- Hey guys, Geoffrey here.
In this video, I wanna talk to you about the root
of all relationship problems,
and this is really the root
of why your partner wants a divorce
and doesn't even wanna try
to save the relationship any longer,
and really, if you fix this problem, if you fix this root,
you fix everything in the relationship,
and I know a lot
of you guys are rolling your eyes right now
whenever I say something so definitive like that,
but again, this has been proven thousands of times over.
If you watch any of my client stories,
you'll see one similar pattern,
they all start out with very different scenarios, sure,
but all those different scenarios have the same root cause.
With the same root cause, it's the same remedies,
and once they apply those same remedies, they're okay.
Their relationship recovers,
so I want you to stick around to the very end of this video,
especially if you're doubting what I'm saying right now,
because I don't want you to miss a thing,
and if you new to this channel,
my name is Geoffrey and I help men
in long term relationships or in marriages
with the right skills and knowledge
to be able to design a thriving relationship on your own,
and we do this without playing any games, any manipulation,
et cetera.
So if you want more content on this topic,
be sure to subscribe and also click that bell button
as well to be notified when I post new videos
every single week.
And before I begin this video, guys,
I also want to let you know that the masterclass
on the five proven steps to rebuilding your relationship,
from the ground up is below,
so if you wanna join me in that masterclass,
or if you want to submit your application
for the relationships revival program,
then be sure to stick around to the very end of this video
for announcements on how you can join both those things.
Now, before I begin this,
I also want to define a few things for you
on what that root is.
That root is really emotional and psychological safety.
So emotional safety is about your ability
to express in the relationship,
and psychological safety is about both ability to listen
to each other as well, and if you fix those two things,
you fix everything.
To understand that we need to understand
why the lack of safety is really the root
of all relationship issues.
So number one, it's really the cause
of what we call the death by a thousand cuts,
so a few video days ago,
we talked about the anatomy or the mechanics
of how relationships typically breaks down,
and in that video, we talked about the four stage cycle
of marriage breakdowns.
If you missed that video,
then I left a link for you up above my head here.
But essentially the four stage cycle kind of goes like this,
where stage one is about the conflict occurring,
and this conflict can be something very small
in the beginning, in the honeymoon period,
over an HD remote for example,
but eventually, with enough conflicts occurring,
you're going to start to respond in not so optimal ways,
and when that happens,
this un-optimal response can be a tiny, tiny deal.
It can be a tiny un-optimal response from you,
but that creates the seed of the lack of safety.
When that happens,
there's gonna be a lot more hesitation for your partner
to share now, and with the hesitation,
there's more and more things built up.
Now with more and more things built up,
that creates even more issues,
and this cycle just keeps happening,
and the way you can see this cycle is almost
like the flywheel effect where,
imagine you have a big flywheel here,
and every day for five years let's say,
you've been spinning this flywheel
in one particular direction,
and eventually the flywheel spins so fast.
And when that flywheel spins fast,
imagine someone asking you,
"Well, which spin got it to spin so fast?"
Well, you can't answer that because it's not just one spin.
It's many spins.
It's a combination of every day spinning it for five years,
or 10 years, or 15 years,
so a lot of you are in this position
where you might start off in a very honeymoon period,
and then eventually things get really bad,
where it is right now.
What you don't realize is that
this flywheel has been spinning in the wrong direction
for a lot longer than you think,
and a lot of people, when they're in this scenario,
when things are hopeless, things are desperate,
they've misdiagnosed this by saying, for example,
"Oh, we're not a good fit, things happen," et cetera,
but what we don't know is that it's this tiny little moment,
death by a thousand cuts that happen over time
in the relationship caused by the lack of safety
that happens over time.
So again, this is one really good way
to represent why safety is really the root of all issues.
Now, another way we can look at this,
is also looking at safety issues as an amplifier
to problems, so all relationships have problems.
We know this.
So you have money issues, for example.
You have incompatibility issues.
You might have sexual problems,
but having all these problems are not really big problems
if you have safety.
If you have safety, you can talk about it.
You can listen to it, you can resolve it,
then all these problems you know will go away,
but the real problems come when you have these problems,
but you don't even have the safety to talk about it,
and again, so you have the problem itself,
but then you have another layer of problems behind it,
which is the problem of not even being able
to talk about it, feeling embittered about it,
repressing it, et cetera,
but again, this doesn't happened to just one problem.
