Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1912: The Science of Successful Marriages & Relationships With Drs. John and Julie Gottman

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin speak with Drs. John & Julie Gottman about scientifically proven ways to improve relationships. What is the Gottman Institute, and what is its purpose? (2:29) What got them so interested in studying relationships? (4:16) What are some of the biggest misconceptions about the way we look at marriages back then compared to now? (6:00) What is the Love Lab, and how did it work? (9:10) The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse. (13:39) The Sound Relationship House theory of what makes relationships work. (18:52) The importance of focusing on the process rather than the content. (29:48) The value of their research in helping build healthy relationships. (34:44) Any differences in same sex-relationships vs different-sex relationships? (39:52) Are there things culturally that are working against them? (49:12) The importance of a moral aspect in a healthy relationship. (55:24) Love is an action. (57:38) Building connection through practice on Gottman Connect. (1:03:22) Love Rx and closing words to the Mind Pump audience. (1:09:21) Related Links/Products Mentioned The Gottman Institute | A research-based approach to relationships Gottman Connect Visit Seed for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP at checkout for 20% off your first month’s supply of Seed’s DS-01™ Daily Synbiotic** September Promotion: Skinny Guy Bundle (MAPS ANABOLIC // MAPS AESTHETIC // NO B.S. 6-PACK FORMULA // INTUITIVE NUTRITION GUIDE // OCCLUSION TRAINING GUIDE.) HALF OFF!! Also, the Fit Mom Bundle (MAPS ANYWHERE // MAPS ANABOLIC // MAPS HIIT // and INTUITIVE NUTRITION GUIDE.) HALF OFF!! **Code SEPT50 at checkout** The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert Love Lab - The Gottman Institute Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse | The Gottman Institute What is The Sound Relationship House? - The Gottman Institute Build Love Maps - The Gottman Institute The Investment Model of Commitment Processes A Review of the Research on Domestic Violence The health benefits of strong relationships The Man's Guide to Women: Scientifically Proven Secrets from the Love Lab About What Women Really Want Bringing Baby Home: The Research - The Gottman Institute Fatherhood (The Developing Child) - Book by Ross Parke Helen Fisher: The brain in love | TED Talk Love Quiz: Fondness and Admiration - The Gottman Institute American families spend just 37 minutes of quality time together per day, survey finds Gottman Card Decks App - Couples | The Gottman Institute Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most influential fitness health and entertainment podcast in the world. This is Mind Pump, right? Today's episode, this is a special one. We got Dr. John Gottman and Dr. Julie Gottman on the show. Both of their research

has been pivotal in marriage research. Literally, they can predict with their data, with the research that they've done, with over 90% accuracy, whether or not you and your partner are going to make it over the next five years. And this research has been duplicated many times. This is the best data we have in the world in terms of what makes successful marriages successful and what makes unsuccessful marriages and relationships unsuccessful. So we know you're going to love this episode. By the way, you can check them out at gotman.com. That's g-o-t-t-m-a-n.com.

They also have an app called gotmanconnect. Go check those out. You will not be disappointed. Now this podcast is brought to you by one of our sponsors, seed. They're the world leaders in science when it comes to the microbiome of the gut. This is a probiotic, but not like any other probiotic.

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So we have two workout program bundles that are 50% off. The first one is a skinny guy bundle. This includes maps, endabolic, maps aesthetic, and OBS six pack formula, the intuitive nutrition guide, and the occlusion Training Guide. So that's all 50% off. Then the second bundle that's half off is the Fit Mom Bundle.

This includes Maps anywhere, Maps Dynamo, Maps Hit, and the Intuitive Nutrition Guide. So they're both 50% off, but the sale ends in 48 hours. So if you want to take advantage, go to mapsfitinistproducts.com and then use the code SEPT50 for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. So I'd like to open by asking you both about the Gauntman Institute.

Like what is the Gauntman Institute? Let's start there and what is its purpose? Okay, so the Gauntman Institute has the purpose of helping couples with science-based interventions, exercises, and assessment of their relationship that comes straight out of our lab. Also, we have materials that trains clinicians all over the world, actually, to conduct the kind of therapy that we have created. Again, thanks to 3,000 couples who volunteered to take part in John's research and later our

research together. So we learned everything from the successful couples as well as the disasters and we have incorporated all of that work into what we give to couples in workshops, in talks, on an app as well called Gotman Connect and in our books. Interesting. So when I first read one of your books, it was about, I want to say almost three years ago and I was somewhat surprised to realize that a lot of the research, aside from the research the two of you have done, but a lot of the research when it comes to couples and relationships wasn't duplicatable or they weren't able to duplicate it in further studies. So a study would come out and say, here's what successful relationships show and then

they try to duplicate it and they couldn't duplicate it. But your research, very different. It's been duplicated and it's been proven time and time again. And that's what made me so interested in kind of the stuff that you both talk about. Well, I want to go back a little bit and talk a little bit about what got you both so interested in studying relationships and what makes them work and what makes them not work.

And John, I think you started this originally, correct? Yeah, with my friend, Bob Levinson, who's a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, and Bob and I started almost 50 years ago. And the reason we got into it was that we were failing in our relationships with women. So it came out of our clueless incompetence. the reason we got into it was that we were failing in our relationships with women. You came out of our clueless incompetence in relationships. We began the research. So two clueless guys started this whole thing. What was it like then versus more recently in terms of research. What was a lot just unknown when you first started?

