The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Love Lessons from the "Masters of Relationships"

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Some people are just good at building and maintaining healthy partnerships. In their 'Love Lab", the married researchers Dr John Gottman and Dr Julie Schwartz Gottman have seen how certain couples interact in ways that mean they'll happily stick together for decades.  The Gottmans join Dr Laurie Santos to explain what we can learn from these "Masters of Relationships" - so that the stresses and strains of life don't destroy our intimate partnerships.  Further reading: Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict into Connection by Dr John Gottman and Dr Julie Schwartz Gottman. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. columns in newspapers and magazines. There are also reality TV dating shows, couples podcasts, TikTok videos, Instagram reels, Reddit dating threads, and on and on and on. Some of this advice is helpful, but a lot of it isn't backed up by empirical evidence. So in this new season of the Happiness Lab, I wanted to explore what the science says about building happier relationships. And what better way to begin than with a husband and wife team that not only has decades of married life experience to draw on, but also a wealth of knowledge gained from some truly elegant scientific studies. Julie's walking around with our grandson on her arms. How old is he?

He is going to be two in January. He just started doing imaginative play this morning. Okay, Jules. I like to be included. Dr. Julie Schwartz-Gottman is a clinical psychologist who's helped people facing challenges in many domains of life, including in their romantic relationships. By the way, the book is

called Fight Right. I bet everybody would have been good at it, too. Uh-uh. I thought of it, so that means it's really great. Dr. John Gottman is an academic psychologist and pioneering relationship researcher. Back in 1976, John used the primitive video technology of his day to capture real-life couples interacting with one another. Collaborating with his then-research partner, Dr. Robert Levinson, John analyzed hours and hours of taped interviews in order to learn how some couples are able to maintain healthy relationships

and to spot the warning signs that a partnership could be doomed. Today, Julie and John run the Gottman Institute, an entire research center devoted to studying romantic relationships. You probably won't be surprised to hear that they have a lot of wise things to say. So much so that we've decided to split their interview into two chunks. Today, the Gottmans will share what so-called masters of relationships can teach us about avoiding the pitfalls of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. These are the traits that John and Julie have christened the four horsemen of relationship destruction. They've found that their presence in a partnership pretty much guarantees an impending apocalypse.

But the real story started way before John and Julie even got together. Back when John and his colleague Robert Levinson were dreaming up a way to robustly study relationships inside the laboratory. We're too dumb to really have a good theory or anything, so we just had couples come into this lab, talk about how their day went after they'd been apart for eight hours and interviewed about the major problem in their relationship and asked them to resolve it. And then they looked at the videotapes and turned the dial to tell us what they were feeling. It ranged from very negative to very positive. And then we just sent them home because we had no clue about

how to help anybody. And three years later, we recontacted these couples to see if they were still together and how happily married they were, how their relationship had changed. And then we started really looking at the data to get hypotheses and really determine over time by doing this study over and over again, also with gay and lesbian couples, that they really are masters of relationship and disasters like Bob and I. So, you know, we actually learned from the research. And then 26 years ago, Julie and I decided to work together in a canoe, you know, where we're paddling in the ocean. Julie suggested that we work together. It was a great combination because Bob and I had no idea to help anybody.

And Julie, with our clinical experience, we were able to combine and create a theory of how relationships work. And then for the last 26 years, we've been testing it out in experiments. And so, Julie, I was going to ask your version of how you two got together in the first place. I guess it involves a canoe, huh? How we got together in terms of our studies. A little bit of both, the together in terms of the studies and in terms of the forever together. Okay, let's see. We both moved to Seattle at around the same time. So I just finished my PhD. John has already been a professor and was moving to University of Washington.

So we actually met in a coffee house. John came over to me and said, I wish he would have said, you're the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen. I really want to have coffee with you. But, you know, he said, what would you think about having coffee with me? You know, kind of a nice, dry, professorial question. So I said, sure. So he sat down, we had coffee, and we had the most incredible conversation. It was fantastic. And the next conversation we had over the phone was four hours long. So there was obviously a connection. And I think on our second date, John said, you know, I was in another relationship, but I've told her I'm not going to see her anymore.

