2 Ways to Deepen Your Connection with Your Partner & The Key to Strong and Lasting Relationships

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1:21Trust me. Discover more at chase.com forward slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA Member FDIC Subject to credit approval, terms apply Amazon has everything for everyone on your list Like my wife Radhi, who somehow nails every holiday photo While I look like I got caught mid-sneeze I'm getting something new to wear in our holiday photos But here's the thing Even if you wait until the very last minute Amazon has you covered Fitness, toys, home, decor, electronics, even fashion delivered fast enough to skip the parking lot panic and still show up with gifts that feel thoughtful.

2:05Shop gifts for everyone. Amazon, everything for everyone on your list. Before this relationship, try to remember a time when you were really happy and you were feeling really fulfilled. What were you doing at that time? What were you thinking about? What were you reading about? What were you feeling? The best-selling author and host. The number one health and wellness podcast. On Purpose with Jay Shetty. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. Thank you so much to all of you that are investing so deeply in your mental, physical, financial, emotional and spiritual health by joining in and tuning in to our conversations.

2:53here on On Purpose. I'm so excited because we're going to be adding a really special offering onto the back of my solo episodes on Fridays. The Daily J is a daily series on calm and it's meant to inspire you while outlining tools and techniques to live a more mindful, stress-free life. We dive into a range of topics and the best part is each episode is only seven minutes long so you can incorporate it into your schedule no matter how busy you are. As a dedicated part of the On Purpose community, I wanted to do something special for you this year. So I'll be playing a hand-picked Daily J during each of my Friday podcasts.

3:33This week, we're talking about your relationships and how to create the most meaningful connections with the people that matter to you. Of course, if you want to listen to the Daily J every day, you can go subscribe to Calm. So go to calm.com forward slash J for 40 % off your membership today. And today we have guests who've been on before. There's only a few of them that have been on the show twice. And these are some of my favorites. Today's guests are none other than Dr. John and Julie Gottman. The Gottmans are the nation's leading marriage researchers and educators. John and Julie Gottman are the renowned experts on marital stability, says The Atlantic.

4:12The Einstein of love, says Psychology Today. And the Dean of Marriage Experts, says The New York Times. Today, we're talking about their new book, Seven Days to More Intimacy, Connection and Joy, The Love Prescription. This is the book. We're going to put the book link in the captions and comments so you can go and grab your copy. John and Julie, it's so wonderful to see you. Thank you for making the time. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to sit down with you again. I'm really excited. Jay, you know, you should know that it's always an honor to be on your show and to be connected with your guests.

4:49So thank you so much for the opportunity. Yeah, I agree. Well, thank you both so much. I want to dive in because whenever I see one of your studies published or a journal or a new book come out, I get very excited because you truly have just studied so many interesting, fascinating parts of relationships. And I guess the first question I want to dive into straight away is when you're dating someone what quality do you value or what quality should we be looking for when we first start that process because I feel like one of the most challenging things right now is we all have different things we're attracted to because of how we were raised what movies we saw what perceptions we have about what What is attractive?

5:37What is male? What is female? What is beyond gender, right? Like we all have certain perceptions and misconceptions. What are some of the values and qualities we should be looking for when we're dating someone or when we're even looking for someone? So I think the very first thing you should look for is kindness. And not only kindness towards you, but kindness towards the people, for example, who bring you your food, who bring you your drinks, who bring you your car. The people that are all around you supporting that date that you're having with this new person, do they treat everyone with kindness?

6:17That's a marker of that person being respectful towards others and not being too classist, not being racist, but being somebody who treats people with care and respect. So kindness is one. I think another is reliability. So does your dating partner actually show up when they say they're going to show up? That's very important. Or are they always late and then they're making an excuse for being late? Maybe they don't even apologize. That's not a good sign. So reliability, they are who they say they are. They'll be where they say they'll be is very important too. One of the things that really impressed me about my son-in-law was that my daughter was completely herself with him.

7:14So it's a little bit different than what quality did he have. But it was that she was really herself. There was no part of her that was being stifled. She had a boyfriend who didn't want her to sing. And she's a natural singer. She's a jazz singer. And my son-in-law just loved her singing, loved her being silly, loved her being tired and crabby. She was completely herself. And I think it's an important thing if you can be completely yourself and feel accepted by this person. Those are both such great answers. And John, I love that thought, the idea that it's not a quality that someone else has.

