Why Young Men and Women Don’t Trust Each Other & What Makes Love Last

You know that stretch you instinctively do when you first wake up — arms out, back arched, often accompanied by a yawn or a strange noise? Dogs and cats do it too. There is actually a name for it, and a reason it feels so incredibly good. Listen and discover what your body is accomplishing when you do it. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-does-pandiculation-feel-so-good Something startling is happening between young men and women. They are dating less, marrying less, and increasingly seem to distrust and disengage from each other. What is driving this divide — and what happens if it continues? Daniel Cox joins me with some eye-opening research on this consequential social change. Daniel is founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is author of Generation Uncoupled: America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection (https://link.amazon/B0bAUzOoI). The excitement at the beginning of a romantic relationship doesn’t last forever. So what do successful couples do next? Anna Elton says there are specific, surprisingly simple things couples can do to keep desire, intimacy and connection alive — and some can actually be fun. Anna is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist, and clinical sexologist who writes for Psychology Today. She is author of The Formula of Desire: What Brings Us Together and Drives Us Apart, and the Science of Connection (https://link.amazon/B02Uzxa9n). To take the assessment she discusses go to: https://theformulaofdesire.com/assessments/ Ever pour yourself a glass of ice water only to discover it tastes or smells vaguely like garlic, onions or last night’s dinner? The water probably isn’t the culprit. It’s your ice. Listen as I explain how those strange flavors get into ice cubes — and the simple thing you can do to stop it. https://www.consumerreports.org/appliances/refrigerators/refrigerator-is-making-smelly-ice-cubes-a1166770149/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future? I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pechek and Anna Rattman, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute, USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:32Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, every morning, you're probably panticulating, and so is your dog. I'll tell you why. Then, something's going on between young men and women, and it's not good.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  Increasingly, young men and women do not trust each other. They're not spending time together to build that understanding and trust, and it is impacting every aspect of their lives. And you see this play out online and offline.

• 0:59Mike Carruthers?

  Also, if the drinking water in your house tastes funny, there might be an easy way to fix that. And why the magic fades from most relationships, and how to get it back.

• 1:11Speaker 03

  The biggest part is, people think that once you stop the chase, once you know the partner, that's it, there's nothing else to find out, and they stop being curious. And at that point, I hear a lot of my clients say, well, my coworkers know me better than my partner.

• 1:27Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:52Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:08Speaker 04

  Something You Should Know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know, with Mike Carruthers.

• 3:21Mike Carruthers?

  You know, it doesn't happen often that when I do an interview here, I am floored or stunned by what I hear. I prepare enough for each interview that I have a pretty good idea what a guest is going to talk about. But the first interview in this episode, which I've already recorded, I mean, I was shocked. It involves the young adults in our society, the Gen Z'ers, as they are known. And what you're about to learn about them as a group, I think, will shock you as it did me. That's coming up in just a moment. But first up, you know that almost irresistible thing you do after you wake up in the morning?

• 4:01Mike Carruthers?

  Your arms stretch out, your back arches, and you usually accompany it by a big yawn? Well, that movement, that action, has a name. It's called panticulation. And it's not just a habit. It's an involuntary reflex built into humans and many other mammals that tends to happen after you've been inactive for a while. The combination of contracting and then releasing muscles may help reduce stiffness and prepare your body to start moving again. It's why dogs and cats do essentially the same thing after a nap. So tomorrow morning, when you stretch, yawn, and make, you know, whatever weird noise you make when you do it, you aren't just waking up, you're panticulating.

• 4:46Mike Carruthers?

  And now you have a much more impressive name for it. And that is something you should know.

• 4:55Mike Carruthers?

  Something unusual and potentially consequential is happening with Gen Z, people in their teens and 20s. There seems to be a lot less interest in the opposite sex. Young men and women are pulling away from each other. They trust each other less. They're forming fewer relationships with the opposite sex. And many of them appear less interested in marriage and having children altogether. And this may be part of an even bigger shift. Young adults increasingly seem to want to live lives that have less in-person social interaction, less conflict, less discomfort, and less friction, even though friction and

• 5:35Mike Carruthers?

  conflict are essential to forming relationships and growing up. The research behind this is pretty eye-opening. Daniel Cox is one of the people who conducted it. He is founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute. His research has been widely cited in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and hundreds of other major media outlets. He's author of a book called Generation Uncoupled: America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection. Hi, Daniel. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  It's great to be here.