I found somebody I want to try and work things out with. I immediately had a panic attack. I was like, really? All right. But five months later, he proposed. I said yes. And I was working purely in clinical work. So I was working with really the sickest of the sick. I was working with folks who were psychotic, who had severe PTSD, who'd come back from various wars and torture, who might have had addictions and so on. And so I was working quite intensely with those folks in private practice for about, I don't know, five or six years or something. But every night over dinner, John would come home and tell me

about his research. And I kept thinking to myself, maintain your boundaries, stay in your old world. You know, it's okay. It's interesting, but stay in your own world. And then I didn't. So we were out canoeing outside of Orcas Island in the sea. It was just absolutely gorgeous. And you suggested it. And let me finish. And I said to him, honey, what do you think about taking this stuff out of the ivory tower? It's such good knowledge. And people have no idea of how to have a relationship. So how about our trying to work on this stuff and create interventions, create theory to really prevent what made the disasters fall apart years later? And then we'll test it, see how it works. And the rest is history. We immediately started jumping into that, then formed the Gottman Institute to start having couples workshops and so on.

And we built this apartment lab, like a cold love lab. And so 130 newlywed couples just a couple of months after the wedding and followed them as many of them became pregnant and had babies. And, you know, I learned to study babies and it was really fun. It led to our bringing baby home intervention, which has been our most powerful intervention, because when the first baby arrives in the first three years of the baby's life, many couples go through a big drop in relationship happiness and fight a lot and there's a lot of conflict. But about a third of them don't.

happiness and fight a lot. And there's a lot of conflict, but about a third of them don't. And we were able to look at the differences between those two groups and build this workshop and test it and evaluate it. And it's very effective. And so when we hear your story about getting together, it's such a lovely story. I think it can lead people to experience a little bit of a misconception that I think a lot of us have when it comes to love, right? That love just happens, right? You see somebody in a coffee shop, you ask them to coffee, and the rest is history. But your work shows that that's not really how good love works. Tell me how love, in some sense, really works. Well, first of all, the first phase of a loving relationship, which people adoringly call in love, is basically chemistry. It's basically

pheromones. You are sensing one another at every level and all the stars come out in the sky. You know, you're very excited. You're very happy. Everything is wonderful. It's a big honeymoon. You move towards marriage, you get married, and then boom, the bond drops. You find out your partner is really messy, and you're not. You find out all the differences between you that are significant and that are true for every single couple. Every person has their own unique personality and lifestyle preference. And nobody is a clone of each other. If they were, we'd be bored to tears. And so people are really different. And as a result, people have to learn how to manage their differences, manage conflict, create a path, a journey forward, especially with commitment, in which you're creating a culture that honors

both of you, honors both of your traditions, your rituals, your preferences. And that's not always an easy thing. The other thing too is that none of us has a nice, stable, flat line of a mood. We're always going up and down and up and down. And sometimes we're crabby. Sometimes we're full of delight. Sometimes we just want to sleep all day. And how does our partner hold that in their hands? Are they there for us? Are we there for them? That building of trust is incredibly important. Are you there for me when I'm sick? Are you there for me when I'm depressed?

Are you there for me when I'm triumphant and I just got a big raise and I want to celebrate? Are you there for me when I just am so stressed out I can't see straight? So there's a lot of back and forth in terms of testing one another. That's a reality. And building trust. All of the conflicts of those 130 newlyweds were basically about trust, about what Julie's talking about. Are you going to be there for me? Can I count on you? And the couples who build trust really go on to have a very good relationship. And usually there's more commitment. With commitment, they really are saying, you're the love of my life.

