The Jordan Harbinger Show - 462: Linda Carroll | Unlocking Lasting Love Skills

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

Linda Carroll (@Lovecycleslinda) is a licensed marriage and family therapist, relationship sage, and author of Love Skills: The Keys to Unlocking Lasting, Wholehearted Love and Love Cycles: The Five Essential Stages of Lasting Love. What We Discuss with Linda Carroll: Love is a feeling that comes and goes, but loving is a skill set you can improve with practice. Why most arguments are not really about what you think you're fighting about. Is communication in relationships overrated? What the Woodpecker Syndrome is and how to avoid it. "You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else" and other cultural stereotypes and clichés about relationships that are worth less than the Hallmark cards they were printed on.  Why so many of us get locked into repeating relationship patterns that ultimately end messily. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/462 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up on the Jordan Harbinger show. One person may see the glass, what they call half empty or half full, but the exaggeration that's going on because we're in the same house is that we get polarized. And so one person wants to watch the news all the time. And the other person doesn't want to watch the news at all. Remember to let your partner grieve the way they want to grieve, deal with the bad news the way they want to deal with it.

Let them be different. They're not you. You're not me. And if you want to watch the news all day, do it. And if you want to talk about how bad things are, I don't need to correct you. And if I want to talk about how good things are, well, that would be hard to do right now, but let me. And I think what's going on is that those differences are so exaggerated now that we're driving each other crazy with them. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the

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get a taste of everything that we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start to get started or to help somebody else get started, which we always appreciate. Today, a returning guest on the show, Linda Carroll. She is a relationship coach, not the cheeseball kind, though, I'll have you know. She's done feedback Fridays with us before. She's done a few episodes with us before. I love talking with her because she really understands this stuff,

and she's great at debunking things like, you need to love yourself first, or there's a soulmate for you out there. Funny how we find those people within 10 miles of our house. Among all the people on earth, typically, when we start looking. Also, today, love is a feeling. Loving is a skill set. And like all feelings, love comes and goes. But loving is an action based on skills that need practice.

And we're going to talk about some of those skills here today. And we're going to debunk some of those love conquers all kind of cliches that don't do us any favors. If you're wondering how I managed to book all these great authors, thinkers and creators every single week, it's because of my network. and I'm teaching you how to build your network for free over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course, they contribute to the course. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Now, here's Linda Carroll.

Linda, thanks for coming back on the show. It's always a pleasure. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. Now, one of the things I wanted to start with, which I thought was interesting now being a dad and being married for a while, is you mentioned that love is a feeling and loving is a skill set. and like all feelings, love comes and goes, but loving isn't, it's an action based on skills that need practice. And I think that's lost on a lot of people because we kind of think like, oh, we fall in love. And if you ever fall out of love, it's like this huge problem. And there's nothing you can do about it. And it's just the universe did that to you and you're screwed. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, you know what I think is that I've been seeing couples for

40 years. You know, the problem is usually not the problem that they come in with. What people present, it's not the trouble. It's a normal trouble. The trouble comes because they get mad, they get defensive, they shut down, and then they start being mean. They close off. They go into fight, freeze, flap, they disappear, they punish. And the love is the feeling part is really that it's easy to be loving when we feel all those gushy feelings. But when we feel upset, when we feel upset because our partner says,

something that's threatening, says something that hurts our feelings, we stop being loving. We even stop being kind. And there comes the trouble because people don't repair. They come in, he forgot the spinach. She called me a jerk. And all of a sudden, the whole thing gets bigger and bigger. And then what happens is that the problem is not forgetting the spinach. The problem is getting stuck in, not forgetting the spinach, letting that leak into every unfair thing that's ever happened to you, feeling protective, defensive, and suddenly that's the dance you're in for five years. Right. This is like the stuff that piles up until somebody finally leaves the cap off the toothpaste and like the other person comes screaming out of the bathroom about how you're an awful human

being and they want a divorce, right? That's right. So if we learn to be loving, which is not gushy, it's not insincere. It's really just practicing kindness. And if we also can learn how to repair and not hold grudges, we can move out of those stuck places very quickly. But unfortunately, that's not what happens for a lot of us. We get stuck in them. The little thing becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And then that becomes the relationship. There was an example you gave one of your articles that was really good. And I'm trying to remember precisely what this was. And we'll link to it in the show notes so people can find it without me butchering it here. But it was somebody had come home. And this is such an easy example for you to pick up on.

assuming, somebody comes home and says, hey, I forgot the spinach and the other person is cooking. And they say, I can't believe you forgot the spinach. You know, you always forget things like this. It's just so convenient, you know, that you forgot the spinach. Well, if I wasn't running around running errands for you all day, then I wouldn't have forgot the spinach. And then it sort of devolves into either this happens all the time. And I catch, well, I shouldn't say, I catch my wife. My wife and I catch each other on this all the time, where if I'm cranky, she'll say, you're always in a bad mood or I'll say you always forget to do this. And now what I've done, which drives her crazy and I told her to do it to me when I do it is I go, I always forget this.

