The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - The Gottman Doctors: Affairs Can Actually Save Your Relationship! But If You See This, It's Time To Walk Away!

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

After 50 years of research, the Gottmans can predict with 90% accuracy if a relationship is doomed for divorce, these are the answers to love you've been searching for  Drs. John and Julie Gottman are professional relationship researchers that have published over 200 academic journal articles and 46 books. They are the co-founders of The Gottman Institute and Love Lab. In this conversation, the Gottmans and Steven discuss topics such as, how to repair from an affair, why dating apps are broken, the facts behind an awful sex life, and why to stop chasing the idea of 'the one'.  (00:00) Intro (02:28) What Do You Do? (05:08) What We Doing Wrong About Dating (09:55) How Do We Find True Love? (11:39) What Is The Most Attractive Thing In A Person? (13:51) The Role Of Self Esteem In How Attractive You Come Across (16:13) There Isn'T 'The One' (18:30) Are We Attracted To People Different To Us? (21:11) Do We Need To Lower Our Expectations (24:52) It'S A Red Flag When They Want To Rush Things (29:06) Can You Fake Confidence? (31:25) Science Know If People Connect Well Or Not (35:13) How To Build Confidence (38:04) Differences Between Gender In Attraction (39:37) Why People Need Alcohol When Dating (44:29) Is Good Enough, Enough To Be With Soemone? (48:06) The Role Of Sex In Attraction (53:40) How To Spice Things Up (57:46) How Much Sex Should We Be Having? (01:03:21) Men Struggle To Talk About Their Feelings (01:09:36) Expressing Gratitude To Your Partner (01:15:55) How To Know If You Should Break Up (01:19:24) The 4 Horsemen Of The Apocalpse In A Relationship (01:25:02) Insecure People Are More Defensive (01:32:19) Do Homosexuals Relationships Last Longer? (01:33:45) Gaslighting (01:38:32) Why People Stay With Gashlighter Or Abusers (01:41:24) How To Help People Going Through Domestic Violence (01:45:01) Treating Affairs (01:47:45) What Percentage Of People Have Affairs? (02:00:42) Does Cheating Help A Relationship? (02:03:34) The Importance Of Connection Follow the Gottmans:  Instagram - https://g2ul0.app.link/66wXYNo5QMb  Twitter - https://g2ul0.app.link/5htmCbr5QMb  The Gottman Institute - https://g2ul0.app.link/KlYOelu5QMb  YouTube: You can purchase the Gottmans’ book, ‘Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict into Connection’, here: https://amzn.to/4emRC7u  Spotify: You can purchase the Gottmans’ book, ‘Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict into Connection’, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/KosccZE5QMb  Watch the episodes on Youtube - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes  My new book! 'The 33 Laws Of Business & Life' is out now - https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACBook  Follow me: https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb  Get your hands on the brand new Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards here: https://appurl.io/iUUJeYn25v Sponsors: Shopify - http://shopify.com/bartlett

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. When the sex falls away, it can become a serious problem. And the largest study done on the quality of sex with 70,000 people in 24 countries found the differences between people who say they have a great sex life and an awful sex life has to do with... Really? That's right. Doctors John and Julie Gutman are world-renowned psychologists and researchers who have studied

over 40,000 couples, written over 50 books, and helped millions of people find and stay in love for over 50 years. People don't know how to have good relationships. So I've got so many questions. I'll start from the top. What are we getting wrong? Well, first of all, most people are living under the myth that you have to be compatible with a partner, which is absolutely wrong. And this is really interesting. There's a t-shirt study where women sell t-shirt study where women smelled t-shirts that have been worn by men for at least two days and selected the ones they thought smelled the best. And they found they were selecting the men that were as most divergent from them genetically rather than people who are like them because we're not really turned on by our

clone. And there isn't a one. Looking for the one is a big mistake. What about how do I become the most attractive version of me if I'm looking for a partner? That's a great question. And this is what you do. This is a difficult question to ask, but have you ever seen cheating help a relationship? Oh, very, very often. Really? When there's recovery. But can it be treated?

75% so far in our research. How? We developed a model and here's what it involves. First. John, Julie, why do you both do what you do? I love that question. One has to define what we do. And there are many things that we do.

First of all, I love to write. That's great. I've been helping people since I was eight years old for some odd reason. And I love, love, love connecting with people and loving them through their pain. That's why I do what I do. And would you class yourself as a clinical psychologist? Is that your official title? Yes.

Okay. John, could you answer the same question, which is, why do you do what you do? And I guess, what do you do? Well, to me, it's really an interesting puzzle to try to understand what makes relationships work and what makes groups work, what makes people be cooperative versus competitive, selfish, and mean, what makes them be altruistic and empathetic, and what makes relationships become sources of longevity and health versus illness and loneliness and despair. So for me, it's a puzzle, and it's fun to work on a puzzle. And what do you do?

I measure things accurately and reliably and then really just kind of see where the data fall out. So it's really applying statistics and measurement and good math to try to understand processes that are going on between people. What makes relationships work and what makes groups work? What makes humans cooperative and magnificent at their best versus selfish, greedy, and functioning at their worst? So it's curiosity that drives me. That's all. And collectively, how many people do you think you've studied, researched, treated, worked with in your practice over the last however many decades? Well, we've done research on 40,000 couples about to start couple therapy using questionnaires, and then more intensely using physiology and objective rating of emotional behavior,

about 3,000 couples followed over time as long as 20 years. And how many books have you collectively written, Julie? I think we're on 51, but I'm not sure. I've lost count. Where I wanted to start with this conversation is is really with I guess the subjective relationships but how we find and form them in the modern society because when you look at the stats despite the incredible work you've done over the last couple of decades it doesn't seem that we're better at finding and keeping relationships than ever before if you especially if you look at non-romantic relationships, you know, loneliness and isolation are at absolute all-time highs. And the technology that

was invented over the last couple of decades came with a promise, which was that it was going to connect us. But it doesn't seem to have succeeded. So I really want to start by answering this question about how people find love and form those relationships in the modern world. And like, what the data says and what our psychology says about where we're going wrong. I had some independent research that I found that says, according to the Euro Census Bureau, nearly 50% of the US population are currently single. According to the 2023 survey by Pew Research,

about 33% of men reported being single, followed by 28% of women. The average first marriage for men is 30 years old, for women it's about 28. We're having less sex ever before. We're getting in relationships later than ever before. Marriages still seem to break down, almost half of them. You probably know those numbers better than me and almost half of people are using dating apps but I think if you speak to anybody that uses a dating app they feel like they're all having a bad time when we think about finding someone to love us or that we love how much of our effort should be about actively going out there and putting ourselves out there buying a new dress whatever it is putting ourselves out there, buying a new dress, whatever it is,

putting ourselves out in the market versus the internal work of building ourselves into someone that is a magnet instead of a door-to-door salesman. You know what I mean? Oh, beautiful. Beautiful, yes.

I love your thought about developing ourselves internally because that's what goes wrong that makes dating apps so terrible. Many, many people suffer from terrible insecurity, right? They feel shame. They may have been criticized a lot as a kid or in their work. And as a result, they hide out. They hide and what they present to the world, either through dating apps, this is very common, or just even meeting people at a party, is something they're not.

It's something that they believe is the ideal, but where are they getting their information? They're getting it from TV, from Hollywood, from idealized heroes and heroines that are not real. Also, they're living under the myth that you have to be compatible with a, the same values, maybe the same background, the same class you were raised in, and so on. All of that is wrong, interestingly enough. So, when you talk about building that internal world, basically what you're saying is trust your own intuition, trust who you are. People will come to you if you are genuinely yourself. And if you're not, then people may mistake you for somebody else, have an expectation of who you are, and you're inevitably going to fail that expectation, which then gives you a negative experience because you feel like this other person is rejecting you and doesn't like you. But the reality is they're not rejecting you.

They're rejecting this idealized portrait that you tried to present to them, which isn't real. I guess a lot of people would think when they hear that, but Julie, if I show up as myself, no one's going to love me. Yeah, that's right. Especially on a first date. That's right. That's right. That's, you know, that's the sadness. People don't believe because of all that criticism in the society that they're worthy of love. They don't believe it. They have to, you know, be, I don't know what, Bruce Willis or something in order to have somebody attracted to them, have somebody really want to get to know them, which isn't true at all.

In fact, it's the opposite. What do you think to that, John? Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this question of, you know, how do we find true love? And, you know, part of the problem, I think, is that, as you mentioned, loneliness is a very serious thing. And so many people are lonely. And part of what they haven't done is build a friendship network that can support them. Friends are just so important as a precondition for finding the love of your life. Because, you know, the research that's been done on strangers now shows that people think that 97% of strangers, if they talk to them, will be rejecting

and will feel like they're invading their privacy. But the data shows that just the opposite is true, that when you approach a stranger, almost 97% of the time, they're quite delighted to be contacted. And they meet an initial contact with interest, enthusiasm. And so talking to strangers turns out to be really a very important thing. And turning a stranger into a friend, turning your social networks into places that are not alienating, that are, you know, places where you actually can enjoy you and company is an important prerequisite to dating. So I would say you need to build that friendship network first. And once you're not lonely, you're not desperate.

And then you can find somebody much more easily. I think this is a really interesting point, which is you finish there by saying, if you're not lonely, you're not desperate. And I was thinking as you're talking about what the most attractive version of me is to the world. If I'm looking to find a partner, whether I'm a man or a woman, it doesn't sound like a desperate version of me is to the world? If I'm looking to find a partner, whether I'm a man

or a woman, it doesn't sound like a desperate version of me is a very attractive version of me. So on this point of attraction, we'll start with you, John, and then we'll go, because we started with Julie last time. What do we know about what makes people attracted to each other? Like, how do I become the most attractive version of me to the world if I'm looking for a partner? I think everyone is really interesting and attractive as long as, you know, they're with somebody who's curious about them. So if you're with somebody who's really snobby and, you know, condescending and superior, nobody's at their best. You know, but when you're with somebody who's really interested in you, then you can really emerge. And just about everybody is really interesting. Their thoughts

are unique and their background is interesting and their goals and their struggles are really fascinating. So I think it's the social context that makes the difference rather than the individual. So, the problem with dating apps, I think, is that they create this very artificial situation in which everyone's being evaluated and assessed and they're swiping left, you know, all the time. Well, that person's not quite right, not quite right, not quite right, not quite right. The research of Eli Finkel shows that there's nothing you can measure in two individuals that will predict whether they like each other. There's nothing you can measure?

