The Viall Files - E301 Dr. Alexandra Solomon - A Clinical Look At The Break - Up of Katie & Greg

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

Welcome to a bonus episode of The Viall Files. Today we are joined by Dr. Alexandra Solomon. Over the last two decades, Dr. Alexandra H. Solomon has become one of today’s most trusted voices in the world of relationships, and her work on Relational Self-Awareness has reached millions of people around the world. Dr. Solomon is a licensed clinical psychologist at The Family Institute at Northwestern University, and she is on faculty in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University where she teaches the internationally renowned course, Building Loving and Lasting Relationships: Marriage 101. In addition to writing articles and chapters for leading academic journals and books in the field of marriage and family, she is the author of two bestselling books, Loving Bravely and Taking Sexy Back. Dr. Solomon regularly presents to diverse groups that include the United States Military Academy at West Point and Microsoft, and she is frequently asked to talk about relationships with media outlets like The Today Show, O Magazine, The Atlantic, Vogue, and Scientific American.   On this episode Dr. Soloman clinically breaks down the fight between Katie and Greg, while discussing gaslighting and emotional abuse. She helps us to understand whether we saw these actions on screen and why it might be triggering to so many watching at home.  Please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and as always send in your relationship questions to [e-mail] to be a part of our Monday episodes.  For merch please visit www.viallfiles.com today! Episode Socials:  @viallfiles @nickviall @dr.alexandra.solomon See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's going on everybody? Welcome back to what is literally a special episode of the Vile Files because we have never done a kind of out of sequence episode, if you will. We're dropping this on a non-normal day, so by definition, truly, truly special. And the reason we wanted to do this is because there has been so many discussions regarding last Monday's episode of The Bachelorette, specifically centered around the breakup between Greg and Katie. And, you know, we've recapped it, we've discussed it, and since then I've seen really just so many different reactions

on both sides of the fence, if you will. And there seems to be a lot of emotion attached to this episode. And I've seen articles, I've seen discussions, I've had people DM me in terms of sharing their personal experiences and how what they saw triggered them, as they mentioned. And with people who found this episode to be frustrating,

I've seen accusations and comments around things like emotional manipulation, emotional abuse. There's been a lot of conversations around gaslighting. We even saw Katie on Tuesday morning post in her Instagram story, I guess, an Instagram post on gaslighting, what it was. And it was just kind of a cryptic post, but certainly seems like she also felt, at least watching it back, like there might've been some gaslighting then. And there's a lot of conversations, again,

out there from people who aren't experts. And as you guys know, I'm always quick to mention that I'm not an expert when it comes to giving my two cents about people's relationship struggles. So I thought it'd be really helpful to bring on an expert, someone who does this for a living and have a discussion about this episode and break down this breakup as it relates to some

of the conversations going out there and some of the accusations because it's a very serious accusation to discuss things like emotional abuse and gaslighting. And we've had the pleasure of having Dr. Solomon on our podcast before, and she is so gracious to come back on and talk this through us because I think the goal here is to just better understand what we watched. Is there some credence to what we saw? Was there gaslighting? Was there abuse displayed? And what can we learn from it? And what can we apply to real life situations? And what maybe is hard to apply given that we saw this in the context of The Bachelor? So Dr. Solomon, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Nick, for having me on. You know, I always admire the way that you turn towards the hard stuff, you know, you don't have

to and you do. So I admire that about you and I'm more than happy to engage with you again. Well, I appreciate it, but I want to discuss this and bring some insight because again, you know, gaslighting, for example, is something we are hearing more and more. We're hearing about emotional abuse and then it's something that we are now using in our discussions with our partners and our friends and we're self-diagnosing ourselves and we're self-diagnosing our partners.

And I think it's good to really remember what it is and understand what it is so we can better apply it and understand our relationship. So I think maybe it's a good place to start is let's define some of these things that are being thrown out there like gaslighting and emotional abuse and truly understand what we're talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I have the privilege of having a bit of a long view here. I've been a licensed clinical psychologist and a relationship educator for over two decades now. And I tell you what, we are in a new day. And it's wonderful and weird to see how these terms that have only really been in the domain of academia and therapist

offices are now like in our cultural vernacular. And that's so exciting. And it's, and I think there's so much potential here for us to really refine our understanding of intimate partnership, of power dynamics, of gender dynamics. So there's a cool opportunity here, but it is, I love that we're starting with kind of an attempt to get our heads around some definitions and some shared understanding because these words are now, like they've escaped the therapist's offices and now they are running amok, you know, in the public discourse. Yeah.

So let's define gaslighting to start out. Like what is gaslighting? Yeah. So gaslighting was a term that was from this like old British play, this 1938 British play that became an American movie in 1944 starring Ingrid Bergman. And the story is there's a man who is trying to drive his wife crazy. And he does a variety of things where he just Fs with her reality in a systematic, intentional way to drive her crazy, to take her inheritance.

And one of the things he does is he turns the gaslight. Like he twists, you know, he adjusts the setting. And then she's like, is it dark in here? And he's like, nope. He turns it up. Did it get brighter in here? Nope. And so that's the origin of the term.

And I think that, you know, therapists sort of latched onto it as sort of when you're when you are sitting with a couple and you're watching the relational dance, there is, you know, there's one partner's reality. There's the other partner's reality. There's sort of the shared reality and things are quite, quite complicated. complicated i think what's the so the definition i would like us to use for gaslighting is it's an the act of undermining somebody else's reality by denying facts by denying the environment by denying their feelings so that's but i think we have to also get clear that like most things in life gaslighting happens on a spectrum or on a continuum, right? So the example from the movie is like hardcore, one end of the spectrum. It's intentional, it's purposeful. There's an end goal in mind. I think we saw a lot. I think part of why this term is now in the public space is we just finished

up a presidency with a president who used gaslighting in that kind of a way. You didn't see what you saw. I didn't see what you saw. I didn't say what I said. And his behavior very much of the time was sort of towards that end. The problem is there are lots of other times where the other end of the continuum would be you and I have a disagreement, right? I took one thing from your tone

and you took something else from your tone and now I accuse you of gaslighting me. So there's sort of this other end of the spectrum where we're throwing it around, perhaps too willy nilly, too recklessly. It becomes a sort of like, um,

cudgel that we're using to kind of say anything that is painful, anything that is disagreement is you are gaslighting me. And I think that's, you know, quite unhelpful. So I think what we're trying to do is like find some middle space where we can use it helpfully in a way that is helpful and in a way that's not like shutting down conversation. So tell me how that lands.

Tell me how that lands for you so far. Yeah, no, it makes sense. I think, you know, what we've heard and I love the origin and thank you so much for sharing that. I never knew about that. It's really interesting. What I've always heard is someone's attempt to make you doubt your own reality, right? For example, I do my questions with Nick, and just this last week, a girl, and you can let me know if I was right, but a girl asked a question. She said, I've been dating a guy and I told him that I no longer wanted to be friends with benefits, right?