And she's like, oh, okay, fine. Lately you have been forgetting this or, okay, fine, today you forgot that. All right, you're usually pretty good about that. And it is annoying, but it's also kind of funny in the moment. But it does bring up sort of a good point between us, which is nobody always forgets everything. Nobody always is late. And you kind of have to snap back into reality where the other person doesn't always, always do the same. If someone is always late, you probably knew that before you got married or there's some like really severe issue. But if somebody just does something that's annoying, do they always do it? Or is it just that this is like the third time and you're a little bit annoyed about it? And it sort of like puts the lid back on the potential

explosion. But that goes into the woodpecker syndrome, right? Doesn't it? Which is building paces. And it's something that we can do. You know, I have a real trouble with cliches. We've talked about that in other programs, soulmates and unconditional love and self-love. I just think those things are just really such bold. And they cause a lot of trouble. But I do really love the whole topic of mindfulness, what it is, what it means. Because what it means for me, even though that's a buzzword, it also carries some truths, which is being aware of myself and my proclivity. to say you always do this or you always do that. And I love what you were talking about when if you and Jen can start laughing at yourself, where there's humor, the relationship is fine.

If you can laugh at yourself, you're not in trouble. You just might have a bad day. But when we stop laughing at ourselves and we take it all so seriously, that's when real trouble starts. And to be fair, sometimes she's right. Like sometimes I do always do X. And then it's like, oh yeah, I should probably think of a system to not do that or work on this particular issue that does always or pretty much always happen. I'm trying to think of an example, but I can't really. Maybe I always get unreasonably angry about other people being late. That's not a real example, but it would be something like that. And then she's like, why is it that this always throws you off your game? And it's like, that's a good thing to put on the mental refrigerator with a magnet

because there's something there. But if it's like you always forget the thing that I tell you to get the grocery store, well, no, I don't. I forget like 10% of the time. But you're talking about two things. You're talking about reactivity in a moment where you're escalating it

rather than de-escalating it. And then you're talking about her saying, you know, is this an issue for you? Like you seem to blah, blah, blah. Those are two different directions. That's true. And if you can do the second direction when you ask your partner,

what's going on, that's another skill set. It can go very badly too. But the first one is really about how to get over it fast, really fast. You forgot the spinach, you know, hey, I'm really sorry. I'll go back and get it. Okay. I mean, it's so easy.

But out of you forgot the spinach can come, you never loved me to begin with. Well, I'm cooking this dinner for your friends and I hate your friends and I always do everything for you. Right. And why aren't you good to my mother? I mean, it all can turn. And that's where the trouble is. Like, stop it.

mindfulness back off. I'm laughing because it's probably true, even though it sounds ridiculous, that somebody would argue like that. But you see this, right? I mean, this is literally your job, seeing couples where somebody says, you forgot the spinach,

and then it's like three leaps later, somebody says, and you never liked my dad or whatever. It's like, what, how did this happen? Because it's all stuff that's sitting there under the carpet, and it never gets dealt with. We need to repair fast and get over stuff fast. And that's the practice of mindfulness.

Like, why am I holding on to this? He forgot the spinach. Why is it that I am feeling like he never loved me to begin with? He never, I do everything. It's not fair. Oh my God. How old is that? I mean, to have that awareness of where my grudges, where my holding on comes from,

I think it's such a big deal. It's so important. Because otherwise, we would just project everything on each other. And guess what, Jordan? When we are quarantined together, what's going to happen? everything is going to get projected on the other person because there's nowhere to go. I definitely want to get into why people are going crazy with one another during COVID, but before we do that, I want to sort of focus on these cultural stereotypes and cliches that we mentioned earlier.

These cliches we have about relationships that create a mess for people, right? Like the example you gave was you have to love yourself before you can love anyone else. It sounds good. I mean, it sort of makes sense, right? Like maybe you do have to love yourself before you love anything. But then again, I know so many people that love other people that have all kinds of issues with self-love, whatever that even means. But what does it mean to love yourself? I don't know. I mean, some days I like myself.

Some days I think I'm hot, I'm cool. Other days I think, oh, God, you're not still thinking that. You're not still doing that. I mean, it's a feeling. Love is a feeling, whether it's for myself, except for my dog, maybe for my grandkids. But mostly, it's a feeling that comes and goes and certainly for myself. And so what does it mean to love your? I know what it means to care for yourself and to take care of yourself and to treat yourself

with care or respect. But what does it really mean to love yourself? I just think of sort of going around primping, like lifting weights and saying, aren't I hot? I can think of people. I won't get into all that at this point in our conversation. Okay. I can think of people who are so overcome with self-love and, you know, we call that narcissism. But what do you think it means to love yourself?

I don't know what it means. Honestly, I don't know. that's one of the things that I don't like about most cliches is when you think about it, when you shine a light on it, it turns out to be a piece of tissue paper instead of a, you know, this metal sort of sheet. We look at it and we're like, this is a wooden board. This is our cultural cornerstone of our life here in the United States or the Western world. And then like I said, you shine a light on it.

