Podcrushed - Podcrushed Goes To Therapy (ft. Dr. Stan Tatkin)

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Relationship scientist, critically-acclaimed author, and Penn's couples therapist, Dr. Stan Tatkin, joins the pod to talk all things love and relationships.  He gives tips on how to help a relationship thrive… even when you want to *kill* the other person. Follow us on socials!InstagramTwitterTikTokSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lemonada So Tracy and I have this agreement that we can go to bed angry, but we at least have to touch toes. And so the other, there was a few nights ago, I was so angry with her. And so she started going to sleep, and I was sitting up, and she was lying curled up, and I just wanted to murder. And then I remembered our principal that we at least got to touch toe. and I was still, you know, I was still, I'm just, I could fill every core in my body just not wanting to do it.

So I reached over and I grabbed her hand and I squeezed it. She squeezed it back and I felt this immediate relief. It all went away. This is Pod Crushed. The podcast that takes the sting out of rejection, one crushing middle school. story at a time. And where guests share their teenage memories, both meaningful and mortifying. And we're your hosts. I'm Nava, a former middle school director. I'm Sophie, a former fifth grade teacher. And I'm Penn, the middle school dropout. We're just three beehis who are living in

Brooklyn. Wanting to make stuff together with a particular fondness for awkward nostalgia. Well, I struggle with nostalgia. I'm here for the therapy. Actually, today, I'm listening to you know how busy I am, guys. I'm just, I'm consolidating my therapy into today's episode Nicky. I like it. You're laughing but you're going to thank me later. Can I tell you a funny story about therapy? Please. So for

years in my marriage with David I begged him to go to therapy okay? Literally on my hands and knees. Is it like him therapy alone or both of you? Yeah, him alone. You're like I don't have the problem. I'm like, please for the love of God. Go to a therapist And he did, he tried six different therapists over the course of a couple of years.

And, I mean, they were real characters, okay? Hilarious. None of them worked. They were all, he, like, did a couple sessions with each one. They were all terrible. And finally, actually, Penn's wife, Domino, suggested a therapist to him. Oh, that's right. He's obsessed with him.

Yes. He's obsessed with him. Now, this guy is like the third person in our marriage. He comes up all the time. I love him. I never met him. I love him. And now David is the biggest proponent of therapy

He tells all his friends He gives his therapist number to all his friends I love that I'm like on the sidelines Like I created you I did this for you Sounds like Domino created Sounds like you need some therapy

So that's a god complex I have to have David weigh in on whether he agrees No but I think you guys are going to love this episode I think it's filled with a lot of gems So this week is pretty exciting We're about 14 episodes in. And you guys have heard several guests, as well as us to the host, share stories of

embarrassment, estrangement, misunderstanding humor, isolation, heartbreak, the whole sort of gamut of human emotions. And what all of these stories have in common is that they take place at the crossroads of our relationships, all kinds of relationships, our peer relationships, our parental, and our romantic relationships. So we are going to therapy. That's right. Our guest today is Dr. Stan Tatkin, a psychotherapist, a researcher. and a best-selling author whose work helps us understand all types of relationships in refreshingly clear and accessible terms.

His practice ties together developmental neuroscience, attachment theory, and practical relationship counseling. And his books, I mean, I personally have read a couple of his books. I mean, you could read even just a page and glean a lot. I just find them incredibly helpful. I think obviously, evidently millions of others have. So they're huge. They've earned him praise from everyone from Esther Perel to Alanis Morissette.

And together with his wife, Tracy, who you hear about in our conversation together, Dr. Tatkin founded the Pact Institute to train clinicians in a psychological approach to couples therapy. He's also someone who talks about an idea that resonated with a lot of listeners a few episodes ago when we talked to Mona Chalaby about the concept of tethering. Although I don't actually know if he used the word tethering or if I imagined it, but he talks about attachment theory. Dr. Tatkin is going to get into that in more depth today. So you guys won't want to miss that. And coincidentally, today's listener submitted story, which you'll hear. here at the end of the episode is strikingly similar to Stan and Tracy's story that brought them together. So you're not going to want to miss that. Stick around. Does anyone else ever get

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Hold on, let me start again because I've only been talking about Louie. Louis is my bait. Louis, you might have heard him growl just now. Louie is my little baby and I'm committed to only giving him the best. I love that Nom Nom's recipes contain wholesome nutrient rich food, meat that looks like meat and veggies that look like veggies because, shocker, they are. Louis has been going absolutely nuts for the lamb pilaf. I have to confess that he's never had anything like it and he cannot get enough.

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Stan, there's so many places to start, but there's something that you have said that is resonating with me now more than ever. You talk about how the sort of individual progress, the kind of growth we all want to see in ourselves, is that the place to learn the most is in relationships. This idea that you need to sort of be alone to figure things out and then you'll be ready for a relationship, I suppose there might be, you know,

some nuggets of wisdom to be had there. Certainly we all need to know independence and self-subsistence to some degree. We can't be like just enmeshed in codependency our whole lives. But you seem to say that like everything that you're trying to learn to be in a relationship, you can only learn in one. isn't that right yeah that's correct we learned through the interactions with others and many of the feelings and ideas we have are constructs that are interactional between other human beings so the idea

if you got to love yourself before you can be in a relationship doesn't hold water developmentally because baby doesn't love itself and baby learns to love itself by being loved and this interaction between self and other is constantly forming sense of self and sense of other. And that goes on throughout the lifespan. It continues. So we're always learning how to be better in relationship. And we're growing in complexity as our brain develops. Just a dovetail in and out of what we try to deal in this podcast with is like, you know, the sort of formative identity gestation. period of middle school, you know, 12, 13, 14-ish.

