The Science of Relationships: This Is Killing Your Relationship
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One of the biggest factors in our happiness and well-being is the strength and quality of our relationships. Most of us want to find lasting love. It's a basic human need. But it can be really tough to find a romantic partner and then you have to make that relationship work. But we often think that love and romance are things that occur naturally. Either a relationship works or it doesn't. And couples face a lot of challenges like miscommunication, handling

handling arguments and making big decisions. It can be so easy for our emotions to get the better of us. So we say and do things that we regret, damaging our relationships. And it can be hard to know exactly what to do to make your relationship stronger. But it turns out that there are some simple evidence-based steps that you can take to improve your relationship so that you can build a healthy, happy life with your partner. And

And so today we're going to be hearing from doctors John and Julie Gottman. They're world-renowned experts and researchers in relationships, and a lot of their work focuses on the way in which couples interact with each other and can actually go on to predict divorce. Based on the couples that we studied, and there were over 3,000 of them, we now can help people by

creating interventions which we've done to change how people relate to one another if it's not working in order to really help couples succeed in the future in their relationship. So Dr. John and Dr. Julie are going to talk us through some of the common mistakes that we make in relationships. Then they'll chat about how we can change how we talk to one another and there'll be tips and tricks for diffusing anger and tension and then finally some techniques that you can use to really bond with your partner.

So in this first section, we're going to talk about some of the mistakes that we make in relationships. And we're going to specifically look at the ways in which men misunderstand women and the way women misunderstand men. And this can lead to significant conflict.

What are some of the men's specific advice that you would give? Let's say if I was asking you, hey, what are the common mistakes that men tend to make in relationships? And then we can talk later about what are the common mistakes that women tend to make in relationships? What does that divide look like? Well, first of all, men know that women have a cycle, right? So they have a menstrual cycle. That's happening regularly every month. And I don't think men understand so well

what happens to women when all those hormones are flooding their bodies from that menstrual cycle. What can happen, there's more fluid accumulated in the body due to hormonal changes, and that fluid affects all of the body, the brain included,

And the woman typically will become more sensitive. So she'll be more sensitive emotionally. She may take things a little harder. So you've got to watch that kind of swing of moods and not necessarily believe that

Some of the stuff that she says a few days before her period is exactly how she feels. Another thing is to realize that women typically see ways to improve the relationship. They're always watching for, is this a good relationship? Is it loving enough? Am I being listened to, et cetera? And so they'll bring up issues more commonly than men. Men can kind of coast on, yeah, this is fine. This is okay.

But women tend not to, and so they're going to bring up issues more regularly. That can make men feel like, whatever I do, it's not enough. And that's one of the things women have to be sensitive to in men. So men are trying very hard to be the best husbands they can be, the best fathers they can be, and they're working hard at it. And sometimes they may not understand what a woman needs,

For example, if a woman comes home stressed from her work, the man thinks as he listens to her that he should offer her a solution to whatever she's stressed about. Wrong. That's going to feel condescending to the woman because it's another way of saying you're not smart enough to figure out a solution, so let me give you one.

Right? That's the message she may take from it. The thing that men need to do in that situation is to not offer solutions unless the woman has specifically asked for that. And instead, just listen.

to what she's saying. Try to feel a little bit of what she's expressing. Ask her questions like, what's the most upsetting part about this for you? Or help me understand how this made you feel so anxious. I want to really get inside that and know that. And then give words of empathy.

And empathy is going to look like, no wonder you felt so angry. Wow. Yeah, I would have been upset too. That sounds terrible. So you're really stepping into the partner's world emotionally and hanging out in there with her, empathizing with her so she doesn't feel so alone.

with those feelings. Not feeling alone is the big stress reducer. Not getting a solution to a problem. You mentioned earlier when we were talking that recently you've done a lot of research on gay and lesbian couples.

I wonder what's been some of the surprising things that you found from that research, I guess, compared to heterosexual couples. Yeah, one of the things that we discovered is that gay and lesbian couples are a lot less defensive when their partner presents a point of view than male-female relationships. So we have a lot to learn from those relationships. You know, we think, well, you know, since, you know, they're...

they're the minority, their relationships, you know, they're not the majority of relationships, then there must be something wrong with them, something defective. We found, in fact, that in many ways they were superior to heterosexual relationships. It wasn't as much war the way it is between men and women.

