The Liz Moody Podcast - Top Couples Therapist: How To Stop Settling For Less Than You Deserve (Even When He Thinks Everything's Fine)

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

We are diving deep into the real reasons men are not doing their part in relationships, and exactly how you can help change that. Whether you want better sex, or for him to take on more of the mental load, or you want to know if you're even with the right person, or if the relationship is worth staying in, we're going to get into that today. I sit down with Zach Brittle, one of the only couples therapists in the entire world certified in both the Gottman method and Terry Real's Relational Life therapy. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vanity Fair. Zach is so pragmatic and has really interesting advice on some of the trickiest issues out there. We also talk about what men secretly think and feel behind the scenes that they're not sharing, and we solve a ton of the real-life relationship struggles that you guys wrote in.  🎧 What you’ll learn: • How to get your needs met without nagging, criticizing, or picking a fight • How to tell if your partner can't do the work or simply won't • What men are secretly thinking and feeling but never say out loud • The one question that ends most arguments before they escalate • The 4 behaviors that predict relationship breakdown • The key sign a relationship will survive hard times Check out our NEW YouTube Channel with tons of YouTube exclusive Shorts, exclusive podcast content, and full video episodes: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@LizMoodyTV⁠  Check out the previous episodes of The Liz Moody Podcast discussed today: Fighting Can Make Your Relationship Better—If You Do It THIS Way with Drs Julie & John Gottman For more from Zach Brittle: • Website: https://zachbrittle.com/  • Substack: https://zachbrittle.substack.com/  • Podcast: https://marriagetherapyradio.com/all-episodes/  Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome.Buy our cute sweatshirts, conversation cards, and more at https://shop.lizmoody.com/. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsors: • Birch: go to https://BirchLiving.com/LizMoody for 20% off a new mattress. • Lumebox: right now get 40% off, that's $260 off the regular price of $629, when you go to TheLumeBox.com/Liz. • Wildgrain: go to Wildgrain.com/LizMoody to get $30 off your first box + FREE croissants for LIFE. • Timeline: visit Timeline.com/Liz to save up to 39% off. • LMNT: head to https://DrinkLMNT.com/Liz to get a FREE 8-count sample pack with any order. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions.The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 436. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you feel like you're the only one who's working to make your relationship better, you are not alone. It's pretty much the most common problem out there these days. Women who know they deserve more in their relationships, but who don't know how to get their partners to give it to them. Today, I'm sitting down with Zach Brittle, one of the only couples therapists in the entire world, certified in both the Gottman Method and Terry Reel's relational life therapy. He's written a ton of books. His work has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Vanity Fair. And today we are diving deep into the real reasons men are not doing their part in relationships

and exactly how you can help change that. Whether you want better sex or for him to take on more of the mental load, or you want to know how to know if you're even with the right person, or if the relationship is worth staying in, we're going to get into that today. We're also going to talk about what men are secretly thinking and feeling behind the scenes that they're not sharing. And we're going to solve a ton of the real-life relationship struggles that you guys wrote in. I'm obsessed with this conversation.

Zach is so pragmatic. He's so smart. And he just has some really interesting advice on some of the trickiest issues out there. Hot tip, if it were me, this is one that I would listen to with my partner. I think it'll spark some really interesting, really helpful conversations. Welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where we believe that there is always something that you can do to create a life that feels amazing. And we help you figure out how to find the lever to pull at any moment to actually do that. Zach Brittle, welcome to the podcast.

I'm so excited to have you here. We're going to dive into so many different parts of like, how do we get our partners to do the work in the relationship? We're going to dive into listener questions, struggles they've been having. But I wanted to ask, something stood out to me about the bio that you sent me. Okay. You said that you've been happily married for 25 out of the 28 years you've been married. Yeah.

What happened in the other three years? Number one, that's the line in my bio that's got me more business than anything. People love knowing that that is a thing that can be true for a therapist, couples therapists in particular. But we had three pretty rough periods that were just challenging. We had to lean into the work ourselves. And like they came at three really different distinct periods in our relationship. There was about three times when she or I both were kind of like, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. And so we ended up doing it and feel stronger and better and healthier as a result.

But no, we haven't like sailed through not being. any means. Can you share the specifics of any of those times? Sure. The most recent one was really around the time when both of us were getting sober. We had relationally, like really challenging period of grappling with what it meant to be people. And we didn't do that very well together. The first one was really specifically around a miscarriage that she had. I never connected with a baby, but she definitely did. So we grieved that really differently. And so her grief went in one direction

and mine went in another. And that separated us by quite a bit. And we had to like kind of wake up to the fact that we were really more interested in doing anything other than taking care of each other until we were ready to break. We got into therapy. I was in therapy every week.

She was in therapy every week and we were in therapy every week. So we took out of home equity line to pay for that. The drinking is interesting. You stopped drinking first and then you wanted her to quit drinking and she took a little bit longer to get to that. Something that I hear from listeners all the time is I'm on this health journey and my partner won't join me on this journey. How would you suggest people approach that given your personal experience and your experience as a therapist? The way you framed it is not exactly the way I think about it.

But yes, I got sober first. I got sober because I was at the end of my rope and feeling like I couldn't manage my life. She and I were drinking buddies. She was great. She held it together. we were good friends. We had lots of enjoyment around our drinking lives together. Mine just kind of fell off the rails during COVID.

And I think what happened after that was because she'd been holding it together for so long, she then also kind of let go for, like she didn't have to hold it together anymore for me. So her drinking kind of got a lot worse. So it wasn't like I quit drinking and I wanted her to quit drinking. It was I quit drinking. Her drinking got a lot worse. As I got more sober, I said, hey, I don't think this is going to work for us anymore because we're not going to be drinking buddies again.

But I'd love to stay married and staying married would be fun. I'd like that to happen. I need to do something about it. I need you to now go on your journey. And it took her a while from that moment. That was in February of, I think of 23, I want to say. It wasn't until November of that year that she quit herself. But for me, it was I'm feeling really healthy and good and this is the right place for me.

And I want you over here with me. Come over here where I am. Hang out with me because I can't come over there and hang out with you. you. And I'm not going to leave you, which means if you don't change, I'm going to be sad and lonely, and I'm going to get my needs met in other places. I'm going to have my friends and my job and my kids. I'm going to leave you out and I'm going to be sad about it. And I don't want that for us or for you. And so there wasn't a demand in it. There wasn't entitlement in it. And now we're different kind of buddies. We're not drinking buddies anymore, but we have a much

more like solid friendship and relationship because we're not cloudy and foggy all the time and dealing with other stuff. What's the best way to get a partner to come on a health journey with you or to take a health journey themselves if you're just worried about their health? My thesis is it's get healthy. It's be healthy. Go be as healthy as you can, whether that's spiritually, physically, relationally with your diet, whatever.

and be as committed as you can to that process for yourself and then make it attractive to your partner. Build a castle, throw ladders over the edge, make signs, drop flyers from the airplanes, but don't go out into the unhealthy place, which includes getting all pissed off and angry and upset and entitled about like you must behave like this in order for me in a relationship with you. And what if they're like, that castle looks nice, but I'm happy over here. Then you have to deal with the consequences, I think, which is, okay, then I'm going to be sad. People aren't going to change until the cost of staying the same is more than the cost of changing. And so you have to tell them what the conditions are for you.

And sometimes the condition are, if you don't, then I'm going to leave you. For me, it was if you don't, I'm going to be sad. But I'm not going to go anywhere. I didn't really want to. And I kind of had confidence that she would meet me eventually. But people don't have the consequences that matter to them. They're not going to change. Is it okay to suggest these?

consequent? Like, is that me sort of micromanaging or getting on their side of the street to be like, I'm not going to do your laundry. The whole world operates on a kind of a quid pro quo or like there are consequences for your actions. If my client said, hey, I really like seeing you as a client, but I'm not going to pay you anymore. I'll be like, well, I'm not going to do that then. Like, you have to pay me for me to do this work for you. And so it's not quid pro quo strictly in terms of relationships, but there is a give and take, you know, there are things you won't tolerate. you know, if you don't stop having unprotected sex with prostitutes, I'm going to leave you. There are lines.

Yeah. And so now it just where's the line? I'm not ever saying, if you don't, then I won't. It's more like, how do I help us get the thing that we want? Because there's some lines that I have and there's some lines that you have. And I've told Rebecca many times, please tell me what you need from me. Tell me about your lines because I have no interest in having you accommodate my lines. while you feel bitter and sad and lonely and resentful about it.

The thing you were saying isn't, I won't do your laundry, you're saying, then I'll be sad. I think that's actually something powerful of saying, I'm wanting you to do this because I'll be sad and not because I'm trying to take anything in actuality from you. You know what I mean? There are reasonable systems to put in place,

which is to go, hey, if you can't respect me enough to say, be home on time, or do your share of the chores, or thank me appropriately for the ways that I am showing up for you. I'm not going to do your stuff anymore. We're partners in this thing. And so learning how to say what's going to work for us is really the key, I think. How do we know what's okay to ask for?

So like you use some examples there like coming home at a certain time. But like is it okay for me to be controlling when my partner comes home? Or how in their world, their routine, am I allowed to be in terms of my request? I think you can request anything you want. You can say, hey, life is easier for me when you are home when you say you're going to be home. Hey, I am actually more attracted to you when you do what you say you're going to do. It's distressing for me when you leave for work at 5 and by 545 you haven't texted me. It makes me have a little bit of extra anxiety that would be super cool that you could alleviate.

You can ask for anything you want. You can't demand it. You can say, hey, this is what works for me and this is what doesn't work for me. I tell Rebecca often, and she's learned to tell me this too. I go, look, I'm not sure you did anything wrong. I don't think you did anything around. In fact, I'm pretty sure you didn't do anything wrong. But what you did, I didn't like it.

I mulled over it for three days. I thought about it. It made me bitter. I wanted to lash out in a particular kind of way. And I worked through that part of myself. But it'd be cool if you didn't do that thing anymore. She's like, sure, thanks for telling me. What if she wasn't like sure?

What if she was like, I really like doing this thing this way? Then I think I would have to work through some stuff for myself. I mean, I'd have to decide if I was, that was going to be okay with me. And maybe we'd continue to negotiate or we figure out what's what. in our home at this point, we're always negotiating good faith. We're not trying to win. We're not trying to control each other. We're trying to find the thing that's going to work for us. So if I said, hey, I would like for you not to do this. And she goes, okay, but I really like doing that thing. I would go, all right, well, maybe you could do it less. Maybe I could build some tolerance

for it. Maybe you could give me a heads up if you're going to do it. But also, I'm not going to ask her for something that's like against her wiring. I personally have a childhood story that is irritating to me because of the way it connects to time. When I'm untethered from time, I get really anxious. So she says something like, I'll be home soon. I don't know what soon is. She might think soon as 40 minutes because she's going to stop by the grocery store. And it probably is soon.

But I think soon as like 10 minutes. So then between 10 and 40 minutes, my body is like untethered and distressed. Yeah. So I'm like, hey, you didn't do anything wrong. You said you're going to be home soon. You went to the grocery store. Thank you so much for getting ice cream. It didn't work for me.