And it's like, oh my gosh, this is so thin. There is nothing holding this up. This is like the wizard of Oz of Dick Tots for your life. right? Like it just, there's nothing behind it. And there's article after article. You can never do anything to you love yourself. I don't even know what it means to love myself. It's a moment that sometimes I can't stand myself. Sometimes I have to work at forgiving myself. Sometimes I'm okay. It's like a cloud. It comes and it goes. So if I'm waiting for that to happen before I can love somebody else, there's a lot of trouble. We run into a lot more than just that, right? Like love conquers all,

which is this thing that I see a lot of people write into Feedback Friday, and they say things like, hey, this is going to be a toughie because it's like a person goes, well, she did this and it's illegal, and she has all these different issues, and she has all this debt, and she has a meth problem. But, you know, I'm in love and love conquers all, right? And I'm like, wow, this is a disaster. And it's not necessarily just the other person. It's like, you know, one person is already married and has three young kids and they live in California. and the other person lives in Florida and also is in another relationship and they're going through

tough economic times and they're both addicts or something. And it's like, love conquers all, this is like the biggest problem in your life right now. And you're saying, oh, well, let's focus on that. People who are swimming in hormones, I think, I don't know. Yeah, maybe because when you're in love, in that first stage, it's all hormones. It's a big drug experience. And at that moment, you know, there is a way, I think, in that first stage of love, that murgy stage, that people do brave and stupid things. You know, they build Taj Mahals and they go across the world for love. And they also do really stupid things, like have affairs after meeting someone for two days. Well, who was the astronaut that, like, drove to Florida wearing a diaper to kill the other person? You remember

reading about that? That was like the epitome of sort of psycho. No, no, no. Yeah. Oh, this is a few years ago. There was like an astronaut or something who's, you know, is there somebody who you would not expect to do this, but like took all of their kind of determination and focus that you would need to become an astronaut and turned it into like going after this person that was already married to somebody else. But why diapers? She didn't want to stop to go to the bathroom, I think. Oh my God. Oh my God. But don't you think part of it is that the culture feeds us this idea that if you get certain things down like you have a wishboard and you have the right kind of attitude, anything can happen. Oh, God, the expression I hate, we're off on something else, but it's all part of it is there's always a reason.

Yeah, everything happens for a reason. Everything happens for a reason. I work with migrants in Tijuana. Tell them everything happens for a reason when their kids have been kidnapped. You know, it's like such bull. And we have a lot in our culture that's giving us real spoon-fed ideas about how easy life is. If you just think right, you'll manifest millions of dollars in true love. And the truth is, I think life is hard. It's a hard deal to be a human. We need a lot of resilience and courage and self-forgiveness and all of those old qualities. We need them for ourselves and we need them to be in a relationship that works. But these cliches are coming in like it's sort of the adult Disneyland. That's how I think of it. Like, oh, I've met him and he's the one. Adult Disneyland.

And so, you know, I think we don't want to deal with that life really is hard. Marriage is hard. relationships are hard. They're fulfilling a lot of the time, but you can't not be in the human condition, no matter how many times you make a wishboard. You can't get out of it. There's another couple of, I guess you would say, obstacles that block us in relationships. One, of course, is that fairy tale view of love, which includes the ideas about self-love. Others are blind spots like defensiveness, needing to be right, feeling unworthy, and then imagining that other people see us in that same way. How do we start to get around those? Because that that's a little bit more deep than just popping the idea that there's us that we have to love ourselves, right? Defensiveness

is a habit. Needing to be right is kind of like a insecurity based feeling unworthy. I mean, these are deeper issues. Well, we have to know ourselves. And love is an inside job. It is not an outside job. And no matter who you're with, if you're not doing the inside work, it's going to come up as trouble between you. So we have to know where we are, I call it triggers. Where is my triggered? I am very vulnerable to criticism, or I am very vulnerable to feeling abandoned, or I'm very vulnerable to feeling not understood. And we all have those places. So I better know what mine are, because I'm in charge of them, not you, not the other person. And so that, I think, wasn't that written on the Temple of Delphi, first rule of the universe? What was it? Know thyself.

love is an inside job. I've got to work on myself first. Otherwise, I wait for you to fix it or to make me feel good. And in doing that, of course, you can make me feel bad if you forget the spinach. That's number one, is my commitment to becoming the best I can be. And that means knowing myself and knowing where, what gets in the way. You're listening to the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest Linda Carroll. We'll be right back. Now back to Linda Carroll on the Jordan Harbinger show. I think there's a lot of people that I've known just throughout the years. And that I see, again, in sort of the Friday inbox, where they jump from relationship to relationship and they think, oh, it's because I just stopped feeling good around this person or this person was making me feel bad. But it wasn't necessarily

that. It was that they always kind of feel bad when they're not with someone and they rely on this other person to kind of fill this, not to use another cliche, but they use it to fill a hole in their psyche or in their heart, if you will. And then once the chemicals wear off, they're like, oh, this relationships not working because I feel bad again, but they don't necessarily feel bad because of the other person. They just feel like themselves again. They kind of need to get back into the high of like this other person filling in their insecurities. And so they will never actually be satisfied of the partner because inevitably that does wear off all the time. And these are the people I assume that have like five marriages or whatever. They want the drugs. But there's another part to that. Like I just saw this person who was saying,

I have failed in all my relationships because I always leave. And as well, We started to explore what that meant. You know what I figured out was, no, she didn't fail. Her failure was her selection process. Her leaving was her success. Some people are doomed for all kinds of reasons. I could get into the psychology of it, but they find the same kind of person over and over.

