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

0:00Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science and tech, alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future. I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pesek and Anna Rathman, Executive Director of the Jane Goodall Institute USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:32Today on Something You Should Know, every morning you're probably pandiculating, and so is your dog. I'll tell you why. Then something's going on between young men and women, and it's not good. Increasingly, young men and women do not trust each other. They're not spending time together to build that understanding and trust, and it is impacting every aspect of their lives, and you see this play out online and offline. Also, if the drinking water in your house tastes funny, there might be an easy way to fix that. And why the magic fades from most relationships and how to get it back. The biggest part is people think that once you stop the chase, once you know the partner, that there's nothing else to find out and they stop being curious.

1:21And at that point, I hear a lot of my clients say, well, my co-workers know me better than my partner. All this today on Something You Should Know.

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2:40We shop at Quince, and I absolutely recommend you try it. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to Quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. You know, it doesn't happen often that when I do an interview here, I am floored or stunned by what I hear.

3:30I prepare enough for each interview that I have a pretty good idea what a guest is going to talk about. But the first interview in this episode, which I've already recorded, I mean, I was shocked. It involves the young adults in our society, the Gen Zers as they are known, and what you're about to learn about them as a group I think will shock you as it did me. That's coming up in just a moment, but first up, you know that almost irresistible thing you do after you wake up in the morning? Your arms stretch out, your back arches, and you usually accompany it by a big yawn. Well, that movement, that action, has a name.

4:10It's called pandiculation. And it's not just a habit, it's an involuntary reflex built into humans and many other mammals that tends to happen after you've been inactive for a while. The combination of contracting and then releasing muscles may help reduce stiffness and prepare your body to start moving again. It's why dogs and cats do essentially the same thing after a nap. So tomorrow morning, when you stretch, yawn, and make, you know, whatever weird noise you make when you do it, you aren't just waking up, you're pandiculating. And now you have a much more impressive name for it. And that is something you should know.

4:54Something unusual and potentially consequential is happening with Gen Z, people in their teens and 20s. There seems to be a lot less interest in the opposite sex. Young men and women are pulling away from each other. They trust each other less. They're forming fewer relationships with the opposite sex. and many of them appear less interested in marriage and having children all together. And this may be part of an even bigger shift. Young adults increasingly seem to want to live lives that have less in-person social interaction, less conflict, less discomfort, and less friction. Even though friction and conflict are essential to forming relationships and growing up.

5:40The research behind this is pretty eye-opening. Daniel Cox is one of the people who conducted it. He is founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life and a senior fellow in polling and public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute. His research has been widely cited in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and hundreds of other major media outlets. He's author of a book called Generation Uncoupled, America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection. Hi, Daniel. Welcome to Something You Should Know. It's great to be here. So kick this off by explaining what this gender divide is, who it applies to, and why it exists.

6:25Sure. And who we're talking about here is young people, 18 to 29. Sometimes it's used interchangeably for Generation Z, and that runs anywhere from late 20s to mid-teenage years. So this is America's youngest generation of adults, including some teenagers. And the divide is really about trust and understanding that increasingly young men and women do not trust each other. They're not spending time together to build that understanding and trust. And it is impacting all kinds of relationships, whether it's friendship, whether it's dating and romantic relationships. It's impacting every aspect of their lives.

7:12And you see this play out online and offline. And is it strictly a gender divide or are women not trusting other women just as much as they're not trusting men? And same thing with men. Or is this strictly a gender thing? No, there is a unique divide between young men and young women. And young women are actually seeing greater solidarity among other women. That's one of the key findings, actually, that at a time when there's increasing distrust about men and concerns about personal safety, more women are turning to each other and sort of saying, you know, we can't trust these men. So we need to rely on each other.

7:53And it's really more of a tribal mentality that is emerging. And this lack of trust, we don't trust men to do what or not do what? So it can be as stark as to not hurt us. I interviewed a young woman who said that men viewed her like she thought of herself as prey, that if she was not careful, men would take advantage of her in any kind of instance. We saw this in some of the survey work we did as well when we asked questions about, you know, how likely would it be for a man to try to take advantage of you? And a dispiriting number, a significant number of young women said that, yeah, given the right circumstances, a man would try to take advantage of them.

