Hey guys. Geoffrey here.
In this video I'm going to show you the number one reason why communication
breaks down in relationships and I really want you to stay until the end of this
video because in a, when we think about communication problems,
we often think about this in a very complicated matter that it's a million
things that you have to fix, a million skills you have to learn.
But in this video I'm going to show you that it's just this one reason and once
you understand this one reason you'll stop being so confused,
you'll stop being so frustrated and actually gain some clarity for once.
And before we begin this video,
I want to let you know they'll be hosting a free live masterclass,
so be sure to state,
so the end of this video for that announcement and how you can get into that
master class. And as always,
if you're looking for more content or more videos that can help you design a
thriving relationship for yourself,
then be sure to subscribe and click the bell button as well to be notified.
When I post new videos three times every single week. To start this off,
I want to give you a very simple premise to communication. Again,
when we think about communication, we tend to overthink it,
but really when you think about it,
it's just this very simple mechanism for a conversation to happen.
It needs two people.
It needs one person who is willing and ready to share and it needs another
person who is willing and ready to receive.
And if both of you are able to share and able to receive,
then the communication here should flow quite nicely.
And this might sound super obvious to many of you,
but if you understand this principle,
then you can also understand that there's only two ways that a relationship can
break down.
Number one is one of these people involved is not able to share.
And the other is if one of these people involved is not able to openly receive.
And in my experience the biggest reasons why one of these breakdowns happen is
if one or more persons feel unsafe to share,
perhaps he thinks that if he shares or she shares something that something bad
will happen. Perhaps an argument happens,
perhaps it will be judged or rejected or criticized in some way,
but some bad consequences happen.
But notice here that the root cause of either of these problems are really at
the lack of safety in a relationship.
And if you've been following me for awhile, you know that safety,
psychological safety and emotional safety is really the root core.
It should be the foundation of your relationship.
And if you don't have that communication and everything else and the
relationship becomes a lot more challenging. And so in healthy relationship,
what happens is there is a very strong sense of safety on both sides here.
So on the one hand,
both of you will feel really free to express the full extent of your emotions.
And your thoughts,
no matter how sensitive or no matter how difficult it may be to express,
you will feel safe to express it because you've learned over many years that
expressing something leads to more good than harm,
that your partner actually listens, understands,
and the both of you can come to win-win solutions whenever you express
something, no matter how difficult.
And the same thing happens on the receiving end here,
when you have learned over many years here that you don't have to be defensive.
You don't have to be self justifying all the time,
then you can just take whatever's given to you is take whatever said to you and
admit your mistakes or admit the difficult things and nothing bad will happen
to.
But what happens if you lack safety when you slowly destroy safety is that the
first thing that happens is you start to have lies of omission in the
relationship. And a lot of people think that when people lie,
they are lying by telling mistruths. But when you're telling mistruths,
that's a lie of commission. So there's two types of lies here.
Lies of omission and commission.
So lies of omission is what I call the silent killer because you never really
know when someone is playing out this live omission because you don't know what
you don't know.
They're lying by simply not telling you the information that could be useful or
could be good for your relationship right now.
And you know you have some lies of omission in relationship or that the safety
may be a bit broken in the relationship when your partner starts stonewalling
you. Maybe. So you're asking a question and all she says is, I don't know,
or I don't want to talk about it or nothing.
When you know this actually something going on there.
And when you start to have lies of omission in the relationship due to lack of
safety, you start to have a lot more misunderstandings.
The relationship starts to get really confusing and that's when communication
really starts to break down. And then when safety gets destroyed even more,
what happens is you move from lies of omission now to lies of commission.
And that's when gaslighting starts to happen.
That's when anger like full on lies and the lack of trust starts to poison your
relationship.
So understand here that there's different levels to the lack of safety and the
more intense the lack of safety gets,
you move from lies of omission to lies of commission.
And when you have lies of commission,
when you find your partner or yourself is needing to lie a lot in the
relationship, that's when you should really worry.
And that's when you have this intense communication problem.
So the first question that you might have in your mind right now is what
destroys safety? How do I actually destroy safety?
Now the obvious ones here are if you respond often with anger and impatience,
whenever your partner wants to express something to you.
So perhaps your partner tells you about the mistake that they did or some really
bad news about something that happened recently. Alright?
Instead of simply listening and understanding things from her perspective,
you start to get unhinged.
You start to panic and you get angry and impatient and the conversation doesn't
end well. The other obvious one is judgements and insults.
So whenever she expresses something to you, a mistake or whatever it is,
you instantly judge character,
judge what she did or insult what she did.
And the other obvious one is when you're playing out this power play or power
and position, and this can often come in a form of lecturing.
So this is when your partner says something to you and instantly you're saying
to her, here's what you're going to do. Let me tell you what to do.
So this is a power play where you're kind of treating your partner like someone
you can lecture instead of treating each other as equals.
But there's also not so obvious and more subtle ways that you destroy safety.
And for this you have to really know the subtext,
the implications of what you're actually doing here.
So a lot of times when our partner says something,
perhaps she was trying to point a problem or a mistake that we made,
and instantly we try to justify, right? We say, no, no, no, no,
you misunderstood. This is what I was actually trying to do.
Or sometimes justifications can seem like you're trying to just do clarify
something. So you might say, no, that's not what happened, right?
This is what happened, this is what I was trying to do.
So it's this premature justification or clarification that can destroy safety.
The other not so obvious way is you're trying to use some implied consequences
and this is where ultimatums come in. So you might say, Hey,
if you don't do this, this will happen. Or else this will happen.
Or the other one is simply asking someone to get to the point.
