New Life LIVE: August 6, 2026

New Life: Welcome to the New Life Live podcast. We hope to provide help and hope in your life through God's word, counselors, and psychologists as we answer questions from listeners who call with the challenges of life. Let's go to today's episode.
Brian Perez: Thank you so much for joining us today on New Life Live. I'm your host, Brian Perez, here in the studio with licensed marriage and family therapist Mark Cameron, who is also the leader of "How We Love." Mark, great to have you here today. Alice Benton is here too. She's a clinical psychologist. Dr. Alice, good to see you. What's on your mind to start us off?
Alice Benton: I once had the honor of talking with a young man who told me that he loves God, loves his faith, and experiences same-sex attraction. He didn't know what to do with that attraction. He also loves his family, and he didn't want to shame or embarrass them. I bring this up because I know there are many of you in the Christian community, and certainly in the secular community, that have conflicting values. The world tells you, do what's best for you, think about yourself, and live your true self. My heart goes out to you because as Christians, it is very difficult. It must feel impossible to know what to do with that. Some of you experience gender dysphoria and you say all my life I have felt like I'm the opposite sex of what my biological sex is. What am I supposed to do about that? The world says, well, get the surgery and become who you believe yourself to be. But it'll hurt my family. I don't know if the Bible is okay with that. I don't know if God is okay with that. In one way, I want to level the playing field. The Bible does have some very harsh and difficult-to-understand things to say about same-sex attraction. It does. But the Bible also says that God hates my sins. My lying lips make that list of the things that God hates. He hates sin, and he hates the brokenness we all have to struggle with because it hurts us and it hurts the people around us. I know that those of you with same-sex attraction or with gender dysphoria, you may feel like you're ostracized within the Christian community and you can't talk about what you're going through. That makes it all the much more difficult for you to find solutions and figure out what your faith tells you to do about this. We are all sinners and maybe that's obvious, but those of you who have same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria, I think you're labeled as worse sinners than the rest of us. I don't think that's how God sees it. I know he loves you all as much as he loves me and he wants healing for you. He wants me to put away my preferences for my sins that are attractive to me, and he wants me to strive to live his way. That continues to be difficult for me too. I also know that as I've been honored to hear some of your stories, there are reasons why you struggle with what you do and there has always been a story of pain, usually very immense, complicated pain in your lives. What I want you to know is that for me, for us here at New Life, and even within the broken Christian community, you are loved, you are wanted, you are welcome, and we desire to help you with what you are struggling with. If you're a family member, be humble about your own sins and your own suffering and become safe for these folks to open up to because they need a listening ear as much as the rest of us.
Brian Perez: Do you think part of the reason why Christians look down on same-sex attraction so much is because, in the Old Testament, God destroyed two entire cities over this? So that must be the worst sin of all.
Alice Benton: That word abomination is used, so there are things that seem to say God is more upset about this sin than others. It's hard for me to know what to make of that, honestly.
Mark Cameron: Well, I think God destroyed other cities for other sins too. I think we tend to make this one a bigger sin than the others. Sin is sin. Everything keeps us disconnected from God.
Brian Perez: We'll go to the phones when we come back here on New Life Live. To find out more information about New Life or to order any of the resources mentioned on today's program, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Now back to New Life Live. All right, let's go to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for our first call. It is Issa listening on WBYN. Welcome, Issa, to New Life Live.
Issa: I'm going to have to call next time. I don't have any time left.
Brian Perez: We're so sorry. Okay, we look forward to hearing from you next time. Thanks for calling in today. Instead, we'll go to Lisa, who's also in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Lisa's listening on newlife.com. Hi there.
Lisa: I need to know how to get over my ex. I'm still in love with him and we've been divorced since December 2020. I just feel like he was my soulmate and he's moved on and has a living girlfriend now. I just don't know how to get over him. He was not good to me in the end, but most of my marriage he was good to me. We have a son together and my son doesn't talk to me. It's just really hard because I keep looking back in the past. I feel like I'm in bondage and I just can't stop thinking in the past.
Brian Perez: Does your son not talk to you because of the divorce?