So here's this woman setting a boundary with this guy saying, I don't want to just be hooking up, all right? And the guy responded a few days later by asking her, why do you hate me? And I responded to her by saying, well, that's a form of gasoline manipulation. You set a boundary. That boundary is I don't want to just have a simple physical relationship. And instead of respecting that boundary, he asked why he hated you. And now instead of working on that, you're defending why you hate him and you never suggested that you hate him at all. You never even brought that up. So now you're on the defensive and you're, again, questioning, wait, I never said I hated you. What are you talking about? And now you're on

the defensive. And that's such a subtle thing. And I think dialogue like that between two couples happens quite frequently. And I took that as gaslighting. Was that accurate? Well, I think that that's, yeah, based on our working definition, we can code that as gaslighting. Does this mean this is a malignant narcissist who is systematically emotionally abusive? I have no idea. But in that interaction, what he said to her was, why do you hate me? What his deeper truth was, like if I was sitting there as the therapist in the session, what I would say is, can you relanguage that? Like, let me try something out. See if this lands for you. When you say, I don't want to be friends with benefits

anymore, I feel devalued, I feel rejected. I feel ashamed. I feel scared. Does that land? Because when he says, why do you hate me? It's a cover story for something that I suspect felt tender, frustrating, disappointing, confusing, upsetting, frightening. He's not giving voice to that tender underbelly. He's, as you said, he's putting her on the defensive. He's putting the ball back in her court. It's like a hot potato of vulnerability as one of my mentors, Suze Johnson says. Yes, go. Question I have, I mean, and again, so,

you know, you gave a suggestion about someone who maybe just might be worked up and just a poor communicator. And then, you know, the other spectrum, you mentioned like a malignant narcissist. And so how much does intent play a role in gaslighting? You know, for example, let's say that example I gave, that guy, you know, he knew he didn't want to date her. He's fine, but he just was trying to make her feel bad because he didn't like her answer. Does that make him a narcissist or does that make him a dick?

You know, like, and yeah, I guess how much does intent matter? And where do we go from there when understanding, you know, gaslighting? Right. Well, I think this is why I am as passionate as I am about the work that I do is that I want everyone to have a really rich vocabulary for their internal world and a savvy understanding of relationship dynamics. So we stop having shit like that happen. Right. Because because I don't think he was. I doubt that he was consciously thinking to himself, how am I going to really mess with her here? I don't know how much it was conscious, like in terms of his intent, but I know that the impact was that she felt disoriented, confused, you know, undermined. So sometimes the intent matters less than the impact, right? And so, you know, if this was, I think it's complicated,

this example we're working with is complicated because it's not maybe an ongoing relationship, but I would want him to, I think in general, in the dating world, I think a really good rule of thumb is like leave people better than you found them. And so it's not helpful for him to say something like that to her. Why do you hate me? I want him to have a richer access to his vocabulary of his internal world, right? So he can say like, oof, I'm really bummed or I'm disappointed or is this something I did or what might you want, you know, from me? But it sounds like he doesn't really have access to that. All he has is this like one move, the why do you hate me move. So I want him to, I want him

in a good therapy, listening to podcasts, reading books and like growing himself up. listening to podcasts, reading books, and growing himself up. Okay. So second definition that I think we want to define before we dive into this discussion is emotional manipulation and emotional abuse. Are they the same thing? And if not, how do they differ? Okay. This is difficult and it's contextual. Usually when we use the word

emotional abuse, we're talking about like the context of an ongoing relationship and we're talking about a bit of a pattern. You know, when we move into talking about Greg and Katie, what's so difficult is we had this really, we had a window into a painful exchange one moment in time. I don't, you know, we don't know a lot about, well, in terms of what led up to this, this was really their first, like their first storm that they hit as a couple, right? So I think in order to talk about abuse, we want to be thinking about something where there's a bit of a pattern. It's not a one-time thing, which is not to say, you know, bad stuff can happen only one time, right? It only takes, you know,

sexual assault to happen as a one-time thing. There's lots of things that are incredibly destructive that are one-time things. What we see as like manipulation is, you know, somebody who's flooded, who's not thinking straight, who's having a really, really hard time putting themselves in somebody else's shoes and they want what they want, when they want it, how they want it. And so that can be like, that is, you know, I think all of us are at risk of trying to get somebody else

to give us what we want when we're flooded and upset. So I think there is, I think we're at risk of trying to make things the way we want them to be and need them to be when we're upset. We're all at risk of doing that. Some people use it as a pattern of behavior in a destructive way, in an abusive way. Yeah. I mean, the way you're describing emotional manipulation, all of a sudden it's like, yeah, who doesn't this apply to? Because if it's just simply, all right, I'm having a hard time processing my emotions,

and then I'm having a hard time communicating this with my partner, all while being upset. And, you know, and then but therefore, I'm confusing them because they're upset. It seems like in every fight, there's emotional manipulation going on. Is that true? Are you seeing that when you're working with your clients and your patients? Yes, which is why we have lots of tools and strategies that we use in couples therapy to help people slow things down. We can talk about some of those. How do we slow things down? How do we really ensure that we are putting ourselves in each other's shoes? How do we start looking at like the dance or the dynamic

between us versus you're messing up or I'm messing up, right? Either you're the dick or I'm the dick. That's so often what we slip into is, you know, finger pointing, who's doing it wrong versus looking at, you know, what we saw with Greg and Katie, right? Like, you know, Greg sees a shift in Katie's face and then, you know, Greg panics and then Katie feels a shift in Greg and then Katie panics and now they're lost, right? They're trapped in this horrible, horrible, painful, it's so hard to watch, painful cycle. And so when we, I mean, the research is so clear when we get upset, which of course we do in intimate relationships because the stakes are high, right? And we are wired for connection. We're wired to feel safe in each other's presence. So when we feel threatened, when we feel upset, we don't have as the access to the kind of like mature,

sophisticated communication skills that we otherwise have. And so a lot of what we do in couples therapy is teach people how to slow down, stop, take a break, get regulated and try again. Yeah, I mean, it's something that my therapist mentioned to me and that my girlfriend and I have started incorporating is when we are disagreeing and having an argument, if she's like, if you're spending more than 10 or 15 minutes and it's going nowhere, just agree to pause and reset

because you're almost like you've gone into what she described as like child mode. You guys are resorting to your most basic instincts and survival mode. And I got to tell you, we tried it and it works quite well because you just reset and you're, you realize that you're going down a kind of very unproductive path. That's, I love that. I love it. I love a mindful timeout. It's not storming out. It's not walking away. It's not abandoning each other it's saying i actually love you too much

to keep talking right now yeah and when we step away one thing that i love is when we when we step away and take a break like get out your phone or get out your journal and write about the problem from the perspective of a neutral third party who loves you both very much so for you nick what's your girlfriend's name? Natalie. Natalie. So like, you know, Nick steps away and he's like, Nick feels like this. Natalie feels like this.

Natalie wants, Nick wants. Like you're literally like writing it in the third person. It's so powerful. My colleague of mine at Northwestern, Eli Finkel, did some research around this and it works. Like stuff like that works. You pause and you shift your mind to like, what is she feeling?

What am I feeling? What's the dance between us? How can I have empathy for her position? Because when we go round and round, like you're describing, and I've been married for almost 23 years, I know that place so well. And when you're going round and round, it's so hard to find an exit door. Yeah, that's really interesting. So obviously Katie and Greg don't have the luxury of doing that. They're in this crazy reality TV world that quite frankly just is promoting drama, wants drama, relies on drama to create a compelling TV show. So no one's suggesting they should take a timeout, send journal when conflict's going on.

