How to Create Emotional Safety, Even in Difficult Moments

Hello, and welcome to the same team podcast. We're here. You get the tools and the wisdom to become the best person, partner, and parent that you can be. We are your hosts, the Freemans. And today, we are gonna be talking about how to create emotional safety in your marriage, even in difficult moments. And interestingly, this has been a very common question we've been getting lately. In different forums, people use different words and phrases, but we've been getting emails, DMs, many questions in our office hours for our marriage reset program. So we said we need to do an episode on this, 'cause clearly people are trying to create more of this. And here's what we have to accept about partnership and living a long life together. You are going to face difficult topics, difficult moments, feelings. It isn't a fairy tale. It isn't only happy moments where you're smiling and you're on dates. Life is full of misunderstandings, emotion, tension, difficult moments. So we need to be prepared to handle that as a team, and emotional safety is a big component of that. But we often find, and we'll give a lot of examples, because here's what we're gonna talk about today. We are gonna define emotional safety. We're gonna talk about what's the difference between tension, friction, and actually feeling unsafe in an interaction. We are also gonna talk about the difference between feeling activated, triggered, and dysregulated, 'cause we really want you to see like, what's the difference between all of those, and where does the emotional safety come in? And then we're gonna talk about things that undermine feeling emotional safety, and then how to create more of it. So we've got a lot to cover. - Yeah, powerful. And hopefully one of the things you take away from us and this podcast is that marriage goes through seasons. There are the moments of feeling so much partnership, and joy, and happiness, and we would say that a lot of the ability to get to the majority of your experiences being in that phase, being joyful, being happy, really does relate to how much emotional safety you're able to create when you do have those moments of tension. So it's not just about the safety in the moment, it's because it really builds the foundation for how you continue to feel more on the same page, more on the same team, and joyful and happy, because when you don't feel emotionally safe, you're not gonna be able to feel more of those joyful, happy moments as often. How do we also maintain the same team mindset in these moments, which is really a key to even starting creating emotional safety? - Because that, when you talk about same team, that's just one of the experiences. Same team is not this motto. It is a feeling. You can feel like no matter what we face, these tense moments, these moments we disagree, we're a team still. We're not battling against each other. We're a team up against this thing, and I think that's one of the best ways to describe what emotional safety feels like. As you know what, it's okay to disagree. It's okay to bring things up to each other because this is my teammate, and we're gonna talk through it, and it's not gonna feel like this combative, intense interaction that I need to be afraid of. Now, here's another way to define it. Emotional safety is knowing that you can be honest, vulnerable, and imperfect with your partner without being punished, judged, dismissed, or having any of it used against you. Really absorb that, and do a check-in right now. Do I experience that right now? Does my partner do they feel like they can be honest, vulnerable, and even imperfect? Or not? And I really love that focus on imperfect because I think when you really learn a lot of communication strategies, and say it this way, instead of this way, and at this time, instead of this time, you can almost go through this stage where you both are correcting each other, and being like, no, you're not using it in the order or the phrase that we learned from that post or whatever it is, you guys are gonna be human still. You're gonna bring it up, trying your best, but it's gonna be imperfect, and if you are just like, well, no, you didn't say it with the script, so now I'm gonna say, nope, I'm not interacting with that. It's gonna be like, what's going on here? We need to have space in our relationship to be human still, and obviously within reason. We're not saying that you should be able to bring up something in a hurtful way, and then be considered just being human, but we're not gonna use scripts perfectly all the time, especially when you're in these very surprised human moments. I mean, let's bring in the parenting element, right? Like there are just moments where you're like, we could not have planned for this, and it's tough, and we're exhausted, and so I can't use a script right now. But can we feel safe that we've got each other's backs, that this isn't gonna become a combative hostile moment and we are teammates? - If I was to use one word, I think it comes down to judgment, and whether I have an internal judgment about what my partner is saying, and you pick the moment, parenting, talking about finances, it could be about your intimacy, and it's right in that moment where your partner is needing to share something with you, sometimes they're trying to be open with their heart and how they've been experiencing life in that area, maybe they're making a request, trying to share a need, and how it lands for you is you really immediately judge something about that. We've had our moments