And it's somebody who is totally inappropriate to be able to meet them. So some of it, we have to learn how to select wisely, if we're going to select a partner. And it's not all feel good stuff. You know, it's sort of boring, traditional stuff like, is this somebody who shows up, who has good relationships with their family, keeps their friends, who tells the truth, who doesn't have 18 bankruptcies and seven wives somewhere back east? So it's like selection process is where we start knowing ourselves. I know I'm not saying

this is not me, but I know that I am always attracted to the saddest looking person in the room because I'm going to try to make them happy. We've got to know that about ourselves. Where do we go? I know that I'm attracted to a certain kind of person who is impossible. I love narcissists because my father was a narcissist. And if I can find a good narcissist and fix them, then I'll have that little girl will have fixed her father. And those are the kinds of stories that we play out over and over. So before we even get to the relationship, how do we choose a partner?

That's a huge piece. Huge piece I work with people as a therapist. Like, why do I end up in the same relationship? partly number two is what you say because I want the hide, but number one is maybe I just keep finding impossible people. There's definitely something to that. What do you do when you find somebody that says, hey, look, I keep picking the wrong person. I feel like I hear that constantly. And usually it is just some sort of variation on the parents having rubbed off on the son of the daughter and they keep trying to replace them. I don't really know the exact mechanism here. I think it's,

that we're trying to repair our psyche. First of all, I know how to be around a depressed person. So I know how to, if you grew up with a depressed parent, often your job is to make them feel good. So my skill in the world is to make depressed people feel good. Who do I see in a crowd of 400? I see the depressed person. I make them laps. They say you're the greatest thing ever. We're in love. But underneath that is this whole other thing playing out that will play out over time. So I've got to know, first of all, how do I select? If I have the same relationships over and over and they all start high with all those great drugs and they all end badly, then there's something about how I'm finding people that I need

to pay attention to. The trouble is not that you get out of the relationship. It's the getting in. The getting out is a success. That makes sense. So what do we do if we find like, oh, I am on my third husband or whatever? Do we take stock of past relationships and sort of list on paper? Like, here's what these people had in common.

Oh, each one was a spendthrift, narcissist, selfish person that lied or whatever. I mean, do we kind of do that and then go, okay, instead of them all being terrible people, what does it say about me? Is that sort of step two? I think step one is what's familiar in this. Uh-huh. What is really familiar about this relationship? You know, it's familiar is that I'm the one that's carrying it all.

It's familiar that I'm the one that's trying to make things better. It's familiar that I'm the person that's always reassuring. So what's familiar in my history about that? You know, that's the really important deep work of knowing thyself. So people talk a lot about fixing relationships. I think we can do a lot to make our relationships better. But if we're with the same narcissistic, physically violent, meth-making, drug addict, alcoholic, stealing, lying, cheating out of jail for just two days' person.

How was that? That was pretty unappealing, right? Then there's something. We have to look at how did I get into it? How did I find that? Why didn't I know to begin with? Is it more of a matter of lying to ourselves? Because these people have to know, like, oh, okay, this person has been in and out of jail

20 times. They have a record. They've never had a real job. Are they really not seeing it? They just don't see it? No, because it's familiar love. Okay. If I have a depressed mother and I love her and I want so much for her to be happy and I'm always a good kid to make her happy, but she never gets happy.

Guess who I'm going to be attracted to. I find a depressed partner and I'm going to do everything to make them happy. And so it's to say, I don't know that. It's called unconscious because we don't know it. I mean, unconscious means we're not aware of it. So sometimes it takes several of those people in a life to figure out, hey, I'm doing the same thing over and over. What's familiar here that I'm doing that came from when I was seven?

I really believe that that's part of it. Then the other part of it is normal trouble that we have. But the first part, sometimes people can't get out of normal trouble because they don't have capacity. We need capacity for certain things, forgiveness, self-growth, getting ourselves out of trouble, out of debt, saying I'm sorry, all the things that we're talking about getting over the spinach trouble. and we need that capacity. Some people don't have the capacity to even say, I'm sorry. They make it some sort of deep meaning about themselves, like you can never admit any fault.

I've known people like that that can never apologize for anything. I know. And, you know, a few drinks later, I'm like, how come you're like that, you know, eight years into the friendship? How does that go, Jordan? So what do they say? They start off by denying it. But if we get a few drinks in and I really get to the truth,

I've had some friends and business partners who could never say they were sorry or admit fault. I've had them, you know, get, I guess, just drunk enough to admit that when they were younger, they were abused. And so any sort of admission of fault just resulted in more punishment. So they always hid everything that they did. And it would be weird stuff, too, because you'd go, who did this, this and this that lost all this money? And then this guy would do mental gymnastics to find out how to blame, like, the lowest ranking

member of the team or someone else. And he would then lobby to, like, fire this lower. level person or just blame someone else or he would just get mad and leave and be i'm so disgusted with you guys you guys can never you know settle a problem and we're like this is the guy that crashed the rental car how is this the guy's fault who we hired last week who does social media marketing like right how is it possible and we're all thinking are we crazy because he's really convinced that this is henry's fault and not his this is kind of a craziness but you know another part of it is there's temperament in it. There's personalities in it. Some people, I mean, some personalities,

if we're talking about defensiveness, they're just so like a perfectionist. A person who's a perfectionist is so critical of themselves most of all. So if you say to a perfectionist, you forgot the spinach, here's what they hear. I'm the biggest jerk that ever lived. And so they have to defend and protect themselves. So that's another part about self-knowledge is knowing if I have that proclivity to be a perfectionist, let's say, I know that I'm going to be harder on myself than anyone else. So I've got to learn. I've got to practice over and over again saying, I'm sorry, I forgot the spinach. I'll go back and get it. Rather than going into some huge thing about, I'm a jerk, I've always been worthless. You know, he doesn't love me. He never did.

