#880: Relationship Tools That Work — Esther Perel, Brené Brown, Dr. Sue Johnson, Terry Real, and More on Conflict, Repair, and Lasting Love

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/d52c081b1081954d

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. This episode is devoted to one simple
question. But simple isn't always easy. Here's the question. How do you stay close?
To those closest to you.
Over time.
That could be your husband, your wife, your co-founder.
could be just about anyone you are close to. Through the inevitable conflict, the misunderstandings, exhaustion, disappointment, change.
And so on.
In this compilation.
We get
A greatest hits.
From some of the minds I lean on.
for answering this type of question. Esther Perrell begins with the basics, then we move to Brene Brown, who explains why marriage or partnership of any type, frankly, is never fifty-fifty and how to navigate that. Bradfeld
describes the monthly life dinners.
That have helped him and his wife, Jim Detmer offers a practical way to distinguish observable facts from the stories we all make up. Sheila Heen.
Explains how humor and genuine curiosity can serve as tools.
The late doctor Sue Johnson.
Man, she was a legend, then walks us through the Hold Me Tight conversation, which I've used myself. Terry Real then offers a very, very simple, strikingly simple model for repair and introduces the term normal marital hatred. I have yet to meet anyone married who is like
What is that? I have no idea what that is. And then finally Diana Chapman describes what it means to let an outdated version of a marriage or any relationship end so that two people can consciously choose
What comes next for their
relationship.
And without further ado.
Please enjoy.
It's very wide ranging, but very tactical.
Conversation about relationships.
First up
Esther Perell
Esther Perel is an internationally renowned psychotherapist.
The New York Times bestselling author of Mating in Captivity
And the state of affairs.
and the host of the award winning podcast.
Where should we begin?
So this is a question from Gregoire Fiffrey via Facebook.
We'd love to ask her how to foster marriage longevity. Any exercises, routines or habit would be great.
Especially around fostering deeper emotional relationships.
There is the first basics.
Appreciation.
Just simply saying a lot of nice things.
Not taking things for granted.
Not forgetting to say thank you and please just because it's the person that you live with.
Making compliments.
Holding hands, kissing, stroking.
Sending sweet notes.
Buying flowers.
Preparing breakfast, bringing the coffee to bed, all those sweet

That they live inside of you, that you're thinking of them even when they're not there.
These daily appreciations they go a long way in
It sometimes is a real diligent effort to keep doing them.
And then I am a strong fan of letter writing. I think that when you fly away, when you're away, when you're sitting in a cafe, when you just have a moment
To drop a note that is not just on the birthday and on the anniversaries.
Just kind of your your own musings about
You about your lives together, your dreams, where you're going, how you met, what you remember, what you fancy.
That is actually very much
The kind of the telling of the story, you know, the story of the couple.
There's a lot of intimacy in there.
Touch?
Is a major experience of intimacy.
I think when you do that, humor
And things that kind of really
Encourage the other person.
in which you recognize them at their at their most authentic. Go do this thing. This is really something you really like.
Take a few more days.
Do you know you wanted to always take disclass, go take this class, kind of.
Ways in which you encourage the other person.
To be the best version of themselves.
And vice versa. Be you the best version of yourself with them.
It's really basic.
What makes a relationship sustain itself and be more nurturing.
Next.
Alicia Tenea Eichelberger via Facebook asks
How to lessen arguments in your marriage.
Look, I think it's all about the art of speaking and listening.
No, there was a
Culture a few years back by Bruce Neumann and it was a world peace project and he had twenty three inch monitors with faces of the most diverse group of people, diverse races, ethnicities, gender, ages, all of it.
And every single person.
Every face was saying I'll talk.
And you listen.
You'll talk and I'll listen. They'll talk and we listen.
You talk and we listen, and it just showed you the robustness of this
Most difficult art.
Which often I would say listening is harder than speaking.
But then for some people, maybe speaking actually becomes the hardest thing.
In a relationship you can often
get the daily hassles in which you are grinding at each other, in which
There's a friction going on. Don't sweat the small things is probably really important in terms of how people deal with arguments in a relationship.
I would say
Don't complain.
Ask?
Behind every criticism there's often a wish.
Because if you believe that your partner has done something wrong that they didn't pay a bill on time or anything, and you wish that they had
Done it right.
But instead of asking them.
To correct it, you basically tell him that he can never do it well that you did doing this on purpose that
You know, just ask them to do it better next time, rather than would it kill you?
Something simply do you think that next time
You know, you could set a monthly alert so that you don't forget.
It's a very different tone. It's a very different way of relating to the person. There's no contempt in that one.
Which we know from the research of John Buttman is one of the four horses of Apocalypse. Actually I'm gonna give you the four horses because they're really important.
One is criticism.
Contempt.
Stonewalling and Defensiveness.
Those four are pretty much the killers in the land of arguments and relationship decline.
You know.
Try not to talk with categories of always and never, all or nothing.
That probably is one of the most
Important?
Changes in vocabulary?
Banish him.
I always have to ask you, you never do this? No, but the moment you say you never the other person is gonna come up with the one time that they knew and that they've done it so that they can defeat your argument rather than really understand that you're asking them to do it more often?
