Something You Should Know - How to Stop the Pain of Rejection & How Couples Can Fight Without Falling Apart

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Walk through a crowded airport or packed stadium and something remarkable happens. Thousands of people weave around each other without collisions, almost as if everyone is reading everyone else's mind. Yet no one is directing traffic. So how does your brain constantly predict where complete strangers are about to move—and why does it work so well? (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08260) Rejection stings. Whether it's being turned down for a job, ignored after asking someone out, or hearing "no" when you were hoping for "yes," most of us spend a lot of energy trying to avoid it. But what if that's exactly backward? What if deliberately seeking rejection could make you more confident, more successful, and surprisingly happier? Jia Jiang decided to test that idea by intentionally getting rejected 100 times in 100 days. What happened changed the course of his life—and it may change the way you think about rejection forever. Jia is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, and bestselling author. His TED Talk has been viewed more than 11 million times, and he is author of the book Easy Discipline: An Unconventional Way to Achieve Ambitious Things (https://amzn.to/4feqHOq). Every couple argues. The real challenge is to understand what those fights are actually about. The disagreement over dirty dishes, money, or who's late again is often just the surface of something much deeper. Once you understand what's really driving those recurring arguments, everything changes. Relationship therapist Kim Polinder explains why couples keep having the same fights, how to stop damaging each other in the process, and what healthy conflict really looks like. Kim has helped hundreds of thousands of people through her work online (https://www.youtube.com/@engineeringlovepodcast) and is author of Why We Fight: A Transformative Road Map to Healing Conflict in Any Relationship. (https://amzn.to/45nZ1AF). Your signature probably wasn't always a scribble. When you first learned to sign your name, you likely wrote every letter carefully and neatly. So why do almost everyone's signature eventually become an indecipherable scrawl? It turns out there's an interesting psychological reason behind that evolution—and it says more about you than you might think. https://www.wired.com/story/is-your-wobbly-illegible-touchscreen-signature-still-you/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I know you like interesting and thought-provoking conversations and ideas because you listen to something you should know. So let me recommend another podcast. I know you will enjoy. It's the Jordan Harbinger Show. Jordan has a real talent for getting his guest to share stories and offer thought-provoking insights. Over the years, I've sent a lot of people to listen,

and I get feedback from people who are so glad I introduce them to the Jordan Harbinger Show. Recently he discussed Scientology and the children who are raised in that organization. It's a fascinating conversation. And he talked with Dr. Rhonda Patrick about how to protect your mind and body from the modern world. And it's tougher than you think. I've gotten to know Jordan pretty well. We talk frequently, and I tell you, he is a very smart, insightful guy who does a hell of a podcast. Check out the Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

listen to podcasts. Today on something you should know, ever wonder why pedestrians don't bump into each other more often. Then many of us fear rejection, but you're going to meet a guy who does the strangest things to seek out rejection and why. I asked people to take selfies with me. Okay, I was just in the airport the other day. I saw a guy sitting there waiting for his flight. I said, can I untie and retie your shoes? Instead of trying to find the path of these resistance, through my life. Let me have fun with rejection. Also, why are most people's signatures completely illegible? And all couples fight, but the words you use can make all the difference. Instead of, you're so selfish, it could be, I feel lonely. When people speak in emotions, it's much easier to then

have the other person tune in and care for those emotions versus speaking in thoughts and judgments. All this today on Something You Should Know. Ready to take your investing knowledge to pro-level. This is Fidelity Connects, your daily edge in the markets. Get deep insights on real-time market topics that may impact your investment portfolio. Listen to Fidelity Connects on Spotify today and power your next move tomorrow. Something You Should Know. Fascinating Intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Wouldn't you think that people walking along a busy sidewalk or in a mall or at a stadium where it's really busy, you would think people would bump into each other more often than they do? Why is that? I'm Mike Carruthers, and that's what we're going to start with today on this episode of something you should know. So if you've ever noticed, pedestrians, if you watch them, will naturally sort themselves into lanes, even when there are no signs telling them to do that. Researchers studying crowds have found that people spontaneously organize themselves much like traffic. In countries where people drive on the right, pedestrians usually drift right.