where we've gotten down to those layers of, was that coming from a place of judgment? And when I was, and I was honest about that, that's what created more of the tension in the moment where Jocelyn started to feel unsafe, but we're going to go into more further examples. But that's kind of the point. The safety is coming in the moments where something isn't landing right, and now there's an emotion. But we have to define this progression of feeling emotion in these moments. A lot of people out there would say, it's when you get triggered, but that's not the first step. So let's break this down into moments where there's some tension, and then one of you feels we're going to call it emotionally activated. So this is where your partner is coming to you with something, and all of a sudden, you do have an emotional feeling or emotional response within your body about it, and this is very normal. This is going to happen multiple times, certainly in a week, for some, maybe multiple times a day, and it's really not about getting rid of these feelings or even judging yourself or having them, but it's okay, emotional activation, I'm starting to feel an emotion based on what my partner is saying. - It's really like an arousal, right? So it's like, we're not all just smiling all the time and like laughing. That isn't the reality of your sustained day and week, so you can think of feeling activated as like, I'm now, something has turned on, and I am now more attentive, I'm noticing things, your nervous system is paying more attention, maybe you're a little bit more prone to getting reactive in that moment, but again, we need to normalize activation, and we're going to talk about how can we handle these very human moments, but what I think is really important before we go to the triggered part of things is we have to remember that if we are just feeling some tension or friction or feeling a little activated, that doesn't mean you actually are emotionally unsafe in that moment, and this is where we think people can almost like overuse the term to avoid difficult conversations and we don't want that for you, we don't want you to every time you are feeling anything but at peace or happy, nope, I'm unsafe right now. No, this is not an emotionally safe conversation, especially with the high stakes decisions that you guys make, if you've been married a long time, so over many years, or if you have children, or just you're running a life together, there's a lot of high stakes decisions, you're gonna have different feelings about it, different ideas, so you're gonna feel friction at times, you're two different human beings, even if you're very aligned on your values and your vision, there's still moment, like Aaron and I are pretty similar, like we have some differences, but we will feel this little bit of tension and friction because it matters to both of us. - And what I wanna say is it's different than just having peace, and that's one error I think partners fall into, because you have an emotional activation, it's sort of the beginning of disrupting your peace, that is not something to fight against. If you want emotional safety to be in your relationship, it's actually allowing for these moments to happen, not that there's always peace, I think that's such a key takeaway for a lot of partners. And so when we start to progress, it's the activation often when unchecked, and you can start to feel that you're judging something, that's when you begin to move into what you would say is being emotionally triggered. And so this is where it just starts to get a little bit more intense within yourself, and because it's getting more intense, more intense than now. It's not just being prone to being reactive. It is that your behavior now follows and you are saying or doing things that are now becoming more of an activation or even trigger for your partner. It's starting to intensify. And so the key thing here is when you're triggered, you are now more reactive in your outward behavior. It's not just the emotion that started to come up. And I think too, you can feel activated, but you're not necessarily triggered, right? The triggers are those sensitivities that we all have and they vary because it really is connected oftentimes to our upbringing and some of our formative experiences that formed these, I just almost envision them as like these little, is the phrase like chinks in your armor, right? Like just these little vulnerabilities that we all have, they just vary. And I can tell when I am triggered, whether it's about from Aaron or even someone else, because it's this sudden feeling and I, because I've developed a lot of self-awareness, because so much of this comes back to us being aware of when it's happening, I'm like, wow, that came on suddenly and it felt really intense. And I've thankfully gotten the majority of the time. I'm not saying 100% of the time, but the majority of the time, I'm able to use a lot of my self-regulation strategies so that I'm not just acting from that triggered place, but it's really important that you know what your partner's triggers are and not just the trigger like, oh, it's my tone, it's what is it triggering? What's the vulnerability, the sensitivity, the wound? And we've got so much more to cover in this podcast, so we're not going to talk more about triggers right now, but actually this is a good time to mention that we have an upcoming live marriage web class where we are going to walk through, model, take you step by step through strategies for how to deescalate conflicts and navigate emotional triggers. We