Yeah, really, there just weren't any predictors that allowed you to know from a couple's interaction what kinds of fault lines they would get into in the future. So it was really our ability to predict from the variables we were collecting in our laboratory that allowed us to really be able to develop these principles for what made relationships work. And Bob and I found that it held for GAN lesbian couples as well as heterosexual couples. For as long as 20 years studying the same group of couples, through the whole life course from dating relationships up through couples in their late 80s.

What were some of the biggest misconceptions with the way we looked at relationships back then compared to now? Well, some of them, for example, included the thought that there was a spectrum on which emotions were on one end of the spectrum and rationality was on the other end. And the goal of the therapy that came out of not research but conjecture was to make partners more rational. Anybody should be more rational. They also thought about the brain as what is called a triune brain, meaning three parts to the brain. And all of that was proven to be completely wrong. In fact, we can't make good decisions without our emotions that tell

us what to prioritize and what we need. Yeah, one thing that I remember reading was, because a lot of people think just fighting in general is a good way to predict whether or not a couple is gonna succeed in five years or 10 years or not. And what I learned from reading your book was, it wasn't really about the fighting, it was how people fought and how they had friendships or how they developed their friendships when they weren't

fighting, necessarily, really blew my mind because I always thought it was just though, which people argue a lot. That means they're not going to make it. Would you mind going into that little bit? Yeah, that's very true. In fact, couples who never argue are actually at greater risk than couples argue. Couples who never argue, wind up suppressing their emotions and their unhappiness, and they wind up complaining to somebody else about their relationship, rather than talking to their partner about what's wrong with the relationship. So actually not fighting is a bad sign. It means you're really suppressing your complaints and not feeling comfortable expressing those

to your partner. Let me also add that there are many philosophies, many religions, many value systems that believe we shouldn't express anger. The knee-thanger is hurt or fear, more vulnerable emotions, and those are the ones you should express. Well, that's absolutely wrong. Anger is a primary emotion. And what really matters is how you express anger. For example, you can criticize your partner, you can express contempt towards your partner, you can be sarcastic. All of those ways do not work. But when you say very just openly

and honestly, I'm really angry about this situation and here's what I would love to see instead, that works beautifully. And we saw that in case after case. Let's talk about how you saw that, because let's talk about the Love Lab. This is what I found this absolutely fascinating. Well, let's talk about that. What is the Love Lab, and how did that all work? Yeah, so Bob Levinson and I created this lab in the 1970s.

And in those days, every university had one computer. There weren't any personal computers. But Bob and I had a lab with a giant computer that has less power than your cell phone. But it was the size of three refrigerators. And what it did was it synchronized to the video time code measures we were collecting of heart rate, blood velocity, how much people were sweating and moving around

and respiration. And what we found was that- Wait, can I interrupt you for a moment? Let's, let's set this up a little better. So what we would do is we had two chairs facing one another, cameras bolted to the balls. And a couple would come in, sit in the chairs, and they would be hooked up to what are called

Holter monitors that measured heart rate. We also had little electrodes that measured perspiration in the hands, which is a sign of anxiety, blood velocity, blood velocity, and they had designed the chairs so that they would record how much the person jiggled. So they call those devices jiggle-alometers. That's a brilliant name. Yeah. Right. And so the cameras would videotape the couples, each one of them and their dynamics together.

And the whole triminator at the same time would be recording physiology, and then all of that material, all that data, would be synchronized according to a time code, second by second or a hundredth of a second by a hundredth of a second actually, to read what was on the partner's faces, what was going on inside their bodies, what was going on between them. Now, did they have chest traps and electrodes? And like, I mean, were they all, like,

I mean, was it a whole, like sort of holster that they had to wear at that point? Cause it's, you know, in the 70s. Yeah, exactly. Nowadays, the lab is wireless. In the 1970s, they were hooked up to these machines that really recorded all of the physiology and synchronized it to the video time code. So Bob and I could tell when people were getting angry, what was happening inside their body? And it turned out that the couples who had really heart rates above 100 beats a minute,

and were sweating and physiologically aroused, their relationships deteriorated in the next three years. So we could predict with very high accuracy which relationships would get better over time which relationships would get worse over time and You know which people would separate and divorce which would stay together just by looking at the physiology Then what we looked at the emotions how they communicated with one another that added to the prediction So that eventually we got to about 94% accuracy in predicting what would happen to a relationship just by our measures in this love lab. Now that had to have blown your guys's mind, right? I mean that type of accuracy, I mean, has had never been seen before. been selecting human behavior is going to be real. Nobody had ever seen accuracy like that in

psychology. And it replicated six times in studies that we did across the life course and for gay and lesbian couples as well. But then 26 years ago, Julie and I got together and used all of that prediction to create a theory with principles about how relationships worked that would be a therapy and would provide self-help to couples that was based in scientific methods that actually worked, not our conjecture. So let's talk about those predictors because I found that, when I first read that, I couldn't believe that statistic with 94% accuracy, which is just absolutely insane, especially in the realm of sciences that you work in.

So what were some of these predictors that you saw? Besides the physiology, you'd see the elevated physiology, but then you would see actions or the ways people respond to each other. What did those look like? Well, first I have to tell you that with that 94% prediction rate, we never got invited to dinner anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

Nobody wants to be analyzed, right? Yeah. No. Ignorance is bliss. You're watching us. So first of all, John and Bob figured out that one of the, well, four of the dynamics that happened between couples was super predictive of separation or divorce or a lot of unhappiness. And those were called the four horsemen of the apocalypse,

the ones that really predicted disaster. And the first one we called criticism, and what criticism is is one partner blaming a problem between them on a personality flaw of the other person. So you're so lazy, you're selfish, you're mean, you're inconsiderate, you're thoughtless. Those kinds of words were all criticisms, always and never, you always forget to take out the garbage. You never clean up the kitchen.