In countries that drive on the left, people favor the left. It's not a law, it's just an unconscious way our brains reduce collisions and keep everyone moving. That's why airports, malls, and stadiums can move thousands of people with surprisingly little chaos until someone goes the wrong way. And that is something you should know. Nobody likes being rejected. In fact, for many people, the fear of rejection is powerful enough to stop them from asking someone out, applying for a better job, negotiating a higher salary, starting a business,

or even speaking up in a meeting. We avoid rejection because we assume it will be painful. But what if that's exactly backwards? What if the best way to get over your fear of rejection is to deliberately seek it out? Imagine trying to get rejected every day until it simply loses its power over you. As strange as that sounds, that's exactly what my guest did,

and what he discovered completely changed the way he approached. life, it also revealed something surprising. We often expect to be rejected far more than we actually are. Here to explain is Jha Jung. He is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, and best-selling author. His TED talk about his quest to get rejected has been viewed more than 11 million times. And he's author of a book called Easy Discipline, an unconventional way to achieve ambitious things. Hi, Jha. Welcome to something you should know.

Hey, Mike. I'm glad to be here. Well, this is such an interesting idea. I mean, talk about facing your fear. Here you decide I'm going to try to get rejected every day for 100 days. Why did you do this? Where did this come from? About 10 years ago.

My goal, I started my own company about 10 years ago. It was my dream to achieve funding, you know, to become, to build this huge company that I've always wanted to do. I met Bill Gates when I was a teenager. But my goal is to be like Bill Gates. About 10 years ago, I was rejected for funding my company. And after that, I was like, oh, my first thought is I'm going to quit. And then I thought, well, I can't quit. That's so easy for me to give up. So I was like, you know, I'm going to overcome my fear of rejection. become tougher. So that's my goal. I'm going to become tougher. I'm going to get my funding.

Then instead of making that, the outcome to go, I said, okay, what if I set my goals of 100 days, and every day I would get rejected once on purpose. So I did this pretty famous experiment called 100 days of rejection therapy, where every day I would go out and look for rejection. And I try to have some fun with it. Right. So that's the input goal. I can completely achieve, not the outcome goal which I'll be good funding, I've become tougher, I'll become successful. What end up happening is this thing I can completely achieve, give me so much motivation and give me so much fun. And then what end up happening is not only I achieve that goal of overcoming of your rejection, I started just starting a lot of people start following me online.

I started filming myself getting rejected and shared this with the world. And that fun and that input go ahead motivated a lot of people. They started doing this with me. So I became quite famous through that rejection experiment. But I can see that's 10 years later. And it started movement online of people doing this. It's called rejection therapy. You can see these people doing TikTok.

You know, you see people doing this on YouTube. You got like hundreds of millions of views. That's another example where I set a goal, a input goal. You want to have the outcome. But instead of focusing on that, you focus on your input and you try to have fun. So when you set out to be rejected every day, how frequently were you surprised that you didn't get rejected? Oh, a lot, a lot. So I would ask the craziest thing.

In the end, I counted my, I wouldn't say winning because again, my goal is not to get that rejection or my goal is to go out and ask. But then I counted the yes and noes. I got 51 yeses and 49 knows. So I'll give you a quick example. The first day I went out and asked someone to borrow $100, right? And I got to reject it. And also I felt pretty bad.

It was the first day. It was very scary. And the person said, no, I just ran away. And I said, sorry, I just ran away. Then I found that, hey, you know, that guy wasn't mean. In my mind, it was really scary situation. And I was running away accordingly because of the idea I had in my mind. And so the next day, I said, I'm not going to run.

I'm going to stay engaged. So the next day, I asked for someone for a burger refill. You know, after having a burger for lunch, I was like, you know, hey, I'm going to get a burger refill. And he said, no. But this time I didn't run. I stayed engaged with that person and negotiated. And I didn't feel too bad.