• 6:16Mike Carruthers?

  So kick this off by explaining what this gender divide is, who it applies to, and why it exists.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Sure. And who we're talking about here is young people, 18, 29. Sometimes it's used interchangeably for Generation Z, and that runs anywhere from late 20s to mid-teenage years. So this is America's youngest generation of adults, including some teenagers. And the divide is really about trust and understanding, that increasingly, young men and women do not trust each other. They're not spending time together to build that understanding and trust. And it is impacting all kinds of relationships, whether it's friendship, whether it's dating and romantic relationships.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  It's impacting every aspect of their lives. And you see this play out online and offline.

• 7:15Mike Carruthers?

  And is it strictly a gender divide? Or are women not trusting other women just as much as they're not trusting men? And same thing with men? Or is this strictly a gender thing?

• 7:28Speaker 02

  No, there is a unique divide between young men and young women. And young women are actually seeing greater solidarity among other women. That's one of the key findings, actually, that at a time when there's increasing distrust about men and concerns about personal safety, more women are turning to each other and sort of saying, you know, we can't trust these men, so we need to rely on each other. And it's really more of a tribal mentality that is emerging.

• 7:57Mike Carruthers?

  And this lack of trust, we don't trust men to do what or not do what?

• 8:05Speaker 02

  So it can be as stark as to not hurt us. I interviewed a young woman who said that men viewed her like she thought of herself as prey, that if she was not careful, men would take advantage of her in any kind of instance. We saw this in some of the survey work we did as well, when we asked questions about, you know, how likely would it be for a man to try to take advantage of you? And a dispiriting number, a significant number of young women said that, yeah, you know, given the right circumstances, a man would try to take advantage of them. So it's concern about how men behave.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  It's concerns about basic things like respect and treating someone with courtesy. And this is on both sides, right? Like, I'm talking about women now, but men feel the same way, that they don't trust women to treat them well, to not take every opportunity to take advantage of them, to, you know, put something that they did or said and put online to be ridiculed. And so it's...

• 9:14Speaker 02

  Incredibly challenging just to try to talk to folks and not have it devolve into a kind of he said, she said argument.

• 9:21Mike Carruthers?

  And do you have a sense of why this distrust exists? And is there truth to it? Or is this distrust manufactured somewhere?

• 9:32Speaker 02

  So I think it's the result of two things that are related. The first is that this generation, Generation Z, is the first generation that was raised online. So many Gen Z'ers got social media in their mid to early teens. It was a critical formative experience. And so they were learning about the world instead of talking and hanging out with their friends, instead of relying on trusted adults, whether it's their parents or teachers. They were learning about the world from what they were seeing online. And a lot of that was highlighting the most negative, you know, dangerous and agitating content.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  As they were seeing men behave in the worst possible way, they were seeing women portrayed in the worst possible light. And it was warping their understanding. And so you have this kind of skewed funhouse mirror that social media is providing of what women and men care about, how they act, combined with a withdrawal of social experiences in the real world. That this generation is less likely to have had a part-time job when they were teenagers, less likely to have participated in sports, or scouting, or religion. Across all these different domains of teenage activities, we're just seeing a significantly

• 10:56Speaker 02

  less active generation than previous generations. And so they have had less real world experience to form an understanding of the world and more time spent online where they're getting a really skewed perception of the world, but increasingly what young men, young women care about and how they behave.

• 11:17Mike Carruthers?

  The picture you're painting is rather frightening, frankly. I mean, it's because where does this go? What happens when these people grow further and become leaders in the community and in the world and everything else if they have this, as you called it, a warped view of each other?

• 11:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we're already sort of seeing the results. We're seeing declining marriage rates, dating experiences that are increasingly negative. We're seeing less interest in people becoming parents, a broad-based withdrawal from community life. And so it's really touching every aspect of our society. You know, our work has shown that when it comes to social capital, and that's the degree to which people are engaged in local community activities, talking to neighbors, attending community meetings, married parents tend to do an awful lot of that. They are really participating in that kind of activities far beyond what most of the rest of us do.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  And so if fewer people are getting married, if fewer people are having kids, that means that these civic superheroes, as we call them in our work, there are fewer of them to help tie our communities together. So this is not an individual problem. This is really a societal problem.

