Getting Past You & Me With Terrance Real

Long-term relationships and healthy marriages take work. Being right, trying to change your partner, attacking, or withdrawing can unravel your relationship over time. In this episode, expert couples therapist and author Terrance Real teaches us how to step out of toxic patriarchy and rugged individualism so that we can step into more loving, intimate, and connected long-term relationships. Terry Real offers practical skills you can apply to your relationship right away.

Transcript

What is it that you can do to have a loving and intimate relationship long-term?

And how can you repair when you get off track?

That's what we're going to explore today with Terri Real on Your Life in Process.

Speaking from experience,

Long-term relationships and healthy marriages take a lot of work.

Sometimes we can get caught in being right,

Trying to change our partner,

Attacking our partner or withdrawing from them.

And these patterns can unravel your relationship over time.

Today we have expert couples therapist and author Terrence Real on the show to talk to us about how to step out of toxic patriarchy and the rugged individualism that prevents us from having loving,

Connected long-term relationships.

We need to start thinking about things relationally.

And in this episode,

Terri talks about what he calls ecological humility,

Seeing ourselves as part of a collaboration,

Cooperation,

A team.

We talk about how our past history influences our current patterns,

How to name and step out of those patterns and some concrete communication skills that you can use,

Things that you can say with your partner that work.

I also share a bit about my relationship with my husband,

Some skillful moments and some not so skillful moments.

Stay tuned to the end where I will distill these concepts down for you into your daily practice and enjoy this episode with Terri Real.

He is an internationally recognized family therapist,

Speaker and author.

He founded the Relational Life Institute offering workshops for couples,

Individuals and parents along with professional training program for clinicians.

And he is the author of many books,

Including the New York Times bestseller,

Us,

Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship,

As well as the bestselling author of I Don't Want to Talk About It,

How Can I Get Through to You?

And New Rules of Marriage.

He is an expert on male psychology,

Which I could use a little bit of expertise on in my family of two boys and a husband.

And he is a very seasoned clinician.

And I think that his last name rings true.

He is quite real in the therapy room.

Let's start with the,

You know,

Even just the title Us.

It's in big,

Bold letters.

It will catch your attention if you're looking for it.

And you've been working in the area of dismantling patriarchy for like over 30 years,

Right?

This isn't new,

But there's a new component to this book,

Which is really about taking down individualism.

And as a couples therapist,

I imagine you're doing that all the time.

One of the things I say is that leading men,

Women and non-binary folk into intimacy is synonymous with leading them beyond patriarchy.

I said that for going on 40 years because patriarchy was never built for intimacy.

Marriage was never about intimacy.

It was about stability,

Property,

And birthright.

You're a very young,

Very youngster.

But back in my day,

If my mom,

Let alone her grand,

My grand mom went to her mom and said,

You know,

Harry's a good provider.

He doesn't beat me or drank or cheat,

But I just feel like we're really distant.

We've grown apart or we haven't had sex in 10 years,

Or I feel like he demeans me in public or.

Well,

She would have been told to go home to her guy.

But nowadays it's exactly these kind of what I call quality relationship issues that are breaking up long term relationships and marriage.

We really have raised the bar.

We want to be lifelong lovers with each other.

We went long walks on the beach holding hands,

Heart to heart talks and great sex into our sixties and seventies and beyond.

We live in an anti-relational culture.

It gives lip service to relationships,

But that's about it.

And we don't teach our sons and daughters and gender fluid kids the basic skills of being relational or even how to think relationally.

The idea of individualism is not always,

You know,

This is not natural.

This wasn't born in the stars.

One of the chapters is the history of the idea.

It comes out of the Enlightenment.

It's a bunch of privileged,

Rich white men.

And look,

It's a good thing.

I mean,

The American Revolution,

The French Revolution,

But.

The essence.

Of the delude,

What I call the toxic culture of individualism.

Is the idea that I stand apart from nature.

That's for being an individual means I'm staying apart from nature.

And that fuses with patriarchy,

Which says not only am I apart from nature,

But I dominated and I control it.

I'm above it.

And they're both of those ideas are crazy.

They're delusions are insane.

Can we can we go back to that,

That hairy example?

Because what you described there,

That maybe if your mom was in that relationship,

It would have gone a certain way if she told her mom about it.

I feel like that hairy relationship is the one that I see most frequently in my practice.

It's pretty a garden variety example of either the one the wife coming in and saying,

I really I love my husband.

He I want to be with him.

I just really don't want to have sex with him.

I used to want to have sex with him,

But I don't anymore.

And I don't know what's wrong with me.

Or the husband coming in saying,

I just feel like she doesn't like me.

She's always criticizing me and I'm always kind of on edge or doing something wrong.

This is sort of the garden variety long-term relationship that you're talking about.

So how do you how do you work with that?

Well,

First of all,

Let's take it to the broad view.

Across the board in the West,

Women are insisting on more emotional intimacy from their men than we traditionally raise boys and men to deliver.

The essence of traditional masculinity is invulnerability.

The more vulnerable we are,

The more manly you are,

The more vulnerable you are,

The more girl you are.