I still got a no, but I didn't feel too bad. And then on the third day, I went and asked someone, I went to a crispy cream donut shop and asked me to make me donuts that looks like Olympic rings. And they say yes. I mean, I had no idea. I did. I thought there's no way they would say yes. But donut maker took me so seriously.

And she was like, okay, what's the color of? look like and I'm going to make it this way and that way. And 15 minutes later, she came up as a box of donuts. I looked like Olympic rings. And I was like, hey, this is different than I thought. And I thought, I want to get 100 rejections. As it turned out, people can say yes to me. And that opened up the whole range of possibilities and also the way I approached things.

I had so much fun throughout 100 days. And in the end, again, I got more yeses than knows. And now you don't fear rejection. perhaps the way you did. Oh, definitely not. I went to the other side because now I kind of developed this almost like mental disease.

When I see something that I could ask, now I have to ask. You know, I was walking by, I was like, oh, it'd be great to get a, you know, I was getting a coffee and I was saying, it'd be great to ask for a discount. And I would ask. And I would be like, can I get a good guy discount?

And then, you know, then the other person would laugh, right? and I would have a good time, you know, when I do that. The thing is, my mindset is I'm going to have a good time. You know, when I see opportunities of getting rejected, I'm going to ask and with the goal of trying to crack myself up, try to crack the other person off, and lighten the mood for me and for the other person. And that has been, has so much application for me in business.

You know, I try not to think myself so seriously when I ask for people in business. I try to create some, even artistic, experience when I talk to people, when I write to people. And that make a huge difference. Asking for Krispy Kreme Donuts in the shape of Olympic rings is a pretty big ask. But was there another big ask that you were sure you weren't going to get that you got? Yeah, yeah, there are quite a bit. And I'll give you some example.

So one of the asks that I felt there's no way I would get, but also very meaningful to me was I wanted to teach a class. I want to teach a college class. Come from a five generations of teachers, you know, and I never want to be a teacher, I want to be an entrepreneur. But I said, okay, in these hundred days, when I'm just setting this input goal of getting rejected and just go on and ask, I have no fear.

In fact, I had the opposite of fear. And I was like, this is a time to achieve all my dreams. So I went out and went to, at the time I was living in Austin, I went to the University of Texas in Austin. I started knocking on professor's doors. And I just said, can I teach you class? Can I teach you class? But also, I didn't have that attachment to the outcome, right?

I didn't say I must get teach your class. I said, I've told myself, I'm going to have attachment to the input. When I just sit down with the professor, I said, I'm going to teach you, I want to teach your class. And here's what I want to teach. I started showing my lectures. powerpoints on the iPad. One professor took interest in me. He was like, huh, okay, this is interesting.

I've never seen anyone done this before. So two months later, I was invited to give a guest lecture to his class. And, you know, when I finished, the students give me applause. And I just had tears in my eyes because I felt my grandma was there with me that day. You know, she passed away already. But she has always told me, hey, it'd be great if you're a teacher. Yeah. But I felt she was there with me spiritually. I felt I achieved my dream. That's one example that I didn't have the attachment to outcome, but I did have attachment

to my own input. And in the end, I got my outcome. But that's a real interesting distinction and one I want to explore with you about, I imagine it is easier to ask for something where you have no attachment to the outcome. But if you do, That seems to get a lot harder. If you want to buy that particular house or ask out that particular girl and you're afraid of being rejected, that really raises the stakes. Well, it does, but you have to have your own mental shift. I mean, that's why we speak specifically about rejection. You try not to be like, I just have to get a yes.

Think about it. If you have so attached to, I'm going to get a yes from this girl, what you end up is you show up tense. You show up like, you know, wanting something, needing something. And the other person would feel it. That's the funny thing about human nature and about psychology. If they sense you want it, they're less likely to say yes to you in business and in dating, in anything. But if you come up saying, all right, I'm going to focus on having fun. I'm going to focus on having, you know, saying jokes.