And we'll get in, obviously, and I want to break that down. Before we do, part of the reason why I prompted this conversation is, again, I've seen, I've had discussions with friends. I've seen a lot of discourse, articles written, DMs of people saying how triggering this episode was. Why do you feel like watching this was triggering for some people? And how can someone who watches something like this and finds it triggering, how can they... I guess what I'm trying to say is, you know,

we want to give space to the people who watch it and are reminded of something they experienced personally, right? But at the same time, does that make it what it is or what they think it is? And how do we have discourse around something that is triggering for some people? You know, a lot of people watched Greg and saw some of this behavior. And again, this is where these conversations are out. That's emotional abuse. That was gaslighting. And yeah, do you have any thoughts around that?

Yeah. Well, I have so much respect for the question that you just asked. I think it's really tender and it's complicated. So the first thing I want to do is validate that for somebody who is a survivor of trauma, the journey towards like safety in your body is like, that's the heart of healing trauma is figuring out how to feel safe in a body that has known danger, that has known a lack of safety, that has known violence, that has known boundary violation. And so what happens in the wake of surviving trauma, whether it's an abusive relationship or anything along those lines, is there's a kind of vigilance for anything that has a resonance, anything that has like a sense of a familiarity, a similarity. We see it sometimes with trauma survivors. There's a particular smell that will awaken an old memory, a particular location that

will awaken an old memory. And so I suspect that there was something in the dialogue between Katie and Greg, something in how Greg, Greg's face, Greg's body, Greg's tone, Greg's words that held echoes or resonances, which does not mean it's the same thing. But if there's a resonance, it's a resonance. So I first want to validate that. And I think that we can validate a resonance or a similarity without saying anything about Greg, which I'm not going to do. I don't know Greg. No, I don't have that context. But we can still validate the resonance or the familiarity that I think comes from when, you know, when you have survived trauma, you have a fine, you have a, you're a tuning fork for particular kinds of patterns and resonances. And I, you know,

one of my hopes would be, I hope that I have a number of hopes about Greg. The thing I hope most of all is that Greg has a space to process the loss of his dad. We can get into sort of the impact of unhealed grief. And I would love for Greg to sit with somebody and kind of look at, you know, watch that together. And what was your, do you remember what your body was feeling in that moment? And I think there's a ton of learning. There's so much richness in that clip. There's a ton of learning for therapists. It was really quite a rich and painful.

I mean, I felt it in my body watching the two of them, as you said in the beginning. We're watching two brokenhearted people and two people who are under a tremendous amount of stress. And none of us can bring our best selves to stressful moments. and two people who are under a tremendous amount of stress. Yeah. And none of us, you know, none of us brings our best, none of us can bring our best selves to stressful moments. Yeah. It's not an excuse, it's a context. Let's just start, you know, from a clinical standpoint,

breaking down the discussion of like how this came to be. So, you know, Greg, obviously he met his family. And then Greg, you know, we talk about, he talks about his dad. He's emotional. He opens up to Katie. And that's where what seems to be the, as Greg mentioned, over and over. I watched it again. And one thing that stood out to me is how Greg saying over and over, I'm just so confused, right? And then Katie said that a lot. I'm just so confused. over. I'm just so confused. And then Katie said that a lot. I'm just so confused. And that's where the confusion started. So Greg pours his heart out. Katie looks at him with this glazed look. And who knows? Again, Katie might be tired. As someone who's empathizing with Katie's point of view, she's just got a hard job to do. She's emotionally stressed. She's tired. Who knows? Maybe that's it. Maybe she didn't know what to say. Maybe she was just a little more focused on everyone's feelings, right? Greg is having a hard time processing

that. I guess, how did you see that from a clinical person? And then how much should we be considering the role that the TV show plays a role as we try to potentially, or maybe we shouldn't be diagnosing this behavior. That's right. That's right. Well, yeah, I think that's difficult too, is we don't know what the editing process was, what the time, you know, what the timestamps were around how this played out in real time. So I think we have to kind of put that off to one side. I know that i i had to rewind my tape to my i had to rewind my video to watch um greg's reaction to feeling like katie had gone cold that that wasn't how it felt for me but i it was very clearly how it felt for greg right like he sort of watched a retreat and she said

i love looking at you and that was really really. It felt like there was a mismatch between the depth at which Greg had shared and the place that Katie was able to meet him in that moment. And it was a really, really painful miss for him. And I think that Greg's brother, Joe, gave us a very powerful clue during the hometown date when Joe says to Katie, our dad died two years ago and Greg does not talk about it. And you are the first person that Greg has talked to about this. So that, you know, Joe gives us a little window into the not just the depth of Greg's grief, but how, um, shut down he's been, right? How he sort of pushed this grief down and pushed it away. And, um, and he wants so much, I, you know, the love of Katie, feeling near Katie, feeling happy with Katie. It's like, it's like, uh, it must feel like it must've felt to him like an oasis in a desert, right? Like this is his chance. This is his way out. And so he's so desperate for her, it seems to just like break

the framework of the show. Like, let's just be done. Let's just have it be you and me done now. I mean, that's the desperation. That's what grief I mean, that's the desperation of grief, right? Like, shit, I know, you know, I've lost my dad. I know, I remember the waves and waves of grief that just feel like they're gonna pull you over. And so there's, he's saying, I want you, Katie, I want you to say that you love me and that you want me. But I think he's also saying, like, I want a place, I want somewhere to go with this grief that has been so locked down. Yeah. And, you know, I watched, again, I watched it back. And there's a lot of these discussions around, like, you know, Katie said she, you know, set the boundary watched it back, and there's a lot of these discussions around, like, you know,

Katie said she set the boundary of I'm not going to say I love you. And then when I watched it back a second time, I was actually surprised just by how much at least Greg tried to make it clear whether he meant it or not, how he's like, I'm not asking for you. I'm not even saying you need to say I love you. Like, I i was looking for something what he you know he specifically said is like you weren't who i've been getting to know you seem to like shift into this kind of like what he described is like this role of the bachelorette

right um and again as someone who's like been in his shoes when I was watching it back, I, it reminded me of the time when I was in that position. Right. And I remember just how, especially the first time when I was on Andy season, I remember being this skeptic of like, it's a show, whatever. I remember then feeling genuine feelings for her. Uh, and then, then well i didn't experience the loss of my father or significant trauma that i felt like i was processing

nevertheless i felt truly desperate to try to make what i knew was kind of an insane world and i tried to make it real to me i tried to validate my real feelings and I had like you know you're just kind of reminded again you're not told you have to engage or anything like that but I remember in the fantasy suites Andy telling me uh because I remember saying to her like hey listen you know I I'm nuts about you like I have real feelings like what do you want to do because I you know this is my first time in this show and prior to being on the show I didn't really watch I like watched a couple episodes I watched Desiree's season like on like like I've like I watched them all like rapid fire I binged it just try to be like oh what I'm gonna do and I just remember being like hey

like we don't have to get engaged like I'm cool like I'm trying to talk to her in like real world points of view and she like stopped me in my tracks and said i don't want to be the first bachelorette who doesn't get proposed to i was like okay you know like so then from that moment forward i'm like oh like if i if i want to be with her i got i got, I got to propose to her. And we've heard Greg say this. We've heard other people say this before. She's like, if I want to propose, I'm only going to do it once and romanticize about what a proposal means to people.

