Something You Should Know - Why Young Men and Women Don’t Trust Each Other & What Makes Love Last

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

You know that stretch you instinctively do when you first wake up — arms out, back arched, often accompanied by a yawn or a strange noise? Dogs and cats do it too. There is actually a name for it, and a reason it feels so incredibly good. Listen and discover what your body is accomplishing when you do it. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-does-pandiculation-feel-so-good Something startling is happening between young men and women. They are dating less, marrying less, and increasingly seem to distrust and disengage from each other. What is driving this divide — and what happens if it continues? Daniel Cox joins me with some eye-opening research on this consequential social change. Daniel is founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is author of Generation Uncoupled: America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection (https://link.amazon/B0bAUzOoI). The excitement at the beginning of a romantic relationship doesn’t last forever. So what do successful couples do next? Anna Elton says there are specific, surprisingly simple things couples can do to keep desire, intimacy and connection alive — and some can actually be fun. Anna is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist, and clinical sexologist who writes for Psychology Today. She is author of The Formula of Desire: What Brings Us Together and Drives Us Apart, and the Science of Connection (https://link.amazon/B02Uzxa9n). To take the assessment she discusses go to: https://theformulaofdesire.com/assessments/ Ever pour yourself a glass of ice water only to discover it tastes or smells vaguely like garlic, onions or last night’s dinner? The water probably isn’t the culprit. It’s your ice. Listen as I explain how those strange flavors get into ice cubes — and the simple thing you can do to stop it. https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/refrigerators/refrigerator-is-making-smelly-ice-cubes-a1166770149/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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every morning you're probably pandiculating, and so is your dog. I'll tell you why. Then something's going on between young men and women and it's not good. Increasingly, young men and women do not trust each other. They're not spending time together to build that understanding and trust. And it is impacting every aspect of their lives. And you see this play out online and offline.

Also, if the drinking water in your house tastes funny, there might be an easy way to fix that. And why the magic fades from most relationships? and how to get it back. The biggest part is people think that once you stop the chase, once you know the partner, that said there's nothing else to find out, and they stop being curious. And at that point, I hear a lot of my clients say, well, my coworkers know me better than my partner.

All this today on Something You Should Know. At Capital One, we don't just use technology. We architect it. Our teams have true end-to-end product owners. shipping distributed systems that handle high concurrency at scale. No single server bottlenecks, engineered beyond legacy downtime, and operating right here in downtown Toronto. That's technology at Capital One. Search Technology at Capital One, Canada. 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. Mike Carruthers. You know, it doesn't happen often that when I do an interview here, I am floored or stunned by what I hear. I prepare enough for each interview that I have a pretty good idea what a guest is going to talk about. But the first interview in this episode, which I've already recorded, I mean, I was shocked. It involves the young adults in our society, the Gen Zers, as they are known. and what you're about to learn about them as a group, I think, will shock you as it did me. That's coming up in just a moment, but first up, you know that almost irresistible thing you do after you wake up in the morning,

your arms stretch out, your back arches, and you usually accompany it by a big yawn. Well, that movement, that action has a name. It's called pandiculation. And it's not just a habit, it's an involuntary reflex built into humans and many, other mammals that tends to happen after you've been inactive for a while. The combination of contracting and then releasing muscles may help reduce stiffness and prepare your body to start moving again. It's why dogs and cats do essentially the same thing after a nap.

So tomorrow morning, when you stretch, yawn, and make, you know, whatever weird noise you make when you do it, you aren't just waking up, you're pandiculating, and now you have a much more impressive name for it. And that is something you should know. Something unusual and potentially consequential is happening with Gen Z, people in their teens and 20s. There seems to be a lot less interest

in the opposite sex. Young men and women are pulling away from each other. They trust each other less. They're forming fewer relationships with the opposite sex. And many of them appear less interested in marriage and having children altogether. And this may be part of an even bigger shift. Young adults increasingly seem to want to live lives

that have less in-person social interaction, less conflict, less discomfort, and less friction. Even though friction and conflict are essential to forming relationships and growing up. The research behind this is pretty eye-opening. Daniel Cox is one of the people who conducted it. He is founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute. His research has been widely cited in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and hundreds of other major media outlets.