There's nobody on the planet that can compare to you. I'm all in. And I think this importance of trust gets to another misconception that I think a lot of us have, right? I think when we think of successful couples, a lot of us mistakenly think that they're couples that exist maybe without conflict or they don't fight very much. They don't have a lot of negative interactions. But your work has shown that the negative interactions might not be as important as the flip side. Talk to me a little bit about that. Even a woman's anger, for example, which men find unpleasant in the moment, in the long run, really is good for the relationship. You know, what a lot of couples therapists thought was the destruction of anger

is actually a good thing. So if people can talk about what they feel and what they need with one another, then, you know, these emotions really can be very constructive. And the goal of conflict is mutual understanding. Yeah, let me say a little more about that. Most people, when they have conflicts, what they imagine is just skating on the surface. They have this current problem, they've got to come up with a fix for that current problem. But they're not necessarily aware of all the underlying subterranean messages, history, values, ideal dreams that lie beneath that surface that they're arguing about. And so part of what we saw, Laurie, with the masters of relationship is that they almost always dug deep when there was a really significant issue at stake. And they would reveal their enduring vulnerabilities, the old scar tissue

from childhood baggage they were still carrying, or another relationship, an old relationship. Nobody really escapes childhood without some kind of baggage. I mean, I've never seen somebody who has. And thus, when we are fighting for something we believe in, some of that baggage can get kicked up, right? Like we may feel judged. We may feel rejected. We may feel put down. Even when our partner is saying, honey, you're the most wonderful thing on the planet,

still, you know, we're hearing old messages in that brain of ours and misinterpreting what our partner is saying. So the successful couples are people who really check deeply. Am I hearing you correctly? Is this what you're saying? Tell me where that comes from. Where did that value get established in your life? Because it sounds like it's relatively new. And before that, you had a different set of values. What happened? It's people really exploring each other's internal landscape to find out where does their partner live inside? Who is their partner really? That's the beauty

of conflict, that you're opening up these aspects of people's inner world that you may not have really been aware of fully. And through conflict, you learn all about that. And that's a good thing. And so I think we're going to dive much more deeply into the conflict work. I want to get totally to fight right. But I also wanted to start with some of your earlier work just on the power of positive interactions. Because I think when we think about couples that aren't doing so great, we're mostly thinking about couples that are having fights or having conflict or things like that. But we often don't realize that sometimes it's really about couples not investing in the positive side of things and kind of getting to some of these bids and things. And

so you talk about this kind of misconception that the investment really needs to be in the positive side of things and kind of getting to some of these bids and things. And so you talk about this kind of misconception that the investment really needs to be in the positive side of things too. And we noticed very quickly in the apartment lab that there were these small moments where one or both people were trying to make a connection, get their partner's attention or interest or have a conversation, get some affection, get their partner's attention or interest or have a conversation, get some affection, tell a story, tell a joke. And how the partner responded to this bid for connection really predicted the future of a relationship. It's now been called the bird test on TikTok. And the idea is, you know, if you try to get your partner's attention just to look at a bird outside, and they do, they say, oh, yeah, beautiful bird. Then that really predicts a very good relationship. And in fact, the couples who

divorced in the love lab had only turned toward bids 33% of the time. The couples who were still together six years earlier had turned toward these bids 86% of the time. So a really huge difference. So give me a sense how couples can react to one another's bids, you of the time. So a really huge difference. So give me a sense of how couples can react to one another's bids, you know, so maybe, because you've talked about like three different ways people can kind of react. So let me, let me start with a bid. Honey, you know, I had a really disturbing dream last night about your mother. You know what? I'm reading. Would you stop interrupting me? I don't want to talk about that. Boom. That's hostile, right?

That's turning against. That's what we call it, turning against. Try it again. I really had a disturbing dream last night about your mother. I'd like to talk to you about it. Silence. It's as if your partner didn't say a word. They don't exist.

That's called turning away. And it makes people feel unimportant, devalued, disrespected, invisible. Now let's try it again. I had a really disturbing dream last night about your mother. You did? Yeah. Really? My mother got into your dream? Yeah.

