#798: Terry Real — Breaking the Rules of Traditional Couples Therapy for Superior Results, A Few Frameworks That Work

For this episode, I’m doing something a bit different. I’m featuring five chapters from the audiobook Fierce Intimacy https://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Intimacy-Terry-Real-audiobook/dp/B07FXXFDLL/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Terry Real https://terryreal.com/. What you will hear in this episode will help you identify both your and your partner’s losing strategies in relationships, and help you move from disharmony to repair. Terry is the creator of Relational Life Therapy, or RLT, which underpins all his books, courses, and teachings and equips people with the powerful relational skills they need to make love work. He is also the author of five books, including the New York Times bestseller Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship https://www.amazon.com/Us-Getting-Build-Loving-Relationship/dp/B09BBN9LGW/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. And if you’d like an extra dose of calm, I recommend checking out Henry Shukman, a past podcast guest and one of only a few dozen masters in the world authorized to teach Sanbo Zen. Henry’s app, The Way http://thewayapp.com/tim, has changed my life. I’ve been using it daily, often twice a day, and it’s lowered my anxiety more than I thought possible. For 30 free sessions, just visit thewayapp.com/tim http://thewayapp.com/tim. No credit card required. Excerpted from Fierce Intimacy: Standing Up to One Another with LOVE https://www.amazon.com/Fierce-Intimacy-Terry-Real-audiobook/dp/B07FXXFDLL/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20 by Terry Real (Sounds True, 2018.). Used with permission. [00:00:00] Who is Terry Real? [00:03:11] Harmony, disharmony, and repair: The rhythm of all intimate human relationships. [00:06:27] Harmony: Love without knowledge. [00:07:01] Disharmony: Knowledge without love. [00:10:01] Repair: Knowing love. [00:10:35] Stay or go? A relational reckoning. [00:12:04] Five losing strategies for getting from disharmony to repair. [00:13:21] Being right: Objective reality has no place in personal relationships. [00:16:35] Trying to control your partner: No one likes being controlled. [00:21:35] Unbridled self-expression: The barf bag approach to intimacy. [00:27:33] Retaliation: Offending from the victim position. [00:32:13] Withdrawal: Provacative distance-taking. [00:35:58] Shaking hands with your adaptive child — your losing strategy profile (LSP). [00:38:08] Lessons learned by comparing your partner’s LSP with your own. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hello ladies and germs, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. For this episode, I'm going to offer something a little different. I'm going to introduce you to Terry Reel. Terry Reel is by far the best relationship coach, the best couples therapist I have ever met. He does not just parrot back questions. If you ask him what he thinks, he will not just ask you what you think. He has strong opinions, positions, he says it straight. And first and foremost, he has a toolkit. He has practices that are incredibly helpful for couples. And his name has come up with various friends, ranging from Kevin Rose to Dr. Peter Attia.

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

  And he does not disappoint. So in this episode, because he is very, very hard to get a hold of for direct client work, you will get to, in effect, hear him like you would in a real session. And I've done real sessions with him. So what you'll hear in this episode and learn, among other things, are, number one, that relationships are not always harmonious. And that'll be obvious to anyone who's been married for a while, for instance. But it is a constant cycle of harmony to disharmony and then repair. So the critical skill set is repair. And what I'm going to share in this episode, because I was so impressed by it, are a few chapters from his book, Fierce Intimacy. And this will provide you with a map for identifying losing strategies and replacing

• 1:29Tim Ferriss?

  them with winning strategies. These are real approaches that you can use. So a bit of background on Terry. He is the creator of Relational Life Therapy, or RLT, which underpins all of his books, courses, teachings, and so on. He is also the author of five books, including the New York Times bestseller, Us, subtitle, Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship. Last but not least, I'll throw in a little bonus, and that is if you'd like an extra dose of calm, C-A-L-M, I recommend checking out Henry Schuckman, a past podcast guest and one of only a few dozen masters in the world authorized to teach Sambo Zen. His app, The Way, has changed my life. I've been using it daily, often twice a day, and it's lowered my anxiety more than I thought

