Why you need to learn how to fight in a relationship (w/ Dr. Julie and John Gottman)

0:02You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. When it comes to how to have a healthy marriage or relationship, today's guests literally wrote the book, or actually several books. I have read many of them myself, and it has sincerely made a big impact in my marriage. For over 50 years, Drs. John and Julie Gottman have devoted their life to the research and practice of fostering healthy, long-lasting relationships. What does that take? How do we handle everything from jealousy and resentment to loading the dishwasher or picking what we're going to eat for dinner? I traveled to Portland, Oregon to interview the Gottmans on their home turf.

0:41And in addition to this podcast episode, we've also got a complimentary episode of our video series that is up on Ted's YouTube channel, where you can see John and Julie work through tough listener submitted relationship questions in real time. And also you can see how just adorable and loving they are with each other. Check that out after you listen to this. But for now, let's start this conversation about relationships with a clip from the Gottman's TED Talk. In this talk, they are explaining what the research shows on how to navigate the inevitable conflicts that are going to arise in any relationship.

1:15So most of us think that fighting is bad for romantic relationships, right? How many people do you know who say, hey, I had a great fight the other day. Oh, yeah, my partner and I fight all the time, and we're super happy. 52 years ago, we put love under the microscope. Julie and I are the founders of the Gottman Institute and the Love Lab. And we've made this study of relationships our life's work. And our research tells us that fighting is good for relationships, not bad. In our lab, we saw that almost all couples fight. In fact, how they fight in the first three minutes predicts with 96 % accuracy not only how the rest of the conversation will go, but how the rest of the relationship will go six years down the road.

2:19My God, I know. It's terrifying, isn't it? So, it's not if we fight that determines relationship success. It's how we fight. In fact, our research has revealed that sun fighting actually increases connection and even improves our sex life. So, how do we fight right? We're going to figure out how to fight right and so much more with Julie and John Gottman right after this.

3:03Today, we're talking with the Gottmans about how to have healthy romantic relationships. Hi there. I'm Dr. Julie Gottman. And I'm Dr. John Gottman. So you mentioned in your TED Talk that a large percentage of conflict is actually never resolved, right? 69%. And I'm curious, Julie, how, when we are having a conflict that we're not going to find a solution, what does the end of that conflict look like? What's a healthy end to a conflict that can't have a solution? A temporary compromise. That's what works best. So a problem like messiness versus neatness is going to come up over and over again. What do you know?

3:43We have that one. Or introversion versus extroversion, right? Right. So what typically happens in the way to do it right is you go to a deeper understanding place by asking each other questions that really draw out underlying themes, underlying dreams, underlying background history, maybe, that are part of each person's position on the issue. So there's deeper understanding, hopefully a little more compassion. And then you arrive at a temporary compromise. just a little bit of compromise. And John, between the two of you, who is the messy one and who's the neater one? Messy. Okay. So how - Well, messy in the sense that I'm constantly reading books and then the pile grows and grows wherever I happen to read.

4:35And the pile grows right next to the side of the bed. So eventually our temporary compromise is after four weeks or so, I will say to John, sweetie, I'm going to break my neck if I try and make the bed. Will you please move your books? And then he does. And then it starts over again. I think that for a lot of people in long-term relationships, when you hit something that is like this, where you have a pattern of being and it keeps happening over and over, a lot of times people make this narrative in their head that this is like a huge problem and that if you can't solve it forever, then that is maybe a deal breaker when it shouldn't necessarily be.

5:14How do you address that with people? Well, what we always say to people is that, look, you are in a different body than me. You have a different brain than me. So there are inevitably going to be personality differences and lifestyle differences that erupt into conflict every now and then. So it's okay as long as you learn how to talk about it and talk about it calmly, gently, without tearing each other apart. You know, Chris, a lot of people want to marry their clone. However, if they did, they would be bored out of their minds. Who wants to, you know, talk to your mirror all day, right? So as a result, those differences can really enrich the relationship.

6:03They don't deter from it. For example, there was a master couple in the study that Bob Levinson and I did, a 20-year longitudinal study. And this couple was amazing. I mean, he was attracted to her because he was really introverted. And she was kind of the life of the party. And she was, you know, they were in this black church together. and she would invite everybody from the church over every Sunday. And it really irritated him. So the very thing that attracted him to her became a source of irritation. And for her, she was attracted to the fact that he was a quiet and thoughtful, steady and loyal person.