And, you know, and they didn't get into these standoffs. They would, you know, they basically would say, oh, well, that's an interesting point of view. Let's talk about your point of view. And, you know, here's what I think you're saying. And is that right? You know, so they were just much better communicators. And that was really interesting to discover. One of the biggest, biggest, biggest, most important differences between men and women in heterosexual relationships, it's about sex.

The biggest difference is that women need emotional closeness in order to be open sexually. Men typically don't. They may use sex as a way to feel emotionally close. Women have a history of thousands of years of being raped, sexually abused,

hurt through sex. We feel it in our bones, even if we haven't experienced it ourselves. We don't feel safe in the world. You can take a room of people, give them an example of you're walking into an underground garage. How many of you feel afraid?

Almost all the women will raise their hands. Almost none of the men will. So when a woman is being most vulnerable, which is typically during sexual intimacy, she really needs to feel safe.

particularly if she's had any kind of sexual abuse in her background. And we know that at the minimum, one out of four women by the age of 18 has experienced sexual abuse or molestation. And those are the only ones who report it. It's probably a higher percentage than that.

So women need to feel emotionally close in order to be sexually open. We need, as women, we need to understand that for men, a lot of times, you know, men may feel like, oh, it's too...

childlike, to just ask for a cuddle. So we'll be manly and we'll go for sex, which gives us all the touch and all the hugging and all that contact that we need as well as pleasure.

So women need to understand that their men are looking for emotional closeness through sex and to be as giving as they can. Next up, we're going to talk about some of John and Julie's research into the reasons why relationships fail. And they call these the four horsemen of relationship failure.

These are the four things that we do which can alienate our partners and lead to unhappiness. So these are the great big predictors that can predict with over 90% accuracy six years down the road where you're going to be. You're going to be together happily with your partner, unhappily, or will you already be separated and divorced.

So the first one is criticism, and all of us are familiar with that one. There's no such thing as constructive criticism.

None. So when your boss tries to critically tell you feedback, that's not a good thing. So what criticism means is blaming a problem between you on a character flaw of your partner. So some examples of that are you're so lazy, you wouldn't think of cleaning up the kitchen.

Why are you so irresponsible? You're always postponing how long it takes to pay the bills. You know, what's happening with you? What's wrong with you is one of the great criticisms. How are you supposed to answer that? You know, it's saying you in general are wrong. So those are criticisms and they hurt people.

And the natural response to that is the second horseman called defensiveness. And defensiveness, we're familiar with two. There's two types. One is whining like, I did too pay the bills on time. Or counterattack. Oh, yeah? Well, when was the last time you took the car in for repair? You know, it's a counterattack.

So that's defensiveness. We have criticism, defensiveness. The third is really the sulfuric acid for a relationship. It's called contempt. And what we mean by contempt is it's criticism too, but from a place of moral superiority.

So it includes some scorn, some disgust. It's often expressed through sarcasm, like, oh, yeah, I'm sure you picked up the tickets. Ha. You know, contempt is also name-calling, all those horrible names when we get very angry that we'll call somebody. Could be mockery also. Eh.

"Ooh, you're so scared!" You know, that kind of stuff. So contempt is horrible, and it not only is the strongest predictor of relationship demise, contempt also destroys the immune system of the listener.

We discovered that in 15 minutes of conflict, the number of times a listener heard something contemptuous predicted how many infectious illnesses they would have in the coming years. Right. Isn't that amazing? So the immune system suppresses or fights off viruses, colds, flus. Tumors. Tumors, right. And the people who experienced more contempt got sicker.

over time. So that was scary. Finally, the fourth horseman is what we call stonewalling. And stonewalling is when one partner completely shuts down, absolutely gives no response to the person, pretends they're not even there. We'll sit there, but not give any nod of the head, anything verbal.

And that's related to another finding of ours about physiological flooding, which John can explain. Right. So the physiology was very predictive. And what we found was that when people's heart rate gets above 100 beats a minute, or if you're an athlete, 80 beats a minute, we start secreting our two stress hormones, cortisol and adrenaline.