Nothing you can measure. In fact, you can actually ask people exactly what they're looking for in a partner and find that exact person in a large database. And it's very unlikely that they'll like that person when they meet them. Yet, if you randomly pair them with strangers, 22% of people like each other when they first meet. I wonder about the role that self-esteem plays in attraction. It's kind of what we're talking about with like being desperate. Maybe they feel like a similar

thing. And I wonder if there's any like data that supports this idea that self-esteem or your self-perception is this invisible force that makes you attractive or not attractive. I've actually seen it in some of my friends, who I won't name, who started going to the gym and just because they started working on themselves, it's almost like they grew six inches. Like they just were like different people. So yeah, a lot of attraction we think like, go get the blow dry, I'll go get a better outfit.

But this goes back to this point about how much of it is actually like, do the internal work. What do you think? I think there's a lot to be said for that yeah if you have a group of friends you know who really like you and you really like them then it's easier to emerge and you know this this dating situation is so artificial that people are so terrified, you know, when they meet somebody. And instead of approaching them with curiosity about them, they're worried that they won't

make a good impression. And they're so self-conscious of themselves, rather than being curious and interested in the other person. And because if they're curious and interested in the other person, you know, it doesn't matter what happens, right? I mean, you meet somebody new and you learn about them and it's an interesting experience and maybe they're interested in you too. So the dating experience is just kind of fun.

You know, it's about exploring, two people exploring one another. And then there's no objective. There's no real goal there. And then it's much less artificial. And then when you meet somebody you really click with, that's a wonderful experience. And especially when you meet an outlier, like I met Julie. I dated 60 women before I met Julie. She's number 61. I had a database.

So I knew I met an outlier. For me, she was an outlier because I just loved interacting with her. It was just so much fun. And she was head and shoulders above any person I'd met before. Do you know what's interesting though? When people look at you two, and when they look at other relationships, they'll go, okay, John, I get it. So you've got to make a database. You've got to wait until you find the one. Right. And this is often the cause of much procrastination as it relates to love.

Everyone's looking for the Julie, you know? And there isn't a one. You know, that's one of the other myths. There isn't a one. You know, that's one of the other myths. There isn't a one. And it's funny because we've seen this in our research on the opposite end of it. And here's what I mean. Every pairing of people, no matter how wonderful they are, no matter how much you love them, the two of you will always have perpetual problems between you. And those are based on either lifestyle preference differences or personality differences always.

And at some point, those conflict. And so, you know, what we saw in our research was, you know, something like 69% of the conflicts that couples suffer from or have are perpetual problems. They never go away. So, you know, when I have somebody coming into my office that says, I want to find my soulmate, my soulmate, it's like, huh? What's a soulmate? You know, I mean, you out of whatever in the U.S., we have, what, 350 million people.

There's probably 500,000 of them that you would find wonderful and attractive, right? So, looking for the one is a big mistake because inevitably they snore at night or, you know, they eat with their mouth open or, you know, something that drives you crazy. So, okay. So, you're not looking for the perfect person. You're not the perfect person. And that's what I was referring to earlier as, you know, let's see each other as human beings. There is no perfection. We are all flawed.

We all have cracks in us. And those can be seen as beautiful, too. We don't have to be perfect to be loved. Right? Yeah. Right. It's interesting because that marries to something that I was reading about in your books, where you talk about how often attracted to people who are very different from ourselves and just the very nature that they're different from us means that there's going to be that pretty much constant conflict why is it the case that we're attracted to people that are different from ourselves is that true um because it doesn't seem to make sense on the surface you'd think i would be attracted to

someone that likes manchester united and you know like my favorite food and my favorite stuff, because then we'll get on like a house on fire. But you're telling me that we're attracted to people that like other things. The research of Klaus Wettekind is so interesting. This t-shirt study that he did, where women smelled t-shirts that had been worn by men for at least two days and selected the ones they thought smelled the best. They actually were selecting, what Wedekind found was, they were selecting T-shirts of men. Those pheromones were attractive. The men were as most divergent from them genetically,

just in the genes of the immune system. Very divergent kinds of people smelled really attractive to these women rather than people who were like them. And actually, the experiment was done. It showed they actually liked those men better than other men they might have met. So genetically different men. Genetically different in terms of the immune system. So here's this evolutionary explanation

of why people are searching for somebody who's really different. Because we're not really turned on by our clone. We're not turned on by people who are just like us. Julie and I are vastly different. She's, you know, this adventurer, you know, this outdoors person. She loves the trees and hiking, you know, up mountain trails. I'm an endorsement. I like sitting in my chair and reading books on mathematics and quantum mechanics and general relativity theory. He's a consummate endorsement. So we're very different, you know, but...

What's the evolutionary reason then, do you think, for why we like people that are different? Oh, the genetic immunity. So remember, it's all about reproduction, right? So if you've got two very divergent sets of genetics in terms of the immune system, that child is going to have a broader genetic base as their immune system, as opposed to two identical or close to it, where they'd have a very narrow genetic base for immunity. Is there anything else that if you were advising me, if I was a single man and I was saying,

okay, how do I find a partner? What should I be doing or looking for? Should I make a list of things that I'm looking for? Should I be, I don't know, you said earlier about being my authentic self as much as I can be because you don't want people to be attracted to your mask. But should I be making a list?

Like, what should I be going for? Is there qualities that are enduring as it relates to success in romance that everyone should be looking for? Should I lower my expectations? It's not about qualities. It's about, well, I hate to say it, but it's more about behavior. So, for example, and I have so many, particularly women who've been divorced and now they're dating, and they ask that question. And here are several of the things that I always tell them. One is, does the person, male or female, ask you questions about yourself, or do they broadcast? Do they just tell you who they are? Oh my God, my boss just gave me a promotion. Oh my, you know, aren't I cool or I just won

this athletic competition. No. Are they asking you questions about yourself and not only that, but listening to the answers, right? And taking in the answers and, oh, that's interesting. That's one. Another is, you know, our society is very striated, right? So how do they treat people who have, let's say, less social status than they do? How do they treat the waitress who comes to their table? Do they treat them with disdain or scorn or, you know, the steak is terrible? Take it back. Or are they kind? Do they treat them like human beings? That's another thing. Do they treat people equally or do they only treat a certain group with respect and the others not? That's number two. Number three is are they reliable? Do they do what they say they're going to do? If they say they're going to call you, do they call you? If they say, I'll pick you up at eight, are they there at eight? So, reliability is a big deal. And of course, nobody can be perfectly reliable. You know, life happens. But do they call you to let you know, oh, I ran into heavy traffic, so I'll be 20 minutes late. So, you know, there's a consideration there of your time, of your energy, curiosity, as John pointed out, as to who you are.

And also, there are so many people who, as you have been talking about, are so terribly lonely. Watch out for this. Watch out for people saying in the first date, oh my God, you're it. You're the answer. Oh my God, you're fantastic. I think I love you. You know, that kind of rush into

let's have an intimate relationship right now. i want to marry you and i'm going to ask you tomorrow no you know they people need to take their time to get to know one another and peel away the layers slowly and carefully to build trust do you think that speed to rush into a relationship is a sign of something else further upstream, maybe insecurity? You bet. Needy. And I don't like the word needy because everybody has needs. We're pack animals. You know, we need each other. We depend on each other. But somebody who can contain themselves, as you were pointing out. With or without you energy. That's right.

Yeah. And have done that internal work so that they're not looking to you to answer every problem they have. You know, I would give different advice to a male who's dating. I would say, you know, just have fun. You know, many people, like when I was creating my database, you know, I met a woman who is a survivalist. She had a.38 Magnum pistol right by her bedside. And she spent thousands of dollars on gowns to go to opera because she loved opera.

And I remember sitting there in her house and saying, you know, God, this is really interesting. You know, I don't know if I like this person or I can be with this person, but she's fascinating. You know, it's kind of fun getting to know her. And then at a certain point, there's somebody you meet, like I met Julie, and everything feels right. The world just kind of opens up when you talk, and your heart opens, and it's very different. It's not just interesting. It's really, there's potential there that you don't feel with anybody else. Were you desperate when you met Julie, though?

I don't think I was. Oh, I don't think I was. Oh, I don't think I was desperate. I've been divorced for about seven years. I was looking to meet somebody my, you know, close to my age, who, you know, was an interesting person. And I met a lot of interesting people. But she was different. I asked this question in part because I wonder if someone's ever done a study where they take a group of people who are looking to find someone and then they take a group of people who aren't really looking and they see who has the most success. And when I say looking, I mean, some people are literally looking for a husband and they feel like they need to find one within

six months because, you know, biological clocks and goals they might have for their lives and all these kinds of things versus a group of people that are just open to it. And I wonder who's more attractive. I think either one can work. Right. You know, I don't think there has to be a magic formula. So I think if you approach the whole situation with curiosity and wonder, you know, and just kind of see who you meet and see what happens. But that sounds more like this group here, you know? That's right. I agree with you.

What you're describing is that being confident in yourself and just being curious, as opposed to, I really have to find somebody. I need to find somebody. Very, very, very different. I think about this in part in the context of business as well, because as an investor, you get an energy from the entrepreneur that's trying to get investment from you as to whether they need you or whether you're an option. And it's so remarkable how much more likely you are to invest in a founder who makes you feel like an option. And then you have these other founders. Well, I can literally think of one example that popped to my mind from the last couple of weeks where they were so desperate that it was almost rude.

Wow. How did that manifest? As in the way that they sent their emails and the way that they were like demanding and how urgent they wanted to speak to you and all these kinds of things and how like low-key expectant they were from you made me feel like their business wasn't doing well whereas and i think about this in the context of relationships whereas the founders and entrepreneurs that message me where they're kind of more patient they you know they're kind of maybe a little bit busier the ones that have that like it's i keep going back to that phrase like with

or without you energy where you're an option to them you're much more likely to invest you feel like it's a privilege to invest. And I think about this from the context of the question I just asked. If someone's like, I need a husband now, versus someone's like, I'm open. I'm curious. I'm willing to go on the date and see if we're right. Because I realize that me saying yes to you is a huge investment.

So I need to take my time to figure out if that investment is going to be worthwhile, because I respect myself. Yeah yeah maybe you're right right maybe it's better if you're just kind of confident and not so desperate can you fake confidence truly this is the problem no you know as a matter of fact when people try to fake confidence they often um overstep it, right? And golly, I know I'll never forget this fellow in high school. He would brag about himself without knowing that he was bragging. He would boast and boast and boast and boast. And I realized, oh my God, I cannot stand this, you know, because it was so fake. But important thing, I realized that the extremity of my negative attitude towards him was because there was a part of me that was just like that, that felt insecure, that wanted to present, you know, this perfect image to people that I wasn't, which is what he was trying to do.