And so when I saw him kind of like trying to grapple with that, that's how I understood his, that's how I understood his point of view as someone who's kind of desperate trying to make sense of what isn't real. And he wanted, like, he was just grappling at trying to make something, he just kept on saying something real. And, and for whatever reason, they, those two didn't seem to meet up and there seemed to be a lot of confusion. And I guess, what was your take on that? And how, I guess, from a clinical standpoint, how can that affect a disagreement when someone is almost in kind of a desperation mode of trying to like find reality. That's right. Yeah. So there's, that's,

that's one piece I want us to hold on to is, you know, he used that word, as you said, he used that word confusion so many times. And he also kept saying things like, this isn't the real Katie. So which tells us there's like, it was like almost a moment of like fragmentation, right? He was not fully grounded in reality. He was, he was really like, he needed us, he needed somebody there to help him ground himself to find solid ground again, because the things he began to say then are coming from a place that

wasn't like locked in, grounded, aligned, right? He was kind of falling apart for, it's not a very clinical way of saying it, but he was saying, I am confused. I don't know what's real. And it's hard because he's not wrong. There's a frame around this show that is not real. And he and Katie, you know, there's, there's a lot going on here around power. In his desperation, he's saying things like, but I thought you were, you know, I thought you were my Katie. And why don't you tell me what's going on, right? He's using some of these devices that I, you know, associate and I see often with men. But in but he at the same time is aware of his total powerlessness at the same time, right? So there's two tracks, there's like this gender piece. And there's the show piece where Katie's holding the cards. Katie is the bachelorette. And I don't know,

we don't know what Katie's, you know, maybe Katie, never in a million years would break the framework and say, Okay, Greg, it's just you and me, the show's over. Because maybe Katie was like, the straight A student, and she was in the front row row of class and she was the good girl. And, you know, it's not personal to Greg. It just is Katie. Katie plays by the rules. You show Katie the rules and she's like, yep, there's the rules. I'll do it. And it doesn't matter what's happening.

Katie's not going to break rules. Katie's going to play it through to the end. I have no idea. That's one hypothesis, right? And she's the one in power in that situation. She has the power to determine how this goes. And she she says something about the heaviness and the burden of carrying all of these relationships. And she says, like, I don't know how to do this.

I have not done this before. Nobody has done this. I mean, except unless you've been a bachelor or a bachelorette before right this is you know this is not traditionally how we move through dating and so she's feeling this heavy responsibility it sounds like to herself to these other men to the show um but it sure feels personal to greg it feels like if you love me, you would. And that's the piece I think that viewers who are picking up on manipulation, that's what they're resonating with. But if you love me, you would. And it sounds, he's in a full grown man's body, but that's the desperate plea of a little boy, right? That's a little boy saying, pick me, choose me,

I want to be special. Yeah. So how do we draw the line if there is a line? Because, you know, like I see two people fight and have this disagreement and they're confusing what each other are saying and misunderstanding. And again, we talked about emotional, technically, anytime in in a fight people are kind of retreating these emotional manipulation tactics that doesn't necessarily make them abusive especially if there's no pattern there but like you know how can we fight fair i mean if we don't have the luxury of taking a time out and don't have the luxury of journaling and things like that, um,

can, is it okay to chalk this up to a bad breakup, you know, uh, where two people just aren't seeing eye to eye because I do like what I guess I didn't understand from some of the reaction, um, was,

you know, Katie kept apologizing, right? And they were like, well, she kept apologizing. And I've been in fights before where a person apologized to me for something they did and I didn't believe their sincerity. And even if I did forgive them,

I still wanted to remove myself from this situation because my gut told me something's off. Like, this doesn't feel right. We talk so much about, you know, follow that intuition, follow your gut. Like, and so is it okay that, you know, because Greg clearly came across as dismissive, you know, he came across as cold at times, you know, especially when he's like, I'm done, you know, and we don't have the luxury of context. We don't know if it was as abrupt as it looked and things like that but regardless is it okay for him to just be done and not want to does do apologies matter to a certain degree as i guess is my question right i mean i i, I, I think of court, like if that was,

I can imagine that stepping away was really served his mental health at that point, right? He was really, really, really suffering. And so it was, it sounds like a decision, you know, who knows, maybe it was a, you know, sometimes I think we, we threatened to leave in order to get somebody else to back down, right? It is in that way a manipulation. It's a power move. It can sometimes be an abusive move. It's sort of like that trump card of like, okay, well, then I'll leave. And it's a desire to just get the tides to turn. I don't know if that was what it sounded to, it felt to me from where I was watching, it felt like it was just like, my pain is so big and I don't, I cannot persist in this

situation. I gotta go. Yeah, that's how I took it. Because yeah, it seemed like almost some of the reactions were, like I saw something, you know, people saying, you know, this is kind of, I've been in a situation like this where, you know, and people ask why I never left type of thing. And they realize that they were in a toxic emotional relationship. And it would make sense if this was their Tuesday fight.

Where let's say Greg and Katie had been dating for a year or whatever. And then one of those couples that have broken up multiple times. And Greg has a history of threatening to leave and just be like, you know, screw it, I'm out. Knowing full well it's going to be a couple days and he comes back. I mean, I have friends who are like, you know, a friend who the guy, he felt embarrassed. And he, you know, took all her stuff and threw it outside and she was asking my opinion. I was just like, he's gonna come back.

You made him feel embarrassed and now he's trying to punish you by embarrassing you by dumping out all your furniture on your front lawn. And he, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm just thinking, I'm watching this and thinking, well, I just saw a guy who just left because it seemed like yeah it was abrupt it was cold and it certainly wasn't very gentlemanly of him but it seemed like he just wanted to remove himself the situation and then katie came out you know you know she wanted to talk to him and she gives him this hug and i just seemed like he at

that point was checked out like he didn't have anything left to talk about. And then there was more dialogue. You know, I guess, what were your thoughts on that? Yeah. I think in some ways Greg had a shame hangover. You know, it sounds like when he wept, you know, at the end of the hometown date, he wept, he said, I've never been this vulnerable to anybody before. And when she missed that moment, there was no, there was no process for repair, right? The depth of his, it's like he swung so

deeply into vulnerability that then the swing, like the sort of equal and opposite reaction was total defensiveness and shut down. He went so deep into vulnerability that when she didn't meet him there in just the way he needed to be met, he bounced back into such deep defensiveness. Like I can't, and he couldn't move past it. He kept saying, but why did you do that? But why did you do that? And she was trying to say things like, I just, I missed it. And if I could go back again, I would do it differently. And, and he and he couldn't, you know, maybe if they had a chance to pause, maybe he would have seen it from her perspective, forgiven her for the miss. But certainly in an ongoing relationship, we have to find ways to have grace for when we have those moments of miss, you know, when our

partners got their, their heart on their sleeve, and we just we were too distracted, too tired to see it. And in healthy relationships, there is an ongoing effort to stay emotionally available, right? But it's hard to ask Katie to be emotionally available to Greg when she's still trying to figure out what the hell she's going to do. Right? She can't be fully emotionally available to Greg when she is kind of sorting through the rest of it. And they couldn't, it sort of seems like they could not come back from it. She tried to apologize. She tried to, which was also painful to see the, you know, she's on her knees and now she can't, now she's having the same feeling perhaps with him that he had with her where he, where he in that moment was so unreachable. She's trying to apologize, trying to own it, trying to hold his eye contact and he's unreachable. And that feeling of I can't reach somebody who matters to me, it's so painful. And of course, they both know that place so well

because they cannot reach their fathers who are, you know, who've both passed away. That sense of like, I love you and I can't reach you. It is exquisitely painful. Yeah, thank you really so much for walking us through kind of the emotional state of mind that both Katie and had. And I think hopefully that is really helpful walking us through kind of the emotional state of mind that both Katie and had.