• 2:12Tim Ferriss?

  possible, and equivalent to a lot of the more aggressive things I've done, like accelerated TMS and other therapies. So try it out for 30 free sessions. You can just visit thewayapp.com/tim. That's thewayapp.com/tim. No credit card required, so you will have a very good feeling for if it's working for you after, I would say, 10 sessions. You can find all things Terry Real at terryreal.com. That's T-E-R-R-Y-R-E-A-L.com. And now, please enjoy these chapters from Fierce Intimacy by none other than Terry Real.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I cannot flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 2:55Speaker 02

  No, I would see an appropriate time.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  Let me talk for a moment about the nature of relationships to begin with.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  All relationships are an endless dance of harmony, disharmony, and repair. Closeness, disruption, and a return to closeness.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  My paradigm for this came from the work of researcher Ed Tronick at Harvard, who was one of the first of a generation of people to actually plonk down a video camera and record what the transactions are between mothers and infants. Before infant observational research, Freud had taught us that the relationship between mothers and infants was an endless dance of oceanic bliss. Clearly Freud had never talked to a mother. The real relationship, as Tronics video recorded, was this dance of closeness, disruption, and return. The infant starts off molded in the mother's arms,

• 4:15Speaker 03

  totally relaxed, a little noodle, and they're in perfect harmony with each other. Then some gas arises, or a hunger pang, or there's a noise in the street. The baby goes nuts. The baby goes through a flurry of disruption. The mother tries to soothe the baby to the degree to which the mother fails. The mother goes through a flurry of disruption. The two of them are absolutely at odds with each other, trying to find harmony and peace. And then, the pacifier is accepted, or the nipple is taken, or the gas passes, or the noise dies away, and the baby goes back to molded and noodle, and all is well.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  This dance, harmony, disharmony, and repair, is the essential rhythm of all human intimate relationships. Harmony, disharmony, and repair. Closeness, disruption, and a return to closeness. This dance can play out 20 times during the course of one dinner conversation. During the course of one dinner conversation, your partner can look to you lovely, homely, scintillating, boring, just the way you can see yourself. The psychoanalyst Ethel Person once said that as you go through these endless variations during the course of one dinner conversation,

• 5:42Speaker 03

  handsome, ugly, scintillating, boring, a normal person gets up at the end of that dinner and says, "That was a nice dinner." A grandiose or narcissistic person gets up and says, "You know, if I was with the right partner, these fluctuations wouldn't be happening." There's nothing abnormal about this rhythm. It's the same rhythm in the relationship you have with yourself. Harmony, disharmony, and repair. Closeness, disillusionment, and a return to closeness.

• 6:16Speaker 03

  This relationship, harmony, disharmony, repair can also play out during the course of decades in one marriage or one relationship. I talk about three phases of love. The harmony phase, I call love without knowledge. You can have a deep soul recognition that this is the person who's the dream of your life, and you may know that, but you don't know what the bottom of their closet looks like, or what they do with their underwear at night, or how their bills are being paid. You have a deep intimate connection with them at one soulful level, but you don't know them very well.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  That harmony phase is inevitably followed by disillusionment, disharmony. And when you're in the disillusionment phase, I call that knowledge without love. Now you see all your partner's warts and moles, you know all about their imperfections, but you don't love them very much. In fact, you're pretty hurt and angry. This is the dark night of the soul that is a part of all relationships, and it's rarely acknowledged in our culture. In our culture, just like a good body is a 17-year-old body, and a good sex life is the sex that you have in the first three months of your relationship.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  A good relationship is all harmony. There's nothing about disharmony and repair. You know, just once, I'd like to be at a cocktail party, and instead of hearing, "Oh, there's Herbie and Sylvia. They've been married 53 years, and they have the same wonderful, passionate sex life that they had in their twenties. They never fight. They're always one..." Just once, instead of that, I'd like to hear, "Oh, there's Herbie and Sylvia. They actually separated a couple, three times during the course of their marriage. He had an affair while they were separated. She's really never quite completely gotten over it, but they've managed to survive, endure, and be with each other and not lose their grip.