Always and never are also criticisms because they imply a personality flaw in the partner. So that was one of the horsemen. The second one was contempt. And contempt, I have to tell you, was sulfuric acid for the relationship. So here's the difference between contempt and criticism. Contempt incorporates criticism into it, but it's something critical that said from a place on high, I'm so superior. And there would always be a little bit of scorn in it. For example, sarcasm with a cutting edge is contempt like, God, you wouldn't even think to offer to do the dishes. Would you?

No, nah, that's not who you are. Yeah, you're just such a nice guy. That is contempt. mockery is contempt. Name calling is contempt. All those words that come quickly to our tongue when we're angry words that come quickly to our tongue when we're angry, that is contempt. And contempt not only destroys a relationship, but we learned through some studies with a professor in immunology that they also destroy the immune system of the listener. So what we saw is that how many times a partner listened to contempt, predicted how many infectious illnesses they would have when they're coming to lose. Isn't that incredible? Wow. It was the second one and John D. Bonnet said you have to. Yeah, the third one was defensiveness. And defensiveness is either counter-att attacking and escalating the attack.

Oh, you think you're so perfect. Well, here's what's wrong with you. Or acting like an innocent victim. You're always picking on me. I never can do the right thing for you. It's always never gets satisfied. And usually there's whining connected with that. Presenting yourself as a victim. And that was defensiveness. The masters of relationship, by the way, the people who stayed together and stayed happily married, they basically didn't do contempt.

Contempt was really zero for them. They did criticism, but less, less often. And when their partner was critical, instead of getting defensive, they would say, that's interesting. Yeah, maybe I am a little selfish, or maybe I am kind of a considerer. You know, tell me more, I want to listen to you. I want to know what you're feeling and what you need. And the fourth horseman was stonewalling, which is really not in being engaged in the interaction. And 85% of our stonewallers and heterosexual couples were guys. So it was really a guy thing to do. They kind of tune out, not really give the speaker any signals that you're listening,

not really give the speaker any signals that you're listening, fold your hands across your chest, look down and away, and be like a stone wall. And so what Bob and I discovered was that when people's heart rates exceed 100 beats a minute, and we're secreting our two stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline, then we're much more likely to stonewall in the next 10 seconds. So it's about self-sueaning. That's very important. Those are the four horsemen. So when someone looks at these and says, wow, okay, these are really big predictors of unhappiness or separation of divorce, is the key to look at these and say, okay, well,

I'm going to change these things about how I communicate or is it key to look at these and say, okay, well, I'm going to change these things about how I communicate, or is it key looking at other things that lead to not using the horsemen? In other words, someone may be defensive because they feel like they're attacked all the time, or someone may be critical because they feel like it's a counter-attack or whatever. Are there other things they should look at, or should they just focus on these specific horsemen? Well, would this be a good time to talk about our theory of what makes relationship succeed? Absolutely. Okay, so there are nine things we call this the sound relationship house. And imagine a house that has seven levels to it, seven floors, and two walls.

So, at the bottom of the house is what we call love maps. Love maps mean how well do you know your partner's internal world? How well do you know their feelings, their values, their beliefs, their ethics, their needs? Their most embarrassing moment in their childhood, their ethics, their needs, their most embarrassing moment in their childhood, their favorite teacher. Lots of things to know about each partner, and do you feel known yourself? So the operative way to create love maps is asking questions, just asking open-ended questions.

Like, so what are you thinking about redesigning our house next year? Big open-ended questions that have lots of words for answers, not just yes or no. So that's an important way to maintain friendship. The second level is called Fomousen admiration admiration and we all know what those are. They are expressing love,

expressing respect, but you have to express it, not just feel it. That's the key there. So saying, I love you, saying you look great today, saying, boy, that was a smart thing to say at dinner, et cetera. That's important, expressing things with either your words or affection, hands, et cetera. The third level is very important. It's called turning towards. And turning towards versus turning away

and turning against is one of the simplest things to change if you're aware of it. So when your partner makes a bid for connection, even just by calling your name or saying, wow, look at that beautiful bird out the window. Do you respond or not? Do you say, wow, that is beautiful. Or do you say nothing, which is turning away? Or do you turn against your partner by saying something like, you know, I'm trying to read, would you stop interrupting me? A hostile response. That's turning against. So turning toward can be as simple as just saying, when your partner reads something out of the newspaper,

that's simple, interesting, that's all it takes. So partners making a bid for connection and being responded to in successful couples, the partners who are responding did so 86% of the time. Their partners made a bid for connection. The people who were disasters only turned towards each other 33% of the time. That's a huge difference. So that's the third level of the sound relationship house. The fourth level is perspective, positive or negative. And that refers to the attitude the partner has towards you overall.

So if you're grumpy in the morning, if you have a positive perspective, you might think about your partner saying to yourself, oh, they must have had a bad night of sleep or they must be really anxious about the talk they have to give today. That's positive perspective. The negative perspective would be,

oh, God, not again, I can't stand this. That's the negative perspective. The next level is conflict, managing conflict, super important. So the emphasis here is, first of all, to stay as calm as you can and take breaks when you get flooded or that pulse goes above 100 beats a minute, take breaks from each other, tell each other when you're gonna come back, and then resume the conversation. And a break shouldn't be involved thinking

about the problem you were discussing. You have to take your mind off it in order to metabolize the stress hormones that the conflict is causing inside of you. Take your mind off it. Do something self-soothing like reading a book, doing your email, watching some TV, going for a run, taking your mind off it, and coming back at the time you agreed on

and continuing the conversation. And then there are antidotes to each of the four horsemen as well, which really center on instead of describing your partner, you describe yourself and the situation and what your positive need is. So it's going to sound like I'm worried. There's the feeling the situation that the bills haven't been paid on time. That's the situation. You're positive need. Would you please pay them tonight? That's the formula for dealing with plants you have that really help with managing conflict. The next level is honoring each other's dreams. So what we learned is that 69% of all problems couples face are perpetual. They never go away. So, you know, you're really different. You've got two different bodies, two different brains,

and two sets of lifestyle preferences, two sets of personalities, and sometimes those pre-A conflict, 69% of the time. But what we just squalered is that when one partner takes the time to really understand the other one's position on an issue, especially if it's an issue that keeps going forever, by asking questions like ethics and values that are part of your position, history, what's your ideal dream here? A lot of people have those beneath their position on an issue, and they need to be uncovered.