Lisa: No. I was sick a lot during my marriage and I wasn't really a great mom because I was depressed and sick a lot and had migraines. Then I would always try and want to discipline him and my ex-husband never disciplined him. My son physically abused me and that night that he did that, instead of my ex-husband disciplining him, he gave him a $100 gift card for Walgreens. I was the bad guy. I just miss them. My ex cheated. He kissed a girl in a bar and then the day after he said he wanted a divorce, I found him on two dating sites. He lied and said he didn't do that. Then he confessed to it months later and said that was him on the dating site but he wasn't going to cheat, he was just going to see what was out there. I'm really hurt and I just can't move on.
Brian Perez: But you still long for him.
Lisa: Yes.
Mark Cameron: Longing is a good word, Brian, because as I'm listening to your story, Lisa, I think about love and what love is. I'm thinking, what are you actually in love with? When you say you're still in love with him and I hear about all this mistreatment, that's not love.
Lisa: I know. I just miss the good times we had when he was romantic, sweet, funny, and nice to me. He was mostly good and then towards the end he just was not good and lied a lot. I even asked him to pray for me one time because I had a major migraine and he goes, "What am I, your servant?" That shocked me. He changed so much in the end, but I miss the good Jameson.
Mark Cameron: You have a longing for that time in your life again when you guys were together. Even though there's no perfect marriage and things were up and down, you were together, you had companionship, and there was some love and connection happening. You're still in grief and there's a longing for the pain to stop. What work have you done to work through that grief?
Lisa: I've met with so many counselors and I've been in GriefShare and DivorceCare and nothing is helping. I even wanted to just try hypnosis, but I thought, no, that's not of God. I'm just desperate to get free of this bondage and I don't know how.
Mark Cameron: Sometimes when nothing seems like it's helping with the current situation, it's because it's tied to a significant thing in our history. The thing that's happening in the present is where all of our focus is and we're not realizing that there's a past experience that's actually fueling what's going on. Is there anything in your past history that you have yet to grieve or there was longing for a connection that didn't quite happen in the way that you wanted?
Lisa: I know this one guy. I was in love with him too, or I don't know if it was love or lust, but I really wanted to be with him.
Mark Cameron: I'm talking more about childhood history. Your connection with your parents, your family members. Did you feel loved back then? Were you treated well back then? Did you have a longing for a missing parent or someone to treat you differently?
Lisa: My parents were very lenient. They let us smoke pot at the age of 13 and 14 and had a boy in my room when I was 14. My dad was loving but he wasn't around that much. He worked a lot and he cheated on my mom most of their marriage. I'm a triplet, so it was hard for my mom to give each of us individual love.
Mark Cameron: What you've seen about love, especially that loving relationship between a husband and a wife, wasn't really loving or committed. Your dad was cheating on your mom and he wasn't as present for you. Children naturally have a longing for their parents. That's God-given, that's built into us, it's our attachment system. When we don't have parents who are consistent, we can still long for that love and connection from them even though they haven't been capable of giving it to us. I think there's deeper history here. I would encourage you to get in with a therapist or let us put you in touch with a therapist who can help you explore some of that childhood stuff. You may be surprised that as you explore through that, the same feelings that you have, the same thoughts that you had to someone else back in history probably relates to your husband and your son right now.
Alice Benton: Lisa, I think you have only ever tasted crumbs of love. The little bit you've gotten here or there, you're stuck on that with your ex-husband where so many of the things you said made me think this man sounded like he was incredibly neglectful. I wonder how long the cheating was really going on for. Your description of your parents when you say lenient, I thought neglectful to almost an abusive point. I think you've had to minimize your pain and call very big pain small so that you could survive through it. The deficit of true love in your life is just glaring. It makes sense to me that you are struggling with depression, some chronic illness, and migraines. I think your body has just been screaming out that you have not had safe stable environments with people that are consistent and that you know you can rely on them because they'll be kind to you and warm to you. I think you've had almost none of that on a consistent basis. You might have treatment-resistant depression because of all that you have been through in your life. Sometimes that level of depression, when all these counselors haven't made much of a difference, might need a higher level of care. Even a period of inpatient treatment, of psychiatric treatment, medication more than you've taken before if you already have. I'd recommend treatments like EMDR, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and possibly even TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, treatments that can really change some of these brain neuropathways that in your brain are ruts because of how hard your life has truly been for you all this time. Paradoxically, I think the best answer for what to do about this soulmate desire you have is actually to get love from safe women, platonic love from a sisterhood that comes around you.