And I think hopefully that is really helpful for people listening to, you know, really try to empathize the pain that both Katie and Greg were feeling in that moment. There is one thing that you mentioned when talking about that. And there's something you said that, you know, ideally for people who are in a relationship or want to stay in a relationship during a conflict that they, you know, stay emotionally available with each other. And that makes total sense and is certainly hopefully helpful for people listening who face this conflict. certainly hopefully helpful for people listening who face this conflict. But what I'm wondering, what happens when someone doesn't want to stay in the relationship? When they've decided, I don't feel safe here, I'm not getting what I want, and they decide to leave. And it seems like it's very nuanced very nuanced right because again we're trying to

empathize with the people who are watching this and might see these remnants as you say of things they had in their abusive relationships um and you know when someone is trying to set a boundary and they're not meeting each other's boundaries they're like i don't like this boundary you're trying to set and they say well this is what i need right and i want to leave you know and that's what we saw with with greg saying i'm out and certainly abrupt certainly cold certainly dismissive is that okay by checking out and i feel like there's a lot of people maybe it's because we're watching it there's an expectation of the people on the show to make it work and i'm just wondering is it okay to say i have this boundary and this is when i need to stay

and i don't want to stay but I need to leave because you can't give it to me. Right, right. It's, you know, I think that we have, we have free will, right? We have free will of whether we are in or whether we are out. And I think that what you're picking up on is that Greg was at that point where he was just tagging out. What's difficult is we don't really even have great language

for what Greg was doing. Was he breaking up with her? Yes. But was it a relationship? Yes. But how was the relationship defined? It's also a TV show. So the language sort of eludes us, right?

But what he was saying is, I'm taking myself out of this process. And he certainly had free will to do that in relation to the show, as well as any of us have free will to leave a relationship, right? To break up, to end, to say, this isn't enough for me. This doesn't work for me. The little asterisk I would add, though, is that Greg takes Greg with him, just the way that any of us take ourselves with us, right? So Greg, like anybody in a spot, you know, when anyone makes a choice to leave,

the decision to leave, it will benefit Greg to take a look at the Greg stuff, the Greg part of it, the way in which he was triggered, the way in which his stuff was triggered, how he behaved in relation to Katie, right? That's the work post breakup. That's the work post tag out in this situation, is are we going to take this moment to learn about ourselves and grow from a breakup, which is, you know, at the end of a relationship is like fertile, fertile ground for growing what I call relational self-awareness. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting because again, we're, you again, we're having this discussion, part of which in hopes to find that empathy for people who watched, who were triggered by watching this. And like we talked about earlier, it makes sense for someone watching this.

And, again, you see Katie's pain on her knees, right? And if you've been in that relationship, it wouldn't make sense that like, I've had to beg someone, you know, to stay. And again, going back to, it wouldn't make sense when we talk about abusive actions where, you know, I've seen it, I've heard it. And, you know, I've had people send their DMs

in terms of, this reminded me of a time where they would use, I'm going to break up with you as that threat, right? And as that tool to elicit what they wanted, right? And it seems to make sense where maybe that was the remnants that people saw, right? But again, Greg never actually threatened, even though it almost kind of sounded like he was like coming close to it, right? And it would have made sense if had Greg,

the first time he left, you know, I'm out and he abruptly walks out. And instead of Katie going after him, he comes back, even though he broke up with her. I said, I'm done and said, just give me what i want and i'll stay you know as uh if you do this i'll i'll do that and i understand how it sounded like that but uh and why that might you know and if he did it would make sense that's it's

almost like that was the triggering emotion of abusive behavior that people recognized. But in reality, what he did is he left and he didn't come back. And then what the, the last part where, you know, again, the,

it was the, the, the, the exchange outside where, again, it's, it was painful to watch Katie on her knees and begging. But again, you know, Greg probably has a lot to process.

But does it make sense why even though Katie's apologizing, Katie's begging, Katie's pleading with him, he had decided to not be emotionally available anymore. He was in a fight or flight situation and he opted for flight and at least respected the fact that he wasn't going to use that as a way to get what he wanted. He just said, this is what I want. You're not giving it to me. I'm out. That's right. It would have been very hard if we saw him say, oh, well, now that you're on your knees and now that you're begging, aha, I've got you where I want you. Okay, fine. I'll stay. That would have been very, very hard to see. It's still, you know, quite honestly, it's hard to see her on her knees and him not saying, let's just go sit

somewhere where we can both be comfortable, right? There's a way in which he's so myopic in his pain. He's so focused on himself that he's not tending to her. And we wish in a way that perhaps we wish that he would have, but to your point, to your point and and this is i think what is what is the echo for so many viewers is that using using the threat of leaving which i you know sadly many of us grew up in families where parents use threats of leaving that threat of leaving is exquisitely painful it is a tool of manipulation it is a tool of emotional abuse It is a tool of emotional abuse. It is, I'm going to say this, to get what I want. And I don't think we have enough evidence to say, as you're pointing out, I don't think we have evidence that Greg, that's what Greg was doing.

Did Greg go cold? Yes. Did Greg shut down? Yes. Was he unreachable? Did he leave Katie in her pain? Yes. But it wasn't that, from what I saw, it wasn't a tool in order to get Katie to change her view so that he could then stay and have what he wants. He couldn't get what he wanted. She was clear. I can't give you what you want. There's a frame around this show that I am not going to break.

And that was Katie's boundary, right? I will not, I can't give you the thing that you want and need. And then Greg said, okay, then I can't stay. Yeah. And I'm glad we're dissecting it, like I said, because again, we've seen the reactions. We've seen the people identify their pain and talk about how they've been triggered and trying to make sense of, you know, why people can watch it and feel one thing and other people cannot, and they're watching the same thing, right?

And hopefully this helps at least kind of take away some of the things that are making it different for two different people, the point of view, and just empathize with the people who are, who are seeing it through that lens. And it, hearing you say that makes a lot more sense now and why, even though I might not have seen it and other people not have seen it, but people who have been in those situations very much, you know, saw, like you said, those remnants of what their relationship was. Absolutely. And if we were in an alternate universe where that same thing happened, but Katie and Greg found their way back to each other, would I want their booties in couples

therapy? Absolutely. Because I don't want that dance to go that way anymore. I want Greg to learn how to hold his pain and an empathic connection to Katie. That's a growing edge that I want him to step into. I can hold empathy for the wounds that may keep him from being able to do that, but I also want to hold him accountable that to step into relationality is to be able to say, I'm hurting and I can still stay connected to you. I don't know how Katie's ending is going to go, right? But it's been a common thing where it's like, you know, they'll do an interview and it's like, I didn't know until the end, you know, you watch it till, you know, and it's like all the way to the very end, they just don't know.