I'm focusing on being myself, being relaxed. You know, just let me just let me focus on having a good conversation. Let me focus on knowing that person. Now those are more inputs you can focus on. And then you perform better. You just do. You know, the other person feel like, oh, okay, she doesn't feel she's cornered. Or maybe the job searcher doesn't feel like, okay, this guy's needy.

This guy is so tense. He has no other choice. choices, and then they would more likely to say yes to you. So this is a paradox when it comes to input and output. And focused on input would actually give you better chance for the output. Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. I want to explore that a little more when we come back in just a moment. My guest today is Jia Jung.

He's author of a book called Easy Discipline, an unconventional way to achieve ambitious things. So you were saying, and it's true, we've all been in that situation where you're trying to ask for a raise or a job, and it would be so much easier if you didn't care so much. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I would, if I buy a car, right, and I see your example, I see it my dream car. Okay. I know if I set my goal of having that dream car, I would overpay a lot. You know, and the salesperson will sense it. They know they can sense your emotion.

They're like, okay, that person wants this. Now I'm going to jack it up and hold firm. I will set my goal to say, I'm going to have an amazing fun epic negotiation session with the salesperson. That's my goal. You know, I'm going to be like, okay, how much fun can I have with this conversation? Whether get the car or not, you know, I know I want the car, but I'm going to be like, I'm going to see how much I can. push this. I'm going to see how much I can

hold firm. I'm going to see how much tactics I can use in negotiation. Now you flip that around. You're coming so relaxed and so much about the process and then you're just getting the upper hand. But what if you really are invested in the outcome? What if it really needs to be that car, that house, that girl? And you can't shake that because it really feels like that's what that I am invested in the outcome. Okay, practice.

I say practice. So I'm a sports fan, right? And I watch a lot of basketball and, you know, say guys like, I don't know, Steph Curry, right? He's the best shooter in the NBA history. People think, you know, when he makes the last second shot, you know, like a buzzer beater, people think the game are won or lost at that moment. But the games are not.

The games are won and lost in dark gyms. He's shooting when no one's watching. That's why I use everyday situation to toughen myself up. So, you know, I would ask, you know, when I see a random person, you know, a girl or guy, you know, like, I would be like, can I get a selfie with you? Right. And in that way, now I practiced. Now I'm able to have the input.

I'm able to do it when I don't have this strong attachment to the outcome. So when I do that, I practice and I'm able to use these tools. Now I'm better when I do something that I really care about. Now I get this muscle memory to focus on the input. And then when the real outcome, when the real important meeting comes, I'm way more relaxed. During your journey to get rejected 100 times in 100 days, you would ask people if you could take a selfie with them. Talk about that.

I do. And it's funny, especially when I go to big cities, and I'm like, hey, can I take a picture with you? Can we do a selfie together? And I have all kinds of techniques I develop over the years. So, for example, if I go to New York, I would say, can we do a selfie? Some people think, you know, I want them to take a picture for me. And I'm like, no, no, no, I want to take a picture with you, with you in the picture.

And sometimes I tell people, and then people ask why, I'd be like, you know, most people take pictures of buildings, you know, in New York City. And because they think that's New York. I mean, I want to take a picture with New Yorkers, too. I want to take pictures with people. And you just happen to be that New Yorker. Can we take a picture together? And people are like, oh, yeah, here's my good side.

And so, you know, and yeah, I do, I ask people to take selfies with me. I, there's one, okay, I was just in the airport the other day. I saw a guy sitting there waiting for his flight. I said, can I untie and retie your shoes? And I know it's weird, but can I do that? The guy was just laughing. And so I asked all kind of weird things. Because again, I use those moments as ways to train my mind to keep myself relaxed.

So wait, you actually have gone up to people. and said, strangers, and said, can I untie and retie your shoes? I did. I did. I would imagine, and you just used that example with the selfie thing, that people are going to ask why, and you have a reason why, ready to go, because if you don't have any reason, it seems to me like your rejection rate would go way up. Yeah, I always do. Sometimes people don't ask the reason.