He's author of a book called Generation Uncoupled, America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection. Hi, Daniel, welcome to something you should know. It's great to be here. So kick this off by explaining what this gender divide is, who it applies to, and why it exists. Sure. And who we're talking about here is young people, 1829. Sometimes it's used interchangeably for Generation Z, and that runs anywhere from late 20s to mid-teenage years. So this is America's youngest generation of adults, including some teenagers. And the divide, the divide. is really about trust and understanding that increasingly young men and women do not trust each other. They're not spending time together to build that understanding and trust. And it is

impacting all kinds of relationships, whether it's friendship, whether it's dating and romantic relationships. It's impacting every aspect of their lives. And you see this play out online and offline. And is it a strictly a gender divide or are women not trusting other women just as much as they're not trusting men and same thing with men? Or is this strictly a gender thing? No, there is a unique divide between young men and young women and young women are actually seeing greater solidarity among other women. That's one of the key findings actually that at a time when there's increasing distrust about men and concerns about personal safety, more women are turning to each other and sort of saying, we can't trust these men, so we need to rely on each other. And it's really more of

a tribal mentality that is emerging. And this lack of trust, we don't trust men to do what or not do what? So it can be as stark as to not hurt us. I interviewed a young woman who said, that men viewed her like she thought of herself as prey that if she was not careful men would take advantage of her in any kind of instance we saw this in some of the survey work we did as well when we asked questions about you know how likely would it be for a man to try to take advantage of you and a dispiriting number a significant number of young women said that yeah you know given the right circumstances a man would try to take advantage of them So it's concern about how men behave.

It's concerns about basic things like respect and treating someone with courtesy. And this is on both sides, right? I'm talking about women now, but men feel the same way that they don't trust women to treat them well, to not take every opportunity to take advantage of them, to put something that they did or said and put it online to be ridiculed. And so it's incredibly challenging just to try to talk to folks and not have it devolve into a kind of he said, she said argument. And do you have a sense of why this distrust exists? And is there truth to it or is this distrust manufactured somewhere? So I think it's the result of two things that are related.

The first is that this generation, Generation Z, is the first generation that was raised online. So many Gen Ziers got social media in their mid to early teens. It was a critical formative experience, and so they were learning about the world instead of talking and hanging out with their friends, instead of relying on trusted adults,

whether it's their parents or teachers, they were learning about the world from what they were seeing online, and a lot of that was highlighting the most negative, you know, dangerous and agitating content as they were seeing men behave in the worst possible way. They were seeing women portrayed in the worst possible light. And it was warping their understanding.

And so you have this kind of skewed funhouse mirror that social media is providing of what women and men care about, how they act, combined with a withdrawal of social experiences in the real world, that this generation is less likely to have had a partner. time job when they were teenagers, less likely to have participated in sports or scouting or religion. Across all these different domains of teenage activities, we're just seeing a significantly less active generation than previous generations. And so they have had less real-world experience to form an understanding of the world. And more time spent online where they're getting a really skew perception of the world, but increasingly what young men, young men care about and how they

behave. The picture you're painting is rather frightening, frankly. I mean, it's, it, it, because where does this go? What, what happens when these people grow further and become leaders in the community and in the world and everything else? If they have this, as you called it, a warped view of each other? Yeah, I mean, we're already sort of seeing the results. We're seeing declining marriage rates, dating experiences that are increasingly negative. We're seeing less interest in people becoming parents, a broad-based withdrawal from community life. And so it's really touching every aspect of our society.