Brian Perez: The next "Restore" is the weekend of November 13th in Washington, DC. You can get all the details about it at newlife.com or stay on the phone and we'll let you know about it right now. Also, the Life Recovery Workbook for Grief from the newlife.com store would be a good resource and we can connect you with a Life Recovery group in your area and maybe a group of women who can come alongside you now because this could be what it is that you really need. Thank you so much for calling in today to New Life Live and if everybody watching and listening can please keep Lisa in your prayers. Let's now go to Kim in Miami watching us on YouTube. Hey there, Kim, thanks for calling. Kim, are you there? All right, we'll put Kim on hold and see if she's still on the phone. In the meantime, we'll go to Terry in Cincinnati who listens to us on Sirius XM channel 131.
Terry: Hi there, good afternoon, thank you for taking my call. I wanted to get some advice about my college student. We've just recently had a major personality change in her and Friday she actually just packed her bags and moved out, which was probably a good thing based on she wasn't adhering to the rules that we put in place. I don't know if this may be just typical young adult rebelliousness. She'll be 19 in the fall. This will be her sophomore year of college. The reason I'm concerned that it may not just be that is she's gone through some mental health challenges this last year when she was a freshman, and her personality change has been so significantly 180 that I'm afraid that it could be more mental health-driven and what I should do as a parent. Obviously, I'm devastated that we're at this point. I want her to be able to live her life and experience what she thinks she knows, but at the same time I'm so fearful that something bad's going to happen and I should have done more to say that this isn't just rebelliousness. But she's 18 now, so there's limited on what I can do.
Brian Perez: Terry, where did she move? You said she moved out, where is she living now?
Terry: I don't know. She hasn't told me. She pretty much stopped communications with us even when she was living here this past month where she really just came and went and we could hardly communicate with her other than text. That's what kind of led us to this point. This has all only arisen since early June where things just she started acting very differently, started making poor decisions, putting herself in unsafe situations.
Mark Cameron: Can you tell us a little bit about what change what the behaviors are, Terry, so we can understand more?
Terry: Sure. My daughter's a very high-performing straight-A student, very independent. She went to college last fall and went away to school, did not enjoy it, and ended up with a lot of anxiety and OCD tendencies where she had to come home in December. She was crippled with anxiety and OCD. We got her some therapy. She went on SSRIs and then got back on track for the spring. But as of June, all of a sudden started leaving the house, staying overnight, bringing people over, not telling us where she's going and would disappear for 24 hours.
Alice Benton: How terrifying for you all and so startling. You are asking the right questions. Is this possibly mental health? I want you to think over the break if you and your husband started to suspect any substance use.
Brian Perez: All right, Terry, stay on the phone. We've got to take a quick break here on New Life Live. Thanks for calling in and we'll get to as many calls as we can for the next 40 minutes or so that we're going to be in the studio with Dr. Alice Benton and Mark Cameron. Stay tuned to New Life Live. Back to Terry, listening in Cincinnati, Ohio. So, any substance abuse you think, Terry?
Terry: I think the only thing that I would suspect would be potentially marijuana because we did find her some of that in the car that I lent her. Other than that, I don't think so. The reason being, she went on some anti-depressant medication in January to help overcome the major anxiety she was feeling, which very much helped, but she was very stringent about all this research she had done about how bad SSRIs are for you. Even though she started the medication, we went to three different doctors, her pediatrician, my doctor, then a therapist who all said, listen, these documents you're bringing to us is not necessarily meant to be the be-all end-all. We've been doing this for 30 years, we've seen these help people. But she was very much about I only want to be on this for a few weeks, this is bad for my brain and I don't trust this kind of medication. She was on SSRIs briefly in middle school for also anxiety and depression, maybe less than a year, but I've realized recently just through text she sent me, she blames that for what she believes are the mental issues she's going through. I think she's very suspicious of medications, which is why I'm not necessarily sure that it might be substance abuse because of that really overpowering distaste of medications.
Mark Cameron: Is she still on medications, the SSRI, or she's no longer taking it?
Terry: From what I have been told, she stopped taking them and I don't know if she used a doctor to help her wean off or not. I think she may have just stopped in May/June time frame and that's when we started to see the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde turnaround.
