Transcription
Open your mouths and talk. And when you do, describe yourself. Don't describe your partner, which ends up being critical. Describe yourself, your feelings, and your needs.
Hey everyone, before diving into the episode, I want to take a moment to invite you into our mindbodygreen ecosystem, where you can explore the infinite possibilities of health and well-being. All you have to do is click the subscribe button to hear more thought-provoking interviews with leaders in the health space. I am so grateful for all of you who have tuned in over the years, and let me tell you, it's only going to get better.
So, what's the recipe for a loving, long-lasting relationship? What would you say are the top three to five ingredients for such a relationship?
Great question. Well, uh, first of all, you need to turn, turn toward your partner when your partner makes a bid for attention. And I don't mean physically, I mean emotionally. So your partner calls out your name, you say, "Yes." That's all it takes. That's one.
What's another one? Well, one principle I think that is, that is characteristic of couples who have a lasting, reasonably happy relationship is that when their partner is upset, the world stops, and they listen. And they listen well, and listen with empathy and understanding being the goal. And there's a third, which is, uh, know your partner's dreams. Not night dreams, but dreams about their life moving forward. And try to support those dreams in whatever way you can. Really honor your partner's dreams.
And in this book that we just, uh, wrote, that's going to be coming out in January, uh, we really talk about how, particularly in this country, the, the way people fight is a broken system. They're, they either fight, uh, to persuade their partner that they're right, you know, and, and win the argument, or they, they wind up really casting their partner as a stranger. But what we've discovered is in very good relationships, stable and happy relationships, people fight in order to arrive at mutual understanding. So that conflict can be a source of closeness and intimacy in the relationship. And that's why we wrote the book, to take people from conflict that really makes them feel estranged from one another, to conflict that makes them feel closer to one another.
So let's segue to conflict. You say there are three main conflict styles: avoiding, validating, and volatile. Can you walk us through each one briefly?
Sure. So avoiding couples, uh, are couples who agree to disagree. So they may say what their position is on an issue, but they don't try to persuade the other person that they are right and the other is wrong. Instead, there is just, "Okay, we have a difference. Let's move on." They don't try to fight or even just discuss, uh, in great length why their position is true for them. So we call those couples avoidant, and they can have, you know, very good relationships for the most part.
The second group is validators. And validators are people who will, uh, disagree and then they'll talk through their own position and listen to their partner's position, but they present their positions with a little bit more calmness, more rationality. Uh, they don't get explosive emotionally. They really are very, uh, calm and kind to each other as they are trying to decide on a resolution to, uh, a difficult situation.
Finally, the third group are called volatile couples. And volatile couples are the really passionate, intense couples who will argue for their point of view, who will get very emotional at times, who may even get flooded physiologically, meaning they'll go into fight or flight, uh, and they'll escalate the quarrel to the ceiling sometimes. But basically, they are much more intense and much more vulnerable as well when they're talking about a problem.
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard come to mind on that one. Sorry. What did you say?
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard come to mind on that one.
That's a little over the top. Little over the top, but yeah, yeah. Right. And, and all, all three styles are fine as long as the ratio of positive to negative interaction in the conflict discussion is at least five times as much positive as negative. Yes. So all, there's no better fight style. Uh, the problems arise when there's a mismatch between partners. One person is more comfortable starting with persuasion, like volatile couples, and the other one is more avoidant, and then they really get into trouble.
Yeah, let's talk about compatibility. Let's ditch the horoscope. Let's ditch the horoscopes and look at conflict styles instead. Which conflict styles are more compatible, and the flip, less compatible?
Well, I think let's start with the less compatible. Uh, if you look at the two extremes of avoiding and volatile, put a couple like that together, and you've got some struggles. Because the volatile person, of course, is really wanting to get to the solution, and they're pursuing the other person to talk about the issue more and more and more. When the other person really wants to avoid talking about it, disagreement is fine, they don't need to resolve anything. Um, but the volatile person won't let it go. They're like, you know, a bulldog with a bone, they won't let it go. So the avoidant person really gets overwhelmed and extremely uncomfortable. Uh, so it almost turns into what we call a pursuer-distancer conversation. One is trying to create distance, and the other person is really pursuing that one who's trying to get distance. Those are tough.
Um, but avoidant-validating couples do quite well. Um, because the avoidant person is not overwhelmed by whatever the validating person is presenting. The validating person is calmer, a little bit more rational, and so easier to hear. So those two can do pretty well.