You know, our work has shown that when it comes to social capital, and that's the degree to which people are engaged in local community activities, talking to neighbors, attending community meetings, married parents tend to do an awful lot of that. They are really participating in that kind of activities far beyond what most of the rest of us do. And so if fewer people are getting married, if fewer people are having kids, that means that these sort of civic superheroes, as we called them in our work, there are fewer of them to help tie our communities together. So this is a, not an individual problem. This is really a societal problem. And what about socioeconomic groups? Is this a problem for college people? Is this a problem for blue collar people? Or is this

just a problem for everybody? So it's a problem for everybody. But if you sort of step back and look at who is most affected by our broad-based social and civic decline. It's non-college Americans and specifically non-college men. They are struggling across the board when you look at their social outcomes and their romantic outcomes. And those things are intimately connected. That being successful socially is strongly connected to having romantic success. And so we found that for non-college men, You're far more likely to have not gone out on a date in the last year. You're far more likely to be single than your college-educated peers, partly because one of the critical attributes for men is to be able to show that you can provide.

It still matters. Despite all the economic progress we've seen for women, the educational advances, women still really care about and judge men on their ability to provide and provide some amount of financial security. So when non-college men suffer economically and they have disproportionately over the last few decades, it becomes much more difficult for them to succeed romantically. Okay. So I understand the pressure, the social media influence of causing this divide between genders and men not trusting women and women not trusting men and this pulling apart. I guess that I get that.

But on the other hand, kind of knocking at the back door is this whole human requirement that we need to couple up. We need to have babies. We need to keep the species going. That that is a strong human drive for love, romance, and everything involved in that that is a pretty strong urge,

but apparently not strong enough. It is incredibly strong urge. And the very best social science research shows that when it comes to building a meaningful, rewarding life, it is the quality of our social relationships. And so I think people are generally aware of that, but there's just this extant fear of, well, what if I get married to the wrong person? And I heard this in a lot of the interviews, especially with college-educated women, concerns about domestic inequality, that they're going to have to show.

shoulder the majority of the child care work and the domestic work. And they'll have to have full-time jobs as well and careers that they have worked so hard for. So there's this fear that people have about coupling up. And I think right now it's sort of winning out over the desire to form long-term connections with another person. The other thing that's happening is social media and I think increasingly AI is going to offer an alternative that feels a lot safer to folks. You're not going to have to deal with the possibility of rejection. AI is going to provide constant affirmation. There's a growing number of particularly younger men interested in romantic engagements with AI.

And so these things can feel safe. And for a generation that hasn't been raised, experiencing the same kind of social friction and discomfort that many of us did from previous generations, we weren't able to avoid it. I sort of worry about where this is headed. I mean, if that is really a trend, and I want to ask you more about this in a moment, I mean, what could possibly be the future of that? It's frightening. We'll talk more about this in just a moment when we come back. At Capital One, we don't just use technology. We architect it.

Our teams have true end-to-end product ownership, shipping distributed systems that handle high concurrency at scale. No single-server bottlenecks, engineered beyond legacy downtime, and operating right here in downtown Toronto. That's Technology at Capital One. Search Technology at Capital One, Canada. Trade ice skating at Nathan Phillips Square for ice cubes in your umbrella drink. Let Porter Airlines fly you from Toronto Pearson nonstop to

10 top sun destinations in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Costa Rica. Enjoy award-winning Porter service. Toronto has loved for 20 years and start your vacation as soon as you're on the plane. Book your sunny getaway today at flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. I'm talking with Daniel Cox. He is author of of a book called Generation Uncoupled, America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection, and he is also founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life. So this sounds to me, I mean, this sounds so odd that people would rather give up on romance with the opposite sex and go have a relationship or try to with some AI thing. I mean, where could that possibly go?

Yeah, and it's not simply that I feel like in mass people are going to, you know, start coupling up with their AI. But there's enough digital distractions that people can feel like they're, they have a fulfilling life. Even if they don't have these really other important relationships. Yeah, see, that to me is really important. It is our relationships with real people. that teach us about life, how to navigate life, how to get through the world. And if you don't have those relationships,

you're really missing out. The relationships we have, whether they're platonic or romantic, are supposed to be, are supposed to challenge us, they're supposed to change us. We are supposed to be in service to other people. Like that is the thing that makes life worth living.

