The 5:1 ratio that separates happy couples from divorced ones | John & Julie Gottman: Full Interview

0:00 I'm Julie Gottman. >> And I'm John Gottman. I am a senior scientist at Gottman Incorporated. I'm a co-founder of Affective Software. >> I'm the co-founder of the Gottman Institute, also the co-founder of Affective Software. John and I work together as well as have relationship together. Today on Big Think, we're going to be talking about how relationships fall apart, how relationships repair themselves, and how to sustain a long-lasting and loving relationship.

0:38 >> Thank you for watching Big Think. If you'd like to support our work, we encourage you to join our members community. As a member, you'll receive our quarterly print magazine, a beautifully designed collection of the ideas and interviews that matter most. Big Think is for curious people who want to take deep dives into big ideas. To support the media you want to see in the world, go to bigthink.com/membership. And now, back to the interview. Chapter 1: Why Relationships Fall Apart >> Over time, really, relationships end with a whimper, not a bang, for the most part. People kind of start ignoring the relationship. A good example is the Sloan study that was done of dual-career couples, where they followed couples over time. These couples had young children, and they were very surprised to find that in a typical evening, the partners spent less than 10% of the evening in the same room. And so, over time, these couples, for that erosion, they really wound up ignoring the relationship. Their relationships devolved into a long to-do list, rather than them really continuing play and fun and adventure and romance in the relationship. The relationship kind of got ignored over time. People became more distant. And in our research, we found that they kind of led parallel lives. Yeah, like two railroad tracks.

2:05 >> So, when a couple comes to me, and they say, "You know, we've lost something, but we don't know what." Well, that can mean a number of things. It can mean that the way they talk about problems is terribly conflicted. They used to be able to really work on their problems calmly and gently, reach compromises, but now something has changed. So, what's changed? Well, it could be that they've moved into criticism. They've moved into expressions of contempt.

2:41 They've moved into much more defensiveness, or even what we call getting flooded, which means moving into fighter flight when they're addressing their partner and listening to their partner. That means they're not going to be able to hear what their partner is really saying, or the opposite, that they're very, very distant, and they don't talk about their problems at all.

3:13 They're silent. This is really a what we call a devitalized relationship. It's lost its life energy. It's lost its connection. What does distress look like in a couple when they're walking into my office? Well, it can look like several things. One, I have a long couch in my office. So, where do they sit? Do they sit together? Shoulder to shoulder? Or are they sitting at the far ends, clinging to the end of the couch? Also, people will not look at each other when they're in distress. They'll look at me and they're hoping that I'll serve as a referee for who to nail, right? Who is the person who is vastly superior and who is the other one who's making all the mistakes?

4:07 That's not how this therapy works. And so, part of what I'm doing in the very beginning of therapy is looking from one partner to the other partner and sometimes if one person is only looking at me, I'll look at them, then look at the other, which I hope will guide that partner to look at the other along with me. So, we're really building more of a relationship in the therapy where the two partners are talking to one another as well as including me.

4:46 >> What drew me to the topic of studying relationships was my complete incompetence at relationships. And my best friend Bob Levinson and I shared that incompetence and we decided to set up a lab. One of the surprising things that Bob Levinson and I discovered was that 69% of all conflicts are perpetual. By bringing couples in every 2 years or 3 years or 6 years and finding out what they thought about, we found that 69% of the time they're these perpetual problems that never go away. You know, most of them have to do with differences in personality or lifestyle or their values and they they disagree about these issues and they keep coming back to them over and over again.

5:35 The masters of relationships have these perpetual problems as well, but they approach them in a different way. They kind of are able to communicate an acceptance of their partner's personality and some humor about the differences, and then they start working on them, and they arrive at temporary compromises. Disaster couples deal with these perpetual problems in a different way. They really spin their wheels on the problem. They wind up becoming more alienated.

6:06 They vilify one another in their minds, and they see the problems as really the result of the other partner's defects, and withdraw from the problem as much as they can. >> What turns a perpetual problem into a terrible conflict that neither person wants to talk about is typically when criticism is used to describe the problem itself. Let's take housework, for example. So, one partner might be saying, "You know what? You are such a slob. What is the matter with you? You never clean anything. I can't believe what a mess this kitchen is."