It happens to many layers of problems here,
but not only that,
there's also the depth because you can think about,
let's say you have money problems,
then you have the problem of not even being able
to talk about it.
Well, being bitter on that creates more problems,
more problems, and so you can imagine here without safety,
it creates a lot of complex layers of depth,
but also breadth of problems as well,
which is why for people who don't have safety,
and for a lot of you right now,
you might be in a position
where things become very overwhelming.
It's not just about one problem anymore,
but this complex web of so many problems,
all seemingly related to each other, made from each other,
causing each other, et cetera, et cetera,
and this creates a lot of that bitterness and hopelessness.
Now the third thing is also is that without safety,
it creates a lot of changes in both your characters due
to the act of self preservation.
And so as you keep destroying safety
through the thousand cuts,
and as you amplify the problems over and over again,
it starts to change the whole culture of that relationship,
so usually what happens is both people will start
to deal with this in a very stoic way.
They try to logically work through things.
They try to find solutions, et cetera,
but then when they realize that that stoic way doesn't work,
that stoicism turns to active anger,
where they're just really angry now.
They're shouting.
They're gas lighting.
They're just really showing all
that very active, toxic behaviors,
but then when they realize
that the active, toxic behaviors doesn't work,
they go into the third stage, which is the passive.
That's when they resort to stonewalling,
giving up, hopelessness, cold shoulder, et cetera,
so the thing is that right now,
if you're in a brink of a divorce like this,
you might find that your partner is doing a lot
of very toxic behaviors, maybe some of the stoic,
some of the active, some of the passive,
maybe a combination of all of it,
and a lot of us often assign this to the wrong things,
which is, "Oh, they have some character issues.
They have some flaws.
They have some things wrong with them,"
but really again, the problem goes back to,
there was a safety issue
and the safety issue changed the culture,
and that culture changed their behavior.
Again, if you fix a safety issue, you fix everything.
Now the fourth thing is that this is what creates
what we call the hopeless catch 22,
and so now you have all these problems on top of problems
on top of problems that width and breath and depth
of it is intense, but it's not even that bad,
because what's even worse than this is that most couples,
at this point find themselves in such a low level of safety,
that they have so much baggage brewing.
They have so many issues brewing.
They have so much unhappiness brewing, but once again,
if they share it,
they will lose for the same reasons
of why they don't feel safe in the first place.
Either they'll get ignored,
nothing will happen.
They'll feel hopeless.
They'll somehow regret sharing it,
so they lose if they share, and then they lose for sure
if they don't share because then nothing will happen.
Nothing will get fixed,
so they put in some sort of position
where no matter where they step, they lose,
and for most people,
this is what pushes people over the edge.
This is what causes people to get divorced,
the problems, everything like that.
they don't cause people to want divorce.
What really causes people to want divorce is this catch 22,
this really hopeless catch 22,
and again, this is created by the lack of safety,
and if you think about it,
everything else points back to here.
For example, if partner feels hopeless,
because the catch 22.
Why?
Because of the lack of safety.
If you have sexual issues,
well, one thing is that you don't have the safety
to talk about the very sensitive things about sex.
For example, it could be
that your partners having a hard time
to surrender to the act of sex
and to just feel safe in the act of sex
because of the lack of safety.
If you're having admiration issues, goal-alignment issues,
again, why can't you communicate about it?
Why can't you resolve it?
Because of safety issues.
If you have financial issues,
it's not really about the financial issues,
but the fact that you don't have the safety
to talk about the financial issues and resolve it.
You have communication issues,
it's not really that you have communication issues,
but maybe you have so little safety that you cannot,
you have such a hard time expressing yourself to each other
and listening to each other, for example,
so everything, no matter how you cut it, guys,
no matter what your problems are,
no matter what you think your problems are,
everything points back to safety issues.
This is really the root of all problems,
root of why you are in the situation you are in right now.
Everything, no matter how unique your situation is,
you think everything points back to safety issues.
So again, which is why if you watch any
of my client stories, they all have different scenarios,
but the same root issues at the end of the day,
and I'll talk a lot about this in my masterclass guys,
so if you wanna learn more about safety and the importance
of it and the internal shifts you need,
and all the tools you need to create safety,
then I would encourage you to join me in my masterclass
on the five proven steps to rebuilding your relationship
from the ground up,
so I'll put the link above here or down below this video.
But again, once we understand why and how safety is the root
of all things,
we also understand why fixing it will fix everything,
usually.