What is happening there developmentally that's not happening before or after? Middle school is a very tough time. It's a very tough time for everybody, not just the person who's in middle school, but for teachers, for their parents. It's a hard time because we're dealing with a brain change as a brain upgrade at around pre-teen period and then also adolescence proper. We know more, we see more, and because brain development isn't uniform, we don't exactly have the entire equipment available to understand what we're feeling.

And so it's a wild ride. Emotions are high. We're kind of revisiting an earlier period of my parents, I need them, but they're idiots, they're incompetent, but I need them, but they're idiots. And so there's this constant conflict of wanting more independent. but still being dependent, wanting to belong and feeling very anxious about our own identity. And so this is a classic period, a tumultuous period for most, not all teenagers, but most. And it's a time of going under the radar, not wanting to be embarrassed.

So the face begins to stiffen up, very different from when we're seven or eight. We begin to hide. We don't want to show our cards. we feel a lot more shame and exposure. We're careful about how we appear to other people, friends in particular. And we stop talking to our parents. We stop talking except to our friends. And that's where we start to feel a different kind of freedom, identity with our peer group,

if we're lucky enough to fit in to a group. And so it's a really, really tough time. There's a lot of bullying in junior high. In fact, most of the bullying that occurs is in junior high. some in elementary school and it should actually abate in high school if it continues in high school there's something usually else going on but there is so much i mean i just remember my own experience and i remember my first day in junior high and some kid you know i was scratching myself and some kid said hey look at him he's picking his butt that's my first memory in my first day did somebody else here and it stick no i remember it so yes I was very internal and I was very shy and I was very insecure. And so I kept to myself and I had a life outside, which a lot of kids didn't have. I was in the music business.

And so I was among adults doing something special and that made me feel protected in some way, but alienated. You were a drummer, right? I was a drum. Are you saying you were already like somewhat professional, semi-professional? I was recording already with Capitol Records, and I was a studio player. I mean, as a kid, I didn't know anything, but, you know, I was playing jazz. And so I felt special in some way, but that specialness wasn't real. It was a way to protect myself because I was awkward with kids my own age.

And because I spent a lot of time with adults, I felt like I was an outsider, and it felt like I had something. outside of school. But in school, I did not feel safe. I did not feel secure. I heard you say, Stan, in an interview, that a question you'll commonly ask patients or clients is, what was your parents' relationship like, what are your memories of their relationship from before you were 12 or up until you were 12, like kind of your childhood? And that their answer to that will often give you a lot to go off of. And it made me wonder, how much of a role do you think, our experiences and our memories from adolescents stick with us? How much do they inform who we are in our relationships as an adult? All of it. The earlier the memories, the more formative they are.

And a lot of our memories, when we study babies, of course, they're pre-verbal. And those memories, those experiences are through thousands and thousands of repetition of interactions. And those are formative in again in adaptation so you watch a baby and the parents don't do any proximity seeking they don't go and reach out their arms like the baby does or they don't hold the baby for very long the baby begins to adapt and stops looking for proximity and begins to adapt by not tolerating a lot of contact over time so those experience are formative in how we move toward and away from other people. How we adapt to feel safe and secure, even if the environment isn't providing safety and security. So children will always make up the differences, the deficits

for what isn't there and create their version of safety and security, and that in itself is an adaptation, right? What I see between my parents is essential because it is theater, right? I'm watching a movie. I'm watching the only play I know. It is the interaction constant. between these two giants, these two gods. And I'm watching how they do business with each other. And I'm getting a sense by watching one partner interact with the other and seeing how the other reacts. So let's say I'm watching NAVA react to Sophie, and I'm watching Sophie react to NAVA. I'm getting a sense of NAVA through her partner.

I'm getting a sense of Sophie through her partner. and that's how I get an idea of gender, sex, and regard. So basically, I am going to do what I see. We are memory animals that unfortunately, or fortunately, are energy-conserved, meaning we do the least amount necessary. So I'm always going to do what I know, and what I know is what I've experienced, unless I'm forced into a position to become self-aware

or to understand something I'm not looking at. But mostly we don't care. unless we're forced to do that. We're just going to do what we have experienced, especially under stress. Interesting. What I'm kind of hearing from you is like by the time you're already 12, 13, you're bringing like your home life to school and anticipating that.

Isn't that right? I mean, something along those lines. You're already very shaped by what you have and haven't had at home. Our values are shaped still at home, even though rebelling against it. But research has proven that children, though they're rebellious, in adolescence, even late adolescence, they still strongly carry their parental values. So you have this split, kind of, where I'm discovering myself anew in this new land of peer groups. And some of that is influenced by my family of origin, and some of that is being newly created.