Uh, validating and volatile are fair. You know, they can do fairly well. Um, but a lot of times it's, it's so interesting. I've seen it clinically where the volatile person will really push on the validator to get them to be more emotional. They want to be met at that high peak emotional, intense place, and the validator doesn't want to go there. That's not comfortable for them. And so again, you get a little mini version of that pursuer-distancer. But at the same time, you know, what can happen is that the, uh, volatile person realizes is that when their emotions are at high peak, the validator is going to have a hard time listening. So they'll bring down the intensity a little bit to more evenly match the level of emotion of the validator, so that they're on more of an equal playing field, and they really can listen to each other as opposed to pushing each other around emotionally.
I'm curious, does one sex skew towards, are any of the three styles skewed towards certain sexes or evenly split across the board?
No, there's no, uh, there's no gender preference for one type versus another. And all three types of couples will be fine as long as that magic ratio of five to one is there during the conflict discussion. I don't think anyone is. I think the volatile one is the most challenging for a variety of reasons.
You must be married to a volatile person.
No, maybe not. Well, I've got, I've got an almost seven-year-old and a four-year-old, so that there's my, there's my experience with volatile.
So, so you also say that there are five fights everyone has: the bomb drop, the flood, I love these names, the shallows, the standoff, and the chasm in the room. Can, can you also briefly walk us through each of these classical fights?
One of the ones that, I mean, the bomb drop is really very characteristic of couples who are really in trouble. So they store up their grievances and then when they can't take it anymore because they've been withholding, uh, their judgment or their complaints, they start very harshly. They feel justified in really bringing this, uh, point of view through. And so they start with criticism. They start by blaming their partner, describing their partner in order to justify their complaint, and they really describe their partner in very negative terms and present that as the problem. So that's the bomb drop. It's a harsh startup. It's like saying, "What is wrong with you? You, every time, every every time we talk about this, you know, you just shut down and you won't listen to me. And I really am tired of the way the house looks, and you know, you just don't, you just don't take care of things the way I want you to. You're so careless and thoughtless and inconsiderate. I can't take it anymore." And so they start that way, and it's very hard for anyone to listen to criticism like that. And that, so that's the first problem. And the solution is gentle startup, a much soften, more soft way of talking about, uh, your concerns by talking about yourself rather than your partner, not pointing a finger at your partner and saying, "You," but pointing the finger at yourself and saying, "Here's what I feel, and here's what I need from you." Okay? So that's the first one. That's the first one.
Um, what was the second?
The flood is the second one. Oh, the flood. Oh, gosh. All right. So the flood, um, is very typical for, or, uh, volatile couples, however, or volatile individuals, but, uh, anybody can get flooded. And here's what we mean by flooding: when you're in a conflict conversation and it begins to feel very critical and blaming to you, or even contemptuous towards you, and you can feel, all you can almost feel your heart rate rising, you can feel your blood pressure rising. And as you get more and more overwhelmed and feeling attacked, what happens is that you go into what we call diffuse physiological arousal, which is otherwise known as fight or flight or freeze, which everybody's heard of. And when you are sitting there in a conflict conversation in that state, your heart rate may be over a hundred beats a minute, or even 150 beats a minute. It's as if you're facing a saber-tooth tiger instead of this partner that you love. What happens psychologically is that you can't accurately hear what your partner's saying. There's a lot of distortion in how you're taking in what your partner says. You're not seeing accurately either, uh, the facial expressions of your partner. All you're seeing is attack. Even if your partner is saying, "Honey, I really love you, everything's okay," you're still going to be, you know, way up on the ceiling, ready to fight or run away. So the antidote for that, best way to deal with it, is that you have to take a break. As soon as you begin to feel those signature sensations inside you of being flooded, and those may include a tightened chest, or breathing more shallowly and rapidly, may include your jaw getting tense, tight, your belly, you know, tight, feeling hot, all kinds of different signals to your body that tell you you're flooded. You take a break. And here's how you have to do it, right? You ask your partner, "I'd like to take a break," or, "Let's please take a break," and you tell your partner when you'll come back to continue the conversation. Very important. If you don't do that, if you just say, "Let's take a break," and off you go, then your partner may feel abandoned or rejected and hopeless that this problem you're discussing will ever get, you know, discussed again and resolved. Finally, when you're on your break, which should last maybe a half an hour at the minimum and no longer than 24 hours at the maximum, you need to take your mind off the fight. You do not sit there thinking, "Okay, what am I going to say to that? How am I going to rebuttal that?" Instead, you do things that will self-soothe, that will calm you down. Things like reading a book, reading a magazine, maybe meditating, maybe, uh, going for a run, listening to music or playing music, anything that distracts you from the content of the fight. Because if you keep thinking about it, your body doesn't have a chance to begin to metabolize the stress hormones that have flooded your body during that flooding state. Then you come back.
