In this podcast episode, Dr. Tanner Hargrove introduces a concrete, visual intervention for couples dealing with trust breaches, especially after betrayals such as affairs, addictions, or financial infidelity. The method uses a deck of Uno cards—red, yellow, green, (optionally blue) and wild cards—to let the offended partner quantify the severity of the original betrayal and subsequent trustworthy or untrustworthy behaviors. Red cards represent major breaches, yellow cards indicate moderate trustworthiness, green cards signal high trust (60‑80%+), and blue cards can capture ambiguous events. Wild cards symbolize lingering uncertainty or doubt that does not erase prior trust‑building actions. Couples tally cards over a recent period, laying them out to visualize the balance of trust versus distrust, aiming for an overall trust level of roughly 80% or higher. Dr. Hargrove emphasizes careful therapist language, avoiding “good/bad” labels and instead framing actions as trustworthy or untrustworthy. He also notes that perfect (100%) trust is unrealistic, and the exercise helps both partners see the spectrum of trust and the incremental progress toward rebuilding the relationship. The hosts interject with clarifying questions, light banter about coffee mugs, and brief discussion of using blue cards for uncertainty.
Chapters
Foreign.
Here we go. What's next, Tanner? What do we call this one?
Okay, so the next intervention deals with trust. This is especially applicable in couples where there's been a significant betrayal, whether that's an affair, whether that's an addiction of some kind, whether that's fiduciary. So if there's been some significant financial betrayal, this even can work in couples without betrayal. So this is not specific to those, but it's very common. Right. If we work with couples, especially around, like, a fair recovery, it can be hard to really tack down the building of trust and what's considered to be trust building versus what's trust breaking. And so I. I use a lot of. I use Uno cards for a lot of things in my office. But with this intervention, if a couple is having. Right. So a spouse might say, well, I just don't know if I can trust her. Or I just. I want to be able to trust. But it just feels so hard, especially if we're into treatment. So if we've already been working and we've already, you know, six, seven, eight sessions in, and these things keep coming up, that's an indicator to me that we need to help them get a little more concrete in their understandings around on what trust might be. So then what I do is I give them green cards, yellow cards, and red cards. I actually hold the wild cards, but I give them green, red, and yellow. You could use different colors if you want, but these, to me, kind of symbolize some of the, like, varying experiences. And then I tell the spouse who is struggling with trust.
So the spouse said, tanner, for the record, for those of you that are listening, Tanner has a. A deck of Uno cards in his hands, and he's got the colors all separated. So they're red, yellow, and green. I'd say you probably have about, like, 15, 20 cards.
Yeah. Right now. And so what I'll do is I'll tell the spouse who's struggling with the trust. This might be the offended spouse. This could be, you know, the victim, whoever, whomever it is. And I'll tell him or her. And I'll say, I want you to use the red cards, and I want you to pick however many red cards you need to indicate the intensity of the initial betrayal. So if it's an affair, maybe that's four or three red cards.
Right.
Like, it hurt this much. Great. Like, three red cards. It was impactful. There was a significant betrayal. And then I'll say, okay, now I want you to take red and green or yellow and Green cards. Yellow is somewhat trustworthy, and green is pretty trustworthy. Remember, when we're talking about trust, we're looking for about 80 or better, which is what we're looking for. Green cards are anywhere from 60 to 80%. And I would say an example if my spouse said, I'll be home at 6, but showed up at 6:10, that's probably a yellow card. They were close. They weren't right on the money. But if they said, I'll be home at 6, and they showed up at 5:45, that would be a green card. Right? So that would be like, oh, I'm over overly trustworthy. I'm exempt. I'm showing that I can be trustworthy. And then I'll say, okay, so just think about the last week. And in the last week, I want you to pick yellow or green cards based on what you've seen in your relationship that would be considered trustworthy on any level. And then they'll start naming, well, you know, she did this, or she let me look at her phone, but I didn't know what that text message meant. Or it looked like one might be deleted and she picked the kids up, or he helped me kind of get the kids where they needed to be. And then we sat down and we're watching a movie, and she just opened up and communicated some things that I didn't know she was going to. That's actually like three green cards. But then we went out to dinner, and it looked like, you know, she was kind of more interested in her phone and not really interested in me. And so then I'll stop them and. Okay, great. Now look. Now look what we've done, right? We've built it. And I'll usually lay these on a table. It would be very impossible for you guys to see that. But I'll just show them, like, look at what's happened since the initial betrayal. And I might even say if I had the date of the betrayal right, like since October 10th. Look at what's taken place as far as trust. And then I'll say, part of what happens is you've got this wild card. And this wild card is this part of you that's saying, I don't know if I can trust him or her. Now, what I want you to understand is just because you have this wild card, it doesn't erase all of this. These things still exist. They're still there. They've. There've been investments. There has been things that have happened that have started to build trust. And just because we've got this wild card. Doesn't mean that any of this changes. It just means that we've got a little bit of a wild hair, which is reasonable given what you've experienced, the betrayal that you felt. This is totally normal. I would probably even say you'll probably get a few more wild cards. It was probably just going to happen now. I might say, well, yeah, but I. I told them to pick the kids up, and he totally forgot. And I'm like, great, pick a red card. How many red cards was that? And she's like, well, it wasn't really a red card. He'll say, it wasn't really a red card. It was like a yellow. So that's a yellow card. They weren't totally untrustworthy because, remember, these three were the actual affair. This was the actual betrayal. So forgetting to pick something up at the grocery store. I'm gonna. I'm sorry, but I'm not gonna call that a red card. We can't put a red card. If the three red cards were the affair. Right? Like, really kind of pushing on them to fight to see what's changed versus only seeing what's hurt. And then you can kind of build on that, you can expand it, you can get them back out again, you can elaborate on it. But it really does help it click. Like, oh, I guess I need to really fight to see some of these other things that might be happening. Because maybe it's not all untrustworthy. Exactly. And if that's. That's usually where you want them to land is like a totally. Okay, great, we're all good. No, no, no. Just like, try to acknowledge that there's some yellow and green in here too, and an occasional wild card, which is normal.