So I have the opportunity where I am sort of inventing myself or in technical terms individuating, becoming my own person. And all of this is happening through the slings and arrows of life and other relationships with teachers and our peers. We carry with us every experience that impacts us. And we're more triggered by the experience or the re-experience of something that reminds us of a painful event or positive event than we are by the actual person. And so we get confused by that sometimes. I've married my mother. I married my father, which is really not true. Our mate selection is by recognition and familiarity, but it's across a wide swath of experiences and people. It's not just two people. So we're building an ever-complex populace in our head

or representation of these people. They're not the actual people. There are representation of these people, which is formed by our mental capacity to understand those people. My understanding of my of an early friend who humiliated me if i have no other contact with that friend that experience is never updated and i still see that person as i did when i was 12 i still see myself as that person when i was 12 and that experience remains preserved and it can be triggered because i haven't had repeated interactions that would correct or modify that other and in myself in relationship to that person. So we have all these archaic memories of relationships that are frozen in time because they didn't continue as we became more complex to modify. And that's why we're kind of stuck with

some of these injuries because it was never repaired. That makes me think of the power of an apology. Boy, does it. Right? I mean, it just makes it seem like the things that stick with us are those things that as you say got frozen you know i mean how frozen are like when we think of middle school it's just it's all the things that are frozen it's all the things that never got repaired i feel like you know yeah absolutely i mean how many things happened to us and we didn't go to someone to talk about it and where they hugged us and said oh god i know what that's like but we kept it to ourselves and we tried to deal with it ourselves and therefore we couldn't digest it couldn't metabolize it and it sticks with us don't go anywhere we'll be right back

all right so um let's just let's just real talk as they say for a second that's a little bit of an aged thing to say now that that that dates me doesn't it um but no real talk uh how important is your health to you know on like a one to 10 and i don't mean the in the sense of vanity i mean in the sense of like you want your day to go well right you want to be less stressed you don't want to get sick when you have responsibilities um i know myself i'm a householder i have I have two children and two more on the way, a spouse, a pet, you know, a job that sometimes has its demands. So I really want to feel like when I'm not getting the sleep and I'm not getting nutrition,

when my eating's down, I want to know that I'm being held down some other way physically. You know, my family holds me down emotionally, spiritually, but I need something to hold me down physically, right? And so, honestly, I turn to symbiotica, these vitamins and these beautiful little packets that they taste delicious and I'm telling you even before I started doing ads for these guys it was a product that I really really liked and enjoyed and could see the differences with

the three that I use I use I use the what is it called liposomal vitamin C and it tastes delicious like really really good comes out in the packet you put it right in your mouth some people don't do that I do it I think it tastes great I use the liposomal glutathione as well in the morning really good for gut health and although I don't need it you know anti-aging and then I also use the magnesium L3 and 8 which is really good for I think mood and stress I sometimes use it in the

morning sometimes use it at night all three of these things taste incredible honestly you don't even need to mix it with water and yeah I just couldn't recommend them highly enough if you want to try them out go to symbiotica.com slash podcrush for 20% off plus free shipping That's symbiotica.com slash podcrushed for 20% off plus free shipping. The first few weeks of school are in the books, and now's the time to keep that momentum going. I-XL helps kids stay confident and ahead of the curve. I-XL is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand what they're learning. Whether they're brushing up on math or diving into social studies, it covers math, language arts, science, and social studies from pre-K through 12th grade.

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by the same sort of set of people. If someone is not thrilled with that, like if someone is unhappy with the parental model that they have, what are the tools and instruments that are at their disposal to sort of break certain cycles instead of, is it predetermined that they're just going to keep playing out the same things? So I'm just curious from your perspective, what's predetermined, what do we have agency over, and what are the tools that we can draw on to exert our agency in healthy ways? Well, there was a lot of, there was a lot of sub-questions in that question. So let me try to parse it. I met my wife in middle school, Tracy. And I had a huge crush on her. That's so cute. And we didn't get together until our early 40s. So we didn't have a love

relationship, but she was a big part of my life in middle school and high school. So that's serendipitous, you know. We both believe that had we met, you know, in adulthood even earlier, we probably wouldn't have been right for each other. So timing was everything. And we're really very different people. What we share is a history and a culture. But because we're very different people, I don't know that we would have had the maturity early on to make it work. So a lot of that has to do with getting older and having agency, knowing we have agency. When we're younger, we don't have as much. So to answer one part of the question, nature always repeats itself. We don't have control over that. That's a fact, and there's no reason to blame ourselves or others

for that. It's nature. We do have the ability to pick and choose to some degree, what we don't want to repeat and how we want to do things that are better. And that's where a couple can decide what their culture is going to be instead of the one they grew up in, right? A relationship doesn't really exist in real life. It's an abstraction. It's in our heads, which is a cool thing that only human primates can do. But the question is, is what is in our heads the same, and do we agree on it?