Then people can make a compromise that really honors each person's dream regarding a particular conflict, even if it's a perpetual one. And the upper level we call share meaning. And what that means is not you have to have the same life meaning, life purpose, not that. But you talk about what yours is and allow yourself to be vulnerable while you're talking about it, look your partner. So you're sharing your ideas about what's most important to you. And do you want to do the wall? Yeah, the walls are trust and commitment. And trust really means that you've shifted when you're in a relationship to thinking for two

rather than thinking for one. So your decisions really are maximizing not only your benefit in life, but your partners as well. That's what trust is. And commitment, we learned from the research of a woman in Cal-Rusbalt, who studied commitment for 30 years, and really identified that in a committed relationship, you really are saying, this is my journey, and you are the woman, the man I cherish. And here's what I love about you. And you consider yourself really lucky to be in this relationship.

And when you feel that way, when you cherish your partner's positive qualities and feel that your partner is irreplaceable, then when you're upset with your partner, you complain to your partner. When you're not committed, you complain about your partner to somebody else. And that leads to betrayal. So that's what Carol Roswell taught us about commitment. Commitment is really about magnifying in your mind what's great about your partner and minimizing your partner's limitations. And betrayal

really comes from minimizing your partner's positive qualities, feeling sorry for yourself for what you don't have in this relationship and then giving yourself permission to find somebody else better. And you're thinking, I can do better every time there's a fight as opposed to thinking well, you know, yeah, we fight occasionally, but boy, there are a lot of wonderful things about my partner. So we got to work this out together. So that's a sound relationship house theory. Now go ahead, Justin. Yeah, a lot of these treatments, obviously you guys were able to conclude based off of what you've found in the experiments I'm assuming. Right.

So in that regard, like going through all that data, I mean, obviously there must have been some surprising finds with that, but were you able to also take some of those things and apply them to your own relationship after that and see how that flourished in your own relationship. Absolutely. One of the great things about doing research is that you can really admit they are wrong. So I have a track of my own hypotheses about relationships and I'm wrong 60% of the time. We've both learned from the data how to have a better relationship. So when Julie and I do a workshop for couples, we always process a fight that we've had

with one another. Oh, wow. For 26 years, we've never been at a loss for a fight. You guys are just an open book. for 26 years we've never been at a loss for a fight. You guys are just an open book. One of the things that I find most fascinating by the research and the stuff that you guys talk about is that you don't list money, infidelity, politics. I mean, these are the things that I think

that most people think why a relationship, oh, the they have different political views they are never gonna work or all he cheated on her that's never gonna work or old might they're always broke or you know someone blows the money on time but never once have you mentioned any of those things is like a crippling flaw in a relationship it's always about how you handle all those situations that's so much more important It's always about how you handle all those situations that's so much more important. Right. So we call how you handle it process. What's the process you use to manage the differences between you?

Also, to build friendship, closeness, and intimacy between you. What's the process? Versus the issues you're struggling with that you just described so brilliantly? That's the content. Content is housework, money, parenting, sex, everything else. So those are the issues with which you may struggle, but how you deal with them is what matters? Are they so insignificant that when you guys hear a partner or partner is dealing with them that it's you don't even care about it It's really lip-pain attention to how they communicate it like it's like Because I know they have to come to you with this. Oh my god. This is it's so traumatic for them It's so difficult for them. And do

you guys kind of look at it like, no, it's not. We've seen hundreds of couples that have the same issue and get through it just fine. I, I wouldn't agree with you, honey. I think there are a few issues, actually, that are vendors, if not breakers of relationship. So one of them is the decision whether or not to have children. And one person really wants to have children, the other person doesn't, absolutely not. Then that's probably going to be a breakery. You can't have half a kid, right? There's infidelity is another big one. And we are working right now in our research on a treatment for infidelity that we have been incorporating into our therapy for, Finally, a controlled study, a comparative study on whether or not this method works to really heal relationships that have suffered from infidelity.

And the third thing I want to mention is domestic violence. So there are two types of domestic violence. One is characterological where the perpetrator cannot be stopped and it has nothing to do with the victim of the violence. No matter what the victim says or does, they're still going to be battery beating by the other partner. That's only 20% though. That's what we speculate. 20% of domestic violence, and there are major injuries with that. But 80% of domestic violence and their major injuries with that, but 80% of domestic violence is

much more minor where typically both people have thrown something at each other or have slapped each other, pushed each other because they've gotten physiologically flooded and they don't know how to take a break. And we did do a research study on a treatment for that type of domestic violence that was highly successful. It eliminated the domestic violence, reduced hostility, and improved friendship and closeness between the partners. Yeah, so let me underscore that. What we discovered is that often what goes along with unhappiness in a relationship are these other things that are going on as well.