She was right in there. Oh, no. So what happened? Tell me about it. She was so nice to me. What? Yeah. I was really surprised that she was so affectionate. That's called turning towards where you're immediately responding with interest, with attention, and with connection to your partner's bid for connection. It feels so different, you know, when you try to connect and your partner doesn't. So the probability we discovered of re-bidding when your partner turns away is almost zero in relationships that are doomed. It's only 22% in relationships that are going to stay together. So it's very low all the time. So people kind of crumple inside a little bit.

Can I describe an image? If you imagine a sea anemone, those are those creatures, you know, that have about 100 little tiny fingers. And those fingers will stretch out, straighten out, and open up when they're relaxed and they're happy. Imagine just poking a little bit, poking in the center, which is the equivalent of turning against. And what happens? The C anemone folds up its fingers very quickly and tightly and is very reluctant to open them up again. That's, you know, classically what happens inside of us. When somebody turns against our bid, you know, when we're opening up to our partner, they turn against or away, we shrink down inside of ourselves and again, feel unsafe. So we don't want to open up again, not for a while. So love occurs in these very small moments, which is why we say love's a verb, because it's what you do moment to moment that makes the difference. One of the reasons I

find this work so powerful is that, you know, I get the sense, of course, that when you're kind of being adversarial, when your partner makes a bid, if you say, why are you talking to me or something that that's negative. But I think the striking thing from your work is that it's just as bad when the partner just reacts with silence when you're not paying attention. After reading your work, I've been much more careful about this with my husband. But there are definitely times when I'm, you know, checking my email or looking at a screen that, you know, he's mentioning something and my sense is like, oh, it's just not interesting. Like, it's so easy not to pay attention. But when you realize, like, the person on the other end of that email, they're not going

to care that I took, you know, time away for two seconds. But my husband, you know, that bid, it matters a lot if I turn away. I mean, is this the kind of thing you see in couples nowadays when there's so many more distractions for our bid time? Yes, yes, yes. You know, I mean, I'm sure all of us have gone into a cafe and we've seen a table of four people, maybe every single person is on their phone and they're looking at their screens. They're not looking at each other and there's absolute silence at the table. What kind of community connection is that? It's nothing, What kind of community connection is that? It's nothing, which for me anyway is very painful to see because there's the opportunity, all these people sitting together

or a couple sitting together, where they really could be having interaction, connection, laughter, delight, enjoyment, sharing stories. Nope. Silence. That feels very empty, like a vacuum exists between them. Well, you know, what's really amazing, Laurie, is that these small moments mount up, you know, and either create an emotional bank account that has a lot of good stuff in it, or one that's barren. In the latter case, it leaves people feeling very lonely and in the other, very full and very connected. And it affects not only love in the moment, it affects our physical health and longevity.

So if we have a more connected relationship, we're going to live about 17 years longer than if we have a more connected relationship, we're going to live about 17 years longer than if we don't. If living a longer, happier life isn't a good enough reason to pay just a little more attention to our loved ones, then I don't know what is. But being receptive to our partner's bids for attention are only one of the things that the Gottmans recommend. Their next challenge involves finding ways to remain curious about our lovers, no matter how long we've been with them. We'll hear more about why building curiosity is so important when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. If you're months, years, or even decades into a relationship, you might be tempted to think that you know everything there is to know about your partner. But relationship experts Julie and John Gottman say that can be a fatal assumption.

It can also be a problem when life simply gets in the way of the usual relationship curiosity. When we get busy, things to do, children to pick up, meals to make, grocery shopping to do. Busy, busy, busy. How much time do we actually have to give to conversation with our partner where we're simply just wanting to know how was your day? What was the worst part about it for you? What was really happening that upset you, etc.? We're not asking each other those big questions. Julie says that retaining a deep curiosity is vital to the health of any relationship, but it's also something that often fades after the early days of courtship. You may remember when you were first dating or you first met your partner,

you didn't know anything. And so you ask them lots of questions to find out who are they? What makes them tick? Where did they come from? How did that legacy influence them now? But when we get busy with kids, with jobs, with careers, we take for granted that we really know our partner. So we don't need to ask those questions anymore. But think about it, guys. Every single day is a new experience, and every new experience builds another layer of identity into each individual. Well, how do you keep up with that evolution of your partner, that development as they go through new experiences, politics, friendships, you know, who do they become? Because we're always in a state of becoming.