Which is exactly why I say ask, don't complain.
Add some humor.
Add some humour, there's nothing that's gonna diffuse your arguments more than just putting some perspective into it and not take yourself so seriously.
Shopity.
At the end of the day.
You know, assume that your partner has the same interests as you to solve the stresses in your relationship.
And for that to happen, it's important that both of you understand and appreciate the other person's point of view.
Do you really think that the other person wants you to purposefully
Be it no idea.
Or hurt you, or let you down.
Probably not.
It's all of that shift.
That takes you out of
relationships that are mired in bickering.
chronic low intensity warfare.
or high conflict.
'Cause there's a range there.
Okay.
Imagine I ask you
Has your arguing turned toxic.
As in does your partner keep telling you that you can never do it right?
Or that they can never do it right by you.
that every little convo about who should set the table will end up in a blowout about how dysfunctional your relationship is.
Or that two minutes into a fight, one of you is saying we should get a divorce or we should break up.
That's what I'm calling a high conflict couple.
The opposite of the arguments is you come in and you say
I want to listen to what you have to say.
I wanna apologise.
What can I do to make this better?
And not what can you do to make this better.
s shift it around and you'll have magic happening.
Next up
Brene Brown.
Brene Brown is the author of six number one New York Times bestsellers.
Exploring courage.
Vulnerability.
Shame and resilience.
A research professor at the University of Houston
And a professor of practice.
At the University of Texas
At Austin.
The other two hacks that I think have saved our marriage.
Um, besides just showing up and kind of using some of these things like what's working, what was hard.

Is
The eighty twenty.
So everyone says marriage should be fifty fifty. It's the biggest crack of bullshit I've ever heard. It's never fifty fifty.
Yeah. Ever.
And so what we do is we quantify where we are. So if Steve comes home and he'll be like
I got twenty.
Just in terms of energy. Just energy.
Investment.
Kindness, patience. I'm I'm at a I at twenty.
And I'll be like I'll I'll cover you.
I got you, brother. I'll pull the eighty.
Mm.
Sometimes we come home, which we have done a lot, my mom has been sick and
I'll say I've got ten and see like
Two days ago said.
I'm riding a solid twenty five.
So we know that we have to sit down at the table anytime we have less than a hundred combined.
And figure out a plan of kindness toward each other. Oh, I love that.
Yeah, because
The thing is, marriage is not something that's fifty fifty.
A partnership works when you can carry their twenty, or they can carry your twenty.
And that when you both just have twenty, you have a plan where you don't hurt each other. Yeah, it's the your threadbare, right? Yeah. And and and so
So what we'll say is I'm like, I've got ten and he'll be like, I got maybe twenty five.
We're like
Put all the groceries that are supposed to be great and healthy in the freezer.
We're ordering out.
Um
Get the housekeeper here an extra day.
and we're canceling anything with people that we really actually don't like.
So how can we create some buff in the system? We do that.
So like and then you know, then we'll like a day or two later I'm like he'll be like I'm I'm riding a sixty, I'm like
Oh my God, work is kicking my ass. I'm still low twenty. It's like
I got you, but where's bear twenty?
So you know, let's ask Charlie if he wants to skip water polar practice today and let's all turn in at eight o'clock.
Mm.
Like huge. The other thing I would say too that now I'm thinking about that is we made a determination very early.
There's kid focused families.
Parent focus families.
And family focused families.
We're a family focused family.
So that means
That
If you wanna do water polo, eagle scouts, tennis, and skeet shooting.
And
Then that comes to the family.
And the family agrees what will keep the family healthy. Like
We can we
Yeah.
I've got a book launch. I've got this.
Steve's got patients, he's taking on other you know, he's a pediatrician, he's doing this.
So what works for our family right now is
You can do two extra curriculars.
And I'm going to have a two week tour, not a four week tour, but we put the family as the system that we serve.
Mm.
It's not the kids at the parents cost or the parents at the kids cost. It's the family and
It is remarkable.
How do you weigh
If you do it all.
The voting system, so to speak.
Rance, if you all come to the table.
Does everyone have
і ко
vote in the
Decision making process with respect? No. No, this is a dictatorship.
Yeah, like yeah.
Fix my mind. Oh no, yeah, no. Like we don't even bullshit around that. It's like when my kids like if I say like, oh shit, my my kids are like, ooh, you can't say that. I'm like, I say anything I want.
You can't say that. And when you're old enough, you can do whatever you want. You get your cursing license. Yeah, we yeah, you but right now I can I can totally do that.

Watch me.
Next up
Brad Feld
Bradfeld is an early stage investor and entrepreneur.
And a co-founder of Foundry Group?
Mobius Venture Capital.
And tech stars.
He writes on entrepreneurship.
Leadership.
Mental health
and sustaining a life beyond work.
So if we're talking about links and breaking
These artificial causal links.
Let's talk about another what seems like a pattern interrupt.
And that is your life dinners.
Can you describe what these are? Yeah, this was another thing that came out of me and Amy's
Weekend in Rhode Island. So
She said to me
As we're walking.
I wanna have dinner with you.
Once a month.
Not a date night, but let's do dinner once a month. Let's do it on the first night of every month.