6:51 Okay. So, the operative word in there was slob, right? Which is a personality flaw they're attributing to the other partner. It's very likely that the other partner is going to be defensive and say, "Oh, yeah? Well, you never pay the bills on time." Or, they may take the defensiveness of somebody who's whining, and they may say, "I do too clean the kitchen. It's fine. What's your problem?"

7:24 Something like that. So, criticism goes nowhere. What Bob Levinson and I discovered over time was that we could accurately predict whether a relationship was heading toward disaster, predict if a couple was going to divorce or stay together and if they stay together how happily married they would be over time. We would count the number of seconds for the amount of positive emotion that they expressed divided by the number of seconds that they were angry or disappointed or hostile or belligerent or sad.

8:04 We found for the couples that we wound up calling the masters of relationships, couples who really were happily married and stayed together, that the ratio of positive to negative averaged five to one among the masters and about point eight for the disasters. And we're very curious about whether some negatives were much more corrosive than others and we basically identified four things that really were the best predictors of relationship demise.

8:36 Criticism, which is stating a problem in the relationship as a flaw of the other person's personality, defensiveness, responding to your partner by denying responsibility for anything, counter attacking, acting like an innocent victim, contempt, which was an escalation of criticism that involved some kind of expression of superiority over the partner on any dimension, and then stonewalling, the fourth one, which involved the listener not giving the usual signals that he or she was listening to the speaker. You know, usually listeners respond by maintaining eye contact, nodding their heads like I'm doing, uttering these brief vocalizations like, "Mhm, -huh, oh, yeah, could be."

9:29 And the stonewaller just kind of shut down. No eye contact, no facial movement, no brief vocalizations, just kind of like a stonewall responding. So, those are the four best predictors, and contempt was the absolute best predictor of relationship demise. >> Contempt is the number one predictor of relationships falling apart. Contempt is similar to criticism, except here's what it looks like.

10:03 You wouldn't even think to clean the kitchen, would you? No. You wouldn't even think of it. You're too selfish. So, there's a difference there. The person who's speaking is acting very superior to the other, like morally superior, looking down their nose at their partner, and they're saying their words with some scorn, with some disrespect, horrible disrespect.

10:33 And the other person is going to feel that, and guess what? The listener of contempt not only shrinks down in their self-esteem and feels terrible about themselves, which really ruins the relationship, but contempt, the number of times contempt is expressed in a conflict conversation, predicts how many infectious illnesses that listening partner is going to have in the coming 4 years. In other words, contempt is not only sulfuric acid for the relationship, it's also sulfuric acid for the immune system, damaging the immune system so the individual listening is going to be sick more often.

11:25 So, contempt is something we really want to eliminate. So, those four things are what make perpetual problems so difficult. So, when a couple doesn't know any alternative to criticism, defensiveness, contempt, maybe stonewalling, shutting down, becoming a big silent wall, what does it feel like to the couple? It makes them sick to their stomach a lot of times. It makes them feel terrible. Every time particular topic that they're stuck on comes to the surface. A lot of times couples will just avoid it altogether.

12:10 They won't talk about it. But, you can feel its presence in the room. It's like, you know, an elephant under the rug that's sitting there saying, "Yoo-hoo, you going to pay attention to me?" And the couple doesn't want to. They're terrified of bringing it up because what ends up happening is they get locked into these very destructive patterns and they don't know how to get out of them.

12:41 So, there are several feelings they're going to have. They're going to have anger often. They're going to have fear. They're going to have often times a lot of grief at, "God, we're so distant. Why can't we work on this together?" They may have also just hopelessness, despair, a feeling of powerlessness because nothing they do is working. And so, they're really paralyzed facing that perpetual problem.

13:16 >> What quietly destroys love is the erosion of trust. Our understanding of betrayal in relationships really comes from the unprecedented research of a social psychologist named Caryl Rusbult. And Caryl Rusbult actually helped us understand betrayal in a new way. What Rusbult found was that betrayal is a gradual process. It's a process where people stop cherishing what they have and start looking for what they don't have and really feeling sorry for themselves for what's missing in the relationship. Caryl Rusbult found after an argument in relationships that are headed for betrayal, people think they can do better.

14:07 And they actually think there's some real or imagined relationship in which they can do better. So, they kind of trash their partner rather than talking to their partner about the problem and giving voice to the complaints. Rusbult discovered that they go talk to somebody else about their partner. And not only that, they give themselves permission to cross boundaries. So, gradually as they complain about their partner, they find somebody very sympathetic and empathetic to their complaints.