Addiction is one really serious kind of problem that goes along with relationship I'm having is depression, thoughts of suicide, domestic violence of the kind Julie was talking about, the situational domestic violence, infidelity. And we have to do controlled studies to test that our methods actually work. So we can't just lie on our intuition. And we've been doing these studies, and because the government doesn't fund this research, we've had to do it using money that we earn from helping couples to fund the research. And so, we've actually been doing that in the last 26 years, and we know that our methods

are very effective. Along those lines, how important is this kind of research just for society? Like how important is it that couples figure out how to work together and grow old together versus just separating divorcing and saying we're going to just give up on this. Well, first of all, we both will have answers for this one. Before this research came out and we started teaching clinicians, the average success rate for family therapy or marital therapy was 17%. Wow. Yes. In other words, going into therapy resulted in 83% of couples remaining unhappy or separating. Not really good.

What we're now doing more controlled studies, but what we have seen is about a 75% to 80% improvement rate given our interventions. And again, thanks to the research couples who showed us how to do it. So it's incredibly important for this work to get out there, not only for the therapists around the world, but also for couples because they're raising kids and kids are watching what their parents do. They're incredible antennae and sponges. They absorb everything their parents do and then they repeat those processes in their own adult relationships. So we very much need to help couples learn the right ways,

rather than the wrong ways of helping each other. And the thing that drives me crazy is that when people who are very popular say the wrong things about how you should have a relationship, couples tend to try those and then they themselves feel like a failure if those methods don't work and it's not their fault, you see. They're just not learning the best methods. Yeah, let me add to what Julie's saying. It's turned out that one of the benefits of a great relationship is that you gain up to 17 years more of life.

So if you want to predict longevity, what's the best predictor longevity? And you might think it's exercise and eating well and not being obese. But really what it is is having happy relationships with your best friends, with your community, with your lover and with your children. So relationships have turned out to really be the critical thing, not only in longevity, but in health and resilience, recovery from illness, how quickly you recover. So that whole field is now called social epidemiology, and it also has developed in the past 50 years.

So when you have a really good relationship, your kids live, they wind up being healthier when they get to middle age because of your relationship with your partner and your lover and they see that quality of love and care and kindness and courtesy and generosity. And that affects their health when they get to middle age. So, you know, having a great relationship has all these positive reverberations in terms of longevity and health, and your children's longevity and health as well. Yeah, I would surmise that it just,

it leads to overall better behaviors and better self-care and, you know, having someone there that allows you to feel supported and, you know, provides a little bit more meaning and purpose. You earlier you had mentioned that 60 something like 69% of the types of arguments that couples have are these perpetual ones that never really get solved. And reminded me, so my parents have been married for over 40 years.

And I remember how they used to argue when I was younger versus now that their grandparents and they've been together for a long time. And I remember how they used to argue when I was younger versus now that their grandparents and they've been together for a long time. And I love it. I love watching them actually argue with each other now because it's so different. And it looks almost like it's the same stuff that they argued about before,

but there's so much more accepting of the other person. It's almost like it doesn't affect them the same. What role does just acceptance play in the fact that, well, you know, we're probably never gonna agree over this. So we just kind of accept each other. No, I'm just wrong, I'm not just wrong. Right, you know, we like to say that your attitude should be, I totally love you, I love everything about you.

I completely accept every facet of your being. But for God's sakes, would you please change? What? I'm dead. That's all. Were there any key differences that you found between men and women? Like for example, there was one that John,

I think you mentioned, where men tend to be the one that stone wall. Were there any other key differences between men and women and is understanding that helpful for, you know, for husbands and wives or even sex? I want to mention one that I think is really something that men need to really be aware of. And that is that, you know, Billy Christel said it really well. He said, a woman needs a reason to have sex. A guy only needs a place. That's true.

For her, but it's because women really, the world is a much more dangerous place for women than it is for men. So the lifetime probability that a woman in America will be seriously attacked sexually or physically is 49% for men, the same figure is 9%. So women really need a relationship to be a safe place for them to feel in the mood to have sex, which means that women need to feel emotionally connected to their men or the women that they love. In order to feel that the situation is indeed erotic, they also need to feel like there's nothing undone

in the long to-do list that women have to deal with. That's what the Housework gets more sex, I what we'll help with the housework, get more sex, and then we'll help with the housework. Yeah, come out here, especially back to me. Right? Right? No, I think that's a very important thing to realize that eroticism is really different for women

than it is for men. Yeah. This is why I vacuum with no pants. That's okay. You only get it half done though, right? Yeah, this is why I vacuum with no pants. That's not good. You want me to get it half done though, right? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we wrote a book called A Man's Guide to Women that tells you everything you need to know.

You know, another thing, of course, is the cycles that women have, they're monthly mencise, and the mood changes that go along with that, and to realize that women have, their monthly mencies, and the mood changes that go along with that, and to realize that women have no control over that. That's just part of the body. What the body does, what the hormones do in women versus men. So those kind of mood shifts monthly, certainly make a difference between men and women and how you relate to different interactions at different times.

Now you guys, you said you also did the lab with gay and lesbian couples too. Were there things that were very similar and were there things that were very different and what were those? Yeah, that's a really great question. And it turned out that gay and lesbian couples just have a better sense of humor about things. And it is defensive as heterosexual couples do. It's not so much a battle of the sexes for gay and lesbian couples.