I'm assuming in some couples where things go south, is they go have a drink.
Oh, no. What you should not do in this instance. And then you just get more amped up, and then the fight just elevates, and then, yeah, it's, it can be really terrible. Alcohol and flooding is an awful combination, for sure, because alcohol disinhibits aggression. So when people have a drink or two, allegedly, to calm down, they're taking the brakes off their aggression at the same time, which means when they come back and talk, they'll be perhaps even more aggressive. They may even get physically aggressive. That's where we see some domestic violence in particular.
And then what about the next one? The shallows.
Yeah, we have an example in the book where, uh, a marriage ends because of a fight about getting a dog or not getting a dog. And the couple's always fighting about the dog, and whose responsibility it is to take the dog out and play with the dog and so on. But really, underneath, there are deeper issues for each person. And for him in that marriage, the issue was the dog constrains my freedom, and it's a symbol of how, you know, we used to really explore in this relationship and travel and have adventures, and we don't do that anymore. For her, getting a dog is really about wanting a family, and she wants to settle down and have children with him. He's terrified of that. But rather than talking about their hidden agendas, they fight on the surface and never get to the issues that really underlie their positions in the relationship.
And what's the antidote for that?
So the antidote for that, uh, is a conversation that is a little bit more structured that you have with your partner, that consists of the listener asking the speaker six questions. Questions that go much deeper. Things like, "Are there any values or ethics that are part of your position on this issue? Is there some childhood history for you, or does your position pertain to something in your past? How about, why is this so important to you? I don't quite get it. Help me understand." We also ask about feelings. And in particular, "What is your ideal dream here?" There's where you know you're unearthing people's really, uh, their underlying place of meaning and purpose deep inside them that connects to their position on this issue. That's where you're diving deep, and you're understanding your partner at a much deeper level because of that. And finally, the next question is rather existential, which has to do with, "Is there some underlying purpose or meaning to your position on this issue? Does this give your life some kind of meaning or purpose?" That is the question. And one partner asks all the questions and just listens, and then they trade roles. The other person does that too. So notice we're not moving to resolution. We're going on the premise that understanding has to precede resolution.
And, and what about the standoff?
The standoff is a very interesting thing, you know. And because in for a lot of couples, a fight is about who's going to win. And people think there has to be one winner and one loser in every fight. And once you have that point of view, then your partner's gains are your losses. And when you have that kind of standoff and that way of thinking about how to resolve conflict, it turns out that not only are you physiologically aroused during the, during the fight, during the conflict, you're generally more physiologically aroused. Your heart is beating harder at each beat, your blood pressure is higher. And many of those couples really die young when they have this zero-sum game, you know, "my win is your loss, your win is my loss." When they think that way, then there's this kind of standoff that really costs them a lot in terms of longevity and health. So there's a wonderful antidote that we discovered by watching out of our 3,000 couples we observed, the ones who were really successful. And here's what they did. They would first take their position and separate their position into two parts. The part that they were really inflexible about, they could not compromise on because if they did, it would feel like giving up the bones of their body. Those things included needs, an ideal dream, perhaps, of very important value to them. So, you know, the, the deeper things that emerged from that prior discussion of questions and answers, that typically was inflexible. Then they would also name what they were more flexible about. And those things would include the nitty-gritty details, you know, who would do what, when would something happen, where would they go, how much would something cost, how long would something last. So they might put in that kind of outer circle of flexible parts of their position, who, what, where, when, you know, those kinds of questions, um, that would be more flexible. Then from that vantage point, it was much easier for people to talk about a compromise in terms of the flexibility they each had in their position. Where does that flexibility overlap that we can build a compromise that at the same time honors each of our inflexible areas in our position on the issue, our values, or our core needs? So our goal there, Jason, is to turn the standoff into collaboration.
Can I give you a great example of of this?
Sure.