• 12:45Mike Carruthers?

  And what about socio-economic groups? Is this a problem for college people? Is this a problem for blue collar people? Or is this just a problem for everybody?

• 12:59Speaker 02

  So it's a problem for everybody. But if you sort of step back and look at who is most affected by our broad-based social and civic decline, it's non-college Americans and specifically non-college men. They are struggling across the board when you look at their social outcomes and their romantic outcomes. And those things are intimately connected, that being successful socially is strongly connected to having romantic success. And so we found that for non-college men, you're far more likely to have not gone out

• 13:40Speaker 02

  on a date in the last year, you're far more likely to be single than your college-educated peers, partly because one of the critical attributes for men is to be able to show that you can provide. It still matters. Despite all the economic progress we've seen for women, the educational advances, women still really care about and judge men on their ability to provide and provide some amount of financial security. So when non-college men suffer economically, and they have disproportionately over the last few decades, it becomes much more difficult for them to succeed romantically.

• 14:19Mike Carruthers?

  Okay, so I understand the pressure, the social media influence of causing this divide between genders and men not trusting women and women not trusting men, and this pulling apart. I get that. But on the other hand, kind of knocking at the back door, is this whole human requirement that we need to couple up? We need to have babies? We need to keep the species going? That that is a strong human drive for love, romance, and everything involved in that that is a pretty strong urge, but apparently not strong enough?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  It is incredibly strong urge. And the very best social science research shows that when it comes to building a meaningful, rewarding life, it is the quality of our social relationships. And so I think people are generally aware of that, but there's just this extent fear of, well, what if I get married to the wrong person? And I heard this in a lot of the interviews, especially with college-educated women, concerns about domestic inequality, that they're going to have to shoulder the majority of the childcare work and the domestic work, and they'll have to have full-time jobs as well and careers that they have worked so hard for.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  So there's this fear that people have about coupling up. And I think right now, it's sort of winning out over the desire to form long-term connections with another person. The other thing that's happening is social media, and I think increasingly AI, is going to offer, you know, an alternative that feels a lot safer to folks. You're not going to have to deal with the possibility of rejection. AI is going to provide constant affirmation. There's a growing number of particularly younger men interested in romantic engagements with AI.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  And so these things can feel safe and for a generation that hasn't been raised, experiencing the same kind of social friction and discomfort that many of us did from previous generations. We weren't able to avoid it. I sort of worry about where this is headed.

• 16:43Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:25Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:10Mike Carruthers?

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• 19:33Mike Carruthers?

  I'm talking with Daniel Cox. He is author of a book called Generation Uncoupled: America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection. And he is also founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life. So this sounds to me, I mean, this sounds so odd that people would rather give up on romance with the opposite sex and go have a relationship or try to with some AI thing. I mean, where could that possibly go?

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's not simply that I feel like en masse, people are gonna, you know, start coupling up with their AI, but there's enough digital distractions that people can feel like they're, they have a fulfilling life, even if they don't have these really other important relationships.

• 20:26Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, see, that to me is really important. It is our relationships with real people that teach us about life, how to navigate life, how to get through the world. And if you don't have those relationships, you're really missing out.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  The relationships we have, whether they're platonic or romantic, are supposed to be, are supposed to challenge us, they're supposed to change us. We are supposed to be in service to other people. Like, that is the thing that makes life worth living. And again, this is backed up by social science research that when someone asks us a favor, to ask us to do something for them, whether it's a help with moving, to help out with childcare, we, the people who do the, the help, give, provide the help are actually feel stronger about the person than before the, the favor is asked. So it builds a sort of bonds of mutuality that are critical for establishing trust

• 21:28Speaker 02

  and long-term friendship and belonging.

• 21:30Mike Carruthers?

  It sounds like what you're saying is that, you know, people worry about connecting with other people of the opposite sex because it's going to interfere with their life. Like, they're gonna, it's gonna cause me friction, and I don't want friction. But how do you be in a relationship without friction? I, I mean, your expectations are just, I mean, they're clearly wrong if that is the expectation.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  Right, right. And part of it stems from their formative experiences. One of the most eye-opening parts of this project was, we were doing focus groups in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we asked folks what they were hearing from their parents about the lessons and what it means to live a good life. And we asked, well, how much, how many of you have heard from your parents the importance of getting a good education? Everyone raises their hands. Then we asked, what about financial stability and security? Did your parents ever mention that? Again, everyone raises their hands. And then we did groups of men and women, and this was universal. Then we asked them, well, what about finding a partner or getting married?