They kind of understand each other better, to women, better understanding, to men better understanding. And so they're not quite as hostile when they present an issue, and they're less defensive, and they have a better sense of humor about themselves. And that winds up being really helpful. The other thing that's different is that gay and lesbian couples

have had a lot more trauma in their primary families, not accepting their homosexuality as much. And heterosexual couples haven't had that kind of trauma, not that they haven't had others. But that's one that really gay and lesbian couples come to therapy with that kind of trauma, and that's one that really gay and lesbian couples come to therapy with that kind of trauma, that's really different. Yeah, I think the other thing too that's different is that typically gay and lesbian couples are part of a community, and they have that community support. So it's like the community of the other. And whenever there's another,

there's much more closeness, understanding and community support that generates into support to the relationship also. But heterosexual couples are much more isolated, more alone these days, especially in the last 50 years, where women have gone back to work, and so they're not building bonds in the neighborhood by sharing coffee at 10 o'clock in the morning.

So, I think heterosexual couples have a bit more of a struggle in terms of creating community for both themselves, for their children, and to support their relationship. Interesting. You mentioned women going back to work really made me think of the old traditional gender roles versus how societies kind of changed. Has that played any role in more or less success with relationships? In other words, did you see that if people fell into more traditional gender roles, they had more

less success or did it just pose different challenges when both people worked or when the wife worked and the husbands stayed at home, is it just different? Yeah, I think it's very important nowadays that anybody who wants to be close to a woman, whether it's a woman or a man, really respect her and respect her dreams. And that's a new thing, that really is a new thing, that to be a successful partner to a woman, you really need to be a nurtured kind of partner. A partner who supports their dreams, emphasizes love and connection and building respect. And that's been a really big change that's happened in the last 50 years.

Yeah, I think that men have really faced a challenge in heterosexual relationships in that they are being asked to totally change their role. You know, their role used to be, you know, bring home the bacon, go out there, go work, and when a woman had a baby, the man would work even harder, more hours to be a good husband and father, bring home more money. That was their role. And now, men are being asked to share the housework, share the parenting, which a lot of men incidentally love and are enjoying. And also, men are being asked to accept that their partner, who is a woman, may be making more money than they are, may have a more elevated position in employment than they have. And given that, you know, for hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years, men's self-esteem has been based in how far

you've progressed in your career path to have a woman who, again, men have had to change in terms of work, to have a woman outpace them in terms of career success is sometimes a painful lesson. And so men have to learn how to base their self-esteem in other facets of their humanity other than just work progress. Yeah, let me have to that because, you you know one of the programs that we've created is called bringing baby boom which is helping couples preserve their intimacy after a baby's been born and that's a challenge and it turns out that research shows that fathers are really important for the emotional and intellectual development of those sons and daughters.

So nobody's more surprised than that than expecting fathers. So we tell them how important they are because the great thing about men with respect to children is that we are great at play, much better than women. You know, we're like another kid and we're really very good at playing. And play turns out to be very important for the emotional and intellectual development of our sons and our daughters. So the research is really amazing. There's a great book called Fatherhood,

written by one of my colleagues Ross Park. And it reviews the incredible research on how important dads are. And by the way, lesbian couples can actually act, one of them can act like a father in a heterosexual couple and get all those benefits. But it's really the way men play with babies and children that winds up being an enormous strength

for the emotional and intellectual development of both sons and daughters that turns out to be very important. No, are there things that you, and I guess this, I want your opinion more than anything on this, that has shifted culturally that are, that's working against us or working against what you guys are trying to do. Oh my god. Pre-Hotsey. Yeah. Our political system, the drugs, let's see, there's a million things. So culturally, I think the phenomenon, I, you know, this is a tough one because it's got its pros and cons.

Yeah, I know I know I'm putting you kind of on the hot sea with that question. No, no, no, no. No, we love answering questions like this. Okay. So one of the big cultural changes for relationships today is technology, which has its pros and cons. So pro, it's wonderful at connecting people over long distances.

So you can text, you can FaceTime, you can do Zoom meetings, you can stay connected to your partner. And that's a great thing. And Con is that people are trying to resolve conflicts or express emotions over FaceTime, over texting, over emails, and it really simply doesn't work. Because you're losing so much information, especially through just texting, that you would have sitting across from your partner face to face. So, you know, my advice about that cultural phenomenon

is don't try to solve anything or express emotion over texting or email, especially negative emotion. Keep that per face to face. I think another cultural phenomenon is the easy sex that's going on. So Tinder, can't remember all the different names of the websites where you know you, depending on where you're located, you can quick pick up a sex partner, go have sex, and then back away. Well, and then back away. Well, that's interesting. I mean, if you want to fulfill only sexual needs, that's fine. But the problem is that most people are lonely. Most people want

a relationship, and they think they're going to find it through Tinder. And I would strongly disagree that all of those levels of the sound relationship house that we named, seven of them plus the walls, two walls, trust and loyalty are really what create a successful relationship. And if you only have sex and passion, but nothing else, that's not a good predictor for a long-term relationship, that will ease your loneliness. A cultural phenomenon that comes to mind, as you're talking about, those apps is pornography. The ease of access to it, which in my lifetime

has dramatically changed over just the last 30 years. What, is that playing any role in challenging couples and relationships at all? Yeah, it absolutely is creating a huge change. So first of all, it's addictive, particularly for men. A lot of men are using pornography as a stressed reliever. But the problem with it is that men come to expect the sex in their bedroom at home to look like sex on their screen.

And what they're not aware of is number one, the partner at home is actually a person with her own needs, her own wishes, or his, their own preferences in terms of sex, and not just under your control if you're the one using the pornography. You can press a button and get whatever sex you want. And secondly, the sex on pornography is totally impersonal. There's no emotional connection to it. So the man gets control over sex, it's too dimensional, and the sex that's expected then at home should mimic that of the porn side. I don't think so. That's not going to work. And it really can destroy relationships, especially when one partner is addicted to porn.