And while this is different with younger men,

There is an age factor.

The younger men are more in touch.

Generally speaking,

The old rules are very much with us.

Boys and men are not raised to be emotionally vulnerable.

In fact,

It feels unmanly to be on the wall to many men.

But as Brene Brown has taught us,

Vulnerability is what connects us human beings and women drag men to people like you and me saying,

I need them to talk to me about themselves,

About their feelings,

About their experience.

And I need them to be compassionate when I talk about my feelings and neither of those things is happening.

And the men are going,

Why doesn't she want to have sex with me?

Well,

Because she doesn't feel connected to you.

That's why.

And the RLT therapists,

Relational life therapy,

It breaks all the rules.

We take sides.

We don't take all problems are 50 50.

So we're perfectly capable of saying,

Diana,

You're a nut and the guy you're with,

If you're straight,

You're an even bigger nut.

And here's why I say that.

We are not neutral.

We share from our own lives.

We deal not just with shame,

But also with grandiosity,

Not just inferiority,

But superiority.

And we do trauma work and we teach.

RLT has three phases.

The first is loving confrontation.

This is what you're doing to blow your foot off.

This is your repeated relational stance that comes from your adaptation from childhood.

For example,

Angry pursuit is a dysfunctional stance.

You'll never get somebody closer to you by complaining about their not being close.

So the first is the therapist lovingly skillfully confronts you about what you're doing.

They will absolutely defeat you.

The second phase is trauma work,

Which nobody does in couples therapy.

Janina Fisher and me,

We do deep trauma work in the presence of the partner.

What you learn how to be an angry pursuer.

Where did you learn this?

What were you adapting to?

Who were you adapting?

And let's do some inner child working.

We do deep and cry,

Cry,

Cry,

Embrace that little boy or little girl that was you back then.

And the other partner sitting there and their heart opens when they see you do this work.

It's so much better than doing it off on the side with a therapist.

And then the third phase is teaching,

Skill building.

This is how you stand up for yourself and be loving in the same breath.

That's new for our culture.

This is how you listen non defensively and with compassion for your part.

This is how you make prepare.

This is what to do when you're in your a wise adult and your partner is being a jerk.

Basic skills.

I think it's the combination of the confrontation with service that's not enough to do the deep trauma work,

This is what you were adapting to back then.

Let's look at that.

And then the skill building and teaching.

It's a combination of all three of those together that produces transformational change so quick.

And we do see that.

We see transformational change in the relationship and in the individual in a pretty short amount of time.

So that first part confrontation is pointing out of the pattern and what they're doing that's keeping them stuck.

And you use a lot of wheeze and a lot of understanding of the co-regulation and the neurobiology behind what's keeping you stuck because it's not just one side,

It's both sides that are playing off of and co-regulating each other that are participating in couples problems.

Can you speak a little bit about that?

I said that the delusion of the toxic culture of individualism and patriarchy is the idea that you're above nature and can control it.

You could dominate it.

And that's crazy.

That's the saying.

That's not true.

Whether the nature you're trying to control is your partner.

I would be happy if you would just allow your kids.

Shut up and do it,

I tell you.

Your body,

I've got to lose 10 pounds.

Your mind,

I've got to be less negative.

Other people,

I'm superior to that race over there or those Republicans over there or planet.

I can throw plastic in the ocean and there's no consequences.

I'm pleased that the book starts with neurobiology.

We're not individuals.

We co-regulate each other's nervous system,

Goes into personal relationships and then fades out to deal with issues like racism and misogyny and the planet.

If we don't trade in a power and control model for what I call ecological humility,

We're not above nature.

We're in it before.

If we don't trade in a power control model for a collaborative,

Cooperative model,

We're done for whether it's our marriage or our parenting or whether democracy goes down the drain,

Whether the planet goes down.

I mean,

This is really critical at every level.

So at the personal level,

When I say is your relationship,

Your marriage is your biosphere.

You're in it,

You breathe it,

You depend upon it.

You can choose to pollute your biosphere over here with temper tantrum,

But you'll breathe in that pollution in your partner's withdrawal or lack of sexuality over here.

Why does my wife not want to have sex?

Because you're a bully,

That's why.

Deal with yourself.

And what people don't understand is that they're connected.

They think they can get away with doing this over here with no repercussions,

But you're an ecosystem.

You're not separate.

You're here together.

So that's the wisdom of us.

We're a team.

We're working together.

And when you think this ecologically or relationally,

Everything changes.

You know,

I have a saying,

You can be right or you can be married.

What's more important?

When you're thinking relationally,

The answer who's right and who's wrong is who cares.

What matters is how are you and I as a team going to work this in a way that's going to work out.

But you have to stay centered in what I call the wise adult part of you to remember.

That part,

The wise adult versus the adaptive child is one of the most helpful teachings for me in your book.

And sometimes I wish that I had like a video camera in my kitchen and I could have snapshotted the fights between me and my husband over the years and see how they've changed and how they've not changed over time.

And one of the things that I actually asked my husband to do in reading your book,

And I asked him this when I was in a very wise adult place,

Very calm,

Late morning,

I'm making pancakes.