6:51Somebody she could really, he was like the rock. And she described him that way. And then she noticed that when he became tense about anything, he really withdrew. And she hated that. So she would say, talk to me, talk to me. And he'd say, everything's all right. Don't worry about it. I've got it under control. Yeah, but what are you feeling? And he'd just be quiet. And that would really irritate her. So often the very source that attracts people then becomes a point of irritation. So these two people talked about this, and she said, okay, so what are all your feelings about this issue? She said in the lab.

7:35And he started to laugh because he doesn't do feelings. So she said, no, really, you know, I wanted to tell you that I really appreciated the drive we took this weekend to that park. And he said, you're welcome. She said it was very thoughtful of you to, you know, to take me on that drive. but you were so quiet. What were you thinking about? And he says, well, I can't pay the insurance this month if you really want to know what I'm feeling. And she said, well, I'm glad you didn't tell me during the ride. It would have spoiled the whole thing. But I need you to talk to me about things like that.

8:15Well, what good would it do? She said, well, I've got my own money. He said, you've got your own money? She said, absolutely. I always have had, you know, and I've got money stashed away. I use it for parties. I use it for all kinds of things. When the kids need something, he says, all right, well, what about that? She said, I can pay that insurance this month. He said, well, that would be great. See, she said, if you talk to me about your feelings, there's a solution there. He said, all right, yeah, well, maybe I'll talk to you more about my feelings. And they're both laughing at themselves. And here they are talking about this perpetual issues that they've had now for, they've been married 25 years.

9:06And these are the masters. And the way they deal with the perpetual issue is just beautiful. That kind of fighting where you come to a resolution and you actually understand your partner better, this is something that you two talk about quite a lot. I also wonder how often are the problems rooted in the past versus the present relationship? 90%, I would say. So part of that exercise that we ask couples to do in order to really understand each other more deeply is a series of questions that they ask each other. But listen to these questions. So the first question is, do you have any ethics, beliefs or values that are part of your position on this issue?

9:54Second question, is there any childhood or background history that is a part of your position on this issue? The third question is, what are all your feelings about this issue? Another one is, why is this so important to you? Next, what is your ideal dream here? If you could have the world the way you want it anyway on this position, on this issue, what would it look like? What would your ideal dream look like? And the last one, is there some underlying life purpose or sense of meaning that you want that is related to your position on this issue? And that goes, Chris, into this really existential place of why am I alive?

10:42Why am I here? So those questions draw out so much deep understanding that the other partners often will just, I had no idea. Really? Oh, my God. So conflict then becomes something entirely different. You can get behind your partner's dream. And you're more willing to work on some kind of an agreement that honors both people's dreams. And so conflict becomes an entirely different thing. It's like problem solving together, working on a puzzle together rather than working against each other, you know, which we think of conflict as this, but we don't think of it as that. And those questions, those six questions are really powerful.

11:31Before I ever met the two of you, my wife and I used a product that you created this deck of cards, 52 questions to ask before marriage or moving in. And honestly, I swear this is not a sponsored ad, but I truly, I believe in this so much. I've given those to so many of friends and couples who are moving and are getting married because my wife and I dated for a long time before we got married almost on our 10 year anniversary. And so having been together for a decade, I thought like, surely we have talked about everything, but not like some sort of new revelation. But these questions that you put together, these are the most common sources of conflict and disagreement in marriage.

12:09And what I found is that when Molly and I actually sat down and talked through them, there were so many that we had never had an explicit conversation about. Do you want to send your kids to public or private school? How do you think about what would happen if one of you was incapacitated medically, right? Like, these are really tough questions. You know, so many people believe in the myth that you have to be compatible in order to have a good relationship, which really has to do with, okay, what things do I think are important? What do I love to do, et cetera. And it's not really about kind of the content of those discussions.

12:48It's more about how do you talk about them? How do you communicate? We're going to talk more with Julie and John right after this short break. Don't go anywhere.

13:14And we are back. One of the concepts that you two became really well known for was this idea of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. And conversations. For people who aren't familiar, can you just walk us through what those are? So, you know, what we found initially was that there were four things, four negative things that people did. And these four things were the way they started talking about a conflict. The first was criticism, which is stating the problem as a defect in the partner's personality. You know, our problem is that you're, you know, thoughtless and unkind or something like that.