I just wanna
Commitment for that.
You know, him and Hawaii, you know, I don't know whether I'll be in
Boulder or Boston or New York or
The Bay Area or whatever.
And she looked at me and she said, Do you have a calendar, an online calendar?
Knowing full well I did, of course.
And I said, Yeah, I have an online calendar.
She says, Does it have the ability for you to make a recurring calendar appointment?
I said yeah, I had the online counter lets me do that.
Just how about if you make an online
recurring calendar appointment from six PM Colorado time to ten PM Colorado time.
on the first day of a month and have it repeat.
Forever.
I said, Okay.
I guess I can do that. So we did that.
And so every month on the first day of the month we have what we call life dinner.
Yeah.
twenty years of life dinners later. So what is that? A thousand something life dinners, which is awesome, by the way.
We have a little flexibility. There are definitely nights where we
We will have it on the second or the third because something's going on.
But we really commit to it.
We used to go out
To dinner.
Now a lot of times we just do it at home. Time of Covid, we for sure do it at home.
We
Often, not always, but often start with a gift exchange.
And the gifts could be trivial little things once she gave me a remote control part machine.
She's picked up a lot of jewelry and art from from it over the years and books.
one dinner she gave me a Range Rover. So it's a full spectrum.
I really hope it was the same dinner that you gave her the farm machine. That would have been literally.
And we sit down and if you're a fan of software development.
And you know what agile is?
We essentially do
The first half is a retrospective of the previous month.
And the second half is sprint planning for the next month.
So again, very deliberately not a date night.
We have plenty of those. This is
Let's talk.
Each of us, you go first or I go first, doesn't matter, about the last month.
And what happened and what was good and what was bad and what we were unhappy about and what we wish we'd done differently and what we regret and
What we're really satisfied with, and anything.
Just retrospective.
This
Powerfully interesting because we started to learn that if
Amy did something that really annoyed me on the twenty first of the month.
In the moment, I didn't have to react.
And cause us to have
A three hour personal meltdown on the twenty first of the month.
I can wait.
Nine more days or ten more days. And it could be part eleven more days. It could be part of our
Life dinner.
And
It gave us a marker.
For being able to resolve
The conflicts that we would have with each other.
Or express things positive and negative that we hadn't said in the moment.
The forward.
Sprint planning part of it is
Not go through the calendar for the next month.
But talk about
Goals, aspirations.
What we might want to do differently.
What we're feeling in the moment that's making us uncomfortable.
About the future.
What we're
not, you know, afraid of what we're worried about happening in the future, what's causing us in the moment real anxiety about the future.
And you know anybody out there is
had any therapy or done meditation. Literally just naming the thing oftentimes gets rid of a lot of the anxiety.
Just labeling it, just calling it out.
And saying it out loud.
And so
These dinners, sometimes the conversation, the life dinner part of the conversation might go five or ten minutes and sometimes it might go three hours.
And sometimes there was a laughter and sometimes there were tears and sometimes there were both.
And
It's just such now.
twenty some odd years later.
A comfortable way to reground ourselves as a couple.
Roughly every thirty days. And what is
A very, very challenging and complicated world.
Next up.
Jim Dethmer
Jim Detmer is a co-founder of the Conscious Leadership Group.
and co author of the fifteen commitments of conscious leadership.
An influential framework for building candidate.
Responsible.
High trust relationships.
As you
Look at your
close relationships whether it be with your parents or with your siblings or children.
This idea of
Are we willing to be candid?
I wanna say something here, Tim, because people misunderstand this. They think that
If I'm below the line if we keep using that language.
Then people will say
I don't have a problem being candid. God, you ask anybody in my world. I'll tell you, I'm candid. I tell it like it is.
But what they're really saying is they're kind of
Living a scorched earth policy where they
Tell the truth all the time.
But they're rigid.
And righteous
About being attached.

Truth.
So we don't call that
Candor.
What we call candor begins with the ability to differentiate.
Facts.
From stories.
Facts or data.
Facts are what is totally unarguable.
Facts are that which
All reasonable people would agree to.
Facts, the facts of life. Stories are judgments, opinions, beliefs, interpretations that we make up
About
The facts.
So
For example.
Well that typical thing would be how walk in a house Debbie standing there.
Fact.
A video camera would record that the corners of her mouth are turned down slightly in what one could call a frail.
That's a fact.
Video camera would record it.
Now my mind starts making up stories.
Debbie's upset with me.
I did something wrong.
She's going to criticize me.
And now I start reacting to the stories.
Defending, justifying, explaining.
Reacting to the stories, even though the stories are all made up in my mind.
So Pander
Practicing conscious candor, first you differentiate fact from story.
And then you reveal
Your stories
holding them
Lightly.
So from below the line, I want to be right about my stories and prove that I'm right because my ego identification believes it can only survive if it's right.
So what that would look like is
You know, from below the line I'd say
What are you upset about? I'm only ten minutes late, and I know I forgot the milk, but God was very busy, uh
So now I'm revealing my story that she's upset in a reactive modality.
while holding tightly to my story that A she is upset at me and B she shouldn't be.
That's
Proof telling.
That's not what we're talking about at all.