They just let me do it. And then because again, I'm very relaxed. You know, I'm not there to stare at the person saying, can I retire and retire your shoes? And that would be very creepy, right? I'm there like very friendly. And, you know, again, this is something I've trained over the years. And I just, I have this very high energy in fun seeking. And the other person is like, okay, this guy's having fun.

And if they ask and I always tell them, hey, you know, I'm trying to have some fun. I'm going to see this as possible. I want to lighten the mood. I want to see if you can say yes, if you're not, that's okay. Don't worry about it. I know it's pretty weird. But if you do it, hey, that's a story we can tell to everyone. So people let me do it.

So you said at the beginning of our conversation that the motivation for doing this is because you got rejected for funding for your company that you were starting, and that hit you hard. In fact, the person who rejected funding for me, he's a very well-known local investor. And I thought that person has seen so many, he's built his own companies, he's invested in so many companies.

If he didn't like my idea, that must mean something. That must mean some sort of truth. That must mean like, you know, and I should quit instead of wasting time. That's where it dawned on me. Like, this is such a loser mindset. And for my whole life, I want something.

And because I've wanted something so bad, I've always had this, you know, holding back, then eventually ask, and they get rejected, and I'm like, man, why should I do it? That's a doom loop. You know, that's a, that's a rejection loser doom loop. And I need to break out of that loop. And I said, let me focus on the input. Well, it must have taken a lot of courage, or it seems like it took courage to actually say, I'm going to go out and get rejected

and yet look what happened. It's such a great story. What ended up happening is I started opening up different windows in my brain. I started seeing things differently. I start acting differently. So when you change your inner world, you change your outer world.

What end up happening is the world turned out to be much different than I thought. It's a kind of world. In fact, if you open your inner self, you start opening up other people, you start opening up other possibilities, and you started just, you know,

and the world would be saying a lot more yes to you. Well, I've heard a lot of advice over the years about dealing with rejection, and I've never heard this, the idea of seeking it out and having fun with it rather than fearing it. I've been speaking with Jaj Young. He's an entrepreneur speaker and best-selling author

who has a TED talk about rejection that's been viewed more than 11 million times, and there's a link to that in the show notes. And his new book is called The Easy Discipline, an unconventional way to achieve ambitious things. And there is also a link to that in the show notes. Jha, thanks for sharing this. What a good story. Thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure. Perfect.

And I had a great time. Every couple has arguments. Some are about money. Some are about the kids. And some are about whose turn it is to take out the trash. But according to my guess, those five. fights are almost never about what they seem to be about. Underneath that argument is something much deeper, an old emotional wound that keeps getting triggered over and over again.

Until you figure out what the wound is, you'll likely keep having the same fight just with different words. Kim Pollander says the secret isn't to stop fighting, every couple fights. It's to learn how to fight better. She is a relationship therapist, whose practical approach to conflict has attracted more than 600,000 followers online. Her new book is Why We Fight, a transformative roadmap to healing conflict in any relationship. Hi, Kim, welcome to something you should know.

Hi, Mike. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. So I think if you ask people why they fight, they'll tell you they're fighting about whatever the thing is that they're fighting about. So what is it you say we're fighting about? So many reasons, but I think at the top of the list is that we are running off of a programming that got seated, shall we say, a long time ago. I spent 20 years in IT engineering and I learned to approach life with a systems approach, a structured approach, where there is a root cause to every problem. And so when we look at human beings and how we are, let's say, conditioned to look at the world, love, ourselves, that could be. conditioning that programming, shall we say, or operating system started very early. And so explain how that operating system operates.