We had a couple in a workshop who were getting ready to retire, and they both agreed that they wanted to sell their house. But what they did next was in conflict. One, he wanted to buy a sailboat, sail around the world, classic dream. What did she want to do? Well, her family had owned a farm for over a century, and she wanted to take her place in the legacy of her ancestors and go live on that farm. Where was the farm located? Iowa. So how do you sail around the world from Iowa? This is a challenge.
Sprout wings. So here's what they did. In their inflexible area, of course, she put down living on the farm. He put down sailing. But in their flexible areas, who, whose dream would go first? How long would it last? Where would we go? What would that be like? How much would we spend? And out of the flexibility of both of them, here's what they came up with. And they've been fighting about this for several years, incidentally. They came up with, "Okay, first, they were going to buy the sailboat and sail as far as they could for one year. At the end of a year, they would put the boat up on dry dock and go live on the farm for a year." Which felt fair, which felt just, and had the experience of living there through all four seasons. At the end of those two years, based on their experiences, then they would decide what to do next. But each person got their dream honored in a fair way, and they were happy with that.
I go back to that original question of the key ingredients for success, and it's feeling like flexibility is one of them. Definitely helps, though you don't want somebody who's so flexible that they're like a pool of jelly on the floor, right? This is not good. They need to have their own identity as well, right? And stand up for whatever is most important to them as part of their identity, right?
And the last one, the chasm in the room.
Oh, the chasm. So when the, when both the friendship and intimacy and conflict have deteriorated in a relationship, a couple is really at a place where they're almost on different planets. And they're, they're trying to deal with such a chasm between between them that has to get resolved. And there, we have, you know, them facing the end of the relationship.
So how did they turn that around?
Yeah. So the way they got to the chasm, Jason, is they had, in the past, a lot of fights that were very painful to them and caused what we call an emotional injury. Which means perhaps, perhaps one insulted the other with contempt. And the words that other used with contempt are burned into the brain of the listener. They can't forget those horrible fights. And those fights are part of what destroyed the bridge across the chasm. So what we have to do is repair, in a very important way, those big emotional injuries. And we developed a five-step process called the aftermath of a regrettable incident, in which the goal is not to solve the problem they originally were fighting about. The goal is to understand what was going on for the partner and have a chance to describe what was going on for them. That talks about the miscommunication, how the communication went wrong. And that is composed of five steps that include expressing your feelings about what happened, your own narrative about what happened without blame or criticism, and there's a specific way of doing that. Looking at what got triggered for you. Again, we're bringing the past into the present in terms of these old scars that we have inside us that started long before this relationship ever began, maybe from childhood or from a former relationship. We bring those out and talk about those with our partner. What buttons got pushed for us? Finally, there is taking responsibility. And notice how late that comes. The apology that's part of taking responsibility will do no good if it's done right away. If you don't explore the impact of what happened on your partner, you're not going to know really what you're apologizing for. That's why we put that apology so late. And finally, how can you avoid this from happening in the future? And that system really does a great job of repairing those old injuries and beginning to rebuild the bridge.
So you mentioned repairing old injuries and rebuilding the bridge. What about couples trying to rebuild their relationship post-affair?
Okay, so post-affair, I'm so glad you asked. Um, we have created a therapy that we are now testing in research in a, the first controlled study ever done on treating affairs. Which means one group is not getting the treatment, at least for a delay of time, versus a couple who is getting our treatment. And the treatment is, uh, a little bit of a different model than what we would normally do with a non-affair having couple, in that it's three stages. The first stage is what we call atonement. And atonement is absolutely crucial to healing from an affair. The hurt partner can ask the person who's had the affair any question they want to, for the most part, and that other person has to honor and answer those questions transparently. Has to also listen to the feelings of the hurt partner with as much empathy as they can. Notice we're not talking about what went wrong in the marriage yet. We're just dealing with the consequences of the affair. And finally, uh, the person who had the affair needs to really say, "I'm sorry," and apologize in a very big way. And they may need to do that many times. Then in step two, which is attune, then we start building marriage number two. That's what I like to call it. With the same partner, marriage number one has burned to the ground with the affair. An affair destroys everything in a marriage. Not only that, but it typically creates, creates post-traumatic stress disorder in the person who's really been hurt. They'll have nightmares, they'll have images of their partner in bed with somebody else that come into their head unbidden. Their feelings will be all over the place. They'll be hypervigilant, looking for signs that the partner didn't finish the affair, things like that. So there's a lot of understanding and then rebuilding the marriage using much better conflict management ways of really sustaining the friendship and passion in the relationship. And, you know, really building more trust based on transparency. And then finally, attachment is the last phase that has to do with getting into sex again, having sex, and really renewing their commitment.