14:39 And when they cross boundaries doing that, feeling sorry for themselves, giving themselves permission to cross boundaries, betrayal is a natural consequence. >> When trust is broken in a relationship, many things can break that trust. It can be you know, the biggest thing, which is typically an extramarital affair or extrarelationship affair, because to the individual who has been hurt, their entire world has blown up.

15:14 Think about it for a minute. You've built your world on a committed relationship where the values you think you share are blown up. The dreams that you thought you had together are blown up. The connection, the teamwork, the companionship, the love, the sex, the intimacy exploded into fragments everywhere. Shards of glass is what betrayal can feel like.

15:50 Therefore, it's very, very difficult to work on trust even with those small betrayals. >> When we had cameras rolling in the love lab, the people in the control room found that when one person tried to get the partner's attention or interest, they would switch one of the three cameras over and see the response of the partner. And my student Jenny Driver discovered this was really a critical moment. The partner either responded and we call that turning toward.

16:28 Or they they didn't respond. Kind of like it was a non-event. And we call that turning away. Or they responded irritably. Will you be quiet? I'm trying to read. We call that turning against. We found that some of the time their partner would come out come back and repeat the bid, but it only happened 22% of the time. Most of the time, you know, close to 80% of the time, when the bid was turned away from, the original partner who made the bid would kind of crumple a little bit.

17:03 When Jenny looked at this over time, she found that the 17 couples who divorced after 6 years, when she looked back 6 years earlier, their average proportion of turning toward their partner's bids was 33%. When she looked at the people who were still married and looked back six years earlier, their average was 86% turning toward. So, you know, over six years you could fill a Russian novel with all the moments of turning toward that these master couples had done. And we realized that bids were really important.

17:43 >> So, a bid for connection is so important in a relationship because it's saying to the other person, "I trust you to respond. I believe in you as a trustworthy person." Let's take for example, you're expressing a bid for connection by expressing a need. You can say to the other person, "You know, I'm really exhausted or I'm really tired. Would you mind doing the dishes tonight?"

18:19 Well, by asking that, you are trusting the other person to be caring of you, to be loving. And what that means is you perceive that partner as being a caring, loving person, right? Who doesn't want to think that about themselves, right? So, making a bid for connection is a way of saying, "You're a good person.

18:53 You're a worthy person. You're a trustworthy person, even. And you're a caring person. So, I trust you, and I'm going to make a bid for connection with you and only you in this moment." >> When one partner starts really checking of the relationship and withdrawing from all of the conflict, withdrawing from that partner, they start getting lonely.

19:24 And that loneliness is very punishing physiologically. In fact, we discovered that couples who are lonely and and when the withdrawal takes place from the relationship, their heart is actually pumping harder at every beat. And the time it takes for the bolus of blood to go from the heart to the ear is chronically reduced. Their blood is flowing faster at every heartbeat. The heart is working harder. Even when they're just reading a newspaper or taking a walk, if they have that loneliness inside them, their heart is actually laboring harder.

20:06 And those people tend to die younger as a result of that loneliness. That's kind of what we discovered in Bob's longitudinal 20-year study of couples, that we tried to recontact these people and we thought they'd dropped out of the study, but what had happened is one of the partners had died. And that faster blood flow was predictive of that death, that early death. Is there a point of no return when you can't really heal a relationship?

20:38 And frankly, we don't know. Helen Fisher taught us that you can stay in love forever. There's no shelf life for love. Before her research, we thought being in love lasts about 2 years and then it goes away. Nobody can sustain being in love. Not true. There may not be any point of no return. we've even seen couples divorce and then hate the divorce and get back together and rebuild the relationship. But we kind of believe that when the relationship becomes a source of abuse, and and it's really no longer really on the side of both people, when people become enemies, when love is no longer just a dying ember that we can fan into a roaring fire, when that's gone, when the fondness and admiration system dies, the relationship is better off dead.

21:37 And so, people are better off separated. >> You know, a lot of couples may believe that they've reached the end of the road. There is no turning back, and it's time to leave the relationship. They've reached the end of that relationship. The problem with thinking that too early, when perhaps, you know, the conflict, you're exhausted by the conflict, or you feel so distant from your partner that, you know, the spark is missing that was there in the beginning, when people believe that they've reached the end of the rope, often times, they can be wrong.