What is our relationship and what is it going to serve? and how are we going to build a culture that suits us both. A lot of us will, you know, judge our parents in a way that is not complex that doesn't really look at them as whole human beings as people who are simply repeating what they learned and that our history is, you know, is basically handed down to us. Understanding that gives us a bigger picture of how we are and why we are. Most every day is automatic energy concerned, therefore memory run and recognition based. To expect us to remember everything and to change everything is just, I mean, that's perfectionism, you know, to a T, that's impossible.

So I think a lot of this is understanding what we can and cannot do and give ourselves and each other a break. As adults, we decide together what is the right thing to do in any given situation when it's the hardest to do. Because to be sure, human beings will always do what's the easiest thing to do that feels the best. That's our nature state. Under stress, I'm going to do what serves my interests. Screw the union. I do what's in my interest. And that is self-destructive from a two-person system think.

If we're interdependent, not codependent, we're a team, an alliance. That's what bonds us. therefore we have to look out for each other as a way to take care of ourselves otherwise i hurt you that's going to hurt me that is self-destructive it's a different way of thinking than the way we normally do now unfortunately the injustices and unfairnesses in our family get carried over to our adult lives we do it automatically we make society pay for the injustices of our parents or a family that has to stop in couples because that creates a system that becomes too unfair, too unjust, too insensitive, too much of the time, and it will dissolve all unions. Does it make sense?

Yeah. People have to consciously decide how to do business with each other that is going to be fair and just, or they will go to war, like all human beings. This is where you link two-person systems, like a serious love relationship, to social justice or in saying that basically like, you know, two people together are the smallest building block of a society. Yeah. I personally love that. Yeah, me too.

I think you love it because it's true. It's true. It is the smallest representation of a civilization. It has to operate on shared power and authority. Otherwise, people will start to screw each other. And we know this when building a community or a church or a temple or a business. But couples, for some reason, do not think about this.

It's a whole other world of separate fantasy, of love and, you know, we're supposed to be together, soulmates. Why do you think couples aren't thinking about this? I think because there is no cultural, there's no legacy of teaching. There's no understanding that this is a separate society, a separate fiefdom that's operating under its own rules of being protective and its own interests, mutual interests, that has to be sustained, fidelity has to be maintained, otherwise it cannot continue. It will fall apart. We have to put things in place to protect us from our impulses, our natural state of being

reckless. Otherwise, it's the Wild West. And that's not what people think. They just don't. They think, will work it out, you know, what love will prevail, attraction will continue, and none of that's true. Real governance is deciding to do the right thing when it's the hardest to do. That means setting the bar high, wanting the best and expecting the worst, and predicting and planning for that. We don't do that. And that is our failing, is that we just go on being, we take things for granted, operate automatically through our lives, and never really paying attention, because we don't have to, until we have to. And oftentimes, that's when it's too late.

It's a good thing to know this, because then it allows us to put guardrails in and to create principles or relationship ethics that are guardrails that are frames for us to be free in and know our limits. Because if I do something that betrays you, it also is going to portray me. and nothing I can do to you won't come back at me in a two-person system.

Nothing. And people whose lives depend on this know this. People who are in countries where bullets are flying over the head, they know this. People on the street homeless and vulnerable, they know this. Cop car partners know this. People in troops where their lives depend on each other know this. They're interdependent. They serve the group because the group serves their protection, their life.

It's a different way of thinking, but couples don't think that way, see. They think that coupling is a luxury, that interdependence is luxury. It's a necessity because pair bonding started with human primates based on survival to protect ourselves from predators in the environment. So we group together. So it's always been mutual interests that kept us together, even though we're, different. But as human beings, we have this energy-conserved way of dealing with life that makes everything easy and automatic. And so we imagine we're family. And of course, that's a mistake.

Because family can get away with things. And family is unconditional. We forget that human pair bonding or unions in adulthood is absolutely conditional. And it must be. It must be to work. there's something very powerful about that because so often we're saying like i want people kind of imagine they're looking for unconditional love and it's like well i mean that's childhood and often even childhood i think maybe it's not demonstrated it's not modeled it's not offered as much as we just i don't know give lip service to from an attachment point of view that's exactly how it should have been so we have attachment realities and then we have the realities of human interaction attachment reality is relationship has to come first above the self, above performance, above

appearance, relationship is everything. And that means that if you hurt, I hurt, if something is wrong between us, I am I am driven to repair because I cannot breathe, I cannot exist, I cannot do business today because things aren't right between me and you. Therefore, I have to do it. That's a relationship-centered world in attachment where I'm interested in you. I pay attention to you. I want to know you. I want you to be successful, but not at the cost of the relationship. And so it's a different culture, and that's the way it's supposed to be, and that gets carried out through and it spreads out to other relationships. It's what makes for people who are socially, emotionally, intelligent. It's what makes for power, because the most

powerful people are the people that know how to work with a great swath of personalities and are able to bring them together and tolerate them. That's an attachment feat. I feel safe and secure inside because my sense of connection, my secure base is solid in my head because I have that foundation. Can we talk a little bit about codependency? Because sometimes I feel like that word is used just for like when someone is expressing like a genuine need for like validation or contact or communication and someone else is like you're so codependent. I feel like people use it as a weapon to like bludgeon you when you're expressing like a healthy desire. The difference between codependency and interdependency. In my head, interdependency is a very positive thing. What's