If soon as 40 minutes, just tell me it's 40 minutes. And then we can go from there. And she's like, oh, I'm not that good at it. I don't remember that stuff. And I go, okay, well, I'm going to try not to get mad about it. But I do want you to know that, like, it's really helpful for me when you do that. We just start to work it out. She's actually gotten really good.

She's almost obnoxious about it now. She's like, I'll be there in seven and a half minutes. It's not like I'm asking her to rewire her whole personality, perhaps maybe with the exception of that drinking thing. But it's something I also knew that she wanted. She wasn't happy. Her life was miserable. Her relationships were falling apart.

Our kids didn't trust her. It was not a do this or else. It was a, hey, I think life's going to go better for us if we can figure out how to do this together. What I like for every example you've used, though, is you say the thing that is frustrating you, and then you say, like, what's happening to you when you experienced that? Like, I'm anxious. I'm sad. It taps on my childhood thing.

I notice in my own relationship, sometimes I may miss that step. You know what I mean? If, like, this is the impact it's having on me because our partners ostensibly love us. that's why there are partners. And they don't want to have that impact. So giving them that additional information, I think can be really helpful. A thing I talk to clients about all the time is you have to learn to talk about yourself. I am really good at talking about myself.

I say, this is what it does for me. This is what it feels like. This is what I think. This is what I'm hoping I can get from you. If you start with, hey, you did this and that's a problem. And you start talking about them, then it's really problematic. And people do this in sneaky ways. They don't even sometimes think.

So I'll say I'm feeling anxious. I feel like is not a feeling. It's actually now a thought. I feel like you is no longer a feeling or thought it's a judgment. I feel like you're disrespecting me. Even if I feel disrespected is still, I feel like you're disrespecting me. So I work really hard to talk about myself.

I own like what's inside of me. I ask my clients to do that. The other thing I tell my clients to do is even if your partners aren't good at it, talking about themselves, what if you just gave them the benefit of the doubt and said every single time they open their mouth, they are in fact talking about themselves. Every single time. So I use the same example.

Rebecca walks into a room. She would never do this, but if she did, and she said, you're a big dumb jerk. What I have learned how to do is go, you seem really upset. Seems like you got something on your mind. I need you to talk to me a little bit differently if you want me to hear you, but what's going on for you? I don't absorb or take in that I'm a big dumb jerk, and I don't respond from the part of me that wants to defend that because that's only going to put us in a different cycle. And so I go, I'm not really interested in engaging with the part that's calling me names, but it sounds like there's

something on your mind that I'm interested in hearing about. You got to learn how to talk about yourself and you got to learn how to let a partner and talk about themselves. That's a big piece of it for me. So like if we're saying something and we're maybe a little bit activated, is there a way that we can have our partner say like, okay, I feel like this is about how you're feeling at this moment. You have to kind of pre-negotiate a lot of that. I can't decide right now that the best thing for me to do is to go, oh, Rebecca, looks like you got something going on, you need to simmer down. We can decide, though, in advance, hey, if one or the other of us is speaking out of turn or speaking in a way that's not helpful, why don't we have a code word? We used to have a phrase is a restaurant

near our house called Royal Unicorn. It's just a Chinese karaoke restaurant. If anybody in our house says Royal Unicorn, it means stop. Let's just start over. This isn't going the way we thought it was going to go. Why don't we just back up like, I don't know, 90 seconds or something. We have a lot of those now embedded in our just natural vocabulary. But sometimes then you're not skilled, as skilled as like a marriage therapist might be, or sometimes you have to pre-negotiate that and then come up with literally ridiculous things like hand signals or Royal Unicorn, which means, I love you. I'm not interested in hurting you. I don't have the skills to solve that problem right now. How about we take a break and we'll come back? That's what it means. But because if it means

buzz off, get out of my face, I can't handle you anymore, that's always a problem. So you've got to find like the ways to kind of pre-negotiate the reality of we're not really that good at this, but we can get better. Was there anything else that you learned during these difficult periods in your marriage that changed the way that you show up now or tools that you began applying? So many. I mean, the thing about being a in my job as a therapist is, you know, people will say, oh, you must have a perfect marriage lady on the plane just the other day.

I was like, I don't have a great marriage. I just don't have any excuses. It's like the plumber who has no excuse for his pipes are leaking. Maybe I don't want to do that work, but you got to at least make sure your pipes aren't leaking. The other piece for us and we would both own that if we grew incrementally in years, say one to five, five to 10, 10 to 20, 20 to 30, whatever that is, math. Once we both started getting sober, it changed everything in terms of the way that we actually leveled up in our relationship. I'm not a sobriety guy. I don't preach sobriety from the mountaintop.

I know that for us, for me, I was in this version of my brain that was so quick to judge and to defend and to deflect and to minimize and to resent. I had so much access to that that now I just have less access to. And she has a similar version. It's like so quick to control or to manage.

And now we're just both in much more sober brain. that we can operate. I know that I have a responsibility to be healthy and sober and attentive and touch with myself so that I can show up in my relationships in a better way.

I don't know if that's a lesson that I learned as much as just an experience that I have come into. What are the most common reasons that you don't see men doing the work in relationships? Because they don't have anybody

who's ever modeled it for them. Like most of us were raised by guys who were raised by men who didn't, most of us, meaning people of my age, I'm 52, you know, my dad was raised by a guy who had literally no access at all to his own emotional intelligence. It was all about provision and performance and at the beginning of my dad's generation, we're starting to learn from scratch how to actually do emotional intelligence and relational intelligence. And so the trickle down has just been a lot slower than we would like. But even if you look at

characters on television, they're either hard masculine men. or they're idiots, they're Homer Simpsons, right? Like there's nobody in the middle who's doing this like clumsy navigation on behalf of good relational health that really kind of shows up. Those guys are only starting to get written. Ted Lassow. Ted Lassar is a really good example of a guy who's confident in himself, is aware of his own grief, has clear about his principles, and he's not trying to make anybody else conform.

He's always invitational. But there aren't just a lot of models for men to learn how to do this. Who are models that are still kind of toxic that are on TV today, that we might be revering societally? Oh, geez. You know, I don't watch a lot of that because I can't, I can't stomach it. You take a show like Succession and everybody loves Succession because it was so real and it was whatever. There was no tenderness.

The aspiration was to be more successful. It was to climb the ladder. It wasn't to be more emotionally intelligent. I'm more of a scapist when I come to the kind of media that I want to consume. I think there's a difference when we're talking. talking about men not doing the work between he can't do the work and he doesn't want to do the work. And I think that's what a lot of us are trying to suss out when we're in these relationships. Yeah, 100%. And you need to be able to do both. You need to have the desire and the capacity to do the work.

Because if you have one or the other, you're going to get thwarted, basically. Is there a way to tell, like, if the struggle is he doesn't want to or you literally just, like, has not had the models. We just need to infuse the relationship with this information with this act. access. In my office, I can come up with ways to figure out if they want to or not. Because sometimes I just hold up a mirror and go, look, if you don't change, you're not going to get what you want out of this relationship. Your partner's already said it's not working for them. They've come in here. Now you've been witnessed. So do you want to change or not? Well, yeah, I want to change. Oh, how much? On a scale on 1 to 10, how interested are you in changing? And they might say 10.

I go, prove it. Here's what we're going to have to do. And then sometimes they'll face what they have to do. And they'll go, oh, I don't know if I can do that. I'll teach you. I'll teach you. you how to do that. I can teach you how to do that. Or I don't know if I want to do that. Oh, well, then now we're back to square one, which is fine. It's okay if you don't want to. It just means you can't have this relationship. I just feel like a lot of men don't know what's on the other side. Like they've never actually had like a deep vulnerable relationship. They've skimmed the surface relationally for a lot of their lives. And they're kind of like, well, it's worked out for me so far. So why would I put an effort? 100%. That's what they've had. And a lot of these

skills that they do have that make them very successful in their careers don't translate over into when they clock out. If I'm a really good salesman or I'm a really good, you know, competitor or ladder climber, great. I hope that makes you a ton of money, but you can't come home and be a salesman or a ladder climber and expect to have intimacy with someone who's looking to feel more emotionally connected to you. Is there a way to like show them the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow though? Like here's the reward for doing this work. Yeah, I think so. Ultimately have to ask them what they want. Oh, I want to feel more connected or I want to feel closer. Sometimes you have to help them be honest about that. Sometimes what they want is to be left alone. Sometimes what they want is to have their

partner just thank them for all the stuff that they're doing. You go, okay, that's a fine thing for you to want. This particular partner isn't super interested in that. I feel like a lot of times what they want is for their partner to be happier, but without them having to do additional work to get there. Yeah. And I think it's my job and the job of this sort of movement toward emotional intelligence to help people go, that's a fine thing to want. It's just not going to happen in this context with this person. You just need to find a different partner who's willing to settle. Wait, that feels like a huge statement. If people come in and say, I want relationship A.

And maybe his partner says, I want relationship X. You go, okay, well, we have to figure out whether or not either of you is willing to give the other one what they want. If you're not, though, it's reasonable to go, maybe we're not the right partners for each other. That's a reasonable thing to do if people are saying, this is what I want out of a relationship, or this isn't what I signed up for. I've heard that a lot. This isn't what I signed up for. Okay, what'd you sign up for?

Sign up for this. Are you into that? Can you do that? No, I can't do that. Oh, we're having a different conversation now. But can you do that? Yeah, I can do that. I need some help.

And that's more often what happens. I'm not trying to drive people apart. But when you give people the math, either it changes or it stays the same. The alternative is, get out. Don't do it anymore. That's math. Yeah.

You know? It feels so scary. Yeah. And that's when people start to go, oh, I don't want that. Oh, that's. That's the thing that will make you change. So sometimes they have to face, oh, I might lose this whole relationship.

Well, I don't want that. So now I'm going to start working. It's a principle of leverage, basically. Are there other things outside of, like, abuse or the big glaring red flags? But when people come into your office, are there other signs they exhibit that you're like, this relationship is not going to work out long term? It's hard because there's definitely research that says these things will tend to be predictive of relationship demise.

All of that comes out of the body of the Gottman Method couples therapy research. For me, it's almost like I can smell it in like 90 seconds. When a couple comes in, you can almost tell right away whether or not they are both bought in in a way that's going to get them the thing that they want. Wait, so is that the thing being bought in? The biggest green flag that we're looking for is being bought in in, in your mind, the biggest predictor of success. Yeah, it's being bought in not just to I want to stay married, but it's I'm bought into the idea of staying married or connected in. a new way. I feel like it's the Carol Dweck growth mindset, kind of right? It's like the belief in the possibility that you can make this progress. It's that, but it's almost, there's a little

bit of an extra chapter, which is like, can you believe in the possibility, but can you actually envision what that possibility is? Like, can you actually draw a picture of it? So I'll say to clients all the time, usually in the first session or two, particularly if they have kids, I'll say, let me tell you something's going to happen. So in about 10 years, your children are going to be in front of a therapist. And the therapist is going to say, tell me about your parents. Tell me what it was like to grow up in their house. Tell me what you learned about relationships from your parents. And then they're going to start talking.

And we have a pretty good idea right now of what they would say because you've already told me about your story. I know I kind of got a good idea. What do you want them to say? Oh, I want them to say this. What else do you want them to say that we laughed? I want them to say that we manage conflict well. I want them to say that we're really good friends.