7:56it's that they allow you to be all of your qualities and they don't dampen or hamper any of those. I think one thing you touched on there, which really got me curious and intrigued is, I think more and more today, people have been in relationships where they feel stifled, or they feel controlled, or they feel manipulated, or they feel like their light had to be dampened. I think I speak to a lot of people. I'm sure you've spoken to, you know, God knows how many people over the years that have felt that way. Why is it, do you think, that it takes us so long to notice that sometimes? Sometimes we become so intoxicated and enamored by another person that until we actually leave or we get the courage to break up, when it happens, we think, oh my gosh, I just realized I've been manipulated for three years.

8:52I just realized I was controlled for three years. But we accept it. We tolerate it. Why do we allow that to happen to ourselves? And why do we also, follow up question to that, why do we allow it to happen to our friends and family members and people around us when we can see it, but we're scared of telling them? First of all, nobody grows up without catching some baggage along the way. That baggage leaves us feeling insecure, feeling badly about certain qualities that we may have. And so when we first start dating, we try to be the best version of ourself that we can be. That's number one. Number two is that as we get to know this other person a little bit, what happens is that we start to psych out who do they want us to be?

9:42Do they want us to accentuate our being athletic but downplay our being intellectual? What fits who they are? And we try to mold ourselves into this jigsaw puzzle piece that isn't being true to ourselves. And a lot of us have the experience as children of doing exactly the same thing. We realize that perhaps our father really didn't like it when we outmaneuvered him in a political debate. So we tamp it down. Or our mother didn't like it when we dressed like an athlete instead of like a very feminine stereotype. So who are we? As little kids, we figure out you only get approval for fitting somebody else's notion of who you should be.

10:36Then if we don't work through that, we don't process that, and we don't acknowledge that who we are is absolutely perfect in every way, even though we have our strengths and we have our challenges, we go into a dating situation where, again, we're trying to mold ourselves. It's that same process of trying to figure out what's wanted of us and molding ourselves to that. Also, Jay, you know, we live in a very critical culture. So at jobs, we are rated on a totem pole. Where do we fit high or low on the totem pole? Same thing in classrooms. Our own individual passions may not be honored. It's only how well do we memorize the capitals of states, right?

11:28So we're always having to mold ourselves to fit somebody else's standards. And we have to work through the fact that all those others out there had very distorted mirrors of who we were and what was beautiful about each one of us. what we have to do is create our own mirror that yes of course it will see the cracks it will see the flaws it will see the weaknesses or challenges that we need to continue to work on like mine is impatience I'm one of the most impatient people I know so I always have to work on that always you know, five steps ahead of where somebody needs to be. So I have to work on that.

12:21But at the same time, I can understand that a lot of things that I am that may have threatened my parents are things that are actually strengths that are beautiful about who I am. Each one of your audience and everyone else has strengths, they have challenges. The work is to see your strengths without the distortions of everyone else's mirrors of you. That's a beautiful response. And you're so right that so many of the things that distort us are gifts or gaps that we received from our parents, where we are functioning differently based on how we were loved and how we were shown love and what's really interesting about that journey and i'm focusing on that feeling stifled and restricted because i think it's just such a big theme and such an important thing that you raised when someone comes out of that when someone finally breaks through a relationship where they were feeling stifled where they were feeling controlled they can feel extremely lost in who they are and they can become confused about their identity and about their value and often people will say well i just doubt myself now because i was doubted or i have lost my self-esteem what are some of the building blocks you think and what is the importance of self-awareness and self-esteem?

14:02I mean, Julie, you just said it right now. You said, hey, I know that I'm impatient and that's something I'm always working on, which means you have self-awareness and you can still have positive self-esteem because you know it's something you're building on or working on. What role does self-esteem and self-awareness have in healthy relationships? And how does one redevelop them after a painful experience? I love that question, Jay, because every single day I see clients who are in exactly the kind of pain you're describing, where they've come out of a painful, painful relationship where they were treated badly, disrespectfully, they've been devalued or they felt invisible, unimportant.

14:47And they are lost because they've tried so hard to mold themselves into a paper doll that they've lost track of who the real person is behind the mask that they've displayed. So the building block of change is first of all seeking people and more connection with those people that you actually really trust, who care about you, who see the beauty in your heart, in your soul. and talking to them about your experience, asking them what was their perception of what was going on in the relationship. Does it make sense to them that they were being controlled or being manipulated? Can they help you with their own objective eyes understand what process you were involved in.

15:51Now, that may be a friend, that may be a sibling or a relative, it may be a therapist or a healer, but somebody that you can trust who reflects, first of all, more accurately what was going on for you and who you really are. Then what you need to do is follow your own passions. At first, it's really difficult to figure that out. What are my passions? I don't know anymore. So you go back to before this relationship, try to remember a time when you were really happy and you were feeling really fulfilled. What were you doing at that time? What were you thinking about? What were you reading about?

