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📍   📍 there's no one-size-fits-all way to build back trust. Right. It is all about putting marbles back in the jar.

Yeah.

But you gotta get the jar back first, which means you got both people need to be willing to do a lot of uncomfortable work that's gonna require a lot of leaving your ego behind.

On the surface, sounds simple. It's really, really challenging. And because there's no simple one way of doing it- We couldn't give you five easy steps to rebuild trust

it doesn't exist, and anyone who tells you it does is, is trying to- Trying to sell you something

trying to sell you something.

 You've built the business, you're crushing it in your career, you've scaled your impact. But are you winning at home?

Welcome to the 200% Marriage podcast. We're Meredith and Craig, and we're here to help you kill that domestic drag and turn your partner into your most elite teammate.

From Russian taxi mishaps to hailstorms on the summit, we're sharing the raw and real stories and tactical drills you need to move out of roommate-ville and into your 200% life.

So grab your gear. It's time to build an unstoppable team. Let's dive in.

 Welcome back to another episode of the 200% Marriage podcast with Meredith and Craig. I know you've been following along waiting with bated breath every week as we roll through this book, The 200% Marriage: Your Winning Playbook to Be an Unstoppable Team.

We're reading each chapter that we wrote. Chapter 25 today. Mer's reading it. Let's go.

Chapter 25: Big Trust Energy. "The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them," Ernest Hemingway. Trust is a foundational component required for any team to become unstoppable, so we're wrapping this section of the book, the commitment to your team, with some big trust energy.

Now, you might assume the trust chapter in a book on marriage to be big, heavy, packed with research, stories, and advice. That would typically be a reasonable assumption if this were a typical relationship book. But as you've noticed, this isn't that book.

See, we believe that trust isn't something you build in a vacuum. As our friend Greg says, "Trust is nothing more than giving someone the power to hurt you." Here's the twist: Contrary to popular belief, trust isn't earned. Trust is given. Reread that definition again. Trust is nothing more than giving someone the power to hurt you.

Notice the word giving in there. Your teammate doesn't earn the right to hurt you. You hand that power over willingly. Trust is given first, then strengthened through the decisions, actions, strategies, concepts, and skills we've been discussing in this book. Trust strengthens when you fill your teammate's love account.

Trust strengthens when you keep the promises you make to yourself and to them. Trust strengthens when you do what you say you'll do. Trust strengthens when you're brave enough to be vulnerable. Trust strengthens when you check in daily. Trust strengthens when you show up and participate in your weekly marriage meeting.

Trust strengthens when you create time for your teammate without phones, laptops, or distractions. Trust strengthens when you put your teammate first. Yes, even before your kids. Trust strengthens when you take 100% responsibility. Trust strengthens when you lead with curiosity, empathy, and compassion rather than judgment or assumption. Trust strengthens when you give the benefit of the doubt. Trust strengthens when you stop keeping score. Trust strengthens when you consistently show up, put the team first, and be a great teammate. Trust is given, and it's strengthened through consistent actions, follow-through, and showing up for each other over time.

It can also be broken the same way, through consistent action over time. Most of us have heard that trust can be broken in an instant with one careless or hurtful decision, and that's true. Most of us try to avoid those big trust-breaking moves. But here's the myth-busting part. It's not the only way trust is broken.

Trust can also be chipped away little by little.

Death by a thousand cuts applies to trust too. You break trust when you don't show up when you say you will, when you don't get home when you promise, when you don't call when you're late, or don't follow through on your word. Neglecting the everyday actions that strengthen trust eventually erodes it.

Once trust is broken, it's hard, but not impossible, to rebuild. It takes two people, both willing to do the work, to set aside their egos and rebuild together. The question we get most often: how do you rebuild trust after it breaks? Unfortunately, there's no neat five easy steps answer.

The truth is, it depends. It depends on how trust was broken. It depends on the needs and experiences of the two people involved. Rebuilding trust is deeply emotional and takes courage, but it can be done if you're both willing.

Whole books have been written on how to rebuild trust, many of them actually. And while those books can be helpful, rebuilding trust isn't just theory. It's lived. And in real life, it's infinitely easier. Note, easier, not easy, with expert guidance. If you're in a place where trust has been broken, please reach out to us at The200PercentMarriage.com/ContactUs.

We'll walk you through it. You don't have to do this alone. Now, if trust hasn't been broken in your relationship and you want to continue to strengthen it, keep reading. This part may sound wrong or too simple or like it can't possibly work, but stick with us. Strengthening trust requires a decision. Boom, that's it.