13:51Criticism, that was the first one. Defensiveness, the second one, a normal reaction to criticism, counterattacking you. You're not so perfect. Here's what's wrong with you. Or feeling like an innocent victim and whining about it. So criticism, defensiveness, contempt, which is an escalation of criticism with a tone of superiority, like sarcasm does that. Really an insulting superior air to the criticism. And finally, stonewalling, which is really emotional withdrawal from the interaction and just, you know, tuning out and not giving the usual signals to a speaker that you're listening and are with the speaker.

14:36So those are the four things that were the best predictors. And Julie, can a couple come back from experiencing those? Sure, of course. First of all, I think most people use those because we're in a very critical culture. You know, think about it. We go to school at six years old and immediately we're starting to be criticized. Sit down. That's not good. You're not doing well enough, et cetera. So we just absorb criticism as a way of communicating. And it always makes somebody defensive, you know, typically. most of the time. So we can come back when we know the alternatives. Nobody takes relationships one-on-one in high school or college or anywhere else.

15:25Most people haven't had the perfect relationship in front of them to role model after, right? So kids are watching parents typically who are not doing very well, right? At least half of them are not. So how do you learn how to have good conflict? When people have the alternatives, they grab hold of them like a sponge, soak them up, and then try to practice them. And at first it feels really phony, you know, just like, oh, this is ridiculous. This isn't me. You're right. It isn't you. And you are destroying marriage. No, I don't say that. I promise. But anyway, once they have alternatives, they really want to try and use them.

16:14And it turns out that when they do, oh my God, you know, everything turns around, especially with that six question piece where deepening understanding is important. My honest reaction to you naming the four horsemen of the apocalypse is I've done that and I've done that and I can remember a time when I did that one. We all have. Welcome to the human race. This is something that I really have struggled with in my own relationship is needing to learn how to fight. How do I figure out how to learn how to fight and how to do that? So relationship skills are the same kind of thing. It's like learning to play an instrument.

16:53You have to practice. You have to rehearse. You have to make mistakes and recover from them and so on. Good point. It really takes study to really fight right. And once you fight right, though, conflicts are actually a source of greater intimacy and greater understanding. And you're solving problems together, not against one another. I think that my wife Molly and I have, over the years, developed a lot of these skills that we're talking about, how to fight. And yet we are in this moment where we have a young kid at home. We have another on the way. It's kind of a classic time where there's a lot going on.

17:36And so I wonder, what do you do when the conflicts are less internal, how you two are relating to each other, and more external? Like, how do we have enough time to connect? How do we have enough money to go on a date night or to not be stressed? How do we have enough sleep so that we can take that second and be our best selves? When your child is 35, you will be getting enough sleep. I believe that. If I can survive until my child is 35, I believe I will be a much better partner. The answer to your question is really so important because we actually discovered by doing research on people going through the transition from being partners to being parents.

18:24Almost two-thirds of couples go through a big drop in relationship happiness. Hostility increases in their conflict, and it transfers to the child also, adversely affecting the child's development. So we saw that there were masters who went through this transition smoothly. They actually managed to go through it without the drop in relationship satisfaction. And they did the whole thing entirely differently. And so by studying them and comparing them to the people who really suffered through this transition, we learned how people manage that. How do they manage not having enough money for a date or not feeling comfortable leaving the baby with a babysitter or, you know, all of those problems.

19:14So, first of all, it's really important to have what we call a stress-reducing conversation. And, you know, ideally you have that every day, but, you know, who has time? People don't have time. But a stress-reducing conversation is amazing. It deals with external stresses outside the relationship. You talk about your day and you say to your partner, Oh, my God, you know, I had such a terrible day. My boss chewed me out. It was awful in front of everybody. Now, typically, the way that people used to respond to that is, let me fix it for you. Let me solve the problem. Why don't you do this? Wrong.

19:59That doesn't work because it cuts off the emotions. And emotions are where you really build a bond, right? So what the partner needs to do is ask questions to understand the speaker's feelings at a deeper level. So you might ask questions like, what was the worst part about this for you? Do you have a nightmare scenario about what might happen here? You know, help me understand. I don't quite get that part. And then as the understanding builds with questions, and note, you're showing your interest by asking those questions, then you express empathy. That's all you need to do. Empathy looks like, God, what a bummer.