And so then it's like, oh, I've got a lot of work to do on myself. Well, you know, one thing about this dating situation that's interesting is even though there's nothing you can measure in individuals that will predict that they like each other. Once they get together and start interacting, our lab can measure if that interaction has promise or not. Really, we measure openness, the emotional connection, the fact that people are either connecting with one another, communicating with one another or not. We measure tension versus relaxation.

We measure curiosity and interest and all of those things. So can you give me really specifically exactly how a couple would show up, really specifically, if they had promised to last and be successful together? So if you watch their videotape and they had promise, you'd find them laughing together, you know, mirroring each other, smiling, asking questions, being open, wondering about things, and you'd have this real sense of exploration and openness and curiosity and interest in one another. Whereas in a couple that wasn't doing very well,

you'd sense this tension, sarcasm, a lot of negativity, bragging about themselves, talking about themselves rather than being interested in the other person. Body language? Body language. The ratio of positive to negative emotion in those couples would be much less than one, whereas it would be three to one or five to one among couples who are really getting along very, very well, where there's this potential, this openness and potential. What's the difference in body language? Let me demonstrate it. So somebody who's overconfident, pretend he's not sitting here, is just going to be doing that.

For people that aren't watching, laying back, arm... Laying back, your arm, you know, stretched out over the top of the chair next to you. You're leaning back, you know, which is come to me, come to me, you know. It's all me. It's all about me and I'm so cool. And somebody who is really engaged is going to be more kind of leaning forward and making eye contact, being fairly relaxed, you know, not not hunching their shoulders inwards, which shows they're probably depressed, they're insecure, they're hiding out. But you know, just relax, their shoulders are, you know, not up to their ears. They're allowing their eye gaze to look away as they think about something and then they look right at you and they answer the question.

All of those indicators. That ratio of I to other, I mean mine, you know, predominates conversations where there's all this tension. Say that again, sir. Is where, you know, the conversation is really about just myself. I'm sort of putting myself in the center versus being interested in you, being interested in us, being interested in we. And that emerges, that openness emerges in language as well. There's also a reciprocity in the sense that, let's say you and I are meeting, you ask me some questions about myself, I'll answer those questions, but then I'll ask you, I'll come back and ask you questions about yourself, as opposed to, go ahead, ask me more questions and more questions and more.

I'm only happy when I'm talking about myself right right so you know you're going back and forth exhibiting that curiosity as opposed to uh just adoring somebody being curious about you but not reciprocating by being curious about them i am it's funny because you're talking about body language a second ago, and many people will click on episodes on YouTube or podcasts that try and teach us body language. But I think, okay, you can learn some of the things, but really, again, I think body language is a symptom of what's going on inside.

How do you build confidence is really the question. You know, especially when you begin, let's say, in a family or with caretakers who are critical and contemptuous of you. And when you have that from practically the ground up, as I did, you internalize that that and you believe you're worthless because you were treated as worthless. So how do you build the confidence, right? So either through maybe therapy, through looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, all right, this is who I am. This is, all right, this is who I am. This is who I am.

This is who I am. You know, one of the – I used to – like almost every single woman, no matter how beautiful you are, you will always measure yourself as inferior to somebody else. Always. As a woman. I mean, you've seen already 6 million images of idealized women by the time you're 18. Think about that. So how do you build confidence in what you look like? Go to a locker room where women are undressing

and look at their real bodies and notice the variety. Notice, you know, the whatever, a woman that's larger than the standard, thinner than the standard. Women come in all shapes and sizes. So do men. And just seeing the reality, the reality as opposed to the Photoshopped, you know, that's the thing that is so difficult about technology is that these days, you know, especially with dating apps and so on, people are Photoshopping their images or they're taking an image of themselves 30 years ago and there're here is what I am.

And I actually still have hair. It's the reality that it's not really about the appearance. It's not even about, you know, the IQ or whatever, the education. It's really about, well, here we go. It's about the heart. It's about the heart. Is this a kind person? Is this a caring person? Is this a person who exhibits compassion, who treats people equally, and so on? A dating app wouldn't work on that basis, would it? No, and most people aren't lying on dating apps, too. That's right. Is there a difference in what men and women look for in a partner as it relates to attraction when they first meet? Well, you know, that's an interesting question because I remember reading this

paper by Eli Finkel. He says in the introduction, you know, generally the dating research suggests that men are looking for physical beauty and women are looking for occupational competence and wealth. But actually, when he did this really elaborate speed dating study, none of that actually manifested in people's preferences. The preferences were all in terms of what it felt like to be together. And both men and women were really similar. So when you interact with somebody, you're going to interact with them for five minutes in this speed dating situation.

What made the difference was how much fun it was to interact with them for five minutes, how enjoyable it was. And men and women were the same. So the social context of dating is so important. Because if it's this very tense, you know, evaluative context, nothing is going to work. But if it's this relaxed, sort of interested, curious context, almost everything's going to work. Now, a lot of dating happens these days with alcohol in a nightclub or with alcohol at maybe dinner or at a bar.

Is there a better place to conduct a first date? And if so, why? Well, first of all, alcohol distorts everything. Drugs distort everything. You know, there's a reason they say intoxicated, toxic. Alcohol is toxic. So it shuts down certain parts of the brain, shuts down to some degree your ability to judge, your ability to sense, your reflexes, your intuition, all that stuff is shut down to some degree. And so, wow, she's really hot.

Time to go for her. You know, you're not picking up that, you know, she's wearing a wedding ring. She's sitting with a man who has a matching wedding. You know, you're not picking up all that stuff. So probably a coffee shop is nice where we met. Yeah. Well, I think it needs to be a context that is not evaluative. You know, I think it has to be some kind of relaxed context where you're just kind of getting to know one another. I know.

Yeah. And seeing what it's like to meet this person. So it's the judgment that makes it tense and uncomfortable. And so people need alcohol to get relaxed. And, of course, then they're, you know, when they get high, they're laughing at everything and nothing. And there's no connection. There's no real connection.

So the evaluative context is kind of like the antidote to love. You have an evaluative context. You're trying to be at your best. The other person's trying to be at their best. But there's no real interest in one another. When you say evaluative context, it means that we're evaluating each other it's really really that's right it's like an interview basically yeah it's like it's like a job interview interesting never gonna work is there a certain age where if you get together with someone you're more likely to

be successful i was talking to my friend about this actually this weekend because he is approaching 40 and his partner is significantly younger. It's my friend that lives in America, in New York. And he was telling me that because she's sort of 23, he's struggling a little bit because he wants to settle down and he wants to think about kids now.

And she's still trying to figure out life. So it made me wonder if maybe he should be aiming at people that are at least about that sort of 30 age where you start right you know and i don't know if there's any research to you know i i don't know about the research but what i've seen clinically is that people who date uh others that are very very different in age from them have a problem typically. Because, first of all, the social history in which they were raised is different, right? So, for example, John and I, though we're not the same age, we're about nine years apart, but we both went through Vietnam. We both went through all the assassinations in the U.S.

Civil rights movement. The civil rights movement. You know, I got arrested. He didn't. I was unlucky, you know, in the protesting stuff. But that context, you know, understanding a period of history that you grew up in is really important, and also internally, in the sense that there are really phases of development that you go through as you get older. And you're absolutely right, Stephen, in that a 40-year-old who wants to now settle down, create a home, create a family, and a 23-year-old are incredibly different developmentally. So their goals will be different.

Their values will be different. If you will, their maturity will be different. Their interests also may be strikingly different. There may be a real difference in valuing commitment, you know, and so on. So I've seen relationships work with that kind of disparate age. But typically, that can happen more easily when you're older, when you've already created your identity. You've already identified what profession or line of work you want to do, whether or not you want to have kids or if you've already had kids and so on. So like a 40-year-old and a 50-year-old or 55-year-old would be very different than a

40-year-old and a 23-year-old. Good enough relationships. Should I be looking for because this goes back to what I was saying earlier about looking for the one, looking for your Julie or should I be looking for a relationship that is good enough and then try and build it

to be a great relationship because there's a lot of people that are maybe over 30 years old, over 40 years old who are single struggling to find someone that's great. And so their friends or their partners or, you know, the people around them are saying, just, you know, that person's good enough. That person's good enough. Just, you know, give them a chance and go on the date. Yeah, I think there's a lot to that point of view, because when, you know, when you're looking for the perfect relationship

that's good in every dimension, you're going to be disappointed. And I think it makes some sense to look for what's good enough. And so, you know, what's good enough for one person is not the same as what's good enough for another person. I know, you know, what's good enough for me is having somebody you can really trust and really feel a sense of commitment toward. And those two dimensions are absolutely critical. Did you have non-negotiables, both of you? Was there anything on your list of things that were mandatory in finding your partner? Yeah, for me, it was wanting children. So that's a non-negotiable for you? Yes. Was there anything else that was non-negotiable? Monogamy.

Okay, yeah. For me. Yeah. Sense of humor was really important. I think another thing, too, is do you get bored talking to them or not? Or are they continually interesting to you? But I think one of the most important things is how do they make you feel about yourself? Not just, you know, you're attracted to them or whatever, but how do they make you feel about yourself?

If they make you feel dumb or unkind or too needy or whatever, not cool. On the other hand, if they make you feel like the most gorgeous thing in the world and the most brilliant person in the world, etc., and you know you're not, that's not it either. You know, so do they recognize you? It's almost like that. Do they recognize you in your fullness of humanity? And, you know, that takes time, of course. You have to get to know one another. But let's see. Non-negotiables. I know very quickly, I think we both realized that whenever we spent time together, it's always interesting and fun.

That's true. Talking over anything. That's true. And everything that you said, everything that came out of your mouth was so friggin' fascinating. I knew I would be learning from him the rest of my life. Yeah, I felt the same way about you. A road trip was an opportunity. It was really a time to talk about our dreams and our hopes about the world.

Yeah. What about sex and the role that plays in attraction? I ask this question because I had a relationship when i used to live in new york and i really really liked this person we got on all the things you described the road trips everything was fun and then when it came to the point where we had sexual intimacy it just wasn't there yeah and it was it was crushing for me because this person was perfect in every conceivable way smart kind, kind, fun, everything. I just, and then the minute we moved to the next stage,

it just wasn't there. I just wasn't sexually attracted to them. I've had that experience too. And so it made me add to my list of non-negotiables a third thing at the time. There's two things on that list. The first was they kind of helped me become a better version of myself

and however I want to define that. The second was this intellectual stimulation, the ability to conversate and be interested in them and them interested in me. And the third became not about appearance at all. It was purely a sexual connection. And so I just wonder what the role that sexual intimacy and sexual attraction plays in having a good relationship with someone. Yeah. You know, I think that really varies, Stephen, because there's a huge range of the important sexuality plays in individuals. You know, some people are practically asexual. Other people, you know, it's been a really long time if they hadn't had sex in four hours.