And I said,

You know,

When I show up as my sort of worst version of me in our relationship,

How do I show up?

And he,

At first he was a little bit,

He was like,

Should I answer this?

Is it safe?

Is it really safe for me to tell you what I really think?

But he said,

He said to me,

Well,

When he was cautious,

He said,

Well,

When,

When you show up as the worst version of you,

You get,

You go really quickly through things and you speed so quickly and then you get mad at everyone for not keeping up.

I said,

Well,

Do you want to know what the worst version of you is?

Because it relates to the worst version of me because the worst version of him is when he's in his adaptive child,

He shuts down,

Doesn't speak.

And it's,

It's like hard to get him to go anywhere.

He's like,

You know,

Two feet down,

You know,

Like a dog that you're trying to pull on a leash that's like,

I'm not going on this walk.

And so here I am rushing ahead,

Getting mad at everyone for not keeping up and he's,

You know,

Completely shut down and there goes our fight.

It's the same fight that's been in our kitchen for,

You know,

20 years now.

But the difference is over these 20 years is we can,

Usually one of us can pull out of it,

Even though the other person's still in it.

And when the one of us pulls out of it into our wise adult,

Then we can turn,

Then we can shift that person has the power to shift things.

How are you shifted?

What's your name?

Usually through being like,

Oh my gosh,

I'm so sorry.

I've just feel like here we are again.

I love you.

I don't want it to be like this for us.

It like,

I hate it when we're,

When we do this,

That's,

It's usually something like that.

Um,

Simple.

Yeah.

I know that love.

You remember that the person you're speaking to is not the enemy,

That there's somebody to love.

And if you can't remember that,

Remember you have to live with the son of a gun.

So senior atriists to make things better.

This is about repair,

Harmony,

Disharmony,

And repairs the rhythm of all relationships and what you and your husband are finding out is that you can repair and it only takes one to set back,

Get their head on straight and come back in and go,

But let's not do this.

Let's make peace with each other.

And then the other one has to be willing to make peace with them.

The adaptive child part of it is important too,

Because we know enough about each other at this point in time that I know where that part of him came from.

Like I know his history and he knows where that part of me came from and he knows my history.

And when I can see that like,

Oh,

This is his,

His history,

That there's a vulnerability there that causes him to go into that place.

Then I much,

Then I soften even quicker.

Well this is why I want to teach everybody how to do trauma work in the presence of the partner.

The partner has been on the receiving end of that adaptive child repertoire of behaviors.

And you know,

It can be pretty unhappy to be on receiving into that.

But when you do the trauma work,

Which we do in RLT,

The question is,

What were you adapting?

Where did you learn this?

What were you adapting to?

I teach my students to always be respectful of the exquisite intelligence of the adaptive child.

You did exactly what you needed to do back then to preserve your integrity and wholeness and keep yourself saying smart little boy,

Smart little girl.

But I have a saying adaptive then,

Maladaptive now.

You're not that little girl and he's not your dad or mom who is difficult to be with.

It's a different ball game.

We all marry people who are enough like our families that we reenact the old drama.

I call that the mysticism of marriage.

We all marry our unfinished business.

But we marry people who have other resources unless we're very unlucky.

We think we're going to be healed when we get the son of a gun to give us what our parents did it.

But that's not how it works.

We're healed when once we're in the old wound with our partner.

Instead of going with that adaptive child with that automatic knee jerk response,

We take a breath and we get centered back into our wise adult self prefrontal cortex,

The mature part of the brain.

And we go,

I don't want to fight.

I'm sorry.

Let's not believe me.

And they would come out of it.

But the key is remembering love to go back to neurobiology.

The autonomic nervous system far below consciousness.

Where's our bodies four times a second?

Am I safe?

Am I safe?

Am I safe?

Am I safe?

If the answer is yes,

We stay in the most mature part of our brain.

The prefrontal cortex grows until we're 26 years old.

It's far and away the most complicated part of the brain.

This is the part of you that can stop and think that's present based that can be reflective,

That can take a breath,

That can say,

Wait a minute,

I don't want to throw my kid out the window.

I probably would want to give my time out instead.

That's the wise adult part of us.

Dan Siegel and other neurobiologists have pointed out.

If the answer is I'm safe,

You stay integrated and you have what Dan Siegel calls an integrated brain.

If the answer is I'm in danger,

Guess what happens?

The prefrontal cortex goes all the way,

Subcortical,

More primitive parts of the brain take over.

And you are seized by your knee jerk automatic response when you're stressed.

And I say fight,

Flight or fix.

I was very pleased Peter Levine added along with fight,

Flight,

Freeze,

They added a fourth fawn from nature from what observing animals and fondness fix fondness in the animal kingdom.

So fight,

Screw me,

Screw you,

Flight,

You can be six inches away from somebody and still be fleeing,

That's called stonewalling and fix is like an anxious code.

It's not a mature,

Let me see what I can do to make things better.

Because it's anxious.

If you're unhappy,

I'm in happy,

I'll twist myself in the knots.