8:42So it's concern about how men behave. It's concerns about basic things like respect and treating someone with courtesy. And this is on both sides, right? I'm talking about women now, but men feel the same way that they don't trust women to treat them well, to not take every opportunity to take advantage of them, to put something that they did or said and put online to be ridiculed. And so it's incredibly challenging just to try to talk to folks and not have it devolve into a kind of he said, she said argument. And do you have a sense of why this distrust exists? And is there truth to it? Or is this distrust manufactured somewhere?

9:33So I think it's the result of two things that are related. The first is that this generation, Generation Z, is the first generation that was raised online. So many Gen Zers got social media in their mid to early teens. it was a critical formative experience. And so they were learning about the world instead of talking and hanging out with their friends, instead of relying on trusted adults, whether it's their parents or teachers, they were learning about the world from what they were seeing online. And a lot of that was highlighting the most negative, dangerous and agitating content as they were seeing men behave in the worst possible way.

10:18they were seeing women portrayed in the worst possible light and it was warping their understanding and so you have this kind of skewed funhouse mirror that social media is providing of what women and men care about how they act combined with a withdrawal of social experiences in the real world that this generation is less likely to have had a part-time job when they were teenagers less likely to have participated in sports or scouting or religion. Across all these different domains of teenage activities, we're just seeing a significantly less active generation than previous generations. And so they have had less real-world experience to form an understanding of the world and more time spent online where they're getting a really skewed perception of the world, but increasingly what young men and young men care about and how they behave.

11:17The picture you're painting is rather frightening, frankly. I mean, because where does this go? What happens when these people grow further and become leaders in the community and in the world and everything else if they have this, as you called it, a warped view of each other? Yeah, I mean, we're already sort of seeing the results. We're seeing declining marriage rates, dating experiences that are increasingly negative. We're seeing less interest in people becoming parents, a broad-based withdrawal from community life. And so it's really touching every aspect of our society. You know, our work has shown that when it comes to social capital, and that's the degree to which people are engaged in local community activities, talking to neighbors, attending community meetings, married parents tend to do an awful lot of that.

12:19They are really participating in that kind of activities far beyond what most of the rest of us do. And so if fewer people are getting married, if fewer people are having kids, that means that these sort of civic superheroes, as we call them in our work, there are fewer of them to help tie our communities together. So this is not an individual problem. This is really a societal problem. And what about socioeconomic groups? Is this a problem for college people? Is this a problem for blue collar people or is this just a problem for everybody? So it's a problem for everybody. But if you sort of step back and look at who is most affected by our broad based social and civic decline, it's non-college Americans and specifically non-college men.

13:17They are struggling across the board when you look at their social outcomes and their romantic outcomes. And those things are intimately connected, that being successful socially is strongly connected to having romantic success. And so we found that for non-college men, you're far more likely to have not gone out on a date in the last year. You're far more likely to be single than your college-educated peers, partly because one of the critical attributes for men is to be able to show that you can provide. It still matters. Despite all the economic progress we've seen for women, the educational advances, women still really care about and judge men on their ability to provide and provide some amount of financial security.

14:09So when non-college men suffer economically, and they have disproportionately over the last few decades, it becomes much more difficult for them to succeed romantically. Okay, so I understand the pressure, the social media influence of causing this divide between genders and men not trusting women and women not trusting men and this pulling apart. I get that. But on the other hand, kind of knocking at the back door is this whole human requirement that we need to couple up. We need to have babies. We need to keep the species going. That that is a strong human drive for love, romance, and everything involved in that, that is a pretty strong urge, but apparently not strong enough.

15:00It is an incredibly strong urge. And the very best social science research shows that when it comes to building a meaningful, rewarding life, it is the quality of our social relationships. And so I think people are generally aware of that, but there's just this extant fear of, well, what if I get married to the wrong person? And I heard this in a lot of the interviews, especially with college-educated women, concerns about domestic inequality, that they're going to have to shoulder the majority of the childcare work and the domestic work. And they'll have to have full-time jobs as well and careers that they have worked so hard for.

15:43So there's this fear that people have about coupling up. And I think right now it's sort of winning out over the desire to form long-term connections with another person. The other thing that's happening is social media and I think increasingly AI is going to offer an alternative that feels a lot safer to folks. So you're not going to have to deal with the possibility of rejection. AI is going to provide constant affirmation. There's a growing number of particularly younger men interested in romantic engagements with AI. And so these things can feel safe. And for a generation that hasn't been raised experiencing the same kind of social friction and discomfort that many of us did from previous generations, we weren't able to avoid it.