16:38What were you feeling? So I have a client, for example, who was really controlled and manipulated by her partner, and then her partner betrayed her and left her. So now she's very lost trying to figure out who she is. So we listed a whole list of potential passions and had her close her eyes and reflect on, okay, each one of those, how do they resonate with you? How do they resonate? And she generated this very short list of things she loved about herself and she loved doing. There was sailing. There was learning about music and playing guitar. There was going swimming with her children. Swimming in particular was something that she really, really loved to do.

17:32So seek out that passion. pull the thread, see what's at the end of it, and then expand that passion into something that becomes a regular part of your life. And not only that, but most passions include the participation of other people. So if you connect with other people that share that passion with you, you then begin to feel like, ah, this part of myself that I've shut down, that I'm now recapturing is something other people love too. Hooray! And you go out to live those parts of you that you split off, but now you're reconnecting with. That's a brilliant answer. You've given us so many practical things that we can do there when we're in that position.

18:24And they all feel really tough and difficult in the moment, for sure. But they're tried and tested. They work. They make sense. They align. And anyone who's listening or watching right now who's been in that scenario recognizing what what julie was saying like there was a you before this relationship and there will be you after this relationship and the you that got lost during the relationship is the one you're trying to reawaken rediscover and give an opportunity to rise for so i think that recognition that you may have lost connection with who you are but you are not lost, you are not non-existent, which a lot of people can actually end up feeling.

19:08If we move forward into, we started with dating and then we went backwards into breakups and I'm kind of going back into dating again. But I think one of the biggest challenges today is the paradox of choice, right? Today there is more choice, there are more options, there is a quicker ability to say yes or no to someone on a dating app. You're not meeting people within a one mile radius or five mile radius of where you grew up you're meeting people online through a picture you don't know their family you don't know what school they went to you don't know many of their friends so the way we meet people today has drastically shifted in the last 10 to 20 years alone what to speak of over time and on top of that there's this feeling that people have of like well if i'm not with someone who's perfect well then i can just drop them and find someone And that was because there's so many people out there.

20:02So tell me about what you've noticed with the paradox of choice and what can we do in our dating life to actually learn quicker and faster whether someone's right for us or not? And what does that really mean? Let me say something about what modern researchers found in selecting somebody. And it turns out that really nobody has been able to find anything to measure that determines whether you'll like somebody. So you can ask people even what are they looking for in a partner and to list all the qualities. And then you can select for those qualities. And that person is unlikely to even like that person.

20:50So, you know, my answer to that is to find somebody you can trust. And trust is very different for everybody, but it's somebody you feel safe with. Somebody who really makes you feel accepted as you are. And our best index for trust is to pick somebody who is able to think for two, not just for themselves, but can think about what benefits both partners. And that person winds up being very trustworthy. When we talk about choices of dating, part of the problem is that everybody is on the internet trying to find a match. But because basically the internet is black and white text, it gives people only a tiny little sliver, one dimension of who somebody is.

21:49You know, that's always a problem in my head because people will describe themselves in a way that doesn't include how they smell, what they really look like, what their history is, who they really are. So you're not going to find the perfect partner. What John was saying about find somebody that you can trust, in my world, what that means is somebody who makes you feel good about yourself. So one of the questions you need to ask is how do you feel about yourself when you're actually face to face with this person? So, you know, fine, go out and look on the internet, see who appeals to you through the internet, but try to meet up with them, have coffee, you know, for 30 minutes, talk to them, see how many questions they ask you and how do they respond to your answers?

22:50Do they just change the subject? Are they looking over your shoulder at somebody cute who's sitting at the back of the room? how are they responding? Or are they really focused on you and making you feel like, huh, that person seems to really get what I'm saying. They're understanding. They're responding not by interrupting me and talking over me, but by really wanting to even hear more. And gee, I want to hear more about them. How self-disclosing are they? Are they self-disclosing appropriately, not oversharing every personal detail, but letting me know the basics of who they are so that I can respond to them and slowly get to know them.

23:39So it, you know, I'm afraid all of we internet users, when we limit ourselves to looking for somebody on the internet, we're really making a mistake we've got to meet up with people face to face see how we feel being with them and how they feel being with us yeah i think one of the greatest notes that i liked out of that from both of you was i think trust is one of these things that just takes forever to build and you know you hear about people who they've been with someone for 25 years and they feel they trusted each other and then the person after 25 years goes i don't love you anymore and and then you know you're dealing with that and so the thing that really resonated with me was the idea of safety like do you feel safe when you're with someone i think that's a very current immediate way of building trust because trust is this big thing takes a lot of time a lot of building blocks so many other things but do i feel safe with this person is something you can ask yourself right now and you can know whether you feel safe around someone emotionally, whether you feel safe around someone physically or whether you feel fearful or whether you feel unsafe or whether you feel threatened or whether you feel intimidated.