Can or I differentiate fact from story, and here's what this might look like. I walk in the house and let's say I'm above the line and present, which I might not be.
I might say something like this.
Hey.
When I look over
It looks like you're upset. I'm making up the story that you're upset.
And rather than get all scared and react after that, first thing I do is just want to tell you I'm making up that story and I wanna check it out with you. Are you upset? And by the way, when I make up the story that you're upset.
I notice I get defensive. Furthermore, probably what I really get is scared'cause I don't want you to be pissed off at me.
But I'm gonna reveal myself to you, Debbie.
Not from being right. This act of candor is an act of incredible vulnerability.
I'm gonna let you know me. I say it all the time, I'm gonna let you know what's going on on Planet Jim. My thoughts, beliefs, interpretations, wants, desires, so you can know me, not so that I can prove I'm right.
And by the way.
This kind of candor goes hand in hand with conscious of listening.
People always want to say I want a more candid relationship with my partner. I say, Great, before you start revealing, start listening.
Start becoming a person.
To whom others will reveal themselves.
Handedly
Because you see them.
And you hear them.
And you
Get them.
then as they feel safe to reveal themselves, you'll find that the relationship becomes more safe for you to reveal yourself.
So candor and conscious listening go hand and glove.
But again, it's a co commitment, right?
Debbie and I said we want to remove all barriers to closeness. One of the barriers to closeness is not
Revealing ourselves to each other, it's so easy to hide out.
For fear of being rejected, for fear of being criticized.
The risk and Deb and I have been practicing candor for decades, Tim.
And there's almost always some edge of candor.
Where I could reveal a thought or I could reveal a judgment. In our case.
specifically about our children,'cause it's our second relationship. Debbie has four boys, I have two girls.
Well, sometimes I have judgments about her voice.
It's always risky.
To say to her, hey, I just want to tell ya, I had a judgment coming up in me about so and so.
She cares about her boys and she's irrationally involved with them just like I am with my girls. Every time I practice vulnerability and candor in my intimate relationship, there's a modicum of fear that comes up.
'Cause who knows how she's gonna react.
We do have decades now of practicing, so pretty good chance that we'll work it through.
So that's what candor is. Differentiate fact from story, hold your story lightly, reveal to the other for the sake of being known, not for proving you're right.
And practice deeply listening.
So the other person trusts you enough to reveal themselves as a short primer on candor.
Next up
Sheila Heen
Sheila Ean is the deputy of the Harvard Negotiation Project.
Founder of Triad Consulting Group.
And co author of The New York Times bestsellers
Difficult conversations.
And thanks for the feedback.
My guess is that you're familiar with the research by John Gottman up in Seattle.
I have some familiarity, but please.
Provide a
An overview.
Well an overview of just a connection to the question that you just asked.
So he invites married couples into his lab and he invites them to talk about an issue that's stressful between them.
To have a difficult conversation, essentially.
Hooks them up to heart monitors and
video tapes and all of that. And then, you know, he says that he can watch for five minutes and predict with
They're different numbers based on his different studies, but
ninety ish, ninety, ninety two percent accuracy whether they'll divorce within
Three or five years.
Part of the reason I name this is that
For me, it really says it's not just that we have difficult conversations in our most important relationships.
Those conversations are the relationship.
That if we find a way to have them
Productively.
Or
Constructively.
Then the relationship will thrive.
Whether it's a personal or a professional relationship.
And or
It's where we start to disengage because you just don't get it and you won't listen.
And the relationship starts to fray.
So what Gottman is
listening for are what are the indicators, right, that he's listening for that tell him which direction it's gonna go. And one of them
Yeah.
That as a
Conversation gets heated and starts to escalate.
One of the spouses
Will
Often make a joke.
Mm.
But the purpose of the joke is that it's a
invitation to step outside this argument and to see it for what it is, to see what's happening, which is that this is the conversation we usually have and how it usually goes.
And so often it's a little bit of an inside joke.
But humour
By the way, I listened to your conversation with Anne Lamott, who I absolutely adore. She's a treasure.
She is a treasure and
What does she call it?
Laughter is carbonated.
Holiness.
Holiness, yeah.
So laughter also in the brain just
gives us a little bit of instant perspective.
that we suddenly see the absurdity of our own behavior in many cases.
And so it's an invitation to just name what's happening. It's like a meta move.
So for instance with my
Husband who also teaches negotiation, by the way. So
Ha.
Love to be a fly on the wall for some of those.
Yeah, you can imagine. So we fight about how we fight.
Like we usually happen. Their kids are like Stop therapizing me.
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So we're like, Yeah, you're not listening.
Oh, a little with difficult conversations. Yeah. So that's the fight we have.
Stop putting your bat in my face.
That's the best alternative to negotiated agreement, folks. Inside joke. Yes, yeah, exactly. That was a very nice inside baseball joke.

Yeah, wave waving your batten around in a romantic relationship is not usually a successful strategy. You know, there are a lot of people who would find me very appealing.
Um jokes that he and I make
when we have the wherewithal to do it is like, why will you not just admit
I am good and you are bad.
That is what this is about, right? It's about who needs to apologize, whose fault this is, et cetera. So
As things escalate, your ability to just name that underlying dynamic sometimes makes the other person laugh and you can step out of it for a moment.
