When a partner stops sharing with you, it's because of how you've handled their vulnerability. The speaker argues trust isn't lost by accident but broken by your actions, and rebuilding it requires empathy, accountability, and a real choice: stay and do the work, or leave and live with that guilt.
If people don't trust you with sensitive information, that's on you. If people don't trust you, if your wife doesn't trust you with the deepest, most intimate parts of who she is as a woman, then that's on you. Then that's on you. So my question is, what have you done to put yourself in this position where somebody that you love, that you had an amazing relationship with, is no longer comfortable divulging truths to you? I'll tell you why. Because most of the time they're afraid of how you'll take that information. They're afraid of how you'll perceive that information. They're afraid of how when they might share something with you, you're just going to make it about yourself. See, what is empathy really? It's always taking into consideration that there's multiple ways to view something. It's always taking into consideration that I can see something from another person's perspective, and that gives me an opportunity to solve problems in a different way. Because that's what solving problems and conflict resolution is about. It's about seeing something from multiple perspectives, multiple ways it can be perceived. If somebody close to you that loves you that chose to spend their life with you isn't comfortable opening up to you. My question is, how did you get there? Oh, was it just them? They just magically one day decided that they couldn't trust you, they couldn't be honest with you? No, brother. I can tell you this from my experience in my life. When people didn't want to be honest with me, they didn't want to be real with me, they didn't want to tell me the truth, they didn't want to divulge the deepest, most intimate, vulnerable parts of who they were, it was because— ready for it, here it comes— It was because they didn't trust me. And I know that seems like, wow, yeah, no kidding. So how does trust get fractured and broken? Well, I don't know. Here's a question for you. How did it get fractured and broken inside your life? And what are you willing to do to mend the trust and mend the fracture instead of complaining about the fact that somebody doesn't trust you and you got to earn that back? Hey, guess what? Trust has to be earned. It's earned. Trust is earned. You know this. So what are you doing to earn trust or lose trust? Because you have two options: either walk away or stay in the relationship. And I'm going to tell you right now, the reason you don't walk away is because you know you haven't put it all on the table. You don't have a clear conscience. You can't walk away because you know that you still feel guilty on the inside. Because if you did walk away, that you know that you hadn't done everything you could to potentially try and save it. So you can't walk away because you haven't done the work yet. So either A, you live in torment about the fact that you left a relationship with still cards on the table that you hadn't played, or you do everything you can to potentially try and save this thing, rebuild the trust that you fractured and damaged, and come out of this with a clear conscience regardless. But it's up to you to determine which one of those things you feel like you deserve. You want guilt or do you want peace?