• 22:40Speaker 02

  How many heard that from your parents? And no one raised their hands. Then we asked about becoming a parent. How, how many of your parents stress the importance of parenthood and then the rewarding experience that that is? Again, no one raised their hands, although a couple of the young women said that their grandparents had talked to them about that. And so increasingly, I think the lessons young people are getting, I think, from the broader culture, but also their families, is about really building out themselves, right? It's not things I do on behalf of others, it's things that I further my own abilities and interests. And that's a pretty significant change from the past.

• 23:22Mike Carruthers?

  God, this sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen. I mean, it's, it's frightening, this picture you're painting, and I wonder why the parents of these children decided, for whatever reason, not to talk about finding a mate, having children, and the rewards that could come from that. Why the silence?

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Partly is out of a sense that they don't want to instill, you know, their particular values on the next generation. We saw that when it comes to politics or religion, there's a real hesitancy to pass on political beliefs or religious beliefs to their children, which again, that's fairly new. I mean, for previous generations of parents, you took them, took their kids to church, they talk with them about politics and, and, you know, why their particular worldview was correct or right. And there's just a, I think, a lack of parents wanting to be prescriptive for their, their kids.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  But I think that leaves them without a script or roadmap. And so I think you see a lot of young people who are really successful, really smart, really motivated, but they feel a little bit of a drift in their life because they haven't been given a really clear model. This is what you do, this is the, the steps that you do it in. And so I think it's really been kind of a disservice that we ought to be having these conversations. Not that being a parent or being married is the end-all, be-all, but we have a pretty good idea of what it takes to live a good life, and these things are often pretty central. If you've not heard from people that you trust about the value of raising kids and

• 25:14Speaker 02

  how it changes you for the better, I, I think it can be like, well, it just seems like a slog, right? I see, you know, people that I know, or people on social media talk about being a parent, and it looks exhausting, it looks tiring. I am worried about these, these national or global problems that we're experiencing. So, you know, given that, why would I, why would I make this decision?

• 25:35Mike Carruthers?

  That's just, never before, it doesn't seem to me, in previous generations, would someone say, parenting looks tiring and exhausting, and that's a reason not to be? Parenting is tiring and exhausting, and almost every parent will tell you it was worth every second of it.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  That's right. And the obligations that we have are part of what make us great.

• 25:59Mike Carruthers?

  So where do you think this is taking us? What are, where's this going?

• 26:03Speaker 02

  One of the reasons I'm, I'm hopeful, despite all the stuff we've talked about, is that I think there's a growing recognition among this generation about the damage that has been done by social media, by pornography, by online gambling, by OnlyFans, these kind of experiences that lead to more transactional relationships and interactions, that feels fundamentally lessening, that they're, they're losing out on something in the process of all this. And so you're seeing young women increasingly judge social media negatively. There's growing acknowledgement among young men, the damage that pornography is doing,

• 26:45Speaker 02

  that hours and hours of pornography use is not helping them form successful romantic partnerships. There's so much more talk about having embodied experiences that, I don't know if you've ever heard the term third place. This is like a sociological term. It means you're not, you're home, not your workplace, but the, the bars, the cafes, the restaurants, the bookstores, that serve as places for people to interact and engage with others in their community. And there's increasing interest for, among young people, about finding their third place. And so I take some, some real solace there, that there is some hunger for finding ways to connect in authentic ways.

• 27:29Speaker 02

  There's another trend I saw online about the small favors economy, that we should be asking more of each other, that we should ask our friends to help us move, that we should ask them to come over and help us make dinner instead of ordering DoorDash, that we should ask for a ride to the airport. And so that, I'm, I'm heartened by that. And I think that, that there is a good trend, but we need to help young people, we need to offer better models of, of the way we engage. You've gotta be comfortable doing those kinds of things.

• 27:56Mike Carruthers?