22:22 The reason they're wrong is that they haven't learned alternative ways of speaking with one another, reconnecting with one another, and perhaps rebuilding trust with one another. You know, I would say probably every couple that comes into my office, the most distressed ones, often one of them will believe that that's it. They're at the end of the road. I hold the hope for them because I know the fact that they've even come into my office suggests there's a little tiny ember there that still remains of the love of hope that the relationship can grow again into something that's much healthier and much more rewarding for them.

23:20 However, there are couples where they truly have reached the end of the road and I like to think, you know, that results from too little, too late. In other words, I may have a couple who comes in and 25 years have passed since they became really, really unhappy. So, that they've lived on parallel tracks, kind of like railroad tracks with no connection for years and years and years. Well, by the time they finally come in, all those embers have turned into ash.

24:02 And there's no love left, no matter how things change in the relationship. In that case, okay, it may be over. But so many times, it actually isn't. Buried under the ash can be just a little spark of hope. And that's what I will work on with the couple to kind of blow on that little ember, give the partners different ways of connecting with one another, brand new ways of connecting that they hadn't been aware of before.

24:43 And then, things begin to build very, very slowly, kind of like blades of grass, right? Fragile, delicate, but rebuilding nonetheless. >> Chapter two, how couples successfully repair a relationship. >> You know, a lot of people think that a healthy relationship should have no conflict in it. Just be conflict-free.

25:14 And if there is a conflict, then there's something really wrong. Well, let me tell you, conflict is completely normal and healthy in a relationship. So, think about it for a minute. You live in this particular body, skin, head, heart, thinking. The other person in a totally different body, skin, etc. And are those always in sync? No. What we found in our research is that conflict can really be a way of understanding one another. Especially if the conflict is about a fairly important topic, like, let's say, parenting, or what kind of vacation should we have? What kind of adventure should we have? What kind of relationship should we have with our in-laws? How should we celebrate holidays?

26:15 How should we say good night to one another and good morning the next morning? There's so many differences that couples can experience between in the relationship. So, there's conflict. For example, let's say, John and I can get into a fight. One of us is being critical, the other one's being defensive. And we get the opportunity to say, "You call yourself a marriage therapist?"

26:50 We're not perfect, either. So, a healthy relationship isn't perfect, but it is capable of repair. And that is one of the big differences between a healthy relationship and a unhealthy one. >> When we studied 130 newlyweds, just a couple of months after the wedding, we found that some couples really were building trust. And they were testing the relationship to see whether that trust existed. And what we mean by trust really comes from our using game theory to understand the relationship, using the mathematics of game theory. And the answer is very simple. Trust means that each partner is thinking for two.

27:34 They're not just trying to maximize their own benefits in the relationship. They're trying to maximize the sum of their benefit and their partner's benefit. So, that when you start really caring as much about what what's good for your partner as what's good for you, you build that trust, and that's the basis of our trust metric. And many of us have times when, you know, we do something that really betrays our partner's trust in us, when we hurt our partner's feelings, you know, when we have disappointed our partner, when we've done something to really betray our partner in some way, some small way.

28:16 And in relationships that work, people stop and repair those things. That's important, that loss of trust or that sense of slipping commitment. They notice it, and they talk about it, and they repair those losses of their trust. They recommit to one another. They reestablish trust in a way that is very meaningful for both of them. >> When a betrayal is discovered, there's a very specific way that couples need to recover from that betrayal, whether it's a big one or a small one.

28:55 And here are the stages of that recovery from betrayal. First of all, there's atonement. The person who has lied, who has deceived, who has betrayed, doesn't get defensive, doesn't blame the betrayal or the lying on the other person. That individual instead takes on full responsibility for it and empathizes with the other person's pain, sometimes even anguish or despair, as a result of being hurt by the betrayal.

29:35 The person who has done the betraying also needs to ask for forgiveness or at least express their remorse, that they feel really, really terrible that they have committed that betrayal. It may be very difficult for the person who's broken the trust to hear their partner and empathize with their partner if their partner is expressing the hurt through criticism, maybe through contempt, through labeling the other person.