• 8:29Speaker 03

  I think they're really a loving pair. Aren't they cute?" Just once, I'd like to hear that, but you don't. Disharmony, disillusionment is rarely acknowledged. No one tells you how dark it is. No one tells you how raw it is. The great couples therapist, some would say the father of couples therapy, James Framo, wrote back in the 50s, when it was assumed that the person you were sleeping with was your spouse, by the way. Framo wrote, "The day you turn over in bed, look at the person next to you and realize, this is a dreadful mistake. You have been had. The one you fell in love with is not the one you're spending your life with.

• 9:12Speaker 03

  That day," says Framo, "is the first day of your real marriage." Harmony, and then disillusionment. Knowledge without love. It's dark, it's raw, it's desperate. You feel very alone, you feel betrayed, you feel had. Guess what? That's normal. That doesn't mean you're in a bad marriage or a bad long-term relationship. It means you're married. It is an integral part of all relationships. For over 20 years, I've gone around the country talking to people about what I call "normal marital hatred." And you know what?

• 9:56Speaker 03

  Not one person has gone backstage and said to me, "Terry, what do you mean by that?" Normal marital hatred is part of the deal. The trick is getting from that dark night back into the light again, moving from disharmony into repair. Disharmony into repair. What is repair? Knowing love, mature love. In this phase, you also see your partner's warts and moles, but you choose to love them anyway. They are worth it. The good things you're getting outweigh the bad. Now, if you're in a place where that disharmony phase is really calling to you...

• 10:42Speaker 03

  And you're thinking, should I stay or should I go? I have a tool for you. And I like to interrupt whatever the lecture is to actually give you a concrete tool you might use. For those of you who are wondering whether you should stay or you should go, here's the tool. I call it a relational reckoning. Relational reckoning. Relational reckoning is a question. A question that you ask yourself. And it's simply this. Am I getting enough in this relationship to make grieving what I'm not getting worth my while? Am I getting enough in this relationship

• 11:25Speaker 03

  to offset the pain of what's wrong and what's lacking? And grieve you will. We long for perfection. We all long for gods and goddesses who will never let us down. But real relationships, of course, are about the collision of your human imperfection with your partner's and how you manage it. I wouldn't want a perfect relationship. The collision of my humanity with yours is the guts, the stuff of intimacy itself. Harmony, disharmony, repair. How do we get from disharmony to repair? That's where the skills come in.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  And that's where most of us lose our way. Because it's only the functional adult part of us that will turn to skills. And what happens in the disharmony phase is that we are triggered. Early wounds, old family of origin dramas come to the surface. We take our eyes off the prize. We stop thinking about making things better between us and the partner we love. And instead, we are taken over by adaptive child strategies.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  By different agendas. And actually, I sat down one day and figured out what they were. They're not infinite. There are only five of them. Here are the five losing strategies. Being right, controlling your partner, unbridled self-expression, retaliation, and withdrawal. Being right, control, unbridled self-expression, retaliation, and withdrawal. Let's take each of them in turn. Being right. How many of you have ever tried to quote-unquote "solve" or "resolve" an issue?

• 13:30Speaker 03

  By sorting out which of the two of you was correct? Who remembered it correctly? Or whose feelings were valid? Or who has the correct perspective on this issue? What's objectively true? How well did that work for you? You know what? Trying to solve an issue by figuring out who's right is using the scientific method to solve your relational problems. I have a warm spot in my heart for it. It does not work. As we talk together, you're going to be asked to swallow a few bitter pills. And here's one of the first ones. Ready?

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Objective reality has no place in personal relationships. Objective reality doesn't matter. The relational answer to the question who's right and who's wrong is who cares? What matters is, how are the two of us going to work like a team and solve this issue in a way that we can both live with?