Well, it's how we interpret the world. So if we look at it as a lens and we get two people together and one of them interprets the other, let's say, not texting them for 12 hours. I just had a client situation where one spouse was just furious, really hurt that the other spouse did not check in with them for 12 hours, didn't text them or call. Now, one could easily say, oh, well, you don't care about me. That was really hurtful. What's wrong with you? And it by itself is upsetting, sure, but when we're triggered, meaning when we have huge emotions, now we're talking about a charge that got seated very young, where someone, let's say, frequently had their emotions discarded or ignored or criticized and wasn't taken care of when they were struggling. Now when someone doesn't text you for

12 hours, it feels like a knife to the heart. Well, that's a really interesting example to me, because it would seem a lot of it would depend on what's normal. Because if you typically text every 12 hours or less, then I would assume, yeah, okay, well, why didn't you? But if this isn't a normal thing to do, then why would someone get all upset because you hadn't texted them in? 12 hours. Interesting question. I agree that context is everything. What is the pattern? Once again, now we're getting into a system sort of troubleshooting. What is the pattern? Well, in this couple, the pattern is that he does normally text regularly, but because they had had a huge blowout fight the day before, and they were both going into a situation that included a lot of stress around

family, the scene was set for how they now approach conflict and confrontation. His approach is I know my wife's upset. I'm just going to lay low a little bit. I'm completely overwhelmed here with my family. I'm just going to let her decide when to contact me. Her side is, hey, we just had a big fight yesterday. You know I'm stressed today about you being with your family and how that's going to play out. Why wouldn't you check in with me? And so her idea of we just had conflict, you should be checking in more. His idea of we just had conflict, ooh, I'm not going to check in more is now where we have the makings of a big fight. Yeah.

Well, that's a great example because you can see both sides and yet they, I get both arguments. But so when that happens, when you've got two people with fairly reasonable ideas about why we're fighting, what's the next step? I believe that the fastest, quickest, most effective way to de-escalate a situation is to express understanding. Empathy first. And the best way to set someone up to really understand the other person's point of view is to trace the breadcrumbs back to this early conditioning. For her to understand why he would even respond to conflict, even though she knows that he loves her and cares about her very much, why in this moment of high stress would he not come in and check in with her for her to understand that it's not just this cold callous like you don't care about me. And this is a dynamic that most relationships have where one person shuts down in a fight and one person pursues engagement in a fight.

And it's critical to know that the person who goes silent in a fight is just as overwhelmed as the one who's more expressive. Well, it also seems, I mean, it's common for people to say when you shut down and you don't communicate that that's a very passive, aggressive response, that you're basically giving them the silent treatment and you're punishing them by not talking. Yes, absolutely. And it can certainly segue into something as punitive and something as manipulative as that. I'm going to not talk to you until you get yourself together and calm down, right? So there is an argument for that. But what's interesting to me is that, you know, the Gottman research, the Gottman's are pretty famous couple, and they did a lot of research on couples' conflict.

And one of the things, the ideas that they promoted was that if you were to actually put a pulsometer, like measure someone's pulse and their physiological symptoms during fighting, in the beginning for people who shut down, it is a physiological overwhelm or their pulse. On the outside, they may look super calm, right? But on the inside, their pulse might be going 120, 130 beats a minute. They might be sweating. Their brain, and this is what's been expressed by people who shut down is that the inner dialogue goes, such as, I feel completely overwhelmed. I can't, it's difficult to form sentences. anything I say is going to be wrong and going to result in more criticism.

Why do I even try? I'm just going to lay low and nothing I do is going to improve things. So every couple fights, and everybody knows every couple fights, but I bet people in couples think, are we fighting too much? Are we fighting the right way? What's normal? You know, I love this question because I get many people, many couples actually, who say, oh, we never fight.

We never have issues. And I always raise an eyebrow. I get very concerned about couples who never fight, especially if they've been together for, let's say, more than three years, because that just tells me that someone's suppressing. Because if you look just statistically, you put two people on the planet into a home environment, an emotionally intimate, physically intimate space, right? What are the chances that one of them's never going to have a bad day, never going to have a difference in opinion,

never going to just have a fight with their parent and not have it come out within the relationship? Just statistically speaking, if people are honest, there's going to be a little bit of friction at least. And so it's healthy, really healthy, if people can communicate that friction and hurt feelings and unmet needs in some way, shape, or form. Now, the question of, are we fighting in a healthy way, comes down to resentment.