I'm curious, in examples where it doesn't work out, is there usually a specific reason? Is it the person who had the affair, obviously, if they don't stop, that's kind of a non-starter that they can't successfully build the bridge? Or is it the person scorned, you just really can't forgive that person? I'm curious what you see for those where it just, no matter how much reconciliation they go through, they just can't make it work.
Yeah, our collaborators, T. Irvine and Paul Palusuo, discovered that only 50% of couples actually go to therapy. And most of the time, um, they, the therapist does not talk about the affair. And that's kind of surprising. So therapy doesn't work out very well most of the time because therapists avoid any kind of structured approach to dealing with the affair. And so, um, typically what happens is the affair does not get resolved, does not get talked about. And, and, uh, we've discovered that if couples don't actually talk about the affair and confront it, the relationship is likely to end. You know, another thing too, is that there are some people who, um, if they are the hurt partner, they just cannot get over it, no matter what the other person does. They cannot get over it. The hurt is so intense and so powerful. And typically, those people may have experienced prior betrayals. And if they have, and it could be betrayals even during childhood, where, you know, Mom was supposed to protect them from Dad and didn't, that kind of thing, um, they will really struggle with being able to forgive their partner. Um, then again, God, there's also the couples where, uh, the person who had the affair never really stopped it, but has pushed the affair deeper underground and told the other that they stopped it, but the other senses that it hasn't stopped. That's, that's another reason.
In your view, what typically causes affairs?
Loneliness. It's absolute loneliness. So there tends to be, first, in conflict management, somebody will be, one partner or another, will be very critical of the other, very, you know, contemptuous, making the other person feel defensive. There'll be a lot of Four Horsemen until they finally just can't take it anymore, and they start avoiding having conflict discussions. But as they avoid those conversations, they grow more and more and more distant until they're barely talking to each other at all. Then there's deep loneliness within the marriage. And they also, as Carol Rusbult, a fabulous researcher who unfortunately has passed away, what she discovered is the people who had the the greatest tendency to have affairs were people who would compare their partner negatively to somebody else out in the world, like the barista at their coffee shop. "God, you know, she gave me a great smile. My wife never smiles at me like that." That's a negative comparison. And folks who had affairs were full of those.
For those earlier in the relationship, what, what are the top three green flags when you're early, that you say, "Okay, we've got something here. Proceed forward." Yahoo?
Well, you know, there, there are several that, um, I often see people who have already been divorced and their individuals coming to decide, "Is this relationship right for me or not?" So here are a couple of signals. One is the other person takes responsibility for their part in mishaps between them. Doesn't just push off blame to the other person. They take responsibility themselves. That's really a good sign. Um, and sometimes I'll have people ask a potential partner, "So how come your last relationship ended?" And if they blame it all on the other person, that old person, the ex, watch out. It's not a good, that's a big red one. So one is responsibility.
Yeah, I want to underline that one because I think that in my experience, uh, doing therapy, that's what makes every one of the therapies that have failed with me clinically happen, uh, when one person refuses to take responsibility for the problems in the relationship and blames it all on the other person. Okay. A second one is reliability. So does this person do what they say they're going to do? Do they call you when they say they will? If you're living together, maybe, uh, do they call you to let you know they're going to be late for dinner? Do they actually respond to your text, maybe not every second, but you know, within a few hours, do they respond? So, uh, reliability is another big one. And I think probably, another super important one, important one, is, is that person there for you when you try to confide in them about something? So if you've had a stressful day, does that person really listen and empathize with you, or do they almost immediately change the subject? You know, do they say, "Oh, you think you had a terrible day? Let me tell you about my day. My day was so much worse." Blah, blah, blah. So they are there for you when you want to confide in them, maybe when you get sick. You know, the most important thing is, do they bring you chicken soup? If they don't bring you chicken soup, forget it. I'm just kidding. But are they really caring in the way that they are there for you? And nobody is going to be perfect, right? They're not always going to be able to be there for you, but as much as possible.
On that note of perfection, there, there's an interesting trend on social media where they talk about beige flags, where someone does something rather. Yeah, this is a new one for me too. Our team found this one. They're much younger than me, uh, where where essentially someone's doing something innocuous in the relationship, you know, like doing laundry in a strange way, or, you know, pouring their milk and their cereal. It's like something really innocuous, but like it's raising a quote-unquote beige flag, which which feels a little bit juvenile to me. But I'm curious if you kind of take on some of these quirky, uh, quirky maybe behaviors that our, our partners might have.
