How to Repair Relational Fractures

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I'm your host Andy Maurer, and in this podcast I share my insights as a leadership coach and former therapist. I sit down with some of the highest level leaders in business, entertainment and human performance to help you pursue wholeness in your work, life and relationships. Thanks for joining me. Let's jump in.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Pursue Whole podcast and a special welcome to a new year. I'm personally really excited about what's ahead for us at Pursu Whole and how we're going to step in and serve leaders even better this year to pursue wholeness in their life, work and relationships. And as I thought about this year, you know, everyone gets really amped up and excited about New Year's resolutions. And I'm not a big fan of New Year's resolutions. I am a big fan of personal growth and development. And I think there is some value in looking back on the year before and looking at what worked, what didn't work, and how to refine our lives as leaders. And one of the things that I noticed when I looked back is all my work with leaders over the last year, there was one area that I think leaders could do a lot better job at or that I saw them really struggle with, and that was being able to apologize and say that they were wrong or really repair those relational fractures. I can't tell you how many times when I would sit with a leader and I'd ask them and I'd say, when was the last time you said you were sorry? Or you apologized to your spouse or your kids or your team members? And they looked at me with a blank stare and silence, inevitably saying, that's not something I've done. Very frequently. Leaders don't do this enough. And if we're going to have healthy and whole relationships with our spouse, our kids, and our team members, then we have to get really good at repairing some of those fractures. Now, let me be really transparent before we dive in. This topic has been an area of my life that I have had to consistently work on, especially within marriage. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life and instead of apologizing, I got defensive. And there isn't a day that goes by where I don't feel need to grow and develop in this area of my life and leadership. And with that said, I look forward to learning with you today as I lean in and I break down some of what I've learned about fractures and repairs in my own personal life up to this point. So the health and wholeness of any relationship is built on two primary components. The first component is how you create fractures, and the second component is how you repair those fractures. Let's start with fractures. I remember the first time I fractured a bone in my body. In fact, it was the only time I fractured a bone in my body. And thank God, because it was excruciatingly painful. I was in Friedrichshafen, Germany, at a school that was located on the bank of Lake Constance. Half of the lake was in Germany and the other half was in Switzerland. So you had to be careful as you went out on the lake in the canoe or the boats, because you could very easily cross into Switzerland from Germany. And if you didn't have your passport, that could cause a lot of issues. And I remember I would sit on this lake edge and I would stare off into the distance at the beautiful Swiss Alps. Oftentimes they had snow over them and you could see just all the way across the lake, the Swiss Alps. It was beautiful. And one day we had an opportunity as a school to travel to Switzerland and actually hike the Alps. Now, minus the excruciating blisters I accumulated within the first couple hours of hiking, this was a really beautiful hike. It was one of the most beautiful hikes I'd ever been on. And there were waterfalls, there were hidden lakes and breathtaking views all the way up the mountain. But for a college age student, I was driven by adrenaline and I was driven by an incessant need to break rules and put myself in danger. And therefore, I could not wait for what was next after this hike. The Mountain Coaster. The Mountain Coaster is a well known bobsled run that plummets down the side of the alps for nearly 750 meters. The whole bobsled chute was made of metal. And worse, they had you sit on this really rickety makeshift bobsled which had one handbrake situated between your thighs at bed. Barely work to slow you down. I didn't care, though, how dangerous this was, because I wanted to record this memory for the rest of my life. I had one hand holding onto the bobsled and the other hand holding my Lumix camera pointed back at me, showing my thrilled expression the entire time I raced down the mountain. Now, the thing I didn't realize was that there were numerous turns throughout this course which required you to kind of lean into them and effectively stay on the bobsled. Then if you didn't do this, you'd fall. So it's, it's much harder to do with one hand. But once again, getting that memory on film was my ultimate priority. It wasn't my health and my safety of my body. So I heard. I hit the first couple turns at record speed and I executed them with perfection. And I was on fire. And I come into the next turn, I subtly shift my body around the next turn, and the next thing I know, I'm on my back with the camera facing towards me, recording the whole thing. I didn't know what happened. It happened so fast. But the biological survival instinct inside of me looked back as I realized my friend Bryce was plummeting down towards towards me in his own bobsled. Without even thinking, I jumped up and I dove out of the bob sled chute. I had never experienced my body react that quickly, but it wasn't fast enough. As I dove out, Bryce's metal bobsled clipped my big toe at full speed. I laid there in excruciating pain as my toes swelled and instantly turned black and blue. I could barely walk for three weeks. And about a week in, my whole toenail fell off. This could have been a lot worse. But no matter who you are, fractures hurt like the dead dickens and they take quite a bit of time to heal. So maybe you don't have a story of where you fractured a bone. This is the only story I have where I fractured a bone. But I promise you, all leaders have stories where they have created fractures in relationships and they take time to repair and they're painful. It's also true that all good relationships will have fractures. You cannot have healthy, whole and authentic relationships without fractures. So if you're a people pleaser or you're a peacemaker, you gotta hear me in this. The pain and rupture in relationship is an opportunity for growth. And if you're crafting a life where you never let people down or you always give people what they want, you're really limiting your ability to have health and wholeness in those relationships. All good relationships have fractures and tension points. But remember, fractures alone don't make healthy