And again, this is backed up by social science research. that when someone asks us a favor to ask us to do something for them, whether it's help with moving, to help out with child care, the people who do the help, provide the help, or actually feel stronger about the person than before the favor is asked. So it builds sort of bonds of mutuality that are critical for establishing trust and long-term friendship and belonging. It sounds like what you're saying is that, you know, people worry about connecting with other people of the opposite sex because it's going to interfere with their life. Like, it's going to cause me friction, and I don't want friction. But how do you be in a relationship without friction?

I mean, your expectations are just, I mean, they're clearly wrong if that is the expectation. Right, right. And part of it stems from their formative experiences. One of the most eye-opening parts of this project was we were doing focus groups in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we asked folks what they were hearing from their parents about the lessons and what it means to live a good life. And we asked, well, how many of you have heard from your parents the importance of getting a good education? Everyone raises their hands. Then we asked, what about financial stability and security? Did your parents ever mention that?

Again, everyone raises their hands. And then we did groups of men and women, and this was universal. Then we asked them, well, what about finding a partner or getting married? How many heard that from your parents? And no one raised their hands. Then we asked about becoming a parent. How many of your parents stress the importance of parenthood and then the rewarding experience that that is?

Again, no one raised their hands, although a couple of the young women said that their grandparents had talked to them about that. And so increasingly, I think the lessons young people are getting, I think, from the broader culture, but also their families, is about really building out themselves, right? It's not things I do on behalf of others. It's things that I further my own abilities and interests. And that's a pretty significant change from the past. God. This sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen. I mean, it's frightening this picture you're painting,

and I wonder why the parents of these children decided, for whatever reason, not to talk about finding a mate, having children, and the rewards that could come from that. Why the silence? Partly is out of a sense that they don't want to, instill their particular values on the next generation. We saw that when it comes to politics or religion, there's a real hesitancy to pass on political beliefs or religious beliefs to their children, which again, that's fairly new.

I mean, for previous generations of parents, you took their kids to church. They talk with them about politics and why their particular worldview was correct or right. and there's just a, I think, a lack of parents wanting to be prescriptive for their kids. But I think that leaves them without a script or a roadmap. And so I think you see a lot of young people who are really successful, really smart, really motivated, but they feel a little bit of a drift in their life because they haven't been given a really clear model. This is what you do. This is the steps that you do it in.

And so I think it's really been kind of a disservice that we ought to be having these conversations. Not that being a parent or being married is the end-all be-all, but we have a pretty good idea of what it takes to live a good life. And these things are often pretty central. If you've not heard from people that you trust about the value of raising kids and how it changes you for the better, I think it can be like, well, it just seems like a slog, right? I see, you know, people that I know or people on social media talk about being a parent and looks exhausting and looks tiring. I am worried about these national or global problems that we're experiencing. So, you know, given that, why would I make this decision? That's just, and never before, it doesn't seem to me, in previous generations.

Would someone say parenting looks tiring and exhausting, and that's a reason not to be? Parenting is tiring and exhausting, and almost every parent will tell you it was worth every second of it. That's right. And the obligations that we have are part of what make us great. So where do you think this is taking us? Where is this going? One of the reasons I'm hopeful, despite all the stuff we've talked about, is that I think there's a growing recognition among this generation about the damage that has been done by social media,

by pornography, by online gambling, by only fans, these kind of experiences that lead to more transactional relationships and interactions that feels fundamentally lessening, that they're losing out on something in the process of all this. And so you're seeing young women increasingly judge social media negatively. There's growing acknowledgement among young men the damage that pornography is doing, that hours and hours of pornography use is not helping them form successful romantic partnerships. There's so much more talk about having embodied experiences. I don't know if you've ever heard the term third place. This is like a sociological term. It means you're not your home, not your workplace, but the bars, the cafes, the restaurants, the bookstores that

serve as places for people to interact and engage with others in their community. And there's increasing interest among young people about finding their third place. And so I take some real solace there, that there is some hunger for finding ways to connect in authentic ways. There's another trend I saw online about the small favors economy, that we should be asking more of each other, that we should ask our friends to help us move, that we should ask them to come over and help us make dinner instead of order. ordering DoorDash, that we should ask for a ride to the airport. And so I'm heartened by that.

