#129: Understanding and Cultivating Emotional Safety in Your Relationship

And we're stuck in our fighting patterns. We can't seem to make any progress. And we're getting worn out. We're becoming very tired emotionally and worn out. And our desire to do this, to work on it, to rebuild the safety, you know, starts to wane.

Hey, thanks for coming. Welcome to the love shack.

Welcome to the love Shack. It's a little old place where we get to get together, explore fresh perspectives and eavesdrop on juicy conversations to discover the things that really matter while having a little bit of fun along the way. This is episode number 129129, and today we're going to be talking about the subject of emotional safety. It's been coming up a lot within our clients and with on our social media following. So we really wanted to honor that conversation and to teach you a little bit about emotional safety can be a nebulous conversation. We all kind of sense inside of ourselves that we need it. It's important, it's valuable, perhaps. But aside from that, it's kind of a conversation of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, emotional safety. What else have you got for me? And so we want to break this topic down for you so that you can understand what it is. Is it important? How do you create it? How do you go about doing it and where you can maybe assess for yourself. Where are you right now? And that's to be a really easy conversation. But that's what we have in store for you today. I'm Stacey Bartley and I'm the host of the show and I'm here with my husband and lover Tom. He's the co host and we also have a third host.

It's gonna be a try host.

Yeah, I like that.

Try host.

I didn't come up with that.

And who is our try host?

It's Brookie. It's Brookie Brown. We love her. She's also our daughter. We appreciate her being behind the scenes and I'm sure she'll have much to contribute.

She'll be coming out on this episode. I can feel it.

I also wanted to add one thing that you can look forward to in this episode is what will happen in your relationship and might already be happening if emotional safety isn't present.

Yeah, that's a good one.

That's why we have her. Brings in the great comments and introspection. Introspection.

So let's begin at the beginning, shall we? We know when we're going through a tough time that we should be talking about our problems. But when and why did it become such a Difficult thing to do. Like, we know in our heads logically that in order to resolve something with another human being, we've got to talk, we've got to communicate, we've got to lay these things on the table. And do you remember back in the beginning when it seemed to be so easy and so effortless, and you just felt like this person, for the most part, just understood and got you and understood you in ways that you just couldn't imagine even before you spoke. I know you could just be sitting in the same room and there was like, this essence that would just kind of like, I love you.

And you might be saying, where has that gone? Because that hasn't happened in a long time.

Well, and then the thought follows. Knowing that we need to talk, the thought follows, how difficult can it really be? And this can really create a fight right out of the gate. Because it's like, come on, just tell me how you feel. Lay it on the table. Especially if I'm somebody who's really good at sharing my feelings. Like, I can't wrap my head around why it is you just won't tell me how you feel. And so then I feel like it's my duty for us and our relationship. It's really a sweetheart message to drag it out of you. Essentially, I'm going to drag it out of you. I'm going to poke and prod until you finally tell me how you feel. And then maybe we can solve the challenges and the emotional difficulty that we're going through. And here's what I want to say. It is very difficult for somebody to share their feelings at times. And emotional safety is a huge piece of the puzzle that we want to uncover for you today. And why is this the case? What is emotional safety? And why is this the case? The human behavior in us is that if we don't sense emotional safety within ourselves or in the relationship or in the context of environment that I am in, I won't share, I won't show up. I'll give you the surface I'll go along with for a while. Because I personally don't feel emotionally safe to do anything different. And nobody can pry it out of us. If we're not feeling emotionally safe to share, we're not sharing. And no amount of belittling, criticizing, badgering, poking, prodding, begging, pleading, is going to make us feel different. In fact, often it makes us feel more unsafe. So I start clamping up even more, shutting down, going missing even more, getting more and more angry in an effort to shut it down because I don't feel safe enough to explore those areas within sight of myself.

Can I ask a question here? What are some reasons or things that could have happened in the relationship that would make you stop feeling emotionally safe?

Anytime we feel shut down, dismissed, belittled, criticized, blamed, ignored, those are places where I start to shut down and our emotional safety begins to be sacrificed. And the unfortunate thing is that it can be very unintentional. We can think that we're actually trying to do good things for our relationship and move things forward without realizing we're compromising this. The very emotional safety that we're going to need in order to sort through our challenges and understand what we're facing together as a couple in co creation.

And do you find that that emotional safety gets lessened through these, like you say, sometimes innocuous type things that are happening is what so meaning these breaches, if you will, is what continually erodes and has less and less sharing going on?

