00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 344, "Are You a Safe Place For Vulnerability?" Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. 

00:22 

Alright, hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. I am just so glad to have you here. I am recording this from American Samoa. Just as last year, my husband comes out here to do some work in the hospital and I get to come along. Being as all of my work is online or over Zoom, it works out really, really well, and I can come and do that. Here I am today. 

00:47 

A couple of things before we get started. The next Talk with Tanya is going to be February 11th. If you want to sign up for that, you can go to the "group coaching" tab on my website, tanyahale.com. There is a place there where you can sign up. You'll get an email with a link and then you can come to that. We had a great time last time. We talked about some great things. We talked more intensely with one person for a while and then he was like, "I think I took too much time," and somebody else was like, "no, that was perfect. Exactly what I needed to hear." It's just great stuff. You can talk to me about anything. I am a wide open book. So happy to chat with you, to coach you, to just discuss topics more in depth, whatever comes up. I am all for it. 

01:31 

Second, I want to let you know that I am planning and preparing some sense of self classes that will be starting in March and I'm super excited about those. The more that I have really settled into the idea of sense of self and how it works and what it's about, the more I just realize how vital it is if we are going to have a strong healthy relationships. We cannot be strong in a relationship if we are not strong in ourselves. So we have to create this strong sense of self. So those are going to be starting March. I don't have anything nailed down on those, but I want you to put those in the back of your brain. Let your brain start working on them because they will be great. And I think everybody can benefit from a stronger sense of self. 

02:13 

Also, if you are not getting my weekend email, you're going to want to go to my website as well. As soon as you go to tanyahale.com, there will be a pop-up where you can sign up for what's called my "weekend win." And this is just a quick email meant to be read in like two minutes or less. It's going to come sometime during the weekend. And this is where you're going to get heads up first of all of the stuff going on, of the classes that I've got, of anything else that I have. So if you want to make sure that you get those, they're great. They're just a little tidbit of information for you to go, huh, that was interesting. I'm going to see how that works, okay? 

02:47 

And then the last thing, if you love this podcast and I, first of all, I love you for being here. Thank you. I just really am impressed with your ability to keep showing up and to keep trying to learn and understand and figure out this challenging piece of life, which is relationships and how to really show up in ways that are meaningful and helpful and that build connection. And so if you love this, if this is doing that for you, I would love for you to leave me a review. You can do that on Apple and you can do that on Spotify. More reviews help other people find this information. It moves it up in the algorithm so that when people type in related words, it moves this closer to the top so it's easier for people to find. And so that is a great way that you can share it. Reviews only take, it'll take you less than five minutes to do that. And so you can just go to, like on Apple, when you open it up, you can open up my podcast, scroll down to the bottom of the, like, 10 or 12 that they have there and there will be a place where you can leave a review right there. Super quick and easy. And also share this with people that you think can benefit from these concepts. I have a lot of people who share these with their spouses and it starts changing the dynamics in the relationship when that happens. 

04:04 

So, okay, let's go ahead and jump into today. Are you a safe place for vulnerability? I love this topic because we've been talking about vulnerability the last few weeks. And I realized last week in my relationship class where we were also talking about vulnerability, that a piece that I haven't talked about is whether we create a safe place for others to be vulnerable with us. So first let's do a quick review of vulnerability for going the dictionary definition because we've covered that the past few weeks. Here's my own made up special definition. Vulnerability is having the courage to risk physical engagement or sharing intimate and personal details with another person with the hope that they will honor and respect your offering, respond in kind and or with kindness in order to develop a more emotionally intimate relationship. 

04:57 

Okay, the reason vulnerability is so important in our relationships is because it is what propels a relationship into a deeper, more intimate space. When we choose to be the person who shares something personal or who reaches out for physical touch when that hasn't been the norm, we are choosing to be vulnerable. We are taking a risk, even if the other person doesn't want a deeper relationship with us, because we might be rejected or even ridiculed for our vulnerability. And yet, if the other person receives what we offer, they will often feel safe enough to also share something vulnerable. And that's how great friendships and great relationships begin. Someone being brave enough to take the first step. So, of course, we all want the other person to respond well when we choose to step into vulnerability. We want them to listen, to understand, to validate our fears and our insecurities, to offer us grace for our weaknesses or sins or even just our humanity. We want to feel safe when we are sharing. 

05:58 

And here's what's fascinating about us as humans: even though those are all the things that we would want from someone else if we were choosing to be vulnerable, it can be really hard sometimes to offer the same to others when they share something vulnerable. So Brene Brown had an interesting experience several years ago. So Brene is a shame researcher and vulnerability has come up a lot in her work. In fact, as I've mentioned before, she is the one who introduced me to the concept of vulnerability in relationships. And I know I was a little late to the party, but I made it, thank goodness. So all of her research at this point when she had this experience had been done on women, at least to begin with. But after giving a presentation on her research about shame and vulnerability, a man approached her afterwards and here's her recollection of the exchange. 

