What’s The Episode About:

In this episode, Paul and Stacey will share the surprising answer they have to the popular questions, “Why do people make promises they don’t keep?” and “What can I do when my partner keeps making promises they don’t keep?”

These are two questions that plague a lot of relationships (including with family and friends) because people tend to award blame on the other person when in reality, they too, are party to the problem.

Paul and Stacey will share a clip from their recent Relationship Breakthrough Retreat Live Event, where someone from the audience asked them about this issue, and Stacey dropped some life-changing gold nuggets in her answer, so click the player above to dive in.

Key Points Discussed: 

• It’s all about conditioning someone please you in the moment to get out of pain with you (02:49)
• Taking personal responsibility for our part in the dynamic (06:13)
• We shouldn’t have to let go and be okay with it (07:41)
• Using relationship development tools and strategies to collaborate with people in your world (09:02)

Where Can I Learn More:

• Get access to the Relationship Breakthrough Retreat – here
• Join the 14-Day Boost – here

When Did It Air:

December 5, 2019

Episode Transcript:

Disclaimer:  The Transcript Is Auto-Generated And May Contain Spelling And Grammar Errors

Paul:               00:00 Hey relationship transformers, welcome to the Relationship Transformer podcast. And today, Stacey and I are going to share the surprising answer to the popular question, “Why do people make promises that they don’t keep?” and “What can I do when my partner keeps making promises that they don’t keep?” So let’s queue up the intro and dive in.

Intro:              00:22 So the big question is this, how is it possible that one person alone can transform any relationship, save their marriage, great their unshakeable love and unleash passion, divorce, proof their family without needing their partner to get on board and do this with them and yet still get to be happily, authentically you without compromise. That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. We are Paul and Stacey Martino, and welcome to the Relationship Transformer podcast. We are Paul and Stacey Martino and welcome to the Relationship Transformer podcast.

Paul:               00:57 Has anyone ever broken their promise to you? Do you have someone in your life who often makes promises and then doesn’t keep them? Do you have a relationship that you are navigating, where you don’t even really trust that other person when they tell you something because they have just done this far too often? You deserve to know the answer to this challenge. For this, we’re going to take you to a moment from the last Relationship Breakthrough Retreat Live Event, where someone from the audience asked Stacey and I this question, and we want you to hear that answer.

Stacey:             01:29 By the way, if you don’t yet have tickets for the next Relationship Breakthrough Retreat, you gotta get your tickets as soon as we open registration. We only do this three day live immersion event one time a year. You cannot afford to miss it. It’s three full days. Paul and I are the only speakers, and we deliver a breakthrough to you, likely multiple, within those three days that will catapult your relationships forward like nothing else. We’re actually getting ready to announce the dates and location of Relationship Breakthrough Retreat 2020. Do you want to be the first to know? Do you want to be first in line to get the early bird one-time sale that we’re going to do when we open registration to the event? Well, go to RelationshipBreakthroughRetreat.com and opt-in to get on the waiting list, so you get in on that.

Paul:               02:15 So before we start this clip, and I really want you to listen carefully to every word that Stacey is about to say, in the next like three and a half minutes, because she’s going to drop some life-changing gold truth bombs on you right now. And this may be so big that you might have to listen to it, you know, more than one time. So don’t miss a word that she’s saying. And I’ll say this, if you listen to Stacey for just the first 60 seconds, and you don’t have like a holy cow mind-blowing moment, rewind and listen again, because I don’t want you to miss a second of this. It’s very important.

Stacey Clip:        02:49 I want to take the one specific example that you gave me, because this is super, super common and I’m hoping it will serve more people in this room, which is when people make promises that they don’t keep, and this is not just men, this is not just women, this is not just adults, this is not just children. It’s not just at home. It’s not just at work. It’s across the board. Very often when people make promises that they don’t keep, what they were doing in the moment was pleasing you. They weren’t making a promise, they were pleasing you, and they didn’t keep it because it wasn’t authentic for them when they told it to you. And here’s what I want you to get, because the demand relationship piece, is that we’re so focused on someone who doesn’t keep their promise. And for a lot of us in our blueprint, that’s so like reprehensible, is that the word?