And then that gives you the opportunity to say, look.
Obviously we've had this conversation several times.
I'm not understanding why.
Fill in the blank.
I'm not understanding why what I'm suggesting doesn't make sense. Help me under like genuinely help me understand that. Or
I'm not understanding what
You're most worried about here.
That often.
Helps.
Mm-hmm.
And it needs to be a genuine ask. You can't say like what are you worried about?
Because that's really
A hot question. It's like you shouldn't be worried about anything. So why are you being so stupid as to be worrying about something?
As long as you can
Step outside.
C, oh I'm not being curious right now.
And I don't have to pretend
That I agree to do it. I think that's really
the key. And I don't have to say
There's no truth.
But
From where I sit, I can only see some of the pieces of the puzzle.
You have the other pieces of the puzzle.
Putting those pieces on the table for discussion is how we figure out what we have to work with. And then at the end of the day, we still might not agree about this, but it might open up new options for how we handle it.
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Next up
Doctor Sue Johnson.
doctor Sue Johnson was the pioneering clinical psychologist
Who created emotionally focused therapy.
She was named Psychologist of the Year.
By the American Psychological Association.
And appointed to the Order of Canada.
For her global impact on psychotherapy.
Could you walk us through what a hold me tight conversation is?
A whole the tight conversation.
Very briefly, is a bonding conversation.
The tricky part is that
As adults, some of us have never seen this conversation.
So it's a dance that is foreign to us.
We've never had it with our own parents.
We've never had it with siblings, we've never had it with previous lovers.
Um, we get married or we get committed to a partner.
And
It's reasonable that we don't know how to go there.
Because many of us it's just not a drama that we've ever seen enact it.
A hold me tight conversation.
is where one person is able to
Open up and reach for the other person and share vulnerabilities.
Talk about their needs and fears and
In a way that
Pulls the other person close.
It helps the other person reach back and respond.
Could you give any examples of phrasing or questions or or guidelines you provide? That would be I know I would love to know and I suspect others would too. Well when you don't trust and you don't feel safe and you've never seen a hold me tight conversation
The way it usually goes just naturally as human beings.
I catch myself doing this with my husband. If I'm upset about something
Like he's been going to bed very early.
But that means that we don't have our
Snuggle time, we don't have our little chat time. Okay, and it doesn't seem to bother him at all. It doesn't seem to bother him. This isn't happening. So
This will go on for a couple of weeks and
Even though I'm doing this work
There's a sudden point where I start to get self protective
And I start to blame him in my head.
And I say
He's always too busy. He's got his lists.
He's got lists, that's what he and he's a man and he's got lists and all he cares about is his list of tasks and he's just into problem solving and he doesn't think about me at all. And this dialogue will go in my head
So I turn to him and I say
You're going to bed very early.
These days?
Listen to my voice. It's the emotional music.
He says
No?
Ha ha ha
Because he hears the threat in my tone. I say, Yeah, sure.
And you've been going to bed for weeks and I guess it doesn't matter to you that we're not having
Those close moments.
And listen to me.
I mean I'm on the attack.
And we are
A cutely sensitive as human beings.
Two signs
of rejection or abandonment by the people we love.
Acutely sensitive.
That's how we're wired. So he hears that he's blown it.
He hears it that I'm
I'm rejecting him, I'm telling him he's done something wrong.
So he says, I don't want to talk about this right now.
I say, Oh, let me guess, you have to go to bed'cause you're so tired. So we're off, right?
Okay, that is the typical
Demand withdraw Demand defend.
Dialogue that you'll see in a distressed couple.
And it's totally predictable.
You can also have it with your kids. I can remember a glorious argument I had in Starbucks with my adolescent son that was
Just
Perfect example of the way distressed couples talk to each other. So I'm blaming and pointing fingers and he's rolling his eyeballs and
Basically telling me what a dreadful mother I am. So you can have it with anyone, but with partners it's very predictable.
And it has everyone feeling completely threatened and unsafe.
And unable to dance together.
If you shift that into a hold me tight conversation.
The way it would go.
Is that I would be
More able to tune into my own needs.
More aware of my own needs, accepting of my own needs.
And I would realise
Oh.
I'm really missing those conversations.
With John.
We've been married for thirty two years.
We're both very strong people, so it's been quite an adventure. So I think oh, I'm missing
Those relationships with John
And
Maybe he doesn't miss them.
And oh that makes me feel really
Somehow anxious and uncomfortable if he doesn't miss them.
Because
The big question in love relationships is are you there for me? Do I matter to you? Can I count on you?
Maybe those
Conversations don't matter to him.
Where they really matter to me.
So
I am aware on a different level.
of me and I'm specifying
That scares me a bit that maybe these conversations don't matter to him.
I can tune into my own emotions.
Then I take the risk.
And reach for him.
And say to him, I'm open.
I say to him that
You know what, we haven't been having our usual talks.
Late at night.
And
Somehow it doesn't look like you miss them.
And
Somehow that makes me feel
kind of really sort of uncomfortable. You know, it's almost feels
Like I'm I'm not sure that
Uh.