  Well, you know, I have a son in that age group, so this really strikes home for me, and, and I think what you've said is so important for, for everyone. Daniel Cox has been my guest. He is founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life, and he's author of the book Generation Uncoupled: America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection. There's a link to that book in the show notes. And Daniel, thank you for being here, and it was really eye-opening.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Thanks, Mike. Appreciate the conversation.

• 28:27Speaker 05

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• 30:27Mike Carruthers?

  No matter how great a relationship starts out, it changes. The excitement can fade, routines take over, stress gets in the way. And two people who still love each other can suddenly wonder, "What happened to us?" According to my guess, that loss of connection or desire doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is in trouble. Desire isn't just about chemistry, and it isn't something you either have or don't. It's affected by everything from stress and emotional connection to how you communicate, and even how you pay attention to each other. And once you understand what drives desire and what kills it, there are very practical things you can do to bring it back.

• 31:12Mike Carruthers?

  Anna Elton is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist, and clinical sexologist. She believes the health of a relationship can actually be broken down into specific, actionable steps, which she is about to explain. Her work has been featured on PBS, Fox, ABC, and NBC. She writes for Psychology Today, and she is author of the book, "The Formula of Desire: What Brings Us Together and Drives Us Apart and the Science of Connection." Hi, Anna, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  Hello, thank you for having me.

• 31:48Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So what's the one big thing you want people to understand about their relationship?

• 31:55Speaker 03

  Every single relationship will hit the stagnation point, and it's normal. Because I feel like a lot of people think, "If I love my partner, I should always desire my partner." But this is actually a wrong message. And when you don't desire your partner at some point, you feel like that something is wrong with your relationship, with you. And again, the best part about it, you can always bring desire back.

• 32:17Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I think everybody knows that relationships will change, that the fire dims, that the passion can't sustain itself. And yet, often when it happens, people think it is a symptom of a problem, that something is wrong.

• 32:35Speaker 03

  But what's really, really interesting, from a research perspective, you can actually bring desire back. It's not going to be exactly the same desire, it can be the new form of desire. And the most important thing is that relationship, once you get in a relationship, a lot of people think that that's it. They reach the goal, and they stop working in the relationship. But you actually need to continue putting efforts. It's like going to the gym. When you get to the shape and form that you want to get in, you stop, and then if you stop, you know what happens. So same with relationships, it's ongoing work.

• 33:07Mike Carruthers?

  But it seems that in relationships, they start out, and they're very passionate, because there's a lot of novelty, there's a lot of newness going on. But after a while, I mean, it just by definition has to fade away, because the novelty wears off. It can't be as novel as it used to be, because now we know each other so well.

• 33:30Speaker 03

  But I think the biggest part is, people think that once you stop the chase, once you know the partner, that there's nothing else to find out, and they stop being curious. And at that point, I hear a lot of my clients coming in and say, "Well, my coworkers know me better than my partner." And that's a problem, right? Because you need to continue getting to know your partner, you need to continue explore your partner. And I think this is the magic. I've been with my husband for 25 years, and he tells me that he still is amazed to find out new information about me. And usually, we have a lot of fun. And he says, "I'm as fun as the bag of kittens." And I think that's the best part.

• 34:12Mike Carruthers?

  Well, how does that, how is he finding out new information? What have you kept from him? Why is, it seems like if you've been married that long, what else is there to know?

• 34:24Speaker 03

  So what we usually do, we try new experiences. And this is one of the exercises that I recommend my couples, and I've been trying to also follow the same procedures. So you create A to Z date nights. So you take the alphabet, and think of different things that maybe you used to do early in the day, or something you've never done. And make that list. So A could be art gallery, axe throwing. B could be bowling, beach walk, maybe burlesque. We just done burlesque two years ago, and it was really fun. We've never done this before. M is my favorite, is movie and massage. My husband picks a movie, I get a massage. I pick a movie, I still get a massage. So you make the list, and you try to do different experiences as a couple.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  And what's interesting, that you can see your partner through a different lens, with new eyes. And for example, I have this older couple who came in, and they worked on communication, desire. And when they started doing date nights, and they're in their late 70s. So they went to salsa night, and the wife came back, and she said, "Wow, that was so fun. We had just an amazing time together that I feel like we haven't had in many years." And then the next week, they went to do the axe throwing. And she came back, and she said, "Wow, my husband is so sexy, he's so strong." And this is exactly the point where you start seeing your partner through new experiences.