Yes, absolutely. Because it's not something we talk about or understand or have the skills to navigate through. Of course over time that's going to become the default option. There's going to be tiny and big egregious places where the emotional safety gets pulled out of our experience. And the more that that happens, the more aggressive I become or the more I shut down and the less and less we talk and communicate. And if we do, it's either trying to get the heck out of dodge or ripping your face off. Because talking about this now I don't believe is even possible. The emotional safety can get so compromised. I don't even believe that we can go in a different direction. Had a couple in my office just a couple of days ago where all of a sudden the partner that was projected or promised to be the most difficult one in the room ended up being the one who was like, no, I want to do this, this makes sense. And the other one was shut down, pointing to things of the past. This will never happen. He or she's a liar. We can't move forward. It's all their fault. They were just hell bent on this has to be the way I see it and this is why I can't move forward. And it was all pointed at their partner.

Another really common example that comes up a lot in our working with couples and this is from my past marriage. I was really prodding my ex husband and asking over and over and over again if he was attracted to me because my weight was an issue in our relationship and he didn't want to say whether or not he was, because he knew if he was honest, it would hurt my feelings. It was a difficult conversation, but I was pushing him and belittling him and telling him, you better give me an answer, and all these things. And then he finally said, yeah, I don't feel as attracted to you as I did before. And of course, my response to that was not, thank you for being honest with me. It was to literally have one of the biggest emotional breakdowns I've ever had in my life. So to give you, the listener, an example of this that you might not see is happening in your relationship, that is an example of totally dismantling the emotional safety in your relationship. Because I was begging my ex husband to be honest with me, and then when he was, I punished him for weeks because of it. And I'm not taking away the fact that that was really painful for me to hear. Like, that's not an easy answer to hear. But if you're begging your partner to be honest with you and then they are, and then you punish them, you have to see that that removes that. They're not going to want to do that again in the future. They're not going to want to be vulnerable and honest with you about difficult things in the future because of the hell that you put them through for being honest in the past. And I see both sides of it. I'm talking about myself here.

It was awful.

It was a really hard time in my life. But now I can see, wow, I made that an impossible situation.

Very often using the metaphor of a mess, a physical mess, I think it helps us understand why what we're talking about happens. Because if I'm hearing something difficult, I tend to kind of like attack instead of go, oh, that's really hard to hear. But let me take in what you're saying, and let's maintain the safety first so that we can continue to talk about it and work through it. It's much like throwing a glass against the wall and then you get ticked off about the mess that's just been made. So you chuck a glass against the wall and it shatters, and then they get pissed off and chuck another glass against the wall. And on and on it goes until you have a pile, that is a shit show, excuse my French, of a mess to metaphorically clean up. And that could go on years and years and years and just shards of glass. And it gets more and more difficult and dangerous to navigate through. And bloody and bloody. Absolutely bloody. And so as we add to the emotional difficulty, we can have competitions about this too. Like you're in pain. So I'm going to be in pain too. I hear this in my sweet young couples that are really in what I call the divide and conquer years, where they're trying to focus on a career and keep themselves together and maintain a relationship and take care of children and little ones and they can actually compete for who's struggling the most without realizing. No. The opportunity is to lean in and support each other. You think this is hard with a partner beside you, think about how hard it would be on your own. And sometimes we think about that, or we don't think about that. Rather, we are only thinking about pushing you to the point of blaming you in hopes that's going to take us where we want to go. And it doesn't. It just adds to the mess and the difficulty of cleaning up that mess and moving forward in a positive direction. And you're going to lose your compadre, your partner in the mix along the way, the person that loves and supported and co created this with you. We have to be mindful about what it is we're doing. So let's backtrack a little bit. We've kind of given you some things and how it plays out. And if left unchecked or misunderstood, emotional safety is absolutely draining out of your relationship. There's just no way about it. And that's not your fault. It's simply because of how we've been taught to do relationships societally, even religiously, or from our families of origin. It's usually from a place of power and control and manipulation. And so that's where we go to. We feel entitled. If I'm struggling to take it out on you. And we have lots and lots of demonstrations of that in our personal lives as to why that's the way it should go. Like if you've hurt my feelings and I'm entitled to hurt you, right. I'm entitled to mistreat you too. And that puts us in that place where we go back to that physical metaphor of more and more mess and we're just adding to it and adding to it and then wondering why five years later, 10 years later, 25 years later, I can't stand to be in the same room as you. I have created and we have together co created in our relationship a huge, huge mess and a lot of egregious pain and breakdown. And that's what will happen if emotional safety is not present to continue to work through, yes, the inevitable ups and downs and challenges that life is going to throw at us. So I say this often, I'll say it again. It's not about not making a mess. We're going to make them. We're human, we're mess making machines. But in order to navigate through them, to clean them up, to get on to the good stuff, we're absolutely going to have to understand principally what emotional safety is and how to create it and how to know when it's being compromised and sacrificed. That's the piece that we've got to keep our eye on. And just like in the world of business, it's safety first. And that's so true when it comes to relationships as well. So what is it? Let's talk about what it really is that we're talking about here. It's absolutely the feelings that you have inside of yourself. It's a sense of safety to share ourselves, thoughts and feelings with another person. I feel like I'm open to doing that. I feel like I desire to do that. And at times I'm willing to risk a little bit to share maybe something that I'm not quite sure I was going to land. So it's this sense of safety to share ourselves with another person. That's what emotional safety is. When it's present and I start risking and I'm successful with that, we'll risk more and more and more with that person that we're feeling safe with. You know, if I was safe telling you this, then I'm going to be safe telling you a little bit more. And if that goes well, then I'm going to feel safe about telling you a little bit more. And this is what we begin to establish right away in our clients when we start to work with individuals and couples because we can't go anywhere unless there's emotional safety present in the room to do.