the difference? Co-dependency originally started off as an AA or an alcoholic's anonymous term that grew out of co-alcoholic, meaning there's an alcoholic and then there's a co-alcoholic who enables them. So I'm in a love relationship with my alcohol, and my partner is in a love relationship with my tendency to be in love with my alcoholism. And so we have two birds of a feather here that are in a non-reciprocal relationship. It's a one-way, one-direction relationship. Co-dependency is one direction only. It's not reciprocal. It's not collaborative. But it's been used to mean, you know, dealing with a narcissist, being a borderline, being a weak, you know, simp, being somebody who's clinging and overly dependent. Well, the fact of the matter is

human primates are by nature dependent for dependency animals. That is just the way we are. Any other representation is an adaptation. So people who are religiously independent and autonomous are that way, generally, because their independence is confused with having been neglected on an attachment level. That's not real independence. Independence always grows out of full dependency on another person, and then we become autonomous creatures who are able to interdepend. Interdepend means that we have a central purpose or reason to depend on each other, survival being one of them, prosperity another, security another. Those are legitimate reasons to interdepend, but make no mistake, we're separate, autonomous,

different human beings who will never be on the same page, will only approximate each other's minds. That's as good as it ever gets. Any other illusion is an illusion, that we're of the same mind, that we're soulmates, where the same people know, that we think the same, no, that we'll always have the same interest, not a chance, that we really understand each other completely and fully, never. We only approximate that enough to get a lot. long. But we respect each other's differences and therefore we work with each other to make it

right with each other so that we're both good. And that is a real interdependent relationship where you go, I go. If you're unhappy, that's a problem for me. If you feel something's unfair, that's a problem for me. I have to make it right because we're tied together based on purpose in interdependency therefore we have to move together or we can't move is it right to say somewhat that relationships don't just happen naturally like of this of this order of this caliber of this degree you often say that that this is ultimately like a decision and that it is it's like a moral decision too which is an interesting word to use it's a very intense word to use it's self-serving it's actually all everything we do is actually selfish, even altruism. Sorry. My safety depends on you as well.

Therefore, it's self-serving to make sure you're a-okay, otherwise I'm screwed. Everything we do collaboratively should have a self-serving purpose to it. Otherwise, I'm going to resent you. So agreements have to serve the self as well as the other, or it won't work. If it just serves the other, I'll hate you for it and you'll pay for it. If it just serves me, the reverse will be true. way we suck and we won't make it so so there's there's a always the self is involved in everything and that's important so it's a very reasonable understandable impersonal you know a fact of nature you play fair or you're going to have trouble a relationship a love relationship represents a home is it going to be the home that you grew up in or is it going to be the home that you both want and that's a

decision that people will make or they won't make it. And so we're pulled to the other person based on recognition, based on attachment needs because we need to be attached to one person. We need a secure attachment in order to survive this life. We know this for a fact that well-being, longevity, happiness, health, mental, and physical depends on the on the existence of at least one secure attachment in our life. That is. has been studied for decades, and we know it. So there is a biological need to attach, and that biology is an imperative,

which we confuse with love. So people get together and they get attached, and even though the relationship is horrible, what holds them together isn't love. They say, but I love her, I love him. No. The attachment bond is the, I can't quit you, imperative. I can't quit you because attachment is an existential,

fact for human beings. We need to know that this relationship will exist tomorrow or we feel we will die. This goes back to infancy. This goes back to a very primitive, primordial, biological experience of death. And that's why I can't quit you. And that becomes a very big problem because it's not principle-based, it's feeling-based. All other unions, you know, you go into business with someone, you acquit the partnership, you're not going to fill you, you're going to die. And so you can do that if it's unfair, right? You can fire employees. You can, you know, break up with a friend.

You're not going to die. But in primary attachment relationships, it's a different biology. And we confuse it with love. And once we're attached, breaking up is really hard to do. And that's good news because it keeps families intact. It keeps us, you know, connected. It's there for a reason. But it's a problem when a relationship is truly awful and something must be done in order to remedy it.

Stan, I wanted to ask you, as you do some like marriage counseling, are there couples when there isn't like abuse with a capital A, but the incompatibility is so strong or like when would you advise a couple to call it? I don't advise a couple ever to call it because who am I to do that? I don't want that responsibility and it's not my life. But I will set the stage to make it impossible to think otherwise because, well, I mean, my job is to present reality and then to expect or to have faith that people will eventually see reality as is and see that they have no choice. It's a painful experience and I can relate to it. but reality is the safest mother. And so the only reason two people would be incompatible would be that they absolutely want two different things

that are non-negotiable. That's the only incompatibility. So I want polyamory, you want monogamy. Well, that's a deal breaker. We can't go on because we'll be pointing in two different directions and we'll fight over everything. You want to have a baby. You have to have a baby.

I never want to have a baby. Now let's buy a house. That's what people do. Seriously, that's what people do. They look at the abyss, which is the end of their relationship, they go, let's get married. And that's a deal breaker that exists as a cancer cell that's going to cause a lot of fighting because they're incompatible, not the people, but what they want. And so I would say the only incompatibility in unions is pointing in two different directions. It's not personality or interests.