• 35:46Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, I've heard that new experiences, when couples do new experiences together, that that somehow sparks, adds a little spark to the relationship. Although I've never really understood why, but new experiences seem to do that, yeah?

• 36:03Speaker 03

  It's the novelty, but also you're able to step outside of your routine, and take off the head, if you have kids, take off the head of a parent, right? And put on the head of individual romantic partner, and do something fun, which actually creates, releases dopamine, releases oxytocin. Dopamine helps with motivation, oxytocin helps with more of the connection, it's love and bonding hormone.

• 36:30Mike Carruthers?

  So what do you say, though? Because you could plan A to Z date nights, but somewhere in between those different date nights, there's unrelated trouble, there's fights about things, there's something comes up, people get angry. And then you've got to, you've got to put that in the mix. It can't all be just date nights and wonder.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And again, I see couples who, you know, come in, and they're not doing too well in their relationship. And I would say, before you even start with date nights, you need to start on the positivity. You need to make sure that you're able to see your partner through a positive lens. So, and at that point, you would need to, at least for one week, try to notice what's going well. Because usually, our brains are wired to notice what's not going well. We look for problems, good is expected. So for one week, and again, it sounds so simple, but it's not as easy to do, to notice what's going well, and then make a mental note, and then say it out loud to your partner. So this way, you can reestablish the balance, and start working on that connection first,

• 37:37Speaker 03

  emotional connection. And once you have a little bit more of that emotional connection, you need to start checking in with your partner. Because I think a lot of couples, they go back to logistics, or what's not going well in a relationship. And at that point, you just need to make sure you're checking in, how have you been doing, what's been going on? And the third thing is physical connection. So before you become physically connected, before you have physical intimacy, you need to make sure that you focus on small bits of connections, where you can hug each other, where you can touch each other through the day, which creates the more stronger bond.

• 38:20Mike Carruthers?

  So you said a moment ago, to work on your emotional connection. And I don't know that I know exactly what that means. If I were to get up from where I'm sitting and go work on my emotional connection with my wife, what would I be doing? What specifically does that mean?

• 38:39Speaker 03

  So this is where a lot of women, specifically women, say, "I don't feel emotionally connected to my husband, I don't feel emotionally connected to my partner, and I can't be physically connected to him." So at that point, what usually a partner's looking for, they want to be emotionally safe. They want to know that you're interested in them as people, right? They want to know that they can talk to you. They want, they're hoping that you're not going to get defensive when they bring things up to you. And again, it's easier said than done, but the whole idea is to start doing small check-ins. Maybe once a week, you can say like, "Hey, you know, what's been going on?

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Let's talk about not just logistics, but have you been doing, what do we need to do? What do we need as a couple? Is there anything else you need from me?" And it helps to be heard, and actually have a plan to do something, like to fulfill each other's needs emotionally.

• 39:39Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that whole thing about being heard, boy, I think that's really important, and sometimes forgotten, that, you know, you need to be, feel like you're being heard, that what you say... Is landing somewhere.

• 39:53Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And again, in this, the whole world of technology, sometimes it's really, really hard because it's so easy to focus on your phone. It's so easy to scroll and not really focus on your partner. Even making eye contact right now is really, really important because I feel like a lot of partners that will have a conversation with their devices in their hands and they're not fully paying attention and being present with each other.

• 40:17Mike Carruthers?

  So one of the things that, as I hear you talk, one of the assumptions

• 40:24Mike Carruthers?

  in what you say is that both people in a couple are on the same level with this. They're both all about date nights and they're all trying to get in touch and, but that's not real. I mean, it seems like usually one is further along wanting to do this kind of thing than the other.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And usually women tend to say that they carry mostly, most of the mental load, emotional load of the family. They feel like they plan more. Maybe early in relationship, men used to plan on date nights, but then later in the relationship, mostly women tend to plan date nights, focus on connection and feel like, you know, they feel too fatigued, they feel too burned out if their partner's not stepping in. And also according to research, which is really, really interesting. So really, relationship satisfaction is not measured by how long the couple's been together, but the trajectory of where each stands and how close each partner to their breaking point. So that's where one

• 41:26Speaker 03

  partner could be quite quitting from the relationship, checking out and feel like, you know, they've been doing a lot, they've been putting effort in the relationship and nothing lands, where the second partner could feel blindsided and feel like, well, things are fine, we're fine, we're doing okay. So that's where you can find two partners in different places in a relationship.