So you were reading my mind because I was going to say, would you say this is one of the very first things we do, you do, we do in our better love club or individual work is, and I share this on our clarity calls is oftentimes it takes some outside skilled facilitation to reestablish a emotional safety with you and your partner. Would you say so? And that's one of the things you we quickly do.

And I want you to see that it's a principle that you work with over time because it's going to take some time and some real intention to rebuild emotional safety in our relationship. So it's not something we have a conversation about. And then we're like okay, we're good. Let's everybody go home. We got this now. No. It's a consistent practice that you're going to do for the rest of your life if you want your relationship to thrive.

Well. And the telltale sign. Right. Whether it's been reestablished or not, is how everyone is showing up and behaving when we get triggered. Right. I mean, that there's. If the needle really has been moved.

Wow.

So you don't need to talk about whether it's renewed and re established. You're going to know. Right.

Well, and. And knowing how to rudder yourself or navigate yourself through any given piece of difficulty, you yourself need to be aware of. Am I adding to or protecting the emotional safety or am I sacrificing it for this moment? There's a quote that I learned long ago that just so resonates about this principle in relationships, and it goes like this. Unhappiness is trading what I want most for what I think I want in the moment. And that's what we do here all the time. I think I want to attack you. I think I deserve to attack you because of what's just gone down without realizing I'm just sacrificing what it is I ultimately want in the end, which is to feel close and connected and open and available in my relationship with you. And we have to remember that it's on each of us to rudder ourselves through that moment. I can only do my part. And then through time, I need to develop the trust that you'll do yours too. And we're going to mess it up. It's going to happen. You. I just had a conversation with a client this morning that says, okay, we're in a real funk. And I said, okay, yay, because you're practicing, you're gonna mess it up. We're gonna get better at this as we go. So let's reset and go again. And it's reestablishing the place of emotional safety enough that we can turn the corner and go in a different direction. So right out of the gate is about catching these moments when I'm sacrificing the safety and that I have a moment of choice there if I understand the principle enough. Okay. That's, again, going to take some practice, but a worthy practice it is. I want you to understand that it is the reason you're asking, why don't we talk anymore? It is the reason that we don't share and open up or know how to spend time together anymore. It is because the emotional safety has been sacrificed over and over and over again. And now nobody feels safe to talk about anything.

So the proverbial people drifting, husband, wife, spouses, significant others drifting apart, is that really said in another way?

Yeah.

The emotional safety is no longer there.

The emotional safety is leaking out and we don't know what to do about it. And we certainly don't have the words to talk about emotional safety. This is a concept we've brought into the world of relationships because we teach a lot about emotional safety here. It's one of our core key foundational principles and it is at the heart of everything because again, as a human being, if you don't feel safe to open up, you are not going to. There is no amount of, we've already said, begging, pleading, coercing, et cetera, that's going to cause you to cross that line. And it's either going to show up as I'm shutting down, trying to get out of the conversation, or I'm attacking you to shut down the conversation.

That's the two tools we have in our toolbox, the control and the collapse.

That's their emotional survival mode.

It's not only if they're not sharing these deep emotional epiphanies with you, it's even sharing their day to day stuff. They'll stop even telling you interesting things that have happened in their day because they just don't have the energy to share it with you because they don't feel like they're going to get any meaningful response from you anyways because of the things that have transpired in the past.

Yeah, we're talking now, Brooke, about capacity. We've had two incredible. If you're listening to this live, past Monday night trainings in the Better Love Club, Stacy has knocked it out of the park, if I don't say so myself. In fact, it's supposed to be one Monday night and now we're going into our third Monday night because we couldn't cover it all in one. One training, one get together, one gathering.