• 14:38Speaker 03

  When you're about trying to resolve your issue of who's right and who's wrong, you're trying to resolve your differences by eradicating them. Let's come up with one version of what the correct issue is here. And of course, when I do that with my wife Belinda, she has an incredibly pathological, pesky way of thinking that her version happens to be the one we should settle on. Poor woman. What being right leaves you into as a couple is what I call perception battles or objectivity battles. You know what? Last night when we were at the Indian restaurant and you yelled at the waiter. Honey, I didn't yell at the waiter.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  I was being emphatic. No sweetheart, you weren't emphatic, you were yelling. No, I was emphatic, yelling, emphatic, yelling, emphatic. Well, you know what dear? It so happens there was an audiologist sitting at the table next to us with an instrument that measured your decibel level and compared it to the norm of restaurant conversation. It's a loser. It's a dog chasing its own tail. Trying to sort out your differences by figuring out who's right and who's wrong is an endless losing strategy. At its most extreme, being right becomes self-righteous indignation.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  And self-righteous indignation is toxic in a relationship. There's no place for it, there's no need for it, it does damage. Self-righteous indignation is not just "I'm right," it's also "You're wrong." It's intrinsically shaming. Otherwise, I wouldn't be indignant. I'm indignant because you're such a jerk. Lose this losing strategy. Being right will never work.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  The second losing strategy is trying to control your partner. Trying to get your partner to see this or that, to do this or that, is always intrinsically one-up and condescending. Who are you to tell another adult what they should or shouldn't be doing? There are two forms of an attempt to control. There's direct control, sit down, shut up, and do what I tell you. And there's indirect control, also called manipulation. Now, let me ask you, which sex do you think specializes in direct control?

• 17:15Speaker 03

  You're right, it's a male thing, often to great detriment, even at times abuse. And, sorry, which sex tends toward indirect control or manipulation? Yes, it's women. Now, look, women are not relational angels either. It is part of the traditional female role to be indirect and manipulative. One of the things I say is that leading men and women into increased intimacy is synonymous with leading them out of patriarchy, out of traditional gender roles for both, because

• 17:58Speaker 03

  men learn to close their hearts and women learn to close their voices. You can't blame a group for exercising indirect control when direct control has been blocked, but nevertheless, manipulation is part of the traditional female role. I don't know how many of you have ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, but you know, when you get into relational recovery, the culture at large finds things amusing or funny, and you are frankly somewhat appalled. Remember the scene where the mother triumphantly states, "Man is the head of the family, but

• 18:39Speaker 03

  woman is the neck, and where the neck moves, the head moves." Everybody thought that was adorable. I thought it was frankly appalling. It's a peon to the power of manipulation.

• 18:53Speaker 03

  Men have a lot of reasons for mistrusting women, and many of them are about men and about men's pathology. But this one is real. Men mistrust women because they feel played by them. They feel managed by them. And it takes a lot to help a woman move out of managing their man to a place of forthrightness, of telling the truth and taking them on. It's a scary thing to do for a lot of women, but it beats manipulation and control hands down. You know, short of a gun to the head, I don't believe that anybody gets to control anybody. It's a dance.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  One person acts in a bullying manner, and the other person relents. It's a contract between the two of them. The person who's relenting is not being made to relent. We don't do victims in relational work. The person who relents, relents because they choose to. So there is no such thing as an absolute ability to control. I'll tell you, the person who had that one down was Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi knew that if you were willing to sacrifice your life, no one could have any control over you whatsoever. That is the core of civil disobedience,

• 20:19Speaker 03

  which brought down an empire. So control is an illusion, but it's a costly illusion. You may not really control your partner. You can act like you're controlling your partner. You may win the battle, you will lose the war. Can I tell you why? Ready? Here's a big spiritual truth. When I do this in a workshop, I actually ask people to give me a drum roll. So in your mind's eye, give me a drum roll. Here it is. People don't like being controlled. You want to hear that again? People don't like being controlled. You can bully your way through and wind up at the Chinese restaurant