So, and everything in between. So, I think to some degree that's an individual choice as to how important is sexuality to you. And having a wonderful sexual connection as opposed to, who cares? You know, I just want to have a cup of coffee and a pastry. You know, so every individual needs to decide that for themselves, how important it is. And then, you know, if it is important, even of average importance, it's really important. Yeah. But the other thing average importance, it's really important. Yeah. But the other thing, too, that's interesting, I mean, we're talking about dating, but I've also seen relationships that have been together for a long time.

And the sex falls away. But it's much more important to one person than the other. And they diverged. And it becomes, you know, a pretty serious problem. It didn't start off that way. But it can become that way. And what happens in those scenarios? Well, you know, typically it's really interesting.

Of course, in second marriages or relationships at, let's say, over 40 or so, women, especially women going through perimenopause, you know, finishing with menopause, sex hormones go way down. They go way down. And so, are they still interested in having sex? Well, they may not be so interested in it that they want to initiate sex, but we're all hardwired in particular ways. So, you touch there, you lick there, you know, you stimulate here, and that wiring is going to kick in, and the sexuality will kick in again, and the sexual responsiveness will kick in. So you can work on that angle, number one, but number two, oftentimes, there have been big emotional injuries that have broken trust, that have broken emotional connection. And, okay, so two theories.

One, most men in Western culture are not, they don't accept themselves if they just want to cuddle. That's not masculine, right? So everybody needs touch. But for many, many men who bought into that, the only way they can get touch is through sex. They can't just say, will you please just hold me. Women can because women are considered, you know, more vulnerable and softer and it's okay for them, you know, to ask to difficult thing there too, especially with an ultra-masculine man where he's just come back from war. He wants to just be held, but he can't ask for that. He's got to be tough and strong and sexy. Therefore, he'll go for sex. Any thoughts on that, John? I think I agree with you. It's not negotiable.

You know, it's one of these intangible things that, you know, if it's not there, it's not going to work very well. In the beginning, if it's not there. That right right i mean it's yeah i think it needs to be there because it goes on a journey all relationships right it's funny because from doing this podcast and speaking to a lot of sort of sex therapists or couples therapists this one of them said something to me one day or maybe two of them said the same point, I think two or three of them said the same point, which is much of what makes sex so, you know, arousing is the spontaneity and the novelness, the newness of it, the excitement of it, all these kinds of things. And they said to me that love is in many respects the opposite of that. It's the opposite of spontaneity. And love is like security and trust and dependability. And it's, you know, knowing someone. So I've spoken to a few of my friends, in fact,

about this balancing act between like, I really love this person. I know them and I'm there for them. And we know everything about each other. And then like having to fight to also create this excitement. Like, how do I love you like we've known each other for 10 years and you can trust me and depend on me?

But then how do I have sex with you like we've just met? So we call it the Coolidge effect. Have you heard of this? Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States and he and his wife were visiting a farm. And as the president was led past these chickens and roosters, the farmer said, oh, this rooster has sex 17 times a day. And Mrs. Coolidge wanted me to point that out to you, Mr. President, when she came by here,

because we pointed out that rooster has sex 17 times a day. And Calvin Coolidge said, with the same hen? And the farmer said, no, always a different hen. And the president said, tell that to Mrs. Coolidge. So the Coolidge effect is that it has to be novel. It has to be exciting, to be erotic, right? And familiarity, you know, which creates security and relaxation and openness, is antithetical to the novelty that creates sexual excitement.

But the truth is actually not so simple because eroticism often really results from really creating an erotic situation together and making it an erotic situation. And for women, especially, feeling safe and feeling emotionally connected is a prerequisite for feeling really attracted and feeling that this is an erotic situation, that emotional connection is necessary for many women. Because women have such a

strange relationship to safety and fear compared to men. The world is so much more dangerous place for women than it is for men. Women really need that emotional safety and connection in order to feel that the situation is erotic at all. It's important for your audience to realize that the largest study done on the quality of sex with 70,000 people in 24 countries found that the differences between people who say they have a great sex life and people who say they have an awful sex life has to do with affection and emotional connection.

The people who have a great sex life say I love you every day and mean it, kiss each other passionately for no reason at all. Cuddle. They're affectionate even in public. They have romantic dates. So affection and emotional connection for most people all over the planet are connected rather than there being this dichotomy between if you're close and if your friendship is good, sex is going to be terrible. And if you're distant and, you know, it's novel, sex is going to be great. Just not true. That's right.

And is there a certain amount of, because a lot of couples fall into this trap of sort of fake comparison, whether it's social media or movies, where we think, okay, if we're not having sex three times a week, something's wrong, I need to raise it, we need to argue about it, we need to fix it. Is there any merit to the quantity resulting in, you know, happiness? No. No relationship between quantity and happiness. The quality, yes.

Well, with the caveat, with the caveat that if you have two people paired together, one who is extremely sexual and, you know, really does need sex frequently and the other one, the opposite. Asexual. Who is more asexual and, you you know could take it or leave it want sex maybe once a month that's not gonna work that's not gonna work

one of the things me and my friends have been deliberating about is the importance of what we call desire management which is if someone is like around too much and they're there every second of every day in the house when I get home you know everywhere does that not to some degree start to kill the desire a little bit one of the best things that I think I found in my relationship is that my partner's always working away that I'm working away and so when we see each other it feels special and interesting but I personally don't know that if we were both in the house seven days a week and I worked from home with her, whether the desire would be the same. I don't know. You know, I think that, for example, John and I are around each other seven days a week.

And we have been for, you know, most of our marriage. But it doesn't matter. Is that because of my attachment style, maybe? Because, you know, I wondered if... Could be. Yeah. Yeah, could be, could be. I need a lot of solitude.

Yeah. But you are around each other. Yeah. But you're around each other most of the time. Well, we are. But, you know know in a house where there's enough space in the house to not be in visual contact with the other person all the time right you see so he's downstairs i may be upstairs something like that or i can maybe hear him, maybe not. He can hear me, maybe not.

You know, so. I think there is something wonderful about being apart and then coming together. That reunion after you've been apart for a while is really quite delicious. You know what, though? This is so interesting. I am working with an individual right now, and they're both artists. They both travel a whole bunch all the time. And whenever they reunite after one of them is gone,

nothing. There's nothing for about two or three days, and then they have to get into the same rhythm again. Someone said to me on this podcast, they said, you have to spend 90 minutes a week talking to your partner. And if you don't, the person actually said to me, if you don't get that into your dumb skull, you'll be spending much more time with them in divorce court. And I know it was a brash thing to say, but I reflected on it and it really helped me because I think, I don't know, I'm speaking as a man, so I can't speak for all men, I can't speak for women, but speaking as a man myself and also on behalf of my friends with my own attachment style, I think that's important to add. struggle with naturally with conflict resolution because conflict resolution to me sounds like blame so if my when my partner says we need to talk i'm like oh my fucking god what have i done

now that's right what have i done now i sit there like a you know i feel like it's a hidden school being told off by their like the headmaster or the child being told off by their mother i'm like go on tell me all the ways that I'm inadequate. But the framing of this idea of you're going to have to spend 90 minutes a week sitting with each other and talking regardless helped me because he then went on to say, because if you do that, then you can get to play. Well, here's my invention. I have a notebook in my back pocket.

Oh, yeah, interesting. And it's just designed for when Julie says we need to talk. And I take out the notebook and a pen, and I say, okay, talk to me. I'm taking notes. I want to know what's going on. And she'll tell me I'm disappointed in you or angry. You know, I mean, whatever she says, you know, I write it down and reflect it back and see if I understand what she's saying. And so I think it's not just 90 minutes.

It's 90 minutes when you're willing to listen non-defensively. Which is not easy. That's not easy. That's really the work in relationships is being non-defensive. But that's why we wrote Fight Right, you know, and when we gave, you know, a talk. It's really so important to not do that you, you, you, you. Blaming. That blaming. It's, you know, I feel about what, what's the situation, not, you know, the way you failed

me. It's the situation. Julie, is it more often men or women that are saying that I feel? Are you kidding? Men are catching up, but it's hard. It's hard for men to do that. Women, I mean, you go to mental health expertise and all the characteristics of a man that are considered mentally healthy, autonomy, independence, strength, resilience, you know, all the stuff that's autonomous. For women, vulnerability, sensitivity, empathy, expressing emotion. So, you know, there's only one emotion that men are allowed to really openly express, anger. Right? Can they express fear?

Oh, my God, I'm so scared of going in there tomorrow. Or sadness or, you know, the more vulnerable emotions. It's, God, think about it. It's seen as effeminate. And that's supposed to be bad? Why is that bad? Because women are second-class citizens, right? So to be allegedly like a woman and express vulnerable emotions is a bad thing because you shouldn't be like a woman. Why not? You know, I mean, so expressing vulnerable emotions, I think men are starting to catch up. Don't women like strength?

Yes and no. They like strength. But the problem is that they also want to be empathetic too. They want to be, you know, nourishing to their partner. And if their partner is always presenting this facade of strength, they can't get close to them. It's like the opposite of connection. Yeah. But, you know, we observed 8-year-olds in playgrounds.

And if you look at 8-year-old boys, they'll do run and chase games over a very large distance. And if an emotional event happens, if somebody gets upset, you know, say, what's the matter, Brian? Says the leader of the group. He said, I never get the ball. Okay, toss the ball to Brian. Brian gets the ball and they're off and running. They keep the game in play, manage conflict quickly. Look at two, look at girls. They're playing in groups of two or three close to the school building and they're talking about their feelings over and over again. You know, you said that I was a baby, you know, because I had those barrettes. That really hurt my feelings.

Yeah, well, you know, I only wear barrettes when I was little, and now I don't wear them. You know, but that hurt my feelings when you said that. So I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. They're talking about emotions constantly. And it's like the hopscotch or whatever game they're playing is just an excuse for talking about emotions. For the boys, the most important thing is keeping the ball in play. And conflict gets in the way of that. They resolve it quickly. They're socialized so differently. Is this part of the reason why it feels for many men that they are being held off all the time?