Okay, that's now the work. And a lot of times people, all they know is they want it to be different. For Rebecca and I, it's not that we have a perfect marriage. It's that we've three times come up to the edge. and said, I don't know if we can do this anymore, and somehow we found our way back. That's the story we want our kids to tell, that our family's really good at repair. So it's not only being bought in. It's being bought into the work in the present moment, but also being bought into a vision of a

potential future. I think so. Yeah. I think the Gottman method, by the way, is brilliant. And they should teach a relationship 101 in college so that they can have a template for here's what works and here's what doesn't work. Some people have gotten lucky and they've got some of it or they've gotten parents who modeled it for them. Everybody's got parental trauma. So it's not, you can do it exactly right. Your kids are

going to whine about it. You can do exactly wrong. Your kids are going to whine about it. That's not my point. But not a lot of people have a clearly articulatable idea of what it means for them to be in relationship. Sometimes we just get lucky and we kind of ride the puppy love thing or the limerence moment until we get into the stuff. We got all this sunk cost, but we haven't ever formed like this is what a relationship is meant to be kind of philosophy. And is that different person to person? I think it can be. I think it should be. What the Gottman method is done is. Here's what it is broadly across generations and cultures. What is it broadly? Have a strong friendship, manage conflict like adults, and have a shared vision. All the friendship stuff that is so easy at the beginning of a relationship, atrophies, when you start to have kids and mortgages and jobs and broken arms and cancer diagnoses and all this other stuff, the friendship goes away if we don't steward it.

Well, manage conflict like an adult. I think almost every conflict can end if at any point anybody said, hey, what do we both want here? I'd just like to go to bed feeling more connected and less sad. How about you? I'd like that too. Okay, great. Maybe we won't have the rest of this fight. Would you like some ice cream?

Having a shared vision, even for a conflict, can get you out of it. If we're competing or we don't want the same thing, we're not even clear about what we want at all. I don't know how you get it. Can you speak briefly to what some of the research says are those signs that people are going to break up? The first one is thinking about divorce. So couples who think about divorce get divorced more often than couples that don't think about divorce. Is that why when your friends get divorced, your likelihood of divorce goes way up because you're literally just thinking about it more? There's some evidence about that.

Very simply, people who think about running marathons run more marathons, people who don't think about it. So if you're around runners, you're more likely to run marathons. If you're around a bunch of divorced people, you're going to have inputs in your life that help you gain access to that kind of thinking. That doesn't mean your divorce friends are going to recruit you into divorce world. It just means there's a thing that says when I think about this, I'm more likely to do it. The second one is, this is kind of the part that I would say I can tell in 90 seconds. But when you have a couple come in or a couple starts to tell you their story and you can hear them focus on all the problems and the hard things and the challenges without talking about how they overcame hard things and how they grew closer through the challenges and how they navigated things, it tends to be predictive of how they'll do the future. Can we change that?

Yeah. Okay. I think you can. I mean, I'll ask all the people. I mean, they'll tell me blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, do you learn anything? How did you navigate that? Did it keep you from doing it the next time?

If the answer is no, I go, I don't know, I'm going to grow that skill. The third one is my favorite. It's called the failure of repair attempts. It's a tricky one in the research because you think that repair is based on the quality or the frequency of the repair, but it's not. It's based on the receiver's ability to take it in. So, like, if I apologize to you and you go, you're not sorry, you're going to do it again.

That is actually the problem. Even if my apology was crappy, if you can't receive it, if you can't take it in, it's a predictor of relationship demise because there's no way for a guy. And it's my focus clinically for client. I'm not worried about whether or not they fight. I'm worried about whether or not they repair.

Is there a hack or a secret to being good at repair? For me, it's being willing to lose. I will lose the short game every time if it means I win the long game. It's hard to sell that to people who feel like they're always losing, but I actually think you can be smart about it. Like, I'm not really losing.

I'm just like... Because you're winning the long game. Yeah, I'm winning a longer. You're playing the long game. Yeah, totally. Okay. And then the last one, it's called the Four Horseman, the Apocalypse.

And those are four behaviors that Dr. Gottman showed us that said, when these are present and uncorrected, they tend to predict relationship toize. So it's criticism and defensiveness. And then the third one is stonewalling, and the last one's contempt. They all have different ways of showing up. They all have different antidotes.

It's not that you're doomed if you have them. I think we all have them. They're doomed if you have them and you don't try to correct them. Are there certain types of work that you feel like men are better at doing and certain types of work that you feel like women are better at doing? I'm not as quick to divide people into men and women. I do think there's masculine and feminine energy. I think that you can have the more kind of grandiose energy in the relationship.

And I think men are quicker to do that. I think you have more of a kind of a conciliatory or a passive energy. I think women gravitate there more naturally. But I wouldn't say it's universal. And each of those has a different variable to address. I just feel like in so many of my friends, I see the same patterns over and over and over where like she feels like she's taking on a lot of the load and she wants him to show up in a different way.

And he wants her to stop nagging and trying to control his life. Like do you feel like you see those sort of... Yeah, that's pretty standard one. I mean, and there's all kinds of labels that are easy, like pursue or distance or whatever. I think when you flip it over, part of what you have to train people to do is ask and answer this question, which is, how can I give you what you need in order for me to get what I want? So I want you to stop nagging me. How do I give you what you need in order for me to stop nagging you? Not can you just stop nagging me? Could you stop nagging me?

Because if you stop nagging me, no, it's like, hey, it seems like you're nagging me. And I know you're not a nag. And I know you don't want a nag, but that must mean that you're, you don't have something that you want is like the super niggum. of version of it. He doesn't want her to nag. And she wants him to take on more of the mental load. Yeah. So so that she doesn't have to nag. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So listen, I want you to take on more of the mental load. What do you need for me? It's not less nagging. She's already done less nagging. And then he wasn't taking on more of the mental load. Yeah. What do you need for me to get you to take on more of the mental load? Do you need reminders? Do you need a daily

email? Do we need to have a list of things that are each of us in a column? I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the solvable part of that is, but the unsolvable, The underneath part is saying, how do we negotiate in good faith so we both go what we want here? What do you need for me so that you can get what you want? How do I give you what you need in order for me to get what I want? How do I give you what you need in order for me to get what I want? Yeah. So we don't learn how to negotiate that like this.

We learn how to negotiate by going into a car dealer and saying I want as much car as possible and I want to pay as little as possible for it. That's the reasonable thing to do with the car dealer. But that's the shitty thing to do with your partner. Yeah. I know what I want. I want to pay as little as possible for that. So you got to go, look at it what I want.

And because I want it and I want to stay in this relationship, I want to fairly compensate you. So how do I give you what you need in order for me to get what I want? That's what we're chasing. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life. And most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more.

Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning. You're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. Because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had much money to spend on any of these things because it is such a big needle mover. The birch mattress is incredible. It is made with organic cotton, natural latex, and ethically sourced wool. So it has literally no off-gassing. You can not smell anything. right when you unbox it, it has no microplastics, no synthetic foams or flame retardants. And the wool makes it so breathable, which if you've listened to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know that I run very, very hot. Like I am a furnace. Zach has basically accepted that sleeping next to me is like sleeping next to like a little fire. And the birch mattress has been a game changer for that. It's made me sleep so much better. Like I can see my sleep score going up

because I'm not hot all night long. It's also hypoallergenic. which is really worth paying attention to if you find yourself waking up stuffy or congested. Dust mites in a conventional mattress can actually impact your breathing and your sleep quality without you even realizing it. And again, we need to be able to breathe to get good sleep and getting good sleep is the foundation of our health. And then comfort-wise, Zach sleeps on his back and then I sleep on my side and my stomach. So we have two completely different sleep styles and we both wake up feeling really good, no aches and pains. CNN actually named the Birch mattress, the best mattress for side sleepers, and Wired named it the best organic

mattress period. So there you go. Birch has options for every kind of sleeper in your household. They have three firmness layers. I like the Lux Natural, which is the medium one. And then parents, they even have a Birch Kids natural mattress. Birch ships right to your door. It sets up in minutes, and it comes with 120-night risk-free trial. So if it is not for you, they will pick it up for free. You have nothing to lose here. I want all of you to enjoy a deep restful night sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com slash Liz Moody for 20% off. That is birchliving.com slash Liz Moody. And you're going to get 20% off birch living.com slash Liz Moody. You guys ask me constantly if the hype around red light is real. And the answer is yes, but with one

huge caveat. Most of the devices on the market aren't actually powerful enough to make a difference. But if you get one that is, it can transform your skin, your pain, your energy, your hair, even your mood. I know it sounds too good to be true. So here's the science in the nuttiest of nutshells. Red light targets your mitochondria, the powerhouses of your cells, giving them more energy to repair, regenerate, and function better. That's why you get the local benefits wherever you're using the red lights. You get less knee pain or cramps or better skin or thicker hair. But also, because you are helping your mitochondria, you get general benefits like more energy and less anxiety.

There are literally thousands of studies spanning everything from faster recovery and healthier thyroid function to reduce depression and anxiety, reduce joint pain, skin and hair health, all because the light works on the mitochondria wherever you place it and on your body as a whole. The huge problem is that the vast majority of red lights on the market are nowhere near the right dose level or what's called a radiance to actually have those benefits. That is why I love Loombox. it was founded by a doctor who could not find a device that actually met these studied standards to have real results. So she made her own. It is a lightweight portable panel. You can hold it in your hand.

So you can use it for your face. You can use it for your scalp. You can use it anywhere that you need it. It's really easy to travel with, which is so nice. I love putting it on my head for headaches. And it is a godsend for cramps. And of course, I use it every single day on my skin. Each bulb amidst both red and near infrared light, wavelengths and irradiens are third party verified.

It's FDA registered, which is so rare. It's really less of a beauty gadget and more of a medical device that also happens to be great for beauty. So if you have been curious about trying red light therapy, Lumebox is the one that I would recommend. And right now you can get 40% off, 40% off when you go to the loombox.com slash Liz. One more thing. If you have an HSA or FSA, Loonbox may qualify as a medical expense through TrueMed and qualified customers save about 30% on average. You can head to trumed.com slash Loombox to check your eligibility before you buy. TrueMed is for qualified customers. HSA, FSA tax savings vary. Again, though, go to the loombox.com slash Liz for that 40% off.

Being able to eat bread and pasta and feel good afterward is the definition of an ideal life. Luckily, there are a few ways to make the world's best foods like breads and pastas even better for you. The first is to freeze them. Cooling your cooked carbs turns them into something called resistant starch, which is essentially a gut superfood. Next, eat sourdough. Sourdough is fermented.

It's easier to digest. It has better impacts on blood sugar. It has more bioavailable nutrients. It is also delicious. It has this really tangy, addictive flavor. But this is very important. So listen up. Most of the sourdough that you see in the grocery store is.

is not real sourdough. A lot of the brands basically add yeast and they speed up the fermentation process and all these other ways. And the fermentation process is what gives the benefits. Which is why I am so excited to tell you about wild grain.