30:11 They're not describing themselves, their own feelings. Instead, they're saying, "You did this to me. You You are bad. You did this. I don't like it." That's very different than saying, "I felt devastated. I felt so hurt when I found out there was this lie that was told. I just felt sinking to the floor.

30:44 I felt awful. The next stage has to do with really working on the marriage itself or the committed relationship. I like to call it building marriage number two. Marriage number one may have burned to the ground. However, marriage number two can be rebuilt by learning alternative ways of talking to one another, learning how to build what we call rituals or traditions in which they are really creating ways of connecting and being transparent.

31:24 Super important. If they're late coming home from work, they call their partner, tell them that they're late, and they're transparent and say why they're late. Then they come home instead of just leaving a cloud of doubt in that other partner who's home. The final stage has to do with attaching again. And what attaching means is recommitting to the relationship.

31:56 And remember, if trust has been broken, that commitment has also been broken, right? So, recommitment is the final step in really recovering from betrayal. >> Repair is probably the most important thing that discriminates the masters from the disasters of relationship. They actually go and fix it. Interestingly enough, couples whose whose relationships are in trouble also do the repair attempts, but it's not perceived as a repair attempt by the partner. It's perceived as a manipulation or you know, more hostility. And, you know, it's not perceived as, you know, let's try to make things better together.

32:45 And the perception is really important, the perception of repair. Now, we took us about 7 years to study repair attempts. Two of my students actually did it. And those students discovered that the most powerful repair of all is when a person takes responsibility for even a part of the problem. That is so powerful. It's even more powerful in heterosexual relationship if if a woman does that. Very powerful for a man when a woman says, "Hey, this isn't all your fault.

33:19 I, you know, I've I've got a role in our miscommunications, and I I want to admit that role. I I messed up, you know, in in, you know, in the fight we had, or the evening that didn't go well." When repair attempts go well, first of all, they're recognized as an attempt to repair, rather than attempt at more hostility or more conflict. And secondly, they really do take the relationship to a new level. And there's a new understanding of one another when a repair works. And we've tried to really structure that in our therapy by creating this aftermath of regrettable incident form that people go through five different steps that capitalizes on repair being going really deep in understanding one another and what went wrong in the miscommunication.

34:15 >> What that often requires is you being vulnerable. Well, what does being vulnerable actually mean? It means, in a manner of speaking, unzipping yourself and exposing your feelings, exposing your emotions, your heart, right? Well, that can be terrifying for some people. Some people really don't want to do that. It's really, really scary. And in fact, some people may not even know what they're feeling.

34:52 You know, let's take a man for example who was taught that it was not okay to express any emotion whatsoever except anger. Couldn't express sadness, guilt, shame, grief, fear. So, it may be hard for them to access the feelings. How does a person do that? Get to those feelings. You can do it through your body.

35:26 For example, if you're talking to your partner, pay attention to where is there tension in your body. For example, that tightness in your jaw can be frustration, can be anger, maybe fear that's keeping you keeping your mouth shut so that you don't say anything that really offends the other person. If you have tightness in your chest, that means you're breathing very shallowly.

35:59 That typically is the feeling of fear, especially when your shoulders are rounded like this. Kicked in the gut can be the same thing. can be blown away, can be shocked, can be surprised, can be also afraid. Anger, you feel it maybe in your arms, your shoulders, your fists, right? So, you can translate what's going on in your body, which is much easier to connect with, then your feelings beneath the body.

36:38 And then, figure out what that feeling is and dare to name it. >> I've often asked, "What what's the one thing that you would do? What's one What's the best piece of advice you can give people to start working on their relationships?" And my answer is that great relationships seem to have a motto. They seem to operate under this basic rule that when you're upset, baby, the world stops and I listen.

37:16 And I have a little notebook in my back pocket that I take out whenever Julie says the four terrible words, "We need to talk." I whip this out really slowly and I get my pen out really slowly so I can calm myself down and I open it up on a clean page and I say, "I'm listening. Talk to me." The goal of conflict is mutual understanding. It has a purpose.

37:46 And I think if you realize the purpose is mutual understanding, not persuasion, not convincing your partner that you're right and your partner is wrong, but finding a way to be right together, then things can work out really well. That's my big invention. And that's what I think people need to do. They need to really realize that when their partner's upset, it's the most important thing in the world. Stop what you're doing.