This is so great. I feel like with opportunities of compensation, you know, in the forgiveness model, it's a station that we work on. What happens a lot of times is like, people don't know how to give credits.
Right.
So I think this is great. It's like all or nothing language that we've fallen ourselves running into. And I feel like when you put this in front of your client, all of a sudden you're giving them a visual representation of where trust is going.
I really encourage, like, be very mindful around your language as the clinician, because a lot of times what will happen is clients will fall into good and bad or positive and negative language. And I really try to. I try to stay off of that because we're not talking about good and bad. We're talking about trustworthy or Untrustworthy. And so really helping them. See, like just because he forgot to pick up milk at the grocery store, that's not bad. That's just maybe a little untrustworthy. Really kind of helping D, like qualify some of those things can really help that process too.
You said something at the beginning intervention. We're looking for 80. What'd you say, 85, 86%.
Right.
This has come up in our intensives and stuff. So are you saying no one's 100%.
Trustworthy except for Jesus? Right. And I, I usually tell people that.
That'S hard, I think, for people to accept, you know, and you know, obviously when we're talking about untrustworthy, it could be the spectrum of what that looks like. But I guess what you're trying to convey is that no one's going to show up perfectly 100% of the time.
Absolutely. And there a lot of times the, the betrayed spouse might think that he or she needs that which is reasonable. Their betrayal is going to tell them that they do need that. Or I believe that's what like their betrayal is going to tell them that in order for me to build trust, they, he or she has to be 100 trustworthy. Because then you can swing this the other direction. Right. And the other spouse can also talk about, well, what has your spouse done that you've seen be trustworthy or untrustworthy? Right. Like this door swings two directions. And so it can really help to kind of loosen up. Like the goal is not 100 perfection. It's not reasonable, but. And there slips.
Well, yeah. And if you're working around an issue around betrayal and then someone, like you said, forgets the milk, that is, that can be a difficult position. Then try to rebuild some sense of sense, some sense of trustworthiness. Right. I like, I like. It's. Yeah, I've just heard Terry over the years, more recently, I think even, like I said, one of the intensives, maybe the anxiety intensive. Talk about. We're looking for this kind of percentage, the research shows, in terms of trustworthy worthiness. Yeah, yeah, that's a good one.
Valuable data also, this probably does well for soccer fanatics, I imagine. That's a red card. That's a red card. You're out of here, you know?
Yeah.
Okay.
Red.
Red is on the money with his uno cards ready to end.
And it's not a mason jar, but.
So far you are.
I am two for three because I don't not have the heart pillows in my office.
Red has no hard guys.
That's right.
Have you ever used the blue cards? Is my question. Or you just throw them all?
No, you could use the blue cards. I don't know how. Usually I can see how you could use blue cards as more of, like, an uncertain experience. Like, I'm not really sure what that was. Like, he forgot the milk, but he got the cheese. That's, like, blue. Okay, let's put that in blue. Right? Like, you could kind of work it in that way. Yeah.
Or I was sad about him. I was blue.
Yep. Absolutely.
I'm gonna. I'll play with that. And I like the wild card. And you can even have, like, both wild. You have the wild card and the wild card.
Draw four. Yeah, yeah.
Be good. Do you take out the reverse in the skip?
No, I tell them, like, the value. What's actually on the card is irrelevant. Okay.
By the way, just to keep score here, Lance, we noticed Tanner always has a strong coffee mug game going on. Seriously. The podcast started with Lance raising the Amarillo coffee mug from the summit, which looks like Patagonia.
Like, a Patagonia shirt.
But Tanner always has, like, a pretty stylish coffee mug, so. So for those keeping score at home.
Thanks.
Good.
I think that.
Think that's part of, like, a good therapist repertoire is to have a good coffee mug game.
I think so too.
Yeah. And he has both. You guys have really good looking glasses. Tanner is rocking a beard right now, which I think does a lot for. I guess chat really likes it. This is just for people that are listening online. You might need to know these things. Yeah.
There you go.
Rhett's hair is done up. Not total full hawk, but almost there. Yeah.
Season 2 | Episode 85 | Kamusta ka? -- Cultural diversity in therapy, athletic performance, and all things RT with Marriage and Family Therapy Associate, Kim Agramon-Bai
