00:00there's one thing that will degrade trust in your relationship more than anything else. It's this
00:05threatening to leave the relationship when things get hard, even if you don't mean it, even if it's
00:10said in passing, in anger, under your breath, even if you take it back after you've calmed down,
00:15because once leaving becomes a card that you play, your partner stops feeling like they can lean on
00:20the relationship and it no longer feels like a place where they can come with the hard things.
00:24So they stop being honest. They stop taking risks. They stop opening up, not because they don't want
00:29to, but because safety has literally left the building. When you use the relationship itself
00:35as leverage, now you don't have a shared foundation to stand on. Part of what we're working to do when
00:39we're building healthy rupture and repair cycles is to get our nervous systems to understand that it's
00:44okay to have a falling out, that it's normal and safe, no matter what we saw modeled growing up in
00:49our families. That's the goal. But there is no way that our system will ever feel settled enough to
00:54open up into actual safety. When in fights, we're consistently feeling like if we speak the thing
00:59that's hard, that there's a possibility of the relationship ending. Conflict doesn't erode trust.
01:04The uncertainty of wondering whether this will finally be the last thing I can bring up that
01:09makes the whole house crumble does. So you can be mad. You can take space. You can set a boundary
01:14about what won't work for you. Totally healthy and normal. But when you casually threaten to walk
01:18when it gets hard, eventually your partner is going to stop racing and start believing you. And by then
01:23damage will be done. The amount of work it takes to come back into a healthy place of conflict
01:27after threatening to leave is way, way, way harder work than not saying the impulsive thing and just
01:34sticking with the argument at hand. So do yourself a favor. Unless you mean it, don't say it. So if you
01:39do ever mean it, it's taken seriously and addressed as a real consideration, not an empty threat.
01:44don't say it.
01:48I don't think you've ever seen the same thing, just before letting you read the past when you
01:50get rid of the two different things. The second one is what you do to do in the
01:52world. And I do that. So do you want to go into a different thing?
01:53It's like you are going into a different way. So you're going to get rid of it.
01:54But you don't think I'm going to get rid of it, but I think it's actually your
01:56way. Oh, right. And then if you just add a couple of things, you're going to be
01:57there. So I think that's just one thing, because when we're going to go back into a
01:58little thing, it's actually having a different type of place. And then I think that's
02:00a perfect tool. And then I think that's what I think.
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