We never have just arrived. That's an illusion. We're always becoming. And thus, we have to keep asking open-ended questions, that is, questions that have a great big answer, not just a one-word or two-word answer, to learn who are you today? Who do you want to be tomorrow? Those are important questions to keep repeating throughout our relationship. Those are important questions to keep repeating throughout our relationship. May I tell you a story, Lori? Oh, please. Yeah, here's the story how all of this got started. When John and I were first married, we didn't have much money. He was a professor. I was starting in private practice.

But we wanted to go out on a date night once a week. So we lived in Seattle, and there's a beautiful hotel called the Sorrento that has a magnificent big stone fireplace in the lobby and gorgeous, beautiful, soft couches that you fold into right in front of the fireplace. So what John and I would do is we would go to this hotel and we'd pretend we were guests. And we would grab a couch, stay in the couch for three hours, have one drink, which was cheap. And at the end of the day, we would walk out. So during the date, we would ask each other these big questions. John always brought a yellow pad and he would take notes about my answers, which meant, oh my God, I better be careful because one of those answers might wind up in a book. So I was very

careful about what I said. But we were never at a loss for questions because there was always more going on week to week that we wanted to learn about. And later on, we developed this tradition of our annual honeymoon. We would rent a room and a bed and breakfast. And for about two weeks, we would ask each other three questions. What did you love about this year? What did you hate about this year? And what do you want next year to be like? So we do kind of like a review of the whole relationship for that year in that annual

honeymoon. We've done it for 23 years now. It's tradition. And we ask those open-ended questions of each other just to kind of understand how our partner has been affected by the year and, you know, and what they're thinking about. It sounds like this is so powerful to just kind of take the time to get to know your partner, right? You can notice them changing over time and so on. But this is the kind of take the time to get to know your partner, right? You can notice them changing over time and so on. But this is the kind of thing that we forget to do when we're busy. Another thing we forget to do when we're busy is to notice our partner's good features. But you've argued that

we need to fight this tendency, that another thing we can do to make love last is to notice the good stuff. Can I tell you about a study that is really amazing? We didn't do it. This study had observers in couples' homes just noting down everything positive that one person said to the other. And one observer was observing the husband, one observing the wife. The couple was also scoring what their partner was doing positive. And what they discovered was that when the relationship wasn't going well, people missed 50% of all this positivity. They just didn't see it. So the idea is your partner is doing good things. They're taking the garbage out, emptying the dishwasher, saying nice things, but it's just, you don't even

notice. It's just going over your head. You don't even notice it. Right. That's an amazing study. Robinson and Price did that study. It's so important because here's the positivity, the debt study. You know, it's so important because here's the positivity, but it's not getting noticed by the partner when they're really unhappy in the relationship. Right. And so how do we fix that? Well, so our motto is look for what your partner is doing right and say thank you. Very, very simple thing. It's a habit of mind. We've grown up in a very critical society. This is a very competitive, contemptuous place. We're critical. We're being criticized. We're always comparing ourselves, sometimes negatively, to other people. So you've come by it righteously,

this habit to look for what's going wrong, right? But it's not that hard to just shift to, if my partner wasn't taking out the garbage, wouldn't that be a drag? How wonderful that they're taking out the garbage. Thank you very much for taking out the garbage. So if you imagine your partner's not doing this positive thing, it means you'll probably have to be doing it, which will stress you out even more because you already have a lot on your plate, right? So it's practicing gratitude and it's seeing what are they doing? Even those little subtle things.