Wild grain is the first baked from frozen subscription box for fresh, clean, and high quality artisanal breads, pastries, and pastas. And yes, they not only have real long fermented sourdough that you can pop into the oven at home and you get a fresh baked loaf in 25, minute, but also the best gluten-free sourdough that I have ever tried in gluten-free sourdough is like literally impossible to come by. It's a unicorn. The bread is amazing. It is the main

bread that we eat in my house, especially because Zach is gluten-free. So having that gluten-free sourdough option is just so, so helpful. But if I am being very honest, the cookies and the croissants are my favorite thing, being able to pop just one croissant into my toaster oven and get one perfectly baked croissant or one perfectly baked like fresh baked cookie is just a dream and and because every single thing is delivered to you frozen you are getting all of those resistant starch benefits too imagine having fresh bakery quality bread pastries and pasta at home without any trips to the store and do not just take my word for it they have over 40,000 40,000 five star reviews and they were voted the best food subscription box by USA Today for three years. in a row. For a limited time, Wildgrain is offering our listeners $30 off your first box plus free croissant for life. Oh my gosh, free croissants for life. What a dream when you go to wildgrain.com slash Liz Moody to start your subscription today. That is a whopping $30 off your first box plus free croiss for life when you visit wildgrain.com slash Liz Moody. You mentioned

Gottman techniques. You're one of the only people in the world who's certified both in the Gottman therapy techniques and then also Terry Reel's relational life therapy. How do those two modalities differ and how they would approach a relationship? I'm really grateful to have access to both. Like I said about Dr. Gottman's work, it's like Relationship 101. It is the basics. There's a lot of tools in that and the research. What Terry ended up like building his career on is the idea that you can have all the tools in the world.

But if you don't know how to show up in a relational integrity space, you're going to leave your tools on yourself. You can weaponize them. I see people weaponizing tools all the time, even if it's me. Well, Zach said that you're not supposed to. I mean, that's not coming from a healthy place. As somebody who's been in couples therapy, it's so hard not to do that. Like, it's so hard not to be like in the middle of a fight and be like, well,

our therapist would not like that you're saying that, you know? Trying to resource your position by outsourcing your health versus claiming your own. If you're borrowing me, and I tell people to borrow me all the time as long as they do it as friends. Okay. You know, like, oh, remember that thing that Zach said? We should do that. Let's try that. Not like, Zach said this.

Or I'm going to tell Zach. Oh. I can't tell you how many people come and they go, well, I didn't want to say this yesterday, but now that we're here, I'm going to say this. And I'm like, what, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to declare you the winner? Like, what do you want me to do with this tattling that you've brought to me? So Terry says other methodologies will give you tools.

We work with the part of you that doesn't use tools. So there's a lot more emphasis on. on why do you show up this way? Is it trauma? Is it a diagnosis? Is it a lack of skill that you just don't have or never had? Why don't you do that? And can you confront that part?

Because when you can confront that part and really lean into being a like a functional adult, then you can grab these tools. But if you can't grab that part, then you don't really have a chance. Are any of those reasons you might not be showing up in relationship permission giving? Like, I have a lot of girlfriends and their partner has a diagnosis like ADHD or autism and they're like, well, I can't make him do this for the kids because he has ADHD. So that's not a fair thing to ask. What do we do with that?

Those are complicated because ADHD and autism, they show up in ways that are relationally challenging. They're really hard because people drop balls or they don't have access to empathy. If we swap it out, though, and we say, oh, it's cancer or glaucoma, at some point we have to appreciate that the diagnosis is an imposition on the relationship. We have to be responsible to treat the diagnosis. Like, it would be irresponsible for the cancer guy to not. do chemo or the alcoholic to not get sober or the guy with ADHD to not employ the right

kind of resources to support the fact that he's in a relationship with somebody who is being subject to challenges because of the diagnosis. So they need to get on meds or they need to get a coach. It's not just a license to not show up because if it is, then she could say, yeah, that's not working for me. I'm not going to be able to stay in this relationship while you have untreated ADHD that is wreaking havoc on my ability to stay sane or safe in the relationship. I'll hold that mirror up to him. I'll say, you can't do this without some care or without some empathy about how it's affecting your partner. But ADHD is wicked because it does create this parent-child dynamic that the person with ADHD has actually

been suffering their whole life. People have been like, not like that. Don't do it that way. No, try again or hold on or where are you and like they've naturally built up a sensitivity to and a rejection of feeling parented by another adult. Of course they have. And if they're not course correcting in the way that they're showing up because of their diagnosis, they can't just get a free pass and say, well, it shouldn't matter to you because their partner didn't sign up to be somebody else's parent for the rest of their life. It's so interesting. One of the core questions of my life is this idea of what do we owe to each other? When I was two years old, my mom got in an accident and she had severe brain damage as a

result of it and all these things. And my parents ended up getting divorced as a result of this accident. I went through a period where I was extremely agoraphobic and anxious for well over a year in total. And I'm like, what if that had been two years, three years? At what point does Zach not owe it to me, my Zach, not you, to stay in the relationship because I have this formative experience of my parents. of my parents separating and saying that they didn't know each other that, you know.

And so I do think it's like a thing I think about constantly is if I have depression for a long time or if your partner can't find a job for three years, four years, five years, like, what do we owe to each other? As a person who, I mean, we both have mental illness challenges. We both have addiction challenges. This question of what do we owe each other is easier to tackle when I know that she's taking care of her side of the street, like when she's done. doing it and and when she knows that I'm doing it. We both hit our, you know, rough spots when

we looked across the relationship said, you're not doing anything. You're not doing, you're not doing anything about this. And, and sometimes you're paralyzed, depression is wicked. Yeah. Man, depression says you can't do anything about this. Yeah. Depression says, I'm going to press you down. I'm going to depress you onto this couch and you're not going to move. So I think at some level, we have to just be honest with how we're resourcing ourselves, you know, how I'm, I'm resourcing myself or how your Zach is resourcing himself while you work out the thing. But if you're not working out the thing, that's the new question, right? Liz, what are we going to do about this?

Liz, what can be done? Nothing? Can nothing be done? Is this what we're doing forever? And you might not know. And it's not a question you can answer in a satisfying way when you're actually struggling. I heard somebody say the other day for the first time, it's hard to forgive the thing that's not changing. Like, I can forgive you. But if it just keeps going on and on and on, it's really.

really hard to keep digging into the forgiveness well and pulling from it. That's human. And some people are long suffering and they do it. They're wired for like, no, I am in like Flynn forever. This is my person, you know, and they have their conviction that the high side is higher than the low side is lower. And people don't have that. Do you think it always takes two to tango or is sometimes one person just really the problem in a relationship? I don't believe in zero and a hundred, but I probably believe in one in 99. Like, does it take two to tango? Yeah, somebody's got a tango at least one percent.

With my clients who are capable and ready and interested and eager, I encourage them both to take 60 percent. Aim at 60. If you both are taking 60 percent. Like of the accountability? Yeah. What if somebody's like, no, I'm one percent response. Like, what do you get by encouraging them to say, no, I'm 60 percent responsible?

Well, you get an extra 20 percent. You got two people who are taking. You got 120 to play with. If you only there showing up for one, you better hope that your partner shows up with 99. You know? So if you can show up with 60, which means I'm doing my work, I'm showing up, I'm committed to being an adult, even in my dissatisfaction. I'm committed to owning my resentment in ways that I can.

Can I ask, this is maybe a weird question, but like I don't know the right way to articulate this. I have a number of girlfriends who feel like, what am I getting out of being in a good relationship anymore? They're like, I can use a sperm donor. raise kids with my parents and raise kids with my girlfriends and probably do less work. I won't have to take care of the mental load in my house, et cetera, et cetera. Do you think there is an argument for women continuing to stay in relationships with men

who aren't socialized in this way to do this work? I hear this a lot. And I can fund it a lot too. You know, I think that people come into my office. I help them stay married because that's what they're paying me to do. They want to stay connected. They realize that this asset that they have is valuable to them and they want to project it. They want to resource it.

So that's what I help people do. But I go home every day and go, why? Maybe you don't need a person. Maybe you can avoid all this trouble. It feels like a lot of work sometimes. It is a lot of work. And you're kind of like what makes this work worth it? Yeah.

That's a good question. At the broadest sort of existential level, we're wired to be connected. We're wired to be in relationship with other people. That's all those studies about how babies that are. are held thrive more than babies that aren't held. We know that people who are in securely attached relationships live longer, they're happier, they have better sex. You can line them up all day long. But we do live in a world that begs the question about how necessary and it is. Starting with the kind of the legal contract of a marriage, like how important is that? Well, it's got some benefits,

but it's not serving the same purposes it served when it was invented. Well, and I certainly think it's interesting that it shows that the society at large benefits for, legally bound people, but do the individuals benefit? Yeah, it's a good question. I would say I have. I'm a better person on the planet because of my wife and because of the family that we've created. But more men say that. Like there's the stat.

No, it's true. It's true. Yeah. More if a man, if a man's partner dies, he says he's way sadder. His life is way worse. And if a female, if their partner dies, this is just statistically. Like, obviously there's individual cases. She often feels freer.

She feels happier, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So like you, would your wife say? I think she would. Yeah. But you're not wrong. I mean, I think it's a, the phenomenon is real. I mean, women are more capable of being in relationship with communities than men are.

One of my closest friends, she was like, yep, I'm out. I'm not doing men anymore. But I'm going to have babies. And she has two babies now and she's happy as clam. She's just Megan and her kids. And then you have the whole male loneliness crisis and all these things. And people are very worried that men are being sort of societally left behind. They're not making as much money anymore.

They are watching a lot of porn. Poor guys. They're not, they're scared to talk to women in public, et cetera, et cetera. But it's like, is that women's problem? I don't think so. Women should be choosy and they should continue to raise the bar. The problem is when they raise the bar higher than a guy has the bar for himself, that's a recipe for resentment.

What I would encourage them to look for is guys whose bar for themselves is higher than the bar that these women have set for their partners. Where do we find these men? So what would you tell a woman who's like, I have created this incredible life for myself and I can't find a partner who even begins to match that who wouldn't require me to do even more work on a day-to-day basis? Yeah. I would say I'm really sorry and I believe you.

And if you want to come over for dinner, you can hang out at our house anytime you want. I wouldn't point them in any specific direction. I think there are guys out there who are interested in doing work, but it's only because they've come to the end of themselves and said, oh, this thing hasn't worked out for me based on the rules that I've inherited. I almost think like the guys you ought to look for are like widows, guys who have done relationship and then lost it, but not because of their own, not their fault. They didn't get divorced or they didn't get left or they didn't. My girlfriend's in their 20s and 30s are listening and they're like, where do I find

widows? Where are these widows? I have a friend. I have a friend. She's in her 40s and she actually works as a chaplain at a hospital. She's like, well, there's a flaw with these guys because they're usually a hot mess and they need somebody to clean them up and all this other stuff because, you know, she just helps people die all the time and her job. And I was like, oh, well, that's, I guess not, the theory doesn't hold as much water as I hoped it would. The thing I tell my audience is that there's so many paths

to a good life and to kind of as much as possible for yourself of the societal notions that there is just this one journey we can all take. But then they say back to me, well, yeah, but I want a partner. That comes to your question of like, what are you willing to give up to gain what you want? Well, and I think the other thing is, you know, who knows what people's evaluation criteria is, but with couples in my office, I always say one thing that you have to face, the high side higher than the low side is lower. If it's 51 to 49, you have a choice. You can look at the 49 that you don't have and go, I wish I had more.