Yes. And I want you to know this might be starting to begin. Oh man, I'm so screwed. I don't understand what you're talking about. I don't know that I've ever experienced, experienced emotional safety. I have no idea how to build it. And here's the good news. I want you to know that intuitively we know how to create emotional safety. After all, when you're looking for love and you're in the pool of dating, we know we need to create a certain experience. And that experience is Emotional safety. And I put a tremendous amount of awareness and intention into everything. The way I look, the way I speak. Did I share too much? Did I share too little? Did I say it right? How long should it be before I text back? Help me navigate how you took what I just said. Am I sharing oversharing? Are they over sharing? We are intensely aware of creating emotional safety for the person that we're trying to get to know, to understand and to bond with. And the more I care or am interested in you, the more this desire goes off the chart almost to the point it could become some kind of an obsession for us. Like I'm doing everything I can possibly think of to make this a safe, enjoyable experience with this person. And that's how all of us fool around and fall in love. And so we know this intuitively, right? However, as we get lazy in our relationships and not realize that emotional safety is so critically important to maintain in our relationships, then the emotional safety begins to get sacrificed as the messes are made and we don't know how to clean them up and navigate through them. And so yes, emotional safety ends up eking out the back. So the good news is you have a sense intrinsically with inside of you as a human being on how to create emotional safety. Unfortunately, we just don't value it and we don't realize how critically important it is to the quasi healthy relationships we say we're pursuing. And it is at the heart of it. It is the building block of emotional relationships. Okay, so that's how important it is. We've talked about how it gets sacrificed in little ways and in small ways. But what happens when none is left in your relationship when it's all gone? Well, it's simple. Co creation ceases. We will not be co creating anymore. Yeah, we might, you know, live separate lives doing our own thing, but we're not going to be talking about a whole lot of co creation in regards to the us part of us in our relationship. You do you, I do me. Our paths will cross, it'll look good when we go out with friends and family. But the reality is emotionally there's no connection there. There's no intimacy or sex there. We feel very lonely when we're together. And you take care of what you contribute to this relationship logistically. And I'll do the same. So it could look like I pay half the bills, you pay your half, I handle the outside and mow the grass and take care of the garden. You do the inside. It becomes a very transactional relationship and the co creation ceases to exist emotionally.

You become roommates.

Yep.

You become roommates. Yeah. Well said.

So let me just ask for the listeners say, okay, I'm doomed. No, you're not. So let me just ask. Would you say, is it is your experience that any couple, if they're willing, I always like to say, to roll up their sleeves, can emotional safety be reestablished?

Yeah, if everybody is willing to do their part and maintaining and building emotional safety. Absolutely. In fact, even if couples choose to transition or transform their relationship from that as lovers and to co parents Right. Through the measure of dissolving their marriage or their romantic aspect of their relationship, the emotional safety, I just want you to see, trickles in. And so very often in that place, given time, we'll make better friends than lovers.

Okay.

It's because the emotional safety has somewhat come back in and we have all these moments and memories of co creation that were good, that continue to bond us. That's a great example of that. So absolutely, you can and you don't have to dissolve your romantic side of your relationship, but you're going to need to build emotional safety in order to have a romantic side of your relationship.

Because you sure had it. And that was a great analogy. You had it when you started. Come on.

Everything.

Think about it. I'd never thought of it that way. That's your whole focus. So all of us have that ability if you're with a special someone. Because you wouldn't be there otherwise.

Yep.

So I love that. Good news is we're all capable. The bad news is we forget how important it is.

I don't know that we ever realized how important. I don't know that it was a forgetting so much as a. It was a lack of awareness. Right. It's amazing what we can buy into and agree to when we don't understand it.

Well said.

And that is very often the case when it comes to relationships because as we say, where do you go to study them and learn the principles of that govern this very significant place on the human journey? Unless you roll up your sleeves and study it, you're probably winging it. And you're making a lot of choices and decisions based on no principles. That's why we're here, that's why we do what we do. So can you create it? Absolutely. And it begins with you gotta want it, you gotta envision it, you gotta dream it. And then you have to be willing to do your part to create it. I want you to realize it's a lot like blowing up A latex balloon. Ironically, it's the best metaphor I've been able to come up with that describes how emotional safety works. Imagine for a moment that you have a latex balloon in your hand, and it's a big one, and you're gonna have to blow it up. And so the first few puffs of air before you start inflating that thing, it makes you sweat.

Well, a lot of times nothing even seems like it doesn't even move.

Yeah. Have you ever been trying to blow.

Up and it just stays.

Have you ever done blo so hard it just blew out of your hand?

Yeah. Like, man, good gracious. Yeah.

So getting it started is hard. It's hard. And you gotta blow like hell to get your first little puff of air in there. Okay. But then, you know, as you go.

Start to see a little bit of a. Yeah. A little expansion.

It gets a little easier and a little easier. And you might have to pause and take a few extra breaths.

Make sure you hold it, though, so it doesn't seep out.

Oh, yeah, that's a bad program. When you're like that far in and all of a sudden you lose control.

Of it and it comes out fast.

And that's exactly what happens with emotional safet. The minute you let go of that balloon, the air comes out in 22 seconds, doesn't it? And then you're like, oh, great, I'm back to the beginning. But if you go back to the beginning, it's easier to start again than it was when you originally started.

It is.