06:48 

She says, "I did not interview men for the first four years of my study. It wasn't until a man said, 'I love what you say about shame, but I'm curious why you didn't mention men.' And I said, 'I don't study men.' And he said, 'that's convenient.' And I said, 'why?' And he said, 'because you say to reach out, tell our story, be vulnerable, but you see those books you just signed for my wife and daughters?' I said, 'yeah.' He said, 'they'd rather me die on top of my white horse than watch me fall down. When we reach out and are vulnerable, we get the shit beat out of us. And don't tell me it's from the guys and the coaches and the dads, because the men in my life are harder on me than anyone else,'" 

07:33 

So here is where I see women as often contributing to the men in our lives not being vulnerable. When they did try, assuming that they did, we shut them down. Let's talk about the ways that we do that, not just with spouses, but with other people who we're in relationship with as well. How do we make it unsafe? I'm going to be talking today from a women's point of view so men keep listening though and understand the concepts and apply them from a men's point of view. So how do we create unsafe places for others to be vulnerable with us? 

08:09 

The first one we're going to talk about is we dismiss them. They share something vulnerable and we ignore it. We gloss right over it as though it didn't happen. My daughter Allison sent me a video the other day and it's completely scripted but I think it's a good example of being dismissive. So a man is sitting outside on a bench with a mostly gone spool of wire in his hands and the wife comes out and asks what he's doing and he starts by saying, "look at this wire. I've had this spool of wire for almost 40 years and now it's almost gone." So this is paraphrasing but he goes on to say a few things about how it's reflective of 40 years of his life, how now that's almost gone and he's getting a little bit emotional, he has a catch in his voice and his eyes get all kind of teary and what the wife dismisses his vulnerability. She says something about, "oh well, you're wearing your Jets hat and I thought that that's why you were crying because they're losing," And then he stands up and looks at her and he says "okay, I'm done," and he walks away. 

09:13 

So how often do you dismiss or make light of others when they are vulnerable with you? This man was being a little bit vulnerable. He was being self-reflective. He was sharing that and she just dismissed it and blew it off. I don't think it's intentional most of the time, but I think we all do it. We just need to learn to be aware of it and here's what I see happening in this scenario that I just shared. The husband is vulnerable, being reflective of his life, and his wife gets super uncomfortable. It might be the "I'm getting older and life is winding down" discussion, or maybe it's the "my husband is getting emotional" part. But she's uncomfortable with him in that scenario and so to avoid her own discomfort she moves right past his vulnerability and she dismisses it. She ignores what he said and even goes on to mock him a bit about his football team losing and the fact that he's crying about it. 

10:12 

When someone in your life shows up vulnerable, does it make you uncomfortable? And if so, how often do you respond by dismissing it? Look at it this way: here's this husband who instead of a spool of wire in his hands has a bloody piece of his heart and he holds it out for you to see and you look away. You ignore it. You show that it doesn't matter to you, that you are not interested in his pain or his hurt, that you don't want to see what's really going on inside of him. And having someone dismiss you is so painful. For me, I make it mean that I'm not important to them, that they only care about me if I'm easy to love. And being dismissed is so lonely. This is why so many people in marriages say they are so much more lonely than when they are single. I know that was true for me in my previous marriage. Once I got divorced, I wasn't lonely at all. I was way more lonely when I was married. 

11:18 

So, we've talked before about John Gottman's concept of sliding doors. Someone in our life, let's say our spouse, shows a bit of vulnerability. They make a bid for connection. That's what I see this man doing when he opens up his thoughts about the spool of wire. He's trying to connect with his wife on a deeper level. When that sliding door of vulnerability happens, we just have a short window to respond before the door slides shut. When we don't respond to a bid for connection, we lose the opportunity. We dismiss when we pretend we didn't notice the bid for connection, when we see it and brush over it, when we respond to the words and ignore the emotion behind them. 

12:01 

The experience that John Gottman gives in his book is that one night he had been reading a really great book and he was down to the very last chapter or so and he decides to go in, brush his teeth, get ready for bed so he can go back to bed and just finish the last chapters before he goes to sleep, and as he's in the bathroom getting ready for bed his wife is in there and she's brushing her hair and she lets out this big sigh. Now she doesn't say anything, she doesn't say "I've had a hard day," she doesn't say anything like that, she just lets out this sigh but he recognizes that sigh as a bid for connection and then he has this choice because he knows that that window is only going to be open for a short time, right? He can respond to that bid or he can get back to his book that he wants to read. And this is the challenge of relationships. When do we put what we want on hold for the sake of the relationship? And I would say we get to do it quite often because if we're going to be in relationship we have to be willing to invest in the relationship and John Gottman says that what he does is he set the book aside in his mind, he went over to his wife, he took the brush out of her hand and started brushing her hair and asked her what was up and they started this beautiful conversation, right? He was a safe space for her to make a bid for connection. 