Why would he? I forgot the spinach and everything else in my life comes to play. So it comes back to self-awareness, really, and knowing myself, where are my strengths? Where are my strengths? challenges. And if I don't know those, going into relationship is going to be a mess. Yeah, that completely makes sense. You're kind of wandering into uncharted territory without a map at that point. And it's... Exactly. That's really great. No tools, no compass, nothing. And you mentioned something before that it's a result of practice and trying again. And I want to be really clear, because a lot of people are probably taking notes or are going to go to the show notes or the worksheets for this podcast. The worksheets, by the way, are linked in the show notes.

For those of you wondering, a lot of people are going to go, great, I'm going to go get that. I'm going to grab a book or two, and then they don't do all of this stuff right. And I think it's worth highlighting that this is all a practice and nobody gets this stuff right. Because there's this sort of almost mistaken belief that I certainly had in my 20s that good communication and being a loving partner and improving in one way or another, it's like, I can read a lot of blogs or listen to this podcast. And like, I'll just do this right from now on, which is an unrealistic expectation,

but then people are hard on themselves or hard on their partner. They send this to their wife or their husband. And then they're like, did you listen to that? Good. Then you'll never do all of these things ever again. Right. Yeah, but then, okay, so let's say you do, you listen to the podcast, you read the article, and you really get it together.

And then you know what happens in life? You have a baby or COVID comes and you can't leave each other or life changes in some way. And those stresses come in. And when stress comes, gets what, you know what happens. happens, we go back to our old way of doing things. Everything gets exaggerated because it's under this magnifying glass. So all the things that we fall in love with that are different because our partner brings all this stuff in that we don't have and it's also romantic and wonderful. When we're under the same house 24-7, it's not so romantic and wonderful. So life's transitions

exaggerate the differences. So even though you can read all of it, you can learn it all, you get a whole new stress attack and it throws us back to our old ways of doing things. So we need a lot of self-forgiveness and it's what you, in the beginning, you said something, which I thought was great, which was humor where you and Jen were, you were giving an example of just sort of laughing about something. When we lose our humor, there's trouble. I mean, when I see a couple in the biggest mess in the world, you know, you can imagine all the messes in the world I end up with. And when they still can laugh at themselves and each other, I know that relationship has a lot going for it.

Because when you can still laugh at your human condition and your frailties and your messes, then there is some way that you're also not taking yourself so seriously. I think the matter we get, the more we are pulled into trying to make something funny, even if one of us really doesn't want to do that. Yeah, yeah. Well, we can use humor in ways that are not, that are pretty destructive also. But it does end up kind of working in the end. you just have to, I have to be tactful about it and she has to be tactful about it.

Like there's, there's a point at which it's one second too soon and it just makes everything worse. Yeah. But if you do it at the right time and usually at the end of the day, we do like an inventory of the day, things that went well during the day, things that didn't go well, things that we think the other person did well recently. It doesn't have to be that day. That's great. Yeah, the drill's called three positive things.

I think I've talked about it on an episode of Feedback Friday, but I'll go over it really briefly here just for people that are interested. So every night during the bath time with the little one, we do three. It's called three amazing things. And so it's three amazing things that day, and you have to find them. So if you didn't do anything that day, it could be like, I had a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and it was so good. And I haven't had one of those for years.

So that counts, right? You have to find some things that were good, even if it's like, I laid on the couch, and I don't ever get a chance to lay on the couch. So you pick three of those, and then you pick one thing that you learned, even if it's like, yeah, Netflix, I saw that there's a prison in the Philippines that has three times as many people in it as it was built to accommodate. That counts. You know, so it can be little silly things.

And then it's what you could do better, but it has to be something that was within your control. So you can't say, oh, it rained. Because there's no takeaway from that. Yeah, yeah. It has to be like, it rained, and I knew it was going to rain, and I took the umbrella out of the car last week, and I didn't put it back. And I got to remember, put the umbrella back. I love that. So you sort of do that.

And then it's the, what did the other person do well? So, you know, it might be something like, you know, you always have great breakfast stuff. And so I'm always excited to go down in the morning, and there's always good breakfast stuff from you. That's what we do every single night. I teach people something called the DTR, and it's the same kind of thing where you start with an appreciation, new information, and there is in there a complaint with a request for change. Small complaint. It's just, it's a yoga where we practice giving a complaint, but we also practice because under

every complaint is a wish. And so if the complaint is, so it's practicing talking about the wish. So you never hold my hand. Under that is the wish, I want to touch you. So if we can learn how to talk about the wish, it's going to go better. That makes sense. So usually when it comes down to the what I could have done better, if we've had some sort of tiff that day, that person then, end of the day, seven hours later, you know, whatever,

they go, I probably shouldn't have gotten so mad that you forgot the spinach. I reacted poorly. And the other person at that point is like, yeah, that was weird, but I don't really care anymore. And then it's like, okay, so then you can kind of get the apology out. And then you also go, all right, I got to sort of mention. note that that was just a dumb way to get mad about that. And then you go, well, why did we get mad about that? Well, I was mad because I realized I didn't plan enough time to cook the dinner.