16:40I sort of worry about where this is headed. I mean, if that is really a trend, and I want to ask you more about this in a moment, I mean, what could possibly be the future of that? It's frightening. We'll talk more about this in just a moment when we come back. I thought I had a pretty good idea of where my money was going, and then I started using Monarch. And it turns out there's a big difference between thinking you know and actually seeing it all laid out in front of you. I've spent some time with Monarch now. I've connected everything and really tested it out. And I like it a lot. Your accounts, investments, savings goals, spending, they're all there in one place.

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18:10That's 50 % off your first year at Monarch.com with code SYSK. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call someday clothes. I'll wear that someday. That'll fit better someday. Someday, I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility. Sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted. Listing is quick and simple. And when an item sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you.

18:57And importantly, there are no seller fees on Vinted. So when you sell something, you keep everything you earn. I like this whole idea because instead of clothes just taking up space, somebody else gets to wear them and you get some money out of the deal. Your closet looks better too. I mean, everybody wins, even the closet. So maybe it's time to stop waiting for someday. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees so you keep everything you earn. I'm talking with Daniel Cox. He is author of a book called Generation Uncoupled, America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection.

19:42And he is also founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life. So this sounds to me, I mean, this sounds so odd That people would rather give up on romance with the opposite sex and go have a relationship or try to with some AI thing. I mean, where could that possibly go? Yeah, and it's not simply that I feel like in mass people are going to start coupling up with their AI. but there's enough digital distractions that people can feel like they're, they have a fulfilling life, even if they don't have these really other important relationships. Yeah. See that to me is really important.

20:29It is our relationships with real people that teach us about life, how to navigate life, how to get through the world. And if you don't have those relationships, you're really missing out. the relationships we have, whether they're platonic or romantic, are supposed to challenge us. They're supposed to change us. We are supposed to be in service to other people. That is the thing that makes life worth living. And again, this is backed up by social science research, that when someone asks us a favor, to ask us to do something for them, whether it's help with moving, to help out with child care, The people who do the help, provide the help, actually feel stronger about the person than before the favor is asked.

21:20So it builds sort of bonds of mutuality that are critical for establishing trust and long-term friendship and belonging. It sounds like what you're saying is that people worry about connecting with other people of the opposite sex because it's going to interfere with their life. It's going to cause me friction, and I don't want friction. But how do you be in a relationship without friction? I mean, your expectations are just, I mean, they're clearly wrong if that is the expectation. Right, right. And part of it stems from their formative experiences. One of the most eye-opening parts of this project was we were doing focus groups in Raleigh, North Carolina, and we asked folks what they were hearing from their parents about the lessons and what it means to live a good life.

22:17And we asked, well, how many of you have heard from your parents the importance of getting a good education? Everyone raises their hands. Then we asked, what about financial stability and security? Did your parents ever mention that? Again, everyone raises their hands. And we had groups of men and women. And this was universal. Then we asked them, well, what about finding a partner or getting married? How many heard that from your parents? And no one raised their hands. Then we asked about becoming a parent. How many of your parents stress the importance of parenthood and then the rewarding experience that that is?

22:54Again, no one raised their hands, although a couple of the young women said that their grandparents had talked to them about that. And so increasingly, I think the lessons young people are getting, I think from the broader culture, but also their families, is about really building out themselves, right? It's not things I do on behalf of others. It's things that I further my own abilities and interests. And that's a pretty significant change from the past. God, this sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen. I mean, it's frightening, this picture you're painting. And I wonder why the parents of these children decided, for whatever reason, not to talk about finding a mate, having children, and the rewards that could come from that.

23:45Why the silence? partly is out of a sense that they don't want to instill, you know, their particular values on the next generation. And we saw that when it comes to politics or religion, there's a real hesitancy to pass on political beliefs or religious beliefs to their children, which again, that's fairly new. I mean, for previous generations of parents, you took their kids to church, they talk with them about politics and, you know, why their particular worldview was correct or right. And there's just a, I think, a lack of parents wanting to be prescriptive for their kids. But I think that leaves them without a script or roadmap.