Or you can look at the 51 that you do have and go, okay, I got this. I'm working with this. It's a lot easier to do that when it's 90 to 10. But when it's closer to the edge, you know, part of it is evaluating like, what is it that I want? What is I'm willing to tolerate? What am I willing to give up? The perfect man isn't out there.

I mean, do you watch? I have not seen one man on any TV show or movie that I'm like, that's the perfect man. So I'm very curious. Did you watch 1923? It's the spinoff. Wait, you literally just said the only guy I have a crush on TV, Spencer. Spencer, yeah. Wait, literally, Zach, I have one TV crush and that is it.

Yeah. But I don't actually think he's relationally like that good off. You know, he's in the 1920s. He's spending his time, like, protecting people from large animals in Africa. he has some war trauma. So I wouldn't want to date him, but he is the only TV fish that I have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had a gal telling me about how she was like, yeah, we feel like we're Spencer and, what's her name?

Alexander. Where Spencer and Alex moving to the world? I was like, no, honey, you're with Roger. Who's the one that Alex left Spencer for? Oh, yeah. On the boat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, no, he's Roger.

I think his name's Roger. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I actually don't remember isn't I just because I'm just like all team Spencer. Can I dig into that for a second, though, because there is a whole specter, especially of like the podcast host Manosphere Land, who's like, men don't get to be men anymore. And that's the problems with relationships these days. And it's interesting that in your one idealized male example, you brought up like a man's man. He is shooting things, people. He is saving lives. He is a man's man. Do you think that's part of the problem with relationship dynamics these days? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think we've defined masculinity in a way that doesn't include. include tenderness. It doesn't include softness. It doesn't include playing the long game. But you don't think it's like if we let men be men that would bring a Spencer time. The thing that Spencer's got going for him is he's a man of very clear purpose and it seems at the top of the list is family. Family is at the top of his list. Like that's the reason that I think that he ends up being so like kind of captivating is that he's like, no, I know what I'm committed to.

committed to protecting my family. I'm committed to protecting this woman that I love. So he's not about himself. He's about having a purpose for all of that stuff. And that's the thing I think that sets him apart. So the manosphere world is kind of conflating what it is to be a man, even with these idealized versions of men. Yeah, sure.

You can be a man, but for what? But let's just say it's like I'm going to try and make as much money as for what? Make as much money as possible in order to what? To win, to win. but it's not, domineering. Okay, that's fine. That's okay, cool.

You can do that. And the world is a set up for you to do that. And we have plenty of examples if we look around and people who are wielding power and money to, and influence in ways

that aren't relational. But if it's to serve my family or to elevate my wife or to advance the cause of women on the planet or to equalize inequity, you know, then I'm like, sure, go ahead. Use your male men energy thing to do that.

That sounds like a great vision. But it's not, what people are typically driving at. I'm not typically trying to make the world a better place, trying to make it better for themselves. Have you seen the whole like men should be in their masculine energy more, women should be in their feminine energy more, and that would be better for relationships conversation online? I mean, I've seen.

I don't really pay attention to it too much, but I... Do you think there's any truth to that? You have to decide what masculine energy is. Like if it's just brusqueness and strength, but without tenderness and without self-reflection and emotional intelligence, I mean, I think... some of the most manly men are folks that have that can cry. It's also so hot. Every woman likes it when the men in her life cry.

So the fact that men try not to, I think is crazy because I'm like every woman I know finds it so attracted. Yeah, a lot of men, including me, we're punished for crying. Don't cry. Don't cry. Punished by whom? They're parents. My dad.

Don't cry. That's sweetness. Boys don't cry. And that's ubiquitous in the manosphere. So to unlearn that and then to relearn how to cry is an effort. There are some guys who are invent. vested enough in their relationship or their vision of a relationship that they can actually do it if they try, if they want to.

They just have to confront a bunch of stuff. It feels like a lot of work. So this is what you're saying. If your life is largely working out for you as is, you're not going to have a whole lot of motivation to do all that work. Yeah. Why would I? And there's nothing that we can do as your partner to be like, no.

I mean, I guess there is. The thing we can do is say you're going to start losing. My favorite thing to do is when a couple comes in and she's upset about it. and I look at him and I go, what about you? What's, is it, is a relationship working for you? He's like, yeah, pretty much except that she's unhappy. And I go, okay, he's not going to change. It's working for him.

Except that you're unhappy and that's not enough to make him change. And then he goes, what? And I go, unless, did I get you wrong? It sounded like it was working for you. You know, I want her happy. Oh, then you're going to have to change. You have to learn how to do some stuff that you don't know how to do. Like, be vulnerable and kind and sensitive.

and like do things you don't want to do because you don't think you have to. You say that the average couple waits six years after problems emerge before getting help. Why does it take that long? That's Dr. Gottman's research. I don't know, man. It just takes that long to ask for help. A lot of people think they can do it on their own or maybe it's not that bad. It's not bad enough for me to invest in it.

But, you know, people come to the end of their competence and to the top of their consequences, meaning if this doesn't change, I'm not sure I can do it anymore. And that just takes a little bit longer. I'm not a fan of premarital counseling. I'm not really sure what purpose it serves, except perhaps to establish a relationship with somebody who normalizes asking for help. Like, hey, we got a finance guy, we got a auto guy, we got a dentist guy, we got a relationship guy, normalizing it. Like that you're, it's okay to ask for help is a big part of the process.

Why aren't you a fan of premarital counseling just in terms of like, let's get aligned about kids, money, like all these big things. Number one is I got married at 23, 24. And premarital counseling was like the thing we did with our pastor, but those conversations did not prepare us for anything. We didn't know anything about money or kids or whatever until we actually started grappling with that stuff in real time. I would much rather have had established a quality relationship with someone who could coach and guide and direct me than check a box called premarital counseling

before I got into it. These days, especially where I live in Seattle, a lot of people were coming in to their kind of premarital moment at in their 30s. They're already living together. They're probably sharing money. They have established some patterns, you know, whatever. So what boxes are we checking?

We're not checking the sex box. We're not checking in the money box. We're not checking the in-laws box. It's not even pre-marital counseling anymore. It's just a, it's just counseling. So for me, the idea that somehow you can check the right boxes beforehand or the right conversations beforehand, I don't think anybody knows what they're doing

until they actually start doing it. What might Tyson say something like, everybody's got a battle plan that they got. get punched in the mouth. I think you can expose some perpetual problems that are likely to be around. That's also another big part of the research, of course, like... 67%. I always say just about two-thirds, but, you know, I'm an introvert. I mean, I'm a hardline introvert. My wife's an extrovert, hardline extrovert. Like, we, if we had had more conceptual language around the fact that that was never going to change, that might have been helpful. It might have saved us a year or two,

but it wasn't going to change the fact that I was an introvert and she was an extrovert. It would have just hastened our ability to have conversation about it. I want to zoom out on that just really quickly for people who aren't familiar with that research. It's just that around two-thirds of the problems in a relationship are going to be unsolvable problems, are going to be perpetual problems. The way I always think about that is essentially if you had a deck of cards to choose from and you could choose a few problems that you were going to be dealing with for the rest

of your life, like that's the goal here. You want to make sure that the problems that you're never going to be able to solve with your partner are the problems that you would sign up to have for the rest of your life. Yeah, I always tell people who are thinking about divorcing or like maybe I would just be with somebody else. I'm like, you could. The ratio is going to follow you. There's still two thirds, you know, just be a different menu. I don't think this would be possible really, but it's possible that if I ended up with a marriage with someone else, that I'm now the extrovert and they're the introvert. That could be just a flip. Now we have the same need to learn how to navigate that,

but the dynamic would be different. Like you're always signing up for problems, but what problems are you willing to have forever? Yeah. You sit in therapy sessions with men. You hear all of their private confessions. Are there things that men are commonly thinking or feeling that they're not sharing with their partners? I don't spend a lot of time with men one-on-one. I've always got couples. The thing that they most often, I think, are lamenting is that they don't know how to be vulnerable. They just expect it to be easier. They want it to be easier. They're not all dealing with porn or work stress or insecurity about the Seahawks or something. Most of the men that are struggling or struggling with just a basic lack of skill,

basic lack of context for how to do this thing that they signed up for. This thing being vulnerability? Yeah, or the relationship, right? I mean, the relationship was easy at the beginning. And then it stopped being easy. They haven't stewarded the work themselves enough to know how to actually bridge the gap. And at some level, I go, of course you didn't. You were too busy, like, trying to keep a roof over your head

and too busy trying to raise kids. Of course you never spent time on me. And it feels really good to do the things that you're good at. It feels really good to make money. And it feels really good to coach softball. And it feels really good to be a good cook. But it's harder to work on the things that you're not good at. Like showing up for your pregnant wife or your postpartum wife because you still have to put a roof over your head and still have to keep this baby alive.

And what do you tell those men? I tell them it takes practice. everything that I've said in this room about the way Rebecca and I talk to each other, is practice, literally. I mean, I had therapist tell me, do your eardrums work. Yep. Can you form with your brain a memory of what she just said? Yes.

Can you consider options about what might come out of your mouth? Yep. Does your throat work? Does your voice box work? Yes, it does. All right, so why don't we put all that together and start saying the thing that's actually going to make the relationship better? Born to know how to do that?

No. You actually can put time it. What do you think people look for in relationships that doesn't really end up mattering at the end of the day? And what are things that people don't look for that end up being really important? I think we put a lot of emphasis on optics. And I think we do that as a culture. I remember working these events with like 500 couples. Part of literally the job was I was a rover.

I was to walk around and look. The couples that stand out are the couples you're like, wait, how did they end up together? How did that guy and that girl or that guy and that guy and that guy? end up together, they look like they would never match. So culturally, we are wired to like kind of be with people who are about the same size and age and level of attractiveness and ethnicity. Do we put a lot of emphasis on that in ways that we shouldn't? I don't know, but I know that we are looking through a pretty narrow lens when we're trying to find the person. Or people that we think other people will be impressed by. Or at least won't be judgmental

about. Yeah. I mean, I know a lot of like the standard example is like women looking for really tall guys because they know other women and other men will be like, oh, he's a tall guy, like he's attractive. Yeah. Yeah. I don't get the tall guy thing, actually. Don't get me started on the tall guy thing. But I do think you're choosing something because you want to be perceived in a certain way

at first glance. Yeah. I think it's something back to what you were saying in your cat video about the green flag of guys who are alone and have cats. Like somebody who's actually taking care of a thing or somebody who maybe has capacity for warmth and connection that is underneath the surface. There's things that you can look for. My kids right now, they're both dating men, which is not always been the case, but they're both dating guys who, one of them is really good at being present in a conversation.

One of them is really bad at being present in a conversation. And I think that part of what we're looking for is people who can actually hang in a conversation that maybe isn't going to go the way they want it to go. That's an interesting piece for me. Like how do they handle adversity or how do they handle something that spins out a little bit? Right now, the one kid, he's on the phone with her, playing video games, doing something else at the same time. Like, he's not actually engaged at like the level of conversation. If I could teach young men how to do anything, it would be how to actually be in a conversation with someone. And I'm frankly learning how to do that myself all the time.