So you go back to the beginning, you start blowing air in that thing. Okay. You completely inflate it. You get successful and completely inflating that balloon, and then it's really easy to maintain it. If I just protect it and hold it and be mindful of it, and I'm aware of it, and I can even put a couple of extra puffs of air in there if it gets a little flat on me, you know? But again, the minute that I sacrifice letting go of that thing, take my eye off the ball, or become unaware of what I'm doing, it goes out in a nanosecond. And emotional safety works just like that. As you're learning the principle and beginning to work with it, it's going to make you sweat. But as you work with it, it gets easier and easier. And along the way, when we sacrifice the safety, it's going to deflate.

So would you say in our body work and what you have pioneered, the emotional push up, would be synonymous with the Blowing of the balloon, meaning when we're doing those emotional push ups to better in the emotional journey and recreating emotional safety, that's like those first breaths of air that we're trying to expand that balloon.

Is that.

Do I have that right?

Yep, yep. We can, we can catch it too. So just because it gets violated doesn't mean it's all going to come out. I could catch it long before it was flat again, which is what we want you to be able to do. You don't have to completely deflate the thing. We can eke it out and put a little more in and eek it out. That's gonna be realistic. Because we're mess making machines, we're going to mess it up. But unfortunately, without being aware of the principle of emotional safety, we have a tendency to not only eek it out, but let it out and have nothing to work with and can't figure out why it is we're struggling to go in a different direction. We're stuck in our fighting patterns. We can't seem to make any progress and we're getting worn out. We're becoming very tired emotionally and worn out. And our desire to do this, to work on it, to rebuild the safety, you know, starts to wane. Oh, I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if we can get there. And I start to try and manage, typically my partner more, not less, when this happens, which then sacrifices more of the emotional safety in our relationship. So it becomes this catch 22 that we play in our. I want you to start with the idea of permission is at the heart of emotional safety and not permission that you just get to go along with whatever your partner does or doesn't do. It's the permission for you to feel the way you feel and think the way you think and permission for your partner to do the same. And I'm going to tell you right now, if you're a new listener to our podcast, I'm going to encourage you to go back and listen to a lot of our principles because they stack on each other. We break them down here in these episodes with you. If you're a longtime listener, you're going to know what I refer. I'm referring to in this moment as an internal movie or an internal narrative. And those narratives are not the same in any of us. And so it's literally giving us permission to have our own thoughts and feelings about any given subject that we're navigating through. And that if we can maintain the Emotional safety and permission to share those things, then at least we've got all the cards on the table to solve some of the challenges that we're going through. If it's not even safe enough to lay the card on the table to talk about what we really need to talk about and stop the fighting, then we're not going to go anywhere. We're not going to make any progress. So understanding and permission are always the first two pursuits when rebuilding safety. And it's literally, hey, this is what I'm thinking and feeling. What are you thinking and feeling? And I'm going to anticipate they're going to be different than mine. And if they say something that hurts your feelings, it's okay for you to say, man, that's really hard for me to hear. That really hurts my feelings. But tell me more about that. Tell me. Help me understand where you're coming from. Because if I don't and I just shut it down, what have I accomplished anyway? I've accomplished nothing.

I would say permission is the exact opposite of defensiveness.

Very good.

Yes, it absolutely is. And manipulation. Right. It is exactly the direct opposite.

And that permission is going to be built by. If you're following me and you're very left brain because I'm kind of detailed, you're doing that push up would be having this conversation in a way where you're not becoming defensive. You're learning how to do that through practicing. And this is what we do inside the Better Love Club because we literally have never been taught or mentored or shown how to have a conversation other than I'm right and you're wrong, and that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard you say.

Yeah.

And.

And also, you're literally building your emotional resilience by doing these emotional pushups. Because hearing stuff that is a critique of you or that you perceive a critique of you is hard. That's hard no matter what. It's your natural inclination to want to defend yourself, but if you don't give your partner the permission to speak and have their own opinions, then there is no emotional safety. So all of those things are very intertwined. But you can't give that permission and truly feel it inside of you without building this resilience, because otherwise you're just going to go into defensiveness.

Well, I think this is a great opportunity for us to give our listeners an example. Let's go back to the example with you and your first husband, and let's talk that through. I mean, knowing what you know now how would you implement in that scenario? Emotional safety. Even though it was a really difficult, hard thing to hear. Right.

Well, first of all, I shouldn't have been basically begging him to tell me that he wasn't attracted to me anymore. Because honestly, I know now that wasn't the truth. He wasn't disgusted by me. I basically forced him to say that. You know, I'm sure a lot of people know exactly what I'm talking about, where you back your partner into a corner and the conversation isn't over until they say the most horrendous thing that you're wanting them to say because you're.

Hearing it in your own head. Yes.