And then the season finale, and then they're on the couple of people magazine with their pick and the headline is i always knew i always knew you know and so clearly like obviously there's and it's such a like a tough and i've been in that shoot those positions and it's like it's it's it's it's there is some trauma of like the role the lead is faced with. But the question is, and again, however poorly he might've done it, it seemed like what Greg was trying to communicate and what has seemed like his decision to leave was, is I don't believe, it's like what I felt like he was saying is,

I don't believe you anymore. I think you're lying to me about your genuine feelings for me. And I'm sorry's the struggle of trying to understand both their points of view because we don't really know. Well, and if I was talking to Greg, I would want to know. I would ask him. Therapists call it a remote block operation. I would say to Greg, when, when is another time in your life where what you thought was happening, wasn't

happening. You thought it was a, and you find out it was B, right? Because that was what he was, you know, rationally, he knows it's a show rationally. He knows that she's choosing among, you know, set of people. He knows that rationally, but emotionally his felt sense is you are tricking me. You said it was A and now it's B. So that I think is a ghost in the room. And as a couple of therapists, I'm always looking for who are the ghosts in the room, right? And so I think that's, there's an element of that that felt like it was not Katie specific. It was another time in his life when he felt like I thought it was A and now it's B. What I saw was a man step into tremendous vulnerability. He got scared, right? He didn't feel like Katie met him in that

space. He got scared and he shifted into what we call a survival strategy or a coping strategy. And his coping strategy was just the wall is up. And from that walled off space, his language sharpened. So he's saying things like, what do you think is going on? Right. There's a sharpness in his language. And there's a and there's a sense of like, I don't want this vulnerability. So here you take it for a while. And, and that that shift from And that shift from open to closed is a shift that when we see it happen, when we see a man do it, there are times, and I unfortunately, far too many women know that when a man makes that shift and he goes cold and now the tables are turned, bad stuff has happened. Bad stuff can happen from that space of I was open and now I'm closed.

And now you don't know where I'm going to go next. And so I suspect that Katie was not just confused in that moment, but also maybe a bit like kind of nervous or frightened or unsettled, which does not mean that he was abusing her or going to abuse her. But it is it is enough of a again, a resonance is enough of a, again, a resonance. It's enough of a sort of like setup that we know men who are struggling to ground their pain can go in all kinds of directions that have all kinds of really, really bad fallout. So that's almost where like the triggering seems to be coming from, from the people who are watching it, especially if they've experienced some of this trauma

with people who did go to that dangerous side. Yeah. And Katie, you know, one thing I thought was interesting too is when Katie was talking to Greg's mom, she tells the story when they first met. And when they first meet, Greg approaches and he says, I'm so nervous. And she said, and I grabbed his face and I said,

Greg, it's going to be okay. So their first experience of each other was he was unsettled and she affirmed him. She reassured him. She offered comfort and care. And that was like sort of their original relational dance. And I bet it felt really good to Greg and it might've felt really good to Katie that she, you know, has the power to make somebody feel good and calm. And so then it may, it means that then the miss hurt all that much because in Greg's mind, but you're the one who, when I'm scared, you hold my face and you tell me I'm going to be okay. Yeah. I wonder if part of what's been so painful for viewers and part of like viewers like sort of the collective triggeredness

that you've um been been feeling and seeing in terms of like how viewers responded to it is i wonder and you tell me is it like a fall from grace like if greg was the front runner and everyone was like so enthusiastic about greg and seeing this possibility with greg then to watch greg get angry and shut down and retreat then if it just feels like it hurts, it hurts the viewers that much more, it feels disappointing that much more, because that wasn't who Greg had been. He had been in there from the beginning. And, you know, and sort of like liked and people were seeing the possibility of then maybe just like felt all that much more abrupt or confusing. Like, how this, the Greg we've known all season,

how could that Greg be acting like this? Do you think that's part of it? In terms of like how the audience is responding? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The like level of upset, the level of. Well, you know, interesting enough you asked that, but like, cause Greg, you know, right before this episode, like a kind of a, you know,

criticism Greg was getting is like almost like a joke was he's just, he doesn't show a lot of emotion, kind of a low energy, right? So he didn't emote all that unless there was rain, you know,

he didn't really show a lot of emotion and then you saw a lot of emotion all at once or what the appearance of it. And I think certainly that kind of

comes across as startling to the audience. I guess I can't really speak for everyone's point of view, but I can see how that can play into like a triggering response of the turn. And again, we just don't have, like we're just at the mercy of the show and we don't know how,

I'm very reluctant to critique how abrupt things seem for both Katie and Greg because there's no sense of time as we watch it. They could have been sitting there awkwardly for 20 minutes. We don't know. There clearly were things that are said that we don't have the luxury of hearing. We don't know what that is and how relevant it is. But that certainly did happen. But I guess back to that one question, the question I had about someone doubting you when you're trying to give them affirmation, what role does that play?

I'm just wondering, so Katie's into Greg, it seemed like, but Greg, you know, he's a suitor. So he's the one that show is mostly about one. It's so one-sided. It's just one, you know, it's one person supposed to like, you know, be telling their feelings while the lead, the bachelor, the bachelorette is just encouraging feelings to be told. Right. And that's why it's weird. You know, you see that dynamic. Katie's just saying to Greg, I told you this would be hard. I told you just get through this. And there was a part where Greg said, how does anyone, what did you have to get through? It's almost like Greg was saying out loud,

how does anyone fucking getting engaged on this show? This is insane. What did I sign up for? That's right. He's speaking to the depth of the That's right. There's so, he's speaking to the depth of the attachment insecurity. Like how, like there's no bottom, right? Like you like me, but do I like you? Yeah, but I like you, but do you like me? Like there's no kind of like bottom, there's no steady ground. And certainly in engagement, we want to put an engagement on

solid ground and dating. So what makes dating so effing hard is it's a constant game of like, hide and seek. Like I like you a micro inch more than you like me. And that's really, really vulnerable. Well, now you like me more a micro inch more than I like you. And now I feel guilty. And is it unfair? And am I using you? And am I dragging you along? But that's what dating is the chances that two people are going to be at the exact same level of readiness, commitment, and like. And the other thing is like, we have no clear-cut operationalization of what it means when someone says, I'm falling in love. One person's definition of I'm falling in love, we have no idea if qualitatively it

feels the exact same on the inside of the body as it does when somebody else says, I'm falling in love, right? We don't have, it speaks to the amount of uncertainty we have to sit with in the dating world of not just the kind of who's more in than whom and tolerating the discomfort of not being completely synced up. But then also when somebody does decide to say I'm falling for you or I love you,

what does that really mean? And how does it feel? And how do I know if my love feels the same as your love? Because there's not like a, it's not like we can like do a blood draw and find out the level of love and see if the numbers line up, right? We're purely, purely, purely relying on self-report and somebody's description in our own felt sense of how that person seems to be acting to us. It's very, very, very difficult in normal circumstances. And what you're articulating really clearly is it's really, really hard in the bachelor

context. So this has been really great, Dr. Sullivan, and thanks so much for walking us through all this. Listening to you talk, and I've been thinking about this, I kind of feel like I almost had like this aha moment, especially as it relates to gaslighting. As we kind of opened the show, defining it, and we talked about its origin and how it's this someone's attempt or just when someone is made to question their own reality through almost a systematic design, if you will, at its extreme, right? And I'm sitting here thinking, the show is almost designed, whether, you know, it's set up that way, and it is a TV show, so maybe it's

by the unfortunate default, to be a gaslight itself or gaslight environment or whatever we want to call it where everyone who signs up for that show especially the cast members who go into it are asked and are questioning an alternate reality and almost in a way the audience too is being asked to accept an alternative reality right and and it's i it's i i thought about that because i've been you know someone who's been in the world that also watched in that world but watches is it a fad i sometimes am i have a hard time understanding why uh people will watch it and you know the the trope of like right reasons, are they faking it? Are they sincere? But as the show gets into the latter half of the show where feelings intensify

and things get really real for a few people, people will wanna say things like you know what you signed up for, right? So we've just, and you watch the show over and over and we're just accepting this alternative universe in a way. And for many people who go in it, that's where it becomes very complicated and hard. And it's, I don't know, just kind of fascinating to think about how I wonder if we give that enough appreciation in space right that's right that's right it is

yeah i mean i think you articulated that very well that there's a way in which the setup of the show is a gigantic gaslight situation in that you know even the genre right the genre is called reality tv well what the hell is reality who is reality and reality for what purposes and we know it you know, part of our brain is saying, we know this is edited. Part of our brain is saying, we know people have complicated motives for being here. But part of our brain says, I know that's real. What's happening right now. I know that emotion. I have been there. I have lived that. So it is, we're, you know, what we are engaging when we watch this as a viewer, what we're engaging as we watch the show is really complicated. And it's and I think that in of itself, as we are saying this, I think that in of itself is activating, especially for those of us who grew up in dysfunctional families, family with addiction, where where we did that in order to be part of our family.