Alice Benton: I'm sorry to say I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss how much of an impact THC could be having on her because the kind of marijuana that is available today is causing symptoms even that look like schizophrenia. It's causing paranoia. I'm talking to some young people who are telling me, well, marijuana's natural so I trust that more than pharmaceuticals. I want a natural treatment for my anxiety and it does help short-term with anxiety and then it makes it a lot worse over the long run. I think the THC is a big factor in what's going on, but that doesn't mean mental health issues aren't also playing into this.
Mark Cameron: When you stop an SSRI, you can have a strong rebound effect. It's advised to have a doctor help you wean off of that. Terry, you said she was a straight-A student. Did she like being a straight-A student? Did she want to be a straight-A student or did you require her to be a straight-A student?
Terry: No, my husband and I have always been, do your best, you don't have to be As or Bs. We've always had a very strong family home and she's just she actually put a lot of her pressure on herself and always has. Her sister, for instance, gets Bs and Cs and she's more of a laissez-faire type of person whereas my daughter has always wanted to be top of the class, wants to be in all these big clubs. We actually more often than not said, hey, don't take such a hard schedule this fall, join some clubs, join a sorority, don't put yourself under so much pressure. We've always tried to reinforce to her that she doesn't need to do as much. I think that's just her natural ambition. She's kind of quiet and reserved and it takes her a little bit of time to open up to people, so I know that's always been an underlying struggle for her. She moved away for college for one semester, it really threw her in a tailspin and so she came back. When she came home this December, she was literally almost couldn't function hardly. She didn't know what pen to use, she didn't know what to put on in the morning. It was a very severe breakdown. We were shocked because we had never seen her that way and that was literally just six months ago.
Alice Benton: Terry, I have seen several cases, kids that had to go through COVID towards the end of high school and then launched into college afterwards. I have just seen a rise in anxiety and OCD. The kids in that generation through that season, COVID was really hard on them and you know that, but there seem to be after-effects of what they lost coming out in strange and rebellious and confusing ways a few years down the road. What I would say is it's always helpful when a child has all of a sudden refused to talk to you to at least take a strong look at yourself. What is it about you, about your husband that may make it difficult to be children in your family? Asking your other daughter, asking your husband, ask a couple people that know and love you what might it be about me that could perhaps have rubbed my daughter wrong. Preparing to have a humble answer to that question and deciding if you're willing to work on those things can set you up so that when your daughter is ready to come back again, and she probably will be eventually, that you'll have a good solid base of understanding of what you might have done to add to the situation.
Mark Cameron: She's 18, so she's going to need you. I think if you just maintain that attitude of we love you and when you're ready we're here to talk, I think she's going to come back and then that's when you can explore more about what's going on.
Alice Benton: Terry, you could also consider doing a police wellness check if you believe your daughter's in danger. If she's been hanging around unsavory characters to get the marijuana, possibly that could be true. But I'd hold that as an option of last resort because it will anger her and upset her, but it is a legal manner to check on your daughter.
Brian Perez: Let's talk to Will in Dallas, Texas. Welcome, Will, to New Life Live.
Will: I'm dealing with a lot of anger and bitterness. Yesterday I had a disagreement with my spouse. I'm a husband of 20 years, eight children, going through some difficult times. I have adult ADHD. Just between trying to navigate everything and trying to lead with this ADHD thing and the expectations of the output that's needed but it doesn't match with what goes on with me mentally and psychologically with the ADHD. The lack of understanding and support, still trying to lead and be a man, be a father, be a husband, hold things down financially, be a father to eight kids and it's even having a lot of trouble even having a relationship with my children just because of the shame and guilt and just I don't even feel adequate as a man. Even relating to my wife, no communication, intimacy, and all of that on top of trying to lead and be a man, be a father, be a husband with this condition. Over time the anger from not being able to communicate, I suppress a lot and whenever I try to express what goes on with me mentally or emotionally it's taken as an excuse or a complaint. I just put my head down and keep going even though I know I'm broken, hurt, and bitter. I've lost so much of my identity. I'm just this angry, bitter person, no joy, no smile. I'm trying to cope and overcome things and still trying to find love back in my heart for my wife and my family because I struggle so much.
Alice Benton: Will, are you receiving treatment for your ADHD?
Will: No. I've reached out but I get distracted with my life and my wife and kids and responsibilities that I don't really make that a priority and a focus because there's so much other demands outside of me that trying to heal and fix me kind of gets pushed to the side.
