Jefferson Fisher

That's the biggest thing is I don't want you to lose hope.

And so where you find that piece of how can I be a safe place for him?

Don't criticize it when you're not seeing it.

So I want to be very careful with that criticism element that you might be tempted to go into when you don't feel like he's meeting you in that emotion.

There's a difference between wanting to and being able to.

And so it might not be that he doesn't want to feel that way.

He doesn't want to feel like he can't show that kind of emotion.

He really wishes he could, but he's having trouble doing it.

That is usually a problem that happened long before he ever met you, all right?

And so we're all coming into the relationships at different levels.

And so this is where he's at.

So how do you be a safe space?

It's the same way of when my son or daughter come to me with things.

If I were to yell at them for saying that they did something wrong, well, all I'm teaching them is that I'm not a safe place to come to again.

And that's never something that I want.

So if he is approaching you, even with the smallest level of emotion, I want you to, if it makes sense, I'm not trying to push you into something that doesn't feel comfortable to you.

I want you to encourage you to use words of gratitude.

Like, thank you for coming to me with this.

I can imagine that felt really big.

Or, you know, I can imagine that feels really hard to express.