What do you need?

So Diana,

I'm a fighter.

What are you?

I'm a fighter.

Oh really?

Yeah,

I go towards.

Yeah.

Okay.

Angry pursuer.

And your husband's a distancer.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Yeah,

Right.

See,

Once I get your stances and then I get the dynamic,

The more you angrily pursue,

The more he,

I'm going to say angrily withdrawals.

Have I got that right?

He's not super angry.

He's actually a pretty measured guy.

I think he just withdraws and patiently withdraws.

Okay,

Cool withdrawal.

Yeah,

Cool withdraw.

Yeah.

So the more you hotly pursue,

The more equally withdrawal.

Yeah.

We teach our students to say the more,

The more,

The more,

The more,

The more you pursue,

The more he withdraws,

The more he withdraws,

The more you pursue.

Very stereotypical heterosexual relationship.

What I teach my students is if you can formulate the more,

The more by the end of your first session,

You,

Les Havens,

A great psychiatrist here in Boston used to say,

By and large,

The goal of a first session is a second session.

And if you can,

By the end of your first session,

Articulate the more,

The more with the couple and communicate that you can get them out of it,

They're yours.

You got it.

And I mean,

I don't mean to whatever,

But I can't refer.

We have a network of RLT therapists around the world.

They're always full.

Do this work and your practice blows up because you move so quickly.

Anyway,

The more,

The more,

So the more you pursue,

The more he distances,

The more he distances.

So that's my patient as a couples there is that pattern to the degree to which I'm getting either or both of you to change your stance.

Something's happening in the therapy.

Otherwise you're having a lot of insight,

But who cares?

Or a lot of catharsis,

But who cares?

Are you more intimate with each other?

That's my report.

So you start with identifying in those early sessions,

Or if somebody is doing this at home,

Like just this,

This identifying the pattern between the two of you,

The co-regulation and pattern.

And,

You know,

I think that sometimes it can even be more complicated.

I think I'm a,

I'm a pursuer to a point and then I start to withdraw because then I'll get him to start.

I've kind of figured this out.

Like I'll pursue,

Pursue,

And then I'm like,

I'm not getting anywhere with this,

So I'm just going to Stonewall.

And then eventually that'll get us.

So it can,

You know,

We have these complex patterns,

But being an observer of that,

A witness of it and stepping out of it as opposed to being in it.

And that is very much a wise adult self that can observe.

And my pal,

The German mystic Thomas Google,

Has a saying to observe is not of choice because the observing you is the prefrontal cortex.

That's not just the,

The hallmark of the adaptive child part of you is that it's automatic.

But this is what has to happen.

And taking a breath or 10,

I'm a big fan of breaks,

Taking a walk around the block,

Bringing that little boy or girl up on your lap and having a chat with them.

That's my favorite.

Remembering love,

Remembering that the person we wrote,

Wait,

Why am I talking?

If you're talking because you care and you want to make things better,

You center good good talk.

If you're talking to just screw them into the grain out there,

Ventilator,

I have five losing strategies.

She's long the book being right.

We're going to resolve this issue when we prove which one of us is right and wrong.

Good luck with that.

Controlling your partner.

I'll be happy if you just thought that I'll be happy if you just apologize.

Unbrought of self-expression ventilating,

Which therapy has really been a major contributor.

Let me tell you just how miserable I know.

You don't have the unholy right to cord up on your partner.

Therapy's wrong about that.

I say you can express yourself or you can work towards solution,

But you can't do both at the same time.

What's more important?

Retaliation.

I'm going to hurt you the way you hurt me and withdraw.

If that's your agenda,

You got to be dead honest with yourself.

In fact,

People listening take a pen and jot these down and I do what we call losing strategy profile.

What is your adaptive child about?

Being right,

Controlling your partner,

Uh,

Ventilating,

Retaliating,

Or withdrawing.

And what I want you to understand is that the part of you that wants to do some combination of those five,

Uh,

Won't ever solve anything because that part of you doesn't want to.

You have to call relational mindfulness.

The revolution of the book and my work is that you can cultivate the skill.

You can build the muscle when you're triggered,

When you're in your adaptation,

You take a breath and you go in this moment right now,

I'm going to do it different.

True story.

So my beat,

As you know,

Are couples on the brink of divorce that no one else has been able to help.

That's my,

That's what I do.

So I had a couple of like,

I did the words.

Why the guy who is a pervasive or chronic liar likes about everything large and small.

Well,

It says to me,

If you ask him what kind of shoes he has on,

He'll tell you they're not shoes,

They're sneakers.

He will.

Yes.

I think I've had this client.

Yeah.

He's the kind of guy that for you and the therapist listening,

I'm sure you say to him,

Hey,

The sky is blue.

And he goes,

Well,

Actually it's awkward for me,

But he's not going to give it to you.

Right.

So between the wife's description and the way he handles himself in the room,

In five minutes,

I have his dysfunctional relational stance.

This guy is a black belt in aphasia.

So loving confrontation,

Inner child,

Trauma work,

And then skill building.

Those are the three phases.