24:33And so I think you see a lot of young people who are really successful, really smart, really motivated, but they feel a little bit of a drift in their life because they haven't been given a really clear model. This is what you do. This is the steps that you do it in. And so I think it's really been kind of a disservice that we ought to be having these conversations. Not that being a parent or being married is the end all be all, but we have a pretty good idea of what it takes to live a good life. And these things are often pretty central. If you've not heard from people that you trust about the value of raising kids and how it changes you for the better, I think it can be like, well, it just seems like a slog, right?

25:19I see people that I know or people on social media talk about being a parent and it looks exhausting and looks tiring. I am worried about these national or global problems that we're experiencing. So, you know, given that, why would I make this decision? That's just never before, it doesn't seem to me, in previous generations. Would someone say parenting looks tiring and exhausting, and that's a reason not to be? Parenting is tiring and exhausting, and almost every parent will tell you it was worth every second of it. That's right. And the obligations that we have are part of what make us great.

25:59So where do you think this is taking us? Where is this going? One of the reasons I'm hopeful, despite all the stuff we've talked about, is that I think there's a growing recognition among this generation about the damage that has been done by social media, by pornography, by online gambling, by OnlyFans. These kind of experiences that lead to more transactional relationships and interactions that feels fundamentally lessening, that they're losing out on something in the process of all this. And so you're seeing young women increasingly judge social media negatively. There's growing acknowledgement among young men the damage that pornography is doing, that hours and hours of pornography use is not helping them form successful romantic partnerships.

26:51There's so much more talk about having embodied experiences. I don't know if you've ever heard the term third place. This is like a sociological term. It means not your home, not your workplace, but the bars, the cafes, the restaurants, the bookstores that serve as places for people to interact and engage with others in their community. And there's increasing interest for among young people about finding their third place. And so I take some real solace there that there is some hunger for finding ways to connect in authentic ways. There's another trend I saw online about the small favors economy, that we should be asking more of each other, that we should ask our friends to help us move, that we should ask them to come over and help us make dinner instead of ordering DoorDash, that we should ask for a ride to the airport.

27:43And so I'm heartened by that. And I think that there is a good trend. But we need to help young people. We need to offer better models of the way we engage. You've got to be comfortable doing those kinds of things. Well, you know, I have a son in that age group, so this really strikes home for me. And I think what you've said is so important for everyone. Daniel Cox has been my guest. He is founder and director of the Survey Center on American Life, and he's author of the book Generation Uncoupled, America's New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection. There's a link to that book in the show notes.

28:22And, Daniel, thank you for being here, and it was really eye-opening. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate the conversation. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks, and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all e-commerce in the U.S. from household names like Gymshark, Rare Beauty, and Heinz, to brands just getting started.

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30:27No matter how great a relationship starts out, it changes. The excitement can fade, routines take over, stress gets in the way, and two people who still love each other can suddenly wonder, what happened to us? According to my guests, that loss of connection or desire doesn't necessarily mean the relationship is in trouble. Desire isn't just about chemistry, and it isn't something you either have or don't. It's affected by everything from stress and emotional connection to how you communicate and even how you pay attention to each other. And once you understand what drives desire and what kills it, there are very practical things you can do to bring it back.

31:11Anna Elton is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist, and clinical sexologist. She believes the health of a relationship can actually be broken down into specific actionable steps, which she is about to explain. Her work has been featured on PBS, Fox, ABC, and NBC. She writes for Psychology Today, and she is author of the book, The Formula of Desire, What Brings Us Together and Drives Us Apart, and the Science of Connection. Hi, Anna. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hello. Thank you for having me. Sure. So what's the one big thing you want people to understand about their relationship?

31:55Every single relationship will hit the stagnation point. And it's normal, because I feel like a lot of people think, if I love my partner, I should always desire my partner. But this is actually a wrong message. And when you don't desire your partner at some point, you feel like that something is wrong with your relationship, with you. And again, the best part about it, you can always bring desire back? Well, I think everybody knows that relationships will change, that the fire dims, that the passion can't sustain itself. And yet, often when it happens, people think it is a symptom of a problem, that something is wrong.

32:35But what's really, really interesting from a research perspective, you can actually bring desire back. It's not going to be exactly the same desire, it can be the new form of desire. And the most important thing is that relationship, once you get in relationship, a lot of people think that that's it. They reach the goal and they stop working in the relationship. But you actually need to continue putting efforts. It's like going to the gym. When you get to the shape and form that you want to get in, you stop. And then if you stop, you know what happens. So same with relationships. It's ongoing work.