13:26 

But when we don't respond, when we ignore it, when we dismiss it, it makes it more difficult for our spouse to show up vulnerable another time because it hurts to be dismissed when we make a bid. Then we begin to lose trust that they can share that we can share and have their vulnerability treated softly with love and compassion and grace and considering. And the ways we can respond, being dismissive, is probably on the softer, nicer end of things. 

13:57 

Because here's another way we will sometimes respond with contempt and anger. Contempt comes from a one-up place, a place that says, "I'm better than you." Contempt might sound like, "oh gosh, you're such a baby." Or, as the woman in the example did, she just kind of made fun of him for getting emotional. "Oh, I thought you were crying because the Jets were losing," right? It would also sound like phrases like, "Gosh, you're so weak. What is your problem?" Or "serious, can't you get your crap together?" These are just hurtful and full of contempt. And even if we don't say them out loud, even if you're just thinking them, I promise you, they are oozing out of you in your body language, in the tone of your voice, in the looking away or the rolling of the eyes, in the sigh or the exasperated sounds, right? People are very good at reading other people,  especially when we've just shared something vulnerable, right? Our radar is on high alert. 

15:01 

And so an area where we might see a lot of contempt is when a husband approaches his wife wanting to talk about his pornography use. This will be our example today because I think this one is really good and it happens a lot. So whether known or unknown to her before this admission, this is a very vulnerable space for a man in a marriage where pornography might be considered unacceptable for personal or maybe religious reasons. But think for a minute what it takes for someone to confess something that vulnerable to their spouse that they know will paint them in a bad light or will hurt their spouse. The man may know that his pornography use will hurt his wife and he doesn't want to hurt her, but he also wants to be honest and hopefully receive some support to work through this and clean up some things in their relationship. And like you, he wants to be accepted in all of his glorious, imperfect humanity. 

15:59 

And all too often though, in this scenario, the woman will respond with contempt instead of kindness rather than listening, letting his stuff sit on the table and not touching it, not judging it and getting curious. And so, okay, rather she needs to get curious and have compassion and grace, but the woman will respond with anger and judgment. Phrases like, "I thought you were better than this," or "you are so selfish, you are ruining our family," or "how could you do this to me," or maybe even "you disgust me." You get the idea, right? Rather than responding to their vulnerable confession with love and grace and compassion, we turn it on them and we shame them for it. We are very quick to step out of a place of support and kindness and into a space of blame, accusation, attacking, and criticism. And again, I don't think people who do these things are horrible people with ugly, black hearts. I think most of these women are just scared. And that fear takes over our brains and our nervous systems so quickly that we don't think clearly. We feel fear, then we panic, and then we react in a hurtful way. 

17:16 

So a third way that we can respond and make it unsafe is by going into the one down position, and we will make it all about us. So continuing with the pornography example, we might, instead of attacking them, go inward and start thinking about the reason he looks at pornography is because of us, because we're not beautiful enough or skinny enough or sexy enough or adventurous enough. Here's a fun fact: when things happen, women will tend to go inward to find the problem saying "it's all me. I'm not enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy," right? Such as in blaming ourselves while men tend to go outward to find the problem, such as looking at other people or processes or things. These are generalizations, but they are also proven male-female tendencies. 

18:13 

So here's another fun fact: most pornography use in committed relationships isn't because of the spouse not being good enough. Pornography is most often a buffer for difficulty motion. When someone feels stress, one way of disassociating with that stress is to turn to something else that will take our minds off of the stress. It takes the discomfort they are feeling and replaces it with a really good shot of dopamine, and at least for a time the stress dissipates. Many, many people use food in the exact same way. We feel stress and we turn to food to take our minds off of the discomfort and get a good shot of dopamine. Same process, different buffer. One person buffers with food, the other person is buffering with pornography. 

19:06 

So if pornography is being used as a stress relief, does our freaking out and making it about us create more or less stress in our spouse's life? Are we pouring water or are we pouring gas on the fire? A spouse's pornography use almost never has anything to do with you. It's generally a coping mechanism, and the fact that the spouse is being vulnerable with you and it's met with hostility or ridicule or turning on him or you turning on yourself, well this is not helpful and it is not creating a safe space. Not only does it create more of the reason that they may be turning to pornography in the first place, which is stress or anxiety, but it completely shuts down the safe space for being vulnerable and working through it with you. 

