Hey everyone it's Geoffrey here. And we all know that transparency is very,
very important for a relationship. And without transparency,
your relationship will break down.
But what if no matter what you try to say it to your partner, your partner,
or you is struggling to be transparent? Well,
in this video I'm going to show you the one thing you need that one ingredient
you need to really create transparency in your relationship and for the best
marriage and relationship tips.
Then subscribe to this channel and click that bell button to be notified every
time I post a new video every Wednesday and every Saturday
[inaudible].
And so when I have a new client coming to my practice, to my program,
the first thing, the biggest thing they struggle with is with transparency.
Either one of them or both of them are really struggling to open up and really
talk about their own, their true feelings,
their genuine feelings about something about the relationship.
And usually what happens is they tell other half truths or to tell just full
lies.
But all it takes to solve this transparency issue is usually the understanding
of one principle. And so I'm going to show you what this one principle is.
And once you understand this,
this can really stop all the half truths and lies in the relationship and create
transparency for good.
And so the number one mistake that people make when trying to create
transparency in a relationship is forcing transparency to happen.
And a lot of people think that, you know, transparency leads to trust.
But in my experience it's really backwards where trust is required for
transparency to happen and to explain why.
Understand that trust really equals safety here. And so before anyone,
including myself, including you can be fully transparent about something,
anything we need to trust that the person we're talking to is a safe person to
talk to. So if you're working in a company, for example,
and you have some bad news to tell,
but you also know that every time you try to tell this bad news to your boss,
your boss is gonna just flip shit. He's going to freak out.
Would you tell your boss, would you tell your boss this bad news?
The answer is probably not because you don't trust that your boss is a great
person to talk about this negative problem with.
And does the same thing for a relationship. You know when we talk about trust,
we often think about trust in terms of from your perspective,
which is do I trust my partner to tell the truth?
But you have to consider the other side too,
which is does your partner trust you to be able to be transparent and talk to
you about their problems, about the issues,
about the really harsh truths that could be really difficult to hear.
And so if you don't create the safety,
then trust is gone completely from the relationship.
And so to give you an example of how this unfolds,
so usually it's begins with one partner. You know,
this one partner could have cheated,
they could be having fantasies about being with other women,
other people and so on.
They could be feeling not really in love with the relationship anymore so
they're not in love or they don't have the feeling,
the same feelings in the relationship anymore.
And this person subconsciously is asking himself,
is it safe for me to actually express this stuff to my partner?
Can actually tell my partner I've cheated?
Can I actually tell my partner I'm thinking about cheating?
Can I actually tell my partner that I don't feel the same way about the
relationship anymore and I kind of want a divorce? Can I say it to my partner?
And if there's no safety created, then the answer is clear. They're not.
And so what often happens is they start doing things behind the other partner's
back and when the other partner finds out that destroys trust completely.
But notice here that the destruction of trust always begins with one partner
feeling unsafe and hiding the truth from the other.
And then once the other finds out, that's when the whole trust is broken.
And so if we understand that the safety issue is really the core reason,
the root of why a trust is destroyed in a relationship,
why people lie in the first place,
then when we want to talk about solutions or fixing or building back up this
transparency and trust, what we need to talk about is safety.
How to build safety,
how do we make it so that our partner can express something to us and trust that
we're going to take it well and not cause this stir or big argument and they
feel safe and they can trust us fully to be fully transparent about their full
feelings.
And the first thing you need to start doing to create this trust is to start
reacting well to your partner's expressions.
And especially if what they're expressing is the harsh truth or the difficult
things that are actually killing the relationship. You know,
when I work with a client,
the first thing I get them to realize is just how important it is to actually
react well to your partner's expressions. And so imagine this case.
So imagine that you are talking to your partner and your partner kind of slips
up and they say, Hey, uh,
I don't feel the same way about this relationship anymore.
And then you respond to that expression by getting angry,
by getting really upset and telling him like, how dare you say that?
How can you say that you don't love me anymore? That's impossible.