Because actually what's happening is that their wife is just expressing their emotions and the man never really expresses it. You know that old sort of slightly problematic phrase, which is, happy wife, happy life. That's right. The reason why that phrase exists, I would assume, is because the man thinks, as long as I can keep her from expressing more problems to me, then I'm happy. He like thinks of his responsibility as just like, yeah, ask a man how he's feeling. And she says, well, I'm not hungry. I'm not horny. I'm okay. Ask a woman how she's feeling. She says, well, I don't know. There's, there's,

you know, the children and there's this in the house and, you know, and there's this tangle of questions that really she has to address when you ask her how she's feeling. There's so many things. And for a guy, it's so much easier. But, John, as men, I think we can both agree that although, well, I'm speaking for myself here, but although in the moment, going through that conflict resolution, the 90 minutes a week, getting out your notepad listening is annoying in the moment when we zoom out we realize that if they didn't raise these issues if they didn't express these issues this relationship wouldn't be so good that's right and we'd be in serious problems that's right they're the managers of intimacy yeah we need them yes we need them to say, Steven, we need to talk.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you see Steven's face? That was so cute. He went, oh, my God. It's true. I realize it. I realize that this is serving a purpose, which is helping me. Yeah. You know, and it's helping us. That's right. So I sit there and I'll listen to, you know, the things that aren't right. But you're right. My brain is just like

me and my friends can sit in silence for eight hours sat right next to each other and we'll meet each other sit in silence for eight hours leave great evening we're both like doing our own thing but it's just i think men are such simple creatures most of the time oh you are not that is so not true you know one of the things. Oh, you are not. That is so not true. You know, one of the things that I've certainly seen in my work, you know, I've been doing clinical work for 50 years. And what I see is that men have exactly the same emotions. They do. They just try to bury them because it's not okay for them to express them. So they just try to shove it down. But open a little door, crack, and up it comes.

Lionel Tiger, who studied men's friendships and women's friendships, said with alcohol, men get together, they're very physical, and they talk about their feelings an enormous amount. It takes a little alcohol to make it happen two women said to me last night that i was speaking to um on uh whatsapp um people that i work with in a different company they were saying to me that their partners often express how they're feeling by just sending songs out of the blue sending songs sending songs out of the blue and i've never heard of it because one of

them said it and the other woman said oh my god my partner does that too which is instead of like telling me how he feels he'll send me a song which just which is basically a way he feels yeah um and some of those songs are very romantic and it's like i love you you're the best person i've ever found but instead they can't he can't vocalize it to her. So he has to send her a Spotify link and say, listen. But it's the same thing, right? It's the inability to vocalize, which is difficult for men. Keep working on it. I am, yeah.

I'm like progressively getting better, but sometimes I have little relapses. If I am very busy in my mind and then i have to have one of those we need to talk chat so i think you're right there needs to be a bit of a ritual around like is this a good time that's right yeah will i have your attention or you know even being in a different environment well you can make you know make a date to have a talk like that when we are giving couples workshops at the very end of it, we always give recommendations for ways of preserving the changes you're making in the relationship, the improvements. And one of them is called the State of the Union meeting, right? Where you start with five appreciations

of each other, you know, things you haven't said before that you've noticed that your partner is doing right and express your gratitude or thanks or your admiration. Then you go into, okay, so what do we need to change? What do we need to improve? And then you finish up with this beautiful question. I just love this question. How can I make you feel loved this week? And that's closure. You mentioned the word there, gratitude.

Yes. Why is gratitude so important? Being grateful for them and expressing it. It's something that you two both do to each other. And I know I wake up every morning lying next to Julie and think, I'm one lucky guy. You know, I've got this wonderful woman and, you know, life is good. I go through my checklist. Everybody's okay. All the people I love are all right. And I'm with her.

And I get to see my grandson and my daughter. Life is good. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think gratitude brings you into the moment. Brings you into the moment. You know, so, and as John pointed out, you're not just looking for what's wrong, you know, or what your partner is doing wrong. You're looking for what your partner is doing right. You know, there's been studies, who was it,

Price and Robinson, I guess, who looked at unhappy couples versus happy couples. And unhappy, it wasn't that they weren't doing things for one another, but unhappy couples only saw 50% of what their partners were doing for them. The positivity. Of the positivity, right. Whereas happy couples were seeing it all the time. It's like they're wearing different sunglasses or something. Yeah, exactly. Different filters.

And the negative habit of mind, you know, really puts you in a state of being kind of irritable and grumpy all the time. Yeah. You're noticing other people are driving badly and, you know, and being careless and making mistakes all the time. And that's all you see. Yeah. Because gratitude puts you in a different frame of mind.

So you notice actually all the good stuff that's going on. Right. It's more accurate. Let me draw a parallel. One of the things that I've done in my private practice, I still do, is treat cancer patients and their families. And cancer patients, of course, often are facing the possibility of death. So one of the questions, and oftentimes, I mean, the ones who deal with their diagnosis best are people who say, okay, I don't have that long to live. I'm going to reprioritize my life.

I'm going to really think about what's most important to me for the six months I have left. So one of the things that I do in my practice with couples who are just racing through life together on parallel tracks, not connecting at all, is to ask them, okay, you know, if you had six months left to live, how would you want to spend it? Who would be the most important people that you would want to draw close to? Who would you not value as much? How would you want to spend that six months? And I first kind of take people into a very relaxed state so their minds are really free to imagine. And what's that doing? Is it helping to crystallize whether they should be with this person?

Uh, sometimes. But it's more that, oh my God, you know, I'm wasting my life trying to make more money. Why am I doing that? When I've got this love right here, what's more important to me, making more money or creating more love between us? That's what it comes down to oftentimes. When do you know, how do you know when to quit a relationship? How do I know if the relationship I'm in is bad, is not good? Because relationships are incredibly tempting. They tempt us back. They offer comfort, which sometimes necessarily isn't healthy comfort, but they're very hard to leave. And I actually had a conversation with one of my friends recently i always talk about my friends because it's the only way i know to draw on case studies so instead of me just hypothetical coming with something hypothetical i think about the challenges my friends face and got a particular friend who's been in the relationship for many many years seven eight years um relationship is broken broken down

and he naturally because the relationship is broken down is like jumping to repair but i wonder if he should even repair because they've broken up six times they've gone through this cycle six times so i'm like are they just rushing back together for the comfort of the relationship or um should they, you know, take a moment to say, is this even right? But there's also the answer here applies to people that are in relationships that have those thoughts in their mind. Is this the right one? How do you know?

How do you know if this is a problem we can solve and should solve or this is just the wrong person? Therapy helps. Has your friend gone to therapy good therapy not with their partner no then they don't know you know in other words a lot of people um don't know how to deal with conflict for example nobody's taking relationships 101 in high right? To learn how to deal with conflict or to learn how to be more vulnerable to somebody else and be more open and so on.

So people don't know how to have good relationships. That's part of what drives the work that John and I do. People just don't know how to do it. And if they did know, they could change those patterns. And so, you know, with your friend, for example, oftentimes, you know, when people have been together for over, you know, a couple of years, they create patterns that are like dark holes. You know, they're like black holes that have this tremendous gravitational pull. And so they keep sinking down in the same patterns over and over and over and over again, right?

Well, that's exactly what happens. That's your problem. But you can change those patterns once you know and practice what the alternatives are. Oh, okay. Well, I think it's... Not the partner. Yeah, yeah. The pattern.

An alternative pattern. Yes. I think when that fondness and admiration system, you know, the system of affection and respect, love and respect, is gone and gets replaced by denigration, belittling, contempt, that's the tongue to bail. And you've seen this in your work, rightittling, contempt. That's the tongue of the bale.

And you've seen this in your work. Oh, yeah. This is like much of what you guys, you know, are known for is this. And whenever I hear people talking about the Gottmans, they're always talking to me about the idea of contempt and the four horsemen. Right. But see, those things can change too.

Those things can change too. That often is what constitutes the bad pattern. Or there's been so much of that, that now they avoid each other altogether. And there's huge emotional distance. What are the four horsemen, then, before we talk about how we would go about changing, if possible, these things? For anyone that doesn't know, and how you found these four horsemen? Well, Bob Levinson and I, when we were doing our research,

the first thing we looked at was what's the ratio of positive to negative emotion in a conversation? So how did you conduct this experiment? Really just observing couples talking about how their day went. Wait, wait, wait. Bring them into the lab, first of all. What's the lab? The lab was a room where they sat facing one another.

There were video cameras here and there that were focused on each individual and their faces and their body language. There was what was called a gigalometer, how much they moved in their chairs, you know, how much the chairs moved. Physiological measures, what was happening to their heart rate, you know, as well. Blood velocity, respiration. Respiration. Conductance. And all of that, all of that data that was pulled from those measures was all synchronized, you know, hundredth of a second by hundredth of a second. And they would talk for, let's say, 15 minutes about the events of the day.

And then they were asked to talk about a problem they hadn't solved and to try and solve it or talk about it. So that, you know, ends up being conflict. And then a positive topic. And then a positive topic. Or in the apartment lab, they just hung out for, you know, 12 hours before they went to sleep, and the cameras just rolled while we collected physiological data. So we really spied on them.

You really spied on them. We spied on them, right. Except they knew they were being spied on. For 12 hours, you watched them just sort of chill and hang out together, couples. That's right. How many couples? 130. And how many couples have been in the lab in total?

3,000. 3,000. And they were followed, you know, so then they'd be brought back every couple of years. Right. To see how the relationship changed. Right. So the procedures would be repeated every couple of years for as long as 20 years.

And what did you find? So that initially that ratio of positive to negative interaction, even talking about how their day went, or especially during conflict, for people who are in happy, stable relationship, it averaged five positives for every negative. Positive is about the other person or about life? No, just positive emotion.

Let's describe positives. So a positive can be nodding your head. It can be smiling. It can be asking a question. Affection, humor, validation. Showing interest. Interest in the other person. Negative would be anger, irritability, disappointment, hurt, disgust, contempt. Shared humor was another big positive that turned out to be

very important. So that ratio of positive to negative averaged five to one in relationships that were stable and happy. During conflict. During conflict. And 0.8 to one in relationships that were headed for disaster, either splitting up or being together unhappily. But certain negatives were much more predictive of relationship demise, and they were criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. So let's define what those are. So criticism means blaming a problem on a personality flaw of your partner. Like, you're so lazy, you'd never think to clean up the kitchen, wouldn't you? Or, God, you're thoughtless.

You didn't even call me when you were going to be late. You know, thoughtless, lazy, inconsiderate, selfish. Always, never. Okay. So, making it about their personality and their character. Yeah, that's right. That's a criticism. Content is the worst.

That's sulfuric acid for a relationship where you're looking down your nose with disgust as well as criticism of the partner. Superiority. So give me an example of that. You're such an idiot, you know. You just never get things right, you know. It's just, you're just not like me, you know. I'm thoughtful and considerate and you're just, you're just. like me. I'm thoughtful and considerate. You're just, you're a narcissist.