20:00 

Making their decisions all about you is just as destructive as being dismissive or as attacking them because ultimately it doesn't value their vulnerability. Just as we want when we are vulnerable, we want them to listen, to understand, to validate our fears and our insecurities, to offer us grace for our weaknesses or sins, or even just our human selves, and we want to feel safe sharing vulnerable things, so do they. So do they. They want all of that too. Just because they are a man doesn't mean they don't want that acceptance and love and a safe place. Refusing to grant them the grace to be a human is just unkind and unfair. Whatever social crap we were fed as younger versions of ourselves that said that men were always supposed to be strong, to never be afraid, to never show weakness, to not have emotions. That's a bunch of bull crap and it  is destroying your marriage if you are living by those ideas. 

21:07 

When we don't allow men to have emotions, to cry, to share tough things, to be vulnerable, we are shutting down our chances for the emotional intimacy that we crave. And the age-old complaint from women saying that their husbands don't want emotional intimacy I believe is just not generally true. I believe that although men were taught the same bull crap about how they should never show a weakness or show emotion, never be afraid, many of them are trying to figure it out. They want to be connected. 

21:39 

But when they venture into vulnerability and are shut down and dismissed and attacked and made out to be some huge villain, they learn it is not safe to be vulnerable with you and it ends up that we are significantly adding to the problem. I think most of us, if we heard some of the things that we say to the person we claim to love, most of us would be shocked and appalled. In fact, many of us after the fact to go into either a shame spiral or a self-righteous spiral for how we reacted to that type of vulnerability. 

22:17 

But rather than continue to bathe in shame or self-righteousness, let's take a good honest look at where we are and how we respond and why we respond that way. And then let's learn from it. Get curious about all of that about why you respond the way that you do. If you can't seem to help yourself and figure it out, then get some help from a coach or a counselor or someone who can help you see it more clearly, but do something to clean up your response to other people's vulnerability. We can consciously make the decision that our relationship circle is a safe space. That whatever our spouse puts on the table, we will choose to respond with kindness and curiosity rather than react with fear. We will choose to take a breath, think about what a safe space will look like in this situation, and choose our words and our curiosity carefully. We can be kind. We can be loving. We can offer grace. We can accept another person's humanity, but we have to choose it. We have to intentionally with our prefrontal cortex Intentionally choose to be a safe place for vulnerability to thrive because our primitive brain will freak out with fear we have to choose love and grace over fear and judgment. 

23:46 

Until you are a safe place for the people in your life to show up vulnerable, you do not get to complain about them not being a safe space for you. You take the lead, my friend. You be the change agent in your relationship. You first. Why do I say "you first?" Because you want something different and you get to be in charge of making that happen. Because you know this work and you have the tools. Because you want something better and you are willing to do what it takes to create it. Because you, my friend, are strong and powerful and intelligent. Of course, you're scared. Anytime we do something different we get scared and we second-guess ourselves. It's just how it works. It's how our primitive brain protects us. 

24:37 

And guess what? The other person may not create a safe space for our vulnerability, but that's okay because we know what we want and we are willing to risk our own vulnerability to get it. Being loving and kind is the name of the game. It is how we create great, beautiful relationships. When we can truly be become loving and kind, everything changes and it's all part of the brilliance of growing up into middle age. You can do this and I can help you. If it feels like it's too much, I have worked with a lot of clients over the years who think they will probably get divorced and then they work with me, they clean up their crap, and they end up with actually a really great marriage. A huge part of starting this process is being vulnerable and also being a safe place for the other person in your relationship to be vulnerable. It's all part of growing up, my friend. Let's do this. I got you. Okay, that is gonna do it for today. Have a great, great day. 

25:56 

If you would like to talk with me about this, you can go to tanyahale.com. You can go on the "free consultation" tab and there you have access to my calendar and you can find a time that works for you. We can sit down. We can talk about coaching. You can also get coached. I have those, they're 90-minute consults. The reason they are so long, and don't let it freak you out that they're long, but the reason they're that long is because I want to actually help you experience what a coaching session is like and help you know what it can be like. And whether you choose to work with me afterwards or not, you have at least gotten some great coaching that's going to help you nudge your life in the direction that you want it to go. So don't be afraid to go sign up. I promise I'm not a hard sell. I just don't like that for me and I don't like that for you. I'm not going to be a hard sell. I'm not going to make you feel guilty if you don't do this because if it's not a good fit, it's not a good fit. I don't want to work with people who don't want to work with me.

26:56 

Also one thing that I have not mentioned lately is I am also doing couples coaching, so if you and your spouse are both on board with getting some work done and cleaning up some stuff and seeing patterns that you two are not seeing, get in touch with me as well and sign up. Both of you come get on a call with me and let's do some coaching and let's talk about it. I think you'll love the process. I've had some amazing success working with the clients that I've worked with and it's been a really really fun addition to my coaching practice. Okay, that's gonna do it, my friend, have an awesome awesome week and goodbye from Samoa. I'll see you next week. Bye. 

27:34 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email; a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!