So if you learn how to create safety
and you're essentially removing someone
from the catch 22,
so now all these problems will still exist, yes,
but at least the problems have an outlet to be expressed,
to be resolved, to be listened to, et cetera,
and that makes all the difference for a lot of my clients.
And so that's what your partner is looking for.
She's not looking for the perfect product
where no problems exist.
She's looking for an outlet for those problems,
and so if you want to see more evidence of this,
there's an interview with Lawrence and Elsha,
with Lawrence who joined the program alone,
and Elsha joining in later on
once she saw that there's hope,
because again, the catch 22 is removed.
Another one we're gonna publish next week
with Jason Travado and his wife, Maria,
same story there.
At first, his wife was totally out of the picture,
totally hopeless, but once Jason started to create
that safety and remove that catch 22,
everything change as well.
I mean, think about this for yourself.
Think about if you have all these problems now,
but then you have an outlet,
in which you can express yourself
and actually lead somewhere, to a resolution,
to something better.
Would you feel as hopeless?
Would you still want divorce?
Hard to say.
I don't think so.
So again, a lot of you always roll your eyes
when I say no situation is unique, no situations too dire,
but again, it's been proven thousands of times over.
All my client stories have the same pattern,
different cases, all with the same root cause
with the same root treatments,
which is to create safety, and once you do that,
that fixes everything.
And this is crucial too guys, while safety will fix a lot
of things, it's not an overnight fix.
It's not like you create safety overnight,
and then suddenly everything changes.
So from a lot of my clients,
it takes them about three to five months
to really embrace the internal shifts needed,
the internal skills needed to actually create safety.
From there, it takes another three to five months,
or even up to a year sometimes for their partner
to really go through what we call the paradox of change
and really start to slowly believe the changes.
So it's not an overnight fix, but if you do create safety,
it's magical what happens within a year, a year and a half,
et cetera.
Now, guys, the next natural question for you
to ask is, how do we actually create safety then?
And I actually have a master class on this.
I'll just link that above my head here on teaching you how
to create safety, the internal shifts you need, et cetera,
but I wanna spend some time to talk about also why
most people struggle to fix it.
So the thing you need to know about safety is
that safety is created or destroyed in the moments
that you cannot fake.
So I want you to think about this closely with me
for a moment guys, right?
If let's say you have someone who does the right things,
who makes you feel safe 99% of the time
when things they're easy,
but when the time that you bring up
the most difficult thing, the toughest thing,
the most difficult truth,
they blow up, they stonewall you.
They make you feel like you regret sharing it,
Which would you look at?
Which situation would you look at that creates safety.
Of course, that one moment when you did wrong.
So there's a few reasons why people really struggle
to create safety here.
Number one is the issue of being wrongfully certain
about something.
So especially wrongfully certain about playing victim
or what we call the fundamental attribution error,
and again, we have videos on this that you can refer back
to and I'll leave the links down below this video as well.
So basically if you understand how our mind works
and how our actions work, it's really simple.
It's a diagnosis leads to how you question the world.
How you question the world leads to what answers you get,
what answers you get leads to the thinking around
how you treat your problems,
which leads to the feeling,
which leads to the doing the actions,
which leads to the results,
and this all starts with the diagnosis part.
So if you diagnose your situation wrong in a unhealthy way,
then this will just influence everything down the line.
And the worst thing is that also the way you think about
something, the way you feel about something,
the way you do something,
the results you get that will then if you let's say fall
for the victim mindset,
that will then get filtered down into the victim mindset
as well, and the cycle repeats,
and if left unchecked,
you can just go further and further
into the wrong direction, even faster,
which is what victims find themselves in all the time.
Now I've made a very extensive video on the victim mindset,
so I'm not gonna go too deep into it.
Again, you find it down below this video,
but again, if you play victim,
if you diagnose everything in a victim way,
then that will change the nature
of the questions you ask the world.
That will change the answers you get.
That will change your thinking.
That will change your feelings about something.
That will change your results, your actions
that leads to the results,
and when you realize
that your victim mindset is actually destroying safety
and making things worse,
perpetuating all the problems we said earlier.
When you see things getting worse,
you'll interpret that again with your victim mindset
and this keeps going and going and going,
and this cycle is what we call confirmation bias.
It's hypothetic thinking.
It's why people stay stuck
in destroying safety and they cannot get out
of the pattern destroying safety.
