 never know what's going to happen. We're vulnerable to things. And with a romantic intimate partner, there has to be some degree, not of trust so much, but just surrender. Because without some degree of surrender, you're just defended. And that makes it much harder to get what we want out of the relationship. But within that vulnerability and insecurity, we're going to be hurt. That's guaranteed. It's guaranteed that you're going to be hurt by people you care for. It's guaranteed. And the question is, a couple of questions. One, have we learned to grieve our losses? Like, have we learned to feel the pain of disappointment without having to make somebody our enemy? My guess is with the statistics on dissolution of relationships, the answer is we haven't. That relationships involve pain. They also involve good stuff, but they're painful. They require work. You're trusting another human being all the time. They're going to let you down. These people are selfish, as selfish and insensitive as you are, that is very tough to handle. There is a quality of, like, when we're hurt, do we have sufficient self-soothing skills to take care of ourselves? If not, that has to be developed. And it's not somebody else's fault that we don't have them. So there is a decision tree. Not a decision tree may not be the right word, but there's some place where we just have to ask ourselves, and this is as you're moving along the forgiveness pathway, is this a deal breaker or not? Like, is what happened to deal breaker? If it's a deal breaker, you have the prerogative to end the relationship, not talk to them, take them to court, you don't quite have the prerogative to throw them under a bus, but short of that, you have a lot of prerogatives. You can not talk to them, you can do anything you want. I mean, you know, within legal bounds. If it's a deal breaker, you're saying that what happened is sufficient to fracture the relationship. That's going to lead to different pathway than if it's not a deal breaker. But if it's not a deal breaker and you want the relationship to maintain, then you have to do some skills that maintain the relationship, like repair and fix and stuff like that. And first of all, it's essential to know what your deal breakers are. And secondly, it's important to know, A, how to soothe yourself and practice repair in the relationship. Most of us struggle to soothe ourselves. And so when our partner does something that hurts us and we're dependent upon them for soothing, it becomes really hard to have the object from which we're used to gaining nurturance, the one hurting us. And if we haven't found a space in our own heart to soothe ourselves, it's quite difficult. So part of the process of forgiveness, just like any mature experience, is we have to be able to both feel the pain and grieve it. That means ouch. My partner did something that really was painful to me, or they lied to me, or they disappointed me, or they even slept with somebody else, or whatever. But it's essential not to just armor up and not just protect ourselves, but to feel the woundedness deeply in order to make the appropriate decision. Which is, is this a deal breaker or not? Is this somebody that I want to come home to again tomorrow? It might not be. But the point that I'm making is that we have to, we need to understand the necessity of certain self-care behaviors that are independent of what anybody else has done. And it's part of the grief work that is inherent in all relationships. It's just inherent. People are going to hurt us. People are going to cause us pain. And then if it's not a deal breaker, what are some of the things that a smart person might do to make sure they don't completely screw up a relationship? Well, one of the things that I found a smart person does is they don't count every single time they've been hurt. It's not like this is the 474th time that I've told you this, which is really irritating to hear. And particularly, if you know, it's only the 472nd. You know. Come on, you missed two. The, the, there is something like one of the things that, again, I notice as a forgiveness teacher, is most of us don't fight fair. Like if we have been hurt by our partner in, say, 2003, and we never got over it, then they hurt us again in 2006, and we never got over it. And then they hurt us again in 2009, I'm not sure it's fighting fair to bring up 2003. Like just because we didn't get over it, that's not their problem. We stayed because it wasn't a deal breaker, and then we didn't repair it well. Well, here's what I have found is the nub of this experience. It's what we, what we don't like is that when we trust somebody intimately, we are opening ourselves up to suffering. Like that's part of the decision. Part of what we don't like is when we let down our guard and take off our clothes and make ourselves intimate, then we're opening ourselves to pain because we're unprotected, and they're seeing us naked physically and emotionally. And we don't like the consequences of that choice. We don't like the fact that once we choose that, we are now more raw and hurtable. And so what we end up doing is when people, like when our partner reminds us of the consequences of that choice, we try to punish them. You hurt me. Rather than in an intimate relationship, I'm more hurtable. I'm much more hurtable, because you matter so much to me, what you do, and I'm less boundaries and guarded. And what we don't like and none of us want and what we're running from is our vulnerability. And vulnerability, accepting one's vulnerability and feeling one's pain is an essential part of this path of forgiveness. Because it's only then that you can legitimately either let it go or decide that this is not a person who is appropriate with me or work to repair. But it has to be done internally. The process of grieving, of owning, and feeling. You know, one of the things that I see is that people are so shocked when they tell me I've trusted them. I always laugh at that, maybe not always, because that would be a little inappropriate, but what I laugh at is this. When I hear people say I trusted them, I think what a silly thing. The only thing we can trust other people to do is act like themselves. There's no weak way we can trust them to act in the way we want them to act, but that's what people mean when they say I trusted them. Like I trusted the alcoholic means like hide your silverware. You know what I'm saying? Like trust people to behave in the way that they have behaved. That's what real trust is. Don't trust in a fantasy that they're gonna behave the way you want them to behave rather than the way they wanna behave. So what we're grieving at some level is our loss of control, our loss of innocence, and a sense that we're not hurtable, and we are hurtable. And this is where I'm gonna wrap it together. The basic question that I see in relationship is do we look more for our partner's good qualities? Or do we react more to the stuff that triggers us? And do we spend more of our time armoring up to make sure they don't hurt us? Or do we spend more time actively looking for their good?