relationships. It is the repairing of those fractures that makes the relationship stronger than it was before. There are two common types of fractures that happen in relationships. The first is natural fractures, and the second is critical fractures. Natural fractures are the most common and tend to be easier to repair than critical fractures. So natural fractures happen as we pursue intimacy and connection with someone inside of our work or at home. These types of fractures include things like misunderstanding that leads two parties feeling upset or disconnected. Or maybe you forgot to pick up groceries on your way home from work, or you left the remote on the couch and now it's chewed up by the dog. Or maybe you forgot to send that email you had promised to someone the day before. Or maybe you had to cancel a meeting because another priority come up. Natural fractures occur out of our limitations and imperfections as people. As a leader, you are not perfect. You're not in complete control of what happens in your life, and you're not all knowing. You cannot be right all the time. Now, if you struggle with what I just said, you better do some deep reflective work because repairing fractures will be nearly impossible if you are under the delusion that you have everything under control and in order. When we make these kinds of fractures, we cannot simply brush them under the rug. While I know that these fractures are often less intentional and they're a natural part of being human, we still need to apologize for them. And this is one of the most misunderstood concepts of these types of fractures. Now hear me. I know that it was probably something small. I know you didn't mean to do it. But that doesn't make it okay for you to not take ownership for your life and your choices, take ownership for your limitations and simply say, hey, I'm sorry, please forgive me. That was my mistake. Simply saying this is often enough to repair a lot of these more natural fractures. And this is a really natural part of relationships. These types of fractures can often be repaired really easily. But when we consistently repeat the same fracture over time without true and genuine change, then these natural fractures can actually turn into critical fractures. And that's really what deteriorates the trust and safety of a relationship. So this leads us to the second type of fracture, critical fractures. These types of fractures require more intensive care and oftentimes the trust and safety of a relationship is drastically impacted, often for a season, but more than likely, sometimes for a lifetime. There are three main types of critical fractures, repetitive rupture and ransom. As discussed previously, repetitive fractures occur when natural fractures happen over and over again without a change in behavior or heart attitude. If you tell your spouse you'll be home at 5pm every night and consistently find yourself arriving at 5:30 because you got, quote, caught up with work, your apology will be so watered down that it's not going to have the power to repair in that relationship. In fact, the person on the receiving end might actually start expecting that fracture to happen more times than not. And this can create a divide in the trust and intimacy of the relationship. This happens in work as well when we consistently over promise and under deliver your I will get right on that turns into the person having to email you three times to remind you of what you had previously committed to. Your word is everything as a leader, and if you cannot keep your word and follow through on that, your life will be flooded with repetitive fractures and broken relationships. The next type of critical fractures are rupture fractures. Rupture fractures happen when we have hidden behaviors and lifestyles that ultimately come out into the open. Because of the traumatic nature of these types of fractures, they are by far some of the hardest to repair. And it's not uncommon for friendships or partnerships and even marriages to completely disintegrate after these types of fractures occur. Rupture fractures include, but aren't just limited to things like stealing money from the company, spreading hateful and hurtful gossip behind someone's back, having an affair, whether that be sexual or emotional, and a host of addictions such as alcohol, shopping, technology, drugs, workaholism, or even gambling. And one of the hallmarks of addictions is this propensity to hide and to create kind of this alternate lifestyle that you live that no one else knows about. And because there's so much shame there, addicts will often hide that behavior. And when it comes to the light, it can be very traumatic for those in their life, and it can cause a lot of ruptures. These are some of the hardest fractures to repair and often require intensive therapy or coaching. And it takes months or even years to feel a sense of trust and vulnerability back into the relationship again. Because of the shame associated with these types of fractures, we often can find ourselves getting defensive and really being able to push back. When someone pushes up against that armor, this is almost always going to lead to further disconnection and frustration in the relationship. In order to repair these types of fractures, we have to remain in a non defensive position and take complete responsibility for what we have done. Instead of telling the person across from us that it's their fault we had an affair, we stole money from the company, or we became an alcoholic. We have to remain open and not get defensive in those situations. The last type of critical fracture is ransom fractures. Ransom fractures happen when we use the other person's vulnerability against them in a way to wound them. This often happens when we have access to or know something personal or vulnerable about another person and choose to use that as a way to hurt, belittle, or wound them. We often see this most commonly in intimate relationships. Because in intimate relationships, you do know a lot about that person. You spend time with them, you know their family dynamics, maybe our spouse knows that we have a tense relationship with our mother or father, and in the heat of that argument, that might say something like, you're just like your mom or you're just like your dad, and they know that we have a difficult past or relationship with that parental figure. And when they say those things, it can be extremely detrimental to the relationship because they have access to that vulnerability. And you'll notice this come out also. This type of fractures in passive aggressive comments. So we make subtle remarks about someone's physical appearance or personality because we really do know the details of their personality. So we can kind of subtly kind of jab them in the side with these passive aggressive comments. But those are a form of ransom fractures and they really use that person's vulnerability against them to wound them. If