Snippet 3 - How To Be Better At Long-Term Relationships: Logan Ury
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Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

This is a clip from my interview with Logan Urie, the behavioral scientist turned relationships therapist turned best-selling author of the book, "How to Not Die Alone." And in this clip, Logan is sharing her tips on how to become better at relationships and how to be a better life partner. We might think that we shouldn't need a video or a book explaining how to be better at relationships and how to be better at love because that's something that should come naturally and instinctively to us. But clearly, you know, 50% of marriages end in divorce, loads of people struggle in relationships. Clearly there is a need for education on the topic.

This is a fantastic book, by the way, and you should definitely check out my full interview with Logan. But here is a clip on how to be better at relationships. Let's go. How to be a better life partner. So some of it is just knowing yourself and knowing your stuff. So what keeps you in the safe zone where you're happy, you're confident? I like this word that I invented called confident. It's when you're calm and confident.

How do you stay in your confident mode? And what are your triggers? So for some people, let's say they're anxiously attached. Their trigger is when their partner's traveling and isn't in touch, they get upset and they move into the danger zone. So what I would recommend to that person is know your triggers, know what you need and learn how to ask for it. So really part one is going deep inside yourself and knowing yourself and doing the work. Another thing is learning how to have hard conversations. So

Sometimes people say to me, oh, I met this guy. We're getting along so well. We never fight. That's not something that I think you need to optimize for. Lots of very happy couples fight. Fighting is about being passionate. My mother-in-law, who's a therapist, says when couples tell me they don't fight, I also say, do you not have sex? Because for her in her mind, those things go along. It's about having friction and working through stuff. So learning how to have hard conversations, learning how to say things like,

I'm sure you're familiar with nonviolent communication, but when you... Oh, I'm listening to that at the moment. Oh, really? Yeah, I love NBC. I use it all the time. So for people who aren't familiar with it, it's a framework for expressing yourself in a way that helps you get heard and helps you kind of speak in a way that really expresses what's going on for you. So the format is when you insert a specific thing that happened...

I felt, and you have to use an emotion word, so it can't be something that's judging them. Like I felt left behind. It would be something like, I felt sad. I felt enraged. I felt depressed, whatever it was, because of my need for blank. So you explain to them why this matters. So recently I had this in a work conversation where I said, when I wasn't

part of that decision making. It made me feel sad because of my need for inclusion. And then you say, in the future, I request that you blank. And you say a specific request that they can agree to or talk to you about. And so just learning things like that, like how to communicate, how to stand up for yourself, how to have boundaries, all of that is super important. And

Another one is what we talked about earlier around bids. So making bids to connect with your partner and turning towards their bids. So if you are

working really hard and your partner clearly wants to talk do you make a choice to close down your laptop and talk or do you say not now I'm in the middle of editing and I'm in a flow state or maybe you can just say I'd love to hear that story can we talk in 20 minutes and so these small decisions that you're making and I think another one that we haven't talked about that much is sex uh Dan Savage has this concept of ggg this is his secrets to good sex so it's um good

which means being skillful. How can you develop your sexual skills? Giving. How can you be generous in bed? And game. How can you be willing to experiment or give your partner what they want within reason? And so I would also invest in learning how your body works, how somebody else's body works, asking for what they want, giving feedback, because while...

Some very happy relationships don't have great sex lives. For many people, that does matter. And how can you take your own sex life into your own hands?