We did that like, wait, what's real? Mom said this, but her behavior was this. And dad just did that, but I thought it was this. So if we've had those experiences, there's a familiarity and there's a pull and it's confusing. And it, by the way, it plays to a deep, deep desire that so many of us have, which is to figure out love.

I mean, this is why the show has been around for years and years and years, is we are intrinsically organically pulled to try to crack the code of love and figure it out. And we are fascinated by watching other people's love stories, right? We are just we love to be voyeurs, we love to weigh in, we love to give our opinions, anyone who's in the dating world knows darn well that like their whole social group and their family are like more than happy to weigh in. So it's like this enterprise gives us a chance to do this thing that we are so pulled to do, which is express our opinions and try to figure it out and who should go with whom and why and for what reason. So it's just that's why it's so fascinating.

But it also is why then, you know, we end up with situations where people are, the emotions, the reactions are real. Yeah, where you get Katie saying, I'm confused. You get Greg saying, I'm confused. And you get Bachelor Nation being confused and having disagreements with their takes on it. Yeah, that's right. It is confusing. So that's normal. It's normal to feel confused watching the show.

It's normal to feel confused being in the show. Yeah, because, you know, it's this alternate reality that we're being asked to accept. That's right. That's right. That is confusing. Yeah. So, you know, we talked about the definition of gaslighting and its most kind of toxic form right and you mentioned there's this spectrum there you know so you know we are hearing more and more people and it becomes common use right and it's great that we're aware of it but there's becoming this like everyone's diagnosing it and part of the reason that led to this discussion is the internet was abuzz with this is gaslighting, et cetera, et cetera. Is it something that therapists diagnose?

And because it is on a spectrum and it can be nuanced, do we have to be careful to immediately attaching an accusation of gaslighting with abusive behavior? Right, right. I think that, so the term gaslighting is nowhere in the diagnostic manuals for, there's a DSM, a diagnostic manual for clinical disorders, and gaslighting isn't a disorder, and it's not talked about. It is a clinical term, but it's largely used colloquially. And it does happen on a spectrum. And I think that, you know, if you imagine a circle, like in every emotion,

in every emotionally abusive relationship, there is gaslighting. But people can fall back on gaslighting in relationships that are not abusive, it can be a standalone behavior. And so yes, I think, based on the working definition, there was stuff we saw Greg do that technically could be considered gaslighting. He's like, I deserve better. When he's saying I deserve better, you also know you're in a context. So there are these snippets where we can code the phrase and the dynamic as a gaslighting behavior that arises from his deep trigger and his shame and his vulnerability. And so he is falling back on some really unhealthy things in that moment. Is it fair to call him a gaslighter? No. Is it fair to call this relationship abusive? I don't think so. I

would certainly want a more wait and see situation. But gaslighting, as I said before, in every emotionally abusive relationship, you will see gaslighting, but you can also see gaslighting as a problematic symptom of an unhealthy relationship, which clearly with Greg and Katie, it was not healthy. That was not healthy what they went through. What we saw with both of them is when I am in immense pain, it's hard to hold your pain. It's hard to focus on your pain when I'm in so much pain. You know, that's the nature of it, right? If my bucket is overflowing with my own pain, it's very, very difficult to hold empathy and verbalize and stay connected to your pain.

I think that's what we saw. I think that's what we saw. Yeah. So we're almost, we're all kind of at risk of gaslighting in a situation when we're feeling our pain and expecting our partners to hold that pain for us, potentially. Yeah. When I, you know, a skill I teach my couples is when you get to that point where, you know, the little kid self is like in the driver's seat for both of you, like you take an object, like you take literally like a pencil and then I'm the speaker and you're the listener. And all I do is use I statements and give you short little bites of what's going on for me. And then you reflect it back to me. Your only job on earth is to reflect it back to

me when I'm hearing you say, do I have that right? And then I give you the pencil and now you speak your truth and your emotions and your feelings and all I do is reflect you back to you. So you have a speaker and a listener. Like you literally add that much structure so that people can give voice to their pain and receive empathy for it. Okay, now you give voice to your pain

and receive empathy for it. Like, now you give voice to your pain and receive empathy for it. Like we need structure when tempers flare, when pain is in the driver's seat. Talk about power in relationships. I've mentioned it on my podcast that it is something that constantly exists, even in healthy relationships, it's nuanced. There's a power kind of shift that goes back and forth.

And when it is inequitable, when it is so one-sided, like it is in the bachelor world, whoever the lead is, there's this power that exists, whether you want it or not. How can that affect relationships? And how can people, if they feel like power exists in their favor, or it feels like they don't have power how can they address that in a relationship in a healthy way yeah well i i want to just put a spotlight on what you're saying about power is normal in a relationship there are always power dynamics these micro things you know if a couple is trying to figure out where they're going to go out to eat and one person prefers indian food and one person prefers Indian food and one person prefers Chinese food

tonight. They're going to have to go somewhere, right? And so the person, so one person will decide and one person will defer. There's a little micro power dynamic there about who's going to define what happens next, who's going to determine what happens next. So There's always these like micro power dynamics that happen. And we come into any given couple has power dynamics built into a relationship, but we come in with these like predilections, or the ball is a bit more in our court, based on like how our culture has assigned power. And then we're saying before about dating, the person who is a bit more, you know, a person who's like more eager, more like, do you like me? Are we ready? Like that person can feel a little bit powerless, right?

Because the other person has the power to kind of like meet you in that space or not meet you in that space. So I think the best thing we can do around power is just name it. And that's not what we, I think, you know, I think part of Katie's apology was like, I missed it. I didn't really sort of name the amount of power I have in this situation and how very, very difficult this is, even though she tried to, right?

She missed the moment. She tried to go back and repair in it and they couldn't get there. But I think we have to just be able to talk about power and not act like it's not there But I think we have to just be able to talk about power and not act like it's not there. I think maybe because we have such romanticized notions of love, we think if it's a fairy tale, there can't be power dynamics. But there are, and we can be humble with it, and we can own it, and we can ask for feedback, and we can apologize, and we can repair. Those

are all the things that have to happen in a relationship. How would you like to see the viewers, and I guess Greg and Katie going forward to, I guess, try to make the most of this really kind of tough to watch episode, all while maybe, you know, great TV, but certainly triggering for some people who have experienced some trauma. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I certainly, certainly want Greg to have some time and space to heal his trauma. You know, I'm also aware that it sounds like we had a little glimpse for Greg. I want him to have time and space to heal the trauma of the loss of his dad and to have a space to finally talk about it. It can't just be, you know, I think our intimate partner can certainly be an ally in our healing.