you have access as a leader to these more vulnerable places and know more intimate details about someone, whether it's your spouse or your team member or your friend, then don't use those in your arguments and your disagreements to hurt or wound them. This will most assuredly break down that trust and it's going to fracture that relationship. As a recap, we talked about two types of fractures that happen in relationship natural fractures, which are fractures that can be moved through more easily with a simple apology, and critical fractures that require more intensive care because of their ability to deteriorate. Trust, vulnerability and connection. When you fracture a bone, the main symptoms are pain as well as limited mobility. If you're wondering if you've created fractures in your relationships, it will be revealed as you look around and you look at the pain points in your marriage, in your teams, and really the immobility and functionality of the couple or the leadership team. In general, those bone fractures often require the resetting of the bone back into its proper place in order for it to heal effectively. This resetting is really important and if it's not done well, that bone could stabilize and get anchored in a really dysfunctional way. So if you don't apologize, that resetting is going to take place. But that bone that's been broken, that relationship that's been broken, is going to be stabilized and anchored in a really dysfunctional way instead of healed in the way it was meant to be healed. If you do not properly reset your relational fractures, your friendships and your marriages and your teams will begin to deteriorate. Remember that fractures are a natural part of any healthy relationship and if repaired properly, can actually rebuild trust and connection deeper than it was before. So how do we properly rebuild and repair our relationships after a fracture? I'm going to spend very little time on this because a knowledge of how to repair is actually very simple. But it is your willingness and humility to repair that is more than likely going to get you stuck and is going to be your biggest struggle to repair effectively. You got to get really good at saying something like this. I'm going to give you this formula. I am sorry about doing X. I recognize that when I did it, it probably made you feel X. Knowing that I hurt you in that way makes me feel X. I take full responsibility. Would you please forgive me for doing X? Those four simple phrases, easy to say, very difficult to do. After that person sitting across from you hears your apology and they express how that made them feel or their frustrations and they feel understood by that whole conversation, you can then begin to say something like, I understand and once again, I'm really sorry. I will try to do better next time and think through how I can change so that doesn't happen again. Is there anything that I can do to rebuild your trust? And this is a way to let them know that you're still owning responsibility, but you do want that relationship to be repaired. When you say, is there anything that I can do to rebuild that trust? You're reaching out with that olive branch and saying, hey, you're still important to me. How can I rebuild this relationship? Here is how a discussion might sound between a husband and a wife using the above formula. David, I can't believe you made me a prop in your joke tonight. You made fun of me in front of all your friends and family. I'm really frustrated and hurt that you would choose to do that. Jessica, I'm so sorry for calling you out in front of all those people and making fun of you. I recognize that when I did it, it probably made you feel really embarrassed and insecure. Knowing that I hurt you in that way makes me feel really sad. I take full responsibility for my actions tonight. Would you please forgive me for making you the focal point of that joke tonight and for hurting you in that way? Now, she might respond and say something like, david, that's not the only time this has happened. This has happened over and over again. And while I can forgive you for this evening, I'm really frustrated that this keeps happening in our relationships and in our time with friends and family. Something you might say back is, jessica, I understand and recognize that this is not the only time that I've done this, and I'm really sorry that I did this again. I will try to do better next time and think through how I can change so that that does not keep happening. Is there anything I can do to rebuild your trust and what you're basically saying there. When you've repeated a fracture and over over again, you can simply say, I really want to do better. I'm going to get some time to step away and actually think about why that keeps coming up for me. Okay, you really do need to step back and get some self awareness on what's going on. This is a simple example of how this conversation could have gone even though there was a fracture. More than likely this relationship can be rebuilt because of the humility and ownership that this husband took for his behavior. Healing fractures is about taking responsibility and seeking to understand how you might have made someone feel based on your actions or your words. It is not about defending yourself or playing the victim. And if you ultimately need more information to properly apologize, then go ahead and ask for it. But don't ask for more information if your goal is to turn it around and actually use that to confront that person when their job is to really confront you. Now, just because someone is coming at you with a disagreement or because they said you hurt their feelings, it doesn't mean that you have to agree with everything that's being said. You can simply say, I'm hearing what you have to say and I would like to think about it more. What I can own right now is that I did X and I can obviously see that hurts you. Please forgive me for everything else you're saying. I will think about it and get back to you tomorrow. Once again in this situation, don't make a global statement and apologize for something that you don't believe that you did wrong. What you can do is apologize for the things that you can own and then get some time away to say, oh, I need more time to think about this and get back to you on the other things. Saying I am sorry and I was wrong is a very simple phrase. It is the humility and willingness to say it that is the extremely difficult part. But if we truly want thriving and whole relationships with our team, our spouses and our children, then we need to learn how to own our fractures and repair those fractures. Thanks for joining me today on this difficult topic and let's all work to pursue wholeness in this area of our life, work and relationships. Take care. Thanks so much for listening. For more resources, links and show notes, visit pursue whole.com and click podcast. 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