And that shuts down the ability to listen. People repeat themselves. They think they're being more persuasive when they yell instead of talking quietly. They really escalate their behavior and they can't listen very well. They can't take in any new information.

So the physiology is very important because once people are secreting those two stress hormones, the conversation might as well be over because nobody makes any advance. They don't get creative as problem solvers and so on. Yeah, another word for this is fight or flight. So when you're facing your partner, it feels like you're facing a saber-toothed tiger.

So in that context, let's say you're in the middle of, I don't know, an argument with your partner and you're finding yourself feeling those triggers of fight or flight. What does success and what does fail look like? Like what are the kind of options that we have in this context? So fail looks like staying there in the conversation when you're in fight or flight. And what happens is you escalate. You get louder. You repeat yourself, you know, ad nauseum. You start to move into more criticism, more contempt, more

You can't think straight. You don't hear your partner at all. So nothing you say is a response to your partner. You're just yelling your own point of view. Maybe, maybe even getting physical in the worst cases. In a successful couple, here's what they do. The minute they sense that they're getting flooded in fight or flight, one of them will call for a break and say when they ask for a break...

when they'll come back to talk about the conversation, you know, that topic again. So they'll say something like, "Honey, I've got to take a break. I'll be back in an hour. Then let's talk again." That way, they don't leave the other person feeling abandoned and not knowing if they're ever going to talk about it again. Then when the partners separate into separate quarters,

They each do something that is self-soothing.

Not think about the fight because if they think about it, they'll stay escalated. But do something else. Distract yourself. Read a magazine, a book, listen to music, meditation, go for a run, you know, all kinds of things you can do to self-soothe. Take a bath. And then come back at the designated time when you're calmer. And a way to tell if you're calmer is take your heart rate.

And if your heart rate is back down to normal, then you're good. If it's not back, go back to your partner anyway and ask for more time. Give a second time, you'll return until you can talk calmly with one another and the conversation will look like you've just had a brain transplant.

Now, John and Julie also have some really practical advice on how to cool down from a conflict with your partner. You can then return to the conversation in a healthier and more relaxed frame of mind. This is super useful. Every single couple has arguments and disagreements. But the most important thing is to change the way we handle those difficult conversations so we can grow together instead of growing apart. We talked about the four horsemen. Let's say someone's listening to this or watching this and they're thinking, oh, damn, you know, I've definitely got some of one or more of those in my relationship.

What are the actions that someone can take if they recognize that their relationship is sort of falling into one of these four horsemen? Well, one of the best things that you can do, we call processing a regrettable incident. Now, here's what that means. This is a particular intervention. When you've had a really bad fight where some of those four horsemen have thundered through the conversation, you

It's really important to go back with your partner and talk about what happened in the way that you communicated, what went wrong in the way you communicated, and then apologize for it.

And we have a five-step process for this, where each person names their feelings that they had during the regrettable incident. Then they narrate their point of view about what transpired. And needless to say, there's always two points of view. And they could feel like they're on opposite planets. But they're both valid. They're both right.

So each one presents their point of view. The other one summarizes what they just heard the partner say and gives a few words of validation. Like, I get it. I can see how you would have felt that way.

And then third, they talk about what may have gotten triggered for them. And triggers mean feelings that come up for you during a fight or regrettable incident that are the same feelings you may have had long before this relationship.

that may have started in childhood or in a former relationship. And those can include things like abandonment, rejection, feeling judged, feeling frightened, those kinds of old feelings you've been carrying inside you your whole life, perhaps. So you talk about those triggers and what stories go with those from your past. You share one of those.

So your partner really understands better the scars that you carry inside from old experiences and can try to avoid triggering those. And then the fifth step is to talk about one thing you can do differently and one thing your partner can do differently to avoid something like this from happening again.

That's how you process a regrettable incident. How long afterwards would you recommend waiting to process a regrettable incident? Whenever, as long as it's not immediately afterwards. So some people won't know they're supposed to do this and then they'll go back and process something 20 years later, 15 years later. The way that you know you need to process it is that it still festers in your mind. When you think about it, that means you need to process it.

But with that said, you have to be very calm when you sit down and process. And I like to tell people, imagine that you're in the upper balcony of a theater after act one of a play. That play down on stage was the two of you fighting. And you're talking to your partner about what happened during act one. That's the kind of calmness you need to have before you talk.