And I think that there is a good trend, but we need to help young people. We need to offer better models of the way we engage. You've got to be comfortable doing those kinds of things. Well, you know, I have a son in that age group. So this really strikes home for me. And I think what you've said is so important for everyone. Daniel Cox has been my guest. He is founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life, and he's author of the book, Generation Uncoupled, America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection. There's a link to that book in the show notes, and Daniel, thank you for being here, and it was really eye-opening. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate the conversation. At Capital One, we don't just use technology. We architect it. Our teams have true

end-to-end product ownership, shipping distributed systems that handle high concurrency. at scale. No single-server bottlenecks engineered beyond legacy downtime and operating right here in downtown Toronto. That's technology at Capital One. Search Technology at Capital One, Canada. New from Nespresso. Blend wellness into your coffee routine with a coffee plus range, infused with functional benefits. Choose the coffee you love with added B vitamins, like coffee plus B12 to help support immune function and coffee plus B6 to keep your day moving. Or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight. Our new double espresso with ginseng extract.

Whatever lies ahead, don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover coffee plus on espresso.com. No matter how great a relationship starts out, it changes. The excitement can fade, routines take over, stress gets in the way, and two people who still love each other can suddenly wonder, what happened to us? According to my guess, that loss of connection or desire doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is in trouble. Desire isn't just about chemistry, and it isn't something you either have or don't.

It's affected by everything from stress and emotional connection to how you communicate and even how you pay attention to each other. And once you understand what drives desire and what kills it, there are very practical things you can do to bring it back. Anna Elton is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist, and clinical sexologist. She believes the health of a relationship can actually be broken down into specific actionable steps, which she is about to explain. Her work has been featured on PBS, Fox, ABC, and NBC. She writes for psychology today, and she is author of the book, The Formula of Desire, What Brings Us Together and Drives Us Apart and The Science of Connection. Hi, Anna, welcome to something you should know.

Hello, thank you for having me. Sure. So what's the one big thing you want people to understand about their relationship? Every single relationship will hit the stagnation point, and it's normal, Because I feel like a lot of people think, if I love my partner, I should always desire my partner. But this is actually a wrong message. And when you don't desire your partner at some point, you feel like that something is wrong with your relationship, with you. And again, the best part about it, you can always bring desire back.

Well, I think everybody knows that relationships will change, that the fire dims, that the passion can't sustain itself. and yet often when it happens, people think it is a symptom of a problem that something is wrong. But what's really, really interesting from research perspective, you can actually bring desire back. It's not going to be exactly the same desire. It can be the new form of desire. And the most important thing is that relationship, once you get in a relationship, a lot of people think that that's it. They reach the goal and they stop working in the relationship. but you actually need to continue putting efforts.

It's like going to the gym. When you get to the shape and form that you want to get in, you stop, and then if you stop, you know what happens. So same with relationships. It's ongoing work. But it seems that in relationships, they start out and they're very passionate because there's a lot of novelty,

there's a lot of newness going on. But after a while, I mean, it just by definition has to fade away because the novelty wears off. you can't be as novel as it used to be because now we know each other so well. But I think the biggest part is people think that once you stop the chase wise, once you know the partner that said there's nothing else to find out and they stop being curious. And at that point, I hear a lot of my clients coming in and say, well, my coworkers know me better

than my partner. And that's a problem, right? Because you need to continue getting to know your partner. you need to continue explore your partner. And I think this is the magic. I've been with my husband for 25 years. And he tells me that he still is amazed to find out new information about me. And usually we have a lot of fun. And he says, I'm as fun as the bag of kittens. And I think that's the best part.

Well, how is he finding out new information? What have you kept from him? Why is, it seems like if you've been married that long, what else is there to know? So what we usually do, we try new experiences. And this is one of the exercises that I recommend my couples. And I've been trying to also follow the same procedures. So you create A3Z date nights.

So you take the alphabet and think of different things that maybe you used to do early in a day or something you never done. And make that list. So A could be art gallery, X throwing, B could be bowling, beach walk, maybe burlesque. We just done the last two years ago, and it was really fun. We never done this before. Am is my favorite, is movie and massage. My husband picks a movie, I get a massage.