Every single morning for the last, I don't know, 37 years since we've been together. John's been making our coffee every single morning and it's really good and I love it. And I thank him every single morning. I know how she likes it. He knows how I like it. And if I keep saying thank you, he'll keep making it. I love that. And I know you had, if I recall from the book, I know you had a story where you really noticed for the first time how important that was when he wasn't there to make the coffee. Well, I was very sad that he wasn't there. And I was thinking, God, does it take five scoops or six scoops? And I can't remember what I did.

I don't know. I put in seven scoops just six scoops. And I can't remember what I did. And I don't know, I put in seven scoops just for the heck of it. And then I shot to the ceiling after drinking half a cup and stayed there for the next 24 hours. This was not a good thing. So the next time when John made the coffee, it was like, oh, thank you for making coffee. I'm so relieved that you're here making the coffee. Yeah, this can become a habit of mind, really, instead of focusing on your partner's mistakes. And we all make mistakes. If you focus on what your partner is doing right and really express appreciation for it,

then it's an entirely different relationship. And actually, the person who shifts their habit of mind to noticing what's going right actually becomes less stressed and they become nicer. That's kind of surprising. But, you know, when you have that positive habit of mind, the world looks a lot kinder and more generous. And this is something you've talked about a lot, that we really do have much more control over these habits of mind than we expect, right? That in some sense, this negativity bias, not asking these questions, in some ways, they're like an active choice, even though we don't realize it. That's well said. Well, first of all, you have to start with intention. So is it your intention to make this relationship better? You know, in the past, before a lot of this research got done, we had no idea of how to make relationships better. You know, in the past, before a lot of this research got done, we had no idea

of how to make relationships better. Did it take more sex? Did it take better cooking? You know, what did it take? But now, with this research well-grounded here and telling us what to do, then we have tools. We have alternatives as to the good habits to put into place in our relationship. And they're really not that hard, Lori. Here's how much it takes. Wow, look at that beautiful bird. Huh, nice. That's all it takes, period. It's just a couple of little syllables. All of us can do that. It's just a matter of our intention, our intention to connect, to be loving. Can I say something here about this? So, you know, my former graduate student, Janice Driver, discovered that when people increase their turning toward, which just takes really an awareness of how your partner is reaching out, then what happens is when there's

conflict, people automatically have a sense of humor about themselves. They can laugh at themselves. And being able to laugh together when you're disagreeing reduces physiological arousal. It really bonds you even though you're disagreeing on a topic. So it's very powerful. And it fits with this other ratio that you figured out, which is that the positivity to negativity ratio overall seems to matter, right? So that little infusion of humor can be quite powerful. Explain what this ratio is and why it's so important for relationship success. So, you know, Bob Levinson and I counted in a 15-minute conflict discussion, how many seconds people are kind to each other, interested, curious, generous, saying even small things like, oh yeah, huh? Oh, wow. You know, those kinds of reflections,

they really lubricate the wheels of conflict so that we arrive at more mutual understanding. What was a big surprise was that the masters of relationships during conflict, that ratio of positive to negative, that interest in one another, that excitement, curiosity, agreement, understanding was five times as common as negativity in the masters of relationships. And in couples that were doomed, that ratio was 0.8, just a little bit more negativity than positivity. It's very famous in Seattle. I was coming out of Starbucks a couple of months ago when this guy drove by in his truck and rolled down his window and said, five to one, right?

You know, it's become well known, at least in Seattle. When John says it out loud, it seems so obvious. Happy relationships spring from two people being warm towards one another, willing to express interest in and concern for their partner

in far greater proportion than any complaints they might air. After the break, we'll hear more advice that again sounds obvious, but seems to be followed only by those rare masters of relationships. That advice is not to treat your partner like a mind reader. The Happiness Lab, we'll be right back. Are there things you want from your life partner? Are there issues welling up that bother you or make you unhappy? Have you expressed these thoughts openly to your partner? Or are you storing these problems away as resentments that are slowly building up over time?