have not taught this content that we are going into. Some of it we haven't taught ever, and then other pieces it's been years. So go to meetthefremens.com/links. It'll be one of the top buttons there for you to see meetthefremens.com/links, get registered because it's coming up in a couple weeks and it's going to be extremely powerful. And I think very timely because the end of the year and the stress of the holidays and all the things going on, it's actually a time where couples can experience a lot of conflict. So you're going to want to know how to deescalate things. Activation even before the conflict you could say. All of it. Okay, so make sure you are registered for that, but let's continue on triggers and then what's the difference then between dysregulated. Well, the trigger I want some of you to notice is when you start to say to yourself, oh really? And that's kind of the moment where activation is an emotional response to the surface level thing, you can be annoyed at how your partner is cleaning something or hasn't been cleaning or putting something away or you can be annoyed with how you see they're interacting with your child. The trigger though, as I will go more into in the web class, is that it's a much deeper meaning. It's related to something from your past and that's when it amplifies because you say to yourself, oh, you want to go there? Oh, and it's that you're being controlled or disrespected. That's when the reaction follows. Now, in both of these cases, you still have the opportunity to regulate yourself. When you're triggered, however, it's not long. So you're going to have to catch this earlier, more in the web class coming up, but it's not going to be long until you reach this threshold of now being dysregulated. So you're really pushed past your window of tolerance to where you're not just reacting, but you're in what we call them if you follow our content. You're fully in the conflict cycle. You've probably made three, four, five passes. And this is really the state where you're not able to regulate yourself. The trigger has become so intense that you're just reacting. You're bringing up the past. You're saying, well, what about when you did this or my needs, you're starting to personally attack them, characterize them. And this is a place where you're now doing more hurt and or damage, certainly causing way more disconnect than what started this. And we're going to go into what are the exact behaviors that undermine emotional safety and get you to that place of feeling dysregulated. And that's something that Aaron and I have had to get really good at is becoming very observant of of each other in ourselves and noticing, are we activated right now? Are we triggered? Are we dysregulated? And we need to know because teammates do not go to battle to do damage against each other. That's not what teammates do, opponents do. That's what we really want to challenge you as we go into this next section and give you more strategies to interrupt this. You have to really check and say, am I being a teammate in human difficult moments? Number one, do I let my partner have a human experience, have emotions? But do I notice when they are either activated or triggered? And do I fight against them? Or help both of us become more regulated and feel safe in this moment. That's what teammates do. So let's get into what exactly undermines emotional safety in these interactions. An easy one, a common one is eye rolling or being sarcastic when they're either sharing how they feel about something and you disagree. I know that maybe that was normalized in some homes, like you may have watched your parents roll their eyes at each other. Maybe they even roll their eyes at you. And that was a way that you guys just visually showed I disagree. But that's not what teammates do to each other. And it's only combative and it only activates someone further. So that's a no go definitely for us in our relationship. Then certainly a level of getting defensive, where maybe you have a response, a justification, you may even start to counter attack what they're saying. Also related to this would be dismissing or minimizing what they're saying. Again, you can be defending against maybe that you had a positive intent or why you acted the way you did or why you had the attitude or energy you did. But then it's pretty similar where you then turn it around on them. Well, I only did that because you brought this up in the wrong time where you had an attitude or you had a tone with me. And then even just starting to that's the moment where you start to dig into the past when you say absolutely for sure. And it only gets worse and gets more escalated. Another one is interrupting each other. Another very easy one like the eye rolling and maybe that has been how you've been operating. But moving forward, we have got to stop the interrupting each other because number one, it really is even more activating. But then neither person gets to feel understood. And thankfully, when we're doing our private sessions with couples, we're able to act as a mediator and be like, Hey, we're not going to interrupt each other. Let's take turns. But since we can't watch all of your interactions, if it's really difficult for you guys to not interrupt each other, number one, you got to really build that restraint and that muscle. But if it's still difficult, pick an item that you take turns holding to indicate it's their turn to talk. So it could be a pen. It could be like, Hey, you hold the pen. You be the speaker. I'm just going to listen and vice versa. Any