How do you know if resentment is starting to take down your relationship? You can ask yourself, what is unfair or imbalanced in this relationship? What do I feel is unfair? Because that's the very definition of resentment. The perception that you're being treated unfairly. Now, you can ask yourself, okay, I feel like. this, XYZ, me taking care of the kids every night, doing the bedtime routine without their help is unfair. Okay. Now we communicate with the partner, hey, you know, this is unfair, expressing your needs,

all of that. And their response to it is going to be critical as to whether that resentment gets resolved. And this is where people run into trouble is that, A, getting back to empathy first, they don't know how to express understanding in a way that the person feels less lonely. What usually happens is defensiveness. What? I do so much, you know, you know I'm working 12 hours a day. I helped out with the kids, you know, two weeks ago when you were off visiting your mother.

And now we start getting into, you know, scorekeeping and this and that. But really, to be able to communicate your needs, have it heard, and then respond with, okay, where do we go from here? What does that, what does the schedule look like, get into logistics. But what happens is that people, once again, were caught in our lens and we can't hear the other person, we don't get resolution, and then we walk away feeling

very unsatisfied. Would you actually use the word unfair that this situation is unfair? Because isn't that kind of a judgment about the other person, as opposed to coming in saying, I have a concern about this thing, and I'd like to see if we can come up with a better solution. But when you call somebody unfair, it seems like you're lighting the fuse. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because what I love about the definition of resentment is the perception of being treated unfairly. Once again, when we talk about perception, we're now talking about your lens. Them showing up 20 minutes late for date night means that they don't care, the perception. I'm always punctual.

It's unfair that I'm always waiting for them. It's them not taking care of the kids at bedtime with me, helping me with that, is unfair, true. That means that they are selfish. They don't care that I'm struggling. So once again, whenever the lens comes into play of how we perceive unfairness, it's always adjacent to and meshed with that lens with our beliefs that are associated with our emotional experience

I'm suffering they don't care this math this bad math that gets set when we're very young if I take care of everything I'm lovable if I'm crying and upset and struggling and they don't check in with me I'm unlovable I've heard people say people in your profession say that things like resentment and contempt are poisoned to a relationship. But if they're there, if they're already in there, how do you get them out?

Well, it's interesting because when we talk about signs of contempt, and I completely agree with this, that contempt is the relationship killer. Signs of contempt are more subtle. They might be a sarcastic tone. They'll be rolling of the eyes. There will be, sure, name calling, but a lot of the signs, like sighing, rolling the eye, here we go again. That is not, I would call that more indirect communication where if you were to ask that person, hey, if you couldn't roll your eyes, if you couldn't sigh, if you couldn't have that sarcastic kind of edge to your voice, what would you actually communicate? and if you can get to that place of what you would actually communicate,

you might get to a more effective place in expressing your needs, being able to, once again, getting back to verbiage and how you open a conversation, express it in a way that the other person can hear. So you're not coming out of the gate accusing you, you, you, coming out of the gate instead communicating your emotional experience. Instead of you're so selfish, it could be, I feel lonely, I feel hurt. When people speak in emotions, and this is what's called the classic I statements, when people

speak in emotions, it's much easier. Once again, we're trying to set people up to feel understood, that empathy piece. When you talk in emotions, it's much easier to then have the other person tune in and care for those emotions versus speaking in thoughts and judgments of you don't care, you're this or that. Because when we speak in thoughts and judgments, of course, the other. other person is going to defend their honor, defend their character. So how we communicate, the language that we use is very important to, and kind of determines

how the conversation will play out. When couples fight, especially when there's big fights, I wonder if, well, how you deal with the fact that, for some people anyway, that every fight takes a little piece away, that And it's cumulative, that every fight just knocks a little chip off the veneer. And after a while, you got a pretty chipped veneer. And like, it's just taken a toll. And I guess that's because people don't let it go. But sometimes fights, you know, they're hard to, you can't unhear them.