They just can't help it.
That's the first reason.
Second reason too, is they have the wrong ideas
of creating safety.
So previous video, we talked about the three deadly pitfalls
that people make when they're in a brick of divorce.
We talk about smart contact.
We talk about having the perfect product
or perfect solution illusion.
We talk about the high value illusion, for example.
All these things are illusions where people often think
these are things you need to do to create safety,
but actually these are things you do to destroy safety,
so if you don't understand what it truly means
to create safety, you are going to fall
for all the blind spots,
all the common mistakes,
all the pitfalls that people fall into
when trying to create safety.
They think they're creating safety,
but actually they're destroying it even more,
and again, this blindness to their mistakes is often
why people remain stuck in their patterns.
They can't get themselves out
and stop doing the wrong things
if they're not even aware that what they're doing is wrong.
The next reason is because they never catch
their blind spots of how they destroy safety,
so for example, we've talked
about the blind victim illusion.
We talk about the wrongfully certain diagnosis,
and you hear a lot of my clients say this a lot,
in that when they first are in the program,
they thought they were doing a good job
of avoiding the victim mindset, of creating safety,
of doing all these things,
but when they realize all these subconscious ways,
all these programmed ways they've been falling
for the victim illusion, for example, then they realize,
"Wow, I actually fall into it a lot more
than I thought.
I actually had a lot more blind spots than I thought."
And the thing about blind spots is
that you can never spot it yourself.
That's the scary part.
So you could live life,
always thinking that you're doing the correct things,
not knowing that you have all these blind spots,
and your results could be getting worse and worse and worse,
and you will never catch the fact that you have blind spots.
You always think that you're doing the right things.
Now, the last thing is really
about whether your changes are surface level
or whether they're in a very, very deep level,
so the problem with a lot of people is
that they have changed, yes,
but they haven't made their changes
into their new programming,
so basically the quote is
that most people practice something
until they can get it right,
but very few people practice until they can't get it wrong.
So I want you to think about that for a moment,
because that's a very important concept.
So a lot of people, they learn something,
they may find the right process,
the right changes,
but they only master something
until they can get it right once or twice,
but the old self is still the default.
They're doing the new things,
doing the right things is still takes a lot of work,
takes a lot of effort for them.
It feels very unnatural to them,
and it feels like a lot of energy
and a lot of repressing still mounting together.
If that's the case, then eventually you'll explode.
You'll go back to your old self
and you'll undo the house of cards you built.
You'll do some things right,
many things right,
but you'll do many things wrong,
and often you'll do many things wrong
beneath your consciousness,
unconsciously and the things wrong
that you do will be very, very big.
And so this is what happens when you practice
until you can get it right.
but my clients, what I teach 'em to do is
to practice until they can't get it wrong,
so that's when the change is to become your lowest default,
that even when you're sleepy, when you're tired,
when you're having a rough time, whatever it is,
you are accidentally now doing the right things.
That's what makes the difference,
because again, safety is created in the subtle moments,
not in the obvious moments, the subtle moments,
the moments that you cannot fake anymore,
and we have a video on the patterns of change
that I'll put down below this video as well
if you want to understand
why making something a programming
like this is so so crucial.
And the last thing guys, the big, big, big mistake
that people make is really rushing the process
of healing, rushing the process of creating safety.
It takes three to five months for my clients
to really master the internal shift, the internal skills,
and it takes up to three to even a year,
sometimes for your product to really catch up
to your new self,
and for a lot of people,
because they haven't really programmed
the changes internally, they have a hard time making
these changes last and making the changes very consistently
over a long period of time,
and if you watch that video on the patterns of change again,
you'll see why, if your progress up and down like this,
where you're not consistent,
it's really, really hard to create safety that way,
and that's the biggest mistake of all,
is people rushing things.
People are trying to use tactics.
People are trying to shortcut this thing.
The shortcuts and tactics don't exist.
With that, guys, I hope that was helpful for you
in really understanding
why safety is really the root cause,
and I understand that
when it comes to your dire situation right now,
things can seem very complex.
It can seem very confusing.
There's so many advice everywhere,
but I hope you understand now why safety is the root
of all things and why the problems are actually simpler
than you think,
and I hope this points you in the right direction
in terms of how you can solve your problems too,
but I'll leave you in the meantime
with two other videos, with more skills and knowledge
for you to design a thriving relationship,
but for now, guys, I will see you in the next video.