• 21:04Speaker 03

  instead of the Japanese restaurant and get your way in the short run, but there will be payback in resentment. Every time your partner goes beyond their limits and yields to you in ways they don't really want to, trust there will be an underbelly, there will be payback. It's not in your interest whether the control "works" or doesn't work. It, in reality, never works. Give it up. The third losing strategy is one of my personal favorites: unbridled self-expression. Ventilating. It's not just "you did this today, but you did this today, you did the same thing a week

• 21:48Speaker 03

  ago, you did other things three weeks ago, 10 years ago you did this, that, and the other thing, you never, you always, you are a, I feel so bad about..." I call this the "barf-bag" approach to intimacy. Blah, here, hold this, I feel so much better. Listen, bringing in every past offense that remotely ties into the current issue is not a winner. Throwing in the kitchen sink is not going to get you anywhere. And I'll tell you why. This is kind of interesting. Functional moves in a relationship are moves that empower

• 22:31Speaker 03

  your partner to come through for you, right? You want them to change. Functional moves on your side are moves that invite them to change. Functional moves in a car are moves that get the car to go. Dysfunctional moves in a relationship are moves that render your partner helpless. The more helpless you render your partner, the dirtier and nastier the move is going to feel. So, you tell somebody what they didn't do today, they can do something about it. You tell them what they didn't do today, two days ago, three years ago, five years ago, there's a lot less they can do about it. At this point, they're starting to feel helpless, and helpless always means resentful.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  You tell them what they did two, three, four years ago, and then you move into what I call trend talk. You always, you never, you always like this, you'll never do this, and you're pounding the guy or gal into the ground. There's really nothing they can do about it. And then the next step in most escalations is character. You did this, you've done it before, you always, you never, you are a... You're basically a slob. You're basically a witch like your mother. You're basically a selfish jerk like your dad. That is truly nasty and truly helplessness engendering. You know, this is something the field of psychotherapy

• 24:00Speaker 03

  has been a great eder and a better of. The idea here is that you either get it off your chest or you somehow inhibit it to your detriment. You either express it or you suppress it. That's Freud. You know, when Freud was writing, the great metaphor of the time was the internal steam engine. It was the industrial revolution. Just like computers today are the great metaphor of our times, the steam engine was then. And if you read Freud, the human psyche looks like a steam engine. Energy gets dammed up over here and leaks out over there, gets suppressed over here and explodes over there. It's like we're a hydraulic machine.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  It doesn't work like that in real life. If you don't express every emotion you're feeling, trust me, your ears will not fall off your head. I can prove it to you. Look, how many of you are parents? If you're a parent and you're listening to this program, ask yourself this question, and be honest. How many times when I've been interacting with little Johnny or little Sally have I wanted to throw the bugger out the window? How many times have I wanted to haul off and yell and scream and carry on at my impossible demonic child? If you're honest, there are lots of them. Do you do it? Sometimes you may yell more than you want to, but mostly you contain yourself.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  That's a good example of using that containing boundary. You don't yell and scream and call your kids all sorts of mean and nasty names if you're a healthy parent, even though you may have the impulse to do so. Okay, so you've just spent your time, your day, with your child, who's been really impossible that day, and you've really wanted to just be angry and expressive to them, but you've controlled yourself. When your partner comes home and relieves you, do you say to them, "Look, I need to go into a quiet closet and yell and scream for 15 minutes to get this off my chest? I've been suppressing it all day." Of course you don't. You know that not doing that to your child is just part of being a grown-up.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  Those are not pent-up emotions. Those are emotions that you've chosen not to express because it's not appropriate for you or the child. Well, guess what? It's not appropriate for you and your partner either. I will give you a format for complaining about your partner as we go along this program. Trust me, it is very rigid, it is very structured, and it's very brief. Ventilating ad nauseam is not a winning strategy. Neither is excessive sharing. I remember a guy walked into my office and looked at his wife and said,