38:17 Pay attention. Listen. Take it seriously. Communicate respect. Communicate affection. >> When partners really need to make a repair, what brings them really back together again? What's the one thing? You know what it is? It's listening. It's deep listening to the other person. You know, you might think, "Well, if I apologize, then everything is fine and it's all done." But, it isn't. What needs to happen is really listening to the other person's perspective on what happened and putting yourself in the other person's shoes when you're listening so that you can really understand the reasons why they acted or spoke the way they did. You know, so many of us think that to build a relationship, you've got to broadcast. You've got to say who you are. You've got to say what you think.

39:20 You've got to say, you know, what you're feeling, what you believe, etc., etc., describing yourself all the time. And all those things are important, too. But, the greatest gift to create a long-lasting, loving relationship is the desire to listen and understand. That is key. The gift of listening that you're giving to the other person, and hopefully, that other person is also giving to you. So that both people listening to each other reach a much deeper understanding of one another in the process of repair.

40:07 >> So, often start up is something that, you know, we really discovered by taking a look at this active listening that was recommended so strongly by Bernard Guerney in the 1950s. And his idea was that if you would listen well, you could use a formula that says, "Dear partner, when you do X, it makes me feel Y." And it turned out that when people did research with that active listening, they found it was completely ineffective. The Munich Marital Study found that it it was the worst intervention they tried. It had the least effectiveness and the most return to poor communication. And what we decided, what Julie and I decided, was that what was wrong was the you. When you do something, it makes me feel this way. It's still pointing the finger at the other person.

41:02 So, what if we pointed the finger at ourselves? And we took a look and that's what the masters were doing. They were doing this soften startup. They were saying, "Here's how I feel about the situation that we've confronted. Not you, but about a situation. And here's what I need. Not here's what I don't need. Here's my positive need." And they were kind of, you know, we realized they were kind of giving their partner a way to shine for them.

41:33 And they made it easier to listen to what their unhappiness was and what they needed from their partner. So, I think what matters most in love and long-term relationships are maintaining affection and respect in the relationship and fixing it when that goes wrong. >> I think what matters the most, at least this is what our research shows, in loving long-term relationships is the ability to repair. We have to remember that anybody in a relationship is going to make a mistake, no matter how strong the relationship is. And if those repair attempts are not made, if the mistakes or the hurtful feelings are swept under the carpet, well, they tend to add up and fester, right? Until there's more emotional distance because they haven't created repair for whatever was hurtful. So, it's very, very important to always try, at least try, to make repairs when each of you is being human, imperfect, making mistakes, kind of going, "Oh God, why did I say that?"

43:02 And going back to the partner to really repair the disconnect that's occurred. That's what it takes to have a sustained long relationship. >> Chapter 3, defining love. Is love enough to build a happy and lasting relationship? It's a start. It's an important start.

43:34 It's very useful. It's a very wonderful thing to feel loved, to be loved, to give love. But there's a lot more required. Friendship absolutely is the foundation of lasting romantic love. Research shows that of all the couples who are dating, almost 70% of them started as friendships. You don't require that romantic spark. Romantic spark is great if it's there. Not required, not necessary.

44:05 Friendship is necessary. And we've defined what friendship means. You know, it's about building love maps, really getting to know this person, being vulnerable, having the person know you. It's about building fondness and admiration, respect and affection together. It's about really an attitude toward the relationship that it's special and that you're going to treat it as special. Those are the components of friendship that we've identified and they seem to be pretty powerful.

44:37 And they're enough. So, I think friendship is absolutely essential in any relationship that's going to be effective. >> When I've met a healthy couple, I know that they're truly strong by several little signals. One is that they laugh at each other's jokes. Two, they may be affectionate. They may just put their hand on their partner's knee or hold the other person's hand for a moment.

45:12 They don't typically override the other person's opinion and humiliate them in public. They will listen to the other person when the other person is holding forth and talking about something. They are also going to say some things perhaps that are really respectful of you or complimentary to whoever else is there. That also shows a really strong relationship. And finally, love is a choice that you are making over and over and over again.