20:46That's terrible. Oh, geez. You don't have to solve the problem. Your partner is usually smart enough to do that him or herself, right? So it's the empathy and the interest that makes a huge difference. Now, couples who have young kids may end up doing that at, I don't know, 10 to 10. And by 10 o 'clock, it's lights out. So even a quick one will help. Even a quick one. The other thing that you can really do is look for what your partner is doing right and say thank you. not noting what they've done wrong. You didn't clean off the kitchen counters. Look for what they're doing right. Thanks for doing the dishes.

21:34Thanks for making the coffee. Express gratitude. Express appreciation every moment you can. That, too, is building this positive culture of appreciation so that when you do have your blowouts, You've got some good emotional money in the bank that you're drawing from, but there's still some left over. Keep the romance going. Make the relationship a priority. I think naturally, probably people often have a lot of questions for you about how to solve the conflict. But I'm curious about putting that money in the relationship bank. Another thing you can do is ask your partner questions that are meaningful questions, that are open-ended questions.

22:23Like, so, you know, how are you thinking about your career as an academic these days? How are you feeling about the house that we're trying to build right now? How are you thinking about our daughter and how she's doing in school? you know, etc. So we would really draw out questions that were timely, but also gave us a road, kind of a road map really, into the internal world of our partner in that moment. So if you think about it, when you're dating, you ask your partner, potential partner, lots of different questions to find out who they are. As soon as you cross the aisle into marriage, boom, that ends.

23:15There's no more big questions. Bad idea because we're not static creatures, right? We're changing all the time. Every single day, we're going through little changes. And over the course of time, we're evolving into almost totally different human beings. So asking questions like you may have asked initially is a wonderful thing to keep doing. When our daughter was eight years old and she went to sleepaway camp, we decided to take ourselves to camp. We went to this really cool hotel on this island and would go there for, you know, 10 days, week maybe. And we would ask each other these same questions.

24:03year after year. How did you feel about last year? What was a bummer about last year? What was wonderful about last year? What are you looking forward to? That kind of ritual of connection is something, you know, the small ones that you build into your day are perfect. John is a wonderful cook. So he will make dinner. I'm not bad, but I'm a better cleaner than he is. And now you know why. So I'll do the cleaning, right? He does the cooking. And if I cook, he cleans. So, you know, it's this little... To her standards. to most of the time. So that kind of kind of almost co-designing parts of your relationship while preserving the spontaneity.

25:03I've noticed even just in this conversation, there are these like moments of friction that everyone has. And instead of becoming like, I'm upset about that. I'm going to talk about that later where you talked when I wanted to talk or you bumped me, you two, maybe even without thinking about it, you give each other like a little pat, or you say like, sorry, or you laugh, you smile. That feels important. Yeah, I think it is too. You know, it may be just because we've done lots of interviews. And at first, you know, we didn't know who was going to talk, who was going to ask questions. And the reality, Chris, actually, is that this world continues to be very sexist.

25:49So what would happen is that John and I would be asked a question that was usually clinical in nature. I would answer it, and then they would turn to John and they would say, well, Dr. Gottman, what do you think? what am I? I'm also Dr. Gottman. And God bless this man. He would say, I think she already answered it. But that was happening constantly. So eventually, he and I developed signals for who would answer what, and little signals if one of us was going on too long, The other one wanted to say something. And so it's this subtle, nonverbal form of communication that so far has served us well.

26:42I would imagine that very few couples who are listening or watching have the exact problem of we are both clinical psychologists and we are both PhD psychologists who are interviewed and one of us gets asked more questions. But I think that the underlying piece that often there's like a structural societal prejudice that then plays out in your relationship. Whether that is one partner is expected to do more child care or one partner is not expected to have as rich an intellectual life as another or they're expected to be one way or the other. Those can often, the external forces can play a really tough role in the internal relationship.

27:23So this is a way that you two have navigated that. I wonder if there's a way that you can draw some lessons for other people who are struggling with that. You know, for a woman to talk to a man about sexism against women, you know, it's sometimes easy, sometimes it's not, sometimes, you know, the partner, the male partner will really personalize it. You don't like me because I'm a man, you know, etc. And it's really important to make the distinction when you're trying to convey an idea to your partner about what you've gone through to say, this isn't about you. This isn't about you. Preface it.