But it's like, that's where it's at is can I stay in this conversation with you, not just tonight on this phone call, but for, the next 40 years, you know, can we stay in an ongoing conversation? I think that's something that Rebecca and I do really well is we'll punt out of a challenging conversation in order to preserve the longer version of it, that it really is the important piece of the puzzle. That's a listener question that I get a lot is he doesn't ask me any questions about my life. He doesn't bring up interesting conversation topics. I feel like I'm doing all of that work. How can we help our partners become better at conversation? If those two, in my office, I would say, wow, that's interesting. Are you interested in your wife? Yeah. Why don't

you ask her any questions? Oh, I'm not very good at it. Do you want to get good at it? Because it sounds like that would be really important to her and it might go a long wife for you. Oh, yeah, I'd like to get at it. Okay, well, I want you to buy a box of cards to put on your table and read questions out of this box of cards, you know? But sometimes they have to confront that I'm actually just not that interested. Oh, then yeah, sorry, he's not going to ask you any questions. So you have to decide now whether that's something that you're willing to make a trail. Isn't a lot of relationships talking about shit that you find kind of boring? Yeah.

I think that's a great skill. I think people should have it. Okay. Because like I, my husband is in tech. Like the stuff that I sit there and try my hardest to get my head around. Yeah. You know? But like I feel like that's part of what you're signing up for.

Am I wrong? No. If you go back to the Gottman research, right? Number one, the number one thing at the friendship level is do we, can we maintain curiosity? It's called Enhanced Love Maps, right? Can we stay curious about each other? And at the one level, that's, can we listen to each other and ask questions of each other and discover more facts about one another?

On another level, it's, can I let you surprise me? And can I try to surprise you? Can we create, I wonder what's going on here kind of seen in our relationship? And when that disappears and people are just like, nope, I know how this is going to go, I know how this conversation is going to go, I know how this evening is going to go, and how this conflict is going to go. People stop investing so much. And so you got to go back to keeping that thing active and alive,

the curiosity muscle, so that people can actually feel known and feel appreciated and feel enjoyed. So if we feel like we're the problem, it's like ignite our curiosity and ourselves, can we ask our partner, though? I would like you to be more curious about me. I would like you to get this box of question cards.

Yeah, but at some level, it's like, how do I give you what you need in order for me to get what I want? hey, I really want to do more conversation about nothing for no reason. How can we make that happen? I could get you a box. We could just decide that dinner time is conversation about nothing time. We could download this app and do this thing over here. We could go to therapy.

I could make you listen to Liz Mooges' podcast. How do I give you what you need in order for me to get what I want? Because I need to be engaged intellectually. Now, here's the thing that people are often not saying. And if you're not going to talk to me, I'm going to talk to the barista. and the barista is going to get off at 11, and then I'm going to be hanging out with the brista lingering at the coffee shop at like 11 a.m. And then the brests is going to be really great,

and he's going to ask me a ton of question. You know what I mean? Like this is kind of the unspoken part. You would never threaten that. But every single affair that comes into my office has begun because that curiosity, affection, attention system is broken down at the top. That doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens because all of these things that feel so secure attachment

at the top of a relationship, they atrophy and they diminish. Wait, so every single affair that comes into your office is because that person feels like they're missing curiosity, affection, or attention from their partner? Not necessarily. If you're evaluating a relationship like on a systemic basic, and you call the friendship a system, when there's been an affair, the friendship system is broken down. It doesn't mean that person isn't getting what they need. It means that the secure attachment that they're looking for on the day-to-day basis isn't present. That could be because they're bad at communicating it. It could be that they're bad at asking for what they want. And it's easier. to ask the brista because the brista is being paid to be friendly with you every single day. You know, it could be because your partner is on their computer all the time. And you say good morning and they don't even say good morning.

It could be a lot of things. But usually, and in order to do good work around betrayal in particular, you got to back up to the origin story. And the origin story usually includes this fundamental system of being in touch with each other on a day-to-day basis is broken down. A lot of couples feel like they morph into roommates over the years. Yeah. What do they mean when they say that?

and how do you begin to fix that? Well, what they mean is that there was an energy and an enthusiasm and an eroticism and maybe even a little bit of chaos that fueled the relationship and made it amazing for a while. And then they started to make some decisions to settle down. They brought the energy down and they brought the noise down and they brought the attention factor down. They brought the affection of texture down. So what it means is that they've settled into a pretty standard rhythm that feels good, safe and predictable. and maintainable, but it's come at a cost of energy and enthusiasm and erasm and a

rossism and a little bit of chaos. And so, you know, some people are willing to make that trade. And then they wake up one day and they go, oh, I don't really like this so much. I wish it was different. We have to go back to doing things on purpose and having it cost something that didn't use to cost so much. It didn't used to cost me so much to have sex with you because it was fun. It was enthusiastic.

And it was kind of like if I did it, maybe you were going to marry me. You know, but now I've already got you married. I don't need to try and woo you in that way anymore. So we're fine. Oh, but I wish sex was spontaneous. That'd be great. But it's not. So now you have to figure out how to actually be intentional about it.

That's a thing. So when you feel like roommates, it's basically because you've settled into a system that works. And it's working. It's great. It's actually pretty pleasant sometimes. It just doesn't have the fire that's because you've got to tend the fire. What would be the first thing you would tell somebody

who comes in and they're like, we feel like roommates and I don't want to anymore. I'd say something trite. Like, well, then don't. Like, what would you like to do? I'd like to have more sex. I go, okay, well, then let's figure out how to do that. There's all kinds of angles into that conversation. I mean, mostly what people are saying at that moment is I'd like to have more intercourse

that leads in orgasm at the climaxing at the same time. Like the home run, A plus spontaneous sex. And I'm like, so that's a tough target to aim at right now. Why don't you try making out? You make out with your roommates? No. Why don't you try just standing in the kitchen for no reason and just kissing for five, ten seconds? What is people's aversion to that?

Because I feel like we all know we should be having more sacks. We all know we should be kissing more. We all know we should be more physically affectionate. But then, like, most of us still are not doing that. If I had to make it like really simple, it's that people don't know what sex is for. when you're early in a relationship, sex is for like winning the deal, getting the job. It's fun and it's pleasurable, and if I keep doing this, and maybe I can do it for a long time. Then there's a phase usually that a lot of couples go through with just that sex is for trying to have babies.

And you know who hates having sex? It's people who can't get pregnant. They have to have sex at a certain time and they have to have a certain position and they need to inject themselves and blah, blah, blah. And then maybe you're through those phases or you've weathered them in ways that don't feel great. So now we're on the other side and now what is sex for? I've got the job, I've got the kids, or I've got at least the discharging. struggle of having kids, and that's not as fun. So now is it for. And I think people have not filled that gap in very well, you know, am I allowed to have sex for fun? Because my kids are right down the

hall. I'm married to you now and I've seen you poop. So is it sexy anymore? People don't relax into intercourse into dynamic sex. They have to actually find their way back into that with some intention. Which would be scheduling sex? I think it's like kind of agreeing that sexual intimacy is a ladder, right? Up here is intercourse where we climax at the same time. And down here is we held hands in secret when we weren't supposed to. And then there's this giant ladder in between and you got to kind of come back up the ladder. So that's all kinds of things. It could be just wandering around a sex toy store and whacking each other with dildos or something. It can be waking up the atrophied sexual energy that makes the next thing easier. You know, you can just do incremental little things,

I think that remind you, hey, we're sexual beings. We actually like this. We're good at it. We enjoy it with each other. Let's see what we can learn. A lot of women, I hear from say they want to feel desired and they want sex to feel connected to their partner. But then the way in which their partner approaches sex does not make them feel really desired. How do you approach that?

He's got to learn how to do that better. It's fun to sit with couples and say something like, hey, if you're going to have sex at 7 p.m. on Thursday, how far in advance do you need to know? He'll say, 7 p.m., I need to know by 6.58, you know? Yeah. But how about you, Liz? How far in advance do you need to know?

And you might be like, probably Wednesday afternoon. I mean, I hear something like this a lot. And so I turn to him, I go, you got to start having sex on Wednesday afternoon. You got to learn how to do that because... And that's not like a boob honk. It might be a boob honk, but it might be a boob honk that then says,

just so you know, I'm getting you warmed up. Who knows? You negotiate this in advance. But like, yeah, it's definitely not a boob pump. It's at 655. Yeah. It's more about, oh, hey, what do you think about tomorrow night? And what do you need anything for me?

Maybe I'll clean, you want some dinner? Did it do? How do I do? Yeah. You got to learn what your partner likes. Because men, a lot of times, and I would fall in this category, I was awkward about initiating it because I was protecting myself against the rejection. Like, if I could sort of guarantee rejection, then I wouldn't be as upset about it when it came.

Hong Kong. Oh, that's not the way it's going to go, oh, man. Well, that's your fault, not mine. So I think it's really about practicing that. I have a couple, they've graduated, but this is how they solve that problem, is they have sex twice a week, consistently. Wednesday night, Saturday morning. Wednesday night is for him. Saturday morning is for her.

So Wednesday night, they clock in and he's like, this is what I want to do. This is how it's going to go. This is what it's all about. She's like, I'm in. Let's do it. And that's how it goes. And then Saturday morning, she's like, I would like a sponge bath and I would like you to read to me and I would like you to go down on me and I would like you to make me come and you don't get to. She's like, no problem. I'm in. I'll do it because they know what sex is for. Sex is for us to stay connected in a way that's mutually edifying. And if it's not going to be spontaneous about like who gets to do what, whose turn it is or whatever, they've limited any confusion around initiation and rejection. That's like it work for every couple. I don't like blanket prescribe that, but works for them. because they've taken out a lot of these questions that your people are asking.

When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out are good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters. But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline, and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes, every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level.

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You can say, if I don't get this, I'm going to be mad. And you can say, if I do get this, I'm going to be happy. And I think if you really want to go to couples therapy and your couple's not down, your partner's not down, you say, hey, I really think this is important. I want to do this. I would love for you to do it with me. And they go, I don't want to. Then you kind of have to go, well, then I'm going to be sad. Or you say, okay, what alternative you got for me?

People say, I don't think we need couples therapy. Okay, I need something. So if it's not couples therapy, what ideas do you have? Oh, I think we could do it on our own. Okay, great. Can you lead that? It's too expensive. You're right?

You know what? We could take a workshop. We could sign up for this online course. Would that work? You could read a book together. You could read a book together. There's all kinds of objections. I think number one is you say, this is what I want.

It would make me feel really good and see if you can't get some traction there. If you're going to be met with a no, then I think you need to ask for what the yes is. I think if you're going to offer a no, you need to have a yes. That's the other side of this advice. Like I say yes, 100% of the time. If anybody asks me for anything, I say yes, even if I'm about to say no. So it's just part of the way that I understand how to stay in connection to you, not to give you the thing that you want, but to stay connected to you.

He said, Zach, I want you to whisk me off to Paris. right now. If you said that to me right now, I would say, that sounds amazing. Paris is amazing. I would love to get a parent. In fact, I just went to Paris and it was the coolest place. I'm not going to take you. I think we both get in a lot of trouble. I'm going to say yes so that you don't feel embarrassed or ashamed or disconnected from me. You know. That's an interesting life hack. I do it every time. Every single time. Every single time. Every time. It's like hardwired into me right now. It's almost like annoying. My kids are on to me. They're like, we need to ask him twice. Because I'm like, yeah.