It really isn't. People have been getting together who are different since the beginning of time. The difference does not an incompatibility make. But shared vision and purpose and direction, that is the deal maker. Everything else can be dealt with. That was very clear. Thank you for sharing that. So you talk, there's a couple things I'm thinking of.

A, you know, for those of us, which is all of us, you know, not used to thinking of relationships, this way where's the space for romance and spontaneity and all that fun stuff that we come to expect but then also i have a in the beginning in the beginning great great how long does that last and can we bottle it and can we just make movies about it endlessly and never explore no please do not send this message romance is fine i mean all this is fun it's great i mean it's life If it is what makes life romance, I'm romantic to the bone. But I also understand that romance can only really exist in a relationship that has a sound structure. Otherwise, romance is the first die.

And so good feelings are going to be killed if there's a threat in the system. You can't be happy if you're under fear. And so threat is the very first thing that has to be eliminated or mitigate. because a system that is unsafe or insecure cannot be happy. So no matter how you cut it, no union can exist in the long term if there's the existence of threat which will build and accumulate until biologically people cannot even be in the same room without their heart rates racing. That's just going to be a hard cold fact.

That's a two-person failure, pox in both their houses. They let that happen because they do. didn't put anything in place. It was a lawless society and you get what you pay for, which was not much. I want to go back to something you said earlier. You said that human beings generally and in relationships are fundamentally self-centered. These are so wrong. Yeah. Basically. I was like, oh my God. No, that stresses me out. The idea that we're fundamentally self-centered. Actually, I think I agree with that, that our base nature is to be self-centered. But I also want...

But you're under enough stress and you'll say it for yourself. Yeah, I do believe that, but I also want to believe that we are capable of acting not in our self-interest. And I had one specific question because you'd given an example earlier about a two-person system that is interdependent. and if one person in that system is upset or sad or frustrated, that if you're interdependent, that becomes a problem for you and you want to fix it. So how is that self-centered? I'm just wondering. Well, empathy, if you really look at the neurobiology of empathy, empathy, true empathy,

is I literally fill your pain. There are areas of the brain that are actually feeling your pain as if your body's my body. That's not fusion. That's just the way the brain works, certain areas. And so my wanting to make you feel better is also relieving myself. If I was in relationship with you, Sophie, and you were in distress, and we did a blood urine analysis of me, I would also be showing stress hormones, even though I say I'm not, I'm fine. So there's the psychological idea that I'm okay, but then there's the biology that suggests that we're actually interconnected. Where you go, I go.

Even strangers can affect us. Have you ever been around somebody who's just so depressed and you walk away depressed? Yes. Stan, I actually wanted to say something to this selfish, selfless thing. Because when you were sharing it, I was thinking that one way of looking at it is, oh, like, we're so selfish. But I was thinking that it speaks to something really beautiful about human nature, that what's in our best interest is the prosperity of others. And that that leads to your well-being. I don't necessarily conceive of as selfish, but actually it proves to me that when we're outward-looking, when we're concerned, when we're concerned,

with others when we're not just thinking about ourselves and what we want in a particular moment, but if we can broaden that to like, what does my partner want, what will bring health to my community will be much happier. I think that's beautiful. I think that's something amazing about human nature. It is. But there's another aspect here, and that's Chauden Freud, and that is that envy, that I relish in your failure. So, you know, everything cuts both ways. All the features of the human capacity is also, also contains bugs. Knowing what's missing and what I don't have is a bug in my not feeling grateful for what I have and always feeling like I'm missing something and being bummed out and disappointed. But it's a feature in survival by knowing what I need to go out and get.

So everything we have that's a feature that's human is also a bug. My point is get to know how it's a bug and build in something. So you're just not. You're just not, you know, naive and going la-da-da. I believe in the best in people. Yeah, we'll also believe in the worst and plan for it. Otherwise, you're going to get the worst because we're human. For instance, our ability to think critically is used rarely throughout any day. Mostly, we are thinking heroistically.

In other words, we're taking problems and we're applying what we already know, which is coming to the most simplest assumption of what is true. that's not critical thinking at all so since we know this we can be sure that we're going to make errors of attribution constantly with our partners we're going to assume that you're doing something based on what you did before which is false we're going to assume that we're being clear in our communication which is not true we're going to assume that we understand what you just said which is not true because i probably didn't even hear you we're going to assume our memory is right which is never is but we'll fight over it,

and we'll argue about our perceptions, which is stupid. Because our perceptions are constantly being altered by our state of mind. Most of everything we think is true isn't, but because human beings are arrogant and our hubris is that we believe

our perceptions, our memory, our communication is perfect, yours isn't. We fight. Needlessly. These are errors in the mind, in the brain that are common and across all human beings.