When you say it out loud, it sounds like such a stupid strategy, but it's also one a lot of us follow. And Dr. Julie Schwartz-Gottman has a theory why. Let me just say first, give it some context, that in this country, at least, we have grown up with the value of you're weak when you need somebody else. It's not okay to have needs. Women especially are called too needy. And, you know, here's the basic truth. The truth is that human beings are pack animals. We are pack animals. We don't survive without our tribe or our intimates who are really there for us. It's the lone wolf versus the wolf pack, right? Well, we're very similar to that. So what does that mean? It means we need to connect. We need to connect all the time. So when people feel terrible about expressing their needs, When people feel terrible about expressing their needs, they can go two ways.

Either they expect their partner to read their minds, and then out of nowhere, the partner is hearing, why didn't you actually see that I was sick and bring me tea? Why didn't you do that? Well, the partner, number one, didn't know that this first person was sick, didn't know they liked tea when they were sick, etc. How would they know? The other person is not saying what they mean, right? So those needs can stack up over time and create huge amounts of resentment and anger that the other person is not there for them. But the fact of the matter is, how would the other know how to be there for the first person when the needs are not being

expressed? So it's incredibly important for people to realize that interdependency is what creates a strength in a relationship. And interdependency is created by saying what you need in a positive way, saying how your partner can shine for you, and then hopefully your partner responds in that way, which is really fulfilling for you and fulfilling for them, because it makes them feel valued and trusted that you're expressing a need to them. They're the chosen one that you are trusting. And let me say something else, Lori. So far, we've been talking about asking open-ended questions, and now we're talking about expressing needs. So if your listeners go to the App Store and type in Gottman Card Decks, they can download a free app that has expressing needs cards that they can go through once a week, you know, for a

half an hour and say, well, here's what I need from you this week to feel loved. And they can have a card deck that has all these open-ended questions on it that they can use. We use these card decks all the time and they've been downloaded about 350,000 times. So they're available for free. And I think that, you know, having like a little bit of help when you're asking for what you need can be really important because I know, you know, maybe this just in my own life that, you know, Julie, you mentioned that we need to ask with positivity, but I think sometimes when you're feeling really resentful, that can be hard. And sometimes when you finally go about asking for help, it can come off sounding like a criticism. It can sound off like you didn't empty the dishwasher and

I needed that. Talk about maybe a healthier way to go about asking for those needs and like the steps that we need to get in there to do it effectively. First of all, let me just insert a little piece of research here. What John and Bob and other colleagues found is that the first three minutes of a conflict conversation when you're bringing up your complaint not only predicts how the rest of the conversation will go that first three minutes, it also predicts how well the relationship is going to go six years down the road with over 90% accuracy. So how we bring up our complaint is absolutely crucial. We found that successful couples had a formula for this, which we really try to practice

and to teach others to practice. Number one, say what you feel. You're describing yourself. So you're saying things like, I feel angry. I feel resentful. I feel frustrated. You can't sabotage it and say, I feel that you are an idiot. No, it's not going to work. Or I feel like you're such a schmuck.

That's not going to work, right? So it has to be a real emotion. I feel stressed. I feel disappointed. Then step two, about what? Now notice that's not about who, about your partner and how rotten they are. It's about the situation. So it's going to sound like I feel upset that there's a new dent in the car. That's the situation. I feel angry that, here's the situation, the bills haven't been paid. I'm sick and tired of cooking dinner every night, etc. So you're describing the situation and you're feeling about it. Then the all-important step three, you say what your positive need is. And let me distinguish positive from negative. Negative need means what you don't want your partner to do.