33:07But it seems that in relationships, they start out and they're very passionate because there's a lot of novelty. There's a lot of newness going on. But after a while, I mean, it just by definition has to fade away because the novelty wears off. It can't be as novel as it used to be because now we know each other so well. but I think the biggest part is people think that once you stop the chase wise once you know the partner that said there's nothing else to find out and they stop being curious and at that point I hear a lot of my clients coming in and say well my co-workers know me better than my partner and that's a problem right because you need to continue getting to know your partner you need to continue explore your partner and I think this is the magic I've been with my husband for 25 years and he tells me that he still is amazed to find out new information about me.

34:05And usually we have a lot of fun and he says I'm as fun as the bag of kittens and I think that's the best part. Well, how is he finding out new information? What have you kept from him? It seems like if you've been married that long, what else is there to know? So what we usually do, we try new experiences and this is one of the exercises that I recommend my couples and I've been trying to also follow the same procedures so you create A3Z date nights so you take the alphabet and think of different things that maybe you used to do early in the day or something you've never done and make that list so A could be art gallery axe throwing B could be bowling beach walk maybe burlesque we just done burlesque um two years ago and it was really fun we never done this before um am is my favorite is moving massage my husband picks a movie i get a massage i pick a movie i still get a massage so you make the list and you try to do different experiences as a couple and what's interesting that you can see your partner through different lens through with new eyes and um for example i have this older couple who came in and they worked on communication desire and when they started doing date nights and they're in their late 70s.

35:22So they went to salsa night and wife came back and she said, wow, that was so fun. We had just an amazing time together that I feel like we haven't had in many years. And then the next week they went to do the axe throwing. And she came back and she said, wow, my husband is so sexy. He's so strong. And this is exactly the point where you start seeing your partner through new experiences. Yeah, well, I have heard that new experiences, when couples do new experiences together, that that somehow sparks, adds a little spark to the relationship. Although I've never really understood why, but new experiences seem to do that, yeah?

36:03It's the novelty, but also you're able to step outside of your routine and take off the hat. If you have kids, take off the hat of a parent, right? And put on the hat of individual romantic partner and do something fun, which actually releases dopamine, releases oxytocin. Dopamine helps with motivation. Oxytocin helps with more of the connection. It's love and bonding hormone. So what do you say, though, because you could plan A to Z date nights, but somewhere in between those different date nights, there's unrelated trouble. There's fights about things. There's something comes up. People get angry.

36:45And then you've got to put that in the mix. It can't all be just date nights and wonder. Absolutely. And again, I see couples who come in and they're not doing too well in their relationship. And I would say before you even start with date nights, you need to start on the positivity. You need to make sure that you're able to see your partner through a positive lens. so and at that point you would need to at least for one week try to notice what's going well because usually our brains are wired to notice what's not going well we look for problems good as expected so for one week and again it sounds so simple but it's not as easy to do to notice what's going well and then make a mental note and then say it out loud to your partner so this way you can re-establish the balance and start working on that connection first emotional connection and once you have a little bit more of that emotional connection you need to start checking in with your partner because i think a lot of couples they go back to logistics or what's not doing going well in a relationship and at that point you just need to make sure you're checking in how you've been doing what's been going on and the third thing is physical connection so before you become physically connected, before you have physical intimacy, you need to make sure that you focus on small bits of connections where you can hug each other, where you can touch each other through the day, which creates the more stronger bond.

38:19So you said a moment ago to work on your emotional connection. And I don't know that I know exactly what that means to work if i was to get up from my where i'm sitting and go work on my emotional connection with my wife what would i be doing what specifically does that mean so this is where a lot of women specifically women um say i don't feel emotionally connected to my husband i don't feel emotionally connected to my partner and i can't be physically connected to him so at that point And what usually a partner is looking for, they want to be emotionally safe. They want to know that you're interested in them as people, right?

39:01They want to know that they can talk to you. They're hoping that you're not going to get defensive when they bring things up to you. And again, it's easier said than done. But the whole idea is to start doing small check-ins. Maybe once a week, you can say like, hey, what's been going on? let's talk about not just logistics but have you been doing what do we need to do what do we need as a couple is there anything else you need from me and that helps to be heard and actually have a plan to do something like to fulfill each other needs emotionally well that whole thing about being heard boy I think that's really important and sometimes forgotten that you know you You need to feel like you're being heard, that what you say is landing somewhere.