So sometimes your partner may be expressing something to you and she may not be
the most articulate about it.
It's long winded and you were getting impatient and you say, Hey,
can you just get to the point, just spit it out.
Just tell me what your point is here.
And what you need to understand here is that when you're playing out the obvious
signals of how you destroy safety here,
or whether you're playing out the not so obvious, what you're saying to her is,
you know, whatever she says, we'll be judged, will be instantly judged.
You will deem it right or wrong and you may not even understand whether it's
right or wrong,
but you'll already judge it right or wrong from the get go that you don't have
the patients,
that you don't have the emotional stability to be able to deal with a very,
very difficult or sensitive topics.
And what happens is when you continually prove this to her,
you're solely going to remove that safety because you're going to make her
think, Hmm, should I say this or not? Should I express this or not?
For the fear of how you might react or how much rejection she might face or how
badly she might feel simply by expressing something to you.
So you have to always be aware of the Subutex of your communication here.
Understand that everything you say and do has an implication,
has a subtext and you have to understand is that subtext allowing for more
safety and encouraging her to share more and more with you or discouraging her
to share more and more with you.
And you have to recognize this subtext and whether you are playing out any of
these obvious or not. So obvious signs of destroying safety.
Because what happens is when you start to destroy safety by doing any of these
things, it becomes a self perpetual cycle.
And this is something you have to be really extra careful about and really
conscious of. So going back to this example here where you know,
you start with really high safety up top here,
but then eventually you destroy safety slowly by doing one of these things that
we mentioned before. And now you have some lies of omission.
Perhaps your partner starts to Stonewall you and keep more things to herself and
really doesn't talk to you and tell you the truth about everything.
And you know, there's something more to the story,
but somehow she's not telling you. Well,
if you were playing on any of these dysfunctional behaviors,
the obvious ones and the not so obvious ones,
what happens is when you face that stonewalling,
you're more likely to be playing out a more intense version of any of these
things that you're already playing out. So if you're used to being angry,
being judgmental, being insulting, or playing that power-play,
you might say something like, Oh, you're always trying to stonewalling me.
You're such a bad, you kind of express your thoughts properly.
You can express your emotions properly.
So we tend to play out an even stronger version of these patterns.
Or if you're used to asking him to get to the point, for example,
if your partner starts to Stonewall you and starts to play out this lies of
omission cycle, you're going to play a stronger version of that as well,
where you just tell her, look, just spit it out. Just tell me.
Stop keeping stuff to yourself. Just tell me.
So the point here is that as you're moving down to the lack of safety here,
and you start to see more and more symptoms of the lack of safety,
which is lies of omission,
you play out an even stronger version of your dysfunctional behavior and you
tend to push things down to destroy safety even more.
And that results in more destruction of safety,
which eventually pushes things down to the lies of commission.
And that's when you eventually reached a point where you get angry, you fight,
and you really don't feel comfortable telling the truth to each other anymore
for the fear of what might happen when you do.
So behind all communication problems is really the lack of safety.
So from here you can really understand how important the concept of emotional
and psychological safety is to the level of communication you have in your
relationship.
And if you are in a pattern right now where you destroy safety and you might be
doing this consciously or unconsciously, but whenever you're destroying safety,
you tend to destroy safety even more.
And it becomes a self perpetual cycle where it gets worse and worse and worse
over time.
And you're going to start to get more lies of omission and eventually lies of
commission. And finally reaching a point where you lose trust,
you lose ability to communicate at all and you're just arguing and fighting all
the time.
But the encouraging takeaway I want you to get from this video is that in a
while this cycle can go perpetually downhill. Like this,
how we painted this picture right here. It can also go uphill.
You have the power to be able to create this culture of safety for not only
yourself but also your partner as well.
And there is a way to lead conversations to lead the interactions you have
together with your partner that can create the safety for the both of you to
both be able to share better and to be able to receive better as well.
So stay tuned for the next videos to find out how you can do this.
Some mindset shifts you can use to do this and some techniques as well you can
use to do this. In the meantime though,
if you want a free guide that outlines exactly how you should lead that
conversation,
the steps you need to take for every conversation that you have with your
partner, that creates more safety, that stops this cycle,
this negative cycle that we talked about.
Then you want to download the free guide in the description box below this video
and if you want internet free live masterclass in the five proven steps to
rebuilding your relationships from the ground up,
you also want to check out the link in the description box below this video.
This masterclass will show you the exact five step process that all my students
go through and what I went through to rebuild my relationship.
And if you're at a point where you're struggling in your relationship and you
don't really know what to do or what next steps to take,
you want to attend this live master class because it will clearly lay out for
you what are the first steps you need to take to start rebuilding that
relationship and rebuilding that trust and rebuilding the admiration you have
for each other to create this deeper emotional bond and more intimacy in long
run as well.
And also be extending a special offer to you at the end of this masterclass,
but you only get access to the special offer if you attend that masterclass.
So be sure to check out the link in the description box below this video. Now,
of course, if you want to connect with me on a more personal level,
then you can also join my free Facebook group where you can post your questions
and actually get a good advice on the questions or the issues you're having in
your relationship right now and to join that Facebook group,
you also want to check out the link in the description box below this video and
in the meantime I want you to leave a comment below what did you find most
insightful, most eyeopening in this video? Leave a comment below.
I'd love to hear from you and if you like this video and found it to be
valuable,
then give it a like and subscribe to this channel for more content like this
one. In the meantime though,
I do want you to watch this two other videos I have and communication and how to
be a better listener so that you can equip yourself to create more safety every
single time you have conversations with your partner or more interactions with
your partner. In the meantime, I'll see you in the next video.