Positive need means what you do want your partner to do. So if you have a negative need, like stop leaving the kitchen a mess, that's a negative, flip it on its head and think, okay, what would be the opposite of this that I would really like? I wish you would clean up the kitchen nightly. That would be such a help. And that positive need opens up your partner so much more than your partner hearing a criticism, which feels like a put down, which makes them want to withdraw and pull away or get defensive. It's such a powerful strategy because when you say what you're feeling about what situation

and then state a positive need, nowhere in there is a critique of your partner, right? Like you haven't said because you did this bad thing, there's no kind of causal thing that your partner did wrong. And that must mean that like people just don't get as offended, right? Like you haven't said because you did this bad thing, there's no kind of causal thing that your partner did wrong. And that must mean that like people just don't get as offended, right? Everybody's on board with trying to help. It lets your partner be a help rather than a hindrance in this really important way. Beautifully said. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So you're really telling your partner, I love you. I know you can be there for me. And if you would be there for me in this particular way, it would make me so happy. Have you all harnessed this kind of strategy for talking about your own unmet needs and your relationship?

Good examples. Yeah. I would say the books, probably. Probably, yeah. The books, right? Okay. So John is an avid book collector, which means probably once a week, we get seven books a week, maybe? Something like that. We're getting books all the time.

We don't have bookshelf space for seven books a week because we add it up. That's almost 30 books a month. Where are you going to put them? So they end up being on the stairs, in the front entryway, on the dining room table, on the kitchen island, you know, everywhere. On her side of the bed. On my side of the bed. And on his side of the bed, there's such a big pile that I risk breaking my neck to bend over the books to make the bed. So it's a danger to my life. And so what I have to do is, I know this is his personality and lifestyle preference, right? Very different than mine.

Okay. So it doesn't make him a bad person. Just makes him different than mine. Okay, so it doesn't make him a bad person, just makes him different than me, right? With just different priorities. And so I'll say, honey, would you please clean up the books? And he may pay attention or he may not. Week two, I'll say, sweetie, those books are becoming a danger to me. Would you please clean up the books? I'm afraid I'm going to trip on them going down the stairs. See, there's no criticism in there. Okay, week three, I'm going, honey, you know, the voice tone has changed.

And I'm saying, honey, I'm at risk for breaking my neck and you don't want a dead wife, right? No, you don't. So please, please, please clean up the books. I beg you. This is a warning. So then I do it. And then he finally does it. And the books are all cleaned away.

And then it starts to build again. So we have this conversation periodically, once a month, I'd say. Regularly. But it's good that you've been able to figure out a way to do it that's not, you know, attacking the person's personality. Like, why are you this kind of person who, you know, collects all these books? It's really doing it in a way that's expressing what your needs are and kind of giving a clear path to helping too, which I love. Right. You know, the other thing too that people forget, Lori, is that we have to be humble. We have to realize that, okay, we're asking our partner to be perfect, right? Are we perfect? No way. I drive John crazy with, would you please clean this up?

Will you please clean it? I don't want to. I just want to sit and read my book. I'm driving him nuts with my need for tidiness, right? So he's tolerating that in me and being patient and eventually supportive, putting away the books. So I'm no perfect icon either here. I can get grouchy. I can, you know, go a little nuts with all the books all over the place. He has to tolerate that, right? The same way I tolerate the difference in how he treats space. So, okay, I have to be humble about, you know, my flaws, my faults. And of course, you know, that message is throughout most of our religious texts, you know, whatever religion you're in, you know, look at yourself before you start criticizing your partner. So I really tried to hone that to a fine heart.

You do a good job. Yeah. As well as being wise, the Gottmans are just a super fun couple to hang out with. And so you'll be glad to hear that we've only just scratched the surface of the advice that they have to share. In the second part of our conversation, they'll let me in on some secrets for dealing with one of the most upsetting and destabilizing aspects of being in love. The inevitable disagreements. I turned the phone off, but it didn't turn it off. I did, yeah.

Uh-oh. Not seeing eye to eye with your partner is perfectly natural. I'm really sick and tired of the laundry being all over the floor. Disagreements shouldn't be swept under the rug to fester, but they also shouldn't generate hostility either. I'm just sick and tired of this stupid, stupid laundry. The good news, says the Gottmans, is that there is a way that we can all learn to argue better. The laundry's on the floor.

I really don't like seeing it. Would you please clean it up before we have dinner? That's coming up next time on The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.