Yes. Like, of course I knew there was a problem there, but I was thinking way worse things than he would ever think about me. That's number one. And second of all, when I asked him to tell me the truth, I should have made it okay. I should have said, that was really hard to hear, but thank you so much for being honest with me. And now that I know how you feel, we can move forward in a different way. Not, I can't believe you said that to me. And it. And he was probably thinking, what the hell? You just asked me to say that to you. You, like you were goading me along for hours, basically wanting that to come out of my mouth. So why are you having this week long emotional breakdown? Because of it.

Yeah.

But of course he didn't say that because that wasn't safe for him to say, but I'm sure that's what he was thinking.

Well, and I think it's fair to say too, if we just badger someone and beat the tar out of them, it's probably not going to inspire nor induce the finest delivery of maybe something that's difficult to have anyway, to share anyway. Yeah, exactly. I'm done with you. Yeah, here, take the that, put it in your pipe and smoke.

I'm done.

Well, the whole conversation was emotionally exhausting. So now I know that first of all, don't beg someone to say something that you don't want to hear. Number one, that's really manipulative and weird behavior in and of itself. But we all, but we do it often. It's not rare.

Well, and here's the thing. To get them to say the terrible things that are rolling around in your own mind, you're telling him it's going to be okay and you just can. It's okay to say it and I promise I'll be okay. And you're making all these promises, right? That you have no intentions of keeping.

Yes.

And they're thinking, okay, finally, I'm feeling worn out and badgered, so I'm just going to say what it is you want me to say. I hope this takes us somewhere good, and then the whole thing blows up even bigger. You know, I literally became a crazy.

Person after he said that for a long time after. And I used it against him for a long time after by continually saying, I can't believe you said that to me. I'm broken. It was just a really awful situation. But to compare it to another relationship, it's like parents who tell their children, call me, no matter what, if you're drunk, and I will drive you home, and I promise you won't get in trouble. That's a very common thing to say to a kid, but the kid will not do it. If they know you're lying and they know that there's absolutely no way that you would not judge them. You know, like kids or they take.

You up on it one time and you pick them up and then they get grounded for doing it. Yeah. That deal's over. Yep.

Yeah. So it's the same way. We can say words with our mouths, but our partners and our children, after we do something once, they're gonna use that forever until we demonstrate something differently to go off of, you know, so.

No, I just want to say. Excuse me, but let's just make sure, though, that you heard us. We're not saying that what took place is good or. So.

Yeah.

You have to stay in the curious process and put a plan around it in a way that works so that we're not.

Please don't. Right.

But there's ways to talk about these things with your partner and your children without grounding them for months or making it a terrible situation for years or months.

Exactly.

Months, like I just said. But there can be consequences and things that happen, but it doesn't have to be a living hell.

Yeah. And emotional safety and protecting it, learning how to protect it, learning how to build it, learning how to practice it, is something that we do a lot of inside of the Better Love Club. And by the way, we are in the middle of this conversation right now. So if this is something that's resonating with you, I'm going to tell you to get your little fanny over there right now. And if you do so right now, before May is over, you're going to be able to try it on for 14 days for free. And this is because we are in support of Mental Health Awareness Month. Which is the month of May. So make your way over to the Better Love Club and check it out. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. And literally, we are having this conversation inside of the club on our Monday night calls as we speak.

And just to unpack that a little bit, so what that looks like is, yeah, we come together and then Stacy will share. We're going to talk about with this. And then. But the important distinction here, and what's unique about this is we then break out into rooms and Stacy gives very, very specific instructions how you're going to practice. So there's the kind of. The metaphor of the emotional pushup. So you become more masterful at doing these behaviors in the sequence of words to where you're reestablishing the safety. Because let's just be honest, unless that happens, I just heard this quote. I'm gonna share it. This goes awesome. Knowledge is power, but application is wisdom. Until we are able to apply it and deploy. Deploy it, ladies and gentlemen, we don't have anything. We don't.

And I just. I wanna remind you, the listener, that emotional safety in your relationship is fragile and it's sacred. And a lot of times we think that our relationships are invincible because we're, like you said, yes, we got married. You're gonna be with me forever, so I can use you as an emotional punching bag. And nothing bad will ever happen because of it, because we made that promise. And I would argue that is not true. And I know my mom and dad would, too. But just remember, like the balloon analogy, all of the emotional safety can go out of your relationship in an instant. And even though you've already created it, so it's easier than doing it, you can rebuild it, but, like, it's so fragile. So remember your words and your actions have the ability to wipe it out in an instant. Treat your relationship and your home and your family and the people you love the most, those are the ones you should be more careful with, not the opposite.

Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, I see this a lot when couples come together and say, gosh, we were so in love. It was so amazing when we first came together. What happened? What happened. I never thought this would happen to us or I never thought that would happen to the couple that we are all, like, mesmerized by. And this is what happens.