Closeness matters to you and
So
I could get angry about it.
But actually what's happening is
It sort of scares me a bit because I need those conversations. Now I've talked about my fears and my needs.
I can only do that if
I have some sort of model
That it's okay to do that, that that doesn't mean I'm a wimp.
or mentally ill.
A week.
Or pathetic.
From my point of view, it's strength to do that.
And that's what we
Teach and its strength to do that.
And that's what securely attached people can do. They can reach from a position of vulnerability.
So I say that to him.
And that
He says
Oh.
You're right.
Yeah.
I do want those conversations.
I've just been so exhausted.
And I've been doing this and I haven't wanted to tell you how stressed out I am.
So then it becomes reciprocal. I say
Oh.
I didn't know that you were so stressed out about this decision we've made and that it's taking up all your energy and you're worried about it and so then we start to have
An open, responsive, engaged conversation was
Where we can share vulnerabilities, comfort each other.
And you're literally
Better at tuning in.
To each other.
And I think that's because
When I feel safe.
I can tune into you.
When I think about the people I can dance with in Tango really well.
It's the people I feel emotionally safe with.
And I know that there's no mistakes because mistakes don't matter, we're just playing.
Then I relax, I'm in my body, I tune into their cues.
And we move together naturally.
So that's kind of what happens.
And it's a hold me tight conversation.
And it's
Sort of cascades.
Each time you have this conversation
It's
Your nervous system
Goes
This is comfort, this is home, this is safety, this is
This is what I need.
And you see your partner as a resource.
You see your partner as somebody who can provide this safety, comfort, caring, reassurance.
Social support if you want to use a
psychological formal term for it.
You see your partner as this person
And your partner.
connects and you know how to do this dance. This dance is innately
Rewarding.
It.
creates joy in people
You don't have to
Persuade people to keep doing it like going to the gym.
or meditation or their communication skills.
People will do this.
Once they know how to do it.
They'll keep doing it.
And that's why I think we get good follow up results.
Because
Once you start having these conversations
And
It's very moving sometimes to see people's
Response like people
We'll stop.
To cry and say things like
When they discover these whole me tight conversations, people will say
I'm thinking of one man who said
I never knew that you could
Talk
To somebody like this.
I never knew.
That you could
Ask for these things and uh
She wants
Me to be.
vulnerable to her. I never knew that. I never saw that growing up. I didn't know people did that.
And then he wept.
And he turned to the therapist and said.
I've been alone all my life, haven't I?
Yeah.
And that.
What attachment science tells us is that emotional isolation
Is toxic for human beings.
I mean we found out that in the pandemic, but
We still don't get it. I wish we would get it on a different level.
It's toxic for human beings. It's not who we are.
And when people start to have these
Hold me tight conversations.
All kinds of amazing things happen.
They don't just understand how relationships can be and how you can shape relationships.
Don't have to just have them happen to you.
You can shape love.
They understand something very
Deep about themselves.
Couples grow each other in safe relationships.
Couples grow each other.
I watch
Severely traumatized people.
Learn to trust another human being by having these hold me tight conversations with their partner.
And it changes everything.
Because they have a secure place in life for the first time. They feel seen
They feel accepted.
They feel held.
And once you feel seen, accepted, and held
There's a natural
Human.
growth process that happens.
Attachment with science is all about development of the personality.
There's a natural growth process.
So we tune into that natural process in the whole me tight conversation.
And those conversations predict
Over study after study after study after study.
Those conversations predict success.
N E F T
They predict
More secure bonding, they predict better sex.
More sexual satisfaction in couples.
They predict.
Any sort of
Measure of
good positive functioning you can imagine those bonding conversations
Predict all the good results we get.
in EFT and they predict results at follow up.
Next up
Terry Reel
Terry Reel is an internationally recognized family therapist.
A best selling author.
I'm the creator of relational life therapy.
He has spent more than four decades helping couples restore intimacy.
and connection.
What is another term?
that I'd never heard before being exposed to your work, normal marital hatred.
Okay.
I got this from Ed Tronik, infant observational researcher.
I went along with Darry Brazilton was the first generation
The Shinse Floyd
What we said about child development all came from listening to adults.
We didn't watch any gives.
And you're one of the first people that actually plonk a video camera in front of mothers and infants and then fathers and infants and actually look at what happens.
What he came off with, I borrowed and it's central to RLT, which is
The essential rhythm of all relationships
There's harmony.
Disharmony.
And repair.
Closes.
Disruption.
And a return to closeness.
That's where the skills come in, how to move from disruption to
Repair
Our culture doesn't teach it. Our culture doesn't even acknowledge.
A good relationship is all harmony.
Just like a good body is pure. A good body is like a a twenty year old body. A good sex life is like you know what you had when you were two weeks into the relationship. No.
All harm is bullshit.

Shit.
One of the things I like about you, Tim, is you tell the truth.
You know what?
You go to a cocktail party.
And you're Oh, there's Harry and Shirley.
They're in their eighties, they still have sex, they love each other.
One of these days I'd like to go to a cocktail party and hear there's Harry and Shirley.
They actually split up for a year. He fell in love with another woman.