I got to plan more. And then the other person goes, yeah, but you didn't plan enough time because I told you too late yesterday. Yeah. So that was kind of my fault too. And then you're going, okay, so it was nobody's fault and we both just made little tiny mistakes that compounded into us getting mad about the spinach. And then I said that thing about you leaving the cap off the toothpaste and I'm sorry for that. And then they go, well, you know, I shouldn't have done. So you learn all these little things, but you also make up at the same time. And some of the things you can change, some of the things you can't. And you just say, screw it. That's life. Here's what you're doing right, is you're making a repair. Because here's what happens. We connect. And then there's some kind of

rupture, the toothpaste, the spinach, something worse. And then what happens is people don't repair. And without repair, we can't reconnect. Really. You know, we can sort of reconnect. But that little thing, is back there all the time. And you're talking about at the end of the day making a repair. That is a huge, important, it's not a cliche. That's a real thing. Being able to say, I could have done it better. I'm sorry. What that does is it lets us start to open up ourselves again to each other. Yeah. So great. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Linda Carroll. We'll be right back. Thanks so much for listening to the show. I do it for you. I really do. And you support our advertisers and that's who pays the bills.

That's who keeps the lights on. That's how I can send my kids to school, or my kid, so far my kid to school, singular. Go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. If you want to find all the codes and all the deals, all the discounts in one place, thought we'd make it easier for you if they were all on one page. Please do consider supporting those who support us. And don't forget, we've got worksheets for today's episode. If you want some of the drills, exercises, practical takeaways we talked about during the show,

they're all in one easy place as well. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Now for the conclusion of our episode with Linda Carroll. Somebody told me a long time ago, because my dad has a short temper and I got a little bit of that too, and his dad had a horrible temper. And it probably got worse as the generations go on. I don't know. Four generations back, there was some insufferable bastard, miserable old bastard back in my lineage probably.

But somebody told me this like, not a parable, but like a proverb maybe. I don't even know what the difference is. But it's like every time you get mad, you're hammering a nail into the side of a barn. And even if you pull the nail out with apologies, then the hole is still there. You know, and so that like really hit me hard because I go, oh, man, you can't just do whatever you want and say that you're sorry, which was news to me in my 20s, right? I didn't get that. That's a big realization, boy. That is huge.

It's an ugly one. But you know what, Jordan, that's what I mean about self-knowledge. Exactly what I was talking about. If you hadn't figured that out yourself, it wouldn't matter what your partner did. That's why relationships have to be an inside job because you did that. You figured that out. And that's what makes you be able to be in a relationship that is healthier rather than not healthier. But it's your self-knowledge.

Your wife couldn't have told you that. If she had pointed that out to you, you would not have said, I'm so glad you shared. Now I understand. That would not have gone well. But you did it. You figured it out. I think I got that from my mom, who was probably like, I should have sent this to your dad in the 70s. I don't know, you know, where that came from. I can't remember now. Something along those lines.

I do want to jump into why people are going crazy with one another during COVID. You kind of touched on that a couple of times. Now we can't get away from each other. Yes. So what else is going on? Because there's a lot of people have lost their job, so there's stress. A lot of people are getting more face time than usual, which for Jen and I has been actually kind of cool. we have a baby too, so we would have gotten it COVID or otherwise. We would have been cooped up no matter what. But some people are dealing with it okay and other people are not. And I remember when you and I first talked about this, it was probably January. We were getting articles from China or data from China because they had had COVID for a couple months and divorces went through the, they just absolutely skyrocketed. Is it just the exposure and the FaceTime that's doing it? No, well, you know what I think? I think it's polarization. That's the word. I was thinking about this, we were talking about, talking about, positive. And I was on a walk with my husband. And I was talking about how bad the day was. And I was

in all the bad things in the world. And every time I'd say something, he'd say, he'd point out, you know, this is the storm before the calm and it has to get worse before it gets better. And I was getting more and more attached to being unhappy. And then our dog took off. We took off. It was over. But later, I saw this couple in my office. And the woman had had two people die of COVID, really bad stories. And she was crying. And her husband was saying, well, there's always a reason. And, you know, you did everything you could. And she was just sobbing saying, just let me feel my feelings. When they left, I thought about that there was a syndrome happening here. And I started Googling, and I found a term for it, which I love called toxic positivity. And what happens is, I think we tend to be

more on a side in a relationship. One person may see the glass. what they call half empty or half full. But the exaggeration that's going on because we're in the same house is that we get polarized. And so one person wants to watch the news all the time. And the other person doesn't want to watch the news at all. And what I've been saying to people, I've been doing a lot of Zoom. So one of the things that people are giving me lots of feedback on is how important it is to remember to let your partner grieve the way they want to grieve, deal with the bad news the way they want to deal with it. Let them be different. They're not you. You're not me. And if you want to watch the news all day, do it. And if you want to talk about how bad things are, I don't need to correct you. I don't need

to tell you not to grieve. And if I want to talk about how good things are, well, that would be hard to do right now, but the storm before the calm or blah, blah, blah, let me. And I think what's going on is that those differences are so exaggerated now that we're driving each other crazy with them, plus all the ways that were different naturally. Introverts, I had this one couple back east, and they had a two-bedroom condo, and it was a small condo, and the guy was totally an introvert, a total introvert. I mean, he was a mechanic, he was a mechanical engineer. He loved thoughts, he loved ideas, he loved math.