28:04This is not a criticism of you. I married you because you're an exception. But it's still out there. When Julie says the four dreaded words, we need to talk.

28:22I whip out my notebook and I get my pen out and say, okay, I'm listening. Talk to me. And I write down what she says. And if I'm feeling defensive, I just keep writing. I slow her down so I can write every word. And as I'm writing, I kind of go, oh, that's a good point. Interesting. so I stay calm and less defensive this is my big invention and I use it all the time you know how many of these he has he has like 50 of them and guess where they are on top of I was gonna say I was gonna say if there's one thing I've learned about John is that from any possible place around you or on your body you might pull out a book of some kind yeah you gotta be able to reach the resources that you need.

29:10You've been doing this work for decades. Have there been trends or improvements or changes positively or negatively that you've noticed in relationships over the course of your careers? Well, first of all, one of the biggest ones was COVID, right? So people were struggling with COVID for two years, sometimes three years. You know, it's still going on now. And what we saw is that the couples who were doing well and then had to quarantine did great. They were just terrific. They had these conversations they usually didn't have time for and so on. The couples who were not doing well, the cracks really opened up into chasms in their relationships, especially if they were contained in a very small space.

30:02So I found myself giving people ideas like, you know how your kids built a fort out of sheets and pillows? Do the same thing and go inside that tent in order to have your own separate space. even though your partner may be in the room, you can't see them, they can't see you, you've got privacy, just a bit. So that was a very stressful time, terrible time. And out of that, because all this stuff was happening at the same time, politics became a huge divider. So in this country, of course, people have really polarized. And that's one of the big differences. People have polarized to extreme levels.

30:56And if they're on opposite sides of the fence, wow, you can have World War III. And we didn't really have that until 2016, right around there, as the political climate changed. So more polarization. and there's this battle right now between, again, women who are wanting to have a more traditional relationship where the roles are very clearly defined, the woman is staying at home, you know, much more than working, and that's a big shift. Didn't have that as much back in the 80s, 90s, fresh out of feminism when women were going back to work. So men had affairs forevermore since God only knows, 3 ,000 years ago or more.

31:58Women now started to have affairs too. And they also realized that they didn't have to stay in relationships that were abusive, that were depriving. Had their own money. Right. that were very distressing and unhappy. So they left and changed. Another thing that's been much more negative is that the sense of me has become much more prominent, that I'm important. I have to love myself. And so a very big reason for divorce now that's really new is this marriage doesn't actualize my growth. This is a new thing. And it's a major reason for divorce now. So it's much more, in a way, anti-relationship oriented.

32:50And we're seeing the effects of that sort of me-centeredness really hurting relationships rather than helping. People now all over the world are more likely to go solo, not even want to get married or have relationships or have children. And that's been a real negative effect. The other thing is, you know, these telephones that everybody has in their hand, you know, that have led people to communicate by texting. And people think that they communicate emotion very clearly in text. And research shows they don't have a clue, you know, how it's taken. And so people are texting and miscommunicating.

33:33And people like Sherry Turkle have been talking about the loss of face-to-face communication skills. The biggest problem in online dating is getting people to actually have a date rather than text. To actually say, let's meet for coffee. Let's go for a walk. So people are kind of avoiding each other, not talking on the telephone, not seeing each other. The electronics has been really widening the gap between people. Well, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, Dr. John Gottman, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chris. Great interview. This has really been wonderful.

34:17That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guests, Drs. John and Julie Gottman. You can find out more about all of their books, their research, and their courses at The Gottman Institute, which is online at Gottman.com. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and my book, Humor Me, about how to laugh more every day, is available for pre-order now. You can find out more about that book and all of my other projects at ChrisDuffyComedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is wedded in audio bliss to an incredible team of individuals. On the TED side, we've got the horse people of the audio-pocalypse, and I mean that in a positive way.

35:01This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas, whose primary relationships are with facts. On the PRX side, we've got the supportive spouses of audio, Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening. We love you. Please share this episode with someone who you think would enjoy it, someone who is in or wants to be in a romantic relationship. We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care.