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We have built this up over the years and we're awesome. We are constantly pushing and limiting each other throughout every day based on agreement and permission because it gets things done. And we know that we're annoying and we know that we do things that we limit each other and push each other to do because I'm lazy. But we are focused on doing things and focused on problems. We don't focus on each other. That's number one. So as soon as we focus on each other, we're going to be in deep doo-doo and we're going to be spending all our time arguing. We fix things within 30 minutes after a breach of any kind. That doesn't mean that we resolve it.

it means that we let each other know that we're okay. I hate your guts right now, but we're fine. I want to punch your face, but we're good. So Tracy and I have this agreement that we can go to bed angry, but we at least have to touch toes. And so the other, there was a few nights ago, I was so angry with her. And when she gets tired, she just goes to sleep.

And so she's just, she's crazy. That is so weird. She's just, she's the ever-ready bun. she's on it, she's up and then and then that's it. And so she started going to sleep and I was sitting up and she was lying curled up and I just wanted to murder.

And then I remembered our principal that we've at least got to touch toes and I was still, you know, I was still, I'm just like to fill every core in my body just not wanting to do it. And then I also thought, okay, one, there's no upside here. I'm suffering. I'm going to have a very bad night.

I'm the only person suffering. She's sleeping sandwich. Um, so, so that's stealth farming. That's dumb. There's no upside here. No upside. So I, I reached over and I grabbed her hand and I squeezed it. She squeezed it back. And I felt this immediate relief. It all went away. Wow. I could feel like crying right now, but it all went away because I did that simple act and I suddenly was fine and not only that, I felt really proud of myself for doing the right thing. It had a self-esteem hit of character

that I overwrote a base instinct of mine, which was to be right and to punish and to be angry rather than do what was best, and I overwrote it, and it was all upside. Now that's, can I swear? Yeah. Sure. That's fucking awesome, folks. Yes.

Stan, when you were talking, I was dying, like, writhing in my seat, because I feel like you were describing me and David. And just last night, actually, I was upset with David, and we have an agreement that when I'm upset, specifically me, when I'm upset, I'm upset, I. I can just let it sit for a while and, you know, stomp around and the principle for us is I need to just explain. Like, hey, I need a couple minutes or I'm trying to figure out what I'm feeling. But last night, we went down to do the laundry. Well, I went to go do it.

And then he's like, I'll come with you. And I'm like, I don't need you. He came anyway. And I was in front of him. I didn't want to look at him. And I was the whole time going down, we were silent. And I was thinking, I need to just say it. I need to say it.

I need to say it. Say it. Say it. Say it. And I could not say it until David finally was like. do you need a couple moments? I was like, yes. David is beat red right now, by the way.

It's very cute. But is there a way to shorten that time frame? Like what you were describing of knowing that you should touch toes or you should touch your wife, Tracy, but feeling like I want to be right and having it. It's stubbornness, yeah. Yeah. Is there a way to get rid of that? This is where two people can do things one person can't.

So I'm an idiot. it in so many different ways. And I can be an asshole in so many different ways. But my wife is a good handler of me. She knows how to handle me. I know how to handle her. And being each other's whispers is a worthwhile endeavor. And yet partners don't learn it. They don't do it. Mostly because they don't think they should. But that is exactly what they should be doing. And your partner can help you when you can't. As long as there is prior agreement and permission to do so. Everything has to be done with prior agreement and permission. I give you permission to cue me, prompt me, remind me, and then I will cooperate, yield, and change my attitude. That is a life-saving thing.

So, for instance, I can perseverate and beat a dead horse, and my wife Tracy knows that, in which she sees that I'm doing it, she'll redirect me. And I will cooperate because I know that there's nothing more to be gained by obsessing, and I'll gladly do it with her and then change channels and change my attention that gets me out of my loop two people can do amazing things together if they're cooperating with each other and they're agreeing that you know watch my back i'll watch yours so when making agreements of this of this kind the only the only thing that will get people in trouble is when reminded they don't yield because then it enters into whether i can trust you or not, whether you're governable. Because if you say, well, I couldn't, I didn't

feel like it. We have a problem because you're not telling me you can't be governed. And if you can't be governed, you're not, I can't be safe in the foxhole with you. Therefore, I'm out. You're talking about like something of human invention, which grounds us all in the same principles, which will allow us to like practice us in a large scale. Because as is evident, you can't, you can barely do it with two people, let alone how many, seven billion, 11 by the end of the century? Like, do you see this practice on a large scale? We start the smallest unit, and that starts with the couple, which bleeds to the family,

which goes to the neighborhood, which goes to the community, which goes, right? That's all we can do. You know, we're all on this ride together, and we only have so much agency. But pick your battles, and certainly one to begin with is home, right? it sounds like you do see us overcoming this ultimate urge or impulse overcoming our automaticness those automatic responses to some degree but to some degree but the point is is that is that if you can't do it first step small step in your in your closest relationships there's no hope of doing it outside of those right it's it's a worthy practice because what else are you going to

do that's true there's nothing else to do i mean we watch tv you know what i mean yeah right uh but we need people relationships are the center of our universe it's the only thing we we lament on our deathbed if we lament anything it's not where we didn't travel it's who we fucked and and we didn't repair the relationships that we lost because of our own doing and so if we know that then we put value on a relationship's first as it should be and that's really i think uh an important center that we forget, which is why I work with couples as an intervention for children, because couples are influencing their children and their people in their orbit. And so it's a great place

to work because they're leaders, they're exemplars for how to do relationship. And if they're doing it well, that's awesome. And people will flock to those couples. They're called mentor couples. They've been there throughout history. People want to see, want to be near them because they want to know how to do it. That's my mission. That's our mission, my wife. That's our sort of our ministry. And that's what we want to do. Think of it this way. If one partner goes down, the other one there picks them up. If one member of a team falls, the other members of the team pick them up. So there's always the opportunity in communion to help each other because none of it's permanent. We can all fall.