Once I get it that he's an evader,

That's his adaptive child.

Then I ask a question,

Which unless you're thinking relationally sounds like,

Oh my God,

That's so brilliant.

But if you're thinking relationally,

It's like,

It's obvious.

Who is he evading?

Show me the thumbprint.

I'll tell you about the thumb.

Show me the adaptive child.

I can start to have some guesses about what they were adapting to.

So I say to him,

Who tried to control you growing up?

Sure enough,

His father,

Military man,

How he ate,

How he sat,

What he wore,

What friends he had,

What courses he took.

I said to him,

How did you deal with this controlling father?

He looks at me and he smiles.

That's important.

That smile is the force of resistance.

He looks at me and he smiles and he goes,

I lied.

Giant boy,

Smart boy.

You did exactly what you needed to do to preserve your integrity with that domineering man.

But guess what?

You're not that little boy anymore.

And she's not your father.

She's your wife.

That's it.

That's all we do.

And he does a little connecting with that little boy,

That overly controlled little boy.

Come in a couple of weeks later,

Han and Ann,

True story,

Were done,

Were cured.

Okay,

There's a tale,

Tell me the tale.

Over the weekend,

She sent him to a grocery store to get 12 things.

And true to form,

He comes home with 11.

His wife says,

Where's the pumpernickel?

And this is the part he says,

Every muscle and nerve in my butt was screaming to say they were out of it.

And I thought of you,

Terry.

I took a breath.

I found my courage.

I looked my wife in the eye and I said,

I forgot the pumpernickel.

And she,

True story,

Burst into tears and she said,

I've been waiting for this moment for 25 years.

Yeah.

That's one of the stories I opened the book with.

That's a moment of coming out of the adaptive child automatic response and choosing to do something more relatable,

Less healing.

And she was part of that too,

Because how often does somebody make a tiny move and then they get punished?

They don't get rewarded.

They don't get encouraged.

I mean,

She came in,

She saw that as,

Oh my gosh,

You being honest in that moment is what I've wanted for so long and reinforced the heck out of him for it.

So then now he's like,

Oh,

I kind of could do that again because I came into this safe,

Loving arms when I did it.

Yeah,

You're absolutely right.

That's a creative,

Corrective,

Emotional experience.

How between client and therapist,

Between client and personally live with.

That's what we're about.

But you're,

You're right.

I call this transmission reception work.

That was very stewed observation.

And one of the things I say is when partner B starts giving partner A what partner A has been asking for.

Does partner A generally swoon in their arms and say,

Thank you,

Dear.

Now they move into 8 million variations of disqualification.

You didn't do it right.

It's too late.

You're only doing it because Terry told you to you're doing it now,

But it won't last.

And my favorite yearly doing it.

Cause I asked you to like,

That's a real winner for.

So once a partner B starts to transmit progress,

The gauntlet goes to partner A and all of her issues of intimacy come to the floor.

Then they're bailing the wall and they disqualify and reassert the old equilibrium.

I normalize that.

Whenever I say that.

Everybody does that.

But sweetheart,

I got bad news.

I understand why you don't want to be vulnerable.

I understand why you don't want.

You are cloaking yourself in skepticism to protect yourself.

Hey look,

You've hoped and been dashed and hoped and been dashed dozens of times.

You don't want to go through the washing with a cycle.

So you don't want to hope again.

Having said that,

You have to protect yourself where you can work with your marriage,

But I'm afraid you can't do both at the same time.

So what are you going to do?

Yeah,

That's the confrontation part coming back again to that confrontation,

Trauma work and then skills.

I can't say enough about skills.

If you didn't learn how to validate someone because you weren't validated and then your partner just expects you to validate them.

It's not,

It's not going to fly.

I will,

I will,

I will ask a client sometimes to get out their phone and take a note.

And I want you to like,

I want you to write this down.

I want you to write down.

It's understandable that you feel the way that you're feeling.

It makes sense.

And I'm here with you.

And then I want you to like use those words in a sentence this week.

Just that simple.

But oftentimes we don't even,

We don't have the languaging around how to show up in this curious,

Compassionate,

Loving way.

So what are some of the,

You know,

The go-to skills that you teach around that?

Well,

You just said one of them.

And one of the things I really like is you're like an R.

L.

T.

There,

But you roll up your sleeves and you get granular.

You don't say,

Well,

You should have a different attitude.

Say it this way.

That's coaching.

That's what I call micro coaching.

It goes like this on that third phase of skill building.

First of all,

There are people who don't believe that you need to teach people skills.

Some of the trauma people around these days believe that once you remove the trauma,

People just know how to be intimate.

Good luck with that.

So we teach specific skills,

How to stand up for yourself and be cherishing of your partner at the same time.

Nobody knows how to do that.

The difference between saying,

Diana,

Don't talk to me like that,

Which is fair enough and saying,

Diana,

I want to hear what you have to say,

Could you dial it down so I can hear it?

Which of those two would you rather hear?

Which of those two works better?

In terms of your sex couples,

If the judge would be,

I need more sex and saying,

Honey,

We deserve a healthy sex vibe.