He was married to a poet who wanted connection all the time. She followed him all over the two-bedroom condo. This is when people weren't going out. They were making each other crazy, and we ended up making this deal. they had a nice closet. I mean, it wasn't like a scary closet. It had a light in it. He made himself a little room in the closet and he had made a little sign and he put the little sign up and he said introvert time. And when he did that, she left him alone. I mean, it was sort of a gimmick, but it really helped them because it wasn't that he didn't care about her and it wasn't that she was always trying

to invade him, but it felt that way. So what naturally worked when they were in the world with She could go out all the time with her friends, and he could have his quiet time. When they were in the house together, they were making each other nuts. And so rather than making each other wrong, what we talked about was this is a difference in how you are. So how can these differences be respected? Whatever those are, how can we let the other person be who they are? I'm just imagining this poor guy, like setting pillows down in his walk-in closet and just sitting there with the shirts dangling by his head.

he's trying to read or something. It was a nice closet and had a window in it. Oh, that's really nice. Who has a window in their closet? But it was like a way of saying time out that she wasn't personalizing it. But all of those differences are so exaggerated when we're in a cell together, especially if you can't go out anywhere. You know, the things you fell in love with start to drive you crazy anyway.

But when you're 24-7, they really drive you crazy. So there are things we can do to make it better, but we have to know how this is all working. That does remind me of the idea that a lot of folks think, okay, we can shape or manage or change another person, not necessarily from introvert to extrovert, but even in little or more subtle ways, using love or anger, which is a common one, maybe even in my family, little talks, coercion, manipulation, logic, even doing it in a nice way with logic and persuasion or something like that or even with reward. It took me a long time and I think it takes some people of really long time as well to learn that you can really only manage ourselves and it's still like a lesson that

I kind of feel like I have to learn occasionally over and over again. Not that my family was manipulative or anything like that. I just think all people almost anyway try to do this in somewhere or another because we all want to get our own way. We all want to be comfortable. So we all use different mechanisms like yeah like anger, love, coercion, logic, whatever. So I want to give you three You want my three magic words? Yeah, let's do it. They're really good. Okay, so give me a story.

Your partner comes home and does something you want to correct. Tell me, give me the story. Sure, let me see. So, does it have to be real or am I just making it up? No, make it up. Okay, okay. So they come home and I'm on the phone and they start asking me questions, but I'm on the phone and I'm doing something

and they keep asking me something or sending me text about it. or sending me text messages or trying to get me to like pay attention to them. I don't know. I made that up, obviously. That's a good story. Okay, so here's the three magic words. Okay. So you say to them, look, wait until I get off the phone.

You get off the phone. And instead of being annoyed, you say, what's going on? Here are the three magic words. Well, I really wanted your time. Tell me more. Well, something happened today. And I just really needed to talk to you about it. And instead of saying, well, you could have waited until I was off the phone.

The three magic words are in their counterinteching. intuitive, like so much what we have to do if we want a good relationship is we have to go against our instinct. Tell me more. Your partner comes in and says, I've been really mad at you all day. The counterintuitive move first is to defend. You've been mad at me. Well, I've been mad at you. But tell me more. What's going on? Or your partner comes home and says, I hate my job. So what do we say? Well, you know, I told you that was a crummy job. Or I don't blame it that you hate your job. Well, maybe that's just how you feel today. So little talks, we give them little cliches,

but here, how about this? I hate my job. Tell me about it. Tell me more. They're not going to get annoyed that I am using this technique. Tell me more. Well, you would want to know more. It's not your problem.

Well, they could do that. That's another problem. But the intention is important. But the intention is, I want to hear what you have to say rather than redirect you, rather than give you a little talk, rather than move you in some direction, tell me what's going on for you.

Because isn't that what we did at the beginning? We listened and listened to our partner. And then we lived together and then we stop listening. And then we say, I know what you're going to say. I know those stories. I know how this goes. But what if we stop it all and say, tell me what happened when you forgot the spinach? It's not a manipulation.

You've got to come to this with a heart that really is saying, I want to hear about you, rather than I know all about you, which is a whole other direction that we could go which is where people close down. We think we know the other person. We don't know them. We don't know anybody. We barely know ourselves. We're changing all the time.

So it's giving the other person a chance to say, I want to know more about you rather than I already know. Another cliche that you bubble that you'd popped when I was doing research for this was the topic of communication and how it's a little bit overrated. It can actually cause as many problems as it solves, which was surprising because usually you think therapists are going to say communication And any survey that you see sort of in, I don't know, some Cosmo magazine is going to say, what's the number one thing in relationships?