You have to decide to trust your teammate. You have to decide to be trustworthy. It's a choice you make daily, actually many times every day. We had clients who weren't struggling financially but were struggling with trust around money. He told us he couldn't trust her with financial decisions because of the financial decisions she'd made in the past.

It was painful for him to admit. You could see he wanted to trust her. He desperately wanted to know how to trust her. For context, they had been doing a lot of personal growth, both individually and as a couple. They weren't the same people or the same couple they had been even a year earlier.

In their case, the way forward wasn't about her earning back trust. The only way for him to trust her with their finances was clear. He had to give it to her, to willingly hand over to her the power to hurt him, to decide to trust. Simple, but not easy. He had to relinquish control and allow her to make some of the family's financial decisions, and he did.

And their relationship has never been better.

They've been together for almost 20 years, and they will tell you they have never had more trust, been more connected, or been happier than they are today, all because of a decision, and the hard work that goes along with those simple decisions. Let's bring back the football team analogy because why not?

The quarterback has to trust his offensive line, those big beefy dudes in front, to protect him long enough to throw the ball. He's defenseless and vulnerable while he's preparing to pass. Then he has to trust his receiver to catch the ball, even with defenders swarming all around him trying to intercept that ball.

Without all that trust, no touchdowns. Without touchdowns, no wins. Without wins, that team stinks. No one wants to be on a team that stinks. You have to trust your teammate. You have to decide to trust your teammate. You have to give your teammate the power to hurt you. Your entire world will change when you trust your teammate, because that's when you start winning together, and winning is fun.

Speaking of fun, Craig is gonna take you through the next commitment, the commitment to fun and adventure Boom. Section four, chapter 25. In the books Almost forgot the bookmark Don't do that, MacKay. Well, luckily we've got a digital bookmark going. That's true. This, this recording would help us re- Immensely

where we are. Big trust energy. I like the quote- I love the title of this chapter, by the way. Yeah, I do too. But I also like the quote for this chapter, the Ernest Hemingway quote.

Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna butcher it. "The best way to trust someone is to trust them," or something.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

Yeah. It goes hand-in-hand with this whole chapter. It's the perfect quote. I, I just love that quote because a lot of time... Like, you, the, the example you gave towards the end of the chapter-

Mm-hmm ...

is, like, when trust is broken, how do we get it, how do we get it back? Like, I've- You know, the, the financial decisions that she's made in the past have been terrible, and I want to trust her with money and financial decisions, but I just can't.

Well, you can. Mm-hmm. You just have- I- It's not, it's, it's not, it's not easy, but you just hand the trust to her. L-

I remember so clearly him saying, "But how? How do I trust her?" And it's like, you just do.

You just-

You give her the power.

You just-

You let her make the decisions ...

you just give her the card and, and give her the, the, the power to- Mm

make the decisions. And-

And I think an important caveat for this chapter is that obviously this is a marriage book, right? Yeah. Like, we're talking about this relationship. Most all of the concepts in this book apply to any relationship.

Yeah. The sex stuff maybe-

For sure. Let's keep that one really narrowly focused.

An interesting concept, idea for this chapter is yes, you h- no matter who you're deciding to trust, you're giving them the power to hurt you. Mm-hmm. It's a sliding scale. In a marriage, you're giving them full power.

Yeah.

In another relationship, a different-

You give, it, it's-

relationship ...

relationship appropriate level of trust.

Right. Brene Brown talks about it as, putting marbles in a jar. You decide to trust someone with something small.

Yep.

And they hold your trust. Mm. So you, you put marbles in the jar when they maintain your trust. If they don't, the marbles come out.

Yeah.

And when something big happens and you, you need to share it with someone, you look around at who's- Who, who's got the most marbles ... whose jar is full of marbles- Who's got them ... because you've been trusting them with bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger things. In a marriage, you've decided to tie your future to someone else's future forever.

That's the decision you've made to be on the same team. We're gonna win together. We're gonna do life together. In that relationship, in that instance, in that circumstance, you've just gotta hand over the trust, the power to hurt you.

Well, because, uh, they've, you wouldn't have gotten married if they didn't have a jar of marbles in front of them.

Correct.

So it started out- You already built the trust ... it, it started out as a regular, you know-

Relationship ...

relationship. Like, say an employer and an employee.

Mm-hmm.

You're not gonna hand over the keys to your business to your first employee right out of the gates.

Definitely not.