He couldn't take it because she was such a drunk, but then she got into A and got sober, and the two of them are really doing reasonably well, aren't they cute?
Get warmth, I'd like to hear that.
Deal with reality.
The father of couples therapy back in the fifties.
said the day you turn to the person who was next to you it was assumed it was your
Mary.
You would say
This is a mistake.
I've been had.
This is not the person I fell in love with.
That silly frame O is the first day of your real
Married.
So here's what I wanna say about disharmony.
Ready?
It hurts.
It's dark.
You can really, really feel like what the hell
Did I get myself into
This is such a disappointment.
And guess what?
Your partner's probably feeling that about you too.
So I talk about normal marital hatred.
When you're in that dark.
Faith, you your partner, that's okay.
Don't kill yourself or her. It's okay.
Well I'll teach you how to get through it.
But it's part of
The deal for many of it.
Here's what I like to say.
I've been going around the world talking about normal marital hatred for oh my god, what? Thirty years.
This is true.
Not one person has ever come backstage and said, Terry, what do you mean by that?

Don't sweat it. You can get through it. It's normal. Relax.
What are some of the first
steps or tools that you would recommend to someone listening?
who agrees with what you're saying, but has had no models for repair, has never
learned how to
Use any type of approach for repair.
And this is something that
Your direct help and then also your books have really helped me with because I did not grow up in a household with repair.
Right. It was basically one person screams, then the other person goes to fix, which they don't really want to do, but it's
their attempt to
Basically quell the
Disaster and fury, and that's it. Then everybody's kind of upset and it never gets stressed. That was the model growing up.
What do you suggest to people who want to start?
With repair.
You know, of course I'm tempted to say, So are you a screamer or a fixer, but I won't, I'll leave that alone. I I'm a fixer. I'm not a screamer.
Oh, okay. Lucky for your partner, but the problem is the resentment that builds up. Yeah, exactly. Yep.
Yeah.
Okay, so repair.
First of all here's I like to say I have a number of bitter pills to swallow.
But if you swallow them, things will be a lot better in your life. And here's one of them.
Repair is a one way street.
Everybody gets that wrong.
It's not a dialogue.
It's not well these are your issues with me, well these are my issues with you. No.
You have your turn, but not then.
Take
Cards.
So if you have a disgruntled partner, you are at their service. That's the first thing to master.
You know, I like to say, Tim, you're at the customer service window.
Somebody comes to customer service window and says my microwave doesn't work, they don't want to hear you say, Well, my toaster doesn't work.
Don't I want your excuses fixed the goddamn microwave.
Tender partner and bring them back into repair with you.
Tend to them.
Put yourself aside and tend to them.
What does that look like?
Two things. First
Do I get it?
Listen.
Don't argue, don't rebut.
Empty the well.
I'm sorry you feel bad. That's beautiful. Compassion.
I'm sorry you feel bad. I love you. I don't want you to feel bad. Help me understand what feels bad. What's it like for you?
Okay.
Then then you reflect. This is what I hear you say, did I get it?
Yeah, good enough.
Good.
Two.
Is there something I could say or do right now that would be helpful?
What would you like?
Who says that?
And then if if anything short of jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge
Give it to him. Be generous.
Those are the basics.
Last but not least
Diana Chapman.
Diana Chapman is co author of the Fifteen Commitments of Conscious Leadership.
A co-founder of the Conscious Leadership Group.
And founder of the Signal Institute.
Working with leaders on radical honesty.
Somatic intelligence.
And transformation.
I would like to, if you're open to it, s shift
A little bit.
to
relationships.
And
Wanna ask you.
Specifically about your partnership with Matt. So here's one of your superpowers as listed from
Mr. Jim.
Creating and sustaining a wonderful intimate partnership with Matt, her husband and lover, since they were teenagers. Have her talk about the risks she and they were willing to take.
to keep the relationship alive and vital, growing and intimate.
If you are game to talk about that, I would be very
Interested.
Yeah.
To hear more.
Well
It's a challenge. It's both a great gift to be with a partner.
Since you were young, get to grow up together. There's a lot of
Shared memories and shared friends and
There's a sweetness that it started out with you get to keep. And there's also a great challenge of
The fact that we are different people who evolve and change. And so several times
at least three key times in our relationship, we've been willing to let it all go.
And
Which
Basically killed it off.
Just said the relationship as it was is done.
Now let's just check and see.
What is the relationship that wants to happen moving forward?
Maybe it's just friends.
Co-parents, maybe it's lovers, staying married. What is it? And so
We have a lot of courage, both of us, to be willing to let go of what's not working.
And trust.
That
the right form of the relationship will reveal itself. And it just so happens that
It continues to be us married.
And
I think
We play around often, sometimes we'll get up in the morning, I'll say something like
Hey, you want to be married today?
And he'll say
Oh, well, what would that mean? What kind of a husband do I need to be? And we'll you go and play around with well, you you know, how about this and this? And then we choose. And that is for me
We're
Always choosing over and over again and we always are willing to
kind of to the point of using the work with Bayer and Katie of
I'm willing to open to the possibility that
Not being married is just as okay as being married.
And what that has created is an incredibly vital
creative, ever evolving, passionate marriage.
In which we're freed up to
Keep exploring new ways of
Being together.