How can you say that? You get all confused. You get all angry,
you get all impatient and you get really upset at your partner for feeling that
way. But what I'm trying to get them to realize is this,
your partner just told you something very difficult to tell.
They just revealed to you some very harsh truth that's probably been bothering
them for a very, very long time. But as soon as they express it, you flip out.
So ask yourself,
is your partner going to be more transparent with you or less transparent the
next time he has some bad news to tell you,
is he going to tell you or is he going to keep it to himself?
If you keep reacting in a bad way like that, then the answer becomes very clear.
He's not going to tell you he's going to keep more and more things to himself
because he knows that if he does express them to you its never going to end
well. Everyone's just gonna flip shit and it's never going to end well.
It's going to end in this big argument that is gonna make you miserable for
months.
So the first thing you need to understand is you need to develop the skill to
actually react well when your partner expresses something,
especially the harsh truth. And I made a video on this already.
And if you want more details on how to actually do this,
then click the link here for the video. And this video above,
we'll tell you how to wear that Bulletproof vest,
how to stay calm in the face of very intense situations.
So when your partner is giving you this very harsh truth,
how do you stay calm on top of that? And when you can stay calm,
then you can start to create safety. But if you can't even stay calm,
then safety is always going to be destroyed. So again,
the first question to ask yourself is,
are you right now or rewarding your partner more for expressing their truth or
are you punishing them? And so if you're punishing them,
if you've been punishing them by reacting really badly to their expressions,
then it shouldn't be no surprise to you that you have transparency issues.
But when you're focused on rewarding that, you know, saying thank you,
thank you for sharing and not panicking every time they share something with
you, that's a much better step. And the really,
the difference between a good couple and a really bad couple is the good couples
see these kinds of harsh truths as read the beginning.
They realize that whether their partner tells them or not,
these harsh truth was somewhere and it's killing the relationship.
And they would rather you know the devil they know than the devil. They don't.
So when they find out the truth, that's the start for them.
That's a start because now they can start fixing it.
They can start understanding it. But for bad couples,
the harsh truth are really the end. That's when they panic.
That's when they freak out. And so they see it very differently.
So which one do you want to be? That's your choice.
And tell us in the comments below,
what is one thing that you can start doing to reward your partner for sharing
and stop punishing them for sharing. So just one thing.
We'd love to hear your thoughts. So comment below.
And the second tip is to understand how to start conversations in the correct
way. The thing is that when you don't have safety and when there's lack of
transparency, you both have your bound to have a lot of pent up stuff,
a lot of repressed stuff in your hearts and all that repressed stuff is going to
create a lot of bitterness,
a lot of anger and it's going to make both of you very defensive.
You know if you have so much bitterness about your partner is only takes like
that smallest thing that your partner says to really trigger you and same thing
for your partner.
And so in a spot where both of you are lacking transparency and both of you are
very defensive,
you need to be extra careful and extra artful and skillful in how you start
conversations. And if you've been following me for awhile,
you know that I'm a big fan of starting intense conversations in nonverbal ways
and once you call each other down through those non verbal ways,
start by asking very open ended questions and these open ended questions can be
like, tell me your thoughts on that. Tell me what you're thinking about that.
You know, often we ask questions,
but our questions are really assumptions disguised as questions.
And if you want more details on this,
I've made a very detailed video on this and how you can start conversations
properly in this video right here,
so I would click that link to understand how to start conversations in a much
more productive way.
And the third thing you need is the ability to push through resistance.
And so when someone is defensive and someone's not being very transparent,
there's a lot of resistance there and that resistance is caused by a lack of
safety. And so people can resist in two ways.
One way is by kind of walking off and ignoring the conversation.
That's the passive way of resisting and understand that when people walk away
like that,
that's them telling you that they know that talking to you is useless.
They're really suspicious of why do you even want to talk?
Because every time you want to talk it's an argument. So why even talk?
So they walk away and so they don't feel safe and they know that nothing could
come out of this. And so they walk away. The other form of resistance is anger.