You just described exactly this is what happens. And none of us gets the hall pass. None of us. Again, we all know how we created it. If you have a special someone that you once had, but none of us Gets the hall pass. If you don't continue to, you know, you have to continually make deposits because there's going to be some withdrawals. There is. Because we're mess making machines. Let's just be honest.

Well, it's, it's just anything that is a valuable to you, what are you going to do? You're going to protect it, you're going to be aware of it, you're going.

To continue to invest into it, continue.

To invest in it. I don't care if we're talking about our finances or we're talking about our health, mentally or physically. If we just get it to a certain level or have a certain experience and go, okay, we're good. It's not going to maintain any sense of what it once was because I'm not focusing on it. I'm not intentionally protecting it and honoring it and growing it and putting into it, pouring into it every single day.

I would just say, I mean, you think about any other success, long term success in your life, whether that is professionally, your business, your job, your career, when you went to college, anything has come through this process. Meaning it's not science. We continue to invest the currency of commitment as time, money and focus. That's how it goes. So there has to be this continual place. And as Brooke just reminded, which I could not agree, at the end of the day, we get to the end of our road in life. All the stories I've read have always been some version of relational regret. It isn't around the other places that we just mentioned, and not that I'm against any of them, but isn't it interesting that the regret comes from the relational part of life at the end? How don't we just get busy now then?

And I'm just going to point out this last piece, something else that we talk a lot about is polarity and how something wonderful can become our challenge. And so it is with emotional safety. The reason why we take our pain emotionally out on the people that we love the most is because in the beginning that's where we feel the safest. And so ironically, if we allow ourselves to take our emotional pain out on the people that we love the most, it sacrifices the safety that you intuitively built in the beginning of your relationship.

Isn't that interesting?

And that's how it gets sacrificed. Yep. It started out you mistreating that person and saying some really messed up stuff because you felt safe to do so and felt like they were going to always be there for you. And then you took that for Granted. And over time that turned into a place where you had no emotional safety left. So there was nothing of safe places to be able to rudder through the challenges and upsets of life.

And I think, you know, I think it's when we hear of someone in our circle of influence, husband, wife, significant others, where they decide they make the difficult decision not to stay together. Don't we all usually hear some version of I just can't do this anymore. That's because we don't have a limitless emotional gas tank. The metaphor, without this process that we've just described, it's going to run out. It will.

It happens with parents and children too. I'm sure as a parent you can, you can recognize and realize that we feel really close to our children when they're young and then when they start kind of self identifying and going through that, you know, what we call the, the dreaded teenage years, as they self identify, I'm emotionally sacrificing the safety with that child too. And so pretty soon there's a lot of safety that's been sacrificed there as well. And I just want to point out yet another space on the relationship journey where that plays out significantly. And we wonder, gosh, I used to be so close to him or her when they were 6, 8, 10, 12, and now that they're 16, I can't stand to be in the same room of them or they can't stand to be in the same room with the parent. Yeah.

Like the last people or person that they would have any sense to want to spend any time with. And yeah. How many parents say just like you shared with couple with each in a couple. Like what happened? You know, like what the heck happened?

Yeah. Yeah. So just if again, if you want to learn more and dive into the learning the principle and implementing the principle, which I personally would highly recommend, the Better Love Club is going to be a great place for you to explore that, to put a toe in the water. And until the end of May, we are offering you 14 days for free. So take advantage of that not only.

Learning, but you're going to learn how to implement it. Remember, you're going to learn the application of it, how to deploy and execute.

Any other thoughts on emotional safety?

This is a big one. We could talk and talk and talk on this one because I would say it is the bedrock of the route that you've identified and created over your last 10 years.

Right.

It really is, is it not really the primary foundational building block?

Yes, it is the place we have to Begin because without it, we can't go anywhere. So it is the building block we use and we'd love to have you come over and be a part of it. Love to teach you more about it and help you practice and implement more of it into your life and relationship. It will help you get through the difficulties and begin going in the direction that you truly know is available. You just can't seem to figure out how to get there. Take a moment now and switch gears, shall we?

Yes.

And let's do a little bit of Follow the Fun. And today I'm calling this piece of Follow the fun. This is what I see. What I want to invite you to do this week is to select some photos from your library of photos about your partner. And I want you to choose photos that showcase the attributes that you love and appreciate about them. And I want you to put this in the context of the picture that you're looking at of your partner is a reflection of what you see when you're looking at them, which will allow them to see what you see through their eyes. I did this for Tom's birthday here, just beginning of the year. Went through my selection of photos and I wanted to pick out pictures of him so that he could see what I see when I look at him in these moments that are emotionally touching to me.

And it was really cool to be on the receiving end of that. I might as really, really cool because.

After all, don't we all wonder what my partner or person views me as or sees me as? You know, what comes up for them in these moments that we remember?

And Cherish and Stacy did it incrementally throughout my birthday. We were apart. So I would just all of a sudden receive these wonderful pictures. Number one, just great memories and pictures. And then she'd give me why she ch picture and what it represented. So no, it was. It was very, very impactful, very thoughtful. Thank you for doing that.