Communication and you see it in movies and you see it everywhere. But you're saying it's actually a double-edged sword, right? Qualities like humor, generosity, a willingness to do more than one's fair share are important, but it can also be kind of flipped around and used to manipulate the partner. Some people are very communicative. They want to talk about their feelings. They want to talk about their history. They want to talk about their father.

people aren't so communicative. They don't want to talk about their day. Communication can be overrated. It can be a hammer. And sometimes just making somebody a latte in the morning and not asking them why they're upset. I mean, that is a different kind of communication. But we have to really look at what are, again, it's that self-knowledge. I want to talk about it. That's what communication is to me. I want to talk about it. And then I want to talk about talking about it. And then I want to talk about what it was like to talk about it. My partner doesn't want to talk. He maybe will talk about it. And then he's done. So if I have an agenda for what communication means to me, it's that we endlessly talk about what we've been talking about. And if he has an agenda, it's different.

One of the things in the book I wrote in the love skills book, I have this whole thing in the beginning, which says, do not make this a power struggle in your relationship. If you have a partner who doesn't want to read this book, don't ask them to. You read it. Practice the things. Learn them yourself. Practice kindness. We can't make the other person be like us. Communication is a loaded word. And we can learn all the techniques in the world. But if we're not kind, if we don't really care about what's going on with them, if we don't know how to listen, it doesn't mean anything. It's like assertiveness or it's like, I hear you. Remember that when people were going around and saying, I hear you. Oh my God. And then they do when you complain.

Hi, you know, I got on the airplane and they wouldn't take my ticket. I hear how upset you are, ma'am. I hear you makes you want to strangle people. Yeah, does. And so we can use communication as a way to negate, to diminish, to demolish. So we've got to go back. Those basic quality. Am I, is this my need or is it yours? Yeah. Yeah, the old, I understand. What do you mean you understand? You still have a problem. Well, I understand your frustration. You're not apologizing. You're not even saying that you really understand. It's just like something you read in a training manual. You don't care. That much is clear. Right. You understand. I'll show you understanding, buddy. Yeah, that's what I'm always thinking. Right. And that's like, so you can read so many communication books, but you have to have heart and you have to have

an ability to see the other person is different than you. They might just want to talk about it for two minutes. So back off. Linda, thank you so much. This is always a fun conversation. I'm so glad that we got a chance to do this, and it's been too long in the making. That's been wonderful. I love seeing you. It's so great. Thank you. We've got a trailer of our interview with Dennis Rodman, one of the greatest rebounders ever to play professional basketball with five NBA championships under his belt, and who is just as well known for his off-court antics, and stints as an author, an actor, a reality star, a wrestler, and an unofficial diplomat to North Korea. Check out episode 258 of the Jordan

Harbinger show. There's a lot of stories I can tell you. I got a lot of stories. I can tell all about a lot of things. I know your dad who had bounced, I guess, when you were three, showed up to a game once. I was coming in. I was a little late. I was like five minutes late for practice. I was trying to get into the gate. And this black guy runs up to my truck and is knocking on my window. I said, what do you want? I'm, you know, I just want to tell you, Dennis, I'm your father. I said, great. I said, you're going to have to wait. I'm late for practice. Did you even believe it? I don't know. I said, whatever. Another fan. It's going to be cute. There's this incident where you go to the court in Detroit and you're getting in the parking lot with this gun in your lap and then you

just fall asleep. I didn't like being famous. You didn't like it? I didn't like it. So I just drove over there with a gun and just sat there and put it in my lap. It was loaded. Decided to turn the radio and it was pro jam playing. And I was saying I just thought I fell asleep. I think I'm a superhuman because West has transpired my life to now. What is saying if I dive out of a plane, no parachute, look up to God and hopefully that he catch me. I want to see my life flash in front of me. What do you think? You can somebody catch me?

And I'm thinking about that. I've been thinking about it for a long time, just jumping on a plane, no parachute, and just dive out and watch my life flash in front of me. What did I do wrong? How can I fix this? How can I be happy? Somebody catch me.

For more from Dennis Rodman, including marrying himself, the pros and cons of fame and risky birthday toast to Kim Jong-un over in North Korea, check out episode 258 of the Jordan Harbinger show. Big thank you to Linda Carroll. Her book is called Love Skills. Her previous book was called Love Cycles.

We'll link to both of those in the show notes. Many of you have read Love Cycles, loved it, wrote me about it. So only fair that we linked to both. Links to everything will, of course, always be in the show notes. Please do use our website links if you buy the books. That helps support the show. I know it seems like a little tiny purchase, but they do add up. Worksheets for the episode are in the show notes.

Transcripts for the episode are in the show notes. There's a video of this interview going up on our YouTube channel. I think if it didn't get messed up, I didn't check, right? But anyway, videos of many of our interviews are on our YouTube channel atjordanharbinger.com slash YouTube. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram or hit me on LinkedIn. Now look, I will check. I just didn't check right now.

Okay, but either way, you're going to find something on that YouTube channel, whether you like it or not, whether it's this episode or not. I'm teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits over at our six-minute networking course. That course is free. You can find it at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe with the course.

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