We can all do the wrong thing. But this is where community, this is where we help each other because we all are wanting the same thing. But that's important. We are wanting the same thing. We want peace. We want to get along. We want to feel safe. We want to prosper.

but we do it together there's no self-made person that's a fallacy I am made by other people for sure and so that way of thinking is a different way of thinking than the way we commonly especially in the West think and and so yes nothing's permanent and we're all going to do the wrong thing at different times but we're buoyed and we're helped by our partners by our family by other people if we're focused in the same place. We're looking to the same thing, not me, mine, I, or you, you, you. It's we and us. That's beautiful. We and us. That feels like the perfect place to end, but we do have a standard question that we use to end the podcast. I still want to ask you, if you could speak to both Stan and Tracy in middle school,

what would you say to them? Well, I would say to Stan, sweetheart, I'm so sorry and know how lonely and how insecure and how ugly and fat and stupid you feel. You're not. And you're okay. That's the first thing I'd say. And to Tracy, God, you're awesome. Even when you were there, you were just this beautiful filly of a blonde with pronated feet that I still love and adore. And I, you know, I truly admire. my wife. She is actually who she seems. And yeah, she would say the same about me, but I do, I do truly feel that way about it. She's annoying as shit, but I'm, I'm a lucky, lucky person. Well, I think that's a beautiful, hopeful place to end it. Thank you, Stan. Thank you for your time.

Yeah. Thank you all. It was lovely. I had so much fun. Oh, good. I'm so glad. It was so much fun. We'll leave you with today's listener-submitted middle school memory, a rom-com ready gem that we've titled Love Comes Around. Enjoy. I moved out of the big city in eighth grade. Into a small town country school. I was so out of place. But one day, in third period, the gorgeous, brown. Brad Ballinger introduced himself, and I was in love. He was beautiful, funny, sweet, affable. In my eyes, he was perfect. And I was in trouble. I thought there was no way he would ever want to date me,

a skinny city girl with a mouthful of braces. So we didn't date. But we became best friends all the way through graduation. Sadly, after that, we mostly lost touch. And you know what? I never told him how I felt. We both lived our lives. we married, we had children, and at our 20-year high school reunion, I met his wife. She was

gorgeous. I was dejected. By then, I was a divorced mom with two babies, doing it all of my own, with only my mother to help me. And I decided I'd rather keep my best friend than keep a flame going for someone I couldn't have, so I let it go, and pushed my love for him down and buried it deep. We continued to go through life's ups and downs, both experiencing tragic losses, but our friendship was renewed. And then, 2015, I get a phone call. I will never forget. Brad was getting a divorce.

He told me the whole story, and it was a bad one. Trust me. So I helped him through it for eight months, talking to him, listening to him, cry, vent, yell. Until one day, he stopped crying, venting, yelling. He was laughing again, and how he was laughing again. happy. One night on the phone at 3 a.m., I finally confessed that I'd had a crush on him since eighth grade. He asked me why I'd never told him, and I explained my insecurities.

Brad told me that when his divorce was finalized, I'd better not be seeing anyone because he wanted to be able to take me out. We had our first date in October 2016, and on October 28, 2017, 17, we got married. The skinny city girl with a mouth full of braces and the gorgeous country boy from third period finally got their happy ending. You can keep up with Dr. Stan Tatkin and his work at the Pact Institute

by following him online at Dr. Stan Patkin. Pod Crush is hosted by Penn Badgley, Navakavan, and Sophie Ansari. Our executive producer is Nora Ritchie from Stitcher. Our lead producer and editor is David Ansari. Our secondary editor is Sharaf and Twistle. Special thanks to Peter Clowney, VP of Content at Stitcher, Eric Eddings, Director of Lifestyle Programming at Stitcher,

Jared O'Connell and Brendan Bryans for the tech support, and Shruti Marante, who transcribes our tape. Podcrush was created by Navakaval and is executive produced by Penn Badgley and Navakaval, and produced by Sophie and Sari. This podcast is a ninth mode production. Be sure to subscribe to Podcrush. You can find us on Stitcher, the Serious XM app, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. If you'd like to submit a middle school story, go to podcrush.com and give us every detail.

And while you're online, be sure to follow us on socials. It's at Podcrush, spelled how it sounds. And our personals are at Penn Badgley, at NAVA. That's NAVA with three ends, and at scribble by Sophie. And we're out. See you next week. Dr. Stan Tatkin, a psychotherapist, researcher and best-selling author, whose work helps understand all types of relationships in refreshing.

I keep saying refreshingly. Are you a cannibal? It's because of the role you're in, yeah. Reflesh. Stitcher.