I think another thing that's very important in terms of your important question about how things have changed culturally is that we're now seeing a kind of backsliding politically in terms of women's liberation. And the kinds of things that happen when Ms. Magazine was founded, you know, that sort of first generation of feminism is getting reversed politically with the role V-W Wade decisions, for example, a woman's decision about whether or not to have a baby has been taken away from her. And in many states, her life is considered secondary to the life of the fetus. And the processes that honor women and give them control are really important and

creating much greater intimacy in relationships. And so it's very dangerous to reverse that process. It was so hard fought to get even the right to vote. Women only got the right to vote in Switzerland in 1960. And not everywhere in Switzerland. So it's very dangerous to reverse that liberation of women, politically, economically, socially, psychologically. We really need to honor women. Along those lines of, along lines of of Roe versus Wade Data on couples that are that have spiritual or religious practices show that they tend to be happier and and have longer relationships or divorce less Is that have you found in your research that to for that to also be important that they share

Some kind of up of a I don't, 40,000 foot view of their lives, a spiritual practice, if you will, together. That's right. Yes, it is very important, but research adds a caveat to that. It's not religiosity. It's not going to church on Sunday or mosques on Friday or synagogues on Saturday that really matter.

It's considering the relationship to be sacred. It's really placing the relationship in a sacred place and honoring what you're doing in that relationship creatively to create community, to create values that really are effective that matters. Not being religious and it's really being spiritually connected with one another that gives the strength. And do you think it's because that a lot of religions help people or provide that for people? Is that why it was probably successful in the past and is less about the actual religion and more that it gives them a structure to kind of, okay.

Interesting. Go ahead. The other thing too about religion in the past is it provided a given community, a community that supported the relationships staying together, supported each partner where we would travel. That's right. That's actually a really interesting point because one of the things I think is really common

in relationships when they're struggling, they confide in people that are going to side with them and to, oh, he's an asshole or, oh yeah, she's this and that has to be like one of the worst things that you can do in a relationship. And one of the healthiest things you can do is even when you're going through a rough time relationship, is people that are looking for your relationship

to be successful and wanna say, hey, well, maybe you should look at yourself a little bit or you know what I'm saying? So I think that that probably is provided in that community also. Something else that you, something else you guys have talked about before, that for me was a very, very pivotal point

in my life was how you guys discuss love. So love to me growing up, I think, was presented in the wrong. In fact, for many years, I used to not believe in love. I used to say, that's made up. That's not true. It's a bunch of bullshit because it was presented to me as this, you know, Disney like feeling. And not like it's this action. It was later in my life, and when it was presented to me

that love is an actual action that we choose to do. And that completely shifted my paradigm around how I look at you. Because I was measuring relationships all the time by I'd be dating this girl for a while and be like, oh, this must not be love, because we're fighting all the time. Or I've lost that Disney feeling of that we had

with that romantic feeling at the beginning of what I now would think is lust or that romantic feeling, right? I would measure it against that. And then so of course those things would start to fade in every relationship and then be like, oh, I'm not in love. So on to the next one

Until I learned that it was a choice and an action So speak a little bit towards a love because I think it's very powerful what you guys say around that Yeah, I think that is really a key thing which is that Love and being in love first of all being in love can last forever in a relationship. It doesn't have to go away because it really is the way you think about your partner and about the relationship. So when I'm not with Julie, I'm really thinking that I am lucky to be with Julie. I'm really rehearsing in my mind quite often all the wonderful qualities that she has, all the things that she's brought to this relationship, all the ways in which she is irreplaceable. My mother is dead now, but Julie knew my mother, you know, we raised a child together with grandparents together. There's nobody that can replace Julie. And so it's really what I do in my mind about Julie and how I act toward her in the morning, in the evening, how I make love to her,

how I think about her, that keeps me in love. And I am every bit as in love now as I was when we first met, the first moment we met. And the research of Helen Fisher has shown that being in love has no shelf life. It really can last forever. She puts people in a functional MRI tube and shows them pictures of their partner. And the whole pleasure center lights up when they see their partner and the whole pleasure center lights up, you know, when they see their partner. And it's very much based on what you say, that it's an action. It's the way you think about your partner

and the generosity, the kindness you show, the affection you show, and the way you respect your partner that keeps you in love. Mm-hmm. The other thing I would say per your description, which was thank you very much for that, because everybody has gone through that, where you really, oh my God, you're so in love,

and then you're not, what happened. Well, what actually happened is biochemistry. That's what happened. So when we have sex with somebody, even when we touch somebody, oxytocin is released. And oxytocin is the hormone of bonding, right? So all those guys on Tinder who are having sex with somebody are actually producing some bonding with that person, whether they want to or not, every time they touch or make love. So the feelings that are so dreamy

are primarily oxytocin and some of the other hormones that are released during that phase of being in love. But then the person has feet on the ground and the other partner has feet on the ground and the other partner has feet on the ground. And if you start spending nights together, you realize they're breath smells in the morning. You realize that they don't keep the bathroom clean. They leave the towels on the bathroom floor,

drives you nuts. You start having real life human interaction, not just sexual interaction or romantic interaction. And that human interaction is where the deeper love lies. That's what I've found. That the more we see our partner as a fully faceted human being. The more we love them, think about it this way. When you first see a diamond, and that diamond is lying on a nice piece of black velvet,

you see one side of it. Okay, it's beautiful, it's beautiful. But when you hold that diamond up to the light, and you turn it, and you look at the back of it and the side of it and every part of it, the beauty increases enormously in your perception and you love it even more. Well, each of us is a diamond, even a diamond in the rough as they say, and we have to learn how to love the humanity in our partner. And that goes back to the concept of not only acceptance, but loving our partner's cracks, flaws.