What do we need to do to kickstart this?

We were a team.

It's remembering the routine and everything changes.

The energy changes,

The language changes.

This is where a skilled therapist can really help.

A lot of it has to do with repair.

Harmony disharmony and repair.

A lot of the skills are about coming back in when your partner is in a state of disrepair.

Here's a skill.

It's a one way street.

When your partner is in a state of disrepair,

You have one interest,

Which is helping them move back into repair with you.

This is not a dialogue.

This is not a conversation.

This is not a you share what's bothering you about me,

And then I'll share what's bothering me about you.

Now,

Everybody gets that wall.

It's a one way street.

What can I say or do to help you feel better?

And what was implicit in the way you describe coaching these people is you replace our usual orientation,

Which is accuracy,

Objective reality,

Which,

As you know from listening to me,

Objective reality has no place in personal relationship.

We don't care who's right,

Who's wrong,

What's accurate.

We don't care.

What matters is how we're going to make this work.

If I'm listening to you complain about me or the relationship,

My usual go to is that's right.

That's not right.

That's right.

That's half right.

Yeah,

Well,

That's sort of right.

I'm rebutting.

I'm not listening.

I'm measuring everything you say against accuracy.

That's what we all do.

The second reference point is ourselves.

I can't believe I have to listen as we can.

Oh,

My God.

How long is this going to go off?

And when I name that,

I'm naming it for everybody listening to this podcast.

And what I want you to replace it with is grab a pencil.

Those are your listening.

Compassionate curiosity about your partner's subjective experience,

Compassionate curiosity about what they're going through.

It's not about whether it's justified.

Who cares?

Tell me more about what that means to you.

And then here's the golden repair question.

Is there anything I could say or do right now that would help you feel better right now?

Not back then.

Right now.

That's key.

Yeah,

That's really good.

I can't do anything about the past.

Yeah.

And in terms of the future,

Let me reassure you a little workup.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you don't know that till I do it.

But right now,

It's something I could do that.

I feel better,

So these are these are skills how to make repair,

How to speak up for yourself with love,

How to receive when your partner starts to get right.

I teach people in general to celebrate the glass 15 percent for it was only five percent for last week.

What do we need to get it to be 20?

So when your partner starts giving you what you want,

Be encouraging,

Not discouraged.

But these are all skills that no one knows.

You didn't see it in your family.

You don't see it in individualistic patriarchal culture.

You have to learn them.

Right.

And how to communicate it to your partner in terms of what you need or what works for you.

That line that it's understandable that you feel this way,

It makes sense given your circumstances.

That is a line that I have spoon fed to my husband and told him,

Text this back to me if I'm losing it.

And actually,

Last night I came back from I was at a dinner party with a bunch of women and I didn't know a lot of the women.

And we were playing this card game called Cards Against Humanity.

I don't know if you've ever heard this.

OK,

So my first time playing,

You only want to play this card game if you drink or if you know people really well.

And I was in a position of neither.

So it was really uncomfortable for me.

And what came up for me was a feeling of being like 16 again and not fitting in and feeling really awkward.

And so I came home and my kids weren't in bed.

I was pissed that my kids aren't in bed.

I was supposed to come back from the party with everyone in bed and running around doing all my stuff.

And back to my kitchen,

I wish I had a video camera because I would play it of how skillful my husband was.

And this is from years of us working through this.

Here we are in the kitchen.

I'm a mess.

And he says to me,

Of course,

You feel that way.

Of course,

It was a hard thing to go into to feel awkward.

And he knows that about me because he knew me when I was 19 and I was in college.

And he knew me in graduate school and he knows how I am that these kinds of social things are tough for me sometimes.

And he was able to be there because I told him over time,

This is what I need when I'm in this place.

Yeah,

And you know,

If you had me as your guy,

I would have tuned it up a little and I would have your husband even go so far as to say,

And it's understandable when you come home and the kids are running around or not in bed the way we I promised that you're pissed at me and disappointed about that,

Too.

You can even include yourself and be accountable.

But the thing is that I want to emphasize is you trained him.

There are three phases to getting more what you want in relationship.

The first I call daring to rock the boat.

This is when you grab your partner by the collar and you say,

Listen,

This is really important to me.

Pay attention.

So you did that.

Listen,

If I'm flying around in ways you don't like,

Here's what you could say that would bring me to pay attention.

That's important.

The second phase is once your partner is gets it once they hear it.

Okay,

I'll try.

Drop the aggression and roll up your sleeves and help them out.

Okay,

If you were going to listen to me and respond empathically,

Which is what it would take to calm me down.

This is what that would sound like.

Let me give you the sentence and I completely applaud you that you were that specific.

Tell the son of a gun what you want.

We know this was sex,

Right?

We know each,

But it's the same thing with our emotions,

Right?

This is the response that would really help.

And then the third phase,

Which I call making it worth their while.

Let me be encouraging,

Not discouraged.

Good job.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I say,

Get more where you want.

The way we normally in our culture,

Try and get what we want is we're passive.

We don't get their attention or instruct them about what we want.

We expect them just to know.