object that visually reminds you it's their turn. Because that's what also creates this feeling of emotional safety is we're each going to get a chance to be heard. Like we don't have to fight to be heard. We don't have to raise our voices in order to be heard. We're going to give each other a turn. We're going to hear each other out. So that's definitely a common one that undermines emotional safety. I know a lot of people see these outward quicker verbal responses. And in reality, they're more like reactions as what undermines safety. But we will have to also talk about the more reclusive shutting down, stonewalling, giving silent treatment, avoiding. And this can happen pretty fast. We have coached thousands of couples. And this is just as common. A partner is trying to bring up something. Maybe they have a need. They have requests. They have an expectation. And immediately the other partner is offended. But they say nothing. There is no communication. There's no response. There's no receipt as we've done some popular videos on. There's a shutting down. There's distancing. Maybe even proximity. They walk out of the room. And for some, that can go on for a number of hours. Days even. And that's really what can be so frustrating is how did I go from trying to express something I need. And it's not only not being received by my partner, but now paying this price of disconnect to being avoided of getting the silent treatment for hours or days. And it seems pretty unfair. It seems pretty unsafe. And so many partners get into a place where why am I even bringing this up? And this is such a dangerous place to be because the more that that becomes your default, now you're holding things back to not go through that silent treatment. But what that does to you is it has you say less. You're not openly expressing yourself and your experience of life, let alone making requests or being able to have your needs met. And so you're creating this divide between the two of you all because of how you feel your partner is going to receive almost anything that you're going to say. And probably those partners who do that have struggled to develop or expand their window of tolerance. And I think for any parent out there, maybe you've read different books and resources that talk about that, that being one of the most important things that we can help our children create is this being able to tolerate difficult feelings, tolerate feeling frustrated, misunderstood, dismissed, rejected, and not be controlled by that. So we can do a follow-up parenting episode on things like that. But one more piece I just wanted to mention about what undermines emotional safety and then we'll go into more of the steps for what to do body language. So we talked a lot about the things that you're either like doing with your facial expression, but body language, if you are like really, you know, hands and big and your face looks angry and judgmental and you're like, you know, the eye roll is definitely a part of it as we talked about. But all of your body language is either communicating on your teammate. You're open that you're here to receive, even if I'm feeling activated. If my shoulders are slumped and my arms are crossed and I turn my body to you, that's all signaling. I'm not open to hearing what you're saying. And I can be again activated. And so long as you know your partner is doing this, I could take a breath. I can give you eye contact. I can show with my body and my presence that, okay, I'm feeling something about what you said, but let's keep going. And we'll get into these steps here, but it really does start with that body language. Yeah. So Aaron and I pay a lot of attention to how are we showing up for each other in this moment? And even when we disagree, even when it's a difficult moment, we're not trying to give each other signals with our body language that this is a hostile or combative or that we're opponents. So pay attention to that. Let's get into then what to do. What creates emotional safety in these moments? We also want you to continue to think about am I activated? Am I triggered or am I slash we dysregulated? Because as we go into the steps, you can do some of these steps earlier. And ideally, you are able to stay engaged in the conversation when you are activated, when you're initially triggered, but you're not going to be able to stay in the conversation when you are dysregulated, right? Because you, that means you're beyond your threshold. You're not in your logical mind. You're going deep into the past. You're causing more division. So a lot of people talk about creating a pause. We're talking about in, right here in this podcast, way before that, we want you to be able to have emotion come up between both of you openly express it, receive it from each other long before you're even having to decide if we need this pause because we're dysregulated. Yes. Exactly. So let's go into then one of the first things that you can do, which is let it be one person's turn at a time. And what we mean by that is, let's say I bring something up to here and let's say it's after bedtime, we got to make a note. Sure. Neither of you are even activated. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking to myself, all right, we got our daughter to bed and we got the house cleaned up. And you know what, we haven't had time to connect all days. So I remember something earlier on that I just want to talk about. And I think I'm bringing it up in the perfect way at the perfect time. So I go to bring it up. Now if Erin uses this moment, oh, you're going to bring up a grievance. That even felt even strong. Yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you. Yeah. But right there, I think a lot of couples get into an issue with delivery attitude tone. But if you could catch this, that your partner brought up something, they did initiate a conversation with you. Then even before you get into what you just said, you take all the emotion out, you know what? They're bringing up something with me. They're the initiator. So let me allow this to be about them. And I don't even yet know exactly what it is. It could be experienced. It could be a request. It could be a need. It could be something that they are wanting us to look at in terms of our value. I don't even know. But even having no emotion about it yet, the Freeman said in a podcast, let this be their turn. As opposed to saying, okay, they're bringing something up. Now's my chance. Now I'm going to bring up mine. Because okay, I see what we're doing. Some people like Aaron, you're going to bring up your need. Okay. Okay. Some people like Aaron, you've expressed this fairness. I don't even know where you're going. See? Let this be okay. Okay, go ahead. Fairness is the thing that comes up for you sometimes. And so one thing we've really worked through is where Aaron previously had this pattern where he would then be like, okay, now's my chance to bring up my thing because he wanted it to be fair. Like if I'm bringing up mine, he's like, I got to make sure I get a chance to bring up one of my things. I'll even add this in fairness. I think I haven't done it as the immediate response to you in a while. So I'm like saving my even reputation here. But I'm still in my mind not letting this be about you. I've done so much better in allowing for there to be an expression on your answer that you can be understood. And I think I've noticed they've even defaulted to letting you speak. But I'm still feeling that's when I get active. When I feel that something is unfair, that's when I'm getting activated within myself. I haven't said anything. I'm actually on the outside allowing you to speak. And this is where it really takes a level of awareness of each partner. But am I really letting this be your turn? Or am I starting like a defense lawyer to accumulate the things that I want to say? I'm letting it become an inner dialogue about, well, this is unfair. Oh, she wants to bring up her need. Okay, what need have I not expressed? So even before I say anything, I'm not letting this be your turn. I am starting to document within myself when I do get the chance. And it comes out probably initially as, oh, Aaron's really allowing me to speak. But as soon as you're done, it's like, what am I about prepared to not unload on you because I don't go from a zero to 60. But I'm now prepared with a kind of rebuttal. And what has helped you not do that? It's just reminding you to let this be her turn. If Jocelyn initiated something, then this is about her. It's just that simple. I don't want to go any further. I catch all of that thought process. I can catch, well, it goes to the next point. I'm not even really activated. I'm like, okay, this is her turn now. And you know what? Before we go to the next one, this is so good because it goes vice versa. Like if Aaron brings up something to me, I may feel the temptation. I think we can all feel that temptation to be like, okay, okay, great. Now this is my chance to bring up my thing. What helps a lot for both of us, even if we don't necessarily see it from their perspective yet, one thing we'll say to each other is like, I hear you. I'm going to really give that some thought and just like letting it land. We don't have to have the perfect response or even hopefully not a rebuttal. So just practice that more often. If your partner brings something up to you, number one, think, wow, they're actually trying to prevent something in our relationship. They're trying to just communicate with me. It's their turn because they brought something up. I hear you on that. I'm going to really give that some thought. Thanks for bringing it up. Let it land. Nothing more necessarily that needs to be said. Now, let's say that there is a little bit more of a discourse. So it's a topic you're actually discussing. How do we handle this difficult moment with our kids? And you know what? Maybe we see it differently. So I bring it up and I don't just want Aaron to just hear me. Let's say I do want a dialogue because I want to get on the same page. The second thing in order to create emotional safety is don't do any of the escalating behaviors that we just said. So don't be rolling your eyes because you disagree with their point. Don't be sarcastic when they're being vulnerable. Don't interrupt them. Don't raise your voice. Don't bring up tit for tat past issues. Don't do a huff. Yeah, don't be huffing. Don't just be like turning away from them and I just disagree with them and just showing because again, you've done that a few times. Am I trying to talk and you literally turn your shoulders to me? We were on a, you were even on a swing, we were at the park, and I'm, what, what just happened? Well, and so here's the thing, because we're human, there are moments where we are getting beyond our window of tolerance, but we don't get more hostile towards each other. We recognize, you know what, maybe they are just not in the space for this interaction, but I'm not going to do the things that I know escalate these moments. That's a choice that we all make. My partner is imperfect, they're human, just as we are, but