47:02.86)
There you go. Wow. What way to be on top of that game in a big way.
Justin And Trisha Davis (47:07.338)
And then you can find the book anywhere books are sold.
Ian Cron (47:10.4)
Yeah, of course. Well, again, thanks for being on Typology and for all the wonderful things you're doing in the world. Anthony, thank you for being on Typology.
Anthony Skinner (47:18.307)
Good to be with you all today.
Ian Cron (47:20.352)
Mm-hmm. You know one thing about love about Anthony, he's relatively quiet on the show, but he always comes in with one or two questions that land like a pallet of bricks.
Justin And Trisha Davis (47:20.376)
Thanks for having us.
Justin And Trisha Davis (47:30.51)
Mic drop.
Anthony Skinner (47:34.019)
Just.
Ian Cron (47:34.036)
Me, just chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter. And then he just comes in, goes, walks into the room, asks the question, then drops the mic and walks out. It's great. It's perfectly wonderful. Anyway, everybody listening, I hope today has been as meaningful to you as it has been to us. And you know how this thing is, right? May you have love, may you have joy, may you have peace, may you have healing.
May you have rest. And in the words of the great Oscar Wilde, be yourself. Everybody else is already taken. We'll talk to you next time.