We wait for them to fail and then we complain about it.

I want people in general and women in particular to be more proactive upfront and less resentful on the back end.

Teach your partner,

Not from a condescending place of I'm the expert.

You're not the expert on relationships,

But you are the expert on Diana.

So this is what with humility,

This is what would work for me as a favor to me.

Would you be willing to do it this way?

So what do you do when there's one partner that's on board for the us and wanting to do that?

Or is there another one isn't so much on board?

They're not all in.

Well,

You could force the issue.

You could fight as they're in direct the vote.

It depends on how bad it is,

The asymmetry.

If it's really insufferable to live with,

That's a kick out for getting good couples therapy.

Go to a couples therapist that will really help you,

Really support you.

I can't tell you,

You know,

People come see me dragging a spouse who's insufferable to live with,

Uh,

Irresponsible or cruel shut down or,

Or,

Or,

Or they've been,

They've dragged this person to four or five,

Six,

So far the record is eight therapists and no one has taken them on because we're all taught to be nice and we don't deal with issues of grandiosity.

We deal with shame,

But grandiosity screws up couples relationships.

At least as much as Shane does people who are entitled people who are selfish people who are ungiving people who are angry and inflict their crap on everybody else.

These are real issues that come to us and most therapists are taught to back away in our LT and this is where you have to be trained.

We mastered the art of leaning in and confronting difficult people with what they're doing.

This difficult,

But doing it in a way that's so loving.

So on their side,

Did they actually feel closer to us through the confrontation?

We're not taught that in traditional therapy school.

We're taught to handle things with kid gloves,

But that's not going to deliver the goods.

Seems like from a position of you being a white male therapist,

That would be different.

You know,

Especially if you're working with a white male compared to a therapist of color or a female therapist or you know that confrontation element could be more challenging depending on the identity of the therapist or the dynamics in the room.

Certainly had grandiose clients where I felt myself back away,

But I felt myself back away because I'm a little afraid of you.

You're a male,

I'm a female.

I'm not feeling so safe in this space.

Yeah,

You know what I would teach you if you were my multi-therapist,

I would have you look at the guy and say that,

You know what?

I'm a little afraid of you right now.

Do you mean to be intimidating to me?

I learned that working in an ER,

You get these big psychotic people and they tower over you and you look up at them and you go,

I'm a little afraid of you right now.

Do you mean to be intimidating me?

And then they go,

No,

No,

No.

And just sit down and you,

The paradox is if you say I'm afraid of you right now,

You're meta communicating that you're not so frozen that you're not going to put it on the table.

If you're willing to take your seat,

If you're willing to sit in your power,

If you talk to a guy about what they're doing that is blowing their own foot off and you give them goals,

The art is what we call joining through the truth,

Telling you the truth in a way that makes you closer to me.

And there's an art to it.

If you can tell somebody that they're drowning and throw them a lifeline,

They'll take it.

But you have to know how to do it.

I can't tell you how many sessions at the end of a session I or any other trained RLT sounds something like this,

Bill,

Who's been lying and cheating and philandering for 20 years.

You know,

Bill,

You're a decent guy.

I am sad with men who are indecent to the bone to associate that.

And man,

They're cool.

But you're not.

We talk,

I feel connected.

You laugh at my jokes.

We nod.

We take it.

I feel you're,

You know,

It's amazing.

You're a decent guy.

I am talking to a decent man who has behaved indecently for the last 20.

Will you let me help you rescue the real you from that crap that you've been involved in?

Is that something you're interested in?

Who says no to that?

No one.

And they don't.

And what I'm doing is I'm holding,

I'm sort of bypassing the adaptive child and forming an alliance right with the wise adult part.

It's you and me looking at your bad behavior.

I'm empowering that part of you.

I love that part.

Yeah.

We could do that with our partner too,

Right?

Yes.

You know?

Yeah.

Set aside the bad behavior and remember,

I think that's often why we stay with our partners,

You know,

The ones that stick through the many marriages within the marriage.

Healthy self-esteem rare in this culture is the capacity to feel proportionately bad about bad behavior or even character traits like selfishness and still hold yourself in warm regard as a flawed person.

I'm a good person who behaved badly.

If I don't feel bad about the bad behavior,

I'm shameless.

I'm a sociopath.

We don't want that.

If the feeling is not about my behavior,

But it was a person that's shame that does nobody any favors.

Guilt or remorse is in the middle.

It's about the behavior.

It's not about me.

It's about you.

And I teach,

You know,

One of the things therapists are afraid of is that their client will go from inflation to deflation.

You pop the grandiosity and all of a sudden they're on the floor.

But I teach somebody if I see them going through a shame state relative between shame and guilt.

Shame when you go from shamelessness and the shame,

You trade one form of self-preoccupation I deserve on the title to guess what another form of self-preoccupation.

I'm a big shit.

Don't come near me.

I don't comfort me.

I feel so bad about what I just did to you.

It's crazy.

Guilt is not about you.

You get over yourself.

As my kids say,

Guilt is about the person you hurt.

And they may convince you,

What could I do to help you feel better?