• 26:58Speaker 03

  "You know, honey, as sexy as you are, for all these years, I've always been secretly attracted to your sister." Gee, it's great to get that off my chest. Yeah, great for him. His wife wasn't having a good day. You know what? Use that containing boundary. Keep it to yourself. Don't be immoderate in your speech to your partner. Be an adult. Unbridled self-expression is no favor to anybody. Knock it off.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  The fourth losing strategy is another one of my favorites: retaliation. Revenge. Getting even. I don't get hurt, I get even. I often call one of my great mentors, P M Melody, "Our Lady of a Thousand Homilies", because she had a terrific repertoire of wonderful, pithy phrases and saying. And one of my favorites is what she called "offending from the victim position", O F F. Offending from the victim position. It's about retaliation. It's about self-righteous indignation. It's about saying, "Well, you hurt me, so I get to hurt you at least as much, if not

• 28:16Speaker 03

  more, and I have no shame or compunction about doing that, because I'm your victim." Let me tell you, I believe offending from the victim accounts for 90% of the world's violence. That and the other 10% is just a raw grab for resources. Offending from the victim position is the cycle of violence. You kill my brother, I'll burn down your village. You burn down my village, I'll rape your grandmother. You rape my grandmother, and on and on it goes. Offending from the victim position puts you in the crazy position of being, in fact,

• 28:56Speaker 03

  a perpetrator, an offender, while featuring yourself as a victim. This is nuts. Here's what I have to tell you. Every offender thinks that he's a victim. Every perpetrator thinks that she herself has been perpetrated and moved into self-righteous indignation and revenge.

• 29:24Speaker 03

  It was my wife Belinda who gave me the best framework for understanding retaliation and understanding it with a more empathic response. She said that retaliation was really a perverse form of communication, that the essence of the retaliatory agenda, the punchline, was when the other partner falls on his or her knees and says, "Oh, my God, I get it now. I understand what I did to you because I'm feeling the same thing now. Please forgive me." Forget it. Punitive-ness, punishing somebody, will never bring them into increased accountability.

• 30:09Speaker 03

  But you know, the more unaccountable somebody is, the more vengeful we tend to get. Even in our legal system, if one person appears before the judge and seems sincerely contrite, and another person acts like they don't care a damn, the person who acts like they don't care a damn will get a stiffer sentence. We tend to be more punitive as people are less acknowledging. We'll get back to that later. But you know what? Retaliation is a loser. You will never bring somebody into increased accountability by hurting them. I would like to get that message across to our penal system.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  There are two forms of retaliation: direct retaliation, which is rage, or indirect retaliation, which is passive aggression, the covert expression of anger, not by what you do, but by what you don't do, by what you withhold. Here's passive aggression. One of my kids, when they were little, told me this silly joke. "The masochist says to the sadist, 'Hit me, hit me,' and the sadist smiles and says, 'No.'" That's passive aggression. It's the way I was when I was behind a wall after Belinda and I would have a big fight, and she would say, "Isn't it great to be close to each other again?" And I would go, "Sure."

• 31:37Speaker 03

  That's passive aggression. It's retaliation. And whether your retaliation is direct, yelling, screaming, throwing things, hurting your partner the way you think they hurt you, or whether it's indirect, through a kind of a tight-assed, non-giving, retaliation never works. It will not get you what you want. Your partner will not move into accountability, and it is a classic losing strategy that does enormous damage in your relationship. The final losing strategy is withdrawal. And I make a distinction between passive-aggressive retaliation, which may look like withdrawal,

• 32:22Speaker 03

  but is really "screw you", versus actual withdrawal, where you leave the field. It's refusing to engage. You can refuse to engage about an issue. "We're not going to talk about little Timmy", or "we're not going to talk about sex". It can be opting out of a particular aspect of your relationship, like physical affection or erotic joy. It can be checking out of the relationship entirely. People will move into withdrawal. They will give up on an issue or on a particular aspect of their relationship and think that they're moving into acceptance. "Well, I'm just accepting

• 33:05Speaker 03

  that we can't talk about our parenting, and I've made my peace with that." No, you haven't. You're lying to yourself. The trick is, are you resentful? If you're resentful, you are not truly into acceptance. If there's a shred of resentment, move back into engagement and duke it out. Fight the good fight. Withdrawal is not acceptance. Also, withdrawal is different from taking healthy space, from responsible distance-taking. Withdrawal is unilateral, and it's a rupture.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  Here's a skill that I can teach you. When I work with couples, I make a distinction between provocative distance-taking, withdrawal, and responsible distance-taking. Withdrawal or provocative distance-taking is just, "I'm taking it. I'm out of here. No, I'm not going to do it. This conversation's over." That's withdrawal. Responsible distance-taking has two parts to it. I'm taking distance, here's for how long, here's when I come back, and here's why I'm doing it. There's an explanation and there's a promise of return.