Well, let me, let me say something about, you know, these positive things that you were alluding to. They all fall under trust or commitment. So in the beginning of a relationship, we found all the arguments that newlyweds had in our lab were about trust. Can I rely on you? Can I trust you? Are you going to be there for me? Am I more important than your friends? Am I more important than your mother? And building that trust sense, really, that your partner is thinking for two, not just for themselves. They're thinking about your benefit, even when you're not there, you're actually there, and they're thinking of you. And that, that was a really important thing in the beginning of a relationship, building that, that trust, the bedrock of trust. And the second one was commitment. You know, "Am I there? Am I the love of your life? Do you cherish what you have?" And, and Julie talked about Carol Rusbult's research, that idea that when things aren't going well, do you complain to your partner about what's wrong, or do you go to somebody else and complain about your partner?
Let me, Jason, can I jump in to, uh, give provide another answer to your question in terms of those quirks that your partner may have that drive you a little nuts? Um, there are always going to be differences between you. You live in a different body than your partner. You have a different history than your partner. Different brain than your partner. And so there are differences in personality. There are differences in lifestyle preferences. There are differences in ways of chewing your bread, you know, there are going to be all kinds of differences. And one of the things I think about commitment, as John is talking about, is that it's really, really important to be able to accept those quirks. And as long as they don't hurt you, right? Uh, because there can be quirks that really do hurt you. Uh, a quirk like driving 100 miles an hour down a city street, that's not so great. But, but most quirks, you know, are just basically the differences. And if you chose a different partner, there'd be a different set of quirks that bothered you. That's just part and parcel of a relationship.
And, and how does one who's early in their relationship, or maybe I'd say the earlier stages, as they're, they're, they're not married, they're not living together, but they've, they've been together for a while, and then there's, they're starting to think, "Is this the one?" How does one know if they found the one, or is the one just a misconception sold through movies and pop culture?
Good one. Good one. You know, first of all, there isn't just one. There's zillions out there. You know, remember, we're a planet of almost 8 billion people. So to think that there is the one soulmate, uh, is kind of, uh, you don't buy soulmates?
No. How long have you two been married?
36 years.
Yeah, pretty cute. He's pretty cute. I like him. He's okay. Um, however, you know, there's again, as you probably saw, 69% of all problems in a relationship are perpetual. They never go away. 69% of problems between a couple. What that means is that one person has different lifestyle preferences or personality factors that may collide in part with their partner. So does that define a soulmate? I don't think so. It defines two human beings who choose to commit to this person. And, you know, bottom line, what it comes down to is not only, you know, all the limerence, all the chemistry, all the stars in the sky, you know, all that stuff that happens at first, uh, typically in a relationship. It's more about again, what John was talking about, is this person there for me most of the time? Trust. Building trust. And do I have enough trust in this person, and in myself, in this relationship, that I can be fully myself and not have to hide or sequester some part of me off to the side because my partner doesn't like that all of me? Feels accepted, even if parts of me are very annoying. That's, that's trust and commitment.
What percentage of marriages do you think are actually happy marriages?
I'd say roughly 35% are really happy and stable relationships.
So do you think the 65 who don't make it into that happy bucket, are they just kind of staying together because of convenience, maybe perhaps it's children or, you know, dividing assets in a divorce, or they're just kind of tired? Or maybe they probably should have never gotten married? Like, how do you think about that 65%? How they kind of split?
Well, my opinion is that they're struggling because they don't know how to get closer. And conflict is driving them apart. So they become strangers or enemies. And if they knew how to really use, use these principles of conflict to get closer, they would, they would really solve their problems. They would really, you know, learn to live with the ones that were not salvageable and solve the ones that were salvageable. You know, I would, I would also say, though, um, we have to look at external factors outside the relationship. For example, there's a huge percentage of people in this country who are suffering from an addiction, an addiction that they have no access to treatment for, because maybe there are no centers where they can get help, or they don't have the money to pay for help, etc. So we've got addiction feeding into relationships. We have lots of people who are traumatized, either by having served in wars, or from childhood abuse, or a former relationship that was violent, you know, so you've got these external factors that people are bringing into the relationship that they just feel overwhelmed by. And it's almost like those are third parties, third parties in the relationship that are driving the partners apart.