we don't escalate things on purpose. And those lists of behaviors are going to lead you to escalating. And even as we go through this list, I realize these things are happening within one to two seconds, and within a minute to two minutes. It's fast. You know, you can feel like you're doing well, kind of staying in it. And again, that is our intention for you is that emotions can come up. Number one, that your partner can bring something up. And then number two, you can have a feeling about it and still stay in a productive conversation and dialogue about it, which in a very quick moment leads us to step three that you now have to catch your own moment of either early activation or that it is becoming a trigger for you. Now, maybe in general, you're activated first, then as your partner starts to talk, or that you do give into some of those escalating behaviors or things that lead to their not being safety, you get this back and forth of reactions, then you get triggered. That's probably more likely, but that's not to discount the times that maybe what your partner brings up does trigger you right from the beginning. That's typically that experience of a zero to 60 kind of interaction. Some couples are surprised about that. Most of the time I would say, well, that's because you did hit a trigger, a wound, a shadow, a trauma, and you got to it really quickly. So your partner had more of an escalated response. Now, regardless of where you are, you want to catch this early. Am I activated here? Am I getting triggered is my partner? Let me notice. And again, they're my teammate. So I want to have their back not show up as an opponent right now. And one thing that Aaron and I do is we will signal to each other. If we are feeling activated, perhaps even getting triggered and want to bring the temperature down and it can literally sound like, hey, I'm starting to feel activated in this interaction right now. Can we slow down here? Can we bring the temperature down? Giving each other those signals of if Aaron can't quite tell from my body language that I'm activated. I'm telling him, hey, I'm feeling this. Can we just slow it down? Because it also can be a matter of circumstances like there could be, you know, maybe you've had a few nights of difficult sleep. Maybe it's been a tough few days with the kids. And all of those things make your capacity lower. You kind of have less of a buffer. Yeah, that's true. And maybe a more difficult time like regulating your emotion. So you want to signal those things to each other. Like even for me, when I am on my cycle, you know, I have less of the capacity for those moments. So it's like, hey, I'm just feeling a bit beyond my capacity right here. I'm feeling activated. Can we slow down or hey, can we take a few? Can we just come right back to this? But a key point here is, we're going to go much more in detail of a number of nuances, of something we call de-escalate now, debrief later, of coming up with your agreements for times of conflict. All of this help to create more safety in these moments. But I do want this. And that you mean in the web class? In the web class. That's what we're coming. Where we're going? We're not going to do the detail on this podcast now. But I do want this part to be an invitation to individual partners that this is your responsibility to catch your own activation or being triggered. And you can communicate that to your partner. But here's the problem. This should not be a dynamic in your relationship where your partner brings up something, initiates the conversation and now is responsible for managing your emotions and having to regulate you. I'm like snaps, yes. That's the parent's job to a child. And seriously, in science, children cannot yet emotionally regulate themselves and they count on you as they start to build that muscle as they age. You have to teach them to regulate and they do that with you. Your partner or you, you're an adult now. And even if someone did not teach this to you, it's up to you to learn regulation and even before that to notice and catch when you are activated or triggered. And it's up to you. It's not your partner's job to regulate you. I mean, just feel this is one of the key things that creates unsafety. What do you mean? I was the one that brought up this concern or this need or this expectation, this conversation. And within two minutes, it's now my job to regulate you being dysregulated. No, that's a sign of you needing to be a more mature partner in working on your ability to regulate your emotions, which I can only say and think we can only because we've had to learn this. Like we were not perfect at this when we got together, we both had to learn this. We both had our patterns. So we can only say these challenging statements to you because we've had to learn it too. And so with that said, then the next thing we want you to focus on is staying curious and seeking understanding. And we're going to talk again, more strategies of how this plays out. We're going to model this stuff for you guys in the web class. We want you there. But if you are feeling like the friction is picking up, you're activating each other. But you know, you need to have the conversation. Like it's not one you can just shut down and never talk about you. You can't you can't be like, oh, we can never talk about parenting. We can never talk about finances. How would you guys accomplish things? So we need to be able to have this conversation. All right, we have different perspectives. We have different feelings. Maybe we each have a little trigger related