• 34:24Speaker 03

  This does a lot to quell your partner's anxieties. It is not a rupture, it is a break, but you have to do it responsibly. Take care of your partner, just don't be unilateral. Be accountable in your distance-taking. I'm taking distance, here's why I'm taking distance, and here's when I'm coming back.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Being right, controlling your partner, unbridled self-expression, retaliation, and withdrawal. None of these and no combination will ever get you more of what you want in your relationship. You know why? You're not trying. I have a saying, for example, "You can be right or you can be married. What's more important to you?" You ask that adaptive child part of you what's more important? Buddy, it's right, down the line. Who cares about the relationship? Once your adaptive child takes over, losing strategies reign, and you have lost your perspective, you've lost your compass, you have not kept your eyes on the prize,

• 35:34Speaker 03

  which is remembering that the person you're speaking to is someone you love and the reason why you're speaking is to make things better. Instead, you're speaking to be right, or to control, or to vent, or to hurt, or to withdraw.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Okay, it's time to out yourself once again. You know, a lot of what we've been doing so far, I call shaking hands with your adaptive child. It's about getting to know that adaptive child part of you that can run amok in your relationships. It's really important to understand where you are and what that child part of you is all about in order for you to encircle that child and help manage them. So let's take a look at what we call your LSP, your losing strategy profile. Take a moment and think, or if you're home, whip out a piece of paper and a pen and write this down.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  What are my most usual losing strategies? Could be one, I usually withdraw. Could be a combination. I move into being right and unbridled self-expression. I move into being right and controlling my partner. It could be a two-step, but don't get too complicated. Most two-steps are I'm right, or controlling, or vending, or retaliating. That's the first step, and when that doesn't work, I withdraw. That's a usual two-step pattern. What is your losing strategy profile? What is the one or combination of losing strategies you will fall prey to when the heat of the moment

• 37:23Speaker 03

  has knocked you out of your functional role? Take a moment and note that.

• 37:38Speaker 03

  Now, you know,

• 37:41Speaker 03

  as acute as you might be in understanding your own human limitations, we tend to be even more perspicacious about our partners. So, sometimes when I'm doing these exercises, I actually ask people to diagnose their partner before they diagnose themselves, because partners are easy to do. But you just did the heroic job of looking at yourself squarely in the mirror, and looking at your usual losing strategy. Now, it's time, for those of you who are in a current relationship, to look at your partner's losing strategy. What does he or she do when they lose it in the heat of the moment? Being right, control, ventilation, retaliation, or withdrawal?

• 38:36Speaker 03

  Now, the simple task is to put these two together. Remember the vicious circle? Remember that "the more, the more," that dance? Well, here's the simplest way of unearthing "the more, the more" between you and your partner. "The more I..." Fill in the blank of your losing strategies. "The more he or she..." Fill in the blank of his or her losing strategies. "The more I am about being right, the more my partner ventilates. And the more my partner ventilates, the more I'm about being right. The more I try to control my partner, the more my partner withdraws. And the more they withdraw, the more I try to control them." The simplest way of unearthing the dynamic between you and your partner

• 39:20Speaker 03

  is just put your losing strategy profile up against theirs, and you will get the dynamic, the dance, that's burying the two of you. Come out of these losing strategies. Come out of the adaptive child, and move into your functional adult. Move into the circle of health.

• 39:46Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1.5 and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter, called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half-page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.

• 40:28Tim Ferriss?

  And these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.