Sure, that's a great idea. I love it. Like you're validating the question, essentially. Yeah. And then you're offering your real answer. Well, here's the real. I'm saying yes to you. But perhaps no to the question.

Maybe saying no to the thing. Yeah. But I'll say yes to you first every single time. Yeah. Does therapy work even if our partner does not want to be there? No. Therapy doesn't work. Therapy doesn't work.

So if they agree to do it for us, is that enough of a want? No, here's the reality. Therapy doesn't work. 12-step programs don't work. Podcasts don't work, workshops don't work, small groups at your church don't work, people work. Couples work or couples don't work. There's nothing I can do for a couple that is not interested in working. If they come and their partner doesn't want to be there, I will say the same thing over and over again,

which is you can do the work. You can work. And if he doesn't work, that's on him. That's his loss. But you can do the work. And it's the right thing for you to do. It's the right thing to do for this relationship. Can you do the work in absence of your partner doing?

What does that look like? You learn how to say yes, 100% of the time. your partner says, you're nagging me so much. And I hate that you're nagging me all the time. Can't you just be grateful for what I've done for you? And you go, I have nagging you a lot. And I am grateful. This is really amazing.

I love most of our life. And yeah, I'm still pretty frustrated. I'm still pretty disconnected. So I guess I'm going to go, I guess I'll go read a book. I guess I'll go for a walk. I guess I'll go call Sherry or John. If you're going to solicit change, it's going to be because you did it from a healthy place. if you solicit change out of an unhealthy place, it's not going to last.

I asked my audience to share some of the real struggles that they're facing in their relationships. These are all going to be anonymous. But I will say that reading through them, my biggest takeaway is how many of us share struggles. Like there was a lot of repeats. I saw my relationship in a lot of these. So I just want anybody listening to know that if you feel alone in your relationship

struggles, you are definitely not. 100%. Let's start with. How do I support my partner when he's in a low place without taking on more load myself? I know a lot of people. people whose male partners, we talked about this a little bit earlier, are struggling right now. They have low self-esteem. They're having job issues. They're having health issues. And they're less equipped. Like we talked about to tackle these than women. So they lose their temper,

they pout, or do they do all these other negative coping mechanisms. But it feels terrible to be like, you suck or you're not doing this right, when they're already in a low place. So relational life therapy has a kind of a model. It's called the center of health. How does one be in the center of health? In this model, it's on a matrix. It's called the relationship grid. people who are in the center of health have appropriate self-esteem and appropriate boundaries. So appropriate self-esteem is I don't have too much self-esteem. I don't see myself too highly and I don't see myself too lowly. We are the same.

I am a healthy human being. You're a healthy human being. You happen to be healthy human being struggling. Healthy boundaries are, I'm not too welled off and I'm not too boundaryless. I'm not going to overcompensate for you. I'm not going to fix you and I'm not going to let your lack of being okay affect my okayness, but I also not going to withdraw or pull myself back. I'm going to be able to speak truthfully and clearly to you about the struggle that you're having.

Now, tactically, with this question, I'm not exactly sure where to go. Part of what I really believe is you stay healthy. You stay in the center of health, appropriate self-esteem, appropriate boundaries, and you invite your partner into that space. So I say, hey, man, you can see that you're really struggling. And I wish I could help. I'm not sure how I need you to help me help you. If you're not going to help yourself, if you're going to wallow in this place, then we need to explore some other kinds of support for you because I can't be all things.

I can't do it all. I'm not going to do none. I'm willing to do about 60%. But I need to step to at least 40 while you're struggling. But ideally aim at 60. That'd be great. Anytime I give my partner any feedback, he gets defensive. This is for sex, for house cleaning, for how we're raising our kids.

How can I share my needs and opinions without triggering him? One of the best possible questions you can ask someone around the concept of feedback is, is now a good time. If you're giving your partner feedback at a time that's not good for them, then it's not going to go well. It doesn't matter what that feedback is. And if the answer is no, now's not a good time, it is his responsibility or their responsibility to tell you when a good time is.

So that needs to be pre-negotiated. If you say, hey, I've got some stuff on my mind that's really important to me that I need to hear about is now a good time. And they say no, then you say, okay, well, when would it be a good time? because it's not going to work for me that never tell you this stuff. Then the other piece I would say is back to the earlier part of our interview is when you're giving feedback,

endeavor as much as possible to talk about yourself. And really talk about yourself. Really talk about yourself. This is what it feels like for me. This is the story I make up about it. Sometimes you can say, I don't think you want it to mean that, but it does to me.

And so I need your help is very different than when you do this, it bugs me and I need to change. When you're going to ask people to change, to change, you need to ask them in a way that works for them. And that's a little bit of a chess move, it's chess strategy. I use the same metaphor all the time. If you have three children and you want them to eat their Brussels sprouts, to child number one, you say, would you please eat your Brussels sprouts? To child number two, you say, you got to eat your Brussels sprouts. You're not getting any dessert. And child number three, you might say, I bet you can't eat 10 brussels sprouts. And the reason you do

that is not because you're inauthentic or manipulative, you do it because you're a good parent and you know who you're talking to. You need to figure out if your partner is child. number one, child number two or child number three, so that when giving them feedback, it lands for them in the way that actually will get them to eat their Brussels sprouts. And that takes a little bit of, like, maybe takes them negotiating. It might just take knowing who you're talking to. If you're providing feedback to someone for whom it's not a good time or in a way that doesn't work for them, I don't know why you would expect it to go well.

I just find it a little annoying that it is often the woman because she cares more about the relationship who's doing that. Jesus Christ, it's another thing that she's. on her plate because he's more satisfied with a less satisfying relationship. Yeah, that's an unfortunate reality of the way that women are often wired vis-a-wee the way men are often wired for sure. That is challenging. And so a lot of times for her, I will say things like, how big of the deal is that to

you? Is the juice worth the squeeze in terms of like, I'm going to bring up this issue or not? And, you know, in a lot of ways in my own family, like I have a lot more feminine energy than my wife does sometimes. I mean, I pick battles all the time where I'm like, I really wish this was different or the relationship would be better if this would happen? And then I kind of go, would it though? Maybe it actually wouldn't.

Maybe it's actually better if I just tuck this one away or deal with it myself. And then I do that. I don't eat shit and then get mad about eating shit. I go, I'd rather save up for the other one that matters to me more. But you're not wrong. Women are generally more aware of and carrying more load and in ways that. that caused them to want to solicit change. And the relationship is often working for guys in ways that they're happy as long as they're

not in trouble. I want to feel more like my partner worships me. Like he's thinking about me all the time and thinks I'm beautiful and a treasure. How do I get him to act more like that? With that one in particular, I'm kind of like, oh, that's sweet. That's funny. You should feel like your partner worships you. I don't know if I love the word worship, but you should feel valued by your partner.

I think a cool thing to do for a couple sometimes is sit down and go, hey, How do you feel valued? Gary Chapman did the five love languages. So I really love words of affirmation. That goes a long way for me. I really love gifts, quality time, acts of service. Aren't they those have been sort of like invalidated? Not really.

It's not that they're invalidated. It's more like there's five love languages, but there's 500 love languages. It is true that we all value different things. That's what the government said when I interviewed with them. They were like, there's like not five. There's so many. Yeah. It is true that we all feel valid.

You know, we experience love in different ways. I like the metaphor because if you met someone and you married them and they spoke Chinese and you spoke German, you would not spend the rest of your life going, sorry, I don't speak German. Yeah. You would learn a little German. You would hope they learn a little Chinese. Like, that's a thing that you would do.

I think to this questioner to say, let's have a, let's do a little audit, a little inventory to see what makes us feel good. I'd like to do more of that. I'd like to give you more of what makes you feel good because it might not be the same as me, but I'm willing to do your thing. I'm willing to speak a little Chinese. If you're willing to speak a little German, can we do that? I'll also add to this. I think everything you're saying is 100% true and social media has made this question more prominent because we see these like couples on our feeds who are spouting their love for each other and sharing gifts and flowers.

That's all made up. As somebody who sees behind the feeds of that, it is all made up. Yeah. Yeah. Which is important to be aware. Yeah. That's definitely all made up. If that's what floats your boat, then just ask for it. And if you can't get it, you can't get it. I resent that my husband spends so much time helping out my mother-in-law, his mom. But when I need him, he's MIA. There's a word in that one that I love that always makes my ears perk up, which is resent, resentment. I think whenever you resent anything, anywhere, you have to acknowledge that that comes internally from a place of entitlement for you. Like resentments are entitlements that don't get delivered upon.

So I think sometimes you have to go back to the origin story of that. Like is there something that you need to be accountable for or some entitlement you need to release in order to overcome the beginning thing, which is resentment? Because resentment isn't going to get you what you want. You're not going to be able to leverage that to get him to pay more attention to you. I think you can say, hey, I don't think you're trying to do this. It's not even wrong. And I actually think it's pretty cool that you love your mom so much. I often feel invisible and I'm starting to choose resentment as a result.

And I don't think that you want that. And I don't want that either. And I'm wondering if we can figure something out. The end product of the work of going through like managing resentment, learning how to ask for you want in a way that makes it work for your partner. I want him to take on more of the load, but he's so inefficient with tasks that I end up getting annoyed and just doing it myself, which makes me resent. there's your word again, him even more.

So what do you really want? For him to do shit around the house. But is that what she really wants? Because what she really wants is for the house to run efficiently. Yes. So how can he help the house run efficiently, not how can he help do more stuff around the house? Because when he does more stuff around the house, she doesn't get what she wants. She gets an inefficient house.

There's a raising the altitude, I think, that people need to do a lot when they're talking about what they want. This comes up a lot, too, when people say, I want. In fact, this is a bit of your earlier question. I want him to go to therapy or I want us to go to therapy. That's not what they want. They don't want to go to therapy. They want change to happen in a meaningful way.

Therapy can help. A book can help. A small group, but your church can help, whatever. So when she's talking about... Step one is like get clear on what you actually want. Yeah, what do you want? Do you want it to be more fair? Do you want it to be more efficient?

Do you want more gratitude for the work that you do do? I want a well-running house without me spending all of my time on it. Yeah. So, I mean, you can say, hey, I need you to do this and I need you to get good at it. And if that's not a thing that you're interested in doing, I'm going to hire a housekeeper. I mean, that's, again, not a blanket solution. There's so many people out there who don't have the privilege of being able to outsource these things. And they feel like they're scheduling the kids' doctors appointments.

They're unloading the dishwasher. They're making the food, et cetera. Yeah. How do we get men to take on the mental load when they don't do it well? I don't know, man. We can teach them. We can figure out what they do do well. I mean, I think, who was it?

I've got it on the podcast. Yeah, we've had it on the podcast. Just sort of like helping them see it and decide, like negotiate. All this comes back to negotiating, sort of pre-negotiating. Like, what can you do? I can't do this. What can you do? What can I count on you to do?

Because I need to outsource the rest. Either to myself or to our kids or to the nanny that I can't afford or to the, you know, whatever. But what can you do? Because we're trying to solve for the same thing. I just want my partner to have an opinion and make a plan. When I ask what he wants, he says, I don't care, whatever you want. He doesn't understand that puts the load on me. How do I get him to take charge?