Right. So there's the criticism, but it's making yourself superior to that other person. And there's a little disgust in it. You know, snide kind of stuff. Sarcasm is a good example. Mockery. Especially in front of stuff. Sarcasm is a good example. Mockery. Especially in front of people. Yeah, right.

Awful. So the person says, well, I really care how you feel. You really care how I feel. Yeah. A little. So that's contempt. Stonewalling is really emotional withdrawal. Defensiveness.

Don't forget defensiveness. And defensiveness. Yeah. So defensing is really emotional withdrawal. Defensiveness. Don't forget defensiveness. And defensiveness. Yeah. So defensiveness is the one we all have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so hard to get over, which is, you know, you either kind of whine like an innocent victim. You know, I did too pay the bills on time. What do you mean?

I'm thoughtful. I am thoughtful. Don't you remember blah, blah, blah? Or it's counterattack. Oh, yeah? You're so perfect, huh? You never clean up the kitchen. You know, it's that counterattack.

Do you find that insecure people are more defensive? Sure. I have this like theory that if your self-esteem and your self-perception of yourself is fragile, then anyone poking at it at all causes such extreme pain that you like, you live in this state of like, I have never done anything wrong. I can't possibly do anything wrong. And if someone points out something you've done wrong,

it's so painful if you're insecure. Right, you're walking anything else. Yeah, exactly. It's like playing with like an open wound. Yeah. It's like you're a walking burn victim. You know, the way I like to describe it, because I've been there, I know what that's like, is, you know, the earth. If you take a picture of the earth, and the earth has this very thin crust on it.

And then you go down some layers, and in the center is this boiling hot lava, you know, that burns you to death. Well, somebody says to you, why didn't you pay the bills on time? And the earth opens up, you fall through that crack and straight down into that hot lava of self-loathing that is agony. Absolutely. And you feel like you're getting burned to death. So you can't allow yourself to step into that crack and say, oh, God, you're right. I didn't. So you defend. You defend. Oh, yeah? Well, I'm the one who does all the bill paying. What are you doing? You know, it's defensiveness. Well, in that case, it sounds like that's fundamentally linked to some kind of trauma.

Because you didn't pay the bills to the average person would be, yeah, I know, sorry, my bad. But if that's linked to maybe, I don't know, your childhood where your father or your mother or the bullies on the playground told you that you're so forgetful, Steve or Julie. You're the most forgetful person ever, and then they punched you. You could get to 40. Can be. Yeah, can be, can be. And then stonewalling, this was one that was so fascinating because you could have a pair of people sitting just like this,

looking perfectly normal, but you notice that one is completely shutting down, not showing anything on their face, in their body, maybe looking away or just glazed, you know, looking and not saying a word. And that's not for seconds. It's for seconds. It's for minutes. And what's actually going on, because these guys, you know, John and his colleagues, measured physiology, is that they feel so attacked that their heart rates are zooming up above 100 beats a minute, which just sitting here, not going on. It's creating cortisol and adrenaline massively. And so they're shutting down. Yeah. It's a terribly, it's going into fight or flight.

Only you're not facing a saber-toothed tiger. You're facing your partner. You said there, Julie, that you could go into that state for minutes or even longer. Yes. But as you were saying that, I was thinking about my friend's relationship, which kind of started started this conversation and whether they should get back together or not you were totally right when you said there's clearly a pattern because the fact that they're getting back together then breaking up then getting back together then breaking up then breaking up shows that they don't have the tools to resolve whatever issue they keep smashing into right um but much of why I think from what

I've heard or at least a symptom of their relationship, is stonewalling, but it's not minutes. One of them, it's months, I think. I think basically, I only know this because I was sharing some text messages and I looked at the text messages and I was like, oh my God, there's like, whenever you talk about something that might be a little bit challenging or whatever,

or you even even ask how do you think the relationship's going the other partner is like vacant like like vacant nothing it's like they're not expressing their needs they're not saying what they feel they're spiraling in their own mind and then they're just breaking up with you you know it's kind of i don't know whether that's stonewalling but it's also what you're saying about lacking the tools that was at the heart of the relationship is one partner spirals independently, and then without you even knowing it, you thought everything was okay, breaks up with you. To give more context, well, this is a homosexual relationship between two men. So, you know, we talked earlier on about the woman sometimes the instigator of expression of needs.

Yeah. That's right. Oh, that's so sad. You know, so it sounds like both of them have terrible difficulty making themselves vulnerable to the other and saying what they feel. And it may be that if they tried that early on in the relationship, the other one said something very negative to them back that felt punishing in terms of expressing their emotion. And so they made a choice. Oh, God, I can't make myself vulnerable. I'm going to get hurt if

I do that. so they shut down but this point about um men not being very good at expressing their feelings do we you know with that in mind and with the knowledge that expression of feelings are good for building connection how come homosexual relationships with men work and i don't know is there any data to show that they last less longer than a relationship where a woman is stereotypically more likely to, you know, talk about the challenges and the issues and bridge the connection? Someone's got to have done the research on this subject. Well, you know, we've studied gay and lesbian couples and compared them to heterosexual couples as well. For 12 years.

Generally, they're less defensive. They have a better sense of humor, and they're much more gentle in the way they bring up an issue with one another. Men or women in those homosexual relationships? Men and women together. Gay men and lesbians are better than heterosexuals. And they're much less possessive and domineering as well. Much more of a sense of equality in their relationships.

Well, especially, you know, pre—well, wait, pause. Pre-AIDS, you know, men gave each other much more autonomy to have sex outside the relationship, right? But then AIDS kicked in and a lot of emotional connection and falling in love with the third party. Women don't do that nearly as much. They tend to feel very insecure around polygamy, let's say, or polyamory. And so they really are more wanting monogamy with their partners. So am I right in thinking, John, that you're saying that homosexual relationships are better than heterosexual relationships? They are. They are better. In general, they're better.

Do you know if they last longer? I don't know that there's data on that. I don't think there are differences in how long they last. Is that right? I don't think there's any differences. You know, there's another thing, too. I mean, again, it depends on what period of history you're talking about. But because being homosexual has been so stigmatized in the past, you know, and there's so much prejudice against homosexuality.

There's – first of all, there's more of, but as community in order to survive the kind of prejudice they endure out in the heterosexual society, right? And it's been shown actually, the research has shown this, that when the community really supports the relationship, the relationship does better. So if you've got a community around you that's a consistent community that's really supporting the relationship, that's really going to help you sustain that relationship. And on these four horsemen, a word you didn't mention, but I wondered if it fit in there somewhere, is the word gaslighting, which has become quite popular in society. What is gaslighting? How does that show up? So in physically violent relationships that are characterologically violent, where there's a perpetrator and a victim,

those kinds of domestic violence, quite often the perpetrator is communicating to the victim that everything about their reality is wrong. They never raised their hand against this person. You know, it's just all imagined. They're basically doing, you know, what happened to Ingrid Bergman in that movie Gaslight. That's where it comes from. happened to Ingrid Bergman in that movie Gaslight, where she's married to this guy who tries to convince her that she's mentally ill, that her whole sense of reality is wrong. So he does things like change the order of the pictures in the home, steal jewelry that he's given her that, you know,

that he says comes from his mother and grandmother. He steals it, and then he says, you know, where is it? You know, you lost it? You're so forgetful. And he's constantly sort of making her feel like she's going crazy. There never was a painting there. What are you talking about? There was never a painting there.

And he's actually removed it, or he's changed the order of the pictures. He's trying to make her think she's crazy. And even her sense of reality needs him to determine what's real and what's not real. And that's where Gaslight comes from. Let me mention something because that word, you're right, it's really being bandied about commonly, and people have got it wrong, speaking of Gaslight. So people, for example, who have a conflict

and they have totally different points of view about what happened during the conflict, who remembers it better, you know? And one will say, well, you said this. No, I didn't. I never said that. That they're calling gaslighting. And it's not. That is not gaslighting. That is not gaslighting. So it's being misused in the culture all the time. Right.

Because people always have two points of view about. Different perceptions in any situation. That's right. They have, you know, everybody has their own individual filters. And so they're going to hear some things and not hear other things and distort things and so on. Memory isn't perfect. And so they're always going to have some things and not hear other things and distort things and so on. Memory isn't perfect. And so they're always going to have two points of view. And people can get locked into struggles over, no, this is the absolute reality of what happened.

No, it isn't. This is. And there is no absolute reality. It's all about perception. So people are calling that gaslighting. And that's not a... And it isn't. That's not what gaslighting is.

At what point does it become gaslighting? Is that when you're intentionally trying to... Make the other person crazy. Okay. Believe that they're crazy so they don't trust themselves. And these violent relationships that, you know, the man will slap the woman across the face and says, God damn it, you just hit me. I never hit you. I never touched you.

Yeah, I spoke to a domestic violence victim once who told me that her partner went after like love bombing her. So immediately like, you know, throwing all this affection onto her and, you know, very, very quickly, he would then start like hiding her stuff. So he'd put her car keys in the fridge. And he'd be like, I didn't, why did you put your car keys in the fridge? That's gaslighting. Yeah, that's gaslighting. Perfect description. Because then she thinks she's going crazy.

So he goes, well, I'm going to have to take your car keys. Often. And then she can't, she's lost her car. That's right. Often done in the service of extreme jealousy. Yeah. And socially isolating the victim. Yeah.

We've treated domestic violence a lot. And, God, I'll never forget this one guy who had put a mark on the tire and a mark on the driveway that matched up, that lined up. And at the end of the day, if those marks didn't line up, he'd beat her up. Even if she just went to the grocery store, it didn't matter. Who did you fuck today? Right.

Where'd you go? Nowhere. Oh, yeah, right. You liar. You whore. You... Yeah. This is the typical and naive question people ask when they hear a story like that.

Their head goes, I would never stay with someone that did that to me. Blah, blah, blah. But it... Not true. Yeah. Not true. You know, first of all, it doesn't happen all. Secondly, oftentimes the victim usually, you know, in a hetero, it's a woman,

has her confidence beaten down. So it's not just physical, it's also mental abuse. God, you're an idiot. Man, are you stupid? And she starts doubting her own judgment, her own intuition. Plus, you know, I don't think you could survive out there. Nobody else is going to want you. And she starts to believe it, starts to believe it. And she also has a dream that he's going to change. Yeah. Because he's so remorseful of what he did to her.