Consider all of those beautiful too, because they're all part of the human being that you're together with. Now, is there an exercise that you guys would give or something that your advice you would give to help better work through that? For example, I'll give you a personal so you can help me process this, right? So I've been together with my wife for 12 years now,

and I would say we're in more love today than we were when we first started. And I've had to learn to love these flaws that we talk about. She happens to be the one that leaves the towel on the floor. She's the best. So I happen to be the neat freak. And one of the things that I had to learn in our relationship is that I would never trade one of her other qualities that I absolutely love and adore about just to have a clean

bathroom. I'll spend an extra 10 minutes. And that's how I've learned, so I don't know if that was the right way to do it or not, but that's how I started to accept that as I go, she is one of the most amazing women that I've ever met as far as her drive to be successful, her ability to communicate.

She has all these beautiful qualities. And then am I really gonna ruin our relationship because she's terrible at picking the towel up or because she leaves her makeup out on the counter? Like I could spend three more minutes of my day every day making that better because I wouldn't trade those other, so are there exercises to help someone get to that place

that it took me a long time to figure out and get to? I mean, there's a key thing. And Carol Rusbalt discovered this. It's really brilliant. When things aren't going well, if you think in your mind, who needs this crap, I can do better than you're going to be falling out of love. But when things are not going well, and you're thinking in your mind, this is the woman that took care of me when I had the flu. This is the woman who made me chicken soup when I felt lousy. This is the woman who

really loves me. She really loves me and she's not pretending. And you know, when you think that way, then you stay in love. That's the key thing. When things aren't going well, how do you think? If you think I can do better, then you're doomed. So, exercises, we've created a lot of exercises that help build this. One of them is called the fondness and admiration checklist. We created a website and admiration checklist. We created a website which is basically an app. It's called Gotman Connect. And on that app, you have every exercise in the world. There's 39 of them that can build friendship, closeness, sexual intimacy, teach you how to manage conflict and so on, and each one includes little snippets of videotape of John and me showing how not to do something and how to do something.

We're really well practiced at how not to do something. Those videotapes are great, as well as explanations about how to do them and why they're important, but all of those have been shown to build connection, build what you're talking about, which is a sense of fondness and admiration of your partner, and the ability to really turn torture partner and see their humanity,

especially when they describe their own needs. How important is couples working on the relationship when things are good versus, oh, things are bad, now we gotta work on things. Is it important to work on things all the time or really focus on the relationship even when you feel like, oh, everything's good? I don't think we need to work on anything necessarily.

Let me tell you about a study that was done at UCLA by the Sloan Center with dual career couples in Los Angeles. And what they found was that these couples talked to each other only 35 minutes a week. And most of it was about errands. Their lives had devolved into this really long to-do list. And so they weren't building play, fun, and adventure in the relationship. They weren't turning toward one another. They were really neglecting the relationship. It kind of like if you buy a nice car and you don't

ever maintain it, it's going to deteriorate. So the slow inside her found that even in these small moments, you know, we build the relationship. It's not all about conflict. It's also about preserving intimacy, preserving fun, preserving play, preserving adventure, learning together, doing things together that really are enjoyable. Having joy in your life is really important. It's not just about resolving conflict. I'm so glad you had a study for me to reference now. I just talked about this on the podcast the other day that one of the greatest relationship hacks that we've had in our 12 years was when we started incorporating 10 minute walks after eating. And we actually, ironically, did not do that for the better the relationship.

We did it for health. It was about better digestive processes, about getting more activity to keep body fat. So we actually went into it without the intent of the relationship improving. But I found that having an organized time where we put our phones away, that we walked outside and it was literally, we had to connect for 10 to 15 minutes while we walked, it created this incredible bond and opportunity and it forced that space.

And I speculated, even though I didn't know the actual numbers that I know now, that I bet you people don't even spend 10 minutes a day every day making sure they can't, to not just talk about the groceries, the bills and all the basic BS. So I glad I have a study I can reference now because that was so impactful in our relationship

to a two-starchic corporate that. So this has been phenomenal. If there's anything you want to end with in particular in your words of encouragement to people who are maybe couples who are challenged right now, want to end with, in particular, any words of encouragement to people or maybe couples who are challenged right now, we can end with that. Let's also end with our new book.

Yeah. So we have a book coming out called Love RX. And in that book, it's a seven day program where you do something very small every single day that build your closeness, build your intimacy, you know, creates that sense of deeper love between the two of you. It really focuses on that whole positive side of the relationship. So that's one thing. But what I would like to also say in closing is that it's so wonderful that the three of you invited us onto this program to describe what we do because hopefully your audience can recognize themselves in the things that we've been talking about and discussing.

They can seek to maybe incorporate some of them, integrate some of them into their relationships, but overall what we're really working on is creating more love in the world. That's what we need. And that starts at home. Excellent. I want to close by telling people about a free app that they can get. If they go to the App Store and type in Gotman Card Decks, they can download a free app on either their iPhone

or their smartphone that has 14 different card decks that are really useful in expressing your needs to one another and finding out what your erotic love map is for your partner, what turns your partner on and off sexually and in expressing appreciation and many, many other things. And it's completely for free. It's been downloaded 350,000 times so far. So we want to offer that to your listeners as well. Awesome.

Well, this has been incredible. We're huge fans of the work that you guys have done. And for our audience, we highly recommend you read all of their books. They've definitely been pivotal for all of us and the research really backs it all up. So I appreciate you both coming on. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you so much.

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