But when we need to heal from something as big as losing our dad, we really do need a mental health professional, we need a support group, we need to be reading about grief, we need to be reading about relationships. So I want that to be, I think that's one of the takeaways we can have. You know, and for Katie, I, it sounds like we had a little bit of a window earlier in the show about Katie having a trauma that was a sexual trauma that she survived. And so I don't, I suspect that that ghost was in the room. And I don't know what Katie's healing journey has been around that. But I certainly would want, you know, would want her to have like time and space to make sure that that

her lived experiences her what she has survived is also integrated into her experience, so that she can feel really grounded and clear. And, and I'm sure that that moment to with for Katie felt upsetting and confusing and frightening. And I don't know what she can see now in the rear view mirror that she couldn't see then. But I wonder what it might be like for Greg and Katie to have a chance to talk it through again. And sometimes that can't happen, right? It just is. People have to do their own, find their own closure individually and on their own. But I'd be curious to see if down the road with some time, with some space, if they can kind of come at that conversation a bit differently than they were able to in the

heat of the moment. In a real world application, if you feel like you're being gaslit, is that something you should address in real time? Yeah, not in the moment. Because, you know, to say like, you're gaslighting me, it's, it's likely you both are too escalated to be able to hear each other. Right. It's like, it's like when we say calm down, when somebody's upset and we say, just calm down, never in the history of the world has saying calm down helped anybody calm down. So I think when you, when we're at the point where what we want to say is you're gaslighting me instead what i want people to say is let's take a break i gotta i gotta i'm really flustered i'm really flooded i

don't want to say something i'm going to regret i think we should step away and calm down and then step away move your body right ups emotion emotions are bodily states so move your body take a shower drink some water get some fresh air, listen to some music, do the journal prompt where you write about the problem from the perspective of a neutral third party who loves you both very much and let it settle. I think part of one of the problems in our culture is we want things resolved, right? And when we're upset, we get into this like win-lose dynamic and we want things settled and resolved. We want the referee to, we, and when we're upset, we get into this like win-lose dynamic. We want things settled and resolved. We want the referee to blow the whistle and just say what happened. And that's not how intimate partnership works. It needs to be a series of connecting,

stepping away to regulate, connecting again, stepping away to regulate. Like that's just how it goes. Yeah. It sounds so tricky, too, in real-life application because, again, we're trying to define it and then apply it to the world. And like you said, so much has to do with someone's perception or how they feel, whether they intended it or not. And can gaslighting be going on at the same time sure yeah and that's why i guess i get yeah i get it's it that's why it's just like the i'm so trying to understand like you know when people will be like everyone's that was gaslighting and and again like we're um yeah like how do you

not see that and it's it's a struggle because like if someone and then as a viewer right and that's why you have like how do we how do we see if someone can't relate to that experience it just seems it seems so convoluted and yeah and you know a couple couples therapists love to say this they love to say you can be right or you can be happy and so one of the, one of the like sort of blinking indicator lights that it's time to, to shift the conversation is when I'm so invested in being right, when I'm so invested in you seeing things my way, that is, that is going to erode trust. It's going to erode safety.

It's going to erode intimacy. So two people who are deeply invested in trying to see it from the other person's point of view, they're going to do far better in a conversation than two people who are desperately trying to have their partner see it from their point of view. What happens when they're breaking up, though? What happens when one person wants out? Well, one person wants out, we're in a different, yeah, we're in a different situation, because there's no, that foundation isn't there, right? They don't have the same agenda. The agenda is, you know, it's a mixed agenda in that moment.

One wants out, one wants in. Yeah. But I think you could break up and still say, like, I can understand where you're coming from. I can completely see the ways in which I fell short. I can see the ways in which my, the ways in which I fell short. I can see the ways in which my comments were hurtful. My behavior was shady. And I'm still saying I'm done with this relationship.

That's entirely possible, right? We can own our less than perfect behavior. My gosh, all of us, we're all so deeply human, so at risk of saying things that are short-sighted, that are unkind, that are selfish. And then we can come back and say, I don't like how I said that. I can imagine that when I said that, you must have felt so unheard. Yeah. Which is why in the real world, breakups sometimes will take a couple conversations and try to get through it to a place where there at least is a mutual respect. And hopefully Greg and Katie can find that at some point. I hope so too. I hope so too. Yeah. Well, Dr.

And I hope that for, sorry, I hope for each of them, they're able to kind of hold on to what was beautiful about their connection, right? Because there were aspects of that connection that were beautiful and things can end and still have been beautiful. That's a really hard one for us to hold on to. And I hope that it can be that they each are able to cherish memories because it certainly seems like, I mean, from Greg's experience, certainly seems like Greg's relationship with Katie gave him a chance to deepen into his healing and into his grief that he otherwise hadn't yet had. So he gets to keep that whether Katie's in his life or not. He gets to keep that sense of like, I know what it's like to feel alive again. I know what it's like to have a smile on my face again.

How do I now build a life for myself where I get to have that feeling even though it's not going to be with Katie? And whatever parts of Katie that she accessed in her connection with Greg, I hope that she will take those parts of herself and continue to nurture them and cultivate them and savor the ways in which Greg brought beautiful things forward in her. We still get to have that, even if the relationship ends. Yeah, well said. Well, Dr said. Well,

Dr. Salmon, thank you so much. This has been, I hope, helpful to the audience. And that certainly, I found it very interesting and informative. And, you know, hopefully people listening, you know, again, hopefully we all learned a little bit hopefully if watching the episode was something that was triggering hopefully this puts some perspective around it and how we can you know i guess get through you know life with trying to um you know process our emotions all while um you're not necessarily projecting it into every situation without, I guess, the labels. Because it's a tough position for both Katie and Greg are in. And this one got a little messy.

And in a lot of ways, they're both set up to fail in that world. Well, and it's a tough position that you're in, Nick. And yet you do it. You continue to invite yourself, your audience into these conversations. And it's so beautiful that you take the opportunity to use your platform in this space to go deep and to try to figure some stuff out about love, about human connection, about attraction, about power. I just have a lot of respect for your willingness to engage in this way. Well, Dr. Solomon, again, I can't thank you enough for taking the time and walking us through that.

And hopefully, again, for people listening, we have a better understanding of what Katie felt and what Greg might have felt or try to understand also why, for many people watching this, could be triggering and how we can try to process and understand that. Also, just for me, I do want to emphasize we want to give space.

And as I mentioned, when we recap this show, like, let's just, you know, I think we want to hold people accountable. We just want to be very careful on these types of shows. They are very entertaining. We certainly try to apply this to our personal lives and real lives, but with it being edited, with it being high stakes, with it being an alternate universe, to be careful to assign labels,

and despite we might feel triggered by certain things and identify as certain things, not to necessarily label people in certain behaviors is fact, because as we know, things on that show label people and certain behaviors is fact. You know, because as we know, things on that show aren't always how they exactly appear to be in reality. Also, just a final note, we will be having Greg on the podcast

and he will be with us after the final rose. We certainly hope that goes well for both Greg and Katie. We're not sure if it will, but we'll certainly have a chance to hear from Greg. Obviously, we don't know what he's going to say, and maybe he clears a lot of this up at AFR, but either way, we'll be breaking down AFR with Mina Kimes and also with Greg himself to see where he's at. How does he think about this? Has he reflected? What does

he learn? Where is he now? And where do we go from here? As always, thanks so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed it. We'll be back again on Monday for Ask Nick episodes, and then we have a big week ahead. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.