Right? They haven't, you know, pre-set- We haven't put any marbles

in the

jar

we have, they haven't, like, shown that they're capable of doing something with the trust that you've handed them on the lower scale.

Mm-hmm.

So you, you give them little bit, little bit, little bit. L- a credit card with a limit that they show that they can spend appropriately, and then they get maybe something else, and then the, whatever.

It graduates. And then- The same thing in your relationship with the person that you end up marrying. First you, you know, share something- You trust

them with-

You share them

some- That you don't like Star Wars ...

you share something s- exactly. You share that with them, and then it's like, "Okay, they didn't make fun of me.

They didn't belittle me." Mm-hmm. "They, they held that. Okay."

Maybe eventually I tell them I have a fear of abandonment. Here- They get a bigger marble ...

Here's another marble. It's a big marble. Uh, eventually they have a jar of marbles, and you're like, "Okay, this is a person that I know I can trust with my heart and my vulnerabilities.

Let's take this to the next level." You get married.

Mm-hmm.

And now, you know, you carry on. But, uh, but, but when they break that trust, you know- Marbles

come out

of the jar ... marbles are out of the jar, and you don't want a empty jar in front of you.

Mm-hmm. In the event of a big break of trust, whether that's, um, compound interest on little breaks over time that creates an untenable trust situation in a relationship, or it's a big chasm of breakage of trust from one big thing, either way, when you're dealing with an empty jar of marbles with the person you decide to spend your life with, it's a scary fucking place to be.

Well, if you think about it from the jar of marbles perspective, like let's say, like infidelity- Mm-hmm ... is a big, big trust-breaking moment. You break the

jar.

Marbles are gone. It's, it's literally the jar, you dumped it, you shattered it, marbles everywhere. Jar is broken.

Mm-hmm.

You gotta get a new jar, you gotta get...

And then you gotta go and get- Start placing

marbles back in ...

mar- Right. But every time you don't show up, you've taken a marble out.

Mm-hmm.

Every time you say- I'll be s- six o'clock ... you say something and you don't follow through, you take a marble out. And eventually over time, you do enough of that, the jar also becomes empty.

And then you've got nothing left but an empty jar, and then you do something else to break trust, now you've broken the jar. Mm-hmm. You end up in the same place. Mm-hmm. It just takes longer to get there.

Mm-hmm.

If you're not cont- if you're not undoing all the marbles.

And honestly, honestly, I'm not sure which one is harder to come back from.

The, the constant, constant removal of trust till there's nothing left, or the instant break.

Yeah, because-

They're both really hard ...

well, one happens, it's, it's more acute, but it's big and it's a bigger, you know, more emotional situation. Whereas a full jar of marbles that you just consist- it's just consistently over time un- until it becomes the only thing that you remember about this person- Mm-hmm

is that they just consistently- They don't ... don't show up for me. And so it depends on, I think, and th- we talk about it in the book, it really just depends on who's involved and what was involved. Was it, you know, small, little, tiny things over time that we can- Mm-hmm ... you know, deal with? Or were, were medium-sized things consistently over time, or was it one big thing and a lot of little things?

Like, it just depends on the situation.

Which is why there's no one-size-fits-all way to build back trust. Right. It is all about putting marbles back in the jar.

Yeah.

But you gotta b- you gotta get the jar back first, which means you got both people need to be willing to do a lot of uncomfortable work that's gonna require a lot of leaving your ego behind.

And that's a, like, it's, on the surface, sounds simple. It's really, really challenging. And because there's no simple one way of doing it- We couldn't give you five easy steps to rebuild trust

There's, there's just... It doesn't exist, and anyone who tells you it does is, is trying to- Trying to sell you something

trying to sell you something. If you do have a situation where trust is, not easy for you, broken, um, then yeah, reach out. We would love to hear your situation and help you get a jar and, and fill it back up with some marbles. It's a great analogy though, the marble-

Mm-hmm

jars.

I agree. She's a badass. Um, the trust being given, not earned, is counter to what I was conditioned and learned growing up.

I think, I think most people, right?

I remember starting one of my corporate jobs when I switched roles in the company and went over into the, the newer role towards the end. My new boss said to me, like, "You have my full trust.

Like, you could lose it" . So-

But you start off-

You start off- With

a full

mar- With a full jar of marbles ... full jar of marbles. Like, I, I, I fully trust. I, I hired you for a reason. Here's my trust. I've given you my trust. And I remember thinking, "Huh, that's different."

But when you think about it, have you ever had a boss that you felt more connected with or- No

was a better bo- Like, she was an i- she was a great boss, right? She was

a great boss, yeah.