Stacey Clip:        03:50 Whatever. Like there’s no forgiving that or whatever it is. And yet I’m an offer. You are reframing. It’s not that they made a promise they didn’t keep, it’s that you’re in a pattern with them where you have conditioned them to please you in the moment to get out of pain with you. And so they have learned because you have trained them that certain times when they’re talking to you, they need to please you to get out of the hell of this conversation and there is not going to be follow up because they were just using a coping mechanism to deal with you in that moment and then move on there at the end of their skillset, skillset. And so when we judge someone else or when we label someone else as someone who makes promises that they don’t keep, there’s no movement because we’ve blamed them and we don’t see that we are actually a party to that because we’re interacting with the best of intentions.

Stacey Clip:        05:01 Not saying anybody’s fault at all, certainly not saying it’s your fault and you’re part of the dynamic. And so when we show up from demand relationship and we trigger someone to please us in the moment and they don’t follow through, we can own our part and shift it. Has anybody in this room ever told a family member that they would do something for them out of pleasing and then later came up with some kind of an excuse where something came up or they called back or they didn’t show up? Someone got sick, someone had a school play. Right, of course, because we’re pleasing in the moment because we don’t know what else to do cause we ran to the end of our and then later we don’t feel like we’re at the end of our skillset because we, Hey, maybe I just won’t go and we get resourceful and we come up with all kinds of creative ways that we don’t have to follow through because we never wanted to in the first place.

Paul:               06:13 Okay. So it’s time to ask yourself some tough questions and be really honest with yourself. In what ways have you pushed the people around you into pleasing you to avoid some uncomfortable or unpleasant consequences? Again, be honest. Have you used leverage to try and get your kids to do stuff just to please you? Have you used punishment on them when they mess up so they are more likely to lie to you instead of making an honest choice in the future? Have you brought negativity to your partner? When they disappoint you? Have you pushed them into pleasing you in a conversation or a moment because there really was no other option for them other than to say yes to you, to death to get you off their back? How can you start taking personal responsibility for your part in that dynamic that created this pleasing and how can you start relabeling them, not keeping their promises into how did I push them into pleasing me? It’s a very different question and if you have been the one to be the pleaser in those moments, how can you start using relationship development tools instead so that you can break the pattern and stop that negative spiral? Now, there are several reasons why people don’t follow through on promises that they make and we can’t cover all of them here on this podcast. But this is a giant one and it’s probably coming up for your relationships that you can see with new eyes now.

Stacey:             07:42 All right, so a common objection that I hear sometimes is, Oh, so you’re saying that if someone in my life doesn’t keep their promises, then that’s just okay and I need to deal with it. No, I’m not saying that. I’m never saying that by the way, that’s demand relationship thinking. I just think about it for a minute. I know really in demand relationship is so deep, right? And that demand relationship thinking is so deep, it’s hard to get around. I’m never saying that. It’s not that you just have to deal with it, but you do have to take ownership of your part in the dynamic. I’m not saying, okay, so somebody doesn’t break their promises and that’s going to always continue and it’s never going to change. Well, not if you’re, we’re using relationship development tools and strategies. If you’re using our tools and strategies, then you can show up differently in that moment to not push people into pleasing you and you can truly collaborate with them. Make sure that it’s a win, win, that it’s authentic for you and it’s authentic for them. You do need to take ownership of your part in the creation of the dynamic. You don’t need to take over responsibility and take ownership of their part in it, but do need to take ownership for yours and that is what we’re saying. All right, so let’s do some action steps, babe.

Paul:               09:02 All right, action step number one, stop. Stop pushing people into pleasing you and then blaming them later for not following through. Number two, start. Start seeing your part in this dynamic and taking personal responsibility for showing up differently. Use relationship development tools and strategies to collaborate with people in your world. Number three, release. If you have been labeling someone in your world as someone who doesn’t keep their promises, just look at the dynamic with new eyes, free yourself and release them from your label so that you can move things forward.

Stacey:             09:39 Awesome. Awesome. Okay. If you loved this podcast, be sure to share it. Tag us, use our ti podcast hashtag share it on social media. Get it to the people who need to hear it the most, and until next time, remember together we are changing the way relationship done.

Outro:              10:00 Hey, would you like to get big results in your relationships in just 10 seconds a day? If so, then subscribe to our daily inspiration for relationship transformers or the D.I.R.T at www.MartinoPodcast.com/DIRT