to this. There's some sensitivities, some chinks in our armor. Okay. You know what? I am going to assume I actually don't fully understand your perspective. So instead of me just like trying to force my perspective down your throat and interrupt you. You know what? I'm going to slow down. Actually, I got to slow you down and pause you. You're actually being a little too nice. Okay, tell me. Because you've used we a few times. This is not a we need to do this. We need to have our perspective heard. No, if you remember the first point of this is your partner initiated the conversation. You got to keep this focused on them. Step two was about all right. Well, let me not do the escalating behaviors. Three, let me notice my own activation. And number four is you stay curious about what your partner was needing to be understood about. What is the need? What's the expectation? What's the perspective? What's the experience that there were wanting to communicate? And number one, it was the starting point and you notice what was happening within yourself. Number four is really the same thing. It's that this conversation is about your partner. This doesn't need to divulge down into now the two of you navigating hearing both perspectives. No, this isn't about your time. This isn't about you sharing your perspective. It's not about you sharing your need. That's the whole point. You want emotional safety that your partner can bring something forward. You do these steps to not escalate to regulate your own emotion, to not escalate further, but to still keep it about what your partner need to express to you. And I think and I'm loving the fire. I'm totally loving it. And I think what I was describing was if it is one of those type of conversations where you do need to go back and forth because there's either an agreement that you're trying to create. And so I do think that there are times where for, okay, yes. So I brought it up. So let it be my turn first to be understood. I think that's 100%. And there are times. And there's going to be a debrief time later that we are going to go into on the web class. True. And I was just getting this in this moment. This podcast is not about the debriefing later yet. This is about how do you create emotional safety? How do you keep things from escalating and how you do that is allowing a partner to bring up something and keeping it focused on them and managing yourself so that that can happen now. Okay, okay, it's going to be for the web class. And I know where Jocelyn was trying to go. Once that happens and there is emotional safety, it could be about three minutes later. There's a whole other part of this conversation, but that's what we call and we're going to go into on the web class. The debrief part. So a marriage has two people. There's two sides. Yes, all that. I just want to, I'm just kind of like throwing this at Jocelyn now. This is where I want to stop the podcast here. This is emotional safety. You have to be able to bring up things. Manage yourself and let the conversation still be about what you're part of needs to say. Okay, all right. And then you know what? Yes, we will go into more of the back and forth interactions in the web class. And it's going to be really. Thanks for managing your own activation. I am not activated right now. I'm actually fully hearing you. I'm not activated because I value you. your perspective. And I think that's what's important is that you are interested in your partner's perspective. So you're right, we've covered a lot here. Even if you focus on just these points, you will hopefully, I mean, we should see this, feel so much more at ease and feel emotionally safe in difficult interactions. You will feel more like a team, not opponents. So implement these steps. As Aaron said, we're going to go into more of, okay, we got it back and forth. We disagree. We need to come to a decision. We've got an agreement. We need to create. How do we handle that? That's going to be the web class. We want all of you there. This content is going to be truly incredible. We're going to be able to model a lot for you and you'll be able to see how to implement it, how to de-escalate those moments. So make sure you go to meettheframeons.com/links. But we hope that this was incredibly helpful and gave you some language to talk about this with each other and make sure that you both listen to this. And here's what we want you to do. We don't want you to go to each other and be like, these are the things you need to work on. We want you to go to the other person and say, Hey, please listen to this so that there's more emotional safety for me. It's like, or you could have it be more of an invitation. We know a lot of couples send them to each other. Hey, I know I haven't always created the space for you to feel emotionally safe. Let's listen to this together. I would like to have this be a place where I can get better at creating emotional safety for you. Yeah. And let the reciprocity settle in. We're like, Oh, let me do that for you too. Exactly. I think bring up what you see you can do better or differently. So again, same team message you guys. That's our book coming out. Same team. You're going to keep hearing this. But we've got so many great episodes coming. We are just getting started again with this podcast. So make sure you are subscribed. Make sure that you are tuning into all the upcoming episodes and make sure you get registered for the upcoming web class. One more time. It's meetthefremens.com/links. And with that you guys, we will talk to you on the next episode.