24:56And I think that's a really great question that people can ask themselves in the moment, in a day. And of course, the insight of getting as quick as possible to meeting someone in person is the only way that you can really start making better decisions in dating and dealing better with choice. and knowing that the research shows that there is no perfect thing to look for and perfect partner I mean that's very freeing I'm hoping people hear that and go oh I get it like there isn't just the perfect thing to look for and there isn't a perfect formula and there isn't a perfect recipe which means I'm going to work with a lot of ingredients that don't make sense and there are going to be things that are contradictory and there are going to be things that don't perfectly align and that's okay that's what the research shows right so i i think that's a healthy way of approaching i think the challenge i've seen is we're so focused on finding the perfect person that we don't create a process of creating something meaningful with the person we're with and so we keep finding perfect chasing perfect chasing perfect pursuing perfection not thinking oh I can actually create make and build something pretty good if I direct my energy this way let's let's dive into a few of the questions that you ask in the book so we talk about the seven days to more intimacy connection and joy and I think one of the things you talk about that I love in this book is about asking big questions and the reason why I like this idea of when you're in a relationship how do you increase intimacy is that we've been wearing how long we've been in a relationship as a badge of honor right we look at the amount of time someone's been with someone as the success of a relationship and we know that that's not factually true whether it's a job a relationship a home you could live in a home for 30 years and hate it every day you could work a job the same day same job every day in your life for 50 years and hate your job or you could be with someone for a long long time and not really enjoy their company and i think what i've noticed is that the reason that happens is we think when we get married to someone or we move in with someone or we're in a committed relationship with someone you almost have this little voice in your head that says you already know them that we wait till we know someone to make commitments and now that we know them there's almost unconsciously nothing left to know there's nothing left to discover and so when you talk about these incredible ideas that you're sharing in this book the reason why i really like them is this idea that you can always learn something new about someone that you've known a long time so someone who's old in your life there's still something always new to learn about them and one of the ways you say is by asking a big question can you describe what a big question is and why it's a great way of building intimacy you're juggling a lot full-time job side hustle maybe a family and now you're thinking about grad school that's not crazy that's ambitious at American Public University they respect the hustle and they're built for it Their flexible online master's programs are made for real life because big dreams deserve a real path.

28:25Learn more about APU's 40-plus career-relevant master's degrees and certificates at apu.apus.edu. APU, built for the hustle. Radhi, you know how much we value mindful living and personal growth? But finding the perfect gift that reflects that can be tough. That's why I really love Apple Gift Card. It's not just a present, it's an investment in their well-being. They can use it to subscribe to their favorite wellness apps from the App Store by inspiring e-books from Apple Books or even upgrade their AirPods. It's the gift of choice, allowing them to curate their own path to happiness and fulfillment.

29:06Plus, it's super convenient. Send it instantly by email or pick one up while you're out. Give the gift of mindful living. Visit applegiftcard.apple.com to learn more and gift with purpose today. So a big question is a question that has a long answer. It doesn't have a yes or no answer. My favorite color is purple in a one word answer. It has a much bigger answer. Like what are you thinking about death and dying these days? You know, you've just turned 85. What are you thinking about it? What are you thinking about who you want our children to be, especially growing up in this world where so many things really need to change drastically and quickly?

29:58Who do you want our child to be. So they have big answers to them, these questions. One of the reasons that these questions are so important to keep asking is the following. We are not static. We are not like, you know, the fireplace in your home that never changes, that has the same form, the same bricks, the same wood, you know, that'll burn, replace it with a little more wood. It's not the same fixture. We are not a fixed entity. We are constantly evolving. We are changing. We are moving forward. And we are being impacted by our world to shift our beliefs, our thoughts, our feelings about things, our hope or our hopelessness.

30:52We're changing all the time. So if we don't continue to ask those questions, then we may have a picture of our partner in our minds that's obsolete, that's 10 years old, and that person has been replaced by somebody totally different, but we won't know it. So the big questions keep us connected with this beautiful changing form. We are like the sea, Jay. The sea is never the same minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. The sea is always changing color, waveforms, smoothness versus turmoil. It's always changing. Well, so are human beings. Inside of us, we have a sea that's being influenced by all the powers and forces in our world.