And I think that she set the foundation when she, when she said that to you.

Yeah.

Like, I r- I, I don't know, but I, I seem to recall T-shirts when I was a kid of, like, trust is ear- like-

Mm ...

tr- like, earned never... Maybe it wasn't trust specifically, but earned, never given.

And so e- every, at the, if like, I think that it was a work- It's a slogan, yeah ... it's like a workout thing, I think, or like basketball or something. But I think it just, across everything, it was kinda like-

That's a default, bro ...

the mentality- Yeah ... of like, it's, you earned never... E- everything is earned, never given, including trust.

I think for m- similar to you, that was my default setting. It's a, it was a mindset shift to be like, "Well, no, it's actually, you just, y- you hand it over willingly." It's the only way it works. It's the only way, whether you know you can... To Ernest Hemingway's quote- Mm-hmm ... the only way you know if you can trust someone is to trust them.

Yeah.

If you trust them with the little things, like we talked about, and they consistently show up and show you that that was a, a good investment, then you give them more and more and more.

Mm-hmm.

If they don't, then you pull away and you don't have a relationship with them.

I'm just realizing I had another boss too.

The opposite?

No. Similar. It goes along with the jar of marbles. I fucked up. I made a mistake, and like, she explicitly said, "Make sure you double-check this one thing, 'cause this person is a pain in the ass to deal with." And I did double-check. I triple-checked, but then I attached the wrong document, and so I- I, I double-checked the wrong thing.

I needed to double-check all the things. And so I sent the wrong document, and sh- of course, the receiver exploded, 'cause it was an old version. And I remember being scared shitless to go into my boss's office and take 100% responsibility that I made a mistake and now we've got a squeaky wheel over here that's got a major problem with us.

And I went in and I was like, "Oh, this sucks," because my perfectionism, my people-pleasing, all the things. I was feeling, completely useless a- and I was like, "She's gonna be pissed at me." And she was like, "Mistakes happen. You've built up enough trust in the account that-

It was a mistake

It was a mistake Yeah Like, if I was brand new and had not put some marbles in the jar, delivered, come through- It

might have broken the jar

It might have broken the jar

But, uh, all it did was take a marble out of the jar

Correct.

Yeah

And then- I never- ... you just worked hard to put more marbles back in the jar

Correct Yeah And, like, we've had, we had a blip or two over the many years, but by and large we had a fantastic relationship. I got along great with her. And I never thought about it from the jar of marbles trust perspective before, but it really, it really makes sense

In the second edition of this book, maybe we reference the jar of marbles in the book

Mm-hmm

Maybe we introduce that-

Yeah

concept in the new book- It's a good idea ... because I think it is a- It makes sense ... it is a good analogy to kinda... a visual for people who are more visual-

Mm-hmm ...

to have that kind of comparison. 'Cause I, I do think that trust is, it's a really hard-

Concept ...

concept for people to, to wrap their brain around with, like, you know, giving it and earning it and- Why

do I love Greg's definition so much?

It's just- Yeah ... giving someone the power to hurt you

Yeah

That makes it so simple

It's the simplest definition of trust I've-

Ever heard ...

I've heard, and, uh, it's my favorite

Yeah, me too

And it's obviously why we reference it. And, uh, yeah. So if you're struggling with trusting someone, just fucking trust them, and-

If you're struggling to do that, reach out.

We'll help

And that is a wrap on section four, which was the commitment to the team The team And so now we're moving into part five. I think I... We're calling it a section, but it's part five

Part five

Part five, and that's commitment to fun, which-

And adventure

Commitment to fun and adventure, and it's going to get very fun and very adventurous.

If you thought the sarcasm and the humor was, you know, present in the first half of the book, uh, two-thirds of the book- ... wait until you get to this part, because-

And you're taking the lead on this part

I'm-

Look out

We dial up the sarcasm. We dial up the humor. It's gonna be a fun and adventurous ride.

So join us next week for chapter 26, I believe it is. Yep, chapter 26, Hide the Penis. Are we at the sex chapter? Maybe, maybe not. We'll see you soon. Bye

 Look, knowing the strategy is one thing. Executing it in the trenches of daily life is another. If you're ready to stop listening and start doing, we have a challenge for you. It's the 33 Day Unstoppable Team Challenge. 33 days of micro drills delivered right to your inbox for just 33 bucks. It's designed to snap you out of roommate-ville and get you back into alignment.

Go to the200percentmarriage.com/challenge and take the first step toward your 200% life. Your team is worth the investment