I pick a movie. I still get a massage. So you make the list, and you try to do different experiences as a couple. And what's interesting, that you can see your partner through different lengths with new eyes. And for example, I have this older couple who came in and they worked on communication, desire. And when they started doing date nights, and they're in their late 70s. So they went to salsa night and wife came back and she said, wow, that was so fun. We had just an amazing time together that I feel like we haven't had in many years.

And then the next week they went to do the X throwing. And she came back and she said, wow, my husband is so sexy. He's so strong. And this is exactly the point where you start seeing your partner through new experiences. Yeah, well, I have heard that new experiences, when couples do new experiences together, that that somehow sparks, adds a little spark to the relationship. Although I've never really understood why, but new experiences seem to do that, yeah? It's the novelty, but also you're able to step outside of your routine and take off the head.

If you have kids, take off a head of a parent, right? And put on a head of individual romantic partner and do something fun, which actually creates, releases dopamine, releases oxytocin dopamine helps with motivation. Oxytosis helps with more of the connection. It's love and love and bonding hormone. So what do you say, though, because you could plan A to Z date nights, but somewhere in between those different date nights, there's unrelated trouble.

There's fights about things. There's something comes up. People get angry. And then you've got to put that in the mix. It can't all be just date. nights in wonder? Absolutely. And again, I see couples who, you know, come in and they're not doing too well in their relationship. And I would say before you even start with date nights, you need to start on the positivity. You need to make sure that you're able to see your partner through a positive

lens. So, and at that point, you would need to, at least for one week, try to notice what's going well. Because usually our brains are wired to notice what's not going well. We look for problems. good as expected. So for one week, and again, it sounds so simple, but it's not as easy to do to notice what's going well, and then make a mental note and then say it out loud to your partner. So this way you can reestablish the balance and start working on that connection first, emotional connection. And once you have a little bit more of that emotional connection, you need to start checking in with your partner. Because I think a lot of couples, they go back to logistics or not. what's not doing going well in a relationship. And at that point, you just need to make sure you're checking in, how you've been doing, what's been going on. And the third thing is physical connection. So before you become physically connected,

before you have physical intimacy, you need to make sure that you focus on small bits of connections, where you can hug each other, where you can touch each other through the day, which creates the more stronger bond. So you said a moment ago to work on your emotional connection. And I don't know that I know exactly what that means. If I were to get up from where I'm sitting and go work on my emotional connection with my wife,

what would I be doing? What specifically does that mean? So this is where a lot of women, specifically women, say, I don't feel emotionally connected to my husband. I don't feel emotionally connected to my partner. and I can be physically connected to him. So at that point, what usually a partner is looking for, they want to be emotionally safe.

They want to know that you're interested in them as people, right? They want to know that they can talk to you. They're hoping that you're not going to get defensive when they bring things up to you. And again, it's easier said than done, but the whole idea is to start doing small check-ins. maybe once a week you can say like, hey, you know, what's been going on? Let's talk about not just logistics, but have you been doing?

What do we need to do? What do we need as a couple? Is there anything else you need from me? And it helps to be hurt and actually have a plan to do something, like to fulfill each other needs emotionally. Well, that whole thing about being heard, boy, I think that's really important and sometimes forgotten that you need to feel like you're being heard that what you say is landing somewhere absolutely and again in this the whole world of technology sometimes it's

really really hard because it's so easy to focus on your phone it's so easy to scroll and not really focus on your partner even making eye contact right now is really important because I feel like a lot of partners that we have a conversation with their devices in their hands. And they're not fully paying attention and being present with each other. So one of the things that, as I hear you talk, one of the assumptions in what you say is that both people in a couple are on the same level with this. They're both all about date nights and they're all trying to get in touch. But that's not real. I mean, it seems like usually one is further along wanting to do this kind of thing than the other.