He promises he'll never happen again. And he loves her, and he's going to get this under control. Is he a narcissist, or is it possible that someone who isn't a narcissist can perform that behavior? Or is the word narcissist another word that's just thrown around too much? Very good. A plus. Yeah, yeah, I thought so. It's another word. You know, everybody is narcissistic, Stephen.

Everybody is. You know, narcissism basically comes from the instinct for self-preservation. You know, you're thinking about, okay, me, what do I need? What do I need? How am I going to get it? And so on. I've got to really, you know, think about taking care of myself sometimes. I mean, they call that a narcissist. But the way it really is meant is shorthand for a narcissistic personality disorder, which is extreme narcissism where there is no empathy whatsoever. The person has no conscience whatsoever. They can hurt you, they can do everything that damages you, and they take absolutely no responsibility for it and blame you for it, blame the victim.

So somebody who, you know, says, I didn't fail. You made me fail. This is what you did that set me up, you know, blah, blah, blah. So everybody around them is a reflection of who they are themselves. And so they only see people, other people, in two dimensions. How do you go about, you said you spoke to couples and women who have been through domestic abuse, and how do you go about helping them? Okay, there's two types of domestic violence. And, you know, how do you go about helping them? Okay.

There's two types of domestic violence. John mentioned characterological domestic violence. That's when there's a clear perpetrator, clear victim. Nothing the victim can do will change the violence. There's major injury. So what has to happen there is the victim has got to get out of the relationship because she could be killed. Easier said than done, right? It is. That is correct. It is very, very hard. It has to be secretive. It, you know, she's got to plan it, especially if they're kids and so on. But

there's also, that's only 20% of the domestic violence out there. Only 20%. 80% of the domestic violence is what we call situational domestic violence. And in that kind, both people tend to be violent, both. The violence is not seriously injuring of the other person. It's a slap. It's a push. It's a holding, you know, holding them from moving, you know, that kind of thing, pushing them down. Breaking things. Breaking things, throwing things at them, and so on. And that results from moving into that flooded state we described earlier,

where you're in conflict, your heart rate is jumping up over 100 beats a minute, you go into fight or flight. And when you do that, you lose access to your ability to problem solve, your ability to listen, actually, to really take in what the other person is saying. You hear attack, attack, attack, no matter what the person is saying. Because it's like your frontal cortex, your prefrontal cortex is offline. So both people typically are getting flooded during conflict. So those people we can really, really help. So we've done a randomized clinical trial treating those people.

Right. And even a year and a half after treatment has ended, when they discuss a conflict on videotape in their home, and we measure physiology, physiology stays low. So the therapy is really effective compared to a control group. As an entrepreneur, I'm always looking for ways to connect and to create. And that's why I decided to launch the conversation cards. I turned to Shopify, who also sponsored this podcast. And Shopify made it so easy to set up an online store and reach all of you no matter where you are in the world. I remember the challenges we faced when we first launched the Direvers CEO conversation cards, managing inventory, ensuring a seamless checkout process and reaching our audience. Shopify stepped in and made

everything so straightforward and efficient. It was like having an entire team of experts by our side, allowing us to focus on creating content and connecting with you. What I love about Shopify is no matter how big you intend to grow your business, they give you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level. And to say thank you for listening to this podcast, we're giving you a trial, which is just $1 a month. And you can sign up by going to shopify.com slash Bartlett. The link is in the description below. Is this part of the reason why you're in the UK at the moment? You talked about your trauma. Oh, it's trauma.

It's trauma. At Oxford. Yeah, we're talking about trauma. And also affairs. Affairs. Talking about affairs. You're talking about drama. And also affairs. Affairs. You're talking about treating affairs. Right. That's right. I've never really heard the phrase treating affairs as if it's a condition per se. But if there has been an affair or some form of infidelity, can it be treated?

75% so far in our research cure rate and when you say affair what are you throwing in that bucket in terms of the definition of an affair is that a text or is that it could be an emotional affair as well as a sexual affair a physical affair a physical affair. A physical affair of sex. Yeah, it usually, so it can be emotionally, you know, falling in love with somebody else without physical consummation or physical consummation with somebody that you've fallen in love with or just having sex outside the relationship, not an emotional connection, but just having sex when the agreement is monogamy. So it almost always involves deception. Right, always. It always does. Yeah, that's a big part of it is the deception and broken trust.

You know, what affairs do is they turn, you know, the hurt partner's world upside down. Everything they believed about the partner is wrong. Everything that they thought they shared in terms of values is wrong. So, you know, you can trust what the person says no you can't because they weren't staying at work late they were going to so-and-so's apartment it's like i didn't know this person yeah i didn't know this yeah who are you who are you and you know relationships are really oftentimes you know especially committed ones are the foundation for our whole life. You know, we build everything around that oftentimes. Our sense of family, even our sense of work sometimes, what work we choose, how we live our lives.

Purpose. Purpose and meaning that we give our lives together. And when there's betrayal like that, and the person that you thought your partner was isn't, then that whole thing cracks and falls to the ground. It shatters. And how many people, how many couples cheat in any of those definitions that you've described? Well, we don't really know, you know. But, you know, probably around 30% of all couples is a conservative estimate. Conservative, really? I've heard 15% of men and women. And the thing that's interesting is that the stance for women having affairs has pretty much caught up to men now. But here's why. When before the 70s and women's, the women's liberation movement, women were stuck at home. They weren't out in the world working.

They didn't have access to other places. The milkman and the plumber. And the mailman, maybe. So, you know, they were stuck at home having coffee around their, you know, kitchen table with their neighbor woman, you know, whoever. But once they entered the workforce, then they had access to a whole field of potential people out there. And so, you know. It's interesting, as you say that, Julia, I was thinking through all the implications of what would happen in a woman's life when she went out to work. And one of the other things is she would become more independent in every sense of the word. Yeah, exactly. That's right.

She doesn't have to stay in the marriage. She can support herself financially. So how do you treat an affair? So we developed a model based on our research called the Atone, Attune, Attach, A-A-A-M-O-N. And here's what, in a nutshell, here's what it involves. Again, it has to be done in therapy. You really can't do this stuff at home.

It's too intense. First, the person who did the betraying needs to respond totally transparently to every question the hurt partner asks them. However, the hurt partner shouldn't probably ask about the kind of sex they had. And here's why. I mean, it's an important thing. Almost every person who's suffered through an affair has PTSD from it, post-traumatic stress disorder. And part of post-traumatic stress disorder is having these images or flashbacks, if you will, come into your mind unbidden. You don't want them there, but they come in anyway. And traumatic memory is different than regular memory. Regular memory, you have a few little fragments, something said, and so on. Traumatic memory, everything comes up at one time. The images, the smells, the sounds, the adrenaline, cortisol, and so on.

So when a woman asks questions about sex and had, you know, the partner and the affair partner, that plagued her to an even greater degree. And it's horrible. So, atone, answering the questions, and then saying I'm sorry a thousand times. And really meaning it. really, really meaning it. I've had many, both men and women, who've cheated on their partners or had affairs who end up crying during that phase. Even the strongest of men will cry when they realize how hurt the woman is or the man. The other thing that the betraying partner needs

to do is to listen to the other partner's feelings without defensiveness. Just listen. But in the therapy, you know, a lot of times what happens is that the therapist has to help shape the hurt partner's expression of emotion to take it out of criticism and out of contempt into, I feel destroyed. I feel like my, you know, my world has fallen apart. I feel so empty, so abandoned, so rejected. So she has to describe or he has to describe their own feelings, not how bad the partner was, which is typically what happens at home. So that's the atonement phase. A tune, and this has to come after atonement, not as the first thing. They start looking at the actual marriage or relationship itself and what was wrong with it. And a lot of times what you see are couples who at first might have had terrible conflict.

It was so bad they started avoiding conflict. Once they avoided conflict, they got more emotionally distant. And the person who did the betraying got lonely, got lonely. So oftentimes, the affairs are not about just getting more sex. They're about loneliness and beginning to talk to somebody else about how unhappy they are. And then the third phase is attachment. So it's like reattaching to your partner. That second phase is really rebuilding trust.

And the third phase is recommitting to the relationship. And in many, this is not always true, I've seen the opposite, but in many cases, the sexual relationship doesn't resume until phase three, especially if the woman is the one who's been betrayed. But there are some where the woman will kind of throw herself at the man sexually to compete with the affair partner and be better than the affair partner. So, you know, it can be both. I mean, I've got so many questions. So the first phase was the atonement, attunement, and then attachment. So many questions at different phases in that.

I mean, so many of them. I'll start from the top, which was, how many times do you apologize? A thousand. Because is it true that at some point you've got to kind of move on? No. You have to know what you're apologizing for. Well, that's important, but here's why. And, you know, probably some of your audience, especially therapists, may disagree with this, but I've treated it for 50 years. PTSD doesn't disappear. It doesn't disappear.

Right. It can get, episodes of getting triggered can be much less frequent over time, or maybe not as intense, but it never disappears. So, for example, you may apologize a lot during the therapy. Things get better, better, better, better, better. And then, you know, a couple months later, after you leave therapy, the man is late home from work and doesn't call. Well, guess what happens? Boom, she goes into full-blown PTSD reenactment, basically, where it's gotten triggered again. And oh my God, he's doing it again. You see, that's why you can't stop apologizing and just put it behind you. You don't put PTSD behind you, you see. Interesting. I guess that's the cost of cheating, is the person will never be the same again.

It's a high cost. It's a very high cost. That's right. Yeah. I wrote insecurity as you were talking as a note. And I think what I meant when I wrote that is being cheated on must create a huge amount of lasting insecurity. And it kind of links to the second thing I was writing down, which is this whole question of, like, why did you cheat on me?

And it must be, for a lot of people, difficult to answer that question. Because if it's... And also, I was thinking, some people don't even know. They don't actually... So they might try and hazard a guess and do even more harm. Well, I think it's because you gained some weight, or I think, well, you, I think you smell, or, you know what I mean? When actually it's something much deeper. That's right.

You know, is that a useful question to even ask in that setting? It is, but again, in the setting of therapy, in the setting of therapy, you need the safety, hopefully with a good therapist, you need the safety that the therapist provides where, you know, why did she cheat? Well, because you're an asshole, you know. No, that's not going to work. You know, so I once treated a couple where he had had 57 affairs and they'd only been – they had three children under the age of 10 and he'd had 57 affairs. And three of them he actually fell in love with. Okay. So, you know, you can easily say, oh, because the guy has a sexual addiction or blah, blah, blah. No, not true. The real reason was that he had been raped as a kid. And he feared, oh my God, maybe I'm a latent homosexual, which in his culture was the worst in the worst way.