To what extent is there utility in talking things out at the time? So can you talk about it immediately afterwards? Is that what you're asking? Yeah, I guess. What do you do while the emotions are still like, still, they're not quite at that calm level where you can discuss it fully calmly? I wouldn't do it because it's so easy to slide into the old argument again.

You'll slide right back into the fight. And also, a lot of people will apologize almost immediately. And that doesn't work either.

And the reason is because you haven't heard your partner's experience of the fight enough to know how your behavior impacted them. So you don't really know what you're apologizing for until you've heard the story of your partner's experience and you've been able to share yours too.

Because usually both people in some way are responsible for what happened. Not always, but often. Finally, we're going to discuss some of the tools that you can use to build strength and intimacy with your partner. Now, there's this idea that things should just be natural and they can be. But the truth is that there are real steps you can take to make sure your relationship stays loving and close as you move through life.

This is one of my favorite things to do, Ali, is to create what we call rituals of connection. And rituals of connection are activities that you do together with your partner that are pre-designed. They're pre-planned.

and they're agreed upon. So you co-design a ritual of connection. So for example, the way that you greet each other first thing in the morning when you wake up, the way that you greet each other if you're working, you know, apart and you reunite at the end of the day. Do you typically go out on a date one night a week or do you go out for brunch every Sunday? So

So John and I have this great ritual after dinner. We have what we call a cuddle couch, and we'll watch British murder mysteries in the evening. And cuddle. And cuddle. And, you know, we're squished together. Our dog often joins us, so he's in there, too.

And we'll watch, you know, rich people getting murdered and it's very satisfying. So... That's a ritual of connection. That's a ritual of connection. Rituals of connection can be big too. They can be how are birthdays celebrated in our family? How are the religious holidays celebrated in our family? What kind of vacations do you go on?

We have an annual honeymoon that we do. Right. And we rent the same room. Once a year. So for 23 years, we've been taking about 10 days, bring our kayak, and we sit and talk to each other for those 10 days about...

What was the year like? What did you hate about last year? What did you love about last year? And what do you want next year to be like? And we take a lot of time to really do that while we're having fun kayaking and hiking and eating out in really good restaurants and going to the farmer's market on Saturday and things like that. So that's one of our rituals of connection that we love. That sounds amazing.

One of the things that my partner and I started doing fairly early on in our relationship, it's been about 18 months now. We read a book called "How to Not Die Alone" by Logan Urie. And in the book she talked about doing relationship reviews and these included these questionnaires. And so almost from kind of day one, we've been doing every few weeks, the relationship review and everyone, all my friends I mentioned this to, like half of them say, oh my gosh, I need that in my life. And the other half say, wait, what?

That's a bit weird. How can you possibly do a relationship review? But it's been one of the most worthwhile parts about kind of growing together because we co-decided on what 10 questions we were going to use. We have a little notion template that we've been filling in since for the last 18 months. I mean, I've certainly found it super helpful to be like, hey, you know, how are you feeling? What's something that I did that maybe made you feel bad that I didn't realize would make you feel bad? And it's been such a great kind of learning curve from my end.

But also those little things that feel like they're not worth bringing up in the moment. We always know that, okay, at some point in the next couple of weeks, we're going to sit down and actively talk about stuff. So,

If it's not a major thing that needs to be discussed right now, it can always be pushed to the review. Do you guys do anything like that? Is that something that you would recommend people do? Yeah, we totally do. We have, and we often say that our clients should do this, but we tell everybody to do this. It's called a State of the Union meeting. The meeting begins with each person giving three to five appreciations of

for things the other person has done and saying thank you. And these are typically things that maybe haven't been thanked for earlier. So each person gives each other these appreciations. Then the middle of the meeting is

bringing up anything that they need to solve, any decisions that need to be made, any past regrettable incidents that need to be processed the way we talked about earlier today. And then the meeting ends with the question,

that each person poses to the other what is one way that I can help you feel more loved do you guys have a ritual around it do you like go out for dinner and then do it or is it and is it like an ad hoc thing that happens what's the context around the state of the union meeting everybody can create their own context right I mean if you have six kids running around the house you might want to go out um

If you don't, you can do it at home on a Sunday morning. You can certainly go out to dinner. You can do it while you're taking a walk. I mean, that's really a nice way to have that kind of joining together and talking. So, you know, whatever you're comfortable with. It's similar to what we did in our book, Eight Dates.

where we created conversations with a few questions and preparation, thinking, you know, things to think about for each date, and then people discussing these deeper topics on each date.