Absolutely. And usually women tend to say that they carry most of the mental load, emotional lot of the family. They feel like they plan more. Maybe early in relationship men used to plan on date nights, but then later in a relationship, mostly women tend to plan date nights, focus on connection and feel like, you know, they feel too fatigued, they feel too burned out if their partner's not stepping in. And also, according to research, which is really, really interesting. So really relationship satisfaction is not measured by how long the couple has been together,

by the trajectory of where each stands and how close each partner to their breaking point. So that's where one partner could be quite quitting from the relationship, checking out, and feel like, you know, they've been doing a lot, they've been putting effort in a relationship in nothing lens, where the second partner could feel blindside and feel like, well, things are fine. and we're fine, we're doing okay. So that's where you can find two partners in different places in a relationship. So when you're in a couple and you're in those different places, how do you get to the same place? So that's where you need the conversation and how do you get to that conversation.

I actually created an assessment that measures the health of your relationship like a credit score. So when two partners take the test, they can see where each of them are. And I had a podcast a couple months ago, and the host, he took a test right before the podcast, and he just wanted to just see how it works. So he took it with his wife. And he was thinking it's just going to be a fun five-minute exercise. They end up talking for four hours, and they've been together for over 30 years. So they actually went through each part of the assessment, and they wanted to know why each

scored a certain thing, and then had a conversation about it. And he told me that it was really, really interesting that he didn't realize how his wife felt in certain areas and what she needed. So they had that conversation. And sometimes this is the hardest thing because you don't know where your partner stands, right? Maybe you're thinking, like, I'm doing pretty well or I'm not satisfied in a relationship. But it's really, really hard to tell where your partner is at. So that's why the whole assessment was something that I was focusing on in my research. And that assessment's on your website, which is, there's a link to the website and to the assessment in the show notes.

You know, it seems almost inevitable that as you stay in a relationship longer and longer, everyday life just has a dulling effect. And then there's parenting and being a parent. And soon the relationship moves to the back seat. Absolutely. And this is something that I've been looking back in 2017. What I noticed, every single couple who would come in and who would struggle with their relationship would not fulfill their couple's persona. So the whole idea is when you're single, you have your individual persona with your likes, the things that helps you to fulfill yourself, your self-care. And then when you meet someone else, your special person, you create additional persona.

It's a couple's persona. So at that point, you need to fulfill both personas. You still need to do something by yourself so you don't lose yourself in a relationship. and you need to do something with your partner. And then when you have children, you create this additional persona, family persona. And a lot of couples, when they do things with their kids, they think that are they fulfilling their family persona and by default their couple's persona? But it's actually a problem because they do not do anything for their couples persona.

That's why it's so, so, so important to do something as partners, as romantic partners, away from kids. even if it's small 10 minutes of just checking in, hugging, cuddling, doing something, cooking together when kids are, you know, went to sleep, or just kind of checking and having tea or like hopefully dates, but again, something together where you're actually focusing on each other. But it does require that both people are willing to do this, that that you're both in on this. And that's where the whole understanding comes because a lot of people think that, well, if we're in a relationship, things are fine, we should be fine. There's nothing else that we need to do and we can focus on other things. That's where their attention and desire focuses on parenting, careers,

maybe even getting back in shape. And then they don't really put a lot of effort into their relationship. And they don't realize that all the little things that built their relationship in the first place are actually slipping away. So to get back in a good place in your relationship, you need to do exactly same things that you stop doing, you know, because people stop even saying hi to each other when they come back home. You know, I have clients who say like, well, you know, my partner says hi to dogs, but not to me, right? If I get 10% of affection that my dogs get, I'll be the happiest person alive.

We stop touching, you know, I hear a lot. We're like passing ships at night. So we don't look at each other. We don't touch each other. We don't really talk to each other. And what's the best way do you think to, like when people come to you and you explain this and they say, yeah, okay, well, yeah, this sounds great. How do you start? What do you do first?

So that's when I always ask them, three things. Why did you like your partner in the first place? What attracted you? Why did you decide to commit to your partner and why you're still here? What keeps you right now in this relationship? What is your reason? And I think it helps people to take a step back and look at the relationship as a whole. And remember, why did they like this person in the first place?