45:58 Now, when I say that, I'm not talking about the very first stages of love where, you know, there's stars in the sky and things are twinkling and you're so excited. Can't believe you're going to be seeing that person tonight. That we call limerence and that's a little bit different. That's more falling in love, what we call falling in love, which has to do with chemicals. But choosing love over and over again looks really, really different. There's going to be days, especially when you're committed to one another, when you think, "Oh God, you know, I'm going to have to spend the whole day cleaning out the garage with my partner and they're going to complain about it all day long.

46:49 Do I want to be with them? No, not really. Not today." Okay. You have a choice. You can either think about what's wrong with your partner and what they're going to do wrong during the day or you can think, "Wow, isn't it great that they're going to help me even though they hate doing this?" Hear the choice? There's a choice in there. So, choice to love is really particularly important when our partners are not at their best.

47:27 It's easy to love somebody when they're warm and affectionate and complimentary and they're doing things for you and they pick up the kids on time, etc. However, harder to feel love when they make mistakes, when they get things wrong, when they're grumpy, when they're in a bad mood, when they come home late and they haven't told you, you know, all those things. Nobody's perfect. So, can you love somebody who's not perfect?

48:01 That's the choice you have to make. >> The most glaring pattern that reveals that a relationship is strong is that people really are interested in one another. They're listening to one another. They're demonstrating to one another that they care. That they are fascinated by this person. And even during conflict those patterns are there. You know, it's there's this agreement. There's this kind of like saying, "Yeah, talk to me.

48:34 I want to hear what you have to say. Hmm, that's interesting. Tell me more." You know, so "That surprises me. What Help me understand that. I'm kind of confused by that." You know, "Oh, that's fascinating. So, what's the history of that? How did that emerge?" And you know, you see these this sense that the listener is a tourist in the landscape of the speaker's mind.

49:04 You know, we're a tourist. We're just all curiosity. We're open. We're taking in the experience. And that's what the pattern is like in a relationship that's functioning well. >> So, some people actually underestimate how important, how foundational intimacy and affection are in a relationship. So, what are we talking about when we say affection first?

49:35 Affection means touch. Non-sexual touch, but touch nonetheless. It can be hand-holding, an arm around somebody, a big hug. Well, touch is incredibly important in a relationship. Not only that, but it's also really important in creating intimacy and creating a wonderful, passionate sexual life. Sometimes it has sex a lot, sometimes it doesn't. Really depends on the couple.

50:10 There's a huge range of sexuality that couples prefer. There's not a normal, it's got to be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That's not part of a healthy relationship. It's what both people are comfortable with, and that may involve some compromise. Safety is huge in sex. Especially for women. You know, we did an experiment one time.

50:40 God, it was really amazing. We're in a big workshop. We asked people to raise their hands. We asked first the women to raise their hands. When they were in an underground garage, would they feel scared? Everybody raised their hands. All the women raised their hands. The men, asked the same question, two or three, maybe five. That was it. So, one of the things in a heterosexual relationship is that there has to be a sense of safety.

51:21 There has to be trust. There has to be emotional connection. Typically, for a female or a transgender female in a relationship in which there's going to be physical intimacy, there has to be emotional connection and safety, too. And the reality is that no matter what the relationship is, typically that emotional intimacy along with physical intimacy creates the most connection, the most euphoria, even, the most excitement, the most passion, the most love.

52:05 >> What separates couples whose intimate and sexual lives really stay alive and vibrant in their relationship, continue to exist, versus couples whose sex life deteriorates. What we discovered really was that the basis was affection and respect for one another. And, you know, we were surprised by that. You know, couples who even 3 years after the first baby was born had really stopped having sex with one another.

52:39 Compared to couples 3 years after the first baby was born that sex lives were back again, you know, they were they were romantic. And I was delighted when this wonderful study that was done in 24 countries with 70,000 people discovered the same thing. The basis of a great sex life. What's different about the people who say they have an awful sex life and the people who say they have a great sex life. And it's things like saying I love you every day and meaning it.

53:10 Kissing one another passionately for no reason at all. Cuddling, my favorite. Julie and I have a cuddle couch where we cuddle and watch English people murder each other and we love cuddling. And cuddling came out to be really, really important. Having a weekly romantic date, you know, amazing. Taking romantic vacations together. Being affectionate even in public. It not a single thing on that list had to do what happened in the bedroom. It wasn't about sex techniques in the bedroom. It was about affection and shared respect and friendship continuing, nurturing that part of the relationship.