• 41:47Mike Carruthers?

  So when you're in a couple and you're in those different places, how do you get to the same place?

• 41:53Speaker 03

  So that's where you need the conversation and how do you get to that conversation? I actually created an assessment that measures the health of your relationship, like a credit score. So when two partners take the test, they can see where each of them are. And I had a podcast a couple of months ago and the host, he took a test right before the podcast and he just wanted to, you know, just see how it works. So he took it with his wife. And he was thinking it's just gonna be a fun five-minute exercise. They end up talking for four hours and they've been together for over 30 years. So they actually went through each part of the assessment and they wanted to know why each scored a certain thing and then had a conversation about it. And he told me that it was really, really

• 42:38Speaker 03

  interesting that he didn't realize how he, his wife felt in certain areas and what she needed. So they had that conversation. And sometimes this is the hardest thing because you don't know where your partner stands, right? Maybe you're thinking like, I'm doing pretty well or I'm not satisfied in a relationship, but it's really, really hard to tell where your partner is at. So that's why the whole assessment was something that I was focusing on in my research.

• 43:03Mike Carruthers?

  And that assessment's on your website, which is, there's a link to the website and to the assessment in the show notes. You know, it seems almost inevitable that as you stay in a relationship longer and longer, everyday life just has a dulling effect. And, and then there's parenting and being a parent and, and soon the relationship moves to the backseat.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And this is something that I've been looking in back in 2017. What I noticed, every single couple who would come in and who would struggle with their relationship would not fulfill their couple's persona. So the whole idea is when you're single, you have your individual persona, what your likes, the things that helps you to fulfill yourself, your self-care. And then when you meet someone else, your special person, you create additional persona, it's a couple's persona. So at that point, you need to fulfill both personas. You still need to do something by yourself so you don't lose yourself in the relationship and you need to do something with your partner. And then when you have children, you create this additional persona, family persona. And a

• 44:09Speaker 03

  lot of couples, when they do things with their kids, they think that they're fulfilling their family persona and by default, their couple's persona. But it's actually a problem because they do not do anything for their couple's persona. That's why it's so, so, so important to do something as partners, as romantic partners away from kids, even if it's small 10 minutes of just checking in, hugging, cuddling, doing something, cooking together when kids are, you know, went to sleep or just kind of checking in, having tea or like hopefully dates, but again, something together where you're actually focusing on each other.

• 44:45Mike Carruthers?

  But it does require that both people are willing to do this, that, that you're both in on this.

• 44:52Speaker 03

  And that's where the whole understanding comes because a lot of people think that, well, if we're in a relationship, things are fine, we should be fine. There's nothing else that we need to do and we can focus on other things. That's where their attention and desire focuses on parenting, careers, maybe even getting back in shape. And then they don't really put a lot of effort into their relationship. And they don't realize that all the little things that built their relationship in the first place are actually slipping away. So to get back in a good place in your relationship, you need to do exactly the same things that you stopped doing, you know, because people stop even saying hi to each other when they come back home. You know, I have clients who say like, well, you

• 45:36Speaker 03

  know, my partner says hi to dogs, but not to me, right? If I get 10% of affection that my dogs get, I'll be the happiest person alive. We stop touching, you know, I hear a lot, we're like passing ships at night. So we don't look at each other, we don't touch each other, we don't really talk to each other.

• 45:55Mike Carruthers?

  And what's the best way, do you think to, like, when people come to you and you explain this and they say, yeah, okay, well, yeah, this sounds great. How do you start? What do you do first?