39:53Absolutely. And again, in the whole world of technology, sometimes it's really, really hard because it's so easy to focus on your phone. It's so easy to scroll and not really focus on your partner. Even making eye contact right now is really, really important because I feel like a lot of partners that we have a conversation with their devices in their hands, and they're not fully paying attention and being present with each other. So one of the things that, as I hear you talk, one of the assumptions in what you say is that both people in a couple are on the same level with this. They're both all about date nights, and they're all trying to get in touch.

40:36But that's not real. I mean, it seems like usually one is further along wanting to do this kind of thing than the other. Absolutely. And usually women tend to say that they carry most of the mental load, emotional load of the family. They feel like they plan more. Maybe early in relationship, men used to plan date nights, but then later in a relationship, mostly women tend to plan date nights, focus on connection, and feel like they feel too fatigued, they feel too burned out if their partner's not stepping in. And also, according to research, which is really, really interesting, so really, relationship satisfaction is not measured by how long the couple's been together, by the trajectory of where each stands and how close each partner to their breaking point.

41:25So that's where one partner could be quite quitting from the relationship, checking out, and feel like, you know, they've been doing a lot, they've been putting effort in the relationship, and nothing lands, where the second partner could feel blindside and feel like, well, things are fine, we're fine, we're doing okay. So that's where you can find two partners in different places in a relationship. So when you're in a couple and you're in those different places, how do you get to the same place? So that's where you need the conversation. And how do you get to that conversation? I actually created an assessment that measures the health of your relationship, like a credit score.

42:03so when two partners take the test they can see where each of them are and I had a podcast a couple months ago and the host he took a test right before the podcast and he just wanted to you know just see how it works so he took it with his wife and he was thinking it's just going to be a fun five minute exercise they end up talking for four hours and they've been together for over 30 years so they actually went through each part of the assessment and they wanted to know why each scored a certain thing and then had a conversation about it and he told me that it was really really interesting that he didn't realize how he his wife felt in certain areas and what she needed so they had that conversation and sometimes this is the hardest thing because you don't know where your partner stands right maybe you're thinking like i'm doing pretty well or i'm not satisfied in relationship but it's really really hard to tell where your partner is at so that's why the whole assessment was something that I was focusing on in my research.

43:03And that assessment's on your website, which is, there's a link to the website and to the assessment in the show notes. You know, it seems almost inevitable that as you stay in a relationship longer and longer, everyday life just has a dulling effect. And then there's parenting, and being a parent, and soon the relationship moves to the backseat. absolutely and this is something that I've been looking and back in 2017 what I noticed every single couple who would come in and who would struggle with their relationship would not fulfill their couples persona so the whole idea is when you're single you have your individual persona with your likes the things that helps you to fulfill yourself your self-care and then when you meet someone else your special person you create additional persona it's a couple's persona so at that point you need to fulfill both personas you still need to do something by yourself so you don't lose yourself in the relationship and you need to do something with your partner and then when you have children you create this additional persona family persona and a lot of couples when they do things with their kids they think that are they fulfilling their family persona and by default their couples persona but it's actually a problem because they do not do anything for their couple's persona.

44:22That's why it's so, so, so important to do something as partners, as romantic partners, away from kids. Even if it's small 10 minutes of just checking in, hugging, cuddling, doing something, cooking together when kids are, you know, went to sleep, or just kind of checking in, having tea, or like, hopefully dates, but again, something together where you're actually focusing on each other. But it does require that both people are willing to do this, that you're both in on this. And that's where the whole understanding comes, because a lot of people think that, well, if we're in a relationship, things are fine, we should be fine.

45:01There's nothing else that we need to do, and we can focus on other things. That's where their attention and desire focuses on parenting, careers, maybe even getting back in shape. And then they don't really put a lot of effort into their relationship. And they don't realize that all the little things that built their relationship in the first place are actually slipping away so to get back in a good place in your relationship you need to do exactly same things that you stop doing you know because people stop even saying hi to each other when they come back home you know I have clients who say like well you know my partner says hi to dogs but not to me right if I get 10 % of affection that my dogs get I'll be the happiest person alive We stop touching.