Alice Benton: You're last. Everybody else goes first. You may have even grown up in a family that did ministry so it's just all about serving. You have a servant's heart, but you can't get your brain to focus long enough to be able to manage this and you get very little compassion from your wife.
Mark Cameron: Will, you mentioned a lot of times people will diagnose themselves. Do you have an official diagnosis from a medical doctor?
Will: I was diagnosed a few years ago back in California.
Mark Cameron: Good because it can be hard to get the diagnosis once you're in adulthood. Once you have the diagnosis it actually can be quite easy to get the medication. I understand the catch-22 part about ADHD. ADHD impacts what we call executive functioning deficits. It's the part of the brain that is responsible for planning, prioritization, organization, emotion regulation, and it makes it hard to follow through on tasks or start tasks and you forget or you lose things and you have time blindness. That hinders just even being able to set up that appointment. Medication is the number one treatment for ADHD. It doesn't make ADHD go away, but it helps you be able to focus long enough to be able to build strategies. You need to be able to build these strategies because ADHD is going to stick with you for your entire life. You need to be able to put routines and things like that together. ADHD does have an effect on a marriage. I often see this in couples therapy where one partner has ADHD and the other one doesn't. The one who doesn't feels like they're constantly compensating for the one who does. There needs to be understanding both ways. There needs to be understanding that the person who has ADHD doesn't intend to have ADHD and it's not their fault and it's not going away. But the person who has ADHD also needs to acknowledge that that has an effect on the other person. You both need to be able to work together on this and it's going to take a vulnerable conversation. I would say to you the first thing to do is make an appointment with a doctor so that you can start to explore medications. Sometimes it's just the fact that you make one act that can be encouraging for your spouse.
Alice Benton: By getting that appointment, you're actually doing a major service to your wife and children because your behavior is probably confusing to them. I bet you're a high achiever and you probably look healthy and you can't see ADHD but you can sure feel the effects of it. The way we treat people with ADHD if we're ignorant to the disorder and the symptoms, it's like yelling at a person who is vision-impaired. "Look at the board, read it, why aren't you reading it, what's the matter with you?" They don't have the glasses that they need. You haven't had the glasses that you've needed and yet you're still managing awfully well. Your anger and your bitterness make sense because you've kind of been yelled at for not having the glasses on. But you weren't getting the treatment for your brain that it needed. The brain is an organ, just like a person that needs treatment for diabetes. Their body isn't functioning properly to manage their blood sugar and we can yell at them, why aren't you doing this right? There are behavioral steps that people can take for the different things I'm talking about, but it's mainly brain issues that can be dealt with and we have really good treatment that works very quickly. Medication for ADHD works almost instantaneously so I just can't wait for you to experience the relief that you'll be able to feel once you get on the right medication. As you've heard us say to other callers, it will help if you can approach your wife with humility to say, you know what, I should have gotten treatment for this, I haven't, I keep putting it off. That's probably been pretty hard on you. What has it been like to be married to me and my untreated ADHD? You will come across as a safer person and it will actually help your anger and bitterness if you're able to be a listener to her to get some of that godly sorrow that your heart can use. Call her up to get informed about your symptoms and groups like NAMI, the National Alliance for Mental Illness, they have support groups for the spouses of someone suffering with a disorder and that can really be a help to her. She'll be surrounded by people who get it, who understand what this is like.
Brian Perez: Will, thanks for calling us today on New Life Live. We just pray that this next step is going to be the one that will get you on that right path. We'll be right back. We'd like to invite you to an exclusive evening with Becky Brown, the president of New Life Ministries. This online event is happening August 11th at 7:00 PM Central time and you'll hear updates from ministry leaders and you can ask questions. Dr. Alice Benton will be here. She'll be discussing the challenges of living in a screen-saturated world. Ironically, you'll be watching this on your screen, but it's the 60 minutes, 90 minutes or so that it's cool to do. Go to newlife.com/99fortheone or you can text NLM to 28950. Let's go back to the phones. Here is Donna in Pittsburgh who listens to us on Sirius XM channel 131.