And people get angry because they get very defensive and people get defensive
because they have learned over many years that talking to you is a really,
really bad idea. And so they want to stop you,
forcing them to talk to you by getting angry and hopefully their anger can
actually get you to stop forcing them to talk to you. But either way,
either passively or actively,
those are resistance and understand that when people resist,
that's then really testing the waters.
Is it safe for me to express or is it still unsafe?
And if you react badly to their resistance, then that will confirm to them, ah,
I knew it, I knew it was not safe. And so that will confirm to them even more.
That it was never safe in the first place.
But if you learn how to handle that resistance properly,
then you can start to kind of disprove their theories here.
And you start to prove to them that Hey,
your preconceived notions that is not safe is actually not true.
It's actually safe.
And so if you want to learn how to push through resistance the right way,
then I would recommend that you check out this video right here and that will
give you a step by step view of what resistance looks like and how you can fight
through the most common resistance and creating safety might take work in the
short term, but it makes it much, much easier for you in the long term.
And so not only do you get more transparency,
but you also will find that there'll be less lies and less half-truths.
You'll find that it's easier to understand each other because now instead of
kind of keeping it to yourself, you're expressing whatever thoughts you have.
And so if your partner is feeling really bad about the relationship,
he's not just left there to stew and wonder and you're not left there.
to stew and wonder as well. But you can both kind of express it and address it,
understand it, and solve it together. Not only that,
you can resolve conflicts better,
you know it's impossible to resolve conflicts if neither of you know the truth.
Neither of you know the truth of a certain situation or where you guys are at.
But once you understand each other's point of view,
then you can resolve conflicts better.
And in general you can start communicating better. Uh,
not about just serious stuff but just about everything.
And you both will start feeling like one team, one unit,
because when you share more stuff to each other like that and share freely,
you start to understand each other.
And when you keep solving conflicts together like this,
then your relationship will become this place that's actually pretty nice that
you look forward to coming home to because you can just be yourself.
You can just express whatever you want to express,
you can resolve whatever tough challenges you face, but if you can't do that,
then your relationship is not some place you want to be because you will
associate your relationship with the place where bad things happen.
Arguments happen where you have to repress yourself and so on.
And so understand that this safety thing not only creates transparency,
but it opens so many doors in your relationship and with all these doors open,
it makes it much, much easier for you in the long run - in three months,
six months, a year. If you keep creating safety,
your relationship will look a lot different.
And I'll leave you with this one more thought,
which is that safety is hard earned but easily destroyed.
So never get complacent here.
Just understand that if you show your partner just once,
that you will react badly in the face of those harsh truths,
then you will destroy safety a hundred times.
You could have built safety for a year,
but just one moment can really destroy that safety.
And so never be complacent and really investigate the skills that gave you to
allow you to become Bulletproof,
to allow you to push through resistance and start conversations in the correct
way. Because if you can master those three things,
you're going to put your relationship in a much, much better place.
And so if you want a resource that can give you a very detailed understanding of
how to create transparency and how to create safety to open up all these doors
of possibilities for your relationship.
Then you want to access my four day training series,
this four day training series.
We'll give you a step by step plan of how you can create this foundation for
your relationship. And so if you're interested in getting that course,
then the link to that course is in the description box below this video.
And if you're looking for a safe space where you can talk about your issues in
your relationship and actually get really good advice about it from experts,
then you also want to join our secret Facebook group where you can find a
community with experts and also people who are just as committed and as
dedicated to fixing the relationship and working on the relationship as you are.
And if you want to join that group, the link is also below this video.
So if you liked this video then give it a thumbs up,
give it a like and subscribe to this channel. For more videos like this.
And tell us, which of these tips did you actually find most valuable?
Did you find most insightful? Leave a comment below.
We'd love to hear your thoughts. And with that,
thank you for watching this video and supporting this channel. You know,
it's so good to see all of your support for this new channel,
but in the meantime, I will see you in the next video.