You can't unsee them. And so they do take a toll. Yes, I agree. When you get into those big gnarly fights and someone says something that they really regret, you can't take it back. It's always there to some degree. And this is an aspect that most, not every, but most relationships will hit this aspect of hitting below the belt, of going to that really ugly place that then makes you repulsive to your partner.

and I would explain all of it with protection. The number one job of the brain is not to love and to be happy. The brain is designed to survive. And what is key to survival? Well, when there's a threat, when there's a danger in front of you, you're going to protect at all costs. And what's the best way to protect? Put up your guard so it might be shutting down.

if they keep pursuing, it might be lashing out. If they are shutting down and not responding to you, which is so hurtful, then lashing out at them, just going to that ugly place to try to get a reaction out of them, to go to that ugly place to express to them how much they hurt you. So you're going to hurt them back. It's very much related to protection aspects, is how I describe it. And yes, it certainly does chip. away and it does eat away at the relationship, which is why at some point, you know, the two to

three year mark is a very critical point, also the seven to eight year mark, critical point for couples, because it will show you how you've handled that resentment, how you've handled those ugly moments. Did you come back the next day or two or three to talk about it, to get to a better place? There are certainly couples who, it's not that they fight, at least, at least, not anymore, but they've just kind of drifted and now they kind of coexist and they don't really fight, but they probably don't do a whole lot of fun things together either. They've just kind of settled for, eh, this is it. You would say what to that? This is a very common outcome of what's called the companionate phase. When you first start dating someone, you're in the honeymoon

phase. Everyone's familiar with that passionate stage. And what is supposed to happen by design, actually, is at the, let's say, 18-month mark to three-year mark is you get into more of a companionate stage where they're your best friend. You're more emotionally intimate. And when you are in the companionate phase, things such as falling into routines and not, and sweeping things under the rug starts to happen. So the things just does a high level, you know, high level like tips to get through that is being friends, first and foremost, will carry the relationship. It's going to be actually critical to the relationship. Doing new things has been proven.

When you do new things with your partner, it stimulates the brain in a different way. You're getting out of the old pattern. So doing new things with your partner will also make you feel closer to them, getting through conflict, high conflict, coming back, having apologies, having empathy, understanding the other person, seeing that they care, that makes you feel closer. And so for couples who have kind of fallen into this sort of place, by the way, which is very common, I can't tell you how many couples tell me we haven't had sex in 10 years. We sleep in separate bedrooms. Yeah, we're just kind of raising the kids. We've just kind of accepted that. How you want to be in a relationship is up to you.

Yeah, but you've got to figure out how to work together to do that. And I think your advice has been really helpful. Kim Pollander has been my guest. She is a relationship therapist and author of the book, Why We Fight, a transformative roadmap to healing conflict in any relationship. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Kim, great. Thanks for being here and coming on and talking about this. All right. Thank you, Mike. It's been a pleasure.

Most people's signatures look like scribbled. They're illegible. That's okay. The purpose of a signature was never to make your name legible. But when you first learned to sign your name as a kid, it probably was legible. So what happened? Well, as you sign your name, thousands of times over your lifetime, your brain gradually converts it from handwriting into a motor pattern. Eventually, you're no longer writing letters of the alphabet. You're just performing a memorized movement. That's why your signature can become almost unreadable while your normal handwriting stays perfectly neat.

And that is something you should know. I certainly appreciate you listening and telling people that you know to listen. In fact, it happened just the other day. Someone said, yeah, my friend told me about your podcast, and I listened. It was great. So that really is helpful to us. I appreciate you doing it. And thanks.

I'm Micah Rothers. Thanks for listening to something you should know. Ready to take your investing knowledge to pro-level? This is Fidelity Connects, your daily edge in the markets. Get deep insights on real-time market topics that may impact your investment portfolio. Listen to Fidelity Connects on Spotify today and power your next move tomorrow. Thank you.