And if I see this in my office,

I say,

Okay,

Bill,

It's really hard to come out of shame into guilt.

I'll give you 60 seconds.

Ready guilt.

And they do.

Now turn to your partner.

What can you do to help him feel better?

But this is the kind of very active coaching that we do that I think most therapists shy away from.

Yeah,

Which is,

Which is so great.

And there's a lot of,

I'll link to resources.

If you are a therapist and you want to get trained in your model,

I'll put that link in the show notes.

And I will say,

You know,

My,

My,

One of my very,

I'm not,

I'm more an individual therapist than I am a couples therapist,

But my very good friend is a couples therapist.

And I've told her for years that she should get paid double what I get paid because the work that you do is so challenging.

I mean,

Your work,

You,

You have to keep each individual,

You have like three clients,

You have the each individual,

And then you have the couple and you're navigating all of that while you're navigating your own self and observing you and your patterns and how you're getting triggered as a therapist.

And it is hard work.

So thank you for giving some guidance to couples therapists and doing the work that you do.

It's a lot less hard once you have the map and in our LTV teacher,

What to do,

Do this and do it in that order.

You'll be fine.

Well,

Thank you.

Thank you,

Terry.

It's wonderful to meet you in person and have this conversation with you.

And I hope that it benefits many and appreciate you taking the time with us today.

Thank you very much.

And stay in touch.

Okay.

So my favorite line in this episode is when Terry said,

When you are thinking relationally,

The answer to who is right and who is wrong is who cares.

Oh my gosh.

If we could step into the who cares about who's right and wrong step out of that power struggle,

We are halfway there.

Objective reality has no place in relationship was another favorite line of mine.

This week.

I want you to take what you learned here and bring it to your relationship,

Whether you are just beginning or you've been in this for a while.

I think these daily practices could be really helpful for you.

And you could also use them with somebody other than your partner.

These could work really well with your mom or your brother,

Your sister,

Your best friend.

The first daily practice this week is to start thinking relationally.

Notice your pattern of responding what Terry calls the more,

The more.

So what is it that when you do the more of it causes your partner to do the more of something else,

Which then causes you to do the more of that same thing.

What's your,

The more,

The more pattern.

And once you can identify that as a pattern,

You can observe it.

You could even name it,

Which is super helpful in terms of perspective,

Taking that psychological flexibility skill of observing what is happening rather than being caught up in the self story that can lead you to the second step for this week,

Which is to identify your adaptive child.

Your adaptive child is the part of you that showed up when you were a kid that helped you navigate some challenges in life.

But when they show up in your relationship,

It isn't so helpful.

I like to think about your adaptive child in behavioral science terms as your learning history.

So one way to identify your adaptive child is to ask your loved one about them.

Just as I did with my husband,

I asked him what I am triggered,

What part of me shows up.

You can ask this of your partner.

It's really important that you do it when you are liking your wise adult self.

Don't do it when you are triggered,

But it helps to get their perspective on it.

And then you can share your perspective on their adaptive child.

And you can deepen that conversation by then asking about why this part of them showed up in their life.

It's a great intimacy builder,

And it builds compassion for your partner and self-compassion for yourself.

Those processes of compassion and self-compassion are really useful when it comes to building healthy relationships.

Okay,

Then the last step is to remember love.

You can stand up for yourself,

And you can be loving with your partner.

Use some of the effective communication skills that Terry and I talked about this week.

I jotted down what he said.

Did you?

This is what he said.

He said,

Is there anything I can say or do right now that will help you feel better?

It's not about the past.

It's not about the future.

It's about right now.

Another option would be to share the line that I have fed my husband works really well for me and that I also share with my clients,

Which is it's understandable that you're feeling this way.

It makes sense.

I'm here with you.

So remember love.

Use those communication skills this week.

Okay,

Try those three things out.

Think relationally.

What is your adaptive child?

Remember love.

I will see you next week for our very last episode of the season,

Which is all about feedback.

It's a nice partner to this one.

In the episode,

I get some feedback from Dr.

Abby Deal,

Who works on feedback for this show.

So you'll want to listen to that.

Go ahead and share this episode with your partner or with a friend or client who you think might benefit from it.

Don't forget to subscribe and write a review for me.

It really helps.

Here we are wrapping up 30 episodes.

When I was on my other podcast,

Psychologist Off The Clock,

I did one episode per month.

On this podcast,

I am doing an episode per week.

It's a lot of work folks,

And I could use your support.

So get the word out there.

I hope this episode has been as useful to you as it has been to me and my relationship.

Take care.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Your Life in Process.

When you enter your life in process,

When you become psychologically flexible,

You become free.

If you like this episode or think it would be helpful to somebody,

Please leave a review over at podchaser.

Com.

And if you have any questions,

You can leave them for me by phone at 805-457-2776 or send me a voicemail by email at podcast at your life in process.

Com.

I want to thank my team,

Craig,

Angela Stubbs,

Ashley Hyatt,

Abby Deal,

And thank you to Ben Gold at Bell and Branch for his original music.

This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only,

And it's not meant to be a substitute for mental health treatment.