31:50So how does that change us and our partner? And how can we stay attuned to each other? The big questions are the way to do that, to address who are you here and now today? How have you changed? that's really special and i love the analogy of the sea and i feel like when you were saying that with the ocean what i was thinking is that often a lot of us subconsciously are either scared of asking that question or we don't ask that question because we're fearful that someone may change in a way we don't like and that's often what makes relationships so difficult is that two people two oceans as you beautifully described are always changing and then someone changes in a way that you don't like anymore and you go well i don't like that i and and when i ask you about it and now you start telling me about this new thing that you're into or whatever it may be i don't vibe with that like that's not something i resonate with how do we continue to build loving relationships with people we've committed to people that we feel like is going somewhere but then they get into something, whether it's like you said, it could be pain that changes who they are or something that brings them joy that changes who they are.

33:09But we don't quite like it. We don't enjoy how it's changed them. How do you deal with that? I have a great example of this, actually. Okay. So I'm one of those people that looks at a piece of bread and gains five pounds. That's why I can look at a slice of cake and be twice the width the next week. So I have to be really careful about what I consume, and consuming carbs and so on is not necessarily a great choice for me. Okay, so what does my precious, beautiful husband get into? Bread baking. This is a new passion that he has. And he's got a pizza stone and he got the little curving baking pan for making multiple baguettes.

34:04Like I could eat three baguettes in one sitting. So he has gotten into a passion and he's baking bread whenever he has spare time. So is that my favorite passion for my husband to be baking bread that I can look at and, you know, expand myself in the wrong ways? Probably not. But the thing I have to do is to understand by asking more questions. Why this? You know, what is it about this particular passion, my darling, that you really love doing? What part of you is this fulfilling other than, you know, your tummy? What part of this are you loving? You know, help me understand this passion. He's so cute.

34:58And so I want to understand him. This may not be the favorite evolution of mine that he's going through, but because I love him, because love means accepting everything about your partner, even the things that are challenging for you, I want to get to know this part of him too. even if it's something that you know doesn't fit with me and who says I'm the center of the universe and everything has to revolve around my likes and dislikes I'm not so I want to understand this aspect of him and my my mother was trained as a hotel chef and I miss her so one way to remember her is to learn to be a baker of viennese pastry and that's where i'm going oh my god we're headed to viennese pastry jay can i move into your house i bet you have really healthy no and i and thank you john for sharing that insight about why you've got into baking i mean When you hear it from that perspective, you're like, wow, that is, wow, I can only understand how meaningful baking is to you.

36:22So what a beautiful description to share that. And Julie, I thought that was a great example because it's the same with me and my wife. So I'm someone who's very certain about my passions, my purpose, what I'm doing on this planet and what I care about. And I've developed that over time. it's not that I just stumbled upon it yesterday and it's always evolving and growing and of course it changes and and moves and my wife's someone who is very talented and gifted but she's often trying to figure more out and she's more open to this fluid version of herself and discovery she's in a space of discovery and so when you have certainty and discovery it's very important that there's massive flexibility and adapting in both people it's not just me to her or her to me it's both right is what i'm hearing you say it's like she has to be adaptable to the fact that she's married to someone who's super certain about what they want in life and i have to be open to the fact that i'm with someone who enjoys a lot of different things and figuring it out and being in discovery mode and that encourages me if i see it that way to spend more time in discovery and me being this way encourages her to spend more time in certainty or discovering things that are more certain but that requires a lot of flexibility and adaptability and maturity to be able to do it in a healthy way and that's hard it is hard work right this is not easy to do it is challenging it is difficult it can be painful how do we build that flexibility because i feel that most most people i speak to today there's a lot of like well this is the way i am and this is what i want and this is not what you're providing me right especially when it gets to bigger things than what we're talking about so how do we develop that flexibility and adaptability because i think people have very clear plans or parts of how they want their life to go and your partner kind of changing tact or changing track can maybe off you know derail you sometimes right you know i think it goes back to john what you were saying earlier which was you have to think for two you have to think about, you know, if you really love this person, what is going to benefit them?

38:54And how far can I stretch myself outside my own ego, my own way of doing things, my own rigid path? How far can I stretch myself beyond my own rigidity to adapt to my partner's path? And can we talk through the differences between us, the new path that my partner may be following, and find some in between? I'm thinking about an interesting example of somebody who was married and had had a fairly kind of atheistic set of beliefs, and the other person He was very comfortable with that. And then that person went into a very deep spiritual pursuit and started doing kind of visionary quests. And those brought him to a very different place than they had been in together philosophically in terms of more of an atheistic set of beliefs.