So he had to keep proving to himself that he was heterosexual, heterosexual, heterosexual, over and over and over again. And as soon as he, you know, we put that together, because he just completely blocked it out for the most part, boom, the affair stopped. Wow. It just goes to show how complex it can be. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, and it's a. That's right. Yeah. That's right.

Yeah, and it's atonement, not forgiveness. Right. The difference there. Yeah. Because when therapists emphasize forgiveness in this affair situation, they would blame the betrayed partner for not forgiving. Is acceptance important? Acceptance of what?

The situation you find yourself in. No. No. That's bad. Because you're accepting something that's hurtful. That's terribly hurtful. The reason I ask that particular question is because I was thinking about my friend who's going through this breakup. And much of the agony that I see himself in is because he's like refusing to accept the situation, it seems. What's the situation? The situation is basically someone's broken up with him.

Oh. And so it's this constant rumination of maybe if I do this, I can change it. Or maybe if I go, almost like thinking back in time to see if he could time travel and fix all his mistakes. And I was saying to him, and this might be bad advice, but I was saying to him, like, I think the first thing is we have to accept that this is a situation you find yourself in, and then we'll work from here. Oh, oh, oh, that's, yeah, that's a whole different meaning of acceptance. Okay.

Yeah. I don't mean accept the fact that they cheated on you. Right, that's how I interpreted it at first. But yes, acceptance, you know, i would call that grounding in the reality of what you have right now and then you know really grounding in it, maybe, maybe, you know, tiny little teeny weeny spark left, I call it an ember that in therapy it can be blown on, you know, to bring back the fire and the passion and the relationship, hooray. But as John was pointing out, sometimes the person is only feeling the ashes of the past relationship. There are no embers left. This is a difficult question to ask,

but have you ever seen cheating help a relationship? Oh, every time. Really? When there's recovery. Every time. Not every time, but very, every time. Really? When there's recovery. Every time. Not every time, but very, very often. Very often when they get help. When they get help.

If they don't get help, it's not really are, how they want you to turn up in the relationship that they had no idea of before. So it can create more intimacy. Different kind of trust, of before. So it can create more intimacy, different kind of trust, of course, but more intimacy and more connection. Betrayal is always implied prior conflict avoidance. Instead of talking to your partner about what's wrong, you talk to somebody else about what's wrong with you, with the partner. What are some of the, so you're telling me that 74% of the time affairs can be treated,

75% of the time affairs can be treated, roughly. What are some of the revelations or realizations that you've had over all the years of your work about the nature of humans and relationships and love and dating and all these things that always stick front of mind for you? I'm going ask you first john um from a research perspective is there any particular research which you would consider to be your favorite research that was most pivotal for the way you think that you haven't mentioned yet i think that relationships can be great sources of longevity, health, great context for raising children.

And so they can have this wonderful magic that is health-giving, longevity-giving. And it just requires certain conditions to be met. And those are the principles that make relationships work. Is there a particular piece of research that you're most fond of? That he's done or somebody else has done? Both. Yeah, I mean, I think this whole field of social epidemiology, which has emerged in the last 50 years,

really shows that relationships are life-giving and longevity-giving, given today's level of medical treatment of chronic illness. It's really relationships that make the difference and really make the difference in raising kids. And the last thing I want to talk to you about is this idea of bids for connection, because it's a very popular topic and there's lots of people online and on TikTok discussing the importance of bids for connection. What are bids for connection? Well, in this apartment lab that Julie and I built, there were three cameras. And at the time, it was only possible to technologically merge two of them in a split screen.

So the people in the control room had to use the cameras in a particular way so that they had a split screen. And they very quickly saw that quite often one person was trying to get the other person's attention or interest. And so they would focus on that person who was saying, oh, look at that beautiful boat going by. And then they'd focus the other camera on the partner and see the response. And so you had this sort of two-step interaction, one attempting to get the partner's attention, making a bid for connection, and the other person either responding or not responding, or responding irritably, turning toward or turning away or turning against. And it turns out that six years later, the couples who eventually divorced, when they look back six years earlier, they had turned toward these bids an average of 33% of the time. Whereas the couples who were

still married, they look back six years later, they had turned to their partner's bids 86% of the time. So this huge difference, 33% versus 86%. You mentioned three responses to a bid for connection. So my partner comes up to me, she goes, babe, look at this. You mentioned they turned toward them, which is me turning towards my partner and saying, what is it, babe? It's not physical, mind you. Could be. No. What I'm trying to say is that a lot of people

interpret turning toward as oh you turn your body no right yeah no it's not it's just saying it's responding to your partner's uh desire for interest or attention okay yeah and then turning away is me not responding. Not responding. Then turning against would be... An irritable kind of response. Stop interrupting me. I'm working. Okay. Yeah.

So 86% of the couples that stayed together were those that turned toward, i.e. they acknowledged the bid for connection. No. The couples who stayed married had turned toward bids an 86% of the time. So when their partners tried to get their attention, probability of them turning toward was 0.86. Okay. 86% of the time they turned toward. The other thing that was interesting was that people who turned toward a lot tended to have a sense of humor together during conflict,

which reduced physiological arousal. So how do you get people to laugh together when they're disagreeing? And it turns out that if you increase turning toward, people spontaneously develop more of a sense of humor about themselves during conflict. That was a really amazing finding of one of my graduate students, Dennis Driver. You can teach people to turn toward, acknowledge those bits. Yeah, you can. You know, just increase awareness.

I've struggled with that in my relationships. I've not been very good at turning towards, i.e. when my partner makes a bid for connection, I've not been great at. I often saw it as like an interruption or you knew I was busy or like, but from doing this podcast, in fact, and speaking to lots of great people like you guys, I've, in those moments, I go, Steve, fuck the laptop. Just turn on mid-email. Hi, what's up? What's up? You know, and it helps.

Let me give you a suggestion, you know, because all of us have times when we can't turn towards, right? Because we've got a deadline or we've got something. But what you can do is say, honey, I would really love to listen to you right now, but I've got to finish this project. After I do another hour of work, can we then talk? Yeah. You see. So you're putting a bookmark in there that says, I want to talk to you, but I've got this competing goal that I have to finish. But then we'll talk.

My partner says to me, it's how you say it. Oh. You know, so I've just got to be like, actually turn my body language. So I'm acknowledging the person, not like saying it while without missing a keystroke, turn my body language so i'm acknowledging the person not like saying it while without missing a keystroke yeah turn my body and say it in a way that's loving not just one second i'm just working on something it's not it just yeah you know if um if people want to learn more about all the work that you do, how do they go about finding you? Well, a couple of things.

They can go to Gottman.com, G-O-T-T-M-A-N.com, internet site. There's a whole bunch of stuff there. Or they can go to our books. And the last one, especially if you're dealing with conflict, the last one is called Fight Right. But we also have one that is eight dates, essential conversations for a lifetime of love. And that's a great one, too.

And there's also a website we created called Gottman Connect, where people can actually go and take questionnaires and evaluate the strengths and challenges in their own relationship in the privacy of their homes. And then at this, 37 video modules that Julie and I created for improving how you deal with conflict, how you improve intimacy, sexual connection, and so on. We have a closing tradition on this podcast

where the last guest leaves a question for the next. I'm going to start with Julie. Tell us about a paranormal experience you've had. Okay. These always, I have visions now and then. And they always happen when I'm driving for some odd reason. So I was driving across the Mojave Desert and I felt a very strong urge to pull over. Okay.

I always listen to those. Pulled over, walked into the desert to whatever felt like the right place, sat down, started to meditate, and felt myself inside a huge golden Buddha. And I was sitting, tiny little being, in its hands. And it lifted me up off the ground. And I heard many truthful things about reality that form my very foundation. Can you give me one? Everybody suffers.

Everybody. And nobody suffers more than anybody else everybody has their own suffering and everybody has their own path to move through that suffering um and to heal. And people do heal. But life is full of suffering. That's normal. It's not a sense of duality. Suffering is part of the perfection of our existence. It really does change your perspective on yourself and others when you hear that point about suffering, being unavoidable, because then at least you don't treat yourself as such a victim to suffering. You realize that it's fundamentally attached to all the things that I love as well. What about you, John? Have you ever had a paranormal experience when the numbers just came together perfectly and I don't know if this is a paranormal experience but I Alan I was once driving through the University of Washington Arboretum and I was really really sick and and. And I was driving toward my office because I had a client who was suicidal,

and I hadn't been able to reach her to cancel the appointment. And I canceled all the other appointments. But, you know, as sick as I was, I just didn't think I could, you know, just not show up. You know, so I had to show up and at least say, I'm really too sick, you know, physically to see you, but I care about you. And as I was driving through the Arboretum, you know, I had a fever and I was sneezing and coughing. I felt the presence of my parents in the car, both no longer living. I felt my mother on this cheek and my father on this cheek. And it was really very sweet.

I just, because of Julie's experiences, I kind of said, oh, well, maybe this is real. And by the time I got through the Arboretum, all my cold symptoms were gone. And it was important for me to be there for that client. And I was healthy enough to actually have a session with her. So that constitutes a paranormal experience. Is she okay? It's pretty weird. She was okay.

Yeah. Thank you so much. constitutes a paranormal experience, but it's pretty weird. She was okay. Thank you so much. I've continued to learn so much from your wonderful, lovely work. And our last conversation was such a smash hit with my audience. Everywhere I went, people would stop me and say, oh my God, I love that episode

with the Gottmans. I think it's both your wisdom, your knowledge, but also the pair of you together formed such a diverse set of perspectives, which is useful in sort of taking on some of these problems that we've discussed today, which is really nice

because you do have very different perspectives and you come at things differently. And I think that helps complete the whole picture. And thank you more broadly for the work that you've done on relationships and love over the last couple of decades, because people cite it everywhere I go, not just in the context of love,

but they cite it in the context of business. I've used your work on stage when I did a tour of Australia recently. I've gone to conferences in Colombia and I've heard people talk about your work on the Four Horsemen and contempt and all these kinds of things and your love lab, as they call it.

So you're doing incredibly important work that really targets the most important thing, which is keeping humans together. So thank you for all that you do and thank you for being here again thank you steven and thank you very much for being the again the best interviewer we've had in 30 years isn't this cool every single conversation i have here on Diary of a CEO, at the very end of it, you'll know, I asked the guest to leave a question in the Diary of a CEO. And what we've done is we've turned every single question written in the Di of it if you scan that qr code you get to watch the person who answered that question we're finally revealing all of the questions and the

people that answered the question the brand new version 2 updated conversation cards are out right now at theconversationcards.com. They've sold out twice instantaneously. So if you are interested in getting hold of some limited edition Conversation Cards, I really, really recommend acting quickly. Thank you.