45:47I hear a lot, we're like passing ships at night. So we don't look at each other, we don't touch each other, we don't really talk to each other. And what's the best way do you think to, like when people come to you and you explain this and they say, yeah, okay, well, yeah, this sounds great. How do you start? What do you do first? so that's when i always ask them um three things why did you like your partner in the first place what attracted you why did you decide to commit to your partner and why you're still here what keeps you right now in this relationship what is your reason and i think it helps people to take a step back and look at the relationship as a whole and remember why did they like this person in the first place because the way we think affects the way we feel and affects our actions And in many cases, some of the things that attracted us to our partners could be something that's affecting the way we see them right now.

46:45And I'll give an example. For example, a partner comes in and says, like, well, my husband is lazy. I'm type A. And he just doesn't help me out around the house. And when we look back, you know, she remembered that the reason why she was attracted to him because he was the rock. He was the calm one. He helped her out. And then over the years, she was, she wanted to take care of the things. And then he, he was offering help. But then at some point he stepped back because she had it together. But then what happened once they had children, the whole emotion load was too much and it was never reassessed and she never asked for help.

47:24And she assumed that he should know. And that's the thing, because sometimes when we feel like, you know, my partner is strong, my partner can take care of it, or my partner is there to support me, but they're not supporting us, that becomes the big issue in the relationship. So I always say, why did you like it? Why are you here? Why did you commit to your partner? And then how do you begin this process? What's the first thing you do? So I ask them, so what's been going well in a relationship? What do you feel grateful for? And, you know, if the, if partner's able to say it easily, I can tell that, you know, things are okay, you know, we can work with this.

48:03When they're struggling to point out at least one single thing, or if they say, well, I guess my partner is doing this, but I was like, no, no, no, no, but. So when I hear this, but that's when I give them the exercise of for one week, just try to pay attention of what's going well, because we really need to improve that emotional climate of the relationship. We really need to start noticing what's going well. yeah it's so easy to to bitch and complain about what's going wrong when you're missing the blue sky in between the clouds you're not seeing that you're just seeing clouds exactly and again this is something that i know myself and i always try to remind myself catch myself if i start thinking even thinking like oh this is frustrating um so for example my husband been doing coffee he'd been setting up coffee every night.

48:55So when I wake up, I have the fresh brewed coffee. And he has been doing this for many years without prompts, without asking. This is something that he likes to do for me. And, you know, sometimes I wake up and I mean, it doesn't happen too often, right? But sometimes I would wake up and the coffee is not there. And if I catch myself like, this is frustrating, I remind myself, he's been doing this for so many years. And I feel grateful that I get fresh brewed coffee every single morning. And sometimes he says like, oh, I failed you. I was like, no, no, no. I'm really grateful for you doing this.

49:26And that's the refrain because I always try to remind myself, I want to be grateful for everything that we have together. It's so easy to not notice what you've got and, and focus on what's not there. Absolutely. And as I actually heard the other day, so the grass is greener where you water it. So if it's not the other side, but it's where you water your grass. So make sure you water your grass in your relationship, then it's always going to be green. Well, great. I think everybody needs to be reminded about the importance of working on the relationship. It's so easy to forget that and just fall into patterns.

50:04And it's good to hear it. And you've explained it. You've explained some great ideas really well. I've been talking to Anna Elton. She's a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified sex therapist, and clinical sexologist. She writes for Psychology Today, and she's author of the book, The Formula of Desire, What Brings Us Together and Drives Us Apart, and The Science of Connection. There's a link to her book in the show notes, and I appreciate you being here. Thanks, Anna. Thank you so much.

50:36Have you ever had a glass of water and it tasted vaguely like onions or garlic or something else from your refrigerator? You may not be imagining that. You see, in many refrigerators, the refrigerator and freezer compartments share the same cooling system, so air and odors can circulate between them. Consumer reports actually tested this. They put garlic in the refrigerator compartment, and then they made ice in the freezer. The resulting ice smelled and tasted like garlic. The easy fix is to keep strongly scented foods tightly covered in the fridge, clean out the ice bin periodically, and use baking soda to help absorb odors.

51:21Refrigerators with separate evaporators for the fridge and the freezer are less prone to the problem. So if your ice tastes funny, don't automatically blame the water. Your leftover Chinese food may be the culprit. And that is something you should know. And if you have someone in your life that you think could benefit from this episode, I hope you'll share it with them. tell them about it. I'm sure they would appreciate it and it helps us grow our audience and we really appreciate that. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Purchase new carpet from the Home Depot and get it installed for free right now.

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