Well, on that note, I'm curious, this idea of just choosing the right partner from the start. Like, if you talk about a couple where there's extraordinary, extraordinary amount of real trauma, like the big T, you know, not like the little tea that everyone has these days, like real big tea on both sides. Maybe there's a lot of love there, and there's a lot of good, but you know, that may just be doomed. Like there's so much work. Or I hate to say that, but yeah.
You know, Jason, it's one of my specialties in my clinical work is treating PTSD. And so I'm talking big PTSD, incest, combat, torture, rape, being an orphan, you know, all that stuff. And it's amazing. This is what blows my mind. When people go into therapy together, this is how I meet them, and they learn how to really share what they experienced during that trauma to make the partner an ally. And they talk to the partner about what they really need when they're going into a PTSD episode. Those guys can have some of the closest relationships there are. So it's not necessarily the, you know, the big monstrous tea that's driving them apart. Typically, what's driving them apart is that they're not talking about their trauma, and their partner doesn't know what they've gone through. Because of that, the partner who has PTSD may have very strange behavior when that trauma kicks in, that the other person has no way of understanding. It's bewildering to them, and that's going to cause distance and ultimately failure.
So over the context of our conversation today, it seems to me, you know, one needs to be a good communicator, one needs to be flexible to some degree, one needs to do the inner work, whether that's therapy or trauma work in some cases, and that takes time. And it, to me, I think, you know, most people are probably better served waiting to their 30s, maybe 40s. Some of this stuff, I just, I think about reliability. How reliable was I at 25? Yeah, you know, not so much. And I'm a pretty reliable person, but I felt like, guy in 20, it was, you know, I think there are certain stages, um, where we're just really not equipped. And I'll just speak for, for guys specifically, at a certain young age, we're just, we're just not equipped for reliability. So what's your take on, uh, age and getting to know oneself and really being a solid person before engaging in a serious relationship?
There's a universal, uh, research finding that shows that, uh, marriages to women, women who are younger than 20, tend to be doomed. Because once women reach their 20s, they really start to develop in a new way and are able to be much more flexible in relationships than when they're younger. So that is, that is a finding that sort of fits with what you're saying. But the only one I know of like that. Yeah.
I, I think it's an interesting, it's an interesting question. This is a period of history where there's a lot of transition going on, you know, that's been going on for 40, 50 years since feminism, the second wave, really, of women's liberation. Women have gone out to work, they want a career, they want intellectual stimulation, much more than women, for example, of the 50s, who also wanted it, but they didn't have the opportunities to, nor the treatment by society to pursue their own individual goals. So I think it does help to mature a little bit. Uh, after all, our brains are not fully developed until around the age of 25. They're still doing some pruning and changing and so on. However, I, I do think that some people can grow up together. So they may be young when they got started, and they made some mistakes, blah, blah, but there was a lot of commitment. And couples will seek information. We now have the internet, and they may get some terrible information that's totally wrong, but hopefully, they'll also get good information that helps them, "Oh, this is how we manage conflict. Oh, this is what we ought to be doing to stay connected with one another. Create kind of traditions between us." So there are ways that younger couples also can build a relationship. But one of the things I think is a, that's very much a mistake is to wait until you're fully mature. Because nobody is ever, ever. We are growing our entire lives. If you stop growing and say, "Okay, I'm done. I'm fully baked. I'm fine." Forget it. Life is going to give you a different lesson and throw you to the ground and say, "Learn to walk again." So, yeah.
Well, I, I encourage all of our listeners and everyone out there, buy your new book, Fight Right. Buy all of your books. I think I think we'd be a lot happier in our relationships. Uh, I want to be mindful of your time. Is, is there anything we haven't covered that you'd like to, or do you want to leave our audience with any words of wisdom?
Open your mouths and talk. And when you do, describe yourself. If you're dealing with an issue, don't describe your partner, which ends up being critical. Describe yourself, your feelings, and your needs.
I think I would like to leave people with this idea. I have a notebook that I keep in my back pocket and a pen in my front pocket. And when Julie says the four terrifying words, "We need to talk," I whip out my notebook and my pen and I listen and take notes. That's my tip.
And then I have to be really careful what I say because what he writes down is going to end up in a book.
That's a great one. Oh, always a, always a pleasure, Julie and John. Great to see you. Thank you so much for all of your incredible work. What a fun interview. Thank you.