Donna: My husband passed about 17 years ago and I met a new man and married him after six years. He has an oldest daughter who has four children and she has been spoiled throughout her life. I had two children who lived with me when we first got married. She was always coming and pushing into the family. I could never have any time with my children or my family without her coming with her kids and just constantly pushing. My children eventually got very tired of being with her and have set a boundary to say that they do not want to share their time with her. She's created a lot of problems within my husband, my marriage with my husband. Now Christmases have become where both my children now are out of the state and they come in and it's the only time I have two days with them that they stay under my roof with me and it's usually Christmas night and Christmas the day after Christmas. Since that has happened, she has decided that every day after Christmas she wants to come in and have a family Christmas with her dad. She's forcing the issue of coming in and I have had to say no and have tried to put limits on it and it creates she has no boundary with that. I finally said last year in October she was coming in and she wanted to stay the day after Christmas so that she could get on an airplane to go to Florida and the problem was that my children were going to be there and I said no. When I said no, I want to have a Christmas with my children just so that I can sit in my pajamas and hang with them and open presents and not have to be cooking for all these people, she really became just it became a mess. All these texts started coming about how I never want her there, how she wants to see her father. She is 40 and she has four children and has caused she's caused so much trouble. She's living in the state and she can be with my husband. My husband goes up Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with her. But she wants to come down here the day after Christmas and have me celebrate a dinner with that. When I said no, it was hours and hours of texting back and forth, which I probably should have never done. Then she eventually said some really mean things about me with my children and I finally was just I said to her, I am done. She apologized but saying, I wish I had the black ticket. She said, "I'm sorry, but I wish I had the black ticket that your both your children have to your house. How do I get that?" After that I just said, I'm done. A couple months later she gets she drinks a lot. She started drinking she called me and I picked up the phone and it turned escalated into this awful, awful put-down and screaming. I've since said, I will not be with her anymore unless we had counseling together. I don't know I said I need counsel with her, but now a psychiatrist friend that she has says that that's only going to just bring up the past and it's not going to help. My husband is saying just forget about it, just forget everything that happened and just go on. This has been going on for 11 years and I don't see that happening and I don't know what to do.
Mark Cameron: You can't forget everything that's gone on. That's impossible unless you lose your memory somehow. Even then, the deepest recesses of your brain still remember on a subconscious level. Obviously, there's some concerning behavior here with the pushing and the calling while she's drunk that needs to be addressed, that needs to be repaired, that needs to have accountability and a boundary to. She's wanting you to pick between my husband she wants my husband to pick her is really what's going on. I do have some compassion toward her as you tell the story. When I hear, how do I get the ticket so that I can get in there too, my heart goes out to her a little bit here even though I know it's probably hard for you because you've been hurt. Now, I hear you and I understand it may be just for the context of the call that you say "my children." But now you've got remarried. They're your children, both your husband's and hers and if you split into two families like that and you differentiate it, you're going to have this barrier. I'm speaking from experience here because I'm in a blended family. Once we got married, we just decided internally within our family there's no steps. There's no step-parents, there's no step-kids. We're the parents and they're our kids and that's how I introduce them to people. It may have started out with all the best intentions, but there needs to be some kind of reset here where you are going to have to likely listen to her heart too if you want to get to some kind of repair. In order for there to be some resolve, the healthiest thing to do is to try and hear one another out in a productive way if you can. It's only when you can't do that then I would say then there needs to be a really strong boundary here if that can't be achieved. But I think the first part you try and do is how do we reset, not forget, how do we reset and how do we get together and how do we address what's been going on. Both parties get to hear the other one's heart and how do we see how do we come to some kind of compromise? I can understand her wanting to have a Christmas dinner with you and her dad and maybe it can't happen at the same time as when your bio kids are there, but maybe that still can happen where she can still feel included.
Alice Benton: Donna, I think you were right to say, let's have a counseling session before we get together again. I would still stick with that, but agreeing with Mark that be ready to listen and go in knowing you've been imperfect too and there have been ways that you've even unintentionally hurt her. Stick with that attempt at counseling. It might not be successful, but it is worth the attempt. But I think there's a preceding issue that needs attention, which is your husband seems to enable her. I think he's dismissing the effect that her alcohol use is having on the people around her. I'd have you ask him to go to couples counseling first before the session with her and Al-Anon. I think he's in some denial about how bad her alcohol use is and how difficult her behavior is for you all.
Brian Perez: Donna, thanks for calling us today here at New Life Live and we can put you in touch with a counselor in your area. If you're on hold right now, we couldn't get to you, we are so sorry. We had a lot of calls today, please call us back next time. Never stop growing. God bless you guys.