53:54 And that seems to be true everywhere on the planet. What do you do when you're having a hard time being physically or emotionally intimate with your partner? I think the answer is you talk about it. You really have to say to your partner, just like Carol Rusbult said, you're you're investing everything in this relationship. Who's the person you need to talk to about this? Your partner. You've got to say, "Hey, baby, you know, I don't feel things are the same as they used to be. I'm really feeling lonely.

54:30 I'm really feeling I'm not feeling like being physically connected with you. I'm feeling really distant from you. And that really sucks cuz I want to feel close to you. I really want us to be close. I want us to be intimate. Can we talk about how to make that happen? >> One of the primary things that people misunderstand about love and a loving relationship is that you can't have love unless you love yourself first. Absolutely wrong.

55:06 In fact, a loving relationship can help you to love yourself more. There are so many people who wouldn't say they love themselves. At times, they may like themselves or they may not. They may dislike themselves. again, that comes from unhappy childhoods. It can come from unhappy childhood. But, it's very rare that somebody is so healed and so enlightened that they completely love themselves.

55:44 No, not really. We're all imperfect. We're all continuing to grow. And the reality is that actually, we don't really want to finish growing until we leave this Earth. We're going to keep growing. So, that includes growing in self-love. You don't want to wait until you're 92 years old to have a relationship. Do you really? I don't think so. So, have a relationship whether you're healed, enlightened, or not.

56:22 >> >> It doesn't matter. That's one big misconception. Another one, this one just drives me crazy. You have to be completely compatible. You have to have the same interests. you have to come maybe from a similar town or similar background. You have to be a similar race or ethnicity. You have to have had the same school experience. You have to have the same passions, same interests, same desire for adventure.

56:55 No, no, and no. None of those are true. The wonderful thing about relationships or people are never completely compatible. Ever. So, the matter the fact of the matter is that people enrich the relationship with their differences. One loves adventure, the other one loves to read. Okay. So, the reader shares with the adventurer what they've read, and the relationship is enriched by that. The inventor likewise goes on an adventure, comes back, tells the story, the experience.

57:40 That enriches the relationship. So, you don't have to worry about compatibility, necessarily. I think maybe in terms of values, one wants a child and the other doesn't, then you may have a big problem. And that may not be a relationship that can work cuz there's no compromise, right? You're not going to have half a child. So, in some cases, incompatibility means the relationship probably won't work. But, those are far and few between. So, try not to worry too much about having everything be compatible.

58:26 It's not nearly as important as you think. >> I think after everything I've learned about relationships, people should not be cynical about finding a person who really is the love of your life. My mother used to say, "Every pot has a lid." And I think it's true for relationships. And I I've seen people become really cynical about relationships and think, "What's the point, you know? I'll never meet anybody."

59:00 As so many people are doing, 40% of young people in Japan have given up on relationships. There are people who call themselves involuntarily celibate, you know, who wind up being misogynists. Men who give up and wind up hating women. That is so wrong. There's somebody out there for you who loves you the way you are and will accept you the way you are.

59:33 Don't give up and don't turn to hatred the way many of these misogynists are doing. And take it seriously. I did. I went on 60 dates before I met Julie. She was number 61. She was an outlier, a clear outlier for me. And there's an outlier for you. >> You know, what still surprises me about love or about loving relationships after decades of working with couples and studying couples is the incredible resilience relationships can have. I think that's the thing that just blows my mind.

60:18 For example, I have treated couples where they've had 30 affairs, 40 affairs. Some of those affairs they fell in love and they're absolutely miserable living separately, feeling horrible about the other person. And then they come in to get help, amazingly enough. And then they work and work and work and work and by golly they build a new relationship and it's beautiful and the love returns. That is the most gorgeous thing that I get to see in my office all the time.

61:07 That's the big surprise, how resilient relationships are, how forgiving people can be or even not forgiving but accepting, how compassionate people can be despite being destroyed, you know, by some experiences they've had in the relationship. It's not magic for me. It's resilience and the desire to grow and love that couples show.

61:39 That is what surprises me and is a beautiful thing to see. >> Four times a year, we print a magazine worth putting your phone down for. Big Think's premium print magazine is built with custom artwork and expert insight from the world's biggest thinkers. No AI slop, no rage bait, just big ideas for curious people. Support the media you want to see in the world.

62:11 Go to bigthink.com/membership to join.