• 46:07Speaker 03

  So that's when I always ask them, three things. Why did you like your partner in the first place? What attracted you? Why did you decide to commit to your partner? And why are you still here? What keeps you right now in this relationship? What is your reason? And I think it helps people to take a step back and look at the relationship as a whole and remember, why did they like this person in the first place? Because the way we think affects the way we feel and affects our actions. And in many cases, some of the things that attracted our, us to our partners could be something that's affecting the way we see them right now. And I'll give you an example. For example, a partner comes

• 46:49Speaker 03

  in and says like, well, my, my husband is lazy, I'm type A, and he just doesn't help me out around the house. And when we look back, you know, she remembered that the reason why she was attracted to him, because he was the rock, he was the calm one, he helped her out. And then over the years, she was, she wanted to take care of the things and then he, he was offering help, but then at some point he stepped back because she had it together. But then what happened, once they had children, the whole emotional load was too much and it was never reassessed and she never asked for help and she assumed that he should know. And that's the thing, because sometimes when we feel like, you know, my partner's strong, my partner can take care of it, or my partner is there to

• 47:33Speaker 03

  support me, but they're not supporting us, that becomes the big issue in the relationship. So I always say, why did you like it? Why are you here? Why did you commit to your partner?

• 47:44Mike Carruthers?

  And then, and then how do you begin this process? What's the first thing you do?

• 47:49Speaker 03

  So I ask them, so what's been going well in a relationship? What do you feel grateful for? And, you know, if the, if partner's able to say it easily, I can tell that, you know, things are okay, you know, we can work with this. When they're struggling, to point out at least one single thing, or if they say, well, I guess my partner's doing this, but, I was like, no, no, no, no buts. So when I hear this, but, that's when I give them the exercise of for one week, just try to pay attention of what's going well, because we really need to improve that emotional climate of the relationship. We really need to start noticing what's going well.

• 48:27Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, it's so easy to bitch and complain about what's going wrong when you're missing the blue sky in between the clouds. You're not seeing that, you're just seeing clouds.

• 48:39Speaker 03

  Exactly. And again, this is something that I know myself and I always try to remind myself, catch myself if I start thinking, even thinking like, oh, this is frustrating. So for example, my husband been doing coffee, he been setting up coffee every night. So when I wake up, I have the fresh brewed coffee. And he's been doing this for many years without prompts, without asking. This is something that he likes to do for me. And, you know, sometimes I wake up and, I mean, it doesn't happen too often, right? But sometimes I would wake up and the coffee is not there. Well, and if I catch myself like, ah, this is frustrating, I remind myself, he's been doing this for so many years and I feel grateful that I get fresh brewed coffee every single morning. And sometimes he says like, oh, I

• 49:23Speaker 03

  failed you. I was like, no, no, no, I'm really grateful for you doing this. And that's the refrain, because I always try to remind myself, I want to be grateful for everything that we have together.

• 49:33Mike Carruthers?

  It's so easy to not notice what you've got and, and focus on what's not there.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And as I actually heard the other day, so the grass is greener where you water it. So if it's not the other side, but it's where you water your grass. So make sure you water your grass in your relationship, then it's always gonna be green.

• 49:55Mike Carruthers?

  Well, great. I think everybody needs to be reminded about the importance of working on the relationship. It's so easy to forget that and just fall into patterns and it's good to hear it. And you've explained it. You've explained some great ideas really well. I've been talking to Anna Elton. She's a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist and clinical sexologist. She writes for Psychology Today and she's author of the book, The Formula of Desire, What Brings Us Together and Drives Us Apart and The Science of Connection. There's a link to her book in the show notes and I appreciate you being here. Thanks, Anna.

• 50:32Speaker 03

  Thank you so much.

• 50:37Mike Carruthers?

  Have you ever had a glass of water and it tasted vaguely like onions or garlic or something else from your refrigerator? You may not be imagining that. You see, in many refrigerators, the refrigerator and freezer compartments share the same cooling system. So air and odors can circulate between them. Consumer Reports actually tested this. They put garlic in the refrigerator compartment and then they made ice in the freezer. The resulting ice smelled and tasted like garlic. The easy fix is to keep strongly scented foods tightly covered in the fridge, clean out the ice bin periodically, and use baking

• 51:18Mike Carruthers?

  soda to help absorb odors. Refrigerators with separate evaporators for the fridge and the freezer are less prone to the problem. So if your ice tastes funny, don't automatically blame the water. Your leftover Chinese food may be the culprit. And that is something you should know. And if you have someone in your life that you think could benefit from this episode, I hope you'll share it with them. Tell them about it. I'm sure they would appreciate it and it helps us grow our audience and we really appreciate that. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 51:54Speaker 07

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• 52:25Speaker 07

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