Because the way we think affects the way we feel and affects our actions. And in many cases, some of the things that attracted us to our partners could be something that's affecting the way we see them right now. And I'll give an example. For example, a partner comes in and says, like, well, my husband is lazy. them type A and he just doesn't help me out around the house. And when we look back, you know, she remembered that the reason why she was attracted to him because he was the rock, he was the come one, he helped her out. And then over the years, she wanted to take care of the things.

And then he was offering help, but then at some point he stepped back because she had it together. But then what happened once they had children, the whole emotion load was too much and it was never reassessed and she never asked for help and she assumed that he should know and that's the thing because sometimes when we feel like you know my partner is strong my partner can take care of it or my partner is there to support me but they're not supporting us that becomes the big issue in the relationship so i always say why did you like it while you hear um why did you commit to your partner and then and then how do you begin this process what's the first thing you do

So I asked them, so what's been going well in a relationship? What do you feel grateful for? And, you know, if the, if partners able to say it easily, I can tell that, you know, things are okay, you know, we can work with this. When they're struggling to point out at least one single thing or if they say, well, I guess my partner is doing this, but I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, so when I hear this but, that's when I give them the exercise of for one week, just try to pitiate. tension of what's going well because we really need to improve that emotional climate of the

relationship. We really need to start noticing what's going well. Yeah, it's so easy to bitch and complain about what's going wrong when you're missing the blue sky in between the clouds. You're not seeing that. You're just seeing clouds. Exactly. And again, this is something that I know myself and I always try to remind myself, catch myself, if I start thinking, even thinking like, oh, this is frustrating. So for example, my husband been doing coffee. He's been setting up coffee every night. So when I wake up, I have the fresh-brewed coffee. And he has been doing this for many years without prompts, without asking, this is something that he likes to do for me. And, you know, sometimes I wake up and, I mean, it doesn't happen too often, right? But sometimes I would wake up

and the coffee is not there. And if I catch myself like, this is frustrating, I remind myself, he's been doing this for so many years and I feel grateful that I'm, I feel grateful that I get fresh bread coffee every single morning. And sometimes he says like, oh, I failed you. I was like, no, no, no. I'm really grateful for you doing this. And that's the refrain because I always try to remind myself, I want to be grateful for everything that we have together.

It's so easy to not notice what you've got and focus on what's not there. Absolutely. And as I actually heard that the day, so the grass is greener where you watered. So if it's not the other side, but it's where you water your grass. So make sure you water your grass in your relationship, then it's always going to be green. Well, great. I think everybody needs to be reminded about the importance of working on the relationship. It's so easy to forget that and just fall into patterns.

And it's good to hear it. And you've explained some great ideas really well. I've been talking to Anna Elton. She's a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist, and clinical sexologist. She writes for psychology today, and she's author of the book, The Formula of Desire, What Brings Us Together and Drives Us Apart and The Science of Connection. There's a link to her book in the show notes, and I appreciate you being here. Thanks, Anna.

Thank you so much. Have you ever had a glass of water, and it tasted vaguely like onions or garlic or something else from your refrigerator? You may not be imagining that. You see, in many refrigerators, the refrigerator and freezer compartments share the same cooling system. So air and odors can circulate between them. Consumer reports actually tested this. They put garlic in the refrigerator compartment, and then they made ice in the freezer. The resulting ice smelled and tasted like garlic.

The easy fix is to keep strongly scented foods tightly covered in the fridge, clean out the ice bin periodically and use baking soda to help absorb odors. Refrigerators with separate evaporators for the fridge and the freezer are less prone to the problem. So if your ice tastes funny, don't automatically blame the water. Your leftover Chinese food may be the culprit. And that is something you should know. And if you have someone in your life that you think could benefit from this episode, I hope you'll share it with them.

Tell them about it. I'm sure they would appreciate it, and it helps us grow our audience, and we really appreciate that. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. At Capital One, we don't just use technology. We architect it. Our teams have true end-to-end product ownership, shipping distributed systems that handle high concurrency at scale. No single-server bottlenecks, engineered beyond legacy downtime, and operating right here in downtown Toronto. That's Technology at Capital One. Search Technology at Capital One, Canada.