Yeah. And it's a wonderful thing. And so I'm going to give you some ideas and suggestions just to clarify what it is you probably want to look for in this. This is what I see when I look at you. I sent a message with a picture that said, this is what you look like when you listen to me. You are so good at that. Or this is your serious look. This is what you look like when you put me in my place when I need it most. It always makes me feel safe. Or this is what you look like from my eyes when I feel like you love me. And this is what you look like when you feel happy and blissed out and joyful and a little quirky. And so take these ideas and put them in your repertoire of pictures. I would crop his little face out so that even though it might have been a photo together, I cropped out just his face so that he could truly get an experience of what it is I love, value, and appreciate about him and what it looks like from my perspective. So I encourage this. To do this for somebody that you love. It's a wonderful gift, not only to a lover, but to a child, a friend, somebody that you have a little bit of history with, because I know we would all love to know what we look like through the lens of somebody else and what it is they cherish, love, and appreciate about us. So take time to do that. I did do it all in one day, but, gosh, you could do it throughout a week. You could do one a day for a while.

I don't ever imagine receiving something that that would. Would never not be appreciated when. Whenever it would come over. Whether it's just simply because it's all about the end of the day. We all want to be seen, valued, and appreciated. That's really what. And we don't often experience moments of that.

If you want to do a little bit of a copy and paste, I'll have Brookie put the little prompts in the show notes. So make it as easy as we possibly can for you to execute on sometimes these things that we can go, ah, that sounds like a really great idea and that really inspired me. But, yeah, I don't got the time. So I'll put some things that you can copy and paste inside of these show notes for you. I'll brick do that for us, and we'll do everything we can to make it as easy as possible so that you can participate in this and reap the rewards of doing so. Our song today for our can you feel it moment. Each week we choose a theme song that kind of encapsulates the message or the takeaway that we would like to resonate with you through the sounds.

And the wonderful person I've never heard Stacy said, honey, you need to come down and sit and watch this video. We did this right before we went live.

Yeah. And I. I discovered a new artist today, which I knew nothing about. She's. I didn't do any research on her, so I don't know if I'm just late to the party or if she's an up and coming artist, but her name is Trixie Whitley. And she has an incredibly beautiful voice. And she also has a song that I felt was perfect for today's episode. And the title of the song is breathe you in my dreams.

And breathe you in my dreams.

I'll breathe you in my dreams. And the reason why I thought this was so appropriate for our conversation on emotional safety is in the song. She says, I'm not coming home tonight. There's. But I'm having faith and hope that we can be together again. And so tonight, as I close my eyes, I'm breathing you in my dreams again, man. And I think that's where emotional safety and the drive to create that stems from. It's the vision, it's the desire to pursue it that is required first. And if so, then we can begin to breathe you in my dreams. Therefore, imagine what might be possible if we felt safe and close and connected again. It's what we say in our relationships when we say, I want to get back to the way it once was. You can't go back to the way it once was. But the way it once was can serve absolutely of as the vision of what is possible in your life right now. Because if you've had it once, you can go there again. It's just going to take a little bit of practice and learning, but absolutely between now and then in the future, breathe your partner in your dreams. See them in that light As I once was.

So if you feel like, you know, this particular episode has really talked to you at the deepest level. Number one, thank you for listening and being with us. But, you know, we always say this. Don't wait. This is a place that can be really hard to navigate. You understand what we shared with you. You just have no idea. Oh, gosh. This is where we can be of great support and service to you as a family. And sadly, people wait sometimes too long and then their capacity is not there with either person in a relationship to rebuild it. It's just not there. The bandwidth is.

Yeah. And if by chance you want to take a listen to that song we just mentioned, you can recommend it. Yeah, it's really wonderful. She's a wonderful.

Great video, too. It is very simple, but elegant.

Yes, beautiful. You can check it out on our website or you can check it out on Spotify by going to or searching up the Love Shack Live playlist. You can find it in both of those places. Or YouTube. You can take it and pop it into YouTube and you'll get the video as well. All right, that's a wrap. Thank you so much for being here with us. And we so value and appreciate you, our listener. And if this episode has touched you in a way that you know there are other people in your sphere of influence, I want to invite you to share it. This conversation is important, if anything, just to start the conversation and the awareness of what it is that truly breaks our relationships down and what keeps us from being able to navigate through the inevitable challenges of life and come out in a better place on the other side. Emotional safety is at the heart of it. Until we see you again, know that we send you off with all the love and support that we can muster today and we hope to see you again next time, as well as the Better Love Club. Come on over. We would love to just love and support you some more there as well. Bye bye for now.

Okay, everybody, time to go. We gotta close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week, though, and join us for another edition of Love Shack live with Tom and Stacy Bartley.