And we give suggestions for what that date could look like given that particular topic for the week. And of course, people have the freedom to do whatever they want to do. But it's really a lovely thing to do to talk about these deeper topics and to have a way to do that. I'd love to talk a little bit about the new book, The Love Prescription, Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection and Joy. One of the claims in the book

or at least in the blurb is that there is a formula for a good relationship. And if you just, almost the vibe that I got was that, hey, if you follow the formula and just do these seven things across these seven days or however long it takes, you will just almost magically improve the quality of your relationship. So I wonder if you can just kind of riff on that a little bit. Like what is this formula for love? One of the things is being nice to one another. What a concept. So, you know,

Giving your partner compliments, catching your partner doing something right and communicating that, communicating respect and affection in words, letting your partner know how attractive they are to you and how irresistible they seem at times. You know, that kind of positivity is very, very critical. Another one is...

Turning toward turns out to be a very powerful thing in a relationship. So, you know, in our apartment lab where we saw 130 newlywed couples and followed them for six years,

We discovered that a lot of time when they're just kind of hanging out in this apartment lab, one person will try to get the other person's attention or share something humorous or, you know, some interesting story that they've heard or are reading about. And then they try to connect. They make a bid for connection. And then the cameras in the lab always swung to the other person to see the response of

And there were one of three responses, turning toward, which was really acknowledging the connection. One person might say, oh, what a beautiful boat that is going by. And if the other person said, yeah, that was turning toward. If they didn't respond at all, that was turning away. Or if they responded irritably, will you be quiet? I'm trying to read. That was turning against.

So when we found couples, the 17 couples who divorced one another after six years after the wedding, when we look back six years earlier, they had turned toward these bids only 33% of the time. Whereas the couples who are still together six years earlier had turned toward the bids 86% of the time.

You know, huge difference. And we also discovered that turning toward is like an emotional bank account that you build. When you really connect with your partner, when your partner wants to connect with you, then during conflict, you have more of a sense of humor.

about yourself and about one another. You can laugh together and you can be affectionate even when you disagree. And when people become aware of that as a tool of connecting, then the relationship improves quite dramatically. Right. So in this book, what we're doing is each day...

we're giving couples little thing to do, little 10 minute thing to do every single day. Like one day we'll be giving compliments, you know, really expressing fondness and admiration. A second day will be look for what your partner is doing right.

And not just wrong, right. And point it out and say thank you to your partner. You know, third is listening, you know, talking about your needs with one another. What do you need? And we emphasize you should bring up your needs as a positive need rather than a negative need. And what that means is that you ask for what you do want.

not what you don't like or you resent. Don't bring that up because that's going to sound like criticism. Instead, flip it on its head and say, I would love it if you clean the dishes three times a week. That would be such a big help to me. So

people present, you know, on I forget which day, they talk about one need they have with their partner that can allow their partner to shine for them. Another one is honoring each other's dreams. So talk about what maybe deeply held dream you have for something you want to do, something you want to experience, something you want to feel, whatever it is. Share

Share that with your partner and really listen to what your partner says about that question too. What we hope to see if people practice this every day for seven days is that from before they started it to the end of the week, they'll see a little bit of change. Maybe little something feels different. And they can talk about which one of those little prescriptions really made a difference for them.

Now, it doesn't mean everything gets fixed in seven days and then you can go back to being whoever you were before. No. It's instead that you're learning how to do something a little different that deepens the friendship, deepens emotional intimacy, which of course opens up to you know what, you know, more sexual intimacy, and helps you when you have to talk about conflict.

Continue those practices, especially the ones you found the best for you and your partner. And you'll see over time, you know, the relationship is doing this over time. Big change. I really hope you found this episode useful. These are all the techniques that I use in my own relationship and they really do make a big difference. Thank you so much for watching.