This is a really tough one. And Rebecca and I live in this place because I do not care. That's what my husband says all the time is he's like, you care more than me. And I'm like, but I, it's exhaust. Even if I care more, it's exhausting to have to choose the vacation destination and choose where we're hanging with our friends and choose where we're living and all that. But you care and I don't care. Yeah.

It's a tough one. I didn't write this one. Yeah. No, it's a tough one, though. This has been probably our most recent. biggest struggle is kind of starting to negotiate this. Because she cares more about getting it right, she also cares more about when it goes wrong. And I'm not willing to make that trade. I don't want to be part of that. So if she's going to say you pick, I'm going to go, I'll pick,

but I don't want to hear about it at all. You don't get to have your cake and then criticize the way I made the cake. Like that's not going to where I will. I will pick where we go to dinner. I don't want to hear about why that's not going to work for you. Okay. And that is the tradeoff. That's how do you give me what I need in order for you to get what you want. Like that's the tradeoff that we're working on making right now. I'm learning how to tell her what I want. And she's learning how to give it to me. Do you think a lot of these partners have almost gotten disconnected from what they want

because they're afraid of getting it wrong and their partner who cares more, caring a lot about that? I think a lot of men are not super duper in touch with their desire and their actual like vulnerable wants and needs. I think that's the thing. want is to be vulnerable in way. That's so interesting. I don't think a lot of men are in touch with that, so it's easier to kind of outsource it and go, no, what I want is for you to be happy, which is true. But if you being happy means I make decisions, we're at a little bit of a crossroad

because I'm not very practiced at that. I'm not really practiced at saying what I want. So the action step is maybe let the one partner say what they want and make the plan a little bit more, but then the other partner needs to be okay with. Yeah, 100%. If Rebecca says, hey, I want you to pick the dinner, and I go, great, we're going to go to this next direction, She goes, no. I'm like, well, fuck it. I'm not, no. Then you pick dinner.

I will have a great time. I can pick off any menu. That's what my husband is. I just want him to perfectly pick what I would have picked for us. I don't feel like that's too much to ask. No, sure. My husband won't stop farting in front of me. I like that he's comfortable, but it's ruining the romance and he just thinks it's funny.

Hey, would you, are you interested in having more sex? Is that what she's asking him? I would. And he might say no, but he goes, yeah, you go, okay, cool, me too. I love having sex with you, especially when you are like a grown-up. And when you fart and think it's funny, it kind of makes me think of you like a six-year-old or a 10-year-old. And I don't think you want that. So maybe we could figure that out a little bit.

This reminds me of I saw a TikTok that was a woman saying, it was giving a presentation. And her husband's like, what's this? And she's like, this is me trying to help you go golf. more. And it was a presentation that was like, okay, when you get home from golfing, what I don't want to hear is, man, that was so hard. I did so bad today. I'm so tired. I'm going to go take a nap. It's, hey, babe, what would you like to do with an equal amount of time? Hey, can I help around the house? Can I make breakfast? Thanks for watching the kids, et cetera, et cetera. And it was framed as though, like, how can I help you golf more? Yeah. She's right. She got it. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any universal

rules around mystery and relationships? Like no pooping, no farting. What do you think about those things? I have no universal rules around that. It's whatever works for every couple. Well, sure, because I think that there's a model sometimes that I'll use about intimacy, which is intellectual, emotional, physical, sexual, and spiritual. So intellectual, emotional, physical, physical is separate from sexual. They're different. And then spiritual intimacy, it doesn't have to be religious for the people it is.

But physical intimacy is a thing that's a privilege that you and I have that we don't share with anybody else. And that could be going to the bathroom with the door open. It could be, hey, take a look at this thing in my crotch. That's physical intimacy. But it's not to be confused with sexual intimacy, which ironically doesn't require proximity. You can be sexually intimate by sending texts or having phone sex or something. No, I don't have any universal rules around that.

But I do think that you ought to put things in the buckets where they belong. Let's do this is the last one. We get stuck in arguments because we remember such different versions of the events that happened. How can we move forward when we don't agree on who said what and what actually happened? This is a big one. It's not uncommon at all. I'm amazed sometimes when a couple comes in and they'll tell me a story about an argument

and it's often enough that I'll hear about it from her and then sometime later I'll hear about it from him. Same thing. And they're two totally different arguments. I mean, I had people tell me about an argument they were having, she was absolutely positive. It was happening in the car. And she was like, no, it was in the kitchen.

I mean, they couldn't even agree on the setting of the story that they were telling. So for me, hearing this happen over and over and over again across many, many years and many, many couples, I realize that no one is telling you the truth when they're telling you the story about what happened to the argument that they're having and everybody's telling you the truth.

I believe every single person is telling me the truth and I also don't believe a single word that they say. So when two people come into a room and they go, this happened and they start telling me about factually what happened, I tend to go, okay, sure, all right, all that happened, but what does it mean? What does it represent?

What's the through line that is present here? because if we start to center on facts, A, we're going to get them wrong, and B, then somebody's going to win and somebody's going to lose, and that means the relationship loses. So I think people need to think about their arguments, the way they think about if they went to a play,

and when they got to the theater, they realized that they were both in the balcony, but they were seated on opposite sides accidentally. And so he watched the play from over here on stage left, and she watched over there from stage right, and they come down at intermission, and they compare notes about the play that they saw. That's the most effective,

way to kind of try to figure out what happened on stage is to go, what did you see? Well, what did you see? Well, that's weird. I didn't even see the gun behind the vase. So somebody's probably going to get shot in the second act, don't you think? Yeah, probably. But, you know, what about you? To be able to really look at it and go, what did you see, what can we learn and how does that set us up for the future? That's where you have real leverage and kind of rehashing an argument. But if it's just to figure out who won, then flip a coin. I mean, literally, flip a coin. And then somebody's one, somebody's lost. We've saved a bunch of time. And if you flip a coin for the rest of your life, because you can't agree on stuff, at least you'll win half the time and you'll lose half the time,

and then you'll be happy. There's two questions we always ask. One is, what's one habit that's changed your life? Not drinking. That gave me access to so much else. But like, I think the easiest thing that I've done is quit for good. I quit a whole bunch of times before then. But when I quit for good, so much opened up to me in my life and in my world. They don't think everybody should quit. I'm not anti-alcohol, but I know that I went through so many years of my life going, I think my life would be better if I quit drinking. I mean, I have a different brain than I had five years ago. I have a different brain. And I'm just really grateful for that. Have you had to relearn how to like relax or have fun or connect with Rebecca or anything like that? Yeah, I have. But it hasn't been nearly as hard as

trying to figure out how to recover from a hangover or from shame or apologize to somebody for embarrassing them. It's been way easier to learn how to connect. And I do stuff that I never would have done before. I tried pottery on a wheel and I did a triathlon. When I was first, first, first, first getting sober, I bought all these Lego sets. So I bought like the stranger things that a Lego set and I made it while I was watching Stranger Things. My kids were like, Dad, you're spending so much money on Legos. It's not cool how much money you're spending. I was like, you guys, promise you. Wait, don't hear about the cost of alcohol.

I'm not spending nearly as much money on Legos as I spent on alcohol. But yeah, that's an easy one. That's something that I share with my audience a lot is I call myself an intentional drink. I'm not completely sober, but I drink maybe a few times a year. And I always focus on what I'm gaining, not what I'm losing, because I really am gaining so much. It's a book that I read way a long time ago, and it's called Almost Alcoholic. And it's based on the idea that there are two kind of standardized categories that you can name. One is normal social drinker.

I probably put you in that category. And the other one is an alcoholic. And that's a diagnostic category. So these researchers had people over here and people over here. I never got diagnosed as an alcoholic. But I was in the middle and this is the area that they called almost alcoholic. Big wide area. And you can be really close to the diagnosis,

which means you have to get a DUI or get fired from your job. There's things that insurance need you to check in order to cover you as an alcoholic. And the normal social drinkers, everybody knows is kind of like you. like, I have a drink every now and again, or I love wine with dinner or, you know, I might cut loose at a wedding or something. But there's no, nothing that you would call problematic. And in the middle is everybody else. And the whole principle of that almost alcoholic notion is, doesn't matter where you are. If you're in the middle, you've got to move left.

Move left towards normal social drinking. And I tried so hard for so long just to kind of keep incrementally moving left. But the gravity for me was too much. It just was too intense. I like to leave people with one takeaway. Okay. something that they can just do immediately, actively as soon as they turn off this podcast, just like a pragmatic action step. If somebody is in a relationship and they're not as happy

as they want to be, but they feel alone in fixing that, can you give them one thing that they can do immediately to start to really feel a difference? Stop outsourcing your okayness. Like, you're okay. Even if your relationship's not okay, you need to be okay. Healthy self-esteem, healthy boundaries. If it means you're kind of an asshole, then maybe the practical thing to do is to get off your high horse about it. And if you're kind of down. in the dumps about it. Maybe it's to kind of just tap into some courage and come up into the middle and say, no, I'm worthy of a healthy relationship. That's a thing that I get to have if I want. And if it's a boundaries issue, meaning you're kind of on the other axis, maybe you're too

walled off or too open. It's literally just to kind of check in with your own boundaries in ways that protect you psychologically, independent of whether or not the people around you are participating in that. Should it reclaim some autonomy? Yeah, I think so. I mean, again, for me, it is, I'm going to be healthy no matter what. I'm going to be healthy no matter what. If Rebecca falls off the wagon, that's on her. I'll be supportive. I'm not going to jump off the wagon to go get her.

My kids, same way. Like I've set really clear sort of psychological boundaries with them because they want to let me know how I've ruined their lives. I mean, everybody's parents have ruined their lives and mine are old enough to tell me now. And I go, okay, yeah, I'm really sorry. That's challenging. I'm going to do what I can to prepare that.

But I'm not going to go into a shit spiral because you're mad at me today. For me, as much as possible, whatever it takes for you to get into that place of health, that'd be my one piece for you right now when you turn off this podcast. Zach, this was fantastic. Do you want to take a moment to tell people

where they can find you on the internet? Any books you want to shout out? I do have a podcast. It comes out every Tuesday. It's called Marriage Therapy Radio. I interview couples on that podcast. It's so fun because I just learned something new every day. My name is Zach Bridal.

You can find me on the internet. And I've got a substack that I'm working on right now, which is called Stuff I Write. That's kind of fun. Fitting. Yeah, I got a new book coming out in April of next year that I'm finishing up this weekend here in San Francisco. So I'm doing a little writing retreat? Yep. Oh, that's fun.

I got on your calendar and I was like, maybe I'll just make a whole work out of it. And then I got a couple I'm meeting with tomorrow morning. That's a San Francisco couple. So I'm going to spend a few hours with them. Amazing. Well, we'll have to have you back when your new book comes out. Right on. That is all for this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I would so

appreciate if you would share it with somebody that you think would love it too. It is my goal to get as much life-changing information out to as many people as possible. And you sharing episodes with people is 100% the thing that makes that happen. I would also love to hear from you in the comments, any thoughts or questions or opinions that you have on this episode. Make sure that you're subscribed to the podcast on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, wherever you like to listen. You can find every single discount code that you heard in this episode and tons more at Liz Moody.com slash codes. It is the best way to save money on amazing vetted products. Truly, our brand partners make the best products in the world. That is why they're our beloved

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