And
I am really proud of my relationship. I think it's one of the greatest things I've ever done.
is the marriage that I have. We get a lot of feedback that
It's an inspiring marriage to a lot of people.
Hill.
Look to it.
And I do think it comes with
the courage to say no.
You mentioned it f at least I think you said three times.
that you've had this type of
Conversation.
I would like to zoom in on the first conversation.
Were you both already?
prepared and trained to initiate that type of conversation.
Did one side initiate
The hay. Let's decide if we want to
remain as is, or if we want to
Take one of these other forms.
I'm just wondering for people who are listening who have never had one of these conversations, maybe they've been at the breaking point, but they've never had this conversation.
I initiated it. It wasn't Matt's
Idea I said I'm
It just isn't working for me the way we're in relationship.
And
There's a
different kind of a man I want to be with.
Than how you are.
And I wanna another
possibility. And so
I didn't know how to do all this. I was just
Toddling around trying to figure this out.
And
Yeah, I said I I don't want to do it this way anymore. And so
I thought that might mean that we needed to be separated and that we needed to end the marriage.
And I was willing to. We actually
Got some support from
Counsellors about telling it.
our kids that we were gonna divorce.

We were gonna go.
And then I had this great advice from a friend who said, Okay, Diana
I love you both. If you think divorce is what needs to happen, that's great. But I hear you complaining that
There's a certain man you want.
Him to be that he's not.
And she said.
Who is the woman you would need to be?
to call forward that man.
And my stomach dropped.
And I thought.
Yeah. I don't wanna I don't know about that. What?
Um
I realized, oh, I would need to be a different woman.
So
We said let's kill off this old marriage and let's
See if we can create a new one. And I'm gonna keep asking myself, who do I need to be to call forward the man I wanna be with.
And about six months later
I was with the man I wanted to be with and I remember saying to him
You really changed and he said, No, you really change.
And the truth is we both really changed. But I was really grateful for that.

being willing to let it go and then getting the feedback of
Hey, if you're the creator
Oh.
Who's showing up over there? Who do you need to be? And
Or
many months I felt like I was gonna throw up twenty four seven, learning to be a much more vulnerable
Needy.
Woman.
Who called forward the man who
Click protect and read.
In a way that I hadn't been willing to be in the past.
How did you thank you for sharing all this, by the way.
And very courageous and vulnerable and
How did you
Figure out
Who
you needed to be who that woman was to call forth
The version
of your husband or the man who you wanted to be with.
Did you have help?
Was it obvious once you sat with it?
in terms of the changes that needed to be made on on your side or the things you needed to cultivate or drop?
How did you arrive?
At the
Answers.
At first I didn't know. I just knew I was really scared when I asked the question.
I believe that fear
Is
When we're present is
And intelligence that says something needs to get learned.
Something needs to get learned. So when I had that fear I thought, Oh wow, something needs to get learned.
I don't know something here.
And so
That was my first clue that
Her question was powerful.
Is the fear that arose in me.
And I just kept asking the fear.
What needs to be learned. I just kept being really broad in that curiosity.
I got into a state of wonder. I wonder
Who I would need to be to call forward the man I most want to be with.
I just kept asking that. I wonder and I let it be okay that I didn't have to know because I didn't know.
I've been you know, with them for a long time and I didn't know so I had to
Be willing to listen and learn from something
Greater than my own.
experience so far.
And so it was in that level of curiosity that I just
Found my way.
And it was
baby steps. You know, a little bit here, a little bit there. And
We've had several versions of that often. Or not often, but the the three versions were all some version of me.
Something needs to get learned.
for the next evolution here.
Of this relationship.
Do you have
recommended resources or
Practices
That couples
Can
Seek out.
Or
Embrace
so that they are better prepared if they get to these decision points. Or just overall with respect to
nurturing sort of a healthy
Co-created.
relationship.
Books, any
Particular.
Practices that you would highlight.
For folks.
Matt and I studied with gay and Katie Hendrix for years.
At the Hendricks Institute.
They did a lot of relationship work. They still do a bit of it, but I learned so many tools there. I'm
How to get off the drama triangle. I learned about personas and about how
I get caught in these personas that then r unconsciously require that the persona of my partner to show up in a certain way that then I complain about.
And I learned about how to
Unwind those or
Shift them when I wanted to
I learned about
The importance of feeling my feelings.
I learned about
really questioning my stories. I learned about polarity and how important it is to honor polarity that shows up in couples and
Making sure that I honored both sides of the polarity equally.
For example, a lot of couples
Argue about money.
And almost always there's one that we call the gas and one who's the break and somebody who's more free flowing with money and somebody who's more controlling about money and
Can we honor these polarities and can we see the value in both of them because usually
I was the one you
Wanted to spend the money and and my husband wanted to hold on to the money and we would get into a battle about, you know, you're keeping me from having joy in my life because you're so
Stingy about money and he'd say, You're gonna make us all broke because you're just
So unconscious about spending it. And so
Honoring that those two sides of the player there are actually allies
That are here to create just the right balance.
To take care of ourselves and